Religion And Koolaid

BOOK REVIEW: 'Don't Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid': Does a Gigantic Left ...

Maybe Marybeth Hicks should have used a title that today's undereducated but thoroughly indoctrinated students could understand rather than "Don't Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid" (Regnery, 224 pages, $24.95), her scathing indictment of the education/industrial complex (my shorthand coinage for the nation's failed attempt to educate young people, but the wildly successful effort to brainwash them). The reference to the powdered drink -- Kool-Aid -- of course refers to cult leader Jim Jones and his so-called "Peoples Temple" followers who were killed with poisoned Kool-Aid in the jungles of the South American country of Guyana in 1978. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown ). Riffing on the familiar phrase, "Do you know where your children are?" Hicks substitutes: "Do You Know What Your Kids Are Thinking?" adding that you might be surprised. She says, and provides copious examples of how a generation of (I was tempted to borrow Philip Wylie's great title "A Generation of Vipers") young Americans have indoctrinated rather than educated. Don't assume that this generation is like any other, Hicks says. They're not. "Not even close... Numerous polls show the same result on issue after issue. Frightening percentages of our kids believe that" While she says that the far left demonizes our Judeo-Christian culture, the same haters of religion go out of their way to kiss up to Islam. On pages 141-143, she describes  how a pro-Islam series, "History Alive," distorts the message of radical Islam in an attempt to reach out to school kids. Why teaching Islam is OK, while teaching Christianity or Judaism isn't is not explained in a textbook approved for  use in California, Texas (the two states that set the standards for the rest of the country), Illinois, Florida and Washington state. My personal view is that an objective course in comparative religion would be a great idea in high school or even middle school, but how to go about that enormous task!

Science as a Religion

Why doesn’t he believe in science? Does that mean that Rick Perry doesn’t believe in the existence of the scientific method, or does that mean that he doesn’t believe in science as a method? No, there’s something else in here, and it’s growing.

What the author is inferring, and what the mother of this child believes, is that science has the ability to answer all of life’s little questions. The terms have become so convoluted that now we’re actually beginning to ask why someone who believes in science should believe in religion. Do you understand how ridiculous that statement is? Science is a methodology, a process, by which we arrive at facts. To infer that there is a conflict between science and creation is to say that creationists either don’t understand, or don’t use science. In essence you’re asking “why are you still a knuckle walker?”

The question is condescending, ignorant, and just plain offensive. There are many hundreds of brilliant scientists who happen to believe in creation, either by assisted evolution, or special creation. These men and women dedicate their lives to the rigors of scientific study just as much as any naturalist atheist. It is not the methods of science that is in question. It is the religious beliefs that back the practice of those methods.

Naturalism is the doctrine, Atheist is the religion, and the practices of the faith are science. When you begin asking why don’t you believe in science, you’re asking why don’t you put your faith in scientists. You’re not asking about science itself, because science itself does nothing. It’s a means to an end, a methodology of organized study. Science only works when directed by intelligent designers, agents of science. We call them scientists. You’re asking why don’t you have faith in the interpretations of data collected through scientific method, which are then assembled by scientists. The problem with all that is that the question specifically leads towards one group of scientists’ interpretations and precludes all other interpretations.

God Is Not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything

Fancy Nancy and the Boy from Paris

Nancy is delighted that the new boy in her class is from Paris and sets out to become his friend, then discovers that this Parisian is not quite as fancy as she ...

Crime and punishment

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT N an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, ...

War and peace

But the calm, luxurious St. Petersburg life, busying itself only with the apparitions and reflections of life, went on as of old ; and through the tenor of ...

Romeo and Juliet

o Romeo and Juliet BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEAKE CASSELL and COMPANY, Limited LONDOit, PARIS $ MELBOURNE 1890. ...