And Here is Why I Feel the Separation of Church and State is Important!

Caught this one a while back but had some other things keeping me from finishing my post:  http://theimmoralminority.blogspot.com/2016/08/satanism-comes-out-of-closet-in-alaska.html

What also got me was one of the comments, it said:

"I'm a lifelong Atheist but in all fairness some churches do some good, be they Satanic, Christian, Muslim or Spaghetti."

What it raised to me was that when a theist gets defensive about their beliefs, they start spouting off about all the good works their church does, like build hospitals or feed the hungry.  What I have to ask is what does the belief set and good works really have to do with each other?

Here's my  . . . well  . . . dilemma I guess is the best word.  You see, it doesn't seem to matter to me what a belief set includes, good works are not measures against your belief set, but against society's standard of good works.  So building a hospital, for example, is considered a good work, but are religious organizations the only ones who build hospitals?  No!  Plus even building a hospital under the cover of a 'religious good work' is no guarantee that the hospital will remain a going concern.  I know of two hospitals in my local area that both had 'St' in their names that eventually closed.

I guess what I am trying to say, the social activities of a church group are separate from the religious activities of the same group and any cross-over is more accidental than deliberate.  Oh they might voice their religion as justification for doing something society considers good, but the reality is that justification is more rationalization than anything.  All sort of community groups can decide to use some of their resources to do things society considers 'good', many groups have done the exact same thing without the need to invoke a deity.  Does the deity really make a difference in medical care?  Sure doesn't look like it, does it?  Theists still get hurt and sick on par with the rest of the human population.

Now what does this have to do with the Separation of Church and State.  If you read the above article you probably had as good a laugh about it as I did.  The Satanic Temple did the invocation at a local government meeting.  Well I say GOOD!  I mean if you are going to practice religion, you should be open to any and all recognized religions.  Sooner or later I imagine a Jedi will be doing a benediction!  What I have to wonder is how many people did the temple piss off?

Here is one of my major pet peeves about most theists.  While they often give lip service to freedom of religion, they don't really mean it.  What they usually mean is freedom for their religion and everyone else gets to sit in the back of the bus.

One of John F. Kennedy's most famous quotes is:

"If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity."

There is also this quote:

"‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,’ " Attributed to Voltaire, although the wording varies a bit.

Here is where most theists fall short of any sort of ideal.  It is also why I think the separation of Church and State is an important concept.   As I have been told over and over again, "It's not in the Constitution", my response is "So what?"  There are great many things not mentioned in the Constitution, like the 'Separation of Powers' between out three branches of government, but have become part of our everyday lives.

The phrase "separation of church and state" is generally traced to Thomas Jefferson, who wrote:

"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."(January 1, 1802, letter by Thomas Jefferson, addressed to the Danbury Baptist Association)"

So when the author of the Declaration of Independence states that the intent of the Freedom of Religion part of the Constitution was to build this wall  . . . then the fact the phrase itself isn't in the Constitution isn't that big a deal.

Good deeds are good deeds and trying to claim that your religion is the driver of doing good deeds seems . . . shall we say a bit disingenuous.  I mean take a look at "Whipped, hit and locked in closets: Life inside some religious day cares".  Here the exact opposite, what would be criminal behavior in a secular day care is granted a legal exemption if it's a religious day care. 

But there is why the separation should be maintained.  When your religion expects or even allows you to behave is ways contrary to societies concept of good and bad, you really need to rethink your religion!  Look at this one example from North Carolina:

"In the ’90s, [Maymie] Page operated a secular day care in North Carolina, where she wasn’t allowed to use any type of corporal punishment, even if her Christian faith encouraged it. But she didn’t let that get in her way.

She ran into legal problems in 1997 for being too rough with children and again in 1999 after she smacked a child in the head. She was arrested the following year after she pulled down a boy’s pants in front of his classmates and spanked him so hard on his bottom and arms that he developed bruises and welts. 

That was too much for North Carolina day care regulators. The state used its ultimate weapon and revoked Page’s day care license in May 2000, saying that “children were getting hurt on a regular basis,” according to a news release.
Page soon found a workaround. 

Eight months after the state shut her down, Page requested permission to reopen her day care as a religious one, affiliated with the church where her husband was a pastor, Faith Tabernacle Holiness Church of God in Winston-Salem. 

Now that Page’s day care is recognized as religious, it has the state’s blessing to spank children – the very offense that shut her down in the first place."

See what I mean?  Using religion to justify child abuse!  I am sure some theist will say 'their religion doesn't condone that', but that's point.  If you can rationalize good deeds because of your religion, you can also easily rationalize bad deeds because of your religious beliefs.

