Here We Go Again

Oh, for Zeus’s sake! Those right-wing religious idiots never let up. Another creationism in the public schools controversy is brewing in North Carolina:

The Brunswick County school board is looking for a way for creationism to be taught in the classroom side by side with evolution.

“It’s really a disgrace for the state school board to impose evolution on our students without teaching creationism,” county school board member Jimmy Hobbs said at Tuesday’s meeting. “The law says we can’t have Bibles in schools, but we can have evolution, of the atheists.”

Oh, dear. Mr. Jimmy Hobbs has confused atheism with science. It’s easy to see how he would make such an error.  Mr. Hobbs, please be advised that evolution is a scientific theory, atheism is not. Moreover, many religious people, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, etc., have no problem accepting evolution and exercising their religious faiths. Perhaps you’d like to try it. Some say it’s easier than walking and chewing gum at the same time.

When asked by a reporter, his fellow board members all said they were in favor of creationism being taught in the classroom.

Clearly, Hobbs and his fellow board members are all idiots. This is more evidence that it may well be time to dispense with the practice of electing school boards. Instead, we could just let the educated educational professionals do their jobs. Is that a revolutionary idea or what?

The topic came up after county resident Joel Fanti told the board he thought it was unfair for evolution to be taught as fact, saying it should be taught as a theory because there’s no tangible proof it’s true.

“I wasn’t here 2 million years ago,” Fanti said. “If evolution is so slow, why don’t we see anything evolving now?”

Oh, goody, another “evolution is just a theory” proponent. Mr. Fanti, you really need to set aside your Bible for a few minutes a day and read some science instead. Evolution is both theory and fact, and there’s lots of tangible evidence that it’s true. Let me guess: you got a flu vaccine ten years ago, so you don’t intend to get one this year. After all, according to your view, additional flu shots are superfluous because we don’t see anything evolving now.

The board allowed Fanti to speak longer than he was allowed, and at the end of his speech he volunteered to teach creationism and received applause from the audience.

Obviously, the entire town (or, more charitably, the portion of the town represented by those who attended this meeting) is either batshit crazy or abysmally stupid.

When he walked away, school board Chairwoman Shirley Babson took the podium and said another state had tried to teach evolution and creationism together and failed, and that the school system must teach by the law.

“Evolution is taught because that’s what the General Assembly tells us to teach,” Babson said, adding that she doesn’t agree with it, but that students must learn it to graduate.

Damn those pesky laws about what constitutes appropriate curriculum. They really get in the way of teaching superstitions, myths and eternal salvation through Jesus Christ. By the way, Ms. Babson, your personal opinion about the law is completely irrelevant. Stating it added nothing substantive to the discussion. I’ll bet it helped you score a few brownie points with the assembled masses, though.

In 1997, proponents in the N.C. General Assembly tried to amend the law to say that evolution must be taught as a theory and not as a fact in public schools, but that did not pass. Then at the national level in 2005, a federal judge barred the school system in Dover, Pa., from teaching “intelligent design” – which claims organisms must have been created by a higher power and that it’s compatible with evolution – as a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state.

Board attorney Joseph Causey said it might be possible for the board to add creationism to the curriculum if it doesn’t replace the teaching of evolution.

Board attorney Joseph Causey needs to read the details of the Dover decision before dispensing his dreadfully bad advice. In the meantime, the school board should open a search for a more competent attorney before they land their school district into a pile of legal difficulties. In the past, legal difficulties related to teaching creationism and ID have led to financial difficulties for the school districts involved. It’s something they may want to keep in mind.

Schools’ Superintendent Katie McGee said her staff would do research.

Babson said the board must look at the law to see what it says about teaching creationism, but that “if we can do it, I think we ought to do it.”

The issue will continue to be discussed at the board’s committee meetings on Oct. 21.

I’m going to be charitable, for once, and suggest that the superintendent’s promise of further research was merely a salve to the morons in the audience. I suspect she already knows that this line of inquiry is not going to yield the results these idiots want. In the meantime, I’m accepting your bets on whether this matter will be put to rest once and for all, at least for this school district, at next month’s meeting.

– the chaplain