It's not easy being green.

By Jim Dallas

Warning: The following entry is rated PG-13 for adult situations and language.

HULK SMASH!

Sigh. One of the downsides of living in a smaller city is that we get to read a constant stream of unenlightened letters to the editor. As a matter of simple economics, the supply of column inches far outpaces the demand for intelligent analysis. We don't get witty journalism in our opinion pages, we get rote jeremiads. It's getting so that I can read the entire letters to the editor section and not learn a darn thing.

Today's entry in the hall of shame makes me fear for my country more than I usually do. From today's Galveston Daily News:

Christians Must Stand Up For Their Rights

I am furious with the corruption of our nation. Drug use, murder, suicide, rape and homosexuality make me gag.

How long can God-loving Christians stand by and watch while our civil rights are taken away by a government that was supposed to be a republic but turned into a democracy?

I can’t wait any longer. Democracies almost always end up as dictatorships, and the majority opinion is not always right. The main reason I am furious is because evolution is being taught as fact rather than theory in our public schools.

If you don’t want evolution out of schools, at least require the teachers to teach both sides. Yes, there is another side. It is called creation.

Another issue that makes me angry concerns prayer in schools. The idea of “separation of church and state” has been taken out of context.

Thomas Jefferson initiated this idea. Even when Jefferson made this comment, its intended meaning was that the federal government was prohibited from creating a national religion.

This is exactly what the atheists are doing with evolution today, and the federal government is funding it.

Jeremy Osborn
Bacliff

Now, I'm not writing what I'm about to write to "pick on" Mr. Osborn or say he's a bad person... ahh screw it, yes I am. Mr. Osborne, yes you are a moron, and a bad person. Let me explain.

Side-stepping chest thumping like "homosexuality make[s] me gag" (apparently, Mr. Osborne needs practice), this letter should win an award for most negative IQ points packed into a 150-word container. It's a steady stream of non-sequiturs and sundry illogic. It's just.... baaaaaaaaaaaad.

I mean, I am not particularly enlightened myself. I'm not an "Oprah-topian"; gee, come to think of it, I know all the words to "Sweet Home Alabama." But there are lines intelligent people do not cross.

I will now put on my "Responsible Adult" cap and disect two lines of attack in full.

(1) "How long can God-loving Christians stand by and watch while our civil rights are taken away by a government that was supposed to be a republic but turned into a democracy... Democracies almost always end up as dictatorships, and the majority opinion is not always right."

(a) The President, The Vice President, The Leaders of Congress, The Governor, The Lieutenant Governor, The Speaker of the House, and A Majority of High Court Justices both in Washington and Austin are all allegedly Christians, conservatives, and Republicans (not necessarily in that order).

It thus follows that, if there is any tyranny-of-the-majority, it sure as hell isn't the atheists who are doing the tyrannizing.

Speaking of tyrannizing, Pharyngula notes that many school teachers are afraid to even talk about evolution. It's kind of hard to believe that the Atheist Liberals are forcing the national gospel of Darwinism on our youngsters when an increasingly large number teachers simply shrug it off (which is a bad thing).

(b) Empirically, democracies do not "almost always end up as dictatorships." In fact, democracies rarely do, unless they are so institutionally weak that they get overthrown by force, or so culturally weak that they are not seen as legitimate by their own people.

According to a report by Freedom House, the 29 states which were ruled by "totalitarian" or "authoritarian" regimes in 1950 were ruled by democratic governments in 2000. Another, Tajikistan, was on the road to democracy in 2000 (with "restricted democratic practices").

NOT A SINGLE DEMOCRATIC STATE IN 1950 WAS RULED BY A TOTALITARIAN OR AUTHORITARIAN REGIME IN 2000. It would seem that "dictatorships" almost always end up as democracies, not the other way around.

*The twenty-nine 1950 dictatorships which became democracies by 2000 are:Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Haiti, Hungary, Kyrgyz Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Ukraine.

(c) Thomas Jefferson, who Osborne seems to approve, and who should have known a little something about the founding of America (having written, you know, the Declaration of Independence) was committed to democracy by name.

(c1) He even liked it so much he named his party the Democratic Party.

(c2) In an 1816 letter, Jefferson writes "We of the United States are constitutionally and conscientiously democrats."

(c3) Another 1816 letter: "The full experiment of a government democratical, but representative, was and is still reserved for us."

(2)"The main reason I am furious is because evolution is being taught as fact rather than theory in our public schools.

If you don’t want evolution out of schools, at least require the teachers to teach both sides. Yes, there is another side. It is called creation.

Another issue that makes me angry concerns prayer in schools. The idea of “separation of church and state” has been taken out of context.

Thomas Jefferson initiated this idea. Even when Jefferson made this comment, its intended meaning was that the federal government was prohibited from creating a national religion.

This is exactly what the atheists are doing with evolution today, and the federal government is funding it."

(a) More Jefferson:

"I do not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises, its discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious societies, that the General Government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them. Fasting and prayer are religious exercises. The enjoining them, an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises and the objects proper for them according to their own particular tenets; and this right can never be safer than in their own hands where the Constitution has deposited it... Everyone must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Miller, 1808. ME 11:429

"To suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own." --Thomas Jefferson: Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. ME 2:302, Papers 2: 546

"It is... proposed that I should recommend, not prescribe, a day of fasting and prayer. That is, that I should indirectly assume to the United States an authority over religious exercises which the Constitution has directly precluded them from. It must be meant, too, that this recommendation is to carry some authority and to be sanctioned by some penalty on those who disregard it; not indeed of fine and imprisonment, but of some degree of proscription, perhaps in public opinion. And does the change in the nature of the penalty make the recommendation less a law of conduct for those to whom it is directed?... Civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Miller, 1808. ME 11:428

[Which leads one to ask - if the President of the United States claims he'd be wrong to even recommend fasting and prayer, doesn't that suggest that he feels that public school teachers are equally bound to keep the heck out of the prayer business?]

"Whenever... preachers, instead of a lesson in religion, put [their congregation] off with a discourse on the Copernican system, on chemical affinities, on the construction of government, or the characters or conduct of those administering it, it is a breach of contract, depriving their audience of the kind of service for which they are salaried, and giving them, instead of it, what they did not want, or, if wanted, would rather seek from better sources in that particular art of science." --Thomas Jefferson to P. H. Wendover, 1815. ME 14:281

"No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination." --Thomas Jefferson: Elementary School Act, 1817. ME 17:425

(b) There's a reason the theory of evolution is taught seriously in public schools; it is based on facts and reason.

(c) There's a reason why creationism is not - the assertion that the earth and stars were created begs the question - "by whom?". That is inherently a religious question.

(d) The theory of evolution does not assert the presence of a divine Creator; that is not the same as asserting the absence of one. Evolution and creationism are not mutually incompatible (unless you are asserting a specific theory of creation, e.g. Young Earth Creationism. As YEC has very little evidence supporting it (aside from Scripture), why would it be taught in public schools?)

(e) As the theory of evolution does not hold that there is *NOT* a Supreme Being, the assertion of the theory of evolution in public schools should not be equated with the promotion of atheism as a national religion. The whole argument is a non-sequitur.