{"id":5692,"date":"2011-03-30T17:05:54","date_gmt":"2011-03-30T17:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=5692"},"modified":"2011-03-30T17:05:54","modified_gmt":"2011-03-30T17:05:54","slug":"what-happened-to-those-fiscal-priorities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/what-happened-to-those-fiscal-priorities\/","title":{"rendered":"What happened to those fiscal priorities?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, different things come to the fore in state houses, Creationism Makes a Comeback<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The irony is that in the past, creationist institutions and advocates used to be allies of laws and reforms which would give a stronger role for a parents choice in their child\u2019s education, whether through voucher programs, charter schools, or even homeschooling. There is a logic to this approach: rather than tear towns and communities apart over protracted and agonizing legal battles, simply give parents the power to choose what education their child can have.<\/p>\n

Laws such as HB 368, and other \u201cacademic freedom\u201d bills are not about giving parents more options about where they can get their children educated. They are about empowering and protecting those creationists who are already in the public education system and are waiting to be given the legal cover to evangelize and teach bad science.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m a conservative who is passionate about science<\/a>. I can tell you from personal experience that the American right-wing’s periodic love affair with Creationism, whether through genuine sincere belief or political opportunism<\/a>, is a major reason for the alienation of scientists from any engagement with American conservatism. I do not believe that scientist are by their nature lovers of the Leviathan, nor are they often died-in-the-wool cultural relativists. But often they have a hard time taking seriously a movement whose stated aim is to replace established science with science-inflected religion. I don’t know if it is amusing or sad, but many of my scientist acquaintances are very skeptical that I really<\/I> can be a conservative<\/i>. I don’t fit their image of a right-winger, and I am of course pro-science. Now, there are obviously orders of magnitude more American evangelicals than scientists. For politicians they are a substantial voting block which needs to be wooed. But for what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, different things come to the fore in state houses, Creationism Makes a Comeback: The irony is that in the past, creationist institutions and advocates used to be allies of laws and reforms which would give a stronger role for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[711],"tags":[121],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5692"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5692"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5696,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5692\/revisions\/5696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}