The Questioning Librarian

For years now, I've seen posts and received emails calling for God to be allowed back in schools. This is a sentiment often expressed publicly by religious leaders in times of crisis, that whatever crisis is occurring at the moment is because we've turned our collective back on God, including kicking him out of schools. Famously the daughter of Billy Graham made statements to that effect after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, which have since passed into a form of internet legend. Yet, for all the publicity these statements get, for all the reblogging, sharing and forwarding that these statements get, calls to "let God back into schools," as one woman put it in a letter to the editor , are not just wrong factually but downright disingenuous.  Let's take the claim at face value for analysis. While the exact wording varies from person to person, the claim seems like it might best be stated as follows: a) God has been prohibited from (public) school...

Scott Terry. Cowboys, Armageddon, and the Truth: How a Gay Child was Saved       from Religion .  Lethe Press, 2012. PB. 288 p. $18. 978-1-59021-366-7. Growing up in the Jehovah’s Witness religion was hard enough for Scott Terry as the unwanted child of a first marriage; growing up and realizing who he was as a person was harder still. This memoir is a powerful story not only of dealing with and escaping from abuse but also about coming to terms with being gay in an atmosphere that regarded it as both unnatural and sinful. Terry grew up with almost no memory of his mother, being raised in the home of his father Virgil and his stepmother “Fluffy,” a woman who despised both Terry and his sister and did everything to make their lives hell. That Terry did escape in the end is gratifying, but at times reading through the catalog of horrors that he had to undergo is unnerving in the extreme, from being forbidden to touch Fluffy’s television or take food wi...

Not necessarily so. At least, it doesn't have to be that way. Science finds itself under attack on many fronts from fundamentalist religion, and in response to these attacks a number of scientists (and others) have become very vocal in response, attacking religion as an irrational, unsupported, ancient superstition from a time before science, a relic that is no longer necessary for modern society, one that is in fact harmful. Even before these scientists helped to launch the "New Atheist" movement, some believers seemed, and still seem today, positively afraid of science. They hold to a literal interpretation of the Bible, that every  word is literally  true, inspired by God (except the prophecies in Daniel or Revelation, which they interpret in various ways). Thus when it comes to certain facets of science, specifically biological evolution, paleontology, astronomy, chemistry and geology (among others), the response of this set of believers is to deny, deny, deny. But ...