Religions should not be a weapon to discriminate nor should it be a cover for anything illegal, especially where it comes to the welfare of children.  A while back I address a question as to whether or not Creationism is a form of Child Abuse.  I am re-thinking a bit of my answer.  In a vacuum, Creationism may not be a specific example of abuse, but it's not operating in a vacuum.  It's part and parcel of a larger belief set and many aspects of various religious beliefs certainly appear to be forms of abuse.  All the good works in the world can't erase that, just ask the Catholic Church.  Also, when you think about it, how many children have to die at the hands of theists parents who refuse medical care before we get serious about separating church and state!

If your religion permits, encourages, or even demands something against the law, theists should remember that it's not the religion that gets held accountable, but the practitioners who committed the crime! In any event, as long as your belief set doesn't infringe on the rights of other people, and as long as it complies with the law, enjoy!  But there must be a limit, and that limit is the law!

Is Creationism Harmful to Children

I have said on a couple of occasions that I don't consider Creationism Child Abuse, an example is my post "Is Creationism a form of Child Abuse?"  I still stand by that, but an article about the Ark Park certainly made me think. Recently the Boston Globe paid a visit to little kennie ham's ark ministry, the article is "Noah’s Ark, dinosaurs, and a theme park".  It's loaded with the usual contrasts between what kennie and his 'Hamians' say and what the real world says.  I did enjoy a couple of small points, for example:

". . . the Ark Encounter will host between 1.4 million and 2.2 million visitors in its first year . . ." 

Why I find this enjoyable is simple.  Since the announcement of the ark park the visitor estimate has been bounced all over the place.  Now, logically, and this was true for kennie's Creation 'Museum', the first few years usually the highest attendance.  After that it tends to slowly, or in some cases not so slowly, reduce down.  In fact in recent years the Creation 'Museum' is said to be in financial difficulties due to low attendance. (Kentucky’s ‘Creation Museum’ in Financial Trouble Due to Declining Attendance (VIDEO)).  So since the most recent estimates from kennie say about 1.2 million annually, other estimates, from people without a vested interest in the ark park (Hunden Strategic Partners in Chicago), said:

"estimated in the first year the park would receive roughly 325,000, with a peak attendance in the third year around 425,000, declining to 275,000 after that." (Source)

Which is roughly in the neighborhood of the Creation 'Museum' which took one month shy of three years to reach 1 million visitors.  I wish I knew what kennie's original estimates for his 'museum' were, I wonder if those estimates were as inflated as his ones for the ark ministry seem to be.  Another interesting point is:

"Science educators likely see that low and steadily decreasing number [of Creationists who follow little kennie's line] as good news. Ham isn’t so happy with this trend, which he blames on “evolutionary indoctrination through the public education system, secular museums, and much of the media.”
Ham sees AiG’s role as stopping the downward spiral. He wants to show people that all of the seeming impossibilities of Scripture can be scientifically reconciled with a little creativity." 

"With a little creativity" is such a fascinating phrase.  On the one hand you have what kennie and his followers calls the ultimate authority, and yet he needs to use creativity to get people to accept his version.  Do those two seem diametrically opposed to you?  They do so to me.  Which is why I do not consider kennie to be a Biblical Literalist, but a Biblical Revisionist.  He cherry pics from the Bible stories he likes and then he embellishes them to the point of unrecognizability.  For example, here is a photo from my visit to the Creation 'Museum':

Little kennie, in a effort to justify his position that humans and dinosaurs co-existed had to explain what dinosaurs ate.  So this little gem, they were all vegetarians.  Of course there is no evidence to support any of this, but kennie can't leave a question unanswered.  A couple other favorites is his rationalization of where Cain's wife came from and how animals were geographically dispersed after the ark landed.  Here is the explanation why Cain was able to marry his sister:

 All the Bible says about Cain's wife is a mention of the Land of Nod, east of Eden.  Little kennie took it from there and concocted this explanation.  As for biological geodiversity, that is how similar organisms exist in many part of the world, he dreamed up log rafts:

Doesn't he have a great imagination?  See why I refer to him as a Biblical Revisionist more than a Literalist?  He's not interested in what the Bible says, he's much more interested in what he claims it says.

OK, back to the Globe article.  This is the part that had me thinking about whether or not Creationism is harmful to kids:

"But is creationism is harmful to children? Compared to the risk of anti-vaccination pseudoscience in causing physical harm, the answer is no. More worrisome is the harm to children’s intellectual growth. Everyone at AiG was incredibly kind and seemed well-meaning, and the same goes for many creationists — but even people with the best intentions can end up, well, harming children who are paying attention.
Pete Enns, biblical scholar and author of “The Evolution of Adam,” sees creationism as harmful because it sets children up either to experience a crisis of faith or to become unflinchingly rigid about their own faith and closed off to their own human development. Both are tragic, he says."

