re: #347 Summer

I really, really, think that to fight this, scientists are going about this entirely the wrong way.

The best way to fight it is to piss off and humiliate the religious extremists - not by trying to shut down the rule, but by showing how incredibly ludicrous it all is.

Scientists should band together and now clamor for Astrology to be taught alongside Astronomy…but more than that. Scientists should now also clamor for Wiccan and Pagan mystical cures to be taught alongside biology.

That’ll be the way to piss off and humiliate the other side. They frigging hate witchcraft. If you let that into the classroom, they might just have to end up thinking twice. =)

They would, of course, be counterbalanced by the “progressives” who believe in all of that, and more. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the course catalog of any mid-sized community college today. I am no longer surprised to find classes on holistic medicine (including the healing power of everything from green tea to “tinctures”), crystal power, and “The Wiccan Way” being taught alongside courses in Art in liberal arts departments. The difference being, of course, that the LA majors who are teaching them think that they’re teaching “real science”, too- just not the awful, patriarchal, DWM-style Western type.

Politics and theology make strange bedfellows. And can make allies out of groups who otherwise have no use for each other whatsoever.

I now believe Heinlein was correct when he said (in The Number of the Beast) that the rot in our academic system is too deeply rooted for any hope of recovery. The only thing to do (to further quote The Old Man) is to plow it under and start over again from scratch.

cheers

eon