First up from this week’s God machine is a story that seems like a joke, but it completely real. Remember the absurdity of the “war on Christmas”? Apparently, some culture warriors are equally concerned about the “war on Valentine’s Day.”
A group of parents in the Katy Independent School District, near Houston, Texas, literally went to court and obtained a restraining order against local public schools because the parents believed their kids might not be allowed to distribute valentines with religious themes. Of course, the parents were completely paranoid.
Katy spokeswoman Kris Taylor said the district has no rules forbidding a child from handing out a religious valentine to another student.
“This restraining order is telling us not to do things we don’t do anyway,” Taylor said Monday.
Remember, folks, there are only 26 shopping days left until the “war on St. Patrick’s Day” ends, so act now.
Next up, from the less insane world of religion, is an encouraging story about a modest Christian initiative that praises modern biology and the scientist whose groundbreaking research changed the world — without undermining their faith.
On the 197th birthday of Charles Darwin, ministers at several hundred churches around the country preached yesterday against recent efforts to undermine the theory of evolution, asserting that the opposition many Christians say exists between science and faith is false.
At St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church, a small contemporary structure among the pricey homes of north Atlanta, the Rev. Patricia Templeton told the 85 worshipers gathered yesterday, “A faith that requires you to close your mind in order to believe is not much of a faith at all.”
In the basement of an apartment building in Evanston, Ill., the Rev. Mitchell Brown said to the 21 people who came to services at the Evanston Mennonite Church that Darwin’s theories in fact had compelled people to have faith rather than look for “special effects” to confirm the existence of God.
“He forced religion to grow up, to become, really, faith for the first time,” Mr. Brown said. “The life of community, that is where we know God today.”
The event, called Evolution Sunday, is an outgrowth of the Clergy Letter Project, started by academics and ministers in Wisconsin in early 2005 as a response to efforts, most notably in Dover, Pa., to discredit the teaching of evolutionary theory in public schools.
Good for them. The reality-based community keeps trying to tell people that there need not be a conflict between science and faith, and maybe efforts like this will help get the word out.
Which segues nicely into our last item, which points to a group of people who could really benefit from some of the aforementioned information.
Inside the flagship lab of the National Center of Atmospheric Research, a dozen home-schooled children and their parents walk past the offices of scientists grappling with topics from global warming and microphysics to solar storms and the electrical fields of lightning.
They are trailing Rusty Carter, a guide with Biblically Correct Tours. At a large, colorful panel along a wall, Carter reads aloud from a passage describing the disappearance of dinosaurs from the earth about 65 million years ago. He and some of the older students exchange knowing smiles at the timeline, which contradicts their interpretation the Bible suggesting a 6,000-year-old planet.
“Did man and dinosaurs live together?” Carter asks. A timid yes comes from the students. “How do we know that to be true?” Carter says. There’s a long pause. “What day did God create dinosaurs on?” he continues. “Six,” says a chorus of voices. “What day did God create man on?” “Six.” “Did man and dinosaurs live together?” “Yes,” the students say.
Mission accomplished for Carter, who has been leading such tours since 1988.
Biblically Correct Tours’ name pretty much says it all. Evangelists/tour-guides show children around real museums, but convince them to reject anything that doesn’t fit into a worldview based on biblical literalism.
Bill Jack, the founder of Biblically Correct Tours, said, “My contention is evolution kills people.”
Really, he said that.