As the prophet of a new but well-attended (in spirit, though not in body) church—-the Church of the Mouse and the Discoball—-I find the language of my fellows in other religions that have preposterous origin stories to be mystifying when it comes to an insistence that one must “teach the controversy” about that most uncontroversial of claims, that the world as we know it is very old and that life as we know it evolved painstakingly through time. How is there a conflict? Yes, I understand that many Christians believe an origin story about how god made man and then made woman to be his slave and made a bunch of animals to be tasty for man and that anything that’s bad that happened is woman’s fault. But I believe something equally preposterous, that the world was coughed up in a hairball ejected from the Great Cat, as he was trying to distract the Goddess from making love to her new amour, the Roller Disco King. My story is even less preposterous than the Christian fairy tale, because at least we know that cats do that sort of thing. And the “blame women for everything” has the distinct stench of complete bullshit, emanating as it does from a culture that is suspicious of granting women the power that would allow them to fuck up anything, much less everything. And yet, I’m the one who gets that whatever fool thing I believe shouldn’t be competing for classroom time with the actual scientific theories that are evidence-based.
Of course, this is why Discoballmouseatarianism is the One True Church, because we’re the only church that will admit to you that everything we tell you about the supernatural is grade A bullshit, good for fertilizing jokes, but no way to understand the world. Creationists, alas, are a more small-brained sort of religious believer, and they believe their own bullshit and are perfectly willing to make complete asses out of themselves denying that the sky is blue when their silly little religion tells them that it’s yellow.
I bring this up, because as a Texan, I feel compelled to apologize for the morons who kept trying to cram “teach the controversy”-style language into the state’s school board standards. They did, sadly, succeed in making the actual standards vague enough that determinedly stupid biology teachers could try to permanently injure their students by teaching them lies instead of science, but on the whole, the good guys won. That said, the terminally stupid did succeed in making fools out of themselves repeatedly, first begging for language about the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution, and when they lost that battle, thinking they could trick everyone by asking for language about the “sufficiency or insufficiency” of evolutionary theory. At this point, I hope, everyone just felt bad for them, because they think everyone else is as easily confused by synonyms as they are.
But I do pity them on occasion. Creationists are, after all, victims of their false religions. If they joined up with Discoballmouseatarianism, they wouldn’t have as many problems as they do. It’s not just that we teach people not to believe their own bullshit. But it’s not just that. I suspect our non-attendance policy helps as well. Creationists go to their churches on Sundays and often on Wednesdays to have “fellowship”, which unfortunately gives them a group of people as deluded as they themselves are to hang out with. And this leads them to believe that their delusions can’t be that bad when they’re shared by so many people. When you’re a dude in these churches, your belief in the Evedidit story also means that you get to gallivant around the place, spouting ignorant nonsense, and no one will call you out on it, because dudes therefore get this right not to have anyone argue with them. Not that anyone would, of course, because everyone is there to have their delusions propped up instead of challenged.
But on the whole, fuck those bastards. If they had their way, they’d brainwash your kids and make them as stupid as they are, because secretly, they still have wild insecurities about being so stupid and need to swell the ranks.
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From the opinion piece in the Times:They had to settle for language requiring students to “analyze, evaluate and critique” scientific explanations and examine “all sides” of the scientific evidence.
The creationist see no problem asking the students to, basically, use the scientific method to evaluate scientific explanations.