by © Salim Photography/ www.salimphoto.com
Perfect score on a 4th grade science test about Dinosaurs [Via Boing Boing]
I can’t vouch for the provenance of this alleged school test about dinosaurs. I just like to imagine cute dinosaurs the size of sheep. They must’ve been fabulous pets! (Via CN) [More]
See UPDATE below that shows how some religious extremists are spreading heir faith by actually committing felonies against children. I am not suggesting everyone who follows Jesus or believes in God is a problem. The problem comes from those willing to lie and commit crimes for their God.
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I was hoping this was just a setup but Snopes states it is most likely true. Here is the second page of the test, from snopes:
A science quiz! And some people want public money to be used to fund these sorts of religious schools! Religious zealots lying for their God! This is not science but religious claptrap, harmful for its ability to distort the world that surrounds us. For lying about the world that surrounds us.
This makes me furious. Not only because of the intellectual stupidity that denies reality but because denying this reality is not even ethical by their own beliefs.
Spirituality and religion can serve important purposes. They are an vital part of many people’s lives. They present moral and ethical foundations that help us all. Billions of people use them to make the world a better place.
But when they are misused by a small percentage to spread lies and misinformation, we are all hurt.
People die. Spreading lies for their God is deadly.
The refusal to understand the world surrounding us can have terrible consequences. Children die. Sometimes more than one. A paper from 1998 looked at 172 deaths (!) of children over a 20 year period. Only three would not have benefited from clinical help. Three!! One hundred and sixty-nine children died who most likely did not need to because of religious lies.
One hundred and sixty-nine! Dead. How many more since then? Dead. Because of lies.
And spreading lies for their God does not even fit their own beliefs. Their God will not lie. Their God cannot lie. He cannot present them with a universe built on lies, He can not distort the real world they see around them. He creates but does not lie. That is central to their beliefs.
Yet the world around them that their God created is built on facts that demonstrate its tremendous age, demonstrate dinosaurs died out before humans existed, demonstrate the simple difference between a carnivore and an herbivore, demonstrate that a large global flood did not occur, demonstrate that the sun was not stopped in its course, demonstrate that life did not come into sudden existence on the Earth, demonstrate that cities existed 10,000 years ago, demonstrate that layers of lake silt go back 80,000 years, demonstrate that we see light today that left stars millions of years ago.
Their God created these facts. He cannot create lies.
Yet they chose to believe a book – one created by humans – over the facts seen in the world around them, a world produced by their ceator. Either the world around them is a lie or the book is a lie.
By their own faith, which is more likely to be a lie – the world that their God created or a book produced by humans? They cannot both be true.
By their own faith, their God cannot create a falsehood. Only humans can do that. And one other being.
By their own faith, there is only one entity that can lie, that can produce a misrepresentation of the truth, that can distort what their God created in order to mislead, that can make them believe falsehoods, that can take a book – even one whose words were revealed to men by their God – and make it false.
I do not believe in their God at all but it seems to me that the only entity these liars are really following is their Satan, not their God.
They are using a book they themselves know was created by humans in order to spread lies about the world they themselves say was created by their God; a book created by beings that everyone knows can produce lies against their God who cannot create any lies at all. And they believe the book rather than the world around them that was created by their God.
People, whose religious beliefs about the world around us are so easily manipulated to see lies as truth, can be dangerous. They can be manipulated to kill a child. Or an adult. They could be manipulated to hurt a lot of us.
Their own religion believes that only one entity could do that sort of manipulation.
Their own religion states that lies can only come from Satan, not from their God.
People who lie for their God are harmful, even while they break their own religious morality. I am angry about this.
But there are many things to get angry about so I prioritize, as most of us do. As long as these liars for their God only impacted their own community, when they only hurt themselves, I could leave them be. Judge not. Better the beam in my eye than the mote in my brother’s.
But these liars for their God are really trying to push out their lies onto the rest of us, putting all of us in peril. What they do to the least of us – our children – they do to me. Stopping the liars for their God may be necessary for us to survive now.
Before more people are killed.
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UPDATE: School teachers commit felonies in order to force High school students to listen to religious messages at mandatory assemblies. People who believe it is okay to commit crimes against children in order to make them hear religious dogma.
Not allowing a student to leave a religious assembly in violation of the parent’s wishes is felony kidnapping.
So, they violated the Constitution by forcing children to listen to religious teaching on campus. That is a violation that would result in civil penalties. But preventing students from leaving is kidnapping. Will these extremists be jailed or will the students who stood up be bullied and shamed by the community for trying to fight for their rights?
Committing crimes for their God does not seem to fit with the message they are trying to push.
A Man With A Ph.D. 