There are more ways to harm children than what is considered abuse.  I had discussed how Creationism is a poor basis for many careers.  I mean aside from places like little kennie's Answers in Genesis (AiG) or the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), how many places are willing to hire an astrophysicist who insists the speed of light is a variable so we really have no way of knowing how far something is from Earth.  The article mentioned that little kennie likes to bring up the fact he has hired some people who hold PhD's, but in reality, how much actual scientific knowledge have those PhD's managed to pass on?  Has anyone seen a single actual scientific paper referenced from places like AiG and ICR!  As the writer said:

"People at my evangelical church used to talk the same way [as kennie and his pet PhD's] about celebrities who became born again — as if people of such caliber somehow legitimized everything we believed."

I know there will always be some who get their education and then turn on the subject to support their religious beliefs, but they will never be in the majority or even mainstream within those fields. The fact they have a degree in no way legitimizes their belief set.

What I hadn't considered was the inevitable reaction once they start learning the reality of the world around them.  They might have some sort of crisis in faith, or they might become so rigid they become a caricature of a theist, like little kennie.  I'm not sure I agree with the article that the crisis in faith is a tragedy for most folks.  I think whether or not it is a tragedy depends on the person more than anything else.  As we mature we discover many things that were told to us by authority figures that were later found to be untrue.  From childish things like the truth about Santa or even how your life will go.  Think about what you were told as a child about how your life was going to go?  Even as a teenager in HS or an adult in college.  How has that all worked out?

If you are like most people, things haven't followed any pre-explained path.  I never expected to serve 20 years in the AF, get into IT, or end up living in Ohio.  What I am trying to say is that you LIVE your life, you deal with things as they change, no matter what they are.  What was it John Lennon said, "Life is what happens while you are making other plans."  If a 'crisis' in your faith cripples you, then my only suggestion is don't subject any other child to the beliefs that hurt you!  But in all honesty, you have to get over it eventually.  I'm not sure you can consider discovering the faith you were raised in wasn't what you were taught it was as a reason for PTSD, but even that degree of a problem can be overcome.

As for the other reaction, the significant rigidity that can result.  I can't consider them tragic figures.  But I do feel a level of pity for the people they come into contact with or, God forbid :-), any children they might become responsible for.  But they do have to freedom to shut down the functioning parts of their brain.  My only objection is that they do not have the right to force me to belief as they do.  Which is why I object to pretty much everything little kennie does.  As I have said before, his idea of religious freedom is to let him believe as he wishes and let him force everyone else to believe as he does as well.  That's not religious freedom, that's more a form of religious tyranny. 

You really should consider how long various religions have had control over people's lives and how all that turned out.  Look at history . . . not the history kennie and any of his pet 'creation historians' try and sell you in the Creation 'Museum' Gift Shop, but actual history.  Religious tyranny is not some panacea that will solve all the world's problems! 

So there we have it, yes, creationism can be harmful to both adults and children, but how harmful is really up to the individual.  Without a doubt it damages potential career paths, at least until the individual overcomes their belief system, like the many theists who made incredible scientific advances.  Theists are capable of great things, but they simply have further to go because of that extra hurdle they have to overcome.  Little kennie sees that hurdle as an absolute limit, luckily most folks don't accept that.

Who in the World let Ken Ham Teach?

A while back I addressed a comment comparing creationism to child abuse.  The post was "Is Creationism a form of Child Abuse?"  At the time I disagreed that Creationism is a form of child abuse.  I did say that it fails to adequately prepare children for future education and potentially affect their career options.  While that might be unfair to the children, it's not abuse.

Apparently little kennie ham, of AiG, Creation 'Museum', and Ark Park infamy was speaking to a group of about 1000 elementary school kids in Alabama.  First question, were these kids public or private school kids?  To me it does make a difference.  If they are private school kids, then they are hearing nothing more than a much more strait-jacketed version of the typical religious creationism myths that they have heard before.  If they are public school kids, then letting him preach to them might actually be illegal, not that something like the law would stop kennie.  He's a charter member of the 'Liars for Jesus' club.  He only uses the law to get something he wants.  His own post says he 'taught' the kids, so this wasn't a presentation of a viewpoint, but a class of sorts.  So, if these were public school kids, then he did exactly what the Dover Trial discussed about sowing confusion rather than education.  While I still wouldn't call it child abuse, I bet it felt that way to some of the kids.

