I’ve been telling you this for how many years?

You really must take a look at this video clip from an HBO special on American Christianity and specifically creationism.

I just got finished watching Alexandra Pelosi’s Friends of God documentary on HBO and was taken aback at what has become an increasing trend among American christianists. This particular part on evangelicals and evolution (and what they teach their children about the science of evolution) was very disturbing. The "secular progressive" War on Christmas has nothing on the evangelical War on Science.

It’s distressing stuff — especially the scenes with the poor kids being brainwashed by that despicable liar, Ken Ham — but seriously, it’s going on everywhere and has been for years. I just gave you a list of creaitionist activities going on here in the progressive, liberal state of Minnesota, and I can tell you that those people will sound exactly like the kooks in the video clip; don’t think creationism is only the domain of backwoods hicks in the South.

Have you looked in your backyard lately? I guarantee you that there is a church near you where Ken Ham and Kent Hovind and Duane Gish are quoted reverently.

The saddest part: there’s a kid in the video who says he wants to grow up to be a biochemist and work for the institute of creation science and win a Nobel. Nope. Never going to happen. He needs to take a long hard look at the status of the gomers who are telling him the Behemoth of the Bible is a dinosaur—they’re lying to him.

Colorado crazy

A Colorado state senator (a Republican from Colorado Springs, of course), Dave Schultheis, is pushing a draft of an absurd bill to open public schools wide to religious indoctrination, all in the name of the first amendment to the constitution. It’s a demand to create a “Public School Religious Bill Of Rights”, with a long list of religious privileges. Some of them are trivial: it ought to be OK for students to give each other holiday cards with religious sentiments (and of course, they already can), or greet each other with religious slogans (like, say, “Merry Christmas”…hasn’t the war on Christmas been done to death already?). Some sound innocuous but are prohibited for good reason; he wants teachers to be allowed to wear religious jewelry and decorate their classrooms to celebrate their religious holidays. That may be reasonable in moderation, like someone wearing a discreet necklace with a cross on it, but just wait until some fanatic demands the right to hang bloody crucifixes and portraits of Jesus all around the room — then it becomes a repressive sectarian doctrine to allow teachers to promote superstitions that are hostile to some of their students.

The general intent of the document is to clearly prioritize religion as the number one privileged subject of the school, which may not under any circumstances be gainsaid. The rah-rah for god is bad enough, but what I found most disturbing was the way it encouraged the use of religion to undermine good teaching. Here are examples:

Teachers may:

(VII) NOT BE REQUIRED TO TEACH A TOPIC THAT VIOLATES HIS OR HER RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND NOT BE DISCIPLINED FOR REFUSING TO TEACH THE TOPIC;

School boards must set up policies that allow:

(a) A HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT TO OPT OUT OF ANY CLASS OR THE USE OF SPECIFIC COURSE MATERIAL THAT IS INCONSISTENT WITH HIS OR HER RELIGIOUS BELIEFS; OR

(b) A PARENT OR GUARDIAN OF AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, MIDDLE SCHOOL, OR JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT TO EXCUSE HIS OR HER CHILD FROM ANY CLASS OR THE USE OF SPECIFIC COURSE MATERIAL THAT IS INCONSISTENT WITH HIS OR HER RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.

In other words, if someone follows a religion that says the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, you are not allowed to hand them a compass and take them outdoors early in the morning, and if you are a teacher with such a belief you can ignore basic astronomy, even if you are supposed to be teaching earth science. This is a common belief among these loons, that religious freedom means you are not allowed to confront them with reality. You can see where that has gotten this country so far.

Fortunately, other members of the Colorado senate say the bill doesn’t stand a chance of passing. That’s good, and not too surprising, but take heed: this is another strategy for getting creationism and who-knows-what into the schools, by cloaking it under the veil of first amendment religious freedoms.

Astonishing weirdness

The IDists under Dembski have set up this truly cringeworthy site called “Overwhelming Evidence” that caters to the younger set—and if you think the pronouncements of the mature followers of the Blessed Designer are batty, you ought to read what the characters on that site write. I find myself running away, my fragile sensibilities fried, but it looks like Matt of Pooflingers Anonymous is made of sterner stuff. For instance, I found it nearly impossible to read the praise of Kazmer Ujvarosy, who seems to be operating on a wavelength of about 0.9 Timecubes. This is a guy who thinks ID is the secret to discovering the Higgs boson, tapping vacuum energy to power our space vehicles, and giving us mental telepathy, as defined in the Bible.

We’ll be able to read the minds of others, just as Elijah was able to read the mind of the king of Syria, and tell the king of Israel the words Syria’s king spoke in the privacy of his bedchamber (see 2 Kings 6:8-23). This form of ESPionage will make the traditional methods of intelligence gathering obsolete.

Matt was able to actually read the whole thing and still comment cogently on it. Really, you’ve got to check it out. It’s primo wackiness.

Listen and be disillusioned

You can now download the interview by Karl Mogel of Ken Miller and me. You’ll want to listen to it first of all for 1) Ken Miller, 2) the music I suggested, and lastly and leastly, 3) me. Unfortunately, I wasn’t impressed with Miller’s explanation of his comments in Kansas against atheists—it would help if he could make a defense without relying on straw-man mischaracterizations of prominent atheists. The sound track is Roger Waters’ music for “The Body”, which has a nice biological theme, but also makes a sneaky dig at Intelligent Design creationism—it’s got fart sounds in it.

Now there is another problem that came up. As usual, whenever I slither out into the real world and actually meet people or talk to them, I get these comments: “You sound so mellow.” “You seem to be a nice guy.” “You’re like…a college professor.” “You sound wimpy.” It’s terrible. I need an image makeover. I’m looking for suggestions, and here are a few ideas:

  • Hire James Earl Jones to dub over everything I say.
  • Eyepatch. Pegleg. Hook. Parrot.
  • Get tattoos, wear black leather, arrive for appointments on a Harley.
  • Develop maniacal laugh, cackle horribly at inappropriate times, acquire reputation for unpredictability.
  • Vomit blood occasionally.
  • Get elocution lessons from Lewis Black.

What are the universities to do?

Sara at Orcinus has an excellent article on the UC/Calvary Chapel Christian School lawsuit, in which a Christian private school is suing the University of California system to require them to accept their dreck for credit. She’s right that the universities need to stand up for standards, but I do have some problems with her opening statement: it ignores some complexities.

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Jonathan Wells knows nothing about development, part II

Yesterday, I pointed out that Jonathan Wells was grossly ignorant of basic ideas in evo-devo. This isn’t too surprising; he’s a creationist, he has an agenda to destroy evolutionary biology, and he’s going to rail against evolution…same ol’, same ol’. That’s nothing, though. Wells and his fellows at the Discovery Institute have an even more radical goal of fighting natural, material explanations of many other phenomena, and his latest screed at the DI house organ is against natural explanations of development. Not evolution, not evo-devo, just plain basic developmental biology—apparently, he wants to imply that the development of the embryo requires the intervention of a Designer, or as he refers to that busy being in this essay, a postmaster.

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