I found you through a google search on MLK, civil rights …

I strongly advocate that we more thoughtful followers of Jesus and the way of peace and social justice have too long let the vocal far right, literalist, callous-to-injustice people dominate the conversation about what it means to be a Christian.

Keep blogging! Keep cooking! (I totally agree about baked goods n telos!)

Sadly, love, the truth of the matter is that this isn’t about academic freedom and acceptance of alternative viewpoints, because that argument no longer works when one side is demonstrably wrong.

Y’know, I can see why people get so contentious about evolution/creation/ID, even if it’s not directly related to the everyday life of adults. It’s a pretty important policy issue, from an educational standpoint.

And it’s such a hard issue to deal with, because everybody knows that they’re absolutely right, and people who have the wrong position are being actively destructive. And are typically unreasonable jerks, with bizarre value systems.

One position: If public schools are telling our kids Wrong Things about the origins of the world — which, given what we know about God, can’t fail to have a teleology to them — this could confuse them about their faith, which could be dangerous not just for the short term, but also for our moral fabric as a people in the long term. And what if they turn away from the faith for good? We just can’t risk it, and we certainly shouldn’t be paying taxes to have Wrong Things taught to impressionable children.

Another position: If public schools label science textbooks with “THIS IS JUST A THEORY” and start spouting about this “intelligent design” business, then we’re paying taxes to have religion taught to the kidlets, and not all of us share that same religion. And we’re throwing into doubt what the scientific consensus really is, legitimizing beliefs that are really pretty fringe in the biology community. And schools are muddling what scientists mean when they use the word “theory”, which is a very important point. Don’t we need every kid to have the best possible science education we can muster, so we can have really good scientists and engineers and doctors? I for one sure want to get that whole cancer thing sorted out. And I’d rather not look like a backwater yokel on the international stage. You could hear all of Europe laughing at us over the stickers on biology books in Georgia…

The worst part, I think, is that we don’t separate out science classes from philosophy-of-science classes. The question “what can we investigate with science?” is pretty important. The question “what is intentionality, and is there, or can there be, any of that to the universe-as-a-whole”, that’s also really interesting. “Can we make a hypothesis about that and test it out empirically?”. When I’m elected, we will confront the childrens with these questions.

And it is super-awesome; I highly recommend trying it out!