jewel November 10th, 2007
Some very cool news – on Tuesday, November 13th, at 8pm PBS will be airing a new NOVA program about the Kitzmiller vs. Dover trial on teaching ID in public schools. Check your local listings.
For more information, see the press release or click on the graphic to be taken to the NOVA site on the program.
edited to add: The NY Times also has a pretty good write up on Judgment Day.
jewel October 6th, 2007
I just finished reading 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin®, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania by Matthew Chapman, a great great grandson of Charles Darwin.
We actually got to meet Matthew Chapman last weekend at the Atheist Alliance International conference and he is a very down to earth fellow. When I first read about who he was I thought – “Great great grandson of Charles Darwin – how cool is that?!”, but of course we cannot choose our ancestors and he is a very approachable guy, so although I do still think it would be cool to be a direct descendant of such a great historical figure, my rational side does take over and it isn’t such a big deal.
But I digress…
Anyway, I just finished his book on the Dover, PA trial “Kitzmiller v. Dover” where a school board – who were neither educators, nor schooled in science – bent on introducing the teaching of Intelligent Design (aka Creationism in a Labcoat) in their biology classrooms was given the smackdown by a George W. Bush appointee judge. Continue Reading »
jewel September 30th, 2007
We just got back from the AAI convention in Arlington. It was really an amazing 2 days. The guest speakers included Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Julia Sweeney, Eugenie Scott, Matthew Chapman, Edward Tabash, Pastor Deacon Fred, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and many others. The lineup was really quite spectacular.
Security was tight. There was a bomb sniffing dog and everyone that was able to get into the main ballroom was scanned by metal detectors. More on this later. Continue Reading »
jewel June 26th, 2007
Ya know, I’ve been waiting as patiently as I’ve possibly been able for Bush to leave office. 574 days to go. Unfortunately, Bush’s legacy will be with us long after he has been replaced and we will likely be a long time repairing the damage he has done both here and abroad. Many people forget (or count on) a lasting effect brought about by the Supreme Court Justices that the President appoints, given the opportunity. Bush has had the opportunity to appoint two justices to the bench and he held to his promise of ultra conservatives who will likely undo decades of social progress as well as knock that pesky wall of separation of religion and government down once and for all.
One of the most striking examples of this damage happened yesterday when the US Supreme Court ruled (5-4 with strong dissent) that it’s AOK for the President to ignore the Constitutional separation of religion and government (regarding the funding of faith based initiatives), since he isn’t Congress and he’s not “officially” making any laws. Never mind that he is giving millions of tax payer dollars to religious organizations without any kind of oversight. Also, the religious organizations that benefit from our hard earned tax dollars are getting preferential treatment. They don’t have to show that they have a better track record than their secular alternatives and they are allowed to discriminate in hiring and use the tax money they get on promoting religion. If it had been Congress, it would have been different, they said, but hey, it’s the President, so what’s the big deal?!?
Well, the big deal is that there were very good reasons as to why the Framers separated religion and government. They had come from an active theocracy and they saw the oppression that the ruling religious regime so very often caused. They purposefully wanted people to be free to pursue any religion they wished or none at all. In the dissenting opinion, Justice Souter stated:
As the Court said in Flast, the importance of that type of injury has deep historical roots going back to the ideal of religious liberty in James Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, that the government in a free society may not “force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment†of religion.
I fear that many of the folks that feel that Bush’s faith based funding is a good thing don’t really understand the slippery slope that goes with it.
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