To my Texan friends

[asterroc]

I know there's a couple of you who read me. The Gov of Texas has just appointed a 6-person committee to revamp the state's K-12 science curriculum. One of these six individuals is a creationist. A second person on the committee is not just any ol' creationist, but the director of the US's biggest creationist organization: Stephen C. Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute. And the chair of the committee is Donald McLeroy, who has gone on record as saying that biology textbooks containing evolution are anti-Christian and anti-American.

If you give a shit about this, there's more info on astronomer Phil Plat's blog along w/ more links. Unfortunately the only one who can change this situation is the governor, and he's in power until 2010, but perhaps you guys can make his life a little more difficult.

Comments

[txtriffidranch.livejournal.com]

Already waaaaaaay ahead of you on this. McLeroy's typical of the breed that wants to control Texas schoolbooks: he pretty much learned what little he knows from the late Mel and Norma Gabler, the two idiots who refused to allow a dictionary into Texas schools that defined "bed" as "a place where one or more people sleep." (Norma was notorious for appearing on television and screaming about how current textbooks were "teaching our children how to have sex": one look at her helped confirm the stereotype that the people yelling the most about sex education couldn't get laid in Tijuana with a jockstrap full of $100 bills.) Unfortunately for our governor, he's already in the shit (he only won his election two years ago because the vote was split four ways), and a lot of technology and science powerhouses are already on his case about this level of stupidity.

If there's any good side to the invisible hand of the market, it's that creationist efforts tend to explode when high-tech firms threaten to pull out of Texas if they can't get a well-educated workforce. The days of engineers and developers being young-earth creationists are disappearing, and good riddance.

[meig.livejournal.com]

Oh, jeeze.

[weirdlilfaechld.livejournal.com]

"biology textbooks containing evolution are anti-Christian and anti-American"

I can only form one comment: Bwuh?

If you meet any Christians who haven't actually thought it out just ask them what if God wanted it that way, who are they to say it's not true?

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I was asked in class yesterday if the Bible account of creation can be reconciled with with what science knows about the formation of the solar system, and my answer then was that it couldn't if taken literally, but they could be reconciled if we accept that the Bible is figurative.

Since then I've actually thought of one way though: the triple nature of God and the dual nature of Jesus are both paradoxes where multiple contradictory things are all entirely true. It could be that some people reconcile creationism with astronomy/evolution in the same manner as thinking of Jesus as both fully human and fully divine. I'm thinking of mentioning this to the student tomorrow before or after class - although I'm an atheist, I don't want my bias to hurt other students' acceptance of science, nor their religious beliefs.