Creationist v Creationist
by wjw on May 21, 2014
Wow! There’s a big ol’ ruction going on between Creationists at Bryan College, which was founded in 1925 after the Scopes Monkey Trial, and named after William Jennings Bryan, who successfully prosecuted John Scopes (the Commie bastard!) for teaching the Theory of Evolution and corrupting the Youth of America. (Most people think the trial went the other way, but that was only because H.L. Mencken so successfully and infamously portrayed the prosecution as a collection of boobs, hicks, and morons. Which of course was totally not true.)
In order to teach at Bryan (founded 1925, accredited 1969), faculty must sign a “statement of faith.” The old statement of faith was pretty straightforward: “that the origin of man was by fiat of God in the act of creation as related in the Book of Genesis; that he was created in the image of God; that he sinned and thereby incurred physical and spiritual death…”
Sounds pretty literal to me. But the Board of Trustees has decided the old statement wasn’t nearly literal enough, and propounded a new version: “We believe that all humanity is descended from Adam and Eve. They are historical persons created by God in a special formative act, and not from previously existing life forms.” (Take that, amoebas! Take that, dinosaurs! We’re not like you, we’re special!)
Well, the new statement turned out to be too literal for all the literalists. Two professors refused to sign the new version and won’t be back in the fall, and another seven professors are leaving, and that’s a whole 25% of the faculty! Student Government even published a letter criticizing the trustees! (I smell communism! Why are these young Christians even permitted to govern themselves, instead of instantly obeying their elders’ orders on pain of stoning? See Deuteronomy 21:18-21, for heaven’s sake!)
David Coppedge, who once sued JPL for religious discrimination, also thinks the departing liberal comsymp professors are on their way to Hell:
“If the professors love the world more than the Lord, let them go to the disgraced halls of secularism where terrorists are praised, where sexual orgies are promoted, and where conservatives are shouted down in the name of “free speech.””
(Wait a minute. I get orgies? Where’s my invitation?
(Aw, darn, I guess I missed the orgies because I was too busy suppressing the free speech of conservatives!)
If this were the good old days, the matter would be settled by war, torture, and burning at the stake, but I guess evil secularist law will prevent the righteous slaughter that by all rights should ensue.
But even so, the monkey is laughing.
Pah! I grew up among the kind of hardcore Babdeez that would have viewed the faculty’s failure to immediately put the dissidents to the torch as proof that they, too, were corrupt.
In Arkansas in the 1960s and 1970s, the Faithful were in the driver’s seat, and wasted no effort to force the Godless to their will. Right down to vandalism and arson, when it came to that.
The Jeez managed to get the theater shut down, and a 6 o’clock curfew for the park, and it’s still a dry town, though there’s something about that on the ballot for the next election. The “blue laws” got revoked some years ago, though, so you can buy gasoline or groceries on Sunday like any other Godless heathen.
At the risk of bashing you over the head with too big a question, would you tend towards saying this worldwide swing to the right that seems to pervades every layer of civilization is purely reaction to 9/11 or, as your colleague Charlie Stross proposes, widespread Future Shock?
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/09/a-working-hypothesis.html
I was not expecting that. Then again, no one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Welcome to the dark ages.
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