Consider this two posts in one.
Happen (yesterday morning now) across the story at Pandagon. The IMAX movie, “Volcanoes of the Deep Sea”, banned at venues in southern states (GA, SC, NC and TX). Why? Because it mentions the dreaded big E word. Even the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History in Texas has declined to show the film, not wanting to spark controversy.
More here at Edpolitics and then at Panda’s Thumb.
A spokesman for the Science Museum in London described the development as worrying: ‘It is a very tight market in the Imax business and we would be extremely disappointed if this sort of pressure led to a narrowing of the market for popular Imax films.”
So march on the Creationists who are endeavoring to “take back” America from the terrorist nonpuritans who threaten to destroy holy capitalist industry with irreverent speculation on bipedalism.
The capitalist spirit alone was inadequate for ensuring the triumph of the market over a world of hostile forces, and more than the profit motive was needed to tame the American wilderness. The Puritans believed it had to be a holy endeavor. They were not interested in placing a few isolated trading posts on the edge of a wild continent; they wanted to build a model society, one founded on the precepts of God. For they understood very clearly the close connection between civilization, the Christian faith, and private property. The ownership of property teaches man responsibility, reinforces in his mind the importance of law, raises man above brutish existence, enables him to pass a better life on to his children, and affords him the leisure to meditate on matters concerning the soul. Perhaps better than any other people, the Puritans of New England understood that piety, liberty, and commerce were three essential pillars of a lasting and flourishing culture; knock one down, and civilization falls.
— Benjamin Hart, former director of the Christian Defense Fund
Yes, believe it or not, despite there being a church on virtually every corner, Xtian persecution is alive and well today. David Limbaugh’s book, “Persecution”, let’s us all in on how overwhelming, rampant, threatening, all-encompassing is that persecution (my bold face):
Christians are increasingly being driven from public life, denied their First Amendment rights, and even actively discriminated against for their beliefs.
In this relentless exposé of political correctness run amok, best-selling author David Limbaugh rips apart the liberal hypocrisy that condones selective mistreatment of Christians in the mainstream media, Hollywood, our schools and universities, and throughout our public life.
In Persecution you’ll enter the hotly contested battle for the soul of our public schools. Here are appalling — but true — stories of how anti-Christian social engineers not only prohibit school prayer and forbid students from wearing Christian symbols, like a simple cross, but even expunge the real story of Christianity in America from history textbooks. Worse still, in the name of “diversity,” “tolerance,” “multiculturalism,” and “sex education,” the social engineers actively inculcate hatred of Christianity as ignorant, repressive, and offensive…
Looking honestly at the dominant influence of Christianity in America’s colonial culture and schools, where the Bible was routinely used as a textbook, Limbaugh makes a compelling case that the education students receive today is not what the Founders would have endorsed. Indeed, they would have been outraged at what is taught — and what the courts say — in their name, under the pretext of the non-constitutional and woefully misunderstood phrase: “separation of church and state.”
Limbaugh zeros in on how activist judges misinterpret and misapply the Constitution to eliminate Christianity from American government and public life. He reveals a society-wide disinformation campaign that has successfully obscured, for many people, what the Constitution actually says about religious freedom. While allegedly promoting religious freedom, liberals actually suppress it.
Providing details of case after shocking case, Limbaugh demonstrates that the anti-Christian forces now controlling significant portions of our society aggressively target the slightest hint of public Christianity for discrimination, yet ardently encourage the spread of secular values — including “alternative sexuality” and promiscuity.
Limbaugh cuts cleanly through this confusion and distortion, exploring the deeply held Christian faith of the Founding Fathers, and showing that Christianity and Judeo-Christian principles are essential — and were recognized by the Founders as essential — to the unique political liberties Americans enjoy.
Persecution is an indispensable tool to help Christians reclaim their right (and duty) to enter the political arena and to try to influence the course of this country. It helps every liberty-loving citizen to champion what America is supposed to be about-religious freedom.
