I’ve been meaning to post about this for a few days, due to my dedication to Molly Ivins’ belief that Texas is a state to be watched, because so many right wing ideas and strategies hatch here only to be exported elsewhere. It appears that the director of the statewide science curriculum Chris Corner was fired for having the nerve to forward an email that indicated that she might just believe that the science classroom is for science and not for religious indoctrination. (Needless to say, I am pretty sure the “uppity bitch” element played a part in this—Texas both has a long tradition of smart-assed liberal women and the men who will do anything to make sure we get the smackdown.) From the Statesman:
Chris Comer was director of the science curriculum for the Texas Education Agency for nearly a decade when she was forced to resign recently. Her offense, as unbelievable as it is to relate, was forwarding an e-mail message about a presentation by an author critical of the intelligent design approach to science education.
The education agency, of course, portrays the problem as one of insubordination and misconduct. But from all appearances, Comer was pushed out because the agency is enforcing a political doctrine of strict conservatism that allows no criticism of creationism……
Robert Scott, the new education commissioner, is not an educator but a lawyer and former adviser to Gov. Rick Perry. This presents an excellent opportunity for the governor and his appointee to step in firmly to put an end to ideological witch hunts in the agency.
The person who called for Comer to be fired is Lizzette Reynolds, a former deputy legislative director for Gov. George Bush. She joined the state education agency this year as an adviser after a stint in the U.S. Department of Education.
In her memo criticizing Comer, Reynolds said that Comer’s passing along the e-mail “assumes this is a subject that the agency supports.” That’s absurd, of course, but it is in keeping with enforcing a doctrine that says creationism must not be criticized.
Texas really might be the ground zero for the spreading and insidious philosophy that the public schools should not be in the business of education, but in the business of proselytizing about the justness of the cultural dominance of white, well-off fundamentalist Christians and their worldview. What first started inspiring political pressure on revising textbooks and stacking school boards in Texas was not creationism or sex education, but the way history was taught—the reality that white Christian supremacy was a less than utopian system for many who lived under it (or were killed under it) was creeping into the textbooks and classrooms and our asshole army wasn’t going to take it. The wingnuts who really started this entire nightmare of battles over religion vs. science in the science classroom or truth vs. propaganda in the history classroom were Mel and Norma Gabler for the wooded areas of east Texas, where the KKK is known to be looked upon with some sympathy, especially when they got their start in the 60s. Their organization has been at the forefront of demands that textbooks reflect their hateful views of history, ignorant views of science, and rancidly sexist views on health education. (Here’s a sample sheet of their standards on history textbooks, mainly a bunch of stuff about making sure kids worship at the altar of “states’ rights”, are taught that religious fundamentalists can do no wrong, and every time white people are criticized for some cruelty, that it’s “balanced” by saying, in essence, that the people they oppressed were just as bad, if not worse.)
It’s not really a new tactic to fire someone for resisting conservative orthodoxy on behalf of reality, especially from disciples of the church of the Shrub, but it’s still important to watch. As Roxanne is always noting, the wingnuts are vile when they’re winning, but absolutely unbearable when they’re losing. Comer had her job for almost a decade, as the article notes. It’s not a stretch to wonder if she was fired so that some Bushies could get some stress relief the only way wingnuts know how—base sadism.
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“”Robert Scott, the new education commissioner,”"
My first 2008 prediction: This guy’s gonna be found yanking his crank (or offering his yanking services) in an Austin public restroom. Wonder what kinda line I can get in Vegas.
Wow– the Gabler’s are unbelievable! They actually refer to not putting too much emphasis on “naturalistic origins myths like evolution.” And people take them seriously.
I’m going to go cry now.
I’ve totally seen that picture irl! It’s from the Kentucky Creation museum! In case anyone is curious, Adam is not anatomically correct - think Ken doll.
Ah Mel and Norma Gabler and their willing flunkies at the State Adoption Board. I’ve been in textbook publishing for about 6 years now and their reign of terror as made our lives a misery. Every adoption year is a nightmare of just how much companies are prepared to sacrifice to the Texas cabal. Not as much as some might think, but far more than I’m comfortable with.
