From Kathy Martin, Kansas State Board of Education who is pushing for inclusion of Intelligent Design in the state's science curriculum, making the folks at the Discovery Institute tear their hair out while she lays the smack down on their attempts to pretend that ID is just about science, not about religion:
Some scientists claim that ID is thinly disguised creationism with a hidden Christian agenda at its root. Martin agrees that the agenda is not well disguised."Of course this is a Christian agenda. We are a Christian Nation," said Martin. "Our country is made up of Christian conservatives. We don't often speak up but we need to stand up and let our voices be heard," said Martin.
While introducing ID into the evolution cirriculum might blur the lines between theology, philosophy, and science, Martin sees no difficulty in teaching morals or ethics in the science classroom.
"Why shouldn't theology be taught in the classroom? Morality ought to be taught in every class. Prayer ought to be allowed. Whenever a child wanted to pray in class, I prayed with them," said Martin. "All children believe in God. Even little children whose parents don't take them to church believe in God."
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And what about this gem:
""Microevolution is change within the species: there are adaptations that make it easier for the species to live. Macroevolution is change between the classes: reptiles turning into birds, for example. Man has changed
and evolved, but we are not going to change back into monkeys," said Martin""
Wow. She really must want this to be smacked down in Federal Court. The more she talks, the more doomed this whole Kansas nightmare becomes.
I've wondered on several boards, what's the DI going to do when these rubes, who aren't as sophisticated at pretending that ID is not creationism, get into court and ruin their decades-long, multimilliondollar effort?
I like how they are writing it "Christian Nation". It's just like a nationalist to turn a descriptive phrase into a pronoun. I also like this gem:
1) No, our country is not overwhelmingly made up of christian conservatives and 2) yes you sure as hell do often speak up.
I also like how morality becomes a synonym for their conservative christian theology. Too many free-thinkers have let them slip that one by without calling them on it, and therefore the debate has been framed with the postulate of conservative christian theology being real morality.
I've wondered on several boards, what's the DI going to do when these rubes, who aren't as sophisticated at pretending that ID is not creationism, get into court and ruin their decades-long, multimilliondollar effort?Well, one particular DI effort will get shot down, they will regroup, and then they'll keep pushing from another angle. That is the scary thing about them--they don't quit. They have been losing in the courts for the last thirty years at least, but they just keep going. This is the sort of approach you take when you're pretty sure that you're doing Christ's work.
Off topic but still scary.... while the nation was fixated on the behavior of Congress and the President regarding Schiavo, Senators Shelby, Brownbeck, and Burr, introduced their new verison of the Constitution Restoration Act of 2005. It is moving slowly and imperceptibly through committee, waiting for the outcome of the nuclear option to open the door for the final passage of this legislation. It is only peripherally about activist judges, more so about passing this ugly law.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:S.520:
Yet there Christian "morals" are about as far away from Christ's "love your neighbor" ministry as one could get. Our friend DarkSyd had a good take on this here.
Kathy Martin:
"Our country is made up of Christian conservatives. We don't often speak up but we need to stand up and let our voices be heard(...)"
Consider me boggled.
She must've been hiding in a hole so
deep for the last 25 years that she could've gotten Chinese take-out food in Beijing.
"Even little children whose parents don't take them to church believe in God."
Bwah-hah, I've got one data point against her -- I raised my daughter completely agnostic until her grandparents started trying to shovel Christianity into her head. (We had a chat about that.)
The unintentionally comical Ms. Martin, again:
"All children believe in God. Even little children whose parents don't take them to church believe in God."
Bullshit.
Prior to being dragged off to Sunday School at the age of nine or so, the thought of a supreme being did not - I repeat, did not - make much of an impact with me despite the fact that I was exposed to some religious concepts at a Roman Catholic funeral for one of my uncles at the age of six. Granted, that's only my personal experience, but knowing how people like Martin turn their personal experiences into Universal Absolute Truths (as she's doing here), the anecdote is relevant.
It's also nice to know that Martin is perfectly okay with overruling the entire width and breadth of scientific research with a wave of the hand and a appeal to simplistic homilies about what children believe, education be damned. It's almost as if we're drowning in a sea of pod people manufactured by Playskool these days.