There is why you can endlessly seek middle ground with the refrain of “live and let live” in mind, pursue sensible commonality with the notion that if you just act nicely and treat fairly then you will be treated nice and fair in return, employ the Golden Rule of treating others as you would wish to be treated, and–you’re still a fanatic, persecuting heathen out to take away the rights of Xtians. Because these people don’t care about First Amendment rights and religions freedom. Never have. They say they must have freedom and rights, are being denied freedom and rights, when what they mean is that they feel they’ve been denied their right to Xtian government–because you’ve got it wrong, secular government isn’t what it’s about at all.
Yeah, Xtians have it hard. American Church Lists is ready to sell you their lists of 488,000 U.S and Canadian churches and Xtian private schools so that you can reach this $40 billion dollar industry (notice the blue star and Red and white bands proceeding into or from, recalling the U.S. flag).
Megachurches with weekly services holding no less than 2000 and up to 16,000, are on the increase with megabuildings and acres of parking lots. If you’re leery of getting lost in such a church, Atlanta’s own Roswell Street Baptist Church lets you know just how OK it is by comparing it with business success and reassuring you that big business success (and religious success) is the American Dream.
Atlanta happens to have one of the highest concentrations of megachurches in the country.
Only the suburbs of L.A., Houston and Dallas compare. One Atlanta suburb also happens to have three behemoths within uncharacteristically close range — Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Decatur, New Birth Baptist Church in Lithonia and World Changers in College Park. Not surprisingly, the churches — which measure power by number of members — have been known to get feisty about attracting and keeping congregants. After all, the church’s economic health (which, measured in tithes, can total more than $100,000 a week) hinges on how fully the pews are packed.
No, sorry, I don’t buy it, the persecution of Xtians bit, that they have been beaten back to the fringes of society where they must fearlessly connect with one another by means of underground tunnels and profess their confidence in the cross writing in the dust of their floors, from which they can wipe the evidence of their faith when the secular police darken their door.
I live in the south (not from) but live here and as I wrote on some lost comment board a while back, two and three decades ago I wouldn’t have believed it if anyone had told me this would be an issue later. First in schools and now causing theaters to reject films. And a couple of weeks ago when I wrote that comment it wouldn’t have occurred to me that IMAX theaters would bend and ban a film because of the word “evolution”. If these Creationists are looking, as they say, for freedom of speech, then their idea of freedom of speech sounds like what you might feel free not to say if you don’t want a back alley mugging.
I go back to check the comment board at Pendagon and the Discovery Place at Charlotte NC has chosen not to show it.
Also in the news, a school in Raleigh NC is apologizing that a teacher used text that preached creationism and encouraged children “to proselytize for Jesus”. “God’s word tells us about a kind of odor only Christians have…Christians carry forth the fragrance of Christ wherever they go by the way they live; that is, they remind people of him.”
The school admits it crossed the line. They’re excusing it on the teacher being from Australia, using a Christian-based ABEKA text (geez) and that she didn’t know the rules. But this doesn’t explain why, when the parents complained to the principal, she asked, “What’s the problem? Don’t you and your family go to church?” She also said she didn’t understand their objections as their daughter was making perfect scores.
“Could someone find Christ by the scent trail you are leaving behind you?”
–A Beka
The National Center for Science Education is tracking state bills on creationism and evolution in the schools.
Evolution is only mentioned once in Alabama schools and even that required a disclaimer, though evolution is no longer described as controversial.
On February 10, 2005, the Alabama State Board of Education adopted a revised set of state science standards (the Alabama Course of Study: Science, or ACOSS). The treatment of evolution in the revised ACOSS remains weak: evolution is explicitly mentioned only once in the high school biology standards, under the section on protective adaptations. Evolutionary concepts such as hierarchical classification are described without mentioning evolution. During the board meeting, John Schweinsberg of Alabama Citizens for Science Education protested that evolution was obviously downplayed for religious reasons, despite the fact that “[i]t’s just as basic to biology as the periodic table is to chemistry. Teaching biology without evolution is like teaching chemistry without the periodic table” (quoted in the Montgomery Advertiser, February 10, 2005).
