Church & State

"The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit, it is also opposed to all attempts of rational thinking." – H.L. Mencken

"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself." -Sir Richard F. Burton

Yesterday [Tuesday, December 20th], a federal judge struck down a Pennsylvania public school district from teaching intelligent design in biology class. He said the concept was creationism in disguise. - Missouri's Daily Journal

WOO HOO!

Many liberals mistakenly believe that these controversies [regarding church and state] are largely a product of the post-1980 politicization of the Christian right. In fact, the elected anti-evolutionists on local and state school boards today are the heirs of eight decades of fundamentalist campaigning against Darwinism through back-door pressure on textbook publishers and school officials. Even efforts to cloak creationism with the words "science" and "scientific" - as in "creation science" - is an old tactic, reminiscent of the Soviet Union's boasting about "scientific communism." - Susan Jacoby, "Caught Between Church and State," New York Times OP-ED. Jacoby is author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism.

For those of you threatened by the separation of church and state, consider this statement by evolutionary biologist, writer, and scientific historian Stephen Jay Gould:

No scientific theory, including evolution, can pose any threat to religion--for these two great tools of human understanding operate in complementary (not contrary) fashion in their totally separate realms: science as an inquiry about the factual state of the natural world, religion as a search for spiritual meaning and ethical values.