From the Minneapolis City Pages:

The New Ulm Actors Community Theater has decided to cancel its planned production of “Inherit the Wind” thanks to pressure from local evangelicals who object to the way the play portrays the evolution/creationism debate.

And from the New Ulm Journal:

NEW ULM - The New Ulm Actors Community Theatre’s production of “Inherent the Wind” was canceled last week due to cast dropouts stemming from objections by Martin Luther College professors and local WELS members over the play’s depiction of the evolution/creationism debate.

NUACT originally slated the play as its fall production with MLC student Zach Stowe as director. The play deals with a fictionalized version of the evolution/creationism debate in the 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial.” The play is also a metaphor for criticizing the suppression of free expression under the McCarthyism of the 1950s.

So, this was college professors who are normally about academic freedom and such acting like McCarthy about a play that among other things criticizes McCarthyism.

After seeing the poster for the audition, several MLC professors raised objections about the play’s subject to the administration.

Jeffrey Schone, MLC’s VP of Student Life, declined to name the objecting professors, but stated the administration similarly became concerned about being associated with the play.

The college is part of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, the above mentioned “WELS.” They hold Genesis as literally true.

Here’s the kicker:

Ironically, the court case depicted in this play found in favor of the creationist argument made at the time.

More: Theater Owner Bends to Creationists’ Demands, Cancels ‘Inherit the Wind’ - Greg Laden’s Blog

More: South Carolina Christian School Is the Source of the Crazy 4th Grade ‘Science’ Test (IMAGE)

This is a REAL Christian school “science” test!

The image above has recently been making the rounds on all the social sites. I first saw it last week and it was good for a facepalm or two but I was a little suspicious, as we all should be when this sort of thing pops up in the social media nowadays. After appearing in my feed a few times it faded away and I thought nothing more of it.

Today, it was in my Snopes report email so I clicked on the link to find out if my suspicions had been correct. I was surprised to find that the image was real. And there was another page to the test. So, it became legitimate news and here we are.

The test was purported to be a 4th grade quiz from a private school in South Carolina. After some digging by Snopes and others, and a confirmation from Answers In Genesis president Ken Ham, we now know that the school is the Blue Ridge Christian Academy in the Greenville area. Our own Filthy Liberal, Justin Rosario wrote about the initial reactions to the picture and the story behind it.

But even before that information was revealed, the reactions to the test had flown furiously around the web, setting off the patented “Christian victimization reaction.” Mr. Ham wrote an alternately whiny and outraged column on his website, complaining that the school, its administrators and teachers were being ruthlessly attacked by those horrible atheists!

Read more at Addicting Info.

April 2, 2013: There are some common patterns among Islamic terrorists. They tend to be the least educated (often illiterate), least employable and the least intelligent members of their community (either in the old country or within immigrant communities in the West). While university educated terrorists get a lot of media attention, most ideologically motivated terrorists are poor and illiterate. These deficiencies provide a great motivator to do something desperate in the off chance it might improve your lot. Thus most of the violence in the world occurs in countries with low literacy rates.

Strategy Page

As shown in an earlier post on LGF, that is also how Pat likes ‘em.

Little Green Footballs

Idaho investigates complaint about teacher’s human reproduction lesson

More: Idaho Investigates Complaint About Teacher’s Human Reproduction Lesson
Gee, because 16 y/o boys have NEVER heard the word Vagina! The Horrors, The Humanity!!!!

According to McDaniel, four parents were offended that he explained the biology of an orgasm and included the word “vagina” during his lesson on the human reproductive system in a tenth-grade biology course.

Students of course can OPT OUT, but none of them did.

“I teach straight out of the textbook, I don’t include anything that the textbook doesn’t mention,” McDaniel said. “But I give every student the option not attend this class when I teach on the reproductive system if they don’t feel comfortable with the material.”

I guess that the whole “Ignorance is Bliss” thing is what these parents are looking for. After all, if you don’t know anything about Orgasms, you really don’t have any responsibility to make sure your partner has one.

SMW
Who’s motto is “Ladies First, and Second, and maybe even a Third first”

This story is just being reported. Can’t say I’m surprised that Morsi is surrounding himself with people like this. .

An important figure in Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi’s administration has called the Holocaust a hoax put together U.S. intelligence operatives, and claims that the 6 million Jews who were killed by Nazis simply moved to the United States.

These outlandish claims were made by Fathi Shihab-Eddim, a senior figure close to Morsi who is charged with appointing the editors of all state-run Egyptian newspapers. He made these remarks as the world marked Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, and as the U.S. continues to figure out its relationship with the increasingly radical nation.

Shihab-Eddim said:

‘The myth of the Holocaust is an industry that America invented.
U.S. intelligence agencies in cooperation with their counterparts in allied nations during World War II created it [the Holocaust] to destroy the image of their opponents in Germany, and to justify war and massive destruction against military and civilian facilities of the Axis powers, and especially to hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the atomic bomb.’

