# Georgia: the New Alabama? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 23, 2002, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/georgia-the-new-alabama/125279 "2002-08-23T19:09:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![JS\_Princeton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/57b2e6/32.png) [@JS\_Princeton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JS_Princeton)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2002, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/georgia-the-new-alabama/125279/41 "2002-08-24T07:16:10Z")
Is it a theory or a law that as it gets later one’s coding skills get worse? ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2002, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/georgia-the-new-alabama/125279/42 "2002-08-24T07:26:02Z")
[For an update](http://fyi.cnn.com/2002/fyi/teachers.ednews/08/23/schools.creationism.ap/index.html): > [@](#): > > Board Chairman Curt Johnston said he did not know how the policy would change current classroom practices and was unsure whether the new language would allow creationism to be discussed. > > “We’ve been told by our attorney we’re not allowed to teach creationism. But the point is we want free and open discussion in the classroom,” Johnston said. “And our teachers are nervous about what they can talk about. This will clarify things.” > > The board is expected to vote on the policy September 26. ---
**Author:** ![zen101](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c68b51/32.png) [@zen101](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zen101)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2002, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/georgia-the-new-alabama/125279/43 "2002-08-24T11:19:22Z")
Yeah it’s pretty retarded. I was born in Swainsboro, GA and spend most summers back there drinking sody pop and eating boiled peanuts and there is no lack of dipshits there (as I suspect is true almost anywhere). Still I’m less than crazed about this as the entire nation’s education system is one festering pile of horse shit. Just look at the deference given in courses such as history, literature, or any of the arts. The history taught in public schools is scatterbrained and seems to be usually based as much on local legend as actual fact. Great deference is given to authors who’s long dead nature seems to outweigh literary merit and which results in kids developing little to no interest in reading. God forbid your school play is something more recent that Gilbert And Sullivan or some hackneyed revamp of “The Man Who Came To Dinner”. Here in Oregon in one of our more urbane and affluent cities we actually had parents protesting when a local senior high did a production of “Rent”. God forbid! Educational guidelines are set up to teach 50’s era children. It’s all going to hell and the only thing you can do is pull your hair out and worry. Try home schooling and run the risk of child welfare stepping in (where are they when teachers are passing illiterate kids?), or you can get rich and try private schools, most of which are just uniformed versions of their public counterparts with dieties thrown in to really screw up your kids. Not that I think about it much. ---
**Author:** ![gex\_gex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/94ad74/32.png) [@gex\_gex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gex_gex)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2002, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/georgia-the-new-alabama/125279/44 "2002-08-24T14:55:02Z")
_All quotes orignally posted by **dreamer** _ > [@](#): > > I work with Junior High and Elementary school kids and I’ve spent many hours digging through their science text books helping them with their homework. From what I’ve seen they are teaching the big bang theory as fact. For purposes of high school studying, it is best to regard the big bang “theory” as very close to fact, if not completely infallible. > [@](#): > > There’s no mention that they could be wrong or that it’s a theory. That’s because it is not necessary to mention such a thing. Every single statement one can make could have this statement following it, but it would be pointless. For instance, from the Encarta 97 Encyclopedia (the material in italics are my additions) “Elk, common name for two different members of the deer family. _We could be wrong; it’s a theory._ In Europe and Asia the name is applied to a genus of deer that in North America is known as moose. _We could be wrong; it’s a theory._ The deer known in North America as the elk is also called the wapiti, a Shawnee word meaning “pale” or “white.” _We could be wrong; it’s a theory._ This article deals with the European elk, or moose. _We could be wrong; it’s a theory._” > [@](#): > > So these kids get to grow up thinking without a doubt that God had nothing to do with the creation of life and the earth. That is because God had nothing to do with the creation of life and the earth. > [@](#): > > When they hear some fundie saying God created the earth, then they’re going to be quite confused because that’s not what they learned in school. Or maybe they’ll think, “it’s one of those crazy fundies” > [@](#): > > Maybe at least