The revised ACOSS also continues to contain, in its preface, a version of the evolution disclaimer originally mandated in the 1996 version of ACOSS, but evolution is no longer described as controversial.
Intelligent Design. I go to visit the Intelligent Design web home to see what kind of an image they want to project. Blue and white. Unimaginative, tired out science and corporate colors that because of mundane pervasiveness go hand-in-hand with “look, see, we’re official”. IDnet logo in red, white and blue, maybe drawing on patriotism, of course drawing on patriotism, the red white and blue belonging first and foremost to Xtians (review above). ID. Identification. I imagine there was some bantering back and forth about how that was incredibly clever. Intelligent Design is our ID. Anyway, the website came out of someone’s cookie-cutter template archive, but whose, I know it has to be on here somewhere. Indeed, there it is. CDS Creative Design, whose home page, oh man, let’s get past that ugly home page. And yes, the same template used for “Love Mercy” (non profit charity) is also used for ID. the IDnet logo derives from the Love Mercy global logo or vice versa. A needy African American child smiling at the benevolence of white people highlights the entrance page, and I’m not even going there. Back out. Let’s see what else the CDS people have designed for. A website for “Troubled House”, “The modern trial of a biologist persecuted for his lack of faith in Darwinism.”
God vs. Scicence as God. Okay. We get it. Written by Daniel Shwabauer with an intro on the front page by Phillip E. Johnson, author of “Darwin on Trial.” I was thinking this is the kind of thing they must sell for presentation at churches, but navigation has a link to “students and teachers” and a media kit.
Heroic characters say things like:
“I did win. I won freedom. I won the right to question… The right to ask , “What if it didn’t happen that way?”‘
Yes, but we certainly wouldn’t want anyone else to ask the question for themselves, so keep the E word out of it shall we? Let’s not darken the IMAX theater with it, shall we? No, god forbid. Which they believe god does.
Teachers are urged to get the manuscript.
Teachers who truly want to challenge students to think independently will find ‘Troubled House’ inspiring and challenging. This play will fuel great discussion about the definition of science, intolerance, academic freedom, and integrity…
Get in and read the study guide. All wants to sound very sensible and reasonable. No hint here that they’ll take your IMAX away. Instead, the kids seem to be ready for a revolution in the schools. They want their Intelligent Design. That’s what their hungering for. They’ve been deprived long enough. Like refugees wanting bread and water they storm doors seeking truth, seeking freedom, demanding to be afforded the right to Intelligent Design.
I have never been to an IMAX movie by the way. I have always, for some reason, connected them with monster trucks, these behomoths that for some reason make for major entertainment drawing thousands because they have big wheels and wantonly crush things. Maybe because many many years ago I was with a friend at Six Flags and people were leaving the IMAX theater there, and despite it providing relief from the Georgia sun and humidity I wasn’t willing to stand in line the rest of the day to see a film that had no plot, was just “See how big I am. Never mind capturing you with character and plot. Instead, we’re just going to make stuff really big so you can walk out going wow, so big!! That was the biggest movie I’ve ever been to!” Anyway, my friend’s husband was in the Air Force and so when I think of this I always think of when I visited her in Florida (many many years ago) and we were driving through the woods at night, through the Air Force Base, and I remarked on the lights back yonder in the pines and asked what was back there and her husband, blank-faced, said, “Nothing’s back there.” And so for the fun of hearing him say, “Nothing’s back there,” I kept saying, “You sure there’s nothng back there? I see lights.” And he’d respond, on command, “Nothing’s back there.” Eventually he admitted there might be lights but he didn’t know what they were.
Before going to Florida my friend lived in Douglasville GA which, I noticed, before the advent of Monster Truck mega rallies, was a place where people liked to put really big, big wheels on their trucks. I don’t know if it’s still like that out there, which is now really just another suburb of Atlanta.
