Journal of No. 118

Sixth-grade [Louisiana public school] teacher Rita Roark has told her students that the universe was created by God about 6,000 years ago, and taught that both the Big Bang theory and evolution are false, according to the lawsuit. She told her students that “if evolution was real, it would still be happening: Apes would be turning into humans today.”

One test she gave to students asked: “ISN’T IT AMAZING WHAT THE _____________ HAS MADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” The correct answer was “Lord,” but C.C. wrote in something else. Roark responded by scolding the boy in front of the entire class.

When informed that C.C. was a Buddhist and therefore didn’t believe in God, Roark allegedly responded, “you’re stupid if you don’t believe in God.”

When the outraged parents confronted Sabine Parish Superintendent Sara Ebarb about the incidents, she allegedly told them “this is the Bible belt” and that they “shouldn’t be offended” to “see God here.” Ebarb advised that C.C. should either change his faith or be transferred to another District school where “there are more Asians.”

The lawsuit claims that other teachers and faculty members also push Christian beliefs on their students. Prayer is often lead by teachers in classrooms and during school events. Religious literature that denounces evolution and homosexuality has been distributed by faculty members to students. The school’s hallways are filled with Christian iconography and electronic marquee in front of the school scrolls Bible verses.

In possibly related news, Shreveport, Louisiana is ranked the 5th Bible friendliest city in America.

Providence, RI, home of HP Lovecraft, takes the honors as least Bible friendly. Out of the 100 metro areas ranked by the American Bible Society, Los Angeles comes in at #73.

ETAThe ACLU complaint contains lots of other horrifying information:

53. Another display in the main foyer of the school informs students that “ACTIONS
SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS.” It features several posters, including one of a child praying
that instructs students to “Pray,” another that urges them to “Worship,” and another that
encourages them to “Believe.”

Because of its size, Texas exerts a lot of influence on school textbooks, and this often has detrimental effects on the science content of textbooks, but things have been improving.

A reviewer (a chemical engineer by training) predictably complained about the evolution content in Pearson's (dba Prentice Hall) Biology.

Miracle #1: Rather than mushifying or deleting the 'offending' passages, Pearson stood up to the criticism. And produced a lovely (if rather technical (because actual biologists)) document rebutting all of the points.

I say it's a miracle, because this was something of a risk, since the text now faced further scrutiny by the Board of Education, which appointed a panel of experts.

Miracle #2: the Texas BOE appointed a panel of actual experts in biology.

And the book was approved.

Great article on the 'Homeschool Apostates' -- kids raised in overly strict and/or abusive religious homeschooling environments who are not just leaving the movement, but banding together into networks to try to effect changes in the law and in organizations like the Home School Legal Defense Association.

And yes, I can't resist the Schadenfreude that one of the few social activities that these organizations supported was debate. The goal was that this "would create a new generation of culture warriors with the skills to “engage the culture for Christ.” "

Instead...

“You can’t do debate unless you teach people how to look at different sides of an issue, to research all the different arguments that could be made for and against something,” Stollar says. “And so all of a sudden, debate as a way to create culture-war soldiers backfires. They go into this being well trained, they start questioning something neutral like energy policy, but it doesn’t stop there. They start questioning everything.”
...
Swanson, who helped bring debate clubs to Colorado, said he’d seen a “significant majority” of debate alumni turn out wrong, becoming “prima donnas” and “big shots.” “I’m not saying it’s wrong to do speech/debate,” Swanson told his listeners, “but I will say that some of the speech/debate can encourage sort of this proud, arrogant approach and an autonomous approach to philosophy

Holy Cats, they start weighing all sides of an issue and thinking for themselves? What have we done?!?

(Yes, yes, I know a few of you out there in the friendosphere are homeschoolers (or homeschooled) but as far as I know, none of you are batshit insane.)

A splendid book by one of the founders of beliefnet.com

It fits in well with Ye Will Say I Am No Christian and Moral Minority. Founding Faith follows a neat approach interleaving bios of the principal FF's with relevant history pertaining to church-state issues. It works really well, and provides great context. One of his main theses is that both sides of the current 'culture war' on church/state separation misunderstand (willfully or not) the founding fathers. I think he's largely right, and the reason is that the culture has changed so much. When Madison wrote his Memorial and Remonstrance against Virginia using public moneys to fund religious teachers, his most numerous supporters were not secularish people like him, or Deists, but rather the evangelical Baptists of his time, who circulated and signed copies of Madison's document.

