Human quality of life, regardless of the political upheavals of the moment, can be directly attributed to human curiosity and the scientific method of testing hypotheses. Luckily for all of us, brilliant minds have always followed their curiosity despite religion's mandate of ignorance, often at great personal risk. That's why I'm so sad to read that Turkey is no longer teaching evolution before college. "Evolutionary mechanisms" yes (whatever that means), but not the greater overall concept. They think it's too "controversial" for kids' widdle bwains to handle.
My absolutely inexpert hot-headed opinion is that it's yet another attempt to dumb people down to religion's level and eat away at how people know their world. Systematically removing the tools for skeptical inquiry is the best way to keep your populace in line. Political and religious leaders are very good at creating a sense of strong identity around this ignorance. They use words like piety and patriotism to describe how "we know best." Encouraging ignorance helps no one.
What could I say to get you on my team here?
Folks, there is no scientific controversy surrounding evolution. The word "theory" has six definitions. While I think that's a really good reason to change the way we describe scientific discoveries, I don't think it is a good reason to stop teaching children how to think about the world around them.
That science has become a dirty word, spat out by religious authorities around the globe does not make it any less of a good tool for understanding the world around us. Without past scientific studies, which use the same exact methods as evolutionary biology, we would not know that Aspirin is a painkiller. We would not know how to create the combustion engines needed for vehicular travel. We would not have the orbital knowledge to create Global Positioning Systems that could get us from point A to B with staggering accuracy--not to mention the real-time traffic updates of Google Maps and Waze.
Please understand my resolute atheism from this perspective. Religion quashes the desire to further improve the human condition under the guise of a deity's love after you die. I was taught for the first 22 years of my life that if you do what deityman wants, you can die whenever and it's fine, because you'll be reunited with all your family and friends who die too! That engenders, whether on the surface or not, an attitude that it doesn't matter what happens to OTHER people as long as deityman is being served appropriately by YOU.
But there is something that tugs inherently at us when we see suffering. That is why Mother Theresa's beatification bothered me so much. She created an entire theistic branch based on the glorification of extreme suffering, while receiving all the money she could ever want, the medical care usually reserved for heads of state, and the adulation of kind people who didn't have the access to information which painted her as she truly was. There's willful ignorance, sure, on the part of many Catholics, but when those of us who aren't of that faith hear the name "Mother Theresa" we get a warm view of an old nun who helps people, right? Why? Because that's what information we were given in or out of school.
So, when someone says "we won't teach evolution" all I hear is the silent "because we want people to associate biology with deity so we can continue as an institution." It all ties together, in the end.
