Just when you thought it was safe to go back into science class, creationist sharks are once again cruising in Texas to devour and defecate away any ounce of scientific inquiry into evolution. Armed with the Bible and a copy of Archbishop James Ussher’s chronology dating the world’s creation to 4004 BC, they have taken a new approach to remove any and all consideration that the process of evolution might have a part to play in the development of species.
They started with “Creation Science” that was every bit as scientific as flogging your back with spiked Rosary while screaming, forgive me God for I have sinned. When that didn’t work, they evolved debunked “Creation Science” in to “Intelligent Design,” which was Genesis carefully rewritten with all mention of “God” removed. Intelligent designed was debunked and finally banned from the public school curriculum in Pennsylvania by a federal judge. That did not stop them, of course. Persistence is an important quality in the faith based community.
Their new tactic in the war to shove their very narrow view of religion down the throats of anyone who might want to have their own ideas is a small phrase “strengths and weaknesses.” To quote Laura Beil in The New York Times, “The “strengths and weaknesses” language was slipped into the curriculum standards in Texas to appease creationists when the State Board of Education first mandated the teaching of evolution in the late 1980s.” For a scientist, the concept of “strengths and weaknesses” is natural, benign, and normal. Everything in the universe, be it the atomic bond between atoms, design of a bridge, explanation of Super String Theory, economic analysis, or a particular type of colorectal exam have natural “strengths and weaknesses.” To Creationist Sharks, which I can now rename Strength/Weakness Sharks, just the word weakness provides an opening, a weakness you might say, that they can use to remove knowledge from the act of education.
For me, it is difficult to understand the level of intolerance necessary to drive one group of people to remove the very idea of evolution from the memory of mankind. I recognize such intolerance’s existence, of course. I see the evidence of such intolerance again and again through history, and not simply with the Theory of Evolution. That intolerance is as easily linked to the shape of the eyes, the color of the skin, the nation of birth, or the ideology of a government. It is something that lurks deep inside all of us, I suppose. Something we each bring out and use against the thing that we don’t like. But that doesn’t make what they are doing in Texas acceptable. It doesn’t make it right. It is something we have to guard against.
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