Madison championed individual liberty of conscience, while most religious denominations were largely worried about what would happen if those heretics over there got their hooks into government. And so the First Amendment is something of an interesting compromise. It didn't make the US government secular at all levels (as Madison would have preferred). And most of the states at that time did have established churches, and they didn't want the federal government tinkering with them or forbidding them. So the establishment clause was protecting the state churches from the federal government, while also ensuring there would never be a national church. Waldman also goes to great pains to show that Madison and other FF's considered 'establishment' quite broadly to include any state support of religion, not just the establishment of a preferred denomination.

( Anyway, on to some details and quotes )

This is one of the two big cornerstones of the conflict thesis that science and religion are ineluctably bound for conflict. Unfortunately, this book is far inferior (in my opinion) to Andrew Dickson White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (not that it doesn't have problems of its own).

Anyway, despite the title, Draper's book does not actually deal with the conflict between religion and science all that much. Primarily, it bashes Roman Catholicism. An enjoyable pastime to be sure, but really... There's probably ten times as much ink spilt over papal infallibility as over the Galileo affair. But still some interesting things, especially some perspective from 1874. Check out those New Atheists!

WHOEVER has had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the mental condition of the intelligent classes in Europe and America, must have perceived that there is a great and rapidly-increasing departure from the public religious faith, and that, while among the more frank this divergence is not concealed, there is a far more extensive and far more dangerous secession, private and unacknowledged. So wide-spread and so powerful is this secession, that it can neither be treated with contempt nor with punishment. It cannot be extinguished by derision, by vituperation, or by force. The time is rapidly approaching when it will give rise to serious political results.

I was unaware of the virgin birth of Plato.

He does have a way with words, betimes:

The portraits of our friends, or landscape views, may be hidden on the sensitive. surface from the eye, but they are ready to make their appearance as soon as proper developers are resorted to. A spectre is concealed on a silver or glassy surface until, by our necromancy, we make it come forth into the visible world.

I found it weird that Draper refers to Copernicus as a Prussian. Though it seems this comes from him having been born in Royal Prussia, a province of Poland. The connection between Royal Prussia and Prussia Prussia are complex enough that I gave up on untangling the tale.

Pale Blue Dot crossed with an indifferent universe: "Seen from the sun, the earth dwindles away to a mere speck, a mere dust-mote glistening in his beams. If the reader wishes a more precise valuation, let him hold a page of this book a couple of feet from his eye; then let him consider one of its dots or full stops; that dot is several hundred times larger in surface than is the earth as seen from the sun! Of what consequence, then, can such an almost imperceptible particle be? One might think that it could be removed or even annihilated, and yet never be missed. Of what consequence is one of those human monads, of whom more than a thousand millions swarm on the surface of this all but invisible speck, and of a million of whom scarcely one will leave a trace that he has ever existed? Of what consequence is man, his pleasures or his pains?"

"A horse, whose master had taught him many tricks, was tried at Lisbon in 1601, found guilty of being, possessed by the devil, and was burnt."

There must be more to that story. In a quick search, the only thing I've seen that doesn't clearly come from Draper is this from some Theosophist website: "Granger tells the story, describing it as having occurred in his time. The poor animal "had been taught to tell the spots upon cards, and the hour of the day by the watch. Horse and owner were both indicted by the sacred office for dealing with the Devil, and both were burned, with a great ceremony of auto-da-fe, at Lisbon, in 1601, as wizards!""

Draper bashes a papal encyclical from 1864, and with good reason:

From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity,"2 viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way."

Talking about the fight between the Prussian government (back in the 19th century) and the Church: "The Bishop of Ermeland declared that he would not obey the laws of the state if they touched the Church. The government stopped the payment of his salary."

Ah, the good old days in America: "In America the temporal and the spiritual have been absolutely divorced--the latter is not permitted to have any thing to do with affairs of state, though in all other respects liberty is conceded to it."

