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Sedalia, MO School District Bans Evolution-Themed Band Shirts
August 31st, 2009
Here is the story.
Here is a choice quote:
“I was disappointed with the image on the shirt,” said Sherry Melby, a band parent who teaches in the district. “I don’t think evolution should be associated with our school.”
OMG. It’s shit like this that makes me actively angry and antagonistic toward not just the fundamentalist idiots, but all religion in general. Any good religion does can be done without the idiotic crap, and man, is this idiotic crap or what? I mean, tolerating any irrational belief is in essence tolerating all of them.
Evolution is not irrational. Evolution is an observed phenomenon and one that we understand a great deal about from science. Science is not religion and has nothing to do with religion.
Except for when stupid religious people decide to try to make it an issue. That’s ignorant.
Evolution, and science more generally, should be associated with every school of any substance anywhere.
I grew up in Missouri, and freely admit that there are a lot of ignoramouses in that state. Sherry Melby, for instance, who is apparently teaching children there something. I hope to god it’s not more of her idiocy. Because right now I am associating her idiocy with the school district.
School district should have just ignored the complaints. If I were in a position to do so, and had enough spare time on my hands, I’d sue. Here’s why:
Assistant superintendent Brad Pollitt said parents complained to him after the band marched in the Missouri State Fair parade. Though the shirts don’t violate the school’s dress code, Pollitt noted that the district is required by law to remain neutral on religion.
“If the shirts had said ‘Brass Resurrections’ and had a picture of Jesus on the cross, we would have done the same thing,” Pollitt said.
Science isn’t religion. Period. Idiot.
The issue here is that SCIENCE is not being tolerated, let alone respected. Forget freedom of religion. This is about excluding science from band t-shirts. Band t-shirts! With a funny science-theme!
Shit, I can’t even say anything smart about this. I was going to do an introspective self-reflective post about the pros and cons of being an intellectual, but when I saw this story I just kind of went apeshit. Excuse the spew. I’m just saddened to be an American sometimes, or even a human, given the intellectual lows my species is capable of achieving.
I need to go do some science now…
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August 31st, 2009 at 7:45 am
Smith-Cotton High School
312 E Broadway
Sedalia, MO 65301
Pettis County
Phone: (660) 829-6300
Fax: (660) 829-6409
I don’t think being explicitly insulting is the way to go. Still, they should know they look like country bumpkins who look like anything but intelligent educators…they shouldn’t be allowed to think they’ve done a reasonable thing.
Maybe just asking to buy one of the “educational science t-shirts” the band is selling would be enough…
August 31st, 2009 at 8:01 am
To tie this back to my nattering about UFOs, sometimes I think that what the aliens are waiting for, before they will talk to us, is that we stop believing in nonsense. Were they ethical, they could worry that any contact could provoke widespread misery, panic, mass suicide, war, etc. Because we are so fucking stupid as a species.
Maybe they have abducted a bunch of us and are raising a nonsense free colony somewhere. Maybe they’ve given up after some facial sociopathic temporal lobe epileptic invented a new religion on the spot out of whole cloth.
Sigh.
August 31st, 2009 at 9:17 am
OMFSM. WTF?
“Though the shirts don’t violate the school’s dress code, Pollitt noted that the district is required by law to remain neutral on religion.”
Ok, this just seems pulled out of the completely-irrelevant file. If I had an picture of an apple on my shirt, and the law said that I had to remain neutral when it came to vegetables, how does it makes sense?
In keeping with the same theme, I’d like to see them ban any/all references to cows from any
shirts. That is certainly the same spirit as what they are doing.
How about fat people? That’s got to be a reference to Bhudda, right? We should ban them too. How about baldness? Too much like Hare Krishnas, and Tibetan monks. Male pattern baldness should be banned too.
August 31st, 2009 at 9:23 am
[...] Sedalia, MO School District Bans Evolution-Themed Band Shirts [...]
August 31st, 2009 at 6:25 pm
I think even among the muslin the idea of evolution is more widely accepted than in the US… thats quite sad for the country which produced a great deal of the most brilliant scientific minds of the 19th and 20th century.
August 31st, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Interesting. I recently happened to have an argument with some guys online (in a completely science or religion-unrelated forum) and was shocked to discover how many people give in that “evolution is just a weak theory with too many holes to be taken seriously”. None of them did actually know anything consistant about it, they just kept throwing quotes from suspicious websites until I finally decided to let it go, since it’s impossible to argue with people who do not have a full grasp on elementary logic. I’ve heard countless times, also, that evolution was a “conspiracy to promote racism” (sic). What makes me sick is that those people seem to be many. For someone who had always taken as granted that science was the most awesome way of enhancing our human experience and life, I’m shocked to discover that more people believe in bronze age mythologies than in science.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:07 am
The sad thing is, there are enough of them out there that they reinforce each other’s ignorance. It’s not only an educational problem, although it should be.