Kansas Battles Change: The demogogues in Kansas are at it again. Appealing to folks' fear of change, they have convened board of education hearings to determine whether biology teachers should teach Kansas children "intelligent design." (Presumably there exists "non-intelligent design"?)
Evolution means change, and good folks in Kansas (as well as in many other states) are terrified of change. The notion of "intelligent design" suggests that because you can't design something that looks complicated, it must have been designed by someone superior to you. Nothing as complex as a human being, it is theorized, could have come from something as primitive as a monkey (or a creature other than human).
And then there is that problem with an expanding universe. Maybe if we stop teaching evolution in physics classes, the universe will no longer expand but will reach stasis, and all will be as it should be in the universe, which of course it already is. Or isn't.
Kansas has had a marvelous history. They began waging the civil war there about ten years before the attack on Fort Sumter. It seems these folks have been at war with themselves a long time.
Speaking of religion and politics, examining the situation in India seems appropriate, now that Microsoft is so heavily invested in the sub continent and we hear constintly from folks like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times about how progressive that country is. Take a look at the cover story in the June 2003 issue of National Geographic. You'll find a wonderful description of how 15 percent of the poplulation of that country lives and the wonderful convenience to the other 85 percent of having a religiously defined group as "untouchables." The Indian Constitution outlawed the class system, but no one in power will lift a finger in defiance of it.
According to Hindu beliefs, the untouchables are serving out their sentences for crimes committed in past lives, a kind of hell on earth for those Christians among us. Science tells us that around 1600 a population explossion occurred throughout most of the world. There are acutually more people alive at this minute than all of the people combined who have lived and died before the current time. This notion belies the belief that there could possibly be enough people for reincarnation to provide a probable answer to be mathmatically feasible.
However, if you want someone to clean out your sewer system, you either need to pay them a lot of money or designate them as a special, god provided, group who must clean the sewer for very little reward. The Indians have found a wonderful answer to clogged sewer systems. And they can feel sanctimonious about it.
Once upon a time, we had a system like this in place in the U.S. It was called slavery. The justifiers of that system also believed in "intelligent design." Slaves were slaves because a higher intelligence had designed the system to be that way. And the owners of slaves could feel very smug about the system god had provided them. It made them rich, didn't it? They weren't suffering, the slaves were. Obviously god wanted things to work that way, or otherwise he would have made the owners of slaves to suffer. And then that lunatic John Brown started running around in Kansas.
Evolution means change, and good folks in Kansas (as well as in many other states) are terrified of change. The notion of "intelligent design" suggests that because you can't design something that looks complicated, it must have been designed by someone superior to you. Nothing as complex as a human being, it is theorized, could have come from something as primitive as a monkey (or a creature other than human).
And then there is that problem with an expanding universe. Maybe if we stop teaching evolution in physics classes, the universe will no longer expand but will reach stasis, and all will be as it should be in the universe, which of course it already is. Or isn't.
Kansas has had a marvelous history. They began waging the civil war there about ten years before the attack on Fort Sumter. It seems these folks have been at war with themselves a long time.
Speaking of religion and politics, examining the situation in India seems appropriate, now that Microsoft is so heavily invested in the sub continent and we hear constintly from folks like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times about how progressive that country is. Take a look at the cover story in the June 2003 issue of National Geographic. You'll find a wonderful description of how 15 percent of the poplulation of that country lives and the wonderful convenience to the other 85 percent of having a religiously defined group as "untouchables." The Indian Constitution outlawed the class system, but no one in power will lift a finger in defiance of it.
According to Hindu beliefs, the untouchables are serving out their sentences for crimes committed in past lives, a kind of hell on earth for those Christians among us. Science tells us that around 1600 a population explossion occurred throughout most of the world. There are acutually more people alive at this minute than all of the people combined who have lived and died before the current time. This notion belies the belief that there could possibly be enough people for reincarnation to provide a probable answer to be mathmatically feasible.
However, if you want someone to clean out your sewer system, you either need to pay them a lot of money or designate them as a special, god provided, group who must clean the sewer for very little reward. The Indians have found a wonderful answer to clogged sewer systems. And they can feel sanctimonious about it.
Once upon a time, we had a system like this in place in the U.S. It was called slavery. The justifiers of that system also believed in "intelligent design." Slaves were slaves because a higher intelligence had designed the system to be that way. And the owners of slaves could feel very smug about the system god had provided them. It made them rich, didn't it? They weren't suffering, the slaves were. Obviously god wanted things to work that way, or otherwise he would have made the owners of slaves to suffer. And then that lunatic John Brown started running around in Kansas.
posted by Jim | 1:17 PM
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