And finally:

Then has it in truth come to this, that Roman Christianity and Science are recognized by their respective adherents as being absolutely incompatible; they cannot exist together; one must yield to the other; mankind must make its choice--it cannot have both. SCIENCE AND FAITH. While such is, perhaps, the issue as regards Catholicism, a reconciliation of the Reformation with Science is not only possible, but would easily take place, if the Protestant Churches would only live up to the maxim taught by Luther, and established by so many years of war. That maxim is, the right of private interpretation of the Scriptures. It was the foundation of intellectual liberty. But, if a personal interpretation of the book of Revelation is permissible, how can it be denied in the case of the book of Nature? In the misunderstandings that have taken place, we must ever bear in mind the infirmities of men. The generations that immediately followed the Reformation may perhaps be excused for not comprehending the full significance of their cardinal principle, and for not on all occasions carrying it into effect. When Calvin caused Servetus, to be burnt, he was animated, not by the principles of the Reformation, but by those of Catholicism, from which he had not been able to emancipate himself completely. And when the clergy of influential Protestant confessions have stigmatized the investigators of Nature as infidels and atheists, the same may be said.

See, it's all the Catholics' fault. And even when it isn't, it still is.

Holy shit!

In my battles with creationists, I... okay, let me sum up, I posted a picture of the Artemision Bronze:



and my post was "reported and deleted for review"

I presume, because of that prurient wiener. In protest, I make you look at a wiener. Wiener. Penis. Schwanschtucker.

Speaking of Nazis... I was surprised to find that the English phrase "master race" first appears in a long, long poem from 1855: "The Hireling and the Slave" by South Carolina Representative (as a member of the SC-based Nullifier Party) William John Grayson.

For these great ends hath Heaven’s supreme command
Brought the black savage from his native land,
Trains for each purpose his barbarian mind,
By slavery tamed, enlightened, and refined;
Instructs him, from a master-race, to draw
Wise modes of polity and forms of law,
Imbues his soul with faith, his heart with love,
Shapes all his life by dictates from above,
And, to a grateful world, resolves at last
The puzzling question of all ages past,
Revealing to the Christian’s gladdened eyes
How Gospel light may dawn from Libya’s skies,
Disperse the mists that darken and deprave,
And shine with power to civilize and save.

As a big fat secularist, I have strong doubts about whether Congress needs to declare any building a "National House of Prayer," especially when Washington National Cathedral is a sectarian house of worship, even if it does have Darth Vader on it.

But given that it has, I wonder how the theocrats feel about the National Cathedral ringing bells of joy and holding a special service in honor of the rulings that take the nation a couple shuffling steps further toward marriage equality. Most of the theocrats find SSM an abomination, think the Episcopalians at the Cathedral are heretics, and are livid at this celebration. Y'know what? That's exactly why the Founders expressly forbade national churches.

In an otherwise fine article in TIME about service organizations, and the particular good they can do for veterans, Joe Klein seems to go out of his way to offhandedly insult me and other non-religious Americans:

"But there was an occupying army of relief workers [in Oklahoma, after the tornados,] led by local first responders, exhausted but still humping it a week after the storm, church groups from all over the country -- funny how you don't see organized groups of secular humanists giving out hot meals -- and there in the middle of it all, with a purposeful military swagger, were the volunteers from Team Rubicon."

I mean, did I personally, give out any hot meals in Oklahoma? No. But I did give some money to the Oklahoma fund set up by the Foundation Beyond Belief, which ultimately raised some $45,000 for Operation USA, and the local food bank.

Why did I give to a charity run by humanists? Because in the past, assholes like Joe Klein have turned disasters into some kind of competition. It's not even enough to stop giving money to religious charities (though I did that long ago). Joe Klein was there with Team Rubicon, which as far as I can tell is a secular organization, but that's apparently not going to be enough to convince Joe that secular people are helping out. I'm not trying to 'win' this 'competition'; I'm not looking for recognition [as a child, I was too much influenced by Charles Emerson Winchester III's views on charity and anonymity]. Or a pat on the back. But I can't take a slap in the face like this without producing an angry blog post. So there.

Fortunately, the Friendly Atheist has already done a fantastic job tracking down information about the contributions of local and national secular groups after the Oklahoma disaster, including the giving out of meals of an unknown temperature, in partnership with Panera and Krispy Kreme. Funny how you don't see religious restaurants giving out food.

Factoid of the day: there are Hebrew acrostics in the Bible, where the first letter of successive lines form the alphabet.