they will have the chance to question it then. Kids are perfectly able to question evolution, without learning about idiotic fairy tales. > [@](#): > > What do religious parents tell their kids? The textbooks in school are filled with lies? Religious parents can tell their kids, “you shouldn’t believe what that school tells you. You don’t need to know science. Gravity is magical glue. Babies are brought by the stork. Everything that isn’t the bible is lying. In fact, times tables are the tool of the devil.” People are free to be idiots. > [@](#): > > If the teacher is a religious person who believes in a “higher power” is it fair to force them to teach the big bang theory as fact and not be even able to mention anything about a higher power at all? It’s perfectly fair to expect a science teacher to teach science and only science. If they want to go proselytising, they can go join a convent. > [@](#): > > It just doesn’t seem fair that both sides cannot have a fair chance… There are no sides here. There are predictions determined from observation and then there are people who make up stuff and expect people to believe them. > [@](#): > > …and that children with young, naive minds are taught this is the truth and that’s that. Because it is. > [@](#): > > Would it be fair to have a statement in the beginning of their textbooks that says " we may be wrong - decide for yourself"? Somewhere along the way, students are taught the scientific method. I was. This is that disclaimer. Except that it better reads as “we are right beyond reasonable doubt.” Fundamentalism is synonymous with idiocy. It is to reject millennia of study and learning; it is to reject one’s own senses, and it is to reject the way we interact with the universe. ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2002, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/georgia-the-new-alabama/125279/45 "2002-08-24T18:13:13Z")
> [@](#): > > FTR, I’m what’s called a “directed evolutionist”, which means I believe evolution happened, but that God made it happen–that it wasn’t a random accident of amino acids coming together and being hit by lightning, ka-POW! Let there be Life. > > So, file this for future refererence: There are many Fundies out there just like me, who believe in “(f) All of the Above”, and who also believe that the Universe is 12 billion years old, and that at some point homo sapiens evolved from hominids. Try to ignore the foaming-at-the-mouth right-wing loonies like Donald Wildmon and Pat Robertson–many of us already do. Hate to break it to you, **DDG** , but I’m right and you’re wrong, at least according to every history of fundamentalism I’ve read. You are a Christian (and a very cool one BTW), but “inspired by God” is what every Christian believes. That the Bible is literally true is one of the Five Fundamentals. Look it up. Just so you know, even though we are disagreeing, I think that you are an awesome debater and somebody I admire. Like Governor Festus in Acts, “almost thou persuadest me.” ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2002, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/georgia-the-new-alabama/125279/46 "2002-08-24T19:54:07Z")
It’s just the same old cycle rolling over once again. People with inadequate scientific education judge what they’ve learned about science the same way they judge what they’ve learned about religion, because they’ve learned them in the same way: because someone told them so. It’s the fault of the educational system that they don’t understand that the “rote facts” of modern science–i.e., the current scientific consensus, or paradigm–have been arrived at by centuries of self-correcting observation and experimentation: they still simply learn it as “rote facts.” Science, as it’s taught, might as well have been dictated by a burning bush and taken down in shorthand by a desert-addled shepherd. Until the _process_ of science is given as much value in the public school curriculum as the _product_ of science, this will continue to be a problem. Of course, as long as there are desert-addled shepherds running for the local school board, it will continue to be a problem. But perhaps a better scientific curriculum will help to marginalize them. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2002, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/georgia-the-new-alabama/125279/47 "2002-08-24T23:57:54Z")
> [@](#): > > \*\*That the Bible is literally true is one of the Five Fundamentals. Look it up. \*\* Right. I did. It’s only one of the Five Fundamentals if it’s listed as such by somebody whose theology dates from the 1970s. My theology goes back to the 1910 original declaration. The History of “Inerrancy” Picking the brain of the Better Half, who was a seminary student in the late 1970s and early 1980s and who was “there”, so to speak. Ah, the long-ago evenings when as a Young Married Student Wife I would listen to him and his cronies from Dallas Theological Seminary sit around the living room and argue about inerrancy… 😃 “Inerrancy”, as a word, and as a concept that is used to mean “every jot and tittle in the Bible is _literally_ true”, first came into wide use in the 1970s. The person who did the most to popularize it was Harold Lindsell, whose _The Battle for the Bible_, published by Zondervan in 1976, was a tremendous bestseller. [http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showarticle?item\_id=1823](http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showarticle?item_id=1823) > [@](#): > > The author of The Battle for the Bible (Zondervan, $6.95) is Harold Lindsell, who served on the faculties of Chicago’s Northern Baptist Seminary and Pasadena’s Fuller Seminary before succeeding Carl F. H. Henry, founding editor of Christianity Today. The book carries an appreciative foreword/endorsement by Harold J. Ockenga, president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary near Boston and a major force behind the post – World War II “neo-evangelical renaissance” that spawned Christianity Today, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and Fuller Theological Seminary. All of this blue-chip evangelical clout is brought to bear in support of the doctrine of biblical “inerrancy” against a growing party of theological compatriots inclined to speak more of the “authority” of Scripture with regard to “faith and practice.” > > Lindsell flatly argues that the Bible “does not contain error of any kind” – that it may be absolutely trusted in all its references to history, cosmology, science and so forth. For him this doctrine is not only the fundamental discriminator whereby one discerns the “true Christian” but also the universal teaching of the Christian church – at least prior to the rise of biblical criticism. Even back in the 1970s, many of us dismissed this with a big " :rolleyes: ", as an obvious fringe element. You could believe the Bible was God’s inspired word without having to believe that God created the world in six days. It was obvious that the Bible wasn’t a science textbook. Even my mother, a lifelong Southern Baptist Church Lady, and about as theologically conservative as they come, didn’t believe that God created the world in, literally, six days. When as a little girl I asked her how God managed that, she replied, “Well, a day to God could be like a hundred million years to us.” And when I asked her about dinosaurs, she simply said, “There are lots of things that we know are true that aren’t in the Bible.” Anyway, little did we suspect that “inerrancy” would soon take over large portions of the evangelical mindset. However. It isn’t mentioned in the original. Here is the original text of the 1910 Declaration of Deliverance that listed the Five Fundamentals. [http://www.pcanet.org/history/documents/deliverance.html](http://www.pcanet.org/history/documents/deliverance.html) > [@](#): > > The Doctrinal Deliverance of 1910 > [Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.] > > 1. It is an essential doctrine of the Word of God and our Standards, that the Holy Spirit did so inspire, guide and move the writers of the Holy Scriptures as to keep them from error. Our Confession says [Chapter I, Section 10]: "The Supreme Judge, by whom all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scriptures. Notice that the word “inerrancy” or “inerrant” is not used. Neither is the concept that the Bible is entirely, literally, true. What IS here is the concept of the “inspired word of God”, that everything that’s in the Bible is there because it has been handed down by the Holy Spirit. What was intended was a move away from the growing secular humanism movement that said that the Bible was only a collection of human-generated stories, myths, folktales, what-have-you. The Presbyterians wanted to make it clear that the Bible is God’s words, not man’s words, that everything in the Bible is the Holy Spirit speaking, and that thus it is “free from _doctrinal_ error”. They didn’t mean “free from error” in that when it says “six days”, it means “144 hours”. It was the burgeoning Inerrantist movement through the decades between 1910 and 1976 that extrapolated from this “keep them from error” phrase to get to the doctrine that keeps Ken Ham in business. 😃 Thus, when you hear the word “inerrancy” being thrown around today, especially on websites that are talking about, and supposedly listing, the Five Fundamentals, the word “inerrancy” is an anachronism. The concept that “every little thing in the Bible is 100% literally true” was not the original concept, back in 1910. So when I am saying that the Fundamental about the Bible’s authorship that I believe in, that makes me a “Fundamentalist”, is the one that says that the Bible is the “inspired word of God”, I am referring to the original list, and not to Harold Lindsell and Jerry Falwell’s concept of the Bible being completely, totally, literally, true. They added that on there, themselves, and it got really popular in the 1970s, and lots of other people who otherwise didn’t know much about theology, but who liked the comfort of the “sure thing”, jumped on the “inerrancy” bandwagon. And because they are the sort of people who find comfort in the sure thing, because it means they don’t have to think, they are the ones who get the most upset when you question their value system. You’re making them _think_, dammit, and the whole reason they bought the “inerrancy” package was so they wouldn’t have to think. It’s just easier–“the-Bible-is-100%-true–end-of-story”. So this is why they come across as ignorant–people who resent having to think about things always do. My original quibble is only with you lumping all Fundamentalists in with Harold Lindsell and Jerry Falwell. I hope I am able to make you see that there are a lot of us out there who are “Fundamentalists”, but who don’t believe the Bible is totally, literally, true, and who don’t have any problem with things like teaching evolution in the schools. ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2002, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/georgia-the-new-alabama/125279/48 "2002-08-25T02:25:28Z")
