evolution is not religion

Brad Pollitt, a Missouri high school assistant superintendent, makes a bad call having band members turn in promotional t-shirts utilizing the theme of evolution. Mr. Pollitt caved to fear from parent complaints as evidenced by this faulty reasoning:

Pollitt said the district is required by law to remain neutral where religion is concerned.

The problem here is that evolution has nothing to do with religion. It’s science. While some religious cranks perceive science as a threat to their beliefs, that doesn’t make science anything other than science. Pollitt goes on to say,

If the shirts had said ‘Brass Resurrections’ and had a picture of Jesus on the cross, we would have done the same thing

Here Pollitt properly uses a religious example but his analogy fails in that evolution is not religious commentary. Hopefully Pollitt will wake up and apologize for letting the fundamentalists bully him to censorship.

iraqi gays tortured and killed

Sadrist Sheik Ammar al-Saadi would like to distance himself from the murderers. He denies involvement in the killings. He states that he and other clerics “only urged people to stop practicing homosexuality”. Here al-Saadi is blind to the fact that his general attitude forms the platform from which the killers justify their actions. While holding such beliefs regarding homosexuality is not (and should not be) against the law, society’s sane must work to expose such dangerous bigotry through education. These views stimulate conflict and suffering for many.

wacky whacking

Behaviorism taken too far in education. “Teachers” using such methods are confused themselves, so the disproportionate figures are of no surprise. If you view students as animals, you’re bound to treat the more challenging ones like beasts.

prayer != medical attention

Sad news out of Wisconsin as a father allows his 11-year-old daughter to die from an undiagnosed case of diabetes. The core of his defence was as follows:

God promises in the Bible to heal. If I go to the doctor, I am putting the doctor before God. I am not believing what he said he would do.

While I don’t buy Skydaddy stories, I can’t help but wonder why some who do don’t spin that belief in their favor. For instance, God gave us the brains to learn about our bodies and their well-being. With this gift from God, some even become gurus (i.e. doctors) and become the aid we can seek to deal with complex health problems. Silly, but a much more practical and useful outlook.

Unfortunately, Mr. Neumann substituted medical attention with prayer and his Bible – of which he apparently had a warped and literal take on certain passages therein. His defence lawyer says they will appeal the guilty verdict. However, one may wonder why. After all, isn’t going to a lawyer putting the lawyer before God? If there is innocence, won’t God take care of Mr. Neumann and protect him from injustice?