The only small check on the Gablers’ power over national textbooks (their power over Texas books is essentially absolute as far as I can tell) is that if they push too hard we’ll never sell in the blue states (California and New York are the big check, with a few others following behind). But the blue states don’t have the arch-centralized system that Texas does, so pressure groups never have the ability to shut down sales in an entire market like the Gablers do.
Conservatives believing in local control my ass.
Wow. That Gabler link is unbelievable.
Evolution: the best coverage is none.
I had a look at their maths textbook reviews too. The “best” there means the one with the most rote memorisation, least interactive group work, and the least “estimation”. So adding up your grocery bill is OK, but doing the kind of rough back-of-an-envelope calculation that lets you check whether a politician is likely to be lying to you is certainly not.
They really do want to take the education out of education.
I’m glad this story is getting wide coverage. I doubt it’s an unusual circumstance, but just as importantly, it will reveal how many teachers are NOT being fired by participating in this anti-science culture.
I don’t exactly blame them. But the results are CERTAINLY leaving children behind. Observe: in my TN high school in the late nineties, we weren’t taught evolution, sexual reproduction (”Don’t you already know all about that?”), or genetics past Punnett Squares. Inevitably, three of the four AP Bio essay questions were on those very topics in the year I took it. Hardly anyone in my class passed…. I did, but only because I was an avid sci-fi reader. Well, strike that… I read a lot of Michael Crichton. Jurassic Park was my study buddy, y’all!
Anyway, if you LoLCreashun thread. You’ll get an inside look at the place - it’s nuts - and lots of LOLs, of course.
Oh for heavens’ sake. That last line should have read:
Anyway, if you HEART the Creation Museum, then you’ll love the LoLCreashun thread. You’ll get an inside look at the place - it’s nuts - and lots of LOLs, of course.
My ASCII heart confused the HTML editor.
From Columbia to Austin, we have nothing but religious zealots in our State Houses that will do anything to make sure that the Christofacist agenda is shoved down our throats against our will.
“…will do anything to make sure that the Christofacist agenda is shoved down our throats…”
Isn’t that the Judeo-Christofascist agenda? They don’t want people to think they’re bigots…
I’m dying to know whom she forwarded the email to and what, if anything, were her comments on it. I mean, was it “Ha-ha! this guy really sticks it to those stupid creationists!” or “Here is another point of view for our upcoming meetings” or even “Look out–the atheists are after us! We need to come up with responses to this nasty liberal’s criticism.”
Doesn’t that make all the difference in the world?
A copy of the presentation in the forwarded email would be cool, too, but I didn’t see any of that linked from the article.
I want to know why Eve is covering her breasts with her hair. Adam and Eve were naked without shame before the fall.
And is Adam trimming his beard with a dinosaur, Flintstone-style? God said “You shall not shave around the sides of your head,” but that was later.
Dorothy, a copy of the original email is here. It doesn’t say much except where and when the presentation is and who is speaking.
“I want to know why Eve is covering her breasts with her hair. Adam and Eve were naked without shame before the fall.”
To that I want to add:
Why are Adam and Eve light-skinned Europeans? Or should I not ask that question lest the fundie backers of the “Creation Museum” be exposed as believers in the Curse of Ham…
As the father of a boy who in a few years will enter the clusterfook that is the Texas educational system, my wincing muscles are almost busted by now. Apart from machine-gunning local papers and politicians with Letters From A Concerned Citizen, the only counter I can come up with is to cram-pack our house with science books and posters, and to ask as many questions as I can about what he’s learning.
I have a very strong premonition that sometime in the next 16 years, I will find myself standing atop a principal’s desk, waving the biggest copy of Origin Of Species I can find. Of course, that’s the surest way to make sure my son gets an “intervention” from Christer students of the sort the goth kids used to be subjected to when I was in school.
If I could convince all my friends and relations to move to a blue state, that’d be great, but as it is, I’m arming myself for the culture wars, Sarah Connor style.
Meanwhile, “The View”’s Sherri Sheppard, she of “the world is flat” fame, has now stated her opinion that NOTHING predated Christianity.