> [@](#): > > My original quibble is only with you lumping all Fundamentalists in with Harold Lindsell and Jerry Falwell. I hope I am able to make you see that there are a lot of us out there who are “Fundamentalists”, but who don’t believe the Bible is totally, literally, true, and who don’t have any problem with things like teaching evolution in the schools. Well, I will grant your point about the Christian tradition of accepting the Bible as the inspired Word of God is what the authors of “The Fundamentals” meant, but it seems to me that Lindsey/Falwell/Jenkins/LaHaye have effectively hijacked Biblical inerrancy to mean that every word of the Bible is meant to be taken literally. Certainly the creationist lobby would agree. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2002, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/georgia-the-new-alabama/125279/49 "2002-08-25T03:10:49Z")
“Hijack”. Yes. That’s a good word for it. I am actually starting to wonder whether maybe I should stop describing myself as a Fundamentalist, since their hijack seems to be so complete. And so–_loud_, somehow… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![JS\_Princeton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/57b2e6/32.png) [@JS\_Princeton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JS_Princeton)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2002, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/georgia-the-new-alabama/125279/50 "2002-08-25T04:34:27Z")
**DDG** … could you do me a huge favor and help to explain to the more misguided fundamentalist Christians who breathe down the necks of school boards and set up websites like [Answers in Gensis](http://www.answersingenesis.org/intro.asp) how they’re giving the rest of you _thinking_ theologically conservative Christians a bad name? You see, because it seems that every other self-labeled fundamentalist I’ve come across has on prominent display an automatic button that, once pressed, starts an amazing looped-feed playback spitting out lies and misinformation about evolution, the Big Bang, and/or science in general. It’s getting a tad annoying for some of us who actually work in these fields to have to deal with people who claim to have high moral standards on the one hand and then blatantly lie to our faces on the other. Thank you. ---
**Author:** ![PhiloVance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e19adc/32.png) [@PhiloVance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhiloVance)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2002, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/georgia-the-new-alabama/125279/51 "2002-08-25T05:16:25Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by **Gex Gex** _ > \*\*Fundamentalism is synonymous with idiocy \*\* Hmmm…Gex Gex, you are a creation of Dr. Suess, are you? :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![gex\_gex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/94ad74/32.png) [@gex\_gex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gex_gex)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2002, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/georgia-the-new-alabama/125279/52 "2002-08-25T11:26:02Z")
> [@](#): > > Hmmm…Gex Gex, you are a creation of Dr. Suess, are you? You’ve whooshed me. ---
**Author:** ![kniz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c37758/32.png) [@kniz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kniz)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2002, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/georgia-the-new-alabama/125279/53 "2002-08-25T15:34:36Z")
I grew up outside of Atlanta (east not north) and way back then we would hear that Georgia rated 46th in some category and we would automatically say **"Thank God for Alabama and Mississippi** (Alaska and Hawaii were not states at the time). Now I live in Mississippi and when I saw this thread I was hoping to make some comment like “Thank God for Georgia”. That is until this statement from **DDG** > [@](#): > > Try to ignore the foaming-at-the-mouth right-wing loonies like Donald Wildmon and Pat Robertson–many of us already do. Fact is that I’ll proudly tell you that Tupelo is the birthplace of Elvis, but overlook the fact that it is the home of Mr. Wildmon, who deserves every bit of the scorn **DDG** heaped upon him. ---
