Posted on 07/21/2005 2:41:42 PM PDT by bondserv
Depressed Kerry Supporters Find New Cause: Fight Creationism 07/20/2005 
A grass-roots group of Virginia liberal Democrats has found a new cause to lift them out of their depression after John Kerry’s defeat last fall, according to a Washington Post article reprinted by MSNBC News: “Keep Virginia evolving.” Their chosen mission is to defend evolution from intrusions by the intelligent design movement and conservative Republicans and Christians. Peter Slevin writes:
Evolution’s newest defenders, who came together in frustration after the November elections, have little political experience, apart from hoisting Kerry-Edwards signs in morning traffic. They mostly are middle-class people with day jobs. Some had protested the Vietnam War but had rarely felt inspired to undertake political activism since. Together, they call themselves the Message Group and depict themselves as “determined and balanced” voters worried about social conservatives.Starting from scratch about seven months ago, the group realized they shared a general angst but no mission. After some discussion, they landed on the cause of defending evolution, especially after hearing that a Baptist pastor had threatened that if enough doubt could be cast on evolution, liberalism would die. The thought of that prospect apparently provided the spark to lift them out of the malaise of depression and frustration over Kerry’s defeat and give them a new rallying cry.
“I fear for my country. That sounds like a radical notion, something from the ’60s, but there is a pervasive fear, a scariness,” said Richard Lawrence, 63, a retired Environmental Protection Agency employee who voted for Nixon. “We’re just a small group, maybe with a powerful idea. We don’t have a clue, but we’re not letting go.”....
The Message Group was created out of its members’ disappointment. After President Bush was reelected and Republicans strengthened their hold on Capitol Hill, the group’s future comrades were among millions of demoralized Kerry voters who had invested fresh emotional energy and elbow grease in politics, only to fall short. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)
Now, though their aim of defeating intelligent design is explicit, their strategy is, well, evolving.They decided to take a stand in Virginia before ID advocates take up their cause in school board hearings. Their first mailer, urging 75 like-minded souls to “Keep Virginia evolving,” failed to stir the masses to rise up, Slevin said; this draft leaflet “landed with an ugly thud.” The cause did not resonate with Virginia Democrats somehow. Those who even knew about it suggested that ignoring ID was the best strategy. The Message Group tried again, this time with the approach of linking ID with the culture war and the Christian Right. Fairfax County, which recently chastised a creationist teacher (see 06/14/2005 entry), might join their cause, they hoped. They also planned to hold a mock Scopes Trial (see 07/19/2005 entry) with the roles reversed for effect, and plotted to link their efforts with the gubernatorial campaign next year. Meanwhile, the Creation Mega-Conference that started Sunday at Liberty University has not seemed to notice these new foes.
They selected evolution after deciding that other issues, such as Social Security revisions, were well-covered by bigger, richer groups. The emerging duel over the teaching of science, they reasoned, was important, local and manageable, an area in which they could make a small impact – and if they got lucky, a big one.
This is really funny. It almost makes you feel sympathy for these old Vietnam hippies with their tie-dye shirts and long gray hair. There must be something they can do. Ah! Here’s a flag we can send up the pole to see if anyone salutes: “Keep Virginia evolving!” Yes, Virginia, there really is a Charlie Darwin.
One of the leaders said, “I’m just a citizen, not a scientist. “I’ve even had to do a lot of reading to catch up.” We could suggest some books. We could also suggest a strategy. Forget the Scopes sit-in, the chants and incense, and come up with a plausible Darwinian mechanism to explain the origin of life and the molecular machinery of the cell. Explain the explosively abrupt appearance of all the major body plans in the fossil record simultaneously. Prove that mind is nothing more than an emergent property of brain chemistry (without committing a logical fallacy in doing so). Explain the fine-tuning of the universe by chance. Provide solid scientific answers to these and the other questions the ID community are raising, and you will steal their thunder.
Doesn’t this story just nail the connection between Darwinism and political liberalism? (see 12/02/2004 entry). When liberal Democrats, who supposedly emphasize free speech, look for a cause in science to land on, it is predictably pro-evolution and the stifling of dissent about Darwin and his materialist philosophy. Historically, this has usually been the case. The pro-evolutionists throughout the 19th century were predominantly leftist or radical in political ideology, whether German materialists like Vogt and Buchner, or Karl Marx in London, even Darwin himself and his most ardent supporters. Liberalism and evolutionism are inextricably linked. The question is, which is the cart, and which is the horse?
Ping!
