id brouhaha

[David Casseres]

I'm guessing that as a kid, you never suffered the humiliation of
being required to clasp your hands together and recite a prayer to
someone else's "god."  It gave me a bad attitude, and made me grateful
that since I (and others like me) DO have some influence over my local
school board, my daughter had no comparable experience.

I'd love to frame the dispute in love.  But it's actually not my
dispute, and the other side isn't interested in love, only in power. 
Thank Dog I don't live where it is actually in question.  There's
something to be said for smug-ass liberal enclaves.

On 10/4/05, Cometman <cometman_98 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >On Oct 4, 2005, at 5:11 AM, John Carvill wrote:
> >>> David Casseres wrote:
> >>> It is monstrous that the antiscience movement has gathered so much
> >>> momentum that it shows up, in its most destructive form, on the
> >>> Pynchon list of all places.
>
> >> This about sums it up. It's upsetting, depressing, mystifying,
> >> angry-making, etc. to read about schools shoe-horning Creationism/ID
> >> into the syllabus, but to find it creeping into the Pynchon list?
> >> It's > one of those jarring experiences that's so affecting because
> >> so unexpected, like a little old lady swearing at you on the bus.
> >> Grim times............
>
> >Yes,  some p-listers have evidently been admitted to membership
> >without proper vetting.
>
> hee hee, good one --
> Operating from my own dogmatism, a Misesian libertarian but with a
> sympathy for labor over management, let me explain it all:
>
> point 1) If one is a parent, it must be shocking to _have to_ send kids
> off to school and have no control over what they're taught, especially
> if you are trying to build their moral code around a Supreme Being of
> some kind, and instill morality based on their love (presumably mutual)
> for a Creator. The "long novel" of any good religion shows the
> development of kindness and compassion, shows good rewarded and evil
> punished, at the loving hands of the Author
>
> point the 2d) Intelligent design tries to poke holes in blind evolution
> so as to make room for a source of goodness that isn't based on violent
> competition - where's the harm in that, one might wonder?  Any student
> interested in learning biology will certainly grok that evolution is
> the relevant working hypothesis - horse breeders, dog breeders,
> Mendel's beans have recorded repeatable experiments proving that
> inherited traits can be selected.  ID doesn't deny this.
>
> point the 3d) I remember walking out of a dressing room after
> performing in a skit for kids, wearing a partial Donald Duck costume
> (had removed the head because it was warm) and one mother was Seriously
> Pissed that now her son knew I wasn't Donald Duck, but a person.  I
> guess in her family it was important that the illusion of Donald Duck
> be preserved.  It's one of those things that stick in your mind, like
> when you're creeping forward at 1/4 mile an hour in a parking lot and
> somebody is walking in front of your car in a trajectory that they MUST
> know won't intersect with yours, and they yell because you aren't at a
> dead stop.  People are just irrational about some things.  I try to
> anticipate this stuff and go along but sometimes it takes me by
> surprise what they expect.  There are enough taxpayers who are fans of
> the Long Novel of religion that apparently they think it's reasonable
> to inject a reference to it in a technical course.  I personally don't
> see any great value added by it (but no great harm)
>
> point the penultimate) As a non-parent, it's shocking to me that the
> government - abhorrent institution that it is - takes my money to pay
> for 13 years of indoctrination in militarism, regimentation and
> submission to authority.  ID is just another brick in the wall.  And
> yet - I look back on my 13 years of militarism, regimentation and
> submission to authority and am grateful to the teachers and the
> textbook writers, the whole sick crew, even the freaking coaches
> (freakin' militaristic buzzcut violence worshippers yelling "Let's see
> some hittin'") WTF, libertarian-wise, there oughtn't to be a
> government, no mandatory schools neither, 100% gold standard and no
> fractional-reserve banking -- but it's really on the kid.  A truly
> motivated person will either find a way out of school entirely and
> learn more outside, or find a way to grow within the strictures which
> are only painful if you grab them the wrong way. ID is another fad like
> New Math (remember that crock'o'poo? - yet there was some interesting
> matter behind it and it wasn't all bad) --
>
> point the final)  there's a whole lot worse crap going on in schools
> than the teaching of ID.  It's not nearly as bad as the abandonment of
> phonics, or the proliferation of ADD diagnoses, or mandatory
> psychological evaluation, not to mention the things the kids do to each
> other.  But these are real people with real feelings, in the classroom
> and on both sides of the dispute, so why not frame the dispute in Love
> - which I believe somewhere somebody said IS the same as God?
>
> After all, "There is a Hand to turn the Glass..."
>
>
>