The state of Tennessee is about to
make a monkey out of itself. In 1925, the state held its infamous “Monkey
Trial” where a teacher was tried in court for teaching the subject of
“evolution” which had just been outlawed in the state; the statute was not repealed
until 1967.
Read: “Tennessee is lab for
national clash over science class”, Cameron McWhirter, Wall Street Journal,
4-10-2012.
Today, the state is
about to pass another law which will allow science teachers to challenge
theories such as evolution and global warming among others that Tennessee
religious conservatives find objectionable to their religious perception of
earthly reality.
Many in the state
fear that such a law would not only “miseducate” students but would damage the
state’s national and international reputation and dub people living there as a
backward bunch of hicks living in the dark ages…and that would be true.
There is no
rationale for the law to be enacted but only to once again inject religion into
the teaching of science which even the Catholic Church does not advocate
because it challenges not only reason but proven science.
The law allows
teachers to challenge the theory of evolution because some people to this very
day, believe the word “theory” means something that is yet unproven. Well then
it is unfortunate that the word “theory” is so misunderstood in our English
language and its use should be explained much better in school.
We have “music
theory” as well as the “theory of gravity”; all theories that are “fact” or
better yet, a set of principles. If the theory of gravity was a speculation, we
would not have been able to go into space – get it?
Evolution presents a
challenge to creationism and the absurd idea of “intelligent design”. Why do I
say the idea of intelligent design is absurd; because those that actually know
something about our earth know that thousands of species have perished
throughout the ages because they were so unfit to survive living on earth that
they perished quickly? This means that if you believe that all living things
were “intelligently” designed by our creator, you have to also believe that HE
experimented a lot with design because most of his designs were downright
stupid and did not work!
Evolution challenges
creationism because it challenges the Bible story as to how and when things
happened on earth. No intelligent person can challenge the time span of the
creation of earth and the creatures upon it because there is incontrovertible
proof of the real age of the earth.
One also has to
wonder about people believing in the “inerrancy” of the Bible as well as the
idea that each word printed in the Bible is the word of God. Most people don’t
know that there is no “original” copy of the stories in the Bible and that the
translations that were produced throughout history have been based on other
translations to the point that what we have today is a translation of a
translation of a translation…ad infinitum.
Also adding to the
absurdity of the idea that every word in the Bible is the authentic word of God
is the fact that many of those copies that we have were copied by hand, by
humans who introduced errors or variations EACH time a copy was made and there
are “thousands” of copies of copies.
My favorite point
about Bible translations is the fact that ISAIAH 7:14 in the Old Testament was
used by early Christians as a prediction of the birth of Jesus. The original
Hebrew wording stated that a “young” woman would give birth to the eventual
messiah.
Well the Gospel of
Mathew mistranslates from the original of “young woman” to “virgin woman” and
the mistake was caught early on by St. Jerome
who was translating from the original Hebrew but St. Augustine instructed him
to leave the passage as “virgin” since that was what everyone has learned to
believe so why muddy the waters.
Jesus had brothers
and sisters that came before him (as per the Bible) so the virginity claim
seems pretty absurd but hey, tradition is tradition even if based on an error
and that is why people who hold those beliefs about the inerrancy of the Bible
are to me, just plain ignorant about their own faith and where it comes from.
Allowing state
legislatures to legislate their religious beliefs into the education of
children should be made unconstitutional and actually is but the people in
those states are trying to go around the constitutionality of the issue by
using confusing language and that should be stopped dead in its tracks.
This is the problem
with electing conservative Republicans; they carry the Dark Age disease of pure
ignorance of the world around them even if they are better at handling money
than the Democrats.
We cannot have only
two options to choose from when electing officials; we need a third option, a
party that practices financial responsibility but is enlightened when it comes
to our culture and society.
The fact that we are
even talking about this issue at this time in our history makes us all look and
act like a bunch of monkeys…apologies to the monkeys.
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