Dorothy,
The text of the email has been published. (I just looked for it fruitlessly if briefly; I do have a job…)
Her tone was totally neutral — not even the middle scenario you envisioned. She didn’t even mention that there was a POV being espoused. And the speaker wasn’t a guy with a political axe to grind, either; he may have been a moderate conservative, fo all anyone knows. IOW, it appears that he didn’t have a POV, besides that of a mainstream scientist.
Well, Texas is an embarrassment, what else can be said?
Oops, Miss Prism beat me to it. Thx, MP
That picture just has me asking: On what day did ‘god’ invent leaches?
This wouldn’t be a good time to point out to the conservatives that the freedom of speech and faith that they demand when anybody criticises thier faith (or in reality, the imposition of it on others) also belongs to the people that oppose them?
I can’t believe that. How on Earth do you survive without any science being taught in science lessons?
And then we can all whine about how half the world produces better scientists than we do.
From that Texas nut site that grades textbooks:
“Q Explain your organization’s history with textbook analysis and censorship.
A Market demand is not censorship. It is settled law that schools do not censor if they choose one textbook over another, just as you do not censor if you buy Tom Clancy but not Stephen King. Publishers may offer any kind of texts they wish. We tell people what books say before they buy them.”
These folks are as bad, or worse, than the MPAA. (Watching ‘This film is not yet rated’)
And be left wondering why America has to import everything because people here don’t know how to run the machines anymore…
Hey, on their FAQ, you can’t miss the last two items… A real hoot…
First one:
Yeah. Evolution can’t? Really? If they only thought about it… Never mind…
But the real killer quote!!!
I like how Adam and Eve look so Bicentennial and all. After the John Denver concert, they’re going to gab all about Evel Kneivel’s latest exploits on their CB radio.
ADAM: So you’re saying because Eve ate an apple, now I gotta wear frickin’ Hagar slacks?
GOD: That’s a big 10-4, good buddy.
“If points raised are valid, what matters the source? Why stoop to personalities rather than judge ideas on their merits?”
YES!
If I claim the world is flat, sitting perched on the backs of four huge elephants, who in turn are standing on the back of an enormous turtle, my point should be treated as being just as valid as Newton’s and Einstein’s “theory” of “gravity”.
Just because I live in an old Cadillac parked under a bridge and smell bad from lack of regular bathing doesn’t mean my ideas have no merit…
Reminds me how my 9th grade American History teacher told us that slavery wasn’t that bad because they never beat the slaves so hard they couldn’t get back to work within a few days. And that was in Pennsylvania.
Of course, James Carville did describe PA as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between, and I did grow up in the in between part.
“mainly a bunch of stuff about making sure kids worship at the altar of “states’ rights”, ”
We should all worship at the altar of states rights. That’s what this country was founded on. The histroical tyranny of central governments - especially on the mass murder front in the last 100 years - is proof positive that centralized control leads to problems.
LOL. You’re right on target, Godmonkey. And after Adam donned his cutoffs and Eve got into her granny gown, they would be beaten up by the young, crewcut Gablers for being such “dirty rotten hippies” skinnydipping in the creek. That creek is the Gabler’s personal property, ya know!
That’s just disgusting. Celebrating the dumbing down of Texas.
And Sherri Shepard? Nothing predates Christianity? But- but- but- THE BIBLE itself talks about events that PREDATE Christ. Judaism predates Christianity. Even using materials she accepts, Christianity isn’t the start.
I just don’t understand how Barbara Walters can let this woman on the air. She’s so fucking stupid, that she should be laughed at and ridiculed for her lack of logic, or at the very best, pitied and educated. Instead, she’s paid money and given a national audience for her lunacy.
The American Experiment is really over isn’t it? You can’t really have a functional democratic republic when potential voters are this willingly stupid and we create a landed aristocracy that will keep the majority poor and stupid.
Christ!
Doesn’t matter. Didn’t you know that leeches didn’t suck blood until after The Fall?
Oh fuck, I forgot to mention that “negative political correctness” means saying southerners opposed civil rights for blacks without claiming that Reconstruction punishments to white shoutherners were just as bad. It all has to BALANCE, you see, even if it doesn’t add up.