“She’s prejudiced against monster trucks! She’s a culture snob!”
Well, uhm, I just assume from experience that where there are monster trucks I’m not likely to find uhm, never mind. And, yes, I’ve never been to a monster truck rally, and for all I know I might enjoy one in a wow I got super-stoked kind of let’s beat ’em up who can we beat em up kind of let’s flatten mountains into molehills and run over the cars of Iraqi’s with our big jeeps kind of way. Right? As in here is a video of what happens if you’re in Iraq and you’re caught stealing some wood. The video shows a clip from “Frontline”. A white car. About five men. A few dollars worth of wood on top of the car. They were caught stealing some scraps of wood. The soldiers say they tell them not to loot but they don’t understand so they will crush the car. First they shoot out the windows of the car. Then they take the tank and roll it over the car and crush it. The soldiers laugh and they say to the Iraqis, “That’s what you get when you loot.” The car belonged to a taxi driver; it was how he earned his livelihood.
Yeah, crushing cars pumps the old adrenaline up. Feels powerful, feels good. Let’s go do it again!
I am wondering what the subject of the first IMAX film was and looking for it come upon a page at the America’s Air Force webite (more blue and red and a jet unfurling its load of missiles) where it has an Air Force “first”, an Air Force IMAX movie which had its premiere at the Smithsonian last December. An attempt no doubt to get the high school boys to sign up with visions of themselves playing Tom Cruise.
Badly written play, the one selling Intelligent Design. I’m not even going to bother with quotes. And I’m tired of looking at the Intelligent Design website which has on one page a pic of a girl in goggles pouring red kool-aid from one vessel into another. Has a pic of a microscope. Pics from cans that seek to give the impression, against the blue field, with the red, white and blue logo, that “We are America’s Best in Science.”
Now, the why of the problem of looking for a common middle ground with these people and bending over backwards until your back is broken. There is no common middle ground. Those who literally accept that they are the possessors of right, who carry the truth of the world and universe, that’s one thing. Add to that the divine directive to evangelize, to go from town to town spreading the gospel, and where it is not received to shake the dust of the place off one’s feet, handing them over to damnation, these are not middle ground people just looking to get along. They’re businessmen. What they’re selling is Xtianity. When a person always has something to sell, then the people they meet who has not purchased the product is not so much a kindred human as a customer to be won. They have a higher goal for you in mind, a better plan for your life, one that lasts eternal, not just until the latest new in laundry soap has run out of the box. And there’s nothing quite like communing with people who pray that you see the light so that you may be saved from eternal damnation. It’s not like they’re going to trust your taste in books.
Problem is, these folks aren’t satisfied with knocking the dust of your house off their feet, walking off and leaving you to your sorry fate. And most aren’t really that interested in saving you either, because if they were they wouldn’t keep blasting down that rock of faith until you have in every church each believing themselves to be one member of a very select group of individuals who have heard and received rightly and even their fellow churchmen and churchwomen as in dire need of repentence and salvation as the general heathen on the street. What they do have is the lust of fifteenth century papal bulls in their hearts and a burning mission to bring the earth into submission–and protect their children as best they can from coming into contact with contrary thought.
Well, some of them are satisifed with shedding your dust.
