Kansas Court Rejects Argument that Evolution is Religion

Raw Story is reporting that the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected the motion of Citizens for Objective Public Education (COPE) to stop the teaching of evolution in the public schools on the grounds that it constitutes religion.  David Edwards writes:

After the state of Kansas adopted Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in 2013, Citizens for Objective Public Education (COPE) argued that teaching science without a religious explanation for the creation of the universe would indoctrinate children into atheism.

COPE said that teaching evolution took children “into the religious sphere by leading them to ask ultimate religious questions like what is the cause and nature of life and the universe – ‘where do we come from?’”

“The purpose of the indoctrination is to establish the religious Worldview, not to deliver to an age appropriate audience an objective and religiously neutral origins science education that seeks to inform,” the group insisted.

The court ruled that COPE could not show that any students had been harmed or that it had any evidence that the a religious perspective was being taught.