Godless Mom in the Bible Belt

Scott TiVoed an episode of Crossfire for me Thursday. This one was Novak and Carville regarding the debate going on in Kansas right now about teaching "Intelligent Design Theory" (IDT) alongside the theory of evolution in the Kansas public school system.

Now, the whole IDT thing is ridiculous. It is merely an attempt by right wing Christians to cloak their religion in scientific language so it can be forced down the throats of young impressionable children under the guise of "science class." It is not testable, it is not observable it cannot be duplicated in a laboratory, there is no major scientific organization that accepts it as science.

The man who was brought on to Crossfire to argue for IDT in schools based his entire argument for doing so on the what he called "Objective truth." He claimed that because there is cause and effect and natural order to the world there must be a creator, therefore this theory needs to be taught in our public schools as science. This is akin to me observing that there is a newspaper in my driveway next to the oak tree and then claiming as fact that oak trees produce newspapers.

Now, he sees his God in the natural order of the world and he sees creationism in cause and effect. That is great for him, I'm happy that this observation of his has given his faith some sort of real world foundation to stand on (despite the fact that it is an incredibly screwy leap in logic) but just because he has made this observation doesn't make it science and doesn't make it true.

He also argued that creationism should be taught in schools because it is part of the culture of who we are and part of our thoughts on how we've gotten to this point in existence. And in this he is correct. Creationism does have a place in public schools, in a philosophy class or comparative religions class but NOT in science class.

I could go on about this subject ad nauseum so I will come back to it at a later date. However, right now I have to get my Dad his breakfast and I need coffee.