A teacher in East Kilbride, Scotland, openly admitted to being a creationist, and promoting creationist beliefs in the classroom. They’re everywhere, so this is unsurprising, but this is what I have to apologize for:
Education chiefs launched an investigation earlier this month after it emerged that members of a US pro-creationist Christian religious sect, the West Mains Church of Christ, had been working as classroom assistants for eight years at Kirktonholme Primary in East Kilbride.
American creationist fifth columnists seeking to corrupt education in Scotland! I thought we were allies.
At least we sent you the stupid ones.
During a discussion on the Big Bang – the scientific theory explaining the origins of the universe – pupils were also said to have been told by teacher Leonard Rogers that people must stop putting their faith in things that cannot be proven.
Wait. “Stop putting their faith in things that cannot be proven”…well, there goes the entirety of religion, then.
Hey, dummies, we’ve got more evidence for our “things” than you’ve got for yours!
This post could also have been titled “Calling a bluff”.
I can’t take this anymore. Just can’t. All the variations on this over the years, you’d think just fucking one of them would stop short when saying this sentence, realizing the vapid stupidity of it, but no.
Unfortunately, when pressed, their circular reasoning of the babble proves god exists, and since god exists, the babble is the word or god, seems to utterly escape their “skepticism” as a logical fallacy. Followed by the inevitable “but I’m sincere, so I must be right”….Yeah, sure, hey…
The world needs better tinfoil hats
and I need a new irony meeter.
My kids’ 5th grade public school world history curriculum taught that the plagues of Egypt were real. The teacher had to explain how rivers could run with blood or frogs could rain from the sky. There is a section on Jewish history and Bible stories were treated as historical fact. They didn’t treat the Greek myths as factual history. I tried bringing this up with the teacher but she didn’t want to talk about it.
Looks like a really bad day for religious fuckwittery in the UK:
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/18/uk-storms-divine-retirubtion-gay-marriage-ukip
UKIP. Wonder how Pat Condell is reacting to that?
From time to time over here in the UK we get outbreaks of fundies – both home-brewed and imported from the States – trying to shoehorn creationism of other fundamentalist religiosity into the curriculum or some other aspect of public life. For the most part it sputters like something of a damp squib; most Brits are nonplussed by American style evangelism, viewing it as falling somewhere between quaintly eccentric and vaguely annoying, though this attitude is slowly shifting toward greater hostility with regard to the more toxic, bigoted expressions of religion, especially amongst the more progressive younger generation.
Of course, the general public’s failure to immediately bow down before the ‘wisdom’ of whatever inane religious babble is being promoted this week leads to much public whinging from religious wingnuts about the supposed ‘attacks’ on their freeze peach and freedom of conscience. As usual, they try to characterise their lack of a right to force their beliefs upon others as a form of oppression.
Overall, they are not as dangerous as the US religious Right, but very much fulfill the role of useful idiots for our own rightwing parties. They can always be relied upon to get into a frothing frenzy over the latest moral panic, for instance, and to back things like Cameron’s recent bid to use the supposed ‘threat’ from online pornography to push for sweeping laws to restrict access to a wide range of internet sites by means of default ‘opt out’ internet filters.
From wonderpants’ link @ 7:
Resists the urge to bang head into wall repeatedly. What in the fuck is it going to take? We know how weather works now. We’ve known for a long time. It isn’t a gift or punishment from deities, and yet…
Then, a little further down in the article, we get:
You aren’t going to be a wonderful, proud, diverse and free country for long, if you get infected with the current crop of theocrats we have here in the States. Yikes.
Wow! One of the few things we can be absolutely sure of, just as sure that Obama has been elected president twice, is The Big Bang. It’s based on a) repeatable observations (an expanding universe) and b) a well established scientific theory (General Relativity). Sorry, Caine, I disagree. The more stupid creacrappers are the better for us.
War is a natural disaster now?
David:
As long as it is god driven, I imagine. Then it would be a punishment, a natural outcome of disobedience or something like that.
I guess it makes some perverse sort of sense that, since they’re Christians and therefore have never bothered cracking open their bible and reading the damned thing, working as classroom assistants they’ve never bothered cracking open a dictionary and looking up the definition of a word such as “faith.” They should also look up “irony,” if they ever have the chance.
You need to be more specific! Surely this covers the entire group?
Say rather, ‘At least we sent you the especially stupid ones.’
We certainly do. The thunder is angels bowling and rain is them crying when they miss the spare.
kevinalexander:
And when it rains while the sun is out, the devil is beating his wife. Oh my yes.
I work in East Kilbride and live fairly close, the church of Christ are quite active around these parts. My daughter went to school with the daughter of the local minister, it was quite scary to watch them recruiting the kids in the local area for “fun club”. I watched closely, and with much interest as they tried to work their way into my daughter’s school, but fortunately, our head teacher is a bit more savvy than the guy at the East Kilbride primary school and soon gave them short shrift. The Kirktonholme Primary story broke a good few months ago now, I think it will be hard for them to get such a foothold again in any school nearby for quite a while, I was quite pleased to see the hostility towards them when the general public got wind of what they were up to.
And staying with Britain: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/18/uk-storms-divine-retirubtion-gay-marriage-ukip
It’s Severus Snape.
Oh, that was the parent that complained about the teahcer. Shudda zapped the guy with the dark arts
Caine @10
UKIP are smartly-dressed neo-fascists. They don’t want outright theocracy, but religious oppression as a tool of the state is right up their alley. “Diverse” in this context means able to prefer Association Football, Union, or League as your heritage dictates. “Wonderful, proud […] and free” relate to the ability to smack down others they don’t like, and not to have to worry about nanny-state interference except where they think it’s a good idea.
The creationists had been working in the school for eight years!
I don’t believe the other teachers would have been dumb enough not to notice.
I wonder if we’ll ever hear the full story.
We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
I’ve heard that kind of thing before, but that was from theists of the Eastern variety, so they justified it with reference to the karmic debt incurred by sinful behavior. Eventually, lots of people will just have to die and whatever method is handy (earthquake, famine, epidemic, war) will make it happen.
@kevinalexander #16:
I’m sorry, but you have a really weak grasp of meteorology: everyone knows that thunder is the sound of Thor striking a frost giant with Mjolnir. And rain is Yahweh pissing down the back of your neck, again.
*Tch* The things they teach in schools these days…
PZ:
Not sure about Pat, but their leader Nigale Farage calls for removal of the barmy:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25802437
…so they may be looking for a new leader soon.
No, god driven war would be UN-natural disaster. Any corroborated witness to that yet?
@Wonderpants #7
Apparently he’s been suspended now.
stripeycat (#22):
Not entirely true, although neo-fascists (including many not so smartly dressed ones) do make up a proportion of their support. They’re more like a British copy version of American conservatism – xenophobia, anti-immigration, libertarian fuck-the-poor economic policies, climate-change denialism – the Republican Party transplanted to the Home Counties. Or maybe the Tea Party would be a better analogy, since they’re both “populist” parties run and financed by a coterie of rich businessmen.
If it was directed against Muslims, possibly. They may attract gibbering fundies like David Silvester, but they’re more a refuge for anti-Europeans, “I’m not racist, but …” types and anyone else who think the Tories are too left-wing and don’t pander to their privileges enough. Religious rightwingers drift into their orbit more for their rightwinginess than their religiosity. They’re not really any noticeably more pro-religion than the Tories.
WhiteHatLurker (#20):
The difference being that Severus Snape actually knew his subject.
I reside in Scotland. These days it’s a pretty secular nation. You don’t get much of this Creationist nonsense. Glad to see it exposed.