These are strange, devolutionary times, with moves underway to crank back the calendars and clocks to the 1800s and earlier. One of the movements is to plant religion back inside public schools, to ensure that Creationism is taught alongside science.
We could also stand around in the parking lot, pretend to be running a competitive race with the rest of the world, too -- but, why bother with that? We can do make-believe right inside schools, cut right to the chase!
Who would have been able to foresee a time when one would have to defend scientific fact and thought from superstition and fables and storytelling, when we would have to defend the public schoolhouse from mass haunting by religion?
Next thing you know, we'll have to defend the use in schools of those other tools of the devil, the math tables, plus, the alphabet. Can we devalue intellectual currency any more than we have?
Ironically, no doubt, Creationism bills periodically popping up in state houses are linked in some oddball Evolutionary way with attempts to airbrush slavery and Native American genocide from the history textbooks, to otherwise perk up the image of conservative, Christian, Republican viewpoints. Talk about a whitewash!
Evolution is hardly a threat requiring such over-the-top mania and combative action. Evolution is not that close a friend, come right down to it: It moves much too slowly for hopeful adaptations, for one thing. We evolve our technologies -- now changing our planet -- far faster than we upgrade our wisdom, and leave Evolution in the dust, every single time.
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