“Positive political correctness” means mentioning Aztecs had slavery and practiced cannibalism as well as mentioning American slavery. I suppose mentioning American slavery was the most vile form ever and that it still has an impact on the economic freedoms of its descendents and the imagined superiority of its proponents would be negative PC. Heaven forbid we mention the nooses in Jena and how that might be related to that particularly Euro-American form of racism that fomented slavery.
Cause if both sides are “guilty” of doing bad things, then no one needs to accept any responsibility or question their actions.
It’s all good, y’all!
Light-skinned? I dunno, as I sit here in my winter-pale, freckled, easily sun-scorched Irish hide, they look fairly dark to me. Convincingly Mediterranean or Middle Eastern.
But why aren’t they African, you ask? Because these are Adam and Eve - not the first humans to ever exist, but the first humans created in Yahweh’s personal botanical and zoological garden in Eden. Clearly, the curators of the Creation Museum are believers in the story of the Other People:
http://www.caw.org/articles/otherpeople.html
Oh, god. From that LOLCreashun thread:
A real slide from the museum:
According to God’s word, thorns came after Adam’s sin, about six thousand years ago, not millions of years ago. Since we have discovered thorns in the fossil record, along with dinosaurs, and other plants and animals, they all must have lived at the same time as humans, after Adam’s sin. (Emphasis mine)
LOLers comment beat mine: Logic–you’re doing it wrong.
Any time Texass wants to secede from the Union, I’ll be there to wave it good bye. With both middle fingers. Sucks for Austin, but whaddayagonnado?
“We should all worship at the altar of states rights. That’s what this country was founded on. The histroical tyranny of central governments - especially on the mass murder front in the last 100 years - is proof positive that centralized control leads to problems.”
The American Founding Fathers had SO much prescience about this. That’s why when the original Constitution - which created a “strong” federal government to be in overall control of the States - faltered, they came up with the Articles of Confederation, which instead made the States all-powerful. They knew this was the key to a prosperous America…
(What Dr T doesn’t seem to realize is that in reality, the founding fathers did the exact opposite, realizing that a loose “confederation” of states, which had been put in place under the Articles of Confederation [the original “constitution” of the US], was a very weak political arrangement that left those states vulnerable to all sorts of problems. The Constitution was specifically designed to overcome problems the infant America had already experienced precisely because of an over-emphasis on “states rights”. In fact, the experiences of the Confederacy during the Civil War confirmed again many of the same problems uncovered during our experience under the original Articles of Confederation. But Dr T is not one to let history or facts impede his rush to judgment…)
matthew show:
I strongly recommend magazines from the Cricket Group for your young thinking-person. Our house gets “Ask” and “Muse” and I have to read them in self-defense, otherwise the kids will know more Cool Recent Science Facts than I will with my subscription to Scientific American.
But here in NJ, my 6th-grader is learning the difference between the Old Stone Age and the New Stone Age in social studies class, and going to this human evolution site as part of her homework.
I don’t know if this very forthright teaching of scientific evolution is a deliberate pushback against Texas-style educamation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is.
Yeah, the founders tried this one, it was called the Articles of Confederation, and it was an unmitigated disaster. That’s why we now have a federal system under the U.S. Constitution. Why do you hate the Constitution?
Crap! Sorry for basically repeating MikeEss. Got caught in the captcha.
“The Constitution was specifically designed to overcome problems the infant America had already experienced precisely because of an over-emphasis on “states rights”.”
Correct - and it was extremely limited in scope so as to preserve as much local control as possible while providing necessary oversight and pooling of assets to accomplish security goals, ensure freedom of movement, and present a national face to the world. And it anticipated the need to protect the control of states and thus included:
Article II. Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.
As local control is loss - government murder their own people. It has been this way forever, and it happens every day right now. Go states rights!
Dr. T: You do realize that for a lot of people (read: the majority) states rights was not very liberating for them, right? States did not have to respect civil rights, we had theocratic states, and we had slavery. Are you seriously arguing that America was better before the 14th Amendment extended the Bill of Rights and all subsequent amendments to the states?
Please, please study a real history text and forget whatever utopian libertarian fantasy history you obviously have learned.
Unfuckinbelievable.
