Creationists Harass, Threaten, Persecute, Kill, Burn Down Schools, etc, etc
Posted on April 21st, 2008 by blue collar scientistBack at the end of last month, I posted briefly on victims of creationist persecution, suggesting that I might work on finding sources and additional details for some of the cases I posted about.
Well, I never did, because I’m lazy, and because I’m approaching the deadline of a major software development and deployment project, accompanied by a trip to astronomical observatories, at the end of April - there has simply been no time. However, prominent Boston-area skeptic Blake Stacey took up the task, and has done yeoman work completing it.
So please head on over to Science after Sunclipse for the full story of ten people who have been harassed, threatened, assaulted fired, or killed by creationists who were upset that they were teaching or promoting evolutionary theory.
Then head over to Bug Girl’s blog for some additional cases of creationists threatening scientists with violence, and this post on the Kanawha Texboook incident, in which Christians led by a local reverend burned down elementary schools, planted bombs in school busses, and shot at people because they were upset over a recommended reading list for schoolchildren.
And as you do this, think about this for a moment: It is the creationists who shrilly insist that only through their god can anyone have any morality. Yet they are the ones burning elementary schools down, killing their enemies, getting them fired from their jobs, and threatening them with violence when they don’t get their way. This is wrong. If you are reading this, you are learning about the wrong-ness of all this behavior from a scientist; it isn’t coming out of the bible and I don’t claim any particular religious inspiration for this realization. What we have here, folks, is the moral and ethical result of my simple, straightforward, evolved sense of altruism: it is wrong to resort to violence against people you simply disagree with.
And also consider that the creationists - the same ones who resort to harassment, threats, and violence - have made allegations that scientists are the ones making the threats and getting people fired. But of course, that isn’t true - and it makes perfect sense: why would we be surprised that the kind of people who would set fire to an elementary school when they don’t get their way would shrink from lying?
Tags: anti-evolution, creationism, denialism, harassment, terrorism, violence
