Truth Claims

["Doug Jones" <credenda@moscow.com>]

Melynda Huskey wrote:

> Every religion -- and by religion I mean specifically "belief in and
> reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and
governor
> of the universe, and systems grounded in such belief and worship"
(American
> College Dictionary) -- makes a truth claim.  Publically funded schools
cannot
> mediate those competing truth claims.
> 
> Refraining from endorsing one particular religious view does not
amount to
> espousing another or competing religious 

Are you really wanting to claim, then, that public schools make
absolutely no truth claims? They only mediate them? That's the only way
your claim works -- public schools as uncommitted file drawers. Given
what you've said, as soon as the public schools make a truth claim they
are espousing a worldview. 

So in public school math and science classes, for example, you're saying
that no truth claims are made; none in history; none in geography; none
in biology. Public schools only present math, history, literature, and
science from as a series of uncommitted perspectives, never claiming
that gravity is real or the holocaust was evil? Where do these schools
exist? I've spent all my education in secular and public schools, and
I've never seen the animal you're describing. They always made truth
claims. They can't escape them.

But I do agree with you that once someone makes a truth claim a
worldview is at work. 

Doug Jones