If we look at atheism as being divided into two camps; confrontationists and accommodationists, then some days I find myself supporting the confrontationists (Hitchens, Dawkins, et al), other times I find myself supporting the accommodationists (Eugenie Scott, Shermer, and so on).
I submit that anti-religious rhetoric is counterproductive.
To a certain extent I agree with this. Science teachers should not start a class with "Good morning students, today we will be destroying creationism, please open
The God Delusion to chapter 1 and lets read aloud together". But what I do not agree with is if confrontation is raised by students (let's say that a student asks questions designed to be counterproductive to the lesson or if students arrange for a visit to the school by a creationist speaker or arrange some kind of extracurricular lessons which are advertised to students) that the science teacher is instructed to remain quiet and "leave well-enough alone" lest it cause the PTA members to choke on their tea biscuits.
Even if anti-religious sentiment is not force-fed to a religious individual, I think that even without the confrontation of that individual's beliefs, the plugging-of-ears-and-much-lalala-ing would be the outcome anyway (although probably not in such an obvious way). Should any piece of evidence, presented even in a non-confrontational way, contradict the individual's deeply-held beliefs then that person would sacrifice the knowledge to the satisfactory dulling effect of cognative dissonance. As it says in that same article...
Learning and understanding concepts are functions of how new knowledge fits in with preexisting knowledge and beliefs. Misconceptions often arise when individuals alter information to fit their preconceived ideas about a particular subject.
So I think that it is all about starting out with the ground rules, teaching the thinking tools required to make a better informed decision about which of two competing
ideas can be seen as more reasonable - this has nothing to do with religious views, this is only about teaching Critical Reasoning. Should any confrontation arise at a later date then applying the reasoning skills as a group should make it easy to spot the irrationality of religion. If you wait until the horse has bolted (wait until a challenge is raised) to start with teaching these skills then it will appear as though the science teacher is inventing things just to refute religion.
Just to placate my raging inner confrontationist (who has apparently bound and gagged the inner accomodationist today), I'll make a few final points deeply in confrontationist territory.
- If we (the atheists) don't confront, then the fundamentalist theists will not hesitate to spew forth logical fallacies.
- I think the distinction is clear between the positions, it is the stated aim of The Richard Dawkins Foundation and Paul Kurtz's Center For Inquiry to advance science and reason, not coexistence of science and non-reason. Promo video time.
- Richard Dawkins talks at length to New Scientist about the recent stepping down of the Royal Society's head because he (an ordained minister) advocated using creationism in the science class as a teaching tool (but was too vague about how it should be part of the curriculum - as a real challenge to modern evolutionary ideas or as a failed hypothesis). It is perhaps surprising that Dawkins was not one of the RS fellows asking for Michael Reiss to step down.
- A key point (from the New Scientist article that I referenced) is so eloquently stated by Dawkins:
[A]ccommodationists bend over backwards to woo the relatively sensible minority among Christians, who accept evolution.
Get the bishops and theologians on the side of science – so the argument runs – and they'll be valuable allies against the naive creationists (who probably include the majority of Christians and certainly almost all Muslims, by the way).
No politician could deny at least the superficial plausibility of this expedient, although it is disappointing how ineffective as allies the 'sensible' minority of Christians turn out to be.