Second question, who was the person who let kennie ham in front of school students?  Even if they were private school kids, is a close-minded homophobic biblical revisionist someone you want to talk to children? 

What I do disagree with is little kennie's characterization of evolution.  Here is a quote from kennie's Facebook post:

"Intellectual Child Abuse: when kids are taught they're just animals in the evolutionary process."

Before dealing with his child abuse comment, I wanted to look at the rest of it.  Is this what evolution teaches?  Of course not!  But then kennie never will present evolution from an honest perspective.  He prefers a straw-man that he can attack much more easily that actual science.  Does science teach us that human are animals?  Yes it does.

But two things stand out for me from kennie's comment.  Does science in any way teach us that being animals is in some way a negative thing?   No it does not!  When biology talks about animals, the focus is on things being mammals, how the body functions, and where those functions came from (evolved).  Science stresses the relationship with other animals as a fact.  But little kennie doesn't like those facts.  When he says 'animals' he is talking about animal-istic behavior. He wants us to equate being animals to 'acting' like animals in all the worst possible images that come to mind.

That's a large part of my issue.  The clue for me was his use of the word 'just'.  That's the second point that bothered me.  When do you often hear the word 'just', usually when someone is placing some sort of limit, right?  It's also often used in a very negative connotation.  Ever hear someone say 'just a woman'?  How about 'just a child'?  I once heard a yuppie refer to someone as 'just a janitor', not realizing the janitor was also the president of the school employees local union and six months later was sitting across from him at a bargaining table.  I was pretty sure the yuppie saw him in a different light at that point.  But do you see what I mean.  When you hear it phrased like this, someone is putting limits on it and framing it in such a way to try and make you accept these artificial limits.

So what are the limits on being an animal anyway?  What exactly does 'just an animal' mean? Since humans are animals, animals can be pretty damn productive, can't they.  We build amazing edifices, fly across the sky faster than sound, gone to the Moon . . . the list is endless.  And each and every one of them was accomplished by one of more 'just animals'.  Little kennie's idea of limits seems to be pretty ridiculous, but then aren't all of kennie's ideas?

This past weekend I watched the final episode of MythBusters.  It's one of the few shows on TV I have on my DVR.  Aside from the fact I am going to miss it, over the weekend the Science Channel was playing many of the older episodes and watched Adam and Jamie accelerate a ping pong ball to 1100 miles per hour, 1.4 times the speed of sound!  I saw them prove how many of the common expressions we hear are in fact not true, like a car getting hot enough inside set off ammunition or explode cans of spray paint.  Along they way they also demonstrated how foolish things like crystals and pyramids are as power sources.  During the 14 year journey they also built some pretty incredible stuff.  Not to shabby for being a couple of 'just animals'!

The last thing about little kennie's Facebook post was how he characterized evolution as "Intellectual Child Abuse".  Teaching children the truth about the world around them is not child abuse.  It prepares them for higher levels of education and it prepares for jobs on the forefront of technology.  Who knows, one of those kids in kennie's audience might grow up to cure cancer or be the first human on Mars.  However, to do so that child will have to shake off the shackles of kennie's 'teachings'.  Cancer isn't going to be cured by belief in ham's revised version of the Bible.  It's going to be cured by science and a great deal of hard work by many people!  Many of whom will be theists of one tradition or another, after all, being a theist doesn't stop you from thinking.  Many of the greatest scientific achievements throughout history were accomplished by theists.  But if you look, at no point in any of those achievements is reference to some action by one deity or another.

I doubt any new scientific achievements will be done by any one of kennie's 'Hamians'.  Those folks are all too busy denying science, potentially the very science that may one day save their lives!  Being a theist doesn't mean you don't think, but being one of ham's sort means you pretty much refuse to think.  After all, since reality doesn't align with those narrow religious beliefs, do you think those folks change their beliefs?  No, their history says they will deny the science.  Not a very good way to achieve scientific breakthroughs.

You think I kid?  Listen to kennie some day, visit his little pseudo-museum, or hear one of his pet creation 'scientists' tell you about how the speed of light isn't real or the Earth is only 6,000 years old.  Do you think one of the folks who buy into that foolishness will be on the forefront of scientific knowledge in the future?  They certainly weren't in the past, were they?  If we could ask Nicolaus Copernicus, Giordano Bruno or Galileo Galilei, they might offer interesting opinions on the ability of Evangelical believers to actually formulate real science, especially when any of it appears to conflict with their religious beliefs.