One good reason to hate fundamentalists


Posted by hyphenate in General Discussion

Sat Sep 20th 2008, 03:26 PM

Fundies keep on insisting that creationism should be taught in schools, but then they go ahead and bitch interminably about how all these foreign students are getting scholarships to our best universities and all the world is getting ahead but us. Are they that stupid (or willfully ignorant) that they can't see the link between the educational standards they are seeking to impose and the lower college exam scores American children are getting?



It seems to me that if these people had even half a brain among them, they would back off and shut up.



There are many diverse reasons why American students are sliding on these scores, and homeschooling (as it is done by unschooled fundies and other people with no regard for actual education) is one of them. None of them is more important than sending a daughter or son out with the best possible educational background, and that includes a properly taught scientific base.



Yes, there are other reasons why Americans are flunking scores while other countries are succeeding, and that includes laziness, discipline, obsession with gadgetry and a disregard for traditional subject matter, but that's not at issue here--what is at issue is that fundie parents (and any parent who refuses to teach or let their child be taught scientific subject matter) are forgetting the basic foundation of a good education, and that means biology, chemistry, physics and evolution. The subject matter itself is not debatable--we cannot hope to provide students with the tools and weapons they are going to need in a world that isn't sealed off from reality if they have no idea of what they are facing.



My fundie ex-friend, a teacher herself, could not grasp this concept, and bitterly complained how all these "illegals" were getting scholarships and American students were being shut out. In retrospect, I can see that her mind was too tightly wound around dangerous concepts that show how out of touch she had become with the real world.



The only way to keep the devil from our door--and that's how I look to anyone who shuns actual science in favor of idiocy--is to keep fighting it with everything we have in our arsenal of intelligence. That means, debate, a constant barrage of facts, refusal to allow them to sneak in their religious rhetoric in our public school systems, and battling their notions in every way possible in order to keep that nonsense from pervading our educational system.



One argument that some people give in objection to this argument is that the subculture of fundamentalism is a minority one. Be that as it may in terms of actual people who might be considered fundies, but their influence is a great one: no other cult has as many lobbyists, PACs, or publicity as they do, nor are there as many people in the general population who are affected in some fashion as by fundies. A recent survey showed that even among non-fundies that 2/3 of the American population believed in creationism and not in evolution. Scary, isn't it?



The United States is on the brink of losing everything our founding fathers worked so hard to achieve--we will lose our status as a superpower, we will lose any part of being at the forefront of technological discoveries, and we will certainly lose any credibility as a world leader if we allow the religious nuts like the fundies dictate what will or won't be taught in our public schools. Many fundies are looking to the "rapture" and apocalypse to happen in their lifetime: if we allow them to gain any more momentum in that goal, we are dooming not only the United States, but possibly the whole world to a fiery end.



We can't let them win--our lives, and so many others, are at stake. A win for the fundies is armageddon to the rest of us. In their vision, they will be taken into the "hands" of their lord, and the rest of us will suffer for a thousand years before the world ends. In reality, there will simply be nothing--no redemption, no life, no nothing. If our own lives, the lives of the next generation and the life of our planet itself isn't motivation enough to stop these people, there is nothing else for us to look to. We have already seen what religiously motivated people can do, and we know these people are fanatical enough to lead the charge against those of us with a better perception of what might or might not happen. Stopping them, at the very least, will keep the barbarians from the gates, and grant us enough time to launch a counter position. Because if we can't stop them, there aren't enough places on planet earth we will be able to hide from the destruction of all we have taken so long to build.

Journal entries from DU

I have struggled furiously over the past three months to understand where DU, Democratic Underground, has changed so much over the 7, 7 1/2 years I've been a part of it. To have it come to the point where I don't recognize the place, to a point where I fear saying anything too free thinking, I am just filled with a wonder how nebulous acceptance is in the world of politics.

I also firmly believe that no politician is a god, extraordinary, or even inherently wonderful. If a politician can give that impression, he or she is an excellent actor, but just as devious as the next guy. A real statesman (or woman) doesn't exist anymore--perhaps never did. Some have come close, but not all smiles are real, not all words are sweet, not all dreams are pure.

As we come to the final end of the 20th century, nearly ten years into the 21st, we can approach the new century with some hope, but also must realize that not everything is as good as it can be, and most of us are bruised and sore from the past century. Some of us are more cynical than others, and some of us can only see change for the better as a distant dream. Centuries--nay, millennia--of history have only made resonant that evil and apathy win far more than hope and brotherhood.

I'm not exactly a poster of every day thoughts, but I will try to keep up. In the meantime, I will be copying some of my old posts from DU here so that they may live on to some degree--my abondonment of the Democratic Underground will trickle and not be abrupt: I guess it is difficult for me to dissolve the political bands that connect me to them. ;)

Things change

but we don't notice it altogether. Unless it's something really big, it just gets filed into a mental filing cabinet, is accepted, and all done at such a speed that we barely acknowledge it.

There are many events which draw more attention, but they are significant in such a manner that we must accept them, and take note of them. But it's the niggling petite changes which make the most impact and the most difference, and we are like frogs in boiling water. We don't notice so much all the small stuff until the world in which we live is somethng new, something so different that we wonder how we could have missed it changing.

For an example, I turn to TV, one of my favorite subjects, and one in which the changes particularly represent a world long gone and far away. Picture the early 60s, the decade in which I was brought up, and how some of the greatest changes were made in television. Lucy and Ricky Ricardo slept in separate beds, or the original Dick Van Dyke series has similar arrangments; how a "darn" was a huge no-no, nevermind one of the great sins of the day. H