Really stupid Christians in the public school system.

A regular reader emails me a link to this, which is yet more evidence that fundamentalist Christians should simply be given their own country somewhere so they can wallow in their ignorance to their heart's content and leave the rest of us alone to actually know stuff:

Testing Darwin's Teachers

Sometimes disruptive but often sophisticated questioning of evolution by students has educators increasingly on the defensive.

Monday morning, Room 207: First day of a unit on the origins of life. Veteran biology teacher Al Frisby switches on the overhead projector and braces himself.

As his students rummage for their notebooks, Frisby introduces his central theme: Every creature on Earth has been shaped by random mutation and natural selection — in a word, by evolution.

The challenges begin at once.

"Isn't it true that mutations only make an animal weaker?" sophomore Chris Willett demands. " 'Cause I was watching one time on CNN and they mutated monkeys to see if they could get one to become human and they couldn't."

Frisby tries to explain that evolution takes millions of years, but Willett isn't listening. "I feel a tail growing!" he calls to his friends, drawing laughter.

There's lots more -- go read it. I'll wait.

So ... where to start? How about, why the fuck does a teacher allow this sort of disrespectful bullshit to even get started?

Frisby tries to explain that evolution takes millions of years, but Willett isn't listening. "I feel a tail growing!" he calls to his friends, drawing laughter.

I'm sorry -- since when was this acceptable classroom behaviour? Interrupting a lecture and disrespecting the teacher? Apparently, this would be more of those red-state, conservative family values we hear so much about. But that's not all.

Recall that subtitle: "Sometimes disruptive but often sophisticated questioning of evolution by students has educators increasingly on the defensive." Huh? "Often sophisticated?" You mean saying asinine things like, "Hey, I saw something on CNN once." or "I feel a tail growing!" or "You're not just making this up?" or "Have you ever gone to church?" Excuse me, but that's "sophisticated?" Since when? Is that what passes for deep thought in Jesusland these days? What idiots.

However, here's the part that really gripes my wagger:

Other students gather ammunition from sermons at church, or from the dozens of websites that criticize evolution as a God-denying sham. They interrupt lectures to expound on the inaccuracies of carbon dating; to disparage transitional fossils as frauds; to show photos of ancient footprints that they think prove humans and dinosaurs walked side by side.

Ah, so it's the local churches who are, in part, encouraging these students to be disrespectful dumbfucks. Well, there's a simple solution to that. Local citizens who are annoyed by this kind of propagandizing should first identify which churches are involved in this sort of thing, and then make it a point to start attending Sunday services regularly, and interrupting the service on a regular basis: "I'm sorry, how do you know that Jesus was resurrected? Were you there? And that thing about Daniel in the lion's den. Are you just making that up?" And, stealing shamelessly from the series Family Guy, "Whoa, is this really the blood of Christ? Man, that guy must have been wasted 24 hours a day!"

Yes, I think this is the perfect solution. A little citizen activism designed to show the same sort of blatant disrespect to the local clergy as their mindless little automatons are doing in the classroom. And it's not like they can complain, is it? After all, "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." I'm pretty sure that's in Exodus somewhere.

AFTERTHOUGHT: Just to be clear, I don't think the teachers are coming across well in all of this:

Frisby tries to explain that evolution takes millions of years, but Willett isn't listening. "I feel a tail growing!" he calls to his friends, drawing laughter.

Unruffled, Frisby puts up a transparency ...

"Unruffled?" Sorry but, if a teacher doesn't have the balls to deal with that kind of ignorant, uppity snark in his own classroom, then he really doesn't deserve to be teaching.

If Frisby isn't capable of defending biological evolution without breaking a sweat, then maybe he should look for a less challenging line of work. Maybe teaching P.E. or something.

OH, THE DELICIOUS HYPOCRISY! Sigh. You knew -- you just knew -- that if something involved Christians being unspeakably fucking dumb, this guy would be all over it like a Catholic priest on an altar boy.

No, it's not surprising that "Jinx"/Jason is as stupid as a high school sophomore -- that's not my point here. What's interesting is that, as regular readers here will recall, all of my well-crafted, incisive and insightful questions to Jason regarding Christian scholarship were invariably dismissed out of hand since, clearly, I didn't know the first thing about Christianity and anything I had to say about it was rubbish, etc., etc. I'm sure you all remember that, yes?

So isn't it amusing to see what happens when the shoe is on the other foot? Apparently, when it comes to mouthy, ignorant, scientifically illiterate little Christopaths spouting off on subjects about which they know less than nothing, why, Jason couldn't be prouder of the little dumbfucks. How about that?

I'm assuming you can spot the overwhelming hypocrisy here, right? Don't make me stop this car and come back there and explain it to you.