“Dr. T: You do realize that for a lot of people (read: the majority) states rights was not very liberating for them, right? States did not have to respect civil rights, we had theocratic states, and we had slavery.”
I’ll help Dr T here with a little “libertarian” philosophy:
As long as the rich, white, and moneyed class has theirs, who cares about the rest…
Dr. T, MikeEss —
Um … “states’ rights” is right-wing codespeak for “lynching”.
The “states’ rights” folks never seem to care about right-to-die laws, medical marijuana, or gay marriage.
That’s what it has always done. Texas is ESSENTIAL to the education fight because it dictates what the nations textbooks will be. . . and testing regimes.
The companies that make textbooks and tests design for Texas because it’s huge. Once Texas approves the books the materials are basically shoehorned on the rest of the nation. (This is why it is essential to the fuckers in the White House that CA not adopt better fuel efficiency standards; as goes Cali, so goes the nation.) Pushing any aspect of Texas’ education to the right acts like a fulcrum, piling crap on the rest of the nation.
First-hand experience here: Texan teachers will sometimes have to work surreptitiously against their own curriculum to teach the students. Add this to impoverished districts (side-by-side with extremely rich districts) and you end up with a process that does little more than socialize students.
Of course, what we’ve really lacked in our Social Studies classes is an emphasis on Europe. We didn’t even fucking mention Africa in social studies in Texas unless it was about the origin of mankind — and I suppose we were lucky to hear about that.
And if we did look at Europe’s history in significant detail, we’d be learning the better parts of pagan culture.
Ah, and now we get right to it: direct, obvious injection of political ideology. There is simply no way this isn’t a “fuck you” to all non-whites in the room, since it’s the only rightwing that can use the phrase “politically correct stereotypes” — the phrase means nothing outside their ideology.
It’s arguable that the term Judeo-Christian doesn’t have any real meaning in the first place.
And it should come to NO surprise that Adam and Eve are white. Fundies are, at heart, race-obsessed at best and racist at worst. They need to claim every aspect of Christian thought in their own cultural narrative. They are far too insecure to simply accept that an alien culture provided them with an essential aspect of their ideology.
And what does the mass rape, mass murder, and mass slavery that existed 150 years before “central governments” (whatever the fuck that means) existed prove, Dr T? Before there were states there was institutional rape and celebrated murder.
lightning, I’m well aware of the disreputable underpinnings of the phrase “states rights”, but I think Dr T is still living in a
statecondition of denial…oh gosh, that page is a hoot. I loved these ones:
Let’s bring back the old racist and sexist standards! and Longfellow. If you’re planning on taking foreign lands by force, do yourself a favor and make sure to get the right shots before you leave.Miss Prism:
Thanks for the link to the email. This is way, way worse than I imagined.
Of course, now the Texas board of education needs to clean up the rest of the science curriculum: the sun revolves around the earth, there are pillars in the four corners of the world, there’s water above the sky, and North and South America don’t exist (Britain and Ireland are iffy at best), etc.
Then they can move on to Biblically Correct math classes (pi = 3.0).
Seriously: how do these people manage to function in the modern world?
Note the implicit guilt in the Gabler page. There’s no moral position on unknowingly spreading a disease — slavery was evil, but accidentally spreading a plague carries no moral weight. Nevertheless, their paranoid about it. These people are insecure and weak, and they know it. They idolize themselves and are desperately afraid someone will shatter their illusions.
PZ has news up about the Florida creationists making noise on their science standards.
Universities should anounce they will not accept science credits for admission from schools that do not teach evolution as part of the biological sciences. California recently rejected some course credits from schools that used Bob Jones published literature and science textbooks.
Why not start some pushback?
From MirabileDictu:
We decimated their populations with smallpox, but we’re even-steven, because when we raped their women we caught syphilis.
The whole “states rights” shibboleth is something that’s really coming back to bite cultural conservatives on the ass — as they spoil for an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to disenfranchise an entire class of private households (gay couples, that is) …
But most of them are too fucking stupid to even see their own hypocrisy. Most of their “leaders” are at least that smart, but of course they’re cynical, bullying demagogues.
If I ever end up teaching after this Ph.D I will personally fail any creationist I get in my biology classes.
