Suburban Parents Clash Over Textbooks’ Evolution Warning Labels…:
MARIETTA, Ga. — The evolution controversy in this comfortable Atlanta suburb began with one boy’s fascination with dinosaurs. “He was really into ‘Jurassic Park,’ ” his mother recalled. The trouble was, “we kept reading over and over that ‘millions and millions of years ago, dinosaurs roamed the earth,’ ” Marjorie Rogers continued. “And that’s where I said, ‘Hmm — wait a second.’ ”
Like others who adhere to a literal reading of the Book of Genesis, Rogers, a lawyer, believes that Earth is several thousand years old, while most scientists, basing their estimates on the radioactive decay of rock samples, say the planet is billions of years old.
This is a lawyer saying this. Ah, but the full story at the WaPo has . . . .The Rest of The Story:
Rogers is a BMW-driving graduate of the University of Georgia.
Why does BMW rate a mention? What have they done to deserve that?
When Cobb County turned to selecting new biology textbooks in late 2001, that widespread unease developed into parent anger that spurred the school board to action.
Sparked by her son’s interest in dinosaurs, Rogers read several books casting doubt on evolution science, including “Icons of Evolution” by Jonathan Wells and “Darwin on Trial” by Phillip E. Johnson. Once she saw the textbooks under consideration, she was appalled.
“Humans are fundamentally not exceptional because we came from the same evolutionary source as every other species,” she read from one during an interview.
“That offends me,” she said. “That has no business being in a science textbook. That’s religion.”
Um, excuse me?
She points to another passage, in “Biology: Concepts & Connections,” that she says is irreverent. The passage suggests that had human knees and spines been “designed” for our bipedal posture, rather than borrowed from four-legged ancestors, they probably would “be less subject to sprains, spasms and other common injuries.”
Finding fault with the design of humans exasperates her.
“That’s slamming God,” she said.
Why do people feel compelled to defend the tender feelings of someone they believe is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent? I think anyone with those capabilities can handle things for themselves.
Unless there is no such presence.
I don’t know about anyone else, but this is doing more to shift me from a lazy agnosticism to a more rigid atheism.