While Kansas has decided to turn to the Bible for its high school science curriculum, the good people of Dover, PA, voted out all of the Intelligent-Design-Is-Our-Type-of-Science (IDIOTS) supporters on their school board in favor of candidates who understand that science is science and religion is religion and ne’er the twain shall meet:
(Baptist Press) All eight seats on the nine-member Dover Area School Board that were up for election Nov. 8 were narrowly won by candidates affiliated with the Citizens Actively Reviewing Educational Strategies (CARES). The organization’s platform calls for removing Intelligent Design from the district’s science curriculum.
The school district is a defendant in a federal trial over its policy to inform ninth-grade science students about the existence of Intelligent Design. Testimony in the case ended in early November. U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III is expected to issue a ruling by early January.
One of the winners in the board election, Bryan Rehm, is a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the school district. Last year he and 10 other parents, facilitated by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, sued the district. The plaintiffs alleged that exposing the students to Intelligent Design was putting religion in the classroom.
I’ve been following these cases in Pennsylvania and Kansas for some time now, and critics of the IDIOTS always point out that it is merely a backdoor attempt to teach Biblical Creationism in a high school science class in complete disregard for our separation of church and state. The IDIOTS always respond that their theory merely posits an Intelligent Designer without making any mention of their own Christian God, so it isn’t really religion so much as an alternative explanation of existence.
Of course, that’s never fooled anyone, since most of the IDIOTS are also card-carrying members of the American Taliban who never met a political issue into which they wouldn’t inject the Bible. It’s not as if activist Wiccans, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, or Native Americans are out there stumping for Intelligent Design, even though they too believe in religious creation myths.
So it is beautiful to me to read the latest words-of-God directly from his holy messenger on Earth, Rev. Pat Robertson:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Conservative Christian televangelist Pat Robertson told citizens of a Pennsylvania town that they had rejected God by voting their school board out of office for supporting “intelligent design” and warned them on Thursday not to be surprised if disaster struck.
“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city,” Robertson said on his daily television show broadcast from Virginia, “The 700 Club.”
“And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there,” he said.
Wait, Pat, I thought Intelligent Design had nothing to do specifically with the Christian God or the Biblical Creation described in Genesis?
And what’s up with your vengeful Yahweh these days, anyway? According to you and your Talibanic buddies, God struck us with 9/11 because of the “pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America”, he would hit Orlando with “earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor” if they put up rainbow flags to honor diversity, and New Orleans and the Gulf Coast were devastated by Katrina because of our support of legalized abortion.
If this God of yours is so all-powerful and all-knowing, why can’t He pinpoint His destruction a bit more accurately? Did Christian Conservative workers at Cantor-Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center really need to die in the 9/11 attacks? Did good Bible-fearing heterosexual folks need to suffer through all those Florida hurricanes? Did pro-life supporters in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama have to die for God to prove His point? You’d think and omniscient, omnipotent Intelligent Designer could just throw out a few well-directed heart attacks and strokes instead of indiscriminately wiping out hundreds or thousands of His Children at a time.
