Furor over Stupidity

It's high time that scientists and the educated organize against attempts by the dogmatically ignorant to undermine education in America. AiG's deceptive junk-tank monument to stupidity, aka the Creation Museum, has squandered $27 million in order to promote their LIES against scientific fact.

YECs appear not to be a particularly bright group, so it seems unlikely that many budding geniuses are being misled into ignorance. However, this is no reason not to decry the damage done to average children by causing deliberate confusion about science and reality.

The Founding Fathers were wise to separate Religion and the State, though not necessarily for prescient reasons. Whether or not they foresaw the likelihood that organized stupidity would attempt to undermine education, the Constitution should be used to protect education from superstition and ignorance. The mere fact of "scientists'" having signed a document against Darwinism demonstrates the desecration of science, critical thinking, and logic wrought by religious dogmatists. Polls indicate that far too high a percentage of Americans are so ignorant of the facts on which scientific theories are based that they hold a strict creationist view of origins.

Modern politicians, concerned more for their political ambitions than for truth, are all too aware of the vocal agitators who sway religious dogmatists on voting day, so they abrogate their responsibility to uphold the Constitution. To make matters worse, the most stupid president ever not-to-actually-be-elected resorts to claims of communication with God. It's intriguing to ponder how America came to be a nation that largely reviles knowledge while protecting organized stupidity. America has not come very far since 1925!

Statement of Concern
"We, the undersigned scientists at universities and colleges in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, are concerned about scientifically inaccurate materials at the Answers in Genesis museum. Students who accept this material as scientifically valid are unlikely to succeed in science courses at the college level. These students will need remedial instruction in the nature of science, as well as in the specific areas of science misrepresented by Answers in Genesis."

National Center for Science Education petition: http://www.sciohost.org/states

"One of the petitions, started by the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, a Washington, D.C., group that focuses on church and state issues, says the museum is part of a "campaign by the religious right to inject creationist teachings into science education."'

Campaign to Defend the Constitution: http://www.defconamerica.org/

Elsewhere: Gallup Poll on Evolution, which reveals that the overwhelming majority of religious fundamentalists are ignorant of the fact of biological evolution : comment on Pharyngula : Religion—our maelstrom of ignorance: "Maybe we need to start picketing fundamentalist churches. Maybe it's about time that we recognize religious miseducation as child abuse."

Quo Vadis?
...section index...

Blogswarm Against Theocracy

Using God as a running mate might have guaranteed votes from Christian fundamentalists, but it has not ensured good government.

"Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them." -Lily Tomlin

When the Founding Fathers advocated separation of Church and State, they intended that separation of the secular and ecclesiastical continue. The original intent was that the state could neither establish a religion nor interfere with personal religious beliefs.

Too many over-religious Americans seek to undermine the Constitution and to re-insert Church into State and Thinly-Disguised-Creationist-Religion into Education.

To illustrate the fact that theocracies are dangerous, we need only look at the fundamentalist Muslim countries, where human rights are trampled and imams substitute for elected officials.

First Freedom First is an organization dedicated to separation of church and state, and provides resources, including articles and book recommendations. FFF is NOT a "sponsor" of the Blog against Theocracy blogswarm.

Quo Vadis?
...section index...