Efraim Zuroff of the Israel Director of the Jerusalem-based Simon Weisenthal Center responded to Shihab-Eddim’s remarks, saying:

“The sad truth is that these views are relatively common in the Arab world and are the result of ignorance on one hand and of government-sponsored Holocaust denial on the other hand.’

The remarks concern Israeli experts who have been keeping an eye on Egypt ever since Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood administration took over the government in elections last summer.

President Morsi has also come out against Jews in the past. In 2010, Morsi stated that Jews are “the descendants of apes and pigs”, but he insists that they were taken out of context. Nevertheless, archivists say that Morsi made similar statements repeatedly before he rose to power.

Anti-Semitic statements and Holocaust denial appear to be part of the Muslim Brotherhood doctrine.

Ohio Romney Rally - Interviews with Supporters

Ohio Romney Rally - Interview B-Roll - Social Issues

Mississippi Conservatives/Republicans

McCain/Palin Rally (2008)

Supporter Of Republican Presidential Candidate Former… News Photo | Getty Images | 154020260

Romney and Ryan Campaign In Ohio (Photo by Jamie Sabau/Getty Images)

Title: Romney and Ryan Campaign In Ohio

Caption: LANCASTER, OH - OCTOBER 12: A supporter of Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Republican vice presidential candidate U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) waits for a campaign event to begin on October 12, 2012 in Lancaster, Ohio. Ryan debated U.S. Vice President Joe Biden the evening before and Romney is scheduled to debate U.S. President Barack Obama for the second time on October 16. (Photo by Jamie Sabau/Getty Images)

Date created: 12 Oct 2012

Update via Buzzfeed:

A Romney spokesperson commented that the shirt was “reprehensible and has no place in this election.”

thinkatheist.com

Bill Nye, the harmless children’s edu-tainer known as “The Science Guy,” managed to offend a select group of adults in Waco, Texas at a presentation, when he suggested that the moon does not emit light, but instead reflects the light of the sun.

As even most elementary-school graduates know, the moon reflects the light of the sun but produces no light of its own.

But don’t tell that to the good people of Waco, who were “visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence,” according to the Waco Tribune.

Nye was in town to participate in McLennan Community College’s Distinguished Lecture Series. He gave two lectures on such unfunny and adult topics as global warming, Mars exploration, and energy consumption.

But nothing got people as riled as when he brought up Genesis 1:16, which reads: “God made two great lights — the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.”

The lesser light, he pointed out, is not a light at all, but only a reflector.

UPDATE: Please note that the story linked in this Page dates from 2009; there’s more info here:

motherjones.tumblr.com

washingtonpost.com

The 18th century was defined, in many ways, by the Enlightenment, a philosophical movement based on the idea that reason, rational discourse and the advancement of knowledge, were the critical pillars of modern life. The leaders of the movement inspired the thinking of Charles Darwin, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin; its tenets can be found in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. But more than 200 years later, those basic tenets — the very notion that facts and evidence matter — are being rejected, wholesale, by the 21st-century Republican Party.

The contempt with which the party views reason is staggering. Republicans have become proudly and unquestionably anti-science. (It is their litmus test, though they would probably reject the science behind litmus paper.) With the exception of Jon Huntsman, who polls about as well as Darwin would in a Republican primary, the Republican presidential candidates have either denied the existence of climate change, denied that it has been caused — and can be reversed — by man, or apologized for once holding a different view. They have come to this conclusion not because the science is inconclusive, but because they believe, as a matter of principle, that scientific evidence is no evidence at all.

It’s on that basis that Ron Paul can say of evolution, “I think it’s a theory and I don’t accept it as a theory.” It’s on that basis that Rick Perry can call evolution “it’s a theory that’s out there, but one that’s got some gaps in it.” And it’s on that same basis, that same rejection of science, that Perry can say, “I’m not sure anybody actually knows completely and absolutely how old the earth is.”

Then there’s Michele Bachmann, who has embraced the idea that the HPV vaccine can cause mental retardation, although not a single piece of medical evidence backs up her claim. How, then, did she come to that conclusion? That’s simple: A woman came up to her at a debate and told her so. Scientific evidence is anathema; superstitious and anecdotal asides, on the other hand, deserve to be repeated and amplified on a national stage, the consequences, in this case to countless women and girls, be damned.

This kind of guttural rejection of reason, evidence and science trickles into just about every aspect of Republican ideology. There’s Herman Cain’s much-discussed 9-9-9 plan, for example, which has been eviscerated by independents, conservative and progressive economists alike, but which Cain continues to champion. Why? Because, he argues, the skeptics haven’t read his analysis yet — as if he is entitled not just to his own facts but to his own math. It’s that same worldview that makes Cain comfortable, when asked about the Occupy Wall Street protests, to say, “I don’t [have] facts to back this up, but I happen to believe …” Without facts, does it really matter how he finished the sentence?