Best American Ringing Defeat of Religion Masquerading as Science

Posted 13 April 2007 by Nick Matzke

This just in:

Intelligent designs Judge John E. Jones attracted national and international attention with his landmark decision ruling against the Dover School District's efforts to promote the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution. Now, the judge's prose has made its way into the latest edition of "The Best American Nonrequired Reading.'' The anthology is edited by Dave Eggers(http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/catalog/authordetail.cfm?authorID=8684), and compiled by a committee of readers, mostly California high-school and college students. It includes their choices for the year's best magazine articles, short stories, speeches, cartoons and more. An excerpt from Mr. Jones's U.S. District Court decision is included under the title "Best American Ringing Defeat of Religion Masquerading as Science."

24 Comments

Mike · 13 April 2007

Seems to be a formatting error.

David Utidjian · 13 April 2007

Uh yup. Damn hard to read like that.

-DU-

chunkdz · 13 April 2007

I just hope they properly credit the ACLU operative that helped write it for him.

Aerik · 13 April 2007

<url href=.....

Apparently somebody thinks this is a forum.

Steve Reuland · 13 April 2007

url href= is perfectly fine, that's what KwickXML is set up for. The problem is that one of the tags is prematurely closed. I'd fix it for him if I could, but I don't have the superpowers to do it.

Cleardale · 13 April 2007

I've actually just finished the book, overall not a bad read. Parts of it weren't interesting to me, but it did have some good stuff.

Raging Bee · 13 April 2007

chunkdz: I hope someday YOU properly credit the creationist hacks who wrote all of your unoriginal talking-points for you.

ana · 13 April 2007

Subject(s): FICTION
— Houghton Mifflin Books

wamba · 14 April 2007

I just hope they properly credit the ACLU operative that helped write it for him.

On a tangent, was the author of The Wedge Document ever properly credited? My recollection is that the document itself was unsigned.

Torbjörn Larsson · 14 April 2007

Subject(s): FICTION

Well, duh! An anthology with best reading couldn't be sorted under LAW, now could it?

Peculiar Person · 14 April 2007

Greetings, evolutionists. I would like to inform you that God's book says that only a fool wouldn't believe in His existence. I also want you to know that if you continue to rebel against Him, I can guarantee that you will experience a very rude awakening when you die. If you think I'm mistaken, just remember my words when you stand before Him at the end of your lives.
Perhaps you are familiar with the Ten Commandments. They include such laws as "don't kill", "don't commit adultery", "don't lie", "don't steal", etc. If you are guilty of breaking God's perfect law, He will punish you accordingly in hell. Or if you repent by forsaking your sinful way of living, and turning to God for forgiveness, you may be spared His holy wrath. Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay the price for all your sins. If you repent and place your faith in Him, you will spend eternity with Him in heaven. Don't be fools. Eternity is a long time.

Torbjörn Larsson · 14 April 2007

Peculiar person:

Don't make the unfounded mistake to think that biologists can't be religious.

PhilVaz · 15 April 2007

Peculiar: "Greetings, evolutionists. I would like to inform you that God's book says that only a fool wouldn't believe in His existence."

Greetings peculiar. Any comments on:

Finding Darwin's God by Ken Miller
Perspectives on an Evolving Creation by Keith Miller
Coming to Peace with Science by Darrel Falk
The Language of God by Francis Collins
Creation and Evolution by Pope Benedict XVI

I'll reserve judgment on the last one myself since it hasn't been published in English yet.

Phil P

Marek 14 · 15 April 2007

Peculiar Person:

Is your God the one who planted all the fake evidence of evolution so people would be led astray? Is he the one who personally murdered uncounted humans and animals, and who required genocides to be done in his name?

If he the one who meddles in humans' affairs and so often makes things worse?

Do you say things you say because you are afraid of him?

Well, I am not. If I die, and you are right, I will spend rest of time in suffering. But that is STILL preferable to betraying my moral convictions and sucking up to an omnipotent bully.

The fact that I accept logic and science is a choice of my own - and if I will be punished for it, that still wouldn't make it a wrong choice. Your God might be powerful, but not even He could make a right thing wrong.

Mats · 15 April 2007

I just hope they properly credit the ACLU operative that helped write it for him.

lol

stevaroni · 15 April 2007

Peculiar Person writes... Perhaps you are familiar with the Ten Commandments. They include such laws as "don't kill", "don't commit adultery", "don't lie", "don't steal", etc. If you are guilty of breaking God's perfect law, He will punish you accordingly..

