My stomach could use one less hit.

[elfs]

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Government-backed study has revealed. It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

Okay, this upsets me personally. I grew up with an uncle who had a number tattooed on arm, and both of my parents lost family during the Holocaust-- my father because his family is Jewish, my mother because some members joined the French resistance.

This kind of thing infuriates me. The Holocaust is a matter of historical record. Not one person indicted at Nuremberg tried to claim it didn't happen. You should not be allowed to dictate class curricula because your beliefs contradict reality. This is as true of history as it is of science. Holocaust denial and Intelligent Design are exactly the same in this fashion: those who propound these points of view are wrong and that needs to be repeated every second of every day until they feel absolutely beaten by reality.

If we don't do that, if we don't take a stand, then we can just kiss our world, and our future, goodbye.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

There is an equally large body of "scholarship" dedicated to showing that all of medicine "depends upon Intelligent Design" for its output and products.

Uhhh… they're not going to get very far with that sort of FantasyLand "scholarship".

See, you can assert all you like that the pencil you're holding will fall up when you let go of it, but Gravity will behave as it always has despite your beliefs.

So, maybe we should restrict them to medicines that depend upon Intelligent Design. Let them try to develop medical technology based on their ideologically-correct views. I doubt they'll get very far.

And this is why science will always trump any ideology attempting to conflict with it: science produces results. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, you go where the data points, no matter how uncomfortable you might be with what it's trying to tell you.

Now, I'm not saying, "Science will pwn all Fundies!" These nutjobs may succeed in squelching the entire science of biology with their "scholarship". If they do, they'll have lost. Aging tech breaks down. Without the science that the technology's based on, game over. Their beliefs won't repair any of it. So, by winning, the Fundies will doom their descendants to a new Dark Age.