Texas Gets Another Creationist School Board Leader

US News | Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 1:03:47 pm PDT

 Sure enough, just like clockwork, Governor Rick Perry (R-Texas) has appointed yet another activist religious fanatic to head the State Board of Education. The rumor going around was that he’d pick Cynthia Dunbar, who considers public education a “subtly deceptive tool of perversion,” but apparently that was a little much even for Perry to swallow. So instead Gail Lowe will be the woman in charge of overseeing the education of Texas children — a Republican who recently appointed extreme right-wing theocratic preacher David Barton as an “expert reviewer” of the state’s social studies curriculum.

littlegreenfootballs.com/article/34171_T...

Jul 17, 2009 -- 4:03PM, dblad wrote:

Texas Gets Another Creationist School Board Leader

US News | Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 1:03:47 pm PDT

 Sure enough, just like clockwork, Governor Rick Perry (R-Texas) has appointed yet another activist religious fanatic to head the State Board of Education. The rumor going around was that he’d pick Cynthia Dunbar, who considers public education a “subtly deceptive tool of perversion,” but apparently that was a little much even for Perry to swallow. So instead Gail Lowe will be the woman in charge of overseeing the education of Texas children — a Republican who recently appointed extreme right-wing theocratic preacher David Barton as an “expert reviewer” of the state’s social studies curriculum.

littlegreenfootballs.com/article/34171_T...

Rick Perry evidently doesn't care if Texas students learn the truth as long as they're indoctrinated in a bogus Christian version of US history. After all David Barton is not as qualified to write a Social Studies textbook as John Henry "Doc" Holliday would have been to write a medical textbook. Barton's degree is in Religious Education, not History. At least Holliday was a real dentist. I can't wait to see if Texas science textbooks say that the Earth is only 6000-years-old and either there never were dinosaurs or men kept them as pets like Fred Flintstone kept Dino. After all, why should the Republic of Texas follow US court decision such as Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al.

Another quote from that David Barton article...

Some might ask, "What's the harm in all of this?" After all, Americans have always been weak on their own history, and a few bad quotes here and there aren't going to make the country a theocracy. The problem is that Barton's mythology has influence that extends beyond the pews of local fundamentalist churches. He is tied in with the Religious Right's increasingly powerful political machine, a movement that currently holds the Republican Party in a headlock and enjoys the attention of Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Phil Gramm and other top GOP leaders. (At a Heritage Foundation speech pushing a school prayer amendment held on October 5, 1995, Gingrich, who considers himself an historian, praised Barton's books, calling them "most useful" and "wonderful.") When Rep. Ernest Istook (R-OK) held a powwow with Religious Right leaders last year to plot strategy for ramming a school prayer amendment through Congress, Barton was there. Powerful people don't view Barton as just some nut peddling phony quotes on the street corner; he is taken seriously.

I know this is old stuff... but "they" the RR and not going to, "go quietly into the night."

 The source URL on Barton is not working... the last two letters should be ml (html), but will not paste for some reason... here is the quote concerning "Christian Identity" where he spoke a couple of times.... dblad

In 1991 Barton addressed the Rocky Mountain Bible Retreat of Pastor Pete Peters' Scriptures for America, a group that espouses the racist "Christian Identity" theology. Advocates of this bizarre dogma insist that white Anglo-Saxons are the "true" chosen people of the Bible and charge that today's Jews are usurpers. Aside from being a virulent anti-Semite, Peters has advocated the death penalty for homosexuals. According to the Anti-Defamation League, other speakers at the event included white supremacist leader and 1992 presidential candidate James "Bo" Gritz, a leader of the radical and increasingly violent militia movement, and Malcolm Ross, a Holocaust denier from Canada. In November of that same year, Barton spoke at Kingdom Covenant College in Grants Pass, Oregon, another "Christian Identity" front group with ties to Peters.4

Asked to explain these actions, Barton's reply amounted to a not very creative "I didn't know they were Nazis" dodge. In a July 1993 letter, Barton assistant Kit Marshall wrote, "At the time we were contacted by Pete Peters, we had absolutely no idea that he was 'part of the Nazi movement.' He contacted us for David to speak for Scriptures for America. The title is quite innocuous. In all the conversations that I personally had with Pete Peters, never once was there a hint that they were part of a Nazi movement. I would also like to point out that simply because David Barton gives a presentation to a group of people does not mean that he endorses all their beliefs."5 An excuse like that might have washed one time, but it stretches the bounds of credulity to accept that Barton was twice duped by innocuous-sounding extremist organizations.

I'll try to fix that URL in another post.

David Barton is not the issue; if not him, it would be someone else of like mind. The governor of Texas may be a true believer or he may be just a true opportunist who has staked his political future in the tried-and-true Republican tradition of jingoist demagogy.

I can only offer 2 perspectives here. The first is (apologies) something I posted on the Creationist discussion forum, on this same topic:

It is said that a crisis is also an opportunity. Ignorance on the march is a crisis for America, but maybe there is an opportunity here. The creationist/ID fanatics want their crap taught in the science classes. Actually, that may not be a bad thing. Consider:

Science education is not merely learning real science; it is also recognizing the difference between real science, pseudoscience, and Cloud-Cuckooland fantasy. Why not spend the first hour in the science class talking about these things? Explain the meaning of the terms "theory," "hypothesis," and "speculation or conjecture." Use evolution and creationism/ID to illustrate the point, showing that evolution is an evidence-based model that fulfills the definition of a scientific theory whereas creationism/ID not only offers no evidence but not even any prospect for ever obtaining evidence, hence it is not even a hypothesis but merely a speculation. Teach that a "theory" in science is not "just a theory," as we might use the term casually, and that creationism/ID does not fulfill the criteria for a scientific theory at all, and therefore cannot be presented as "an alternate theory." Point out that absolute proof exists only in the realm of mathematics, and that prominent gaps in knowledge exist in all the biological sciences including clinical medicine as well as evolution; yet they are real science. And show that knowledge gaps in the evolution model in no way suggest that the pure speculation that is creationism/ID has any validity at all.

These are all good things for science students to learn. Let them. Let them see what gibberish creationism/ID is by exposing it to the harsh light of critical thought, right in the science classroom, just as the Bible-besotted know-nothings demand.

The second point is that fanaticism is most effectively opposed by rational people within the group in which it arises. It appears that rational Muslims are starting to stand up to the fanatics among them -- and it is way past time for rational Christians to stand up to Christian fanatics. Fanaticism is a cancer that destroys everything, including its own home base. It cannot be bombed or legislated out of existence; it can only be muzzled and marginalized by rational people from within. Christian fundamentalist fanatics in America are far more dangerous than foreign terrorists. Foreign terrorists may plant bombs and kill people, but they cannot change the essential character of America; only Americans can do that, and American Christian fanatics are trying to do exactly that right now -- lying about American history, lying about science, trying to spread their malignant fantasies and establish a Taliban-like theocracy in this country. Rational Christians must mobilize and work collectively and relentlessly to oppose them, just as rational Muslims must organize to oppose the fanatics within their faith. There is no war between Christianity and Islam; the only real war is between rationality and fanaticism, and the fatal error is to assume that the fanatics on "our" side are not really the enemy. Yes, they are.