I had high hopes that the
educational standards in the U.S. were improving. Our students have ranked in the
low 20s and 30s compared to many other civilized countries, and efforts had recently
been introduced to expand and upgrade our science and math skills across the country.
Then I read in the newspaper, and found it confirmed on the
state’s official websites, that we’re not improving our student’s skills, we’re
allowing more classrooms to promote proselytizing.
The next time you go to the doctor’s
office or schedule surgery, you might want to check the diploma on the wall. If
it indicates the doctor obtained his medical degree in the state of Louisiana
or Idaho, you’d best look for another provider or you’re putting your life in the hands of a quack.
Do you want your doctor or surgeon trained
to treat leprosy by combining cedar wood, hyssop, scarlet and a living bird,
dipped in the blood of a dead bird, and then sprinkled over the victim seven
times? In 2,500 years, there has never been a single verifiable case of this
method ever working. Yet it is precisely what the Bible prescribes for “cleansing”
(which in the biblical sense means healing) in Leviticus 14:40-57.
On the left is a cure,
on the right is illiteracy.
If a snake bites you, would you go
to a health care professional who simply pointed to a brass snake up on a pole
and told you if you gaze on it, you’ll live; nothing else is required as it
says in Numbers 21:9? What does it say about any physician who believes serpents
and donkeys talk, polar bears and penguins walked all the way from either pole
to the Middle East to get into an ark, or that a rapist should marry his victim?
What if the doctor claims arthritis is caused by jealousy, fear, shame,
confusion or sadness per passages in Proverbs or Psalms, that eating shellfish
is an abomination worthy of death, that demons cause mental illness and the
plague, or that witches and wizards actually exist and use magic and sorcery to
cast spells as it states in Leviticus 19:31 or Deuteronomy 18:10? This is what the
bible teaches, and it is this that the students will learn from those ‘science’
classes…sorry, pseudo-science classes.
The mysterious ways of biblical medicine
The Louisiana House Education
Committee voted to keep a 1981 creationism law on the books despite a Supreme
Court ruling that found it to be unconstitutional…so Louisiana public schools can
and do use the Book of Genesis in high school science classes. Yes, science
classes. The creationism law, officially known as the Louisiana Science
Education Act (LSEA), was actually a cynical and clever attempt to introduce
religious beliefs as scientific theory, in contravention of the U.S.
Constitution’s Establishment Clause. The state’s Republican governor Bobby Jindal says that public school
students should be taught creationism and intelligent design in addition to
evolution, as long as it’s “the best science.” In an interview on NBC, Jindal
said: “Bottom line, we want our kids to be exposed to the best facts. Let’s
teach them about the big bang theory…and about evolution – I’ve got no problem
if a school board says we want to teach our kids about
creationism, that some people have these beliefs as well. Let’s teach
them about ‘intelligent design.’” He doesn’t mention if the kids should also
learn what the Qur’an, the Bhagavad Gita, and Native American cultures say
about the beginning of the universe and life. Their theories are just as valid
as the Bible's.
Republicans have proven to be elephant’s asses for a long time
On June 11, 2015, from the Idaho
Republican party came this: Therefore be it resolved, that the Idaho County
Central Committee encourages the Idaho legislature to draft and support a bill
stating that the Bible is expressly permitted to be used in Idaho public
schools for reference purposes to further the study of…government, law,
philosophy, ethics, astronomy, biology, geology, world geography, archaeology, sociology,
and other topics of study where an understanding of the Bible may be useful or
relevant. Republican Governor ‘Butch’ Otter has no problem with the passage of such a bill.
So it appears the U.S. will fall
further and further behind the industrialized world in every area of science,
especially given how many students are now home-schooled using the fundamentalist Christian-based
Advanced Training Institute curriculum. That’s the program Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar of TLC's discredited "19 Kids and Counting" use. It’s worth noting that none of the Duggar’s children have been accepted at any full-time
university or college. The dumbing down of America, about like you see in the
movie Idiocracy, is unfortunately coming true.
On the plus side, my kids and grand-kids
won't have to worry about competition for jobs or university spots from
anyone growing up in Louisiana or Idaho, or has a Christian home-school education. However, when employers start routinely rejecting graduates of those state's public schools or the home schooled, do you think Governor Jindal, Governor Otter, or right-wing fundamentalist parents will take any blame because evangelical jerks hijacked the education these kids need to operate in the 21st Century? The Chinese aren't going to wait for us to catch up with them.
