Listics

Here in Wisconsin, embarrassingly enough, the christian ignoramuses have locked a school district into teaching something called "creationism."  Makes me want to puke.  Really.  Here’s what some kinder folks than I have come up with in the way of a gently persuasive (we hope) approach to correcting these hopeless dumb fucks:

Mr. David Ahlquist
President

Board of Education
Grantsburg School District
Grantsburg, Wisconsin 54840

Dear Mr. Ahlquist,

Within the community of Christian believers there are areas of dispute and disagreement, including the proper way to interpret Holy Scripture. While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible
literally, as they would a science textbook. Many of the beloved stories found in the Bible – the Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark – convey timeless truths about God, human beings, and the proper relationship between Creator and creation expressed in the only form capable of transmitting these truths from generation to generation. Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey information but to transform hearts.

We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rest. To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God’s loving plan of salvation
for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask
that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.

Sincerely,
[130 or so signatories representing christian congregations and gathered meetings around the state of Wisconsin]

Now I find embarrassing the stuff about Christ… not being a christian, although my religious group springs from a christian tradition… and I’m embarrassed by capital G-God’s "good gifts" and its "loving plan," but I’m pleased that my meeting embraced the document and didn’t get into one of those lengthy wordsmithing sessions that can take the joy and power out of something like this.  Hard to believe that what we thought were dying embers of superstitious claptrap when we studied 19th century history have flared up anew in the 21st century bonfires of the fanatically ignorant.