Further evidence that “reporting” now means “mindlessly repeating demonstrable falsehoods” August 27, 2007
Posted by Evil Bender in Religion, constiutional issues, wingnuts.trackback
North Carolina’s News and Observer has an article about Southern Baptists leaving public schools because they (the schools, not the baptists) are too secular. That shouldn’t surprise you: wingnuts have been bailing on public schools for that reason since long before I was born. Neither will it surprise you to learn the Southern Baptists are lying:
“In the public schools, you don’t just have neutrality, you have hostility toward organized religion,” said Daniel Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest.
There’s no hostility to religion, and certainly not in the south. “Hostility” toward people like Akin, means that they don’t get to use the public school as a platform to inflict their religious beliefs on others. What are Southern Baptists so upset about, you ask?
They say public schools have long demonstrated a commitment to teaching evolution over creationism, world faiths over Christianity, sex education over abstinence, moral relativism over Christian claims of truth.
So public schools teach science, compare religions in comparative religion classes, and teach kids how to avoid STDs and pregnancy. Oh noes!1!! As for “moral relativism,” that’s just a catchphrase which to fundies means “non-Christian.” I defy Akin to explain to me how schools are teaching relativism–or how they are teaching students about morality in anything but a comparative religion/philosophy class. I won’t hold my breath.
But what really gets me upset here are not the lying fundies, it’s the media’s completely credulous reportage of their lies:
The 1962 and 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decisions banning prayer and devotional readings from public schools only increased Southern Baptists’ ire.
Actually, 1962’s Engel v. Vitale said the school couldn’t lead prayers. It did not–nor has the court ever–told students they can’t pray. The school can’t provide prayers, but students are free to pray on their own–as they do with such events as “see you at the pole,” where Christian kids gather to pray before school.
As for 1963’s Abington v. Schempp, it once again affirmed that schools can’t force kids to pray or have devotionals. It never claimed that students weren’t free to study the religious book of their choosing and pray, only that the school couldn’t tell them to do so.
Why is this a big deal? Because the lies of the far right get repeated as fact by credulous reporters, and then the wingnuts say “they took our prayer” and everyone panics. The Supreme Court has never–nor would it–tell anyone they can’t pray. They rightly say it isn’t schools place to be leading those prayers. And it’s time people started pointing that out.
Bah. It’s frustrating when reporters fall for this crap.
Reading articles like this makes me wonder whether Western civilization -which so recently freed itself from the unbearable burden of having religion sticking its nose in every aspect of life, is in real danger of involution because of the rebirth of religious (catholic, protestant, baptist…) fundamentalism.
I have heard some political correctness apologists (and neo-cons) think it is right for schools in the US to teach creationism, in order to not to offend God-fearing citizens. That’s ridiculous. Do they mean centuries of scientific investigations can compare to the feeble beliefs of a bunch cattle-sacrificing primitive screwheads who lived in the middle of the desert in the furthest end of the Roman empire and thought -seriously- that all animal species in the world lived withing walking distance from Noah’s house? I sincerely hope I am totally wrong about this.
In addition, I hope Europe and specially Spain, where I live, remains safe as a mostly secular society, although Catholic church is trying its best to regain its long-lost influence in educational system.
Glad to see there are people like you out there. Greetings from Spain.
NO! Not the dreaded “moral relativism”!
While you guys sit the foot of the Darwin idol, how about explaining how little Darwin said about the origin of life. His mechanism can’t explain life from no-life. What can explain the intricate complexity of even the most simple single celled life?
While you’re at it, consider that The Pilgrims and the Puritans came here to practice religion freely – not just as individuals but as a community. Why should the schools take that away? The schools must teach that the founders believed that our rights come from God and not from Government.
So you don’t like “moral relativism”. Where do you get right from wrong? If I want something, can I just take it? If I pay you to spy on someone, aren’t we both benefitting so it’s morally ok behavior?
Tubaman,
If you’re not simply trolling, try responding to the substance of the post instead of flinging fallacies around.
EB, There are plenty of examples of schools (the South included) where they change all the Christmas celebrations to “Winter”-this or “Holiday”-that, disallow any songs that mention the birth of Christ allowing only Santa Claus and Rudolph tunes, textbooks that fail to disclose the faith-based motivations of groups like the Pilgrims and the Puritans but not failing magnify any failures that they have (supposed mistreatment of Indians, greed, Salem witch trials etc.) as though any of us is/are perfect. We are not.
My point is that schools don’t teach the bedrock reasons that this country formed the way that it did. A comparative religion class is fine but that is not what a second grader needs.
Nor do schools teach the weaknesses of Darwin’s theory. The “conventional wisdom” is that Darwin made God unnecessary but that is simply not true (origin of the universe and Origin of life being two examples).
Tubaman– “Supposed mistreatment of Indians,” huh? Yeah, Native Americans sure benefited from those settlers. Sheesh.
I don’t know what you want kids taught in school, but America isn’t a Christian nation, and public schools have no right to force religious messages down a second-grader’s throat. If you want to teach your kids about religion, do it in you own time. As an aside, you should read what actual historians say about the founding fathers’ beliefs. Many of them were deists and their conception of God would anger you. And many of the Christian founding fathers were staunch defenders of secular government.
As for the “weaknesses in Darwin’s theory,” the fact that it doesn’t explain the origin of life of the Universe is not a weakness, any more than plate techtonic’s failure to explain why trees grow is a weakness. You’re conflating your own religious ideas about the origin of life with your distaste for Darwin, and that’s foolish.
Evolution is a demonstrated fact–specization has been observed. It is also a theory–the highest order of scientific knowledge, combining and explaining thousands of lines of evidence. If you don’t like that, fine, but keep your religious objections to science out of our public schools: it’s not your right to use public schools to force religion on students.
EB, The cultural center of early America was the northeast. The Pigrims and Puritans who largely occupied there were certainly religious. Ministers like George Whitefield unified the colonies with their message rights are granted by God and not from some King. Harvard was formed when the local minister donated his library to form a school to educate ministers. These facts are history and should be taught. Something like 85% of US citizens consider themselves Christians. The Judeo-Christian principles in play here have caused the US to be the most tolerant and pluralistic society ever. We make mistakes but despite them people of the world want to come here (not the other way around). I’m just saying that to teach our religious history is to teach history and is proper and is not “the establishment of religion”. That phrase should be viewed in the context of what the “Church of England” was and not in the context of excuding any mention of religion from the public square.
Why So Serious?