Williams College Prof. Mark Taylor has another facet to the question of whether we teach about religion in schools, in an opposite-editorial page article in the December 21 New York Times titled “The Devoted Student” (subscription required after December 28, 2006). Taylor wrote:
Today, professors invite harassment or worse by including “unacceptable” books on their syllabuses or by studying religious ideas and practices in ways deemed improper by religiously correct students.
Distinguished scholars at several major universities in the United States have been condemned, even subjected to death threats, for proposing psychological, sociological or anthropological interpretations of religious texts in their classes and published writings. In the most egregious cases, defenders of the faith insist that only true believers are qualified to teach their religious tradition.
This contrasts interestingly, and vexingly, with trends like the Texas high schools who teach the Bible as history, many of whom probably cross the line into advocacy for religion according to one study.
So, on one hand we get religious fanatics who want the Bible taught as a faith document in high schools. On the other hand, the students at whom those classes are aimed want it taught only one way, their way, when they get it. There is no thought of actually learning beyond what the fanatics want to learn.
Alan Bloom was wrong: THIS is the closing of the American mind.
Taylor ends his piece with a warning:
Until recently, many influential analysts argued that religion, a vestige of an earlier stage of human development, would wither away as people became more sophisticated and rational. Obviously, things have not turned out that way. Indeed, the 21st century will be dominated by religion in ways that were inconceivable just a few years ago. Religious conflict will be less a matter of struggles between belief and unbelief than of clashes between believers who make room for doubt and those who do not.
The warning signs are clear: unless we establish a genuine dialogue within and among all kinds of belief, ranging from religious fundamentalism to secular dogmatism, the conflicts of the future will probably be even more deadly.
Case in point: This discussion at Pharyngula.
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Details are in the Daily Telegraph
Photo at left shows work to install a permeable reactive barrier (PRB) to help clean up contamination from arsenic, molybdenum, nitrate, vanadium and uranium wastes at an 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 