Those Wacky Kabbalists! [orichalcum]

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So, a Georgia state legislator, in a memo circulated around not only his legislature but those of Texas, California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio, is arguing that evolution can't be taught in schools because it's religion and thus prohibited under the First Amendment. And not just any religion, mind you, but the product of the "Pharisee Religion" and mystic writings in the Kabbala. These "Kabbalists" have also apparently fooled Americans into thinking that the earth goes around the sun and _rotates._

It's anti-Semitism and creationism all rolled into one, really a neat trick.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we need to teach our students - and apparently our representatives - how to conduct research and evaluate sources properly, and why librarians of all sorts are such helpful and useful people.

location: Evanston

Mood::

amused

Music:: Zelda

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There are 8 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

The geocentrism is really the completely whack part of all this. The memo repeatedly cites fixedearth.com, which can be a fun place to visit if you like reading utterly incoherent psuedo-science.

On the other hand, it's infused with anti-Semitism, which is just ugly and not fun at all, even in a laugh at kind of way.

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It's the idea of public officials taking this seriously that I find mockable and scary.

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Yeah. The argument where I feel it really reaches its zenith is that the Michelson-Morley experiment demonstrated that the Earth wasn't moving, thus disproving the heliocentric model of the solar system.

I'm pretty horrified; I knew that there were lots of people rejecting evolution, including many in elected offices. But I didn't know that at least some of them go the next step to embrace geocentrism. I mean, parts of that website read like parody... except, of course, they're not.

--Adam

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Antisemitism and creationism and geocentrism. It must be awfully disheartening to people teaching evolution to find that there are still influential people who haven't gotten on board with fargin' Copernicus yet.

Warren Chisum, who distributed this memo in Texas, is the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. Ye gods.

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