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Tuesday, May 12. 2009
Unintelligible Design
Caught this bit of news last week on Yahoo, that purveyor of everything not usually found on the nightly news with Katie Couric: “Ohio Christian school tells student to skip prom.” My first reaction after reading it is, “That’s what you get for sending your kid to an American, Christian-style madrassah.” Here’s a school that thinks kissing, holding hands, dancing, rock music and most definitely sex are all evil and immoral.It would probably be a winning bet to assume the school, Heritage Christian in Findlay, Ohio, still uses corporal punishment. People who run fundamentalist establishments seem to really enjoy BDSM.
The kid in question dates a girl who attends a public school and the two planned on attending her prom. That would be violating the rules of Heritage Christian and the parents of the boy signed the paperwork that outlined all the rules for attending that sad institution, so the kid gets what’s coming to him, which is suspension just for going and expulsion if he drinks alcohol or has any type of sexual contact with his girlfriend. I’m betting he and his girlfriend already do the hokey-pokey on a regular basis.
If he is suspended, he doesn’t get to graduate and wear the cap and gown with his fellow seniors, he has to make up his exams at a later date and then receive his diploma. Pretty harsh for attending a dance, but then fundamentalist Christians are a seriously disturbed bunch. This is the crowd that teaches evolution is the product of Satan, a lie put in place to lead us away from God and that the Grand Canyon was created in three days of the Great Flood of Noah fame.Geologically speaking, it’s taken 60-70 million years to form the Grand Canyon and 1.7 billion years ago, that area actually was a seabed, but not due to a 40 day rain and subsequent flood. The 20 plates of the Earth’s crust are constantly moving and eons ago the Southwest United States was a mountain range underwater. It’s really quite fascinating if you like geological history.
The problem with geological history, for many people, is that it takes time to study the facts and if you can have an easy story like a flood 8,000 years creating the Grand Canyon in three days, well by golly, I’ll go with the easy story! Then of course Pastor Ted said that the science of evolution of the planet is wrong and the work of Satan. It’s much simpler and more romantic to look at the beauty of the Canyon and say, “Look what God has wrought!”
Well, there is a higher power in this universe. Sadly, it isn’t me, although the worrier that I am, being the Supreme Being would get tiresome and annoying by the first couple millennia. A slacker couldn’t be the Supreme Being. No, the higher power is Nature itself, at one with everything in the universe, controlled by the laws of physics. Nothing happens in this universe without a corresponding reaction, which then initiates a ripple effect.Thankfully we are rarely aware of these chains of events, but on the flipside, sadly we aren’t aware of these effects, especially when it comes to human influence on the Earth’s atmosphere and physical being: global warming specifically. Even now there are people who want to deny the Earth’s atmosphere is in jeopardy, many of those being people who believe the stories in the Book of Genesis are fact, not mythology.
This begs the question: why does anyone in this day and age still believe all that nonsense? I can understand a belief that Jesus Christ is the Lord and Savoir, or that Allah is the One True God; believing in a supernatural being who controls our lives and destiny brings comfort and peace and allows the believer to ignore the world around them without fear.
Not to be confused with those who don’t watch, listen to or read the news because they believe it’s one big left wing conspiracy.
“Ignore” is the right word too because so many believers in Jesus Christ have told me they don’t watch, listen or read the news. It’s too depressing for them. Then of course there are those believers who get their “news” from Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. Those are the ones to really keep an eye on; they believe acts of violence in the name of Christ are justified and they can get quite agitated if you disagree with their political views.
After listening to the former Astronomer to the Vatican (Father George Coyne) talk about the history of the Universe about five years ago, the geological history, not the mythological history, why is it incongruent to believe in such a supernatural being, but not be bound by the literal strictures of the earliest scriptures? Sadly, three years ago Father Coyne was fired by the Pope as the director of the Vatican Observatory for speaking out against Intelligent Design.
Actually, most American Christians believe there is a role for evolution in the story of God creating the universe, but when they do speak on it the people who believe Genesis is historical fact roundly attack them. Then of course there are those who wish to believe in “Intelligent Design,” which is just a soft-pedaling of creationism with faux science to try and back it up.
Most Americans who believe in Intelligent Design really have no idea what it encompasses or that all of the “science” put out by the original and leading proponents of the philosophy has been debunked. Intelligent Design is no more real and factual than Genesis, except that proponents accept that the Universe might be billions of years old.This is the nonsense kids are learning in schools like Heritage Christian in Findlay, OH. Maybe it’s best the boy gets expelled from the school so he’s forced to finish his classes in a public school where he’ll get an honest education. I have no sympathy for him and his parents. After all, they thought it was a smart idea to send the boy to Heritage Christian.
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