On a recent visit to the website of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, I ran across this article. The NY Times picked up on the story as well.
Matthew LeClair, a junior at Kearny High School in New Jersey, recently caught his history teacher, David Paszkiewicz, on tape delivering what can only be described as a sermon.
Step into the light...
If the subject of religion is broached in a historical context (i.e. explaining what mythologies people believed at a particular historical moment, the influence of religion in past social movements, etc) I can swallow it. Indeed, without understanding the role religion has played, one cannot come to an accurate view of history.
What we are talking about here is entirely different. Paszkiewicz--who apparently holds self-appointed advanced degrees in Cosmology and Evolutionary Biology--denies the big bang, natural selection, claims that there were dinosaurs on Noah’s ark, and threatens anyone who doesn’t share his delusions with eternal damnation:
"If you reject his gift of salvation, then you know where you belong," Paszkiewicz was recorded as saying. "He did everything in his power to make sure that you could go to heaven, so much so that he took your sins on his own body, suffered you pains for you, and he’s saying, ‘Please, accept me, believe.’ If you reject that, you belong in hell."
What can one say to that?
Under normal circumstances, this would be bad enough. But it happens in a class whose primary focus is precisely the U.S. Constitution! These people are bereft of irony and shame... either that or they are deliberately trying to kill us with exploding head syndrome.
There is more at issue here than the legal question (though a teacher threatening kids under his power is wholly unnaceptable), or that these cases seem to come up continuously. No. The fundamental problem is that a substantial portion of the population believes this utter, irredeemable bullshit. Part of it is obviously inadequate exposure to scientific methodology in the educational system, but a big part is cultural tolerance for irrationality.
People should always be entitled to believe whatever they wish (no matter how odious or erroneous). However, as thinking individuals, we are obliged to ridicule the ridiculous. Believing in an ark that carried two of every animal through a global flood, or that the earth is 6000 years old, or that a personal God speaks to our dear leaders and pleads them to start wars, is tantamount to believing in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy--and we must not shy away from making that point. Everytime we stay silent when this tripe is spewed forth, we allow it to propagate unchallenged. There is something to be said for being gracious, conciliatory and polite but, unfortunately, we no can no longer afford such niceties. If ideas have power, then bad ideas have consequences.
The word theocracy means "rule by God". I submit that a nation doesn't have to suffer abject dominion over its political system to meet this criterion--it's not an all or nothing proposition. A more practical metric might be to consider what we have forgone or undergone to placate unreason: How many women have died from back alley abortions? How many young minds are held captive, their full potential thwarted? How many cures have we not discovered to avoid "taboo" medical research? How many men, women and children have lost their lives in religiously inspired wars of choice? Or better... how many will yet die?
Bad ideas have consequences. Insofar as we have the power to prevent these consequences, we bear responsibility when we do not.