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"Lark Myers, a blond, 45-year-old gift shop owner, frames the question and answers it. "I definitely would prefer to believe that God created me than that I'm 50th cousin to a silverback ape," she said. "What's wrong with wanting our children to hear about all the holes in the theory of evolution?"" (Washington Post, visit BugMeNot or sell your soul, either way.)
Leaving aside the rest of the problems with this pseudoscientific trojan horse for religion being a mandatory part of schooling, there's another fundamental thing here with this issue. I just don't understand the whole outrage over being "related to apes" bit. We share something like 70% of our DNA with every species on the planet. I don't understand the people who are so outraged about distant genetic relations to other species. To me, it shows the fundamental way all life on the planet's connected and related to each other. I can't see this as a bad thing.
I guess it's mostly religious, like the part in the Bible about Man being "given dominion over the beasts" and such. And people like to believe they're special and different, which, well, we are. But being special and different from most of the other animals on the planet doesn't mean we can't share a common ancestor way back when. It's who and what we are now, and what we're going to be in the future that let humans be special. We're not seperate from everything else in the world, and that's a good thing, if we'd just remember it more often.
I don't know, maybe I'm just weird, but I just don't understand the outrage.
And should there be any doubt that they're trying to teach religion in schools, a quote from one of the board members involved:
"[School Board Member Buckingham] added, according to the ACLU's lawsuit, that "our country was founded on Christianity and our students should be taught as such.""
Sure it was.
"As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries." from the Treaty of Tripoli.
[meta: mindscribbles]
[meta: politics]
Leaving aside the rest of the problems with this pseudoscientific trojan horse for religion being a mandatory part of schooling, there's another fundamental thing here with this issue. I just don't understand the whole outrage over being "related to apes" bit. We share something like 70% of our DNA with every species on the planet. I don't understand the people who are so outraged about distant genetic relations to other species. To me, it shows the fundamental way all life on the planet's connected and related to each other. I can't see this as a bad thing.
I guess it's mostly religious, like the part in the Bible about Man being "given dominion over the beasts" and such. And people like to believe they're special and different, which, well, we are. But being special and different from most of the other animals on the planet doesn't mean we can't share a common ancestor way back when. It's who and what we are now, and what we're going to be in the future that let humans be special. We're not seperate from everything else in the world, and that's a good thing, if we'd just remember it more often.
I don't know, maybe I'm just weird, but I just don't understand the outrage.
And should there be any doubt that they're trying to teach religion in schools, a quote from one of the board members involved:
"[School Board Member Buckingham] added, according to the ACLU's lawsuit, that "our country was founded on Christianity and our students should be taught as such.""
Sure it was.
"As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries." from the Treaty of Tripoli.
[meta: mindscribbles]
[meta: politics]
no subject