Actually, PP, there are more like 27. After all the early hubbub over the "big ten" in Exodus 20:1-17 everybody forgets about all the rest of the pesky little ones in Exodus 34:12-27. But let's not quibble over little technical points like "Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven", after all, it's just holy writ. Regardless; even in these 27 commandments, I still see nothing like "Thou shalt continue not to see the forest for the trees" Or "Thou shalt not take the knowledge of three thousand years of civilization and try to understand the things I could not possibly explain to bronze-age nomadic shepherds". Or my personal favorite "Thou shalt take the four pounds of brains I have given you - arguably the rarest and most precious thing in my creation - and use them to pretend that a simple, easy to demonstrate law of nature does not exist". No, in fact I see quite the opposite, right up front in the Good Book, barely 200 words into Genesis, in the very first sentence God speaks to his creation. "God said unto them ... have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth". Dominion requires accurate knowledge, not wishful thinking. Anyhow, here's the important part in all this. You believe what you believe because of faith. I have no problem with that, in fact, I will aggressively protect your right to do so, even though I personally disagree with you. I will also grant the same courtesy to my neighbors, who are, respectively, Hindu and Scientologist. What I will not allow, is for those neighbors to use the public schools and venues to teach unsupported Hindu and Scientology creation stories to my children under the guise of being accurately verified information. To this end, I support the reasonable position that children in high school biology classes should be taught any facts about biology that can be verified to a reasonable standard by empirical testing and demonstrations, and not any that are unsupported anywhere outside of religious texts. And ya know what? In light of Gen 1:26 I'm pretty sure God would be OK with that too. While I'd love to argue more, Tuesday is tax filing day where I live, so I have to get back to rendering unto Cesar, and all that.

stevaroni · 15 April 2007

Oops, in my haste to go render, I may have left the impression that I was picking on the creation stories of Hindu's and Scientologists.

Hindus, of course, are not regularly in the news for trying to get their creation stories taught in schools, but I was using them as an example because I felt that PP would agree that we shouldn't teach this sort of stuff in schools.

I forgot to explicitly state that that means we shouldn't teach any religious dogma, and I assume most readers would get the point, but I felt I should still clarify lest someone think that I'm one of those who argues "We shouldn't allow any creation stories, except mine of course, which is true"

Vyoma · 15 April 2007

Hindus, of course, are not regularly in the news for trying to get their creation stories taught in schools, but I was using them as an example because I felt that PP would agree that we shouldn't teach this sort of stuff in schools.
— stevearoni

Hindus don't have "a" creation story; there are maybe a couple of dozen variants. There are probably six of 'em in the Lingapurana alone (all Puranas, an entire class of literature, must by definition contain at least one creation story; some contain more). I guess there's not so much importance to getting attached to any one of them, and I haven't met a Hindu yet who put as much importance on such stories as seems to be more prevalent in Semitically-derived religions.

Ben (t.o.o.) · 16 April 2007

The Wedge document(1) does not require giving credit to the author. It is the Holy Word(2) of God, after all.

(1) The Discovery Institute (the Lip-Service of God) 1999.
(2) One more reason, it's not science. The field of biology 1859, 1860, 1861, ... 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007...

George Cauldron · 16 April 2007

Oops, in my haste to go render, I may have left the impression that I was picking on the creation stories of Hindu's and Scientologists. Hindus, of course, are not regularly in the news for trying to get their creation stories taught in schools, but I was using them as an example because I felt that PP would agree that we shouldn't teach this sort of stuff in schools.

You are making the mistake of assuming that Peculiar Person would agree that schools are not supposed to teach Christian doctrine.

I just hope they properly credit the ACLU operative that helped write it for him.

Chunkdz needs to work up some new material.

CJColucci · 16 April 2007

"I also want you to know that if you continue to rebel against Him, I can guarantee that you will experience a very rude awakening when you die. If you think I'm mistaken, just remember my words when you stand before Him at the end of your lives."

Dear Mr. or Ms. Person:

One of us is wrong. I'd make a wager, but if you're wrong you'll never know and never be in a position to pay up. If I'm wrong, I'll know and I'll pay. Hardly seems fair.

stevaroni · 16 April 2007

George C wrote... You are making the mistake of assuming that Peculiar Person would agree that schools are not supposed to teach Christian doctrine.

Actually, I was making the assumption that PP would, like most creationists, agree that schools should teach creationism - just so long as it's the true creation story - the one with the talking snake and the fair maiden cooked up from spare ribs. It's the teaching of those pesky heathen creation stories, like the Hindus, Scientologists, Azetcz and most of all, Darwinists, that we have to be on guard for.

Henry J · 17 April 2007

Re "It's the teaching of those pesky heathen creation stories, like the Hindus, Scientologists, Azetcz and most of all, Darwinists, that we have to be on guard for."

It's turtles all the way down!!!

Henry J · 23 April 2007

Or should that be "Galapagos tortoises" instead of turtles? Hmm...