A young woman lived briefly across the hall from us here, and the day she was moving out last year (neighborhood scared her) she came knocking on the door. She wanted to leave me the key for the landlord, but she also seemed to want to talk, which surprised me, that she was suddenly all friendly. She was nice. She commented on a painting I’d done. Though I was unbathed and stinky, and my son was still asleep, I invited her in, wondering what was up. She was tall, pretty, red hair, pink hoodie, mid 20s, friendly, exceptionally adept at packing her bio into a brief amount of conversation as in a short amount of time I knew her favored artists and where she’d been to school in NY and how well-traveled she was (which always makes me feel quite small as I’m not well-traveled at all, it taking money and time to travel, and we were always working and slaving for rent money) and I thought well it’s too bad that we didn’t talk before the day she was moving out–for we had met when she was moving in but hadn’t talked–except I’m two decades older and have a son and I wouldn’t have imagined she’d have been interested. She started going on about an art gallery she was involved with downtown and maybe I’d be interested in showing there, talking about how she liked the small galleries so much better than the professional ones only interested in big names, money etcetera. I am skeptical of easy things and asked some question about it and it was I guess the kind of question that couldn’t be easily ducked and she said that well it was part of their new Xtian church they were starting downtown, trying to do a neighborhood ministry that involved people in the area and I ought to come down some time and check it out. I”ve heard a lot of this type thing over the years and so I said in a nice friendly but have no doubt about it way that I wasn’t Xtian, we weren’t Xtian. This didn’t seem to perturb her too much and she continued on about the art gallery and neighborhood mission and I should go down and check it out.
And then I don’t what possessed her, but she brought up the The Da Vinci Code. Our apartment is lined with books and no doubt she must have seen something that sparked the comment, though I don’t know what as we have no best sellers lying around, and it wouldn’t have been a copy of the Da Vinci Code because we don’t own and I’ve not read and I told her I’d not read it and I said from what I had read though it seemed a modern variation/pistache/pot boiler selling as big conspiracy mystery some beliefs that have been around a very long time in one form or another. I wish I could remember how this came up. I didn’t know whether she was slightly confused about her present religious position in life, or if she was in some way impressing upon me her worldliness, which was confusing to me that she would use the Da Vinci Code to do this. I was tired and kept smiling and thinking you don’t know when to stop do you. I said yes whether it’s pagan or Jewish mysticism or what-not there were all kinds of ways of reading the bible Xtianity just didn’t have a clue about. She started looking confused and said she would have to talk to her minister about that as he knew Hebrew etc. and had studied the bible. And I thought I should not go there, I should not surprise her , but said yes I’d learned Hebrew on my own so I could read the Old Testament, and it was interesting what I’d learned but it certainly didn’t make me Jewish or a Xtian. Well, she would have to talk to her minister first to see what he had to say about all this, she said, that he would know. I said I thought Percival would be a better read. She admitted she’d never heard of it, which really surprised me, that she’d not. I said, oh well, definitely forget the Da Vinci Code, read Percival, only abandon thoughts of Xtiandom. Her shoulders were starting to shrink a bit but I for some reason kept on and how it never is what it says it’s about or what the jacket cover tells you and she must read Percival, really must, if only because it’s essential reading for knowing anything about Western literature, and I read it every few years if for no other reason than it was quite funny, that many people don’t get just how hilarious it is.
Along the way she had mentioned the art gallery/mission should have a website up, and I said well let me check and I insisted I check while she was here. It wasn’t up. She said she could get me on the mailing list. I said sure here’s my email but I knew I’d never get any notices from the mailing list. I knew she was just going through the motions now. She left. And that was that. The gallery was bait. I’d failed to measure up even for the mailing list and I knew that was the last of it. And I was thinking it was kind of too bad this was just a sales job because she was nice, friendly, probably had a lot of interesting stories to tell as she was from Poland and had been to India etc. I know If I’d been to India and was from Poland I’d have some interesting stories to tell.
Oh, by the way, she stole all the curtains and a dresser that the landlord had lent her. He was furious and called her for months and she never would call him back.
It’s an odd kind of thing that Xtians who I have to inform that I’m not Xtian, that I’m not interested in their church, I’m often made to feel that I’m somehow just not being nice to them. Their sensibilities are too delicate, and I’m being antisocial and condemning when I say, “No, I’m not Xtian.” My Xtian landlord and I ended up having a discussion on this. He’s not too delicate. I know other Xtians who aren’t too delicate or we just stay away from the subject. They don’t evangelize to me. There are more important things in this world. Perhaps not personally–their convictions may mean them the eternal life of their soul, mean everything in their world to them. But that’s their world. There are more important things socially, in trying to live in a compatible manner, yes.
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