Thursday 19 August 2010

State Funded Religious Indoctrination

Time and time again, when I think about it, I realise that most of my gripes, rants, hatreds etc all have one common denominator: Stupidity. I’m not talking like acting like a bit of a tit because it’s a laugh, being a ditzy fuckwit on the odd occasion or acting like an over-excited child once in a while until reaching the point where you need a bit of a lay down with a cold flannel on your head. No. I’m talking about genuine, down to earth retarditude. Pillockliness. Fucknuttery.

Not knowing something is not stupidity. What defines stupidity in my estimation is not mere ignorance but wilful ignorance. If you’ve never seen, heard, or been presented with the evidence of a thing then you’re not going to have knowledge, or indeed a justified belief about that thing. If you are shown, told about or been presented with evidence for the existence of that thing and your view of the world remains completely unchanged, then you’re an idiot. You are stupid. Even if the evidence of/argument for said thing is tenuous; if it is justified and logical it should at least make you want to look into the matter. If for no other reason than to disprove the argument!

So why another rant about stupidity? Why am I once again on the logical vs illogical? Why am I beating this drum so hard I’ve had to flip it over because the other side’s got a hole in it?

Well, it’s down to Richard Dawkins’ programme Faith Schools Menace? Or rather it’s down to something that it highlighted in passing.

It’s not surprising that at some point the usual arguments about evolution were going to be brought up. Not only because this was a programme about faith oriented education, but rather because Dawkins is a biologist whose scientific work has largely been focused on evolution and natural selection. This may come as a surprise to some who would like Dawkins to be a pastiche of a militant atheist, baselessly raging against religion. This is a characterisation, incidentally, that I keep coming across when listening to various, increasingly left-wing BBC radio comedy series extolling the classically British ‘virtues’ of “don’t speak too loud, don’t rock the boat, don’t stir up trouble and everything will be okay, really.”

Dragging myself, kicking and screaming, back to the point:

The particular item within the programme that had me ranting until my gerbils tried to eat each other (no it’s not a bizarre euphemism – had to separate the furry little cunts . . . again) was during Dawkins’ visit to Madani High School; an Islamic, state funded school in Leicester. What he was particularly looking at during this segment was whether the pupils were properly informed about evolution and why, if so, did the school’s science teacher claim – not without some pride, I thought – that every student comes out of her classroom believing in intelligent design.

Recap: Students coming out of a science class opt for intelligent fucking design as the most logical explanation for the existence of the plethora of life on the planet. That is not a science class!

Dawkins was then asked by one of the pupils why, if humans evolved from chimpanzees then why did chimps still exit.

Hopefully, you’ll all see the obvious flaw in this question.

Dawkins first put the question to the science teacher who, after some awkward silence, had to admit she didn’t know. A science teacher, teaching evolution couldn’t answer this simple question! How the fuck is this bitch a teacher?!

Dawkins then went on to explain that we didn’t evolve from chimps but from a common ancestor and the programme moved on.

But this fucking stuck with me. I mean, despite the whole philosophical issue of faith-based education, despite the fact that if even a single school is indoctrinating children to believe a holy book as evidence above actual scientific fact*, what is really fucking worrying is that a science teacher obviously has a weaker grasp of the theory of evolution than a man on a three-day bender does on his pint pot!

How is this fucking possible? Seriously? People like this should only be allowed to cook for themselves under supervision let alone ‘educate’ someone in their formative years by filling their head with fucking detritus!

I can’t help wondering how many students attend this school and others like it. Whether mulsim, christian, jewish – I couldn’t give a fuck – any educational institution that claims to instruct pupils and let them make up their own mind but where 100% of the students come out of the class claiming to ‘know’ that intelligent design is correct needs to be fucking abolished. Then hopefully, in the same way that people are ‘de-programmed’ when saved from some crackpot cult, we can save some of these poor little bastards.

I can only hope that the reason these kids come out professing to believe in intelligent design is because they know there’d be dire consequences from these ‘teachers’ who claim to let them make up their own minds.

* For those uneducated and yet argumentative: Yes it is fact. Evolution is proven. The Theory of Evolution is natural selection. In other words; the theory that attempts to explain how evolution works.

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