Check it out: it’s yet another transitional form, a 92 million year old snake with two hindlimbs. Cool! Just last week I was told that none of these things exist.
I’ve been getting a lot of email about this putatively Islamic public school in Minnesota, Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy. It’s a wretched situation — this is a school associated with the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, and clearly all the students and families involved are Muslims who want a little bit of cultural isolation, and I suspect there is a lot of religious indoctrination going on behind closed doors — and I think it’s a bad thing that this school is receiving state tax dollars.
I’ve been reluctant to jump on this story, though, for a couple of reasons. The main person fanning the hysteria is a columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Katherine Kersten, who is a far right-wing kook with a history of hypocrisy, and this is just another example. I am actually quite happy to see her and her fellow Christianists tearing their hair out in anxiety over the existence of a culturally Islamic school in our midst — maybe (but I doubt this a bit) they are actually getting a vague idea of what it feels like to be non-Christian in America, and watch as the schools are blithely used as organs of theological propaganda while the administrators claim they are not.
For instance, Kersten is outraged at this report:
Afterward, Getz said, “teachers led the kids into the gym, where a man dressed in white with a white cap, who had been at the school all day,” was preparing to lead prayer. Beside him, another man “was prostrating himself in prayer on a carpet as the students entered.”
We are about to go through the various graduation ceremonies out here in Morris. There will probably be a student speaker who will be trotted out to tell everyone how much he or she loves Jesus. We will witness a man dressed all in black with a funny collar who will be given a place of honor in the event, and who will close his eyes, bow his head, clasp his hands, and lead everyone in attendance in prayer to the Christian deity. What’s the difference? One chooses white, the other black? I don’t think Kersten will be going on a rampage to get baccalaureate ceremonies shut down all across the state.
Our local high school had Youth for Christ assemblies on campus, during school hours. This is just as insane and distasteful to non-Christians (as well as many Christians who didn’t care much for an airhead braying about abstinence-only education and how wicked gay people are) as having an imam preach during school hours, but of course it was welcomed by our fundie community. Where was Katherine Kersten then?
Andy Birkey points out more Kersten hypocrisy: she has nothing but praise for a “classical curriculum” that contains Christian nonsense and was implemented in a school run on the grounds of a Catholic church in Minneapolis. You could argue, of course, that you can teach religion from a secular perspective and just exposing kids to their historical roots is not in itself a forbidden act by a public school, but the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy may be doing exactly the same thing … just from a minority Islamic perspective rather than a majority Catholic one. Their website is carefully non-sectarian and secular, at any rate, not that I wouldn’t put it past the liars for Jesus or Mohammed to scrub the crazy talk from their public face.
So, yeah, I don’t like any of it, but I find it hard to get irate at a school of 300 students which may be subverting the secular mission of the public school system, when we’ve got over 800,000 students in this same system who take Christianity for granted. Let’s get it all out. The main virtue of this little episode is that we’ll be able to use it to our advantage next time some school administrator tries to infuse Christian values into our schools — we’ll be able to point out that if it’s not OK to peddle Islam in school, then Christianity should be getting equal treatment.
The other good outcome here is that the ACLU is on the case, and has sent a letter demanding explanations and accountability. I like the ACLU; I’ll abide by their findings. What will the wingnuts say, I wonder?
One thing I know: I never want to piss off Peter Irons, Esq., Attorney at Law.
First Fox News, now Scientific American gives Expelled both barrels. They dedicated a fair amount of space to ripping into the movie, and you might be wondering if it isn’t giving the movie more publicity than it deserves, a question I’m getting asked a lot, too. Of course it is! The controversy is exactly what they want, since it will help put butts in seats. However, this is bad publicity, and what serves our ends is that people see the movie skeptically, and are made aware of the fundamental dishonesty of the makers. John Rennie notes this problem:
Rather, it seems a safe bet that the producers hope a whipping from us would be useful for publicity: further proof that any mention of ID outrages the close-minded establishment. (Picture Ben Stein as Jack Nicholson, shouting, “You can’t handle the truth!”) Knowing this, we could simply ignore the movie–which might also suit their purposes, come to think of it.
Unfortunately, Expelled is a movie not quite harmless enough to be ignored. Shrugging off most of the film’s attacks–all recycled from previous pro-ID works–would be easy, but its heavy-handed linkage of modern biology to the Holocaust demands a response for the sake of simple human decency.
I agree — this is a movie that goes beyond stupidity to actual malice, and it shouldn’t be ignored. SciAm does a great job in exposing the intellectual poverty behind this propaganda film.
Also, remember how Mark Mathis was mentioning that they allowed Michael Shermer to see the movie, as if he were expecting a thumbs-up from Shermer? His review is also online, and as I expected, it is not kind.
It’s worth a try, and it certainly would stand out against the near-universal background of credulity on television. The makers of the Skeptoid podcast are putting together a pilot for a program on skepticism, with Phil Plait and Steven Novella in the cast. Let’s hope it makes it! Network executives — it’s something new and different, and it’s the kind of thing that might get me and people like me (you know, upscale, highly educated technophiles with some disposable income to spend on high-end luxury items) to turn on our TVs again.
There has been a recent upsurge in email coming my way. Some of it is very complimentary, thank you very much to all who have written in to say nice things about the blog, and some of it is extremely nasty (no thank you, I’m not interested in being sent to hell right now), but others … others are just weird.
Oh, my — you know a right wing Christianist propaganda film is bad when even Fox News pans it.
That Willikers fella has a fine post on the differences between science and religion. Even if he obstinately refuses the label of “atheist” I have to go along with him on this:
So, science is universal, while religion is rather local. One relies on an epistemology everyone in the world has access to; the other relies on an epistemology that barely works for that religion. To say of all religions that “each is valid” is to assert an absurdity. If each religion is separately valid, and all religions contradict each other, we are way past postmodernist silliness and out the other side into pure fiction and flights of imagination. It basically causes the very idea of knowledge to be degraded to the point that it no longer has the slightest meaning.
I think he ought to be invited to speak at that Australian creationist conference. If he and I were to show up there, I’m sure they’d hate him far more than me.
Some wacky creationists are having a Creation Supercamp in Australia. I am surprised by one thing: their opening description of the event is actually true! I can’t find one thing I disagree with in this statement.
The atheists are on the march like never before. Why? Because creation is also being discussed like never before and they are worried! This weeklong series of lectures and activities will equip you and your children with the necessary tools and information to dramatically affect this world for Christ.
Yes, I think we are seeing an atheist surge right now, and yes, we are worried by the growing creationist activism — I’d even say that rising creationism is one factor in motivating many of the “New” Atheists. Of course, that isn’t a good thing. We also think that the risks of measles prompts worldwide efforts to vaccinate against the disease, but no one thinks that is an endorsement of sickness.
I also think these kinds of events do help misguided people “dramatically affect this world for Christ”. Always for the worst, always with greater and greater levels of stupidity, but sure, they’re affecting this world. That Christ guy seems to have said a few smart things; it’s too bad his name has become such a symbol of deluded idiocy, thanks to people like Carl Wieland, one of the conference organizers.
Unfortunately, too, that one paragraph seems to have exhausted the creationists’ full quota of honesty, and looking over their schedule of speakers, it looks like they’re going to babble out a whole week of lies to compensate.