Did everyone see Countdown last night, with that clip from the View where Sherri Shepherd declaring that nothing came (historically) before Jesus?
Here’s video
“I don’t think anything came before the Christians.”
Whoopi has the patience of a saint.
Yeah, ot “probably” came from America. But creationists don’t actually have the scientific ability to back up their claim, and since America isn’t specifically mentioned in the Bible, there’s no absolute knowledge about it.
Pretty much everything here is a “probably” as there’s no God’s word on it.
And damn it, if Europeans can’t rape aboriginal women without contracting a “very” lethal strain of syphillis, God must be dead anyway!
I’m dying to know whom she forwarded the email to and what, if anything, were her comments on it. I mean, was it “Ha-ha! this guy really sticks it to those stupid creationists!” or “Here is another point of view for our upcoming meetings” or even “Look out–the atheists are after us! We need to come up with responses to this nasty liberal’s criticism.”
Doesn’t that make all the difference in the world?
I don’t think so. If we accept that the first is over the line, we’re still accepting the idea that creationism deserves to be taken seriously as a challenge to real science.
Considering that “states’ rights” is a conservative code word for racism, a translation of comment #27:
Makes more sense once translated, huh?
I’m dying to know whom she forwarded the email to and what, if anything, were her comments on it.
It was an email of a programming announcement for a presentation by Barbara Forrest. She sent it out as an FYI announcement.
That’s it.
Here it is.
Ah yes, Ignorance Only Education has it’s finest hour.
Never mind that these same loony Jesus Junkies can’t abide any notion of Universal Marriage Rights being left to the states … they want to change the constitution so that states CAN’T decide.
Oh, but that’s just contradiction mongering that misses the point about reality being whatever they say it is!
Sometimes I think bipartisianship is impossible because we can’t even seem to agree on REALITY much less motivations.
Sometimes I think bipartisianship is impossible because we can’t even seem to agree on REALITY much less motivations
And, we need to recognize that there are actually points of incommensurability between those realities. Let’s be honest, creationism doesn’t just deserve to be defeated, it needs to be crushed.
In the Columbian exchange, infection was a two-way street. A very lethal strain of syphilis, probably from America, killed many Europeans in the early 1500s.
Probably from America…but not necessarily from Native Americans.
I remember being taught that syphillis was naturally found in the intestinal tracks of sheep and goats–does anyone know for sure?
we’re even-steven, because when we raped their women we caught syphilis.
Assuming we were actually raping women, that is…
And let’s ignore the not-so-accidental spreading of smallpox by those God-fearing English colonists.
I’ve totally seen that picture irl! It’s from the Kentucky Creation museum! In case anyone is curious, Adam is not anatomically correct - think Ken doll.
He has it attached where his johnson should be?
A very lethal strain of syphilis, probably from America,
Still not settled, IIRC, although the evolution towards less lethality since it showed up in Europe is certainly suggestive.
The histroical tyranny of central governments - especially on the mass murder front in the last 100 years - is proof positive that centralized control leads to problems.
Because places such as Somalia show far superior societies…
It is impossible to negotiate substantively if two parties lack common value systems. Think of it this way: do you think that hard-core bigots can sit down with a latina and work out a political compromise? There is no point to bipartisanship for its own sake with those who disagree with everything you value. It isn’t even good theater: the common citizen, unlike Beltway scum, doesn’t believe bipartisanship is a virtue.
Columbus’ party was guilty of this and slavery, but I don’t know about the South American invaders.
Tell me again why even Ivy League students didn’t know the half-century the Civil War took place in?
