No School, Public or Private, Should be Allowed to Teach Religion

My opponent does not believe that I know the difference between a church and a school. However, what Thomas Jefferson meant by the separation of church and state is not an actual church, but rather the ideas and practices that the church represents. A church is a metonymy (or a symbol) for the religion itself, and separating the religion from the political is what the Founding Fathers intended. A private school, which teaches religious beliefs as fact, must be regarded as part of a religious system, not as an actual church, but as what is logically subsumed under that concept. My opponent believes that private schools can teach children about religion, but not teach religion as truth. However, my opponent should have no problem with schools teaching scientific theories as absolute truth. The problem with this view is that scientific theories are frequently false. According to the pessimistic meta-induction[1], we do not have good reason to think that our presently successful scientific theories are true or approximately true because the history of science is a graveyard of once empirically successful theories with meaningless referents. In Medieval times, students were taught Aristotelian physics, which, although empirically successful, turned out to be false. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, students were taught Newtonian physics, which, although empirically successful, turned out to be false. If the successful scientific theories of the past all turned out to be false, there is no reason to believe that our current, successful scientific theories are true. With that said, there is trouble in believing that "claims for which there is evidence to support them" attain a special class of knowledge, for even the empirically successful can turn out to be untrue. For better or for worse, religious beliefs have never been proven otherwise, and thus there is a special certainty that they are immune to disproof. Moreover, to a large degree, I do not believe private schools teach religions as true (from my own experience in a private school). They indeed teach about religion, but religious values are reinforced in the home and cemented by the parents' beliefs. Thus, my opponent's objection to theism should be taken up with parents, not with schools. In the absence of these private schools, children will still become religious (albeit much more ignorant about what they believe). Lastly, my opponent believes that religious values hold the country back, because politicians (a lot of whom attend private schools) have a biased, religious education. However, there is no reason to suppose that a completely atheist society would be any better than an overtly Christian one. As an atheist myself, I hate to make this argument, but there are plenty of counter-examples to this: such as the Soviet Union and North Korea, which restricted religious freedom in the same way that my opponent is proposing. The right balance is a virtuous mean between atheist and theist, and not imposing one's values on one's neighbor. My opponent questions why the children should be taught "mythology". I personally think that much of science today is composed of mythology, misunderstanding, and misinterpretation. However, education is a matter that individual parents must decide for their children, for education falls under the heading of a parent's greater responsibility to the welfare of his or her child. ------------ [1] = http://everything2.com...