A while back the United States Supreme Court ruled that public schools can offer classes on the bible so long as no specific religious view is advocated by either the teacher, or the school district. Down in Texas a law was passed that stated such classes must be, "impartial."
There is no slope quite so slippery as the one that involves religion and education, especially when you throw a bunch of evangelicals into the mix. MSN News is reporting that the Texas Freedom Network is saying that there are now 60 districts in that state conducting bible courses. That would be all fine and good, but according to them the word "impartial" really doesn't apply in most of those cases. In fact many of the classes have strayed into the realm of fundamentalist Christianity when it comes to both history and science. Well it is Texas after all. Rick Perry is governor there for a reason.
Mark Chancey, a professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University, says many of the classes have come to closely resemble a morning at a fundamentalist Sunday school.
Among other tidbits he found that two districts teach racial diversity in the world, you know why some people are black and some aren't, can be traced directly back to the sons of Noah. It isn't clear how that works to a lay person such as myself unless Noah had a bunch of kids of different races. In the bible the old boy had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. According to the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia there is a table of nations that lists which racial groups emerged from the three sons and their descendants. The problem is that none of the peoples mentioned there, as near as I can tell, have anything to do with east Asians. So basically a billion fucking Chinese and off shoots from that race are simply unaccounted for, leaving a rather large hole in the anthropological record. I suppose one could take comfort in the fact that it doesn't take much reading between the lines to see the divine hand of evolution at work there in that table. Although to suggest that would, no doubt, create unimaginable shudders and heated denials among the academicians teaching this history of humankind.
Chancey claims many of the courses either suggest, or openly claim the bible is literally fact. One teaches that true Christians will be called to heaven in the "rapture." It is an event that gets them out of suffering through the chaos and pain of the tribulation, or end of times, with the rest of us poor schmoes.
The professor also found that a number of the "impartial" classes teach their students that the earth is only 6000 years old, which I'm sure will help them out immensely when they take their first college geology class. Yes, just tell that grad assistant the chunk of granite you are holding is less than 6000 years old and see what sort of grade you end up with.
The Texas Freedom Network states, a bit dryly, that statute guidelines are being ignored and no one is enforcing them. Oh, you think?
Freedom of religion is one thing. There is also freedom from religion. Finally there is cold, hard, science. If I want someone to teach my kids, or rather now, my grand kids that the bible is literal, that the earth is only 6000 years old, I'll either send them to a church sponsored school, or shove them into a time machine and set the date for 1300 A.D. It is not the state's job to be the arbiter of which religion is true, of which faith is God Almighty's preference. That is not separation of church and state. It never has been and it never will be.
If children want to pray, let them pray. Just don't tell them what to pray, or how to do it. And for the sake of the Lord and you're own intellect, don't ignore all those Chinese.
sic vita est
1-29-13
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