My cousin Ashley Green Myers linked to this guy yesterday. He'd written a blog entry about people being rude to parents whose kids are having tantrums in public places.
I read the entry and it's one of those 'ehhhhhh' pieces for me. I'm a parent, I have kids, I know there is no good way to keep them under control when they're young and something triggers them. I don't automatically see it as a parenting fail just because a kid is whining or throwing a fit in a supermarket over being denied a toy or a treat.
On the other hand, I have seen spectacular parenting fails in public places, involving the parent repeatedly entreating a child to behave properly -- put a toy down, leave that other child alone, stop singing that incredibly obscene song they learned at Bible camp, whatever... and the kid standing there, three feet away, smugly ignoring the parent, knowing that he or she is never going to be punished, that all that's going to happen is, the proferred bribes will soon start to escalate. That, in my opinion, is bad parenting. Reason with your children, absolutely. Explain rather than simply command or demand, certainly. Clout the little bastards if they still won't do what's correct beyond that point, you're damn straight.
Whatever the case, I read this guy's piece, where he bravely remonstrates with his 'fan' who had the nerve to say something he himself felt was wrong and rude, and I wasn't convinced, but, you know, I wasn't in utter disagreement, either. Screaming kids are one of those things that nearly all humans find impossible to ignore; it is a distress signal programmed into us by hundreds of thousands of years of biological and social evolution. I think it's understandable that someone might say something like "Some people need to learn how to control their fucking kids". I'm not sure, if someone were to say that to me, even if the parent in question could hear it, I'd respond the way this guy did.
But I also agree, if you don't have kids yourself, you don't know what it's like.
But all that is beside the point. Having been left with mixed emotions reading his linked to article, I hit the link for his previous one, labeled "Christianity has done more for science than atheism ever could". This seemed a curious title to me, calling to mind as it did for me the image of an elderly Italian gent murmuring "And yet it moves" as he shuffles sadly away from those willing to torture him to death to suppress scientific discovery.
And sure enough, here's this guy, hyperventilating into his keyboard about all those crazy evil atheists wanting to teach actual science in science classes, "without other ideas presented to compete with the theory".
He doesn't specify what 'other ideas' he'd like to see presented to 'compete with the theory'. I'm pretty sure I can fill that in for myself. But here's what he does say, after a few more paragraphs of sheer raving insanity about how Christians stand on the Mountain of Truth and our civilization was founded by Christians blah blah blah:
"Christianity hasn’t stifled science. Christianity has been its driving force and, for hundreds of years, virtually its only significant contributor. Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Pascal, Descartes, Newton, Kelvin, Mendel, Boyle — all devout Christians. You want to remove your science from my religion? Fine. But we’re keeping these dudes. You can have Richard Dawkins and his tales of “mild pedophilia.” Enjoy."
Yep. He went there. Copernicus, whose heliocentric doctrines were opposed by the entire Church establishment at the time, to the point where Copernicus' student, Galileo, was forced to publicly recant or be burned by the Inquisition, and then placed on house arrest for the rest of his life. These are two of the first three 'devout Christians' that Matt Walsh will 'keep', in his relentless campaign to have Creationism taught as a scientific theory right alongside the theory of evolution.
And not just any Creationism, either. Mr. Walsh of course does not specify, but I strongly suspect that if our public schools were to start teaching Hindu Creationism or Cherokee Creationism or Satanic Creationism in science classes as approved scientific theories with, you know, actual observed biological and geological evidence to back them up, Mr. Walsh would completely lose his shit. And yes, I specifically did not list Islamic Creationism because, as far as I know, Islamic teachings say that Allah is the same God as Jehovah, it's just that his Christian and Jewish followers are badly deluded, so I presume Islamic Creationism is much the same as Christian Creationism, although I also suspect that Mr. Walsh would lose his shit if anyone were to bring a Koran into a science classroom, too.
No, no... while Creationism is in every way and absolutely as valid a scientific theory as evolution -- which is, in fact, not one theory, but many -- still, only Biblical Creationism is the TRUE, historically and scientifically valid Creationism. That Iroquois Creationist stuff about a crumb of dirt on the back of a turtle? Thppppttttt! That's OBVIOUSLY stupid! That Norse creation myth involving the World Tree? Completely retarded. Nope, when we speak of a scientifically valid theory of Creationism that must be taught as being every bit as intelligent and reasonable as evolution, well, only the book of Genesis need apply. All others are obviously, patently absurd.
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