Wednesday, September 24, 2008

The Extreme Southeastern Corner of NC Devolves

Brunswick County, which is the part of Myrtle Beach that doesn't want to be in South Carolina, is thinking about teaching creationism in schools. School board member Jimmy Hobbs brings the crazy:
"It's really a disgrace for the state school board to impose evolution on our students without teaching creationism," county school board member Jimmy Hobbs said at Tuesday's meeting. "The law says we can't have Bibles in schools, but we can have evolution, of the atheists." (emphasis mine - J)

Mr. Hobbs, that could be the dumbest sentence ever uttered. What law, exactly, says that we can't have Bibles in schools? Look, I have no problem with creationists. I don't care whether you accept science or not. But I do have a problem with idiots who don't know what the separation of church and state means.

Oh, and the link includes the requisite "it's just a theory" argument. Standard rant #42 applies.

8 comments:

Ben said...

Then, on the other end of the spectrum, there would be folks like Richard Dawkins who would actually agree with Jimmy Hobbs that evolution inevitably leads to atheism. Nothing to say about that but, "huh!"

Matthew B. Novak said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Matthew B. Novak said...

When I was in high school I was taught evolution and I was taught about creationism. I think that seems a reasonable compromise.

Mike said...

Matt, that sounds pretty much like what my argument has always been. Teach evolution, then say, "Oh by the way, there are also people who believe everything was created by a higher being and Darwin was full of shit." And leave it at that.

Ben said...

Not sure I follow, Matt. "Taught about Creationism"?

Where you taught that in science class? Social Studies? What did they teach you about it exactly?

As I said above, all the stuff in the Ebert Q&A Jeff cites above is pretty much the stuff I was taught in my 8th grade science class.

Matthew B. Novak said...

Yeah, I wasn't taught any of that. When I was taught about creationism I was basically told that evolution isn't accepted by everyone, that others have proposed plausible theories, among them creationism, and that they can cite some evidence to back them up. I was even taught a little of creationism's basic premises (God created everything, no evolution, much younger Earth, etc.). But we weren't taught that the premises were right, weren't introduced to any of the evidence for creationism, didn't spend a significant length of time on it, didn't have labs for it, weren't expected to know it for a test, or anything along those lines. We were just introduced to the fact that the idea was out there, and what exactly the idea proposed.

Mike said...

In other words, basically what I said.

Matthew B. Novak said...

Yes.