While I already linked to it back here, this bit of Blogging Tory inanity is so huggably precious, it really deserves its own post. Go ahead -- it's pinata time.
Several people seem to be upset about John Tory wanting intelligent design taught in a religion class in private religious schools that he wants to be funded publically. Let's just look at the numbers. According to the 2001 census only 16.2% of the people who answered the census identified themselves as no religion. How can alienating only 16.2% of the population be such a horrible set back?
How many of that 16% would have voted for him in the first place? Conversely, how many of the other 84% be more apt to vote for him? Surely much of that 84% are centrists. Besides, what else would you expect from private religious schools? How is this any different from the previous debate about funding private religious schools?
Who is preaching intolerance now?
Where to even begin?
JUST SO YOU DON'T MISS IT, there is one point in the above to which I would like to draw your attention.
GC claims that, since only 16.2% of the population is allegedly non-theistic, then promoting the teaching of creationism can alienate at most that 16.2%. Now, who sees the logical implication of that logic? Come on, you can do it.
Why, yes ... by logical implication, GC is therefore claiming that the remaining 83.8% will have no problem with creationism in the science classroom. He is therefore implying -- nay, he is suggesting outright -- that that remaining 83.8% of the electorate (including all variations of Christianity) are all scientific retards.
Clearly, it does not occur to GC that there might those who, while devout Christians, are still educated enough to recognize fundamentalist, Christian swill for the scientific excrement that it is. No, in GC's world, if you're a Christian, you're a moron. I'm pretty sure that's not the message he was trying to send but, sadly, it's the one that's coming across. I'm sure his religious colleagues are going to have some words for GC. And I don't think they're going to be encouraging ones.
17 comments:
I see - 16.2% don't follow any religion, and therefore the remaining 83.8% are irrational fools that will believe any old tripe?
Not to mention the unsupported assumption that the beliefs of all the remaining 83.8% are in line with the idea of creationism/ID, which I rather doubt is the case given the wide variety of religious faiths within the Canadian populace, let alone seen as something to be taught in schools in place of evolution/scientific method. I mean really, the amount of holes within this line of "reasoning" makes swiss cheese look solid.
...not to mention the philosophy that if a certain group is not all that likely to vote for you, fuck 'em. I didn't think they were supposed to say that out loud.
Plus Tory never specified teaching it in religion class he talked about mentioning alternate theories alongside evolution.
That implies science class to me.
Looking up statistics for Canada on the CIA factbook ( cuz they're gospel after all) ... I see the following breakdown:
Total 33,390,141
Population
Catholic 42.60%
Protestant 23.30%
Anglican 6.80%
Baptist 2.40%
Lutheran 2.00%
Other Christian 4.40%
Muslim 1.90%
Other/Unspecified 11.80%
None 16.00%
Apparently the CIA stole it from your 2001 census data.
Most of the evolution vs creationism BS comes from Protestants, specifically Baptists. Which make up only 23.3% of your total population.
So why, in this case would you not just go with the Catholic world view since they make up 43% of your population. On November 7th 2005, the Vatican issued a statement that said that the Genesis description of how god created the universe and Darwin's theory of evolution were 'perfectly compatible' and denounced fundamentalists for trying to give scientific meaning to words that had no scientific name. The real message in Genesis is that the universe didn't make itself that there was an ultimate creator. The theory of evolution says that all things evolved over time from simpler life forms. But it doesn't posit where the universe came from or where the original life forms came from. So I guess he won't be getting the Catholic vote either.
His same statement could be said about his group: Why would you care about offending only 23.4 percent of the population?
23.4 percent is only 5% more than those who have no religion. What makes him thing the 'other / nonspecified' types would agree with him even if every since Christian sect did? Add them in and you have 27.8 %, which is one and a half million more people than Protestants.
I love when asshats like him start slinging around numbers as though reality should be determined like a freeper poll that they can skew in their favor.
Sorry pal, the universe doesn't care which way you vote or whether or not you believe in a certain invisible sky wizard. Keep your religious teachings to yourself. It is YOUR duty to teach your kids that sort of nonsense, not the government's.
Worse, E, about 2/3 of those the CIA lists as 'Protestant' are members of the United Church of Canada (including Tory himself) which is not at all dogmatic or creationist...
"Clearly, it does not occur to GC that there might those who, while devout Christians, are still educated enough to recognize fundamentalist, Christian swill for the scientific excrement that it is."
That's right. 'Cause only "fundamentalist" Christians believe that God created mankind. CC shur is up on the whole Christian beliefs thing.
Do me a favor. Can all of you on the left forget that you ever heard the word "devout"? Please? Listening to you use it is just embarrassing.
Wait, what does being devout have to do with this?
And just because people believed some mythical sky monster created humans doesn't mean he/she/it didn't set up evolution to accomplish that goal.
Do me a favor. Can all of you on the left forget that you ever heard the word "devout"? Please? Listening to you use it is just embarrassing.
By Anonymous, at 5:58 PM
Do me a favor. Go enlist.
Anonymous....do *me* a favour and shut up.
If only all our problems could be solved by trying to impress our invisible sky superheroes, instead of... none of them.
Seems to me that Mr. Tory suggested he would accept Intelligent Design's being taught in "faith-based" schools, not "public" schools - and his reason/excuse/whatever-you-want-to-call-it was not about pandering to the religious fundamentalists so much as allowing the government to evaluate said schools to ensure the children get a well-rounded education.
Of course, I'm not a fan of Tory's, and I don't live in Ontario...
BTW, as a (very) backslidden "fundamentalist", I can assure you there are some who believe ID set up evolution...
And there are non-religious people who believe in ID - but not "God."
ID is an attack on science itself in an attempt blur the line between the quest for the truth and morality, which paves the way for the imposition of one moral standard, which most of us properly sense as illiberal and anti-democratic.
Penny -- the point is that Tory is making publicly-funded, faith-based schools a major plank in his platform. Then he said, sure, they can teach "alternatives" to evolution. So that pretty much confirmed the worst fears of those of us who actually foot the bill.
As for atheists (is that what you mean by non-religion?) who believe in ID -- can you explain why they would, since the central theme of ID is "god did it"?
"ID is an attack on science itself in an attempt blur the line between the quest for the truth and morality, which paves the way for the imposition of one moral standard, which most of us properly sense as illiberal and anti-democratic."
Dumb. With big words.
Sadly, I can see that I'm going to have to re-activate the bozon (AKA "anonymous" commenter) filter. If people can't be bothered to at least register with Blogger, I don't see why they should clutter up my valuable blog space.
Dumb. With big words.
Still smarting from the last time I kicked your ass, eh troll?
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