Religion Dispatches
…rom using the new provision to adopt creationist-friendly or intelligent design literature. Quinn said that board members could reject material for factual errors. “But then it becomes a battle among board of education members over whether it’s accurate,” he said. Last year, McLeroy successfully included in the Texas’ science standards such creationist code as “analyze and evaluate the sufficiency of scientific explanations concerning any data of…
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…“supplemental material” as a way to sneak in creationist and intelligent design documents, like the Discovery Institute’s Signature of the Cell, or books that rewrite history from a distorted and dubious Christian perspective, like David Barton’s America’s Godly Heritage. Other states have tried the supplemental material language, so far unsuccessfully. “But they keep trying,” Hillis said. Interestingly, the person who led efforts to rewrite the s…
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…t Christian members of the Texas Board of Education inserted intelligent design code words into its science education requirements. The wording includes directing students to analyze and evaluate “sudden appearance” in the fossil record and analyze the “complexity of the cell.” The language prompted creationist and pro-intelligent design organizations like the Seattle-based Discovery Institute to claim victory “for science education,” but science…
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…merica’s acceptance of the second coming of Christ. In this context, it is significant today that in some parts of the United States, over one-third of the opponents of the policies of President Barack Obama believe he is the Antichrist as characterized in the End-Times Rapture scenario. The Christian anti-abortion movement is permeated with ideas from Dominion Theology. Randall Terry (founder of the militant anti-abortion organization Operation R…
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…to make sure this predator was not around children. No one challenged the code of deference to those higher up and obedience to the rule of secrecy. Now we have “the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in Church history,” declares the National Catholic Reporter in an editorial. The New York Times, which broke the story of abuse at the deaf school in Wisconsin, quotes a priest in Berlin as saying the crisis is “the worst in 100 yea…
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…Lemon test,” said Steve Newton. The hot-button issues of human cloning (a code word for abortion, Newton says) and global warming are linked to increase the appearance of evolution’s controversy. Fostering Fear of Science The science blog Denialism has a list of themes used in the global warming debate that have been similarly deployed in intelligent design battles: Well-funded think tanks are capable of derailing a scientific consensus, in this…
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…port NIF, which promotes on-the-ground change. But the attack by Im Tirtzu signals an end to business as usual. Following the Money Im Tirtzu calls itself a centrist organization that wants to strengthen political Zionism. But according to an investigative report by Ha’aretz, the movement is funded by right-wing groups and individuals, including John Hagee, the controversial Texas minister whose endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Joh…
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…even the staunchest fans blanche in horror. In Jazzin’ for Blue Jean, the promotional mini-movie for the song “Blue Jean” from his 1984 album Tonight, Bowie makes light of—and casts a psychoanalytic light on—the gap between his rock-god persona and his inner fanboy. Literalizing the Divided Self hinted at in his lyrics (specifically, in Man Who Sold the World’s recurrent references to his brother Terry’s schizophrenia) and on the iconic cover of…
Read More…reflect conservative Christian values. At the time, the pro-intelligent design organization was using the fundraising document to raise money to “defeat scientific materialism” represented by evolution, and “reverse the stifling materialist world view and replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.” But now, it looks like the strategy has been expanded to fight a culture war over the interpretation of our nation’s…
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…art of a discussion of workers’ rights, or to include Maimonides’ medieval code in a discussion of the death penalty, or to quote from the writings of twentieth-century Orthodox Rabbinical jurists to make a point about trying minors as adults. So what does this all mean? I would like to suggest that this marks the third stage in an evolution from a desacralized language of social justice to the current reclamation of the language of tradition. In…
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