Fighting to keep religous beliefs out of the science curriculum is not just a fight for depressed Kerry voters but for all people who want the USA tops in Science education
Removing our children from Communist indoctrination camps would be a better solution. Notice how threatened the Liberal education establishment is by Intelligent Design theory. Why not just say, "Let these ideas be considered by the mainstream scientific community, and if there is any validity it will hold. If invalid, it will be disproven. Science has it's own checks and balances that don't need to be enforced by anyone."
It has become very apparent that the purveyors of science within academia are not willing to allow these things to be brought to light. Mostly regarding the failings of Darwinian Random Mutation & Natural Selection.
Public schools have been lockstep Darwinist for at least 50 years. Why don't we have the world's best science education yet?
(Hint: NEA)
And .. the liberals continue to be AGAINST anything which the MAJORITY OF THE PUBLIC favors.
Unless the libs realize that being against everything that is basic to America is not the way to win elections .. they will continue to lose elections.
Fine with me .. I like to see what conservatism could do in about 40-60 years.
But you don't understand. Whoever does not accept evolution appears "unscientific," and we dare not have the name of conservatism besmirched with unscientific notions.
Tax-chick you are partially correct with the NEA, other factors include, the bureaucracy inherent in the system, and parents sending undisciplined kids to the schools. From a former teacher I assure you you would not believe the attitudes and rudeness and resistance to learning in public school students. However a giant mis-step would be giving creationism a place in science curriculum. ID is creationism in fancy clothes and has no place in a science curriculum as it is not science.
No, I really can't imagine what public school teachers go through. I'm very sheltered in my homeschool, and I know it!
However, I think the ID-in-schools issue is a total red herring for both sides. If our kids were learning science at a level to be competitive, they'd be learning it. Among other things, they'd be learning way more math than they are.
Almost any scientific knowledge can be conveyed without reference to origins, either way. You don't need it for physics, chemistry, descriptive biology, any type of experimentation at the secondary level ... you just don't need it. However, you do need higher math, and most American students aren't learning it. After all, being told that 2+2=4 every time might hurt their little feelings!
Our students are below par in every subject, not just science ... but they're way above average in self-esteem! And as I said above, we achieved this situation while exposing them to nothing but but Darwinism.
Yes.
Either keep religous beliefs out of the sciences or prepare to join the Muslims in the 7th century.
So9
It's interesting, I used to teach math (and some physics), I taught everything from algebra applications (bonehead math as the students called it) to calculus. There are two types of students, students that will learn in spite of you, and students who will do everything in their power not to learn. They intersected in Geometry which had seniors ending their math learning road here and Freshmen (who would end with Calculus) just starting. It was pretty obvious in which homes education and learning was important, and which homes it was not. I could fairly accurately predict who would show up on parent-teacher meeting nights.
If I remember correctly from past threads your husband is an engineer so your kids have an awesome resource there. To other home-school parents though I would say this is an area where you might consider an outside tutor and/or utilize the local community college.
BTW kudos to you on your home-school, I assume you get a huge tax break because you don't use the school system /sarcasm
Yeah, that property tax refund really makes the difference. (Ack! Unnngh!)
Yes, my husband's an engineer (M.S.E.E.) so he can handle the upper-level math instruction if he wants to. If he's too busy, we will certainly enroll our children in classes, as we likely will for lab science as well. When the community college is available, in addition to private schools that allow homeschoolers to register part time, I think we'd be silly not to take advantage of faciities that are impossible to equal at home.
There're quite a number of us vivacious Bush supporters with the same goal.
This is idiocy, bonserv (IMHO FWIW). These people need to stop scaring themselves to death and get a life.
Again, your fears and those of these liberals are unfounded. The majority of Creationists are rational conservative persons of high integrity. Typically shining contributors to their local communities. Most often, we take education very seriously, and press our children to learn how to think about the knowledge they are memorizing.
All we (Creationists) are asking for is an accurate representation of the facts. Any interpretations, whether on the side of naturalism or on the side of supernaturalism, should be coupled with disclaimers. Because naturalism tends to be easier to observe and test in the present, it appears to have more credibility. This is not necessarily the reality of our history.
Non-linear catastrophism doesn't lend itself to the pristine conditions that life requires to survive over billions of years. Shumaker-Levy type life ending comet impacts, Super Valcanos that set life back millions of years at a pop, life ending orbital fluctuations that should be part of a billions of years scenario ... These problems are better answered with supernaturalism.
It doesn't hurt to know someones opinion as long as you know it is an opinion. The MSM has been selling opinion as fact, so you should be familiar with why Creationists see the same thing coming from academia.
Almost??
;^)
Teaching evolution and harassing fundamentalist Protestants is not enough. There is much more to science than one theory.
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