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Originally Posted by MarchHare
I strongly disagree with the emphasized portion of that statement. While there are certainly cases of good deeds being done in the name of religion, on the whole religion has been responsible for a huge amount of unspeakable evil. I wouldn't go so far to say that relgion is entirely bad, but for sure it is on the negative end of the spectrum, hardly neutral.
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I guess that falling short of a complete catalogue of religion's moral ledger, we may have to agree to disagree on this point--but not before I offer this observation: religion has indeed been the justification for a lot of hateful views throughout history--but the other side of that ledger is in my view equally full. Just one example that I alluded to earlier was slavery: slavery in the U.S. was perpetrated for economic, not religious reasons. It was ended for religious, not economic reasons. (some churches supported it--but the main movers of abolitionism--William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, etc.--were evangelical Christians. Add to that list the many Quakers who were both abolitionists and pacifists. And you're right--it's only one example--but to me, it's a telling one, because it's an example where people decided that the moral teachings of their religion were not consistent with what they were seeing on the ground, and so they engaged in social activism in order to create positive change, while their secular counterparts were at that time relatively happy with the status quo.
Your other comment--that "pluralism" was part of the creationists' justification for including a diversity of viewpoints in the classroom--is an interesting one. I suppose a case can be made that diversities of viewpoints SHOULD be taught, or at least that students should be alerted to their existence. But context is everything: creationists want ID to be taught in the science classroom. This is where we learn that not all truth is relative, because anything that is labelled as science must also meet the tests of science, and ID does not. If it's not science, you can't teach it in science class--end of story. It would be like teaching civics in shop class.
Of course, the "pluralism" advocated by the pushers of so-called "intelligent design" will turn out to be merely a pluralism of convenience. Would it extend to the inclusion of sex ed, or the biological roots of sexual orientation? Frank discussions of the real roots of the "pledge of allegiance" each time it is recited in class? Surely not--but maybe we can arrange a trade:
If America will also teach their students that the words "under God" appear NOWHERE in the words of the framers of the U.S. constitution--that actually, the pledge of allegiance was invented in the late 19th century as a way of introducing religion into a civic discussion that never included much of it--then maybe we can discuss teaching students that a few people don't believe in evolution in spite of the preponderance of evidence that exists to support it.