**Author:** ![zen101](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c68b51/32.png) [@zen101](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zen101)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2002, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/georgia-the-new-alabama/125279/54 "2002-08-25T22:40:32Z")
I’m wondering now about the “Equal Time” principle applying to those of us who know we are the creation of alien+chimpanzee cross breeding? What about the science of cabbage patches and storks? Do thos folks get equal time as well? And while we are on the subject, when is the theory of Midgard and Asgard and how Bifrost connects them going to be taught? Or that we all live on the back of a giant tortoise? BTW: To the fundie who dropped the “S” bombs earlier. You are an excellent example of your kind, keep up the poster child behavior. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2002, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/georgia-the-new-alabama/125279/55 "2002-08-26T03:33:31Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by JS Princeton \* > **DDG… could you do me a huge favor and help to explain to the more misguided fundamentalist Christians who breathe down the necks of school boards and set up websites like [Answers in Gensis](http://www.answersingenesis.org/intro.asp) how they’re giving the rest of you _thinking_ theologically conservative Christians a bad name?** I’ll see what I can do, but ya know, it’s an uphill battle. 😃 Actually, next time you’re confronted with a Young Earth Creationist who _insists_ that Genesis 1 is literally true, that it’s a word-for-word account of the Creation of Everything, that in 144 hours God did so create every species that has ever existed, and that 200 million-year-old fossil trilobites are just clever fakes, (“the temptation of the Devil!”), and that there’s no such thing as “species evolving into other species”, you can ask him three questions: 1. When were insects created? 2. What about kelp? 3. What about mushrooms? [Genesis 1](http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?language=english&passage=genesis+1&version=NIV), courtesy of the Bible Gateway, doesn’t say when insects were created. Plants, birds, fish, mammals, and people are all mentioned, but the closest you can get to “insects” is to assume they’re included under “creatures that move along the ground”, which doesn’t happen until the Sixth Day. So, the question is, since seed-bearing plants were created on the Third Day, what was pollinating them until Day Six? Or did insects just get left off the list (“oops”)? If it’s that they were just left off the list, then why couldn’t other things, like trilobites, have been left off the list, too? 1. The plants that were created on the Third Day specify only “land-based vegetation”. God says, “Let the land produce vegetation.” What about water plants, like kelp and other seaweed, and duckweed and that icky algae that grows in farm ponds, and things like water hyacinths? They’re not mentioned. So when were they created? Or did they just get left out of the list, too? Or did they–perish the thought–“evolve” from the land-based plants? 2. The plants that were created on the Third Day also specify only"seed-bearing" plants. What about things like mushrooms, that don’t make seeds? When were they created? And you can always bring up Cain’s wife, if you’re really bored, although it isn’t really connected to “creationism” as such. (I’m fascinated by [Ken Ham’s response to this](http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/tools/cains_wife.asp)–“she was his SISTER, of course, duh…” He doesn’t seem to have any problem with incest as long as it supports his agenda of Biblical inerrancy.) And if the YEC says, a little huffily, “Well, God doesn’t tell us _everything_,” you can respond with, “But I thought that was the whole point of using Genesis 1 as an inerrant creation account–that ‘it’s all in there’.” ---
**Author:** ![Some\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Some\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Some_Guy)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2002, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/georgia-the-new-alabama/125279/56 "2002-08-26T03:33:34Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by zen101 \* > \*\* > […] when is the theory of Midgard and Asgard and how Bifrost connects them going to be taught? \*\* I mean, [seriously](http://www.trygve.com/uenct.html). ---
**Author:** ![Netbrian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71e660/32.png) [@Netbrian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Netbrian)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2002, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/georgia-the-new-alabama/125279/57 "2002-08-26T06:03:45Z")
Oh, this annoyed me quite a bit. I thought that the creationists were finally waning, that they were down to grasping at straws. And now they’re back in the limelight, and managed to bamboozle an entire freaking school district into “equal time”. I wonder if anyone there gave serious thought to the implications of “equal time” to all theories, or was just using this as a crobar to get God into public schools. Does this apply to history? Mathematics? Will we have to start learning Vedic Math, and the “zero point energy” so everyone’s represented? When will it ever stop? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/georgia-the-new-alabama/125279.md?page=2)