LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY mirandaflynn)

"Train up a child in the way he should go", I guess. I really wish this was a satire site.

::shudder::

link

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY nebris)

By JODI RUDOREN
February 14, 2006
From The New York Times
( Dealing with these people is like being pecked to death by ducks )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY mizliz) An excellent article from Philip Pullman, who has done more to reframe a rational cosmology with his "Dark Materials" books (ostensibly for children) than anyone I know. 

This is worth the reading, I promise.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY jaded_journeys)

Their Own Version of a Big Bang

From the article:

Evangelist Ken Ham smiled at the 2,300 elementary students packed into pews, their faces rapt. With dinosaur puppets and silly cartoons, he was training them to reject much of geology, paleontology and evolutionary biology as a sinister tangle of lies.

"Boys and girls," Ham said. If a teacher so much as mentions evolution, or the Big Bang, or an era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, "you put your hand up and you say, 'Excuse me, were you there?' Can you remember that?"

The children roared their assent.

"Sometimes people will answer, 'No, but you weren't there either,' " Ham told them. "Then you say, 'No, I wasn't, but I know someone who was, and I have his book about the history of the world.' " He waved his Bible in the air.

"Who's the only one who's always been there?" Ham asked.

"God!" the boys and girls shouted.

"Who's the only one who knows everything?"

"God!"

"So who should you always trust, God or the scientists?"

The children answered with a thundering: "God!"

A former high-school biology teacher, Ham travels the nation training children as young as 5 to challenge science orthodoxy. He doesn't engage in the political and legal fights that have erupted over the teaching of evolution. His strategy is more subtle: He aims to give people who trust the biblical account of creation the confidence to defend their views — aggressively. [Emphasis Mine]

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY cheap_laugh)

AND WHY YOU MUST READ AND THINK ABOUT WHAT HE SAYS

I am simply posting the link, rather than posting with excerpts since I believe nothing in the interview should be taken out of context.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY kalibex)

A group of parents in the Katy Independent School District obtained a restraining order Monday preventing the district from interfering today with pupils handing out valentines with religious themes.

But Katy spokeswoman Kris Taylor said the district has no rules forbidding a child from handing out a religious valentine to another student.

"This restraining order is telling us not to do things we don't do anyway," Taylor said Monday.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This just in: Ohio Board votes out evolution lesson plan

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Ohio school board voted Tuesday to eliminate a passage in the state's science standards that critics said opened the door to the teaching of intelligent design.

The Ohio Board of Education decided 11-4 to delete material encouraging students to seek evidence for and against evolution.

The 2002 science standards say students should be able to "describe how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory." The standards include a disclaimer that they do not require the teaching of intelligent design.

The board vote represents the latest setback for the intelligent design movement, which holds that life is so complex it must have been created by a higher authority.

In December, a federal judge barred the school system in Dover, Pa., from teaching intelligent design alongside evolution in high school biology classes. The judge said that intelligent design is religion masquerading as science, and that teaching it alongside evolution violates the separation of church and state.