Thou shalt not think

"This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."

So read a sticker inside science textbooks in Georgia. However, in accordance with a federal judge's ruling, these stickers are being removed. The judge agreed with the ACLU lawyers that claimed the stickers violated the seperation of church and state. This strikes me as a bit odd given that there is nothing church related at all in the text of these stickers. Consider the sticker, line by line:

"This textbook contains material on evolution."

Clearly, nothing religious about this. It simply states the obvious. It would no different than saying "This textbook contains material on DNA."

"Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things."

I'm going to assume that this is the problematic part of the sticker. Still, the religious part escapes me. The sticker isn't affirmatively suggesting an alternative to evolution. It's promoting nothing. It's merely stating what any intellectually honest scientist would have to concede--that evolution isn't a fact. It's a theory. It's not saying it's a bad theory, a wrong theory, or a crazy theory. Just that it's a theory. To say anything else simply isn't intellectually honest. If the judge believes that something insidious is implied by the text, he must be deriving such inferences from his own political paranoia rather than from the text of the sticker itself. Either that or he has a hermeneutical philosophy that defies all rational explanation (talk about reading into a text).

"This material should be approached with an open mind, studies carefully, and critically considered."

Assuming that we don't want students to be brainwashed robots that don't know how to think and critically appraise information, ideas, and theories then how how can anyone possible object to this statement? Isn't this expressing what should be the governing philosphy of education in general--namely that the essence of learning isn't to imprint facts into one's mind but to develop the ability to think critically while reasoning through things, analyzing the data, and coming to conclusions that based on the facts seem to be the most reasonable?

I can't help but wonder if evolution's proponents actually realize that their philosophy of naturalism/evolution can't withstand the modest scrutiny encouraged by a sticker.