PBS Telling Teachers to Violate First Amendment, Group Says

Posted at CNSNews.com

A packet for educators issued by the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) in conjunction with the NOVA program "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" encourages teaching practices that are probably unconstitutional, a conservative organization stated on Tuesday.

"The NOVA/PBS teaching guide encourages the injection of religion into classroom teaching about evolution in a way that likely would violate current Supreme Court precedents about the First Amendment's Establishment Clause," said John West, vice president for public policy and legal affairs at the Discovery Institute, in a news release.

The 22-page document is a companion piece to the two-hour NOVA docudrama, "Judgment Day," airing on most network affiliates Tuesday night. The film is about a trial concerning intelligent design that took place in Dover, Pa., in 2005.

The guide claims to provide teachers with "easily digestible information to guide and support you in facing challenges to evolution."

In the booklet, teachers are instructed to use such discussion questions as: "Can you accept evolution and still believe in religion?" The answer to that query is provided as: "Yes. The common view that evolution is inherently antireligious is simply false."

"This statement is simplistic and not neutral among different religions, and in that sense arguably inconsistent with Supreme Court teachings concerning neutrality," said attorney Casey Luskin, program officer for public policy and legal affairs at the institute.

"The Supreme Court ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas that the government must maintain 'neutrality between religion and religion,'" said Randal Wenger, a Pennsylvania attorney who filed amicus briefs in the Kitzmiller v. Dover School District case.

"Because the briefing packet only promotes religious viewpoints that are friendly towards evolution, this is not neutral, and PBS is encouraging teachers to violate the First Amendment's Establishment Clause," Wenger added.

Natural evolution is still a "faith-based" belief system established upon the interpretation of evidence found in our natural world. To teach that one interpretation is more plausible than a conflicting interpretation due to either consensus or misrepresentation of the facts is simply wrong. Many evolutionists like to make the claim that the theory is fully compatible with a belief in a god, any god. However, the theory in and of itself teaches that the bible is wrong beginning with the first book of Genesis. This is a full frontal attack on the Evangelical Christian faith. If you're going to try and attack my faith and the faith that I am instilling in my children, you had better come more equipped than with just your favorite interpretation of the available evidence. Truth be known, all of the evidence supports the truth and the only evidence as to the origins of the universe come from the One who created it. Evolutionism is indoctrinated into our children in the government school system as a fact. The interpretation of the evidence is presented as fact, and alternative interpretations, any that invoke a Deity of any kind, are either completely ignored or mocked as foolishness by educators. Evidence that refutes natural evolutionism is also ignored, chastised as "Creationism", or swept under the proverbial rug.