MC Hawking: What we need more of is science
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing for bipartisianship for bipartisianship’s sake. I’m not going to let someone say that slavery “wasn’t that bad” and I’m not going to accept that evolution does’t happen.
damn right, what’s wrong with these people? i think another aspect of the problem is that conservatives hate the gay-united-nations-french-baby-blue-helmet government, so they traditionally try to take it over and crash it into the nearest telephone pole… these are the same people who want more home schooling and more church education, rather than more, uh, schooling taking place in the schools.
methinks the KKK sank its teeth into communities like this long before the 60s brought about a resurgence, too. they’re just defending tradition, after all.
the spanish/european invaders were definitely guilty of rape, at least some(many) of them.
spanish lords owned large tracts of land (i believe called haciendas but i could be wrong there..) worked by indigenous slaves, and the slaves who were women were viewed as sexual property to be “used” whenever the spanish men saw fit. this helped to contribute to the large population of mestizos (aka “half breeds”).
ive read that, in north america at least, the indigenous people refused to practice rape, likely partially because of matriarchal political systems, but also because rape was seen as proof of the savagery of the invading europeans. the europeans, on the other hand, held the view that scalping was proof of the savagery of the indigenous people and thus never took up the practice. hmmm…
apologies if this doubleposts..ive read here for a long time but this is my first time posting..err
the spanish/european invaders were definitely guilty of rape, at least some(many) of them.
spanish lords owned large tracts of land (i believe called haciendas but i could be wrong there..) worked by indigenous slaves, and the slaves who were women were viewed as sexual property to be “used” whenever the spanish men saw fit. this helped to contribute to the large population of mestizos (aka “half breeds”).
ive read that, in north america at least, the indigenous people refused to practice rape, likely partially because of matriarchal political systems, but also because rape was seen as proof of the savagery of the invading europeans. the europeans, on the other hand, held the view that scalping was proof of the savagery of the indigenous people and thus never took up the practice. hmmm…
apologies if this doubleposts..ive read here for a long time but this is my first time posting..err
I’ve totally seen that picture irl! It’s from the Kentucky Creation museum! In case anyone is curious, Adam is not anatomically correct - think Ken doll.
Hmm, to me they seem to be from south of the border. Which leads to the thought that God expelled them ‘cause he mistook them for illegal immigrants
“Which leads to the thought that God expelled them ‘cause he mistook them for illegal immigrants”
Arun, I love humor, but that one is not in good taste, IMHO…
I’ve heard worse. I actually find that funny. Considering the ‘religious’ right’s focus on ‘those damn immigrants’.
Hypocrisy knows many forms…
Well, at least they’re dark skinned Europeans at the Creation Museom.
It’s Haunakah now, the celebration of the most important defeat of the secular West by the superstitious East. We all hail our successes at Marathon and Salamis, but when Antiochus lost to the Maccabees, the West lost. If Antiochus had won there’d be no Christianiy or Islam.
What’s really frightening is that Texas, due to the value of its school textbook purchases, indirectly dictates what textbooks are available for the rest of the country. Any ID claptrap entering Texas schools will soon appear in other states.
Hey bacopa, Christopher Hitchens called, he wants his imperialistic rant back.
From Pinky’s quote of their FAQ:
It always cracks me up when nuts like this insist they’re being criticized because of “personalities”, rather than because they HOLD STUPID FUCKING IDEAS. It’s like the MRA’s who show up here whining because we won’t “debate the issues on their merits instead of name-calling”.
There IS no merit to these ideas, therefore there’s nothing to debate. Calling someone who holds them a fucking idiot is just gravy (and optional).
Shorter loopy Christian fascist: “Having even the slightest fucking clue what you’re talking about is totally overrated.”
Well, at least they’re dark skinned Europeans at the Creation Museom.
Presumably skin cancer is just one of those things due to the Fall. Who knew biting an apple would cause the sun to start putting out UV-B?
Phonecian, I think Young Eatrh Creationists believe the sun always put out UVB. The water canopy and high air pressure protected us fron UV radiation. I suppose the pre-flood vegitation contained hoge amounts of absorbable vitamin D so we could survive without at least a little UVB. And the metabolism of turtles and arid lizards must have been completely different. If these critters don’t get UVB, they die fast.
And MsDarwin: Don’t you ever wonder what the world would be like if the eastern monotheistic faiths had never taken foothold in the west? If Antiochus had won, there probably never would have been anything like Christianity or Islam, though Judaism would probably persist as an obscure cult.
Thanks for saying my rant was Hitchens-like. I aim to emulate the best
I think Young Eatrh Creationists believe the sun always put out UVB.
Yes, I’m sure they’ve spent long hours working that question out to everyone’s satisfaction.