Dewey: Like Pastor Roy said, how God’s so much bigger and wiser than us. And trying to see what he’s thinking would be like an ant trying to see what I’m thinking.

Teacher: Yes, exactly. But we can trust in his wisdom and we can have faith that he is watching over us.

Dewey: Like me with the anthill in my backyard. I spent days watching the ants, trying to figure out which ones were good and which ones were bad. But they all just look like ants. So I started smiting all of them. I was smiting them with the garden hose, and with lighter fluid, and with the lawnmower. And to be perfectly honest, I think I went a little crazy with the shovel. Those ants could have been praying to me all day; I wouldn’t have heard ‘em. There was nothing they could do about it. Really, it’s the same with us. There’s nothing we can do about anything, either. So why worry about it? Hey, this is making me feel better. I guess all we can do is live our lives with as much kindness and decency as possible and try not to dwell on God standing over us with that giant shovel. Bye!

But seriously though, we're having a good ol' time here in Pennsylvania right now, because of the morons in Dover, York County and their attempts to sneak religion into the classroom. Even despite my hatred for local newspapers, I have been enjoying the coverage we get in the morning rag, because every time the Creationist School Board idiots open their collective mouth, they just get stupider and stupider. There's great ongoing coverage here, including local editorials which are usually a complete snide slam dunk against the God Squad (look for the Mike Argento columns).

Yesterday, one of the School Board Jihadists had to admit in court that she still doesn't even understand what "Intelligent Design" means. Yet she forced mention of it into the school's scientific curriculum!

And under every rock another loon scurries. It has come out that in 1998, the school's janitor took it upon himself to burn a giant mural (painted by a student) that illustrated the various evolutionary steps of man. The janitor. Well, that's typical of Christians; when they find something they don't like, they burn it.

Then there's the ID textbook the Dover School Board purchased for insertion into all school libraries, "Of Pandas and People." Early drafts for the book prove that it was written using the word "creationism," but then search-and-replaced that legal landmine with the supposedly neutral term "intelligent design." However, despite their best efforts, no one is buying the idea that intelligent design does not equal creationism. Although we did have one local professor who - regardless of intelligent design never achieving any level of peer review or scientific inquiry or publication - sat on the stand and tried to sell that very notion: that intelligent design was good science and not especially religious. But then he elaborated that it was entirely possible that the "designer" (we dare not call "him" a "creator" or a "god") may have since disappeared... which probably didn't exactly strengthen his fellowship with the religious defense who hired him.

There's something else that grinds my gears. The notion of "defending" Christianity. You know, I can't drive five miles without seeing at least one Christian church. I don't think this is an organization in trouble.

The truth is that you have a collection of nuts with an agenda. They wanted to "balance" the scientific teaching of evolution with an opposing theory because evolution offended them. Which is only because modern science finds answers for things that ancient religion necessarily whitewashed out of a lack of technological sophistication. Why did those locusts swarm? Because God got pissed off, that's why.

But as the quote goes, "Congress shall make no law etc etc etc." As a country, we decided early on that the state really shouldn't force any one religion on anybody. (And I have to point out that York County, now seen nationally as a haven for racists AND religious lunacy, has a full complement of private Christian schools one can choose to attend and learn all about whatever fairy tales they like.) Of course, we've had McCarthy-esque mistakes that still must be dealt with - "under God" in the Pledge, Ten Commandments in courthouses - but we're still learning what The Melting Pot truly means. 200 years later.

Every day the Dover School Board sinks deeper into their own mire. They've lied under oath ("I misspoke," the Lead Idiot said.) They've hidden costs. They've been secretly planning this for years, with full knowledge that it was wrong, that it was offensive, that it was a bait-and-switch.

And they would have gotten away with it, had not a few brave parents and teachers stepped up. Because, as the board duly noted, the vast majority of parents and children in Dover have no problem with it. The kids could care less; they're barely paying attention anyway. And most parents around here are undeniably Christian and this sort of thing appeals to their "common sense." They're not going to complain about it, no matter how wrong it is. In fact, this only raises their ire as they buy into the myth that Christians are under attack. (Now we have to put up with the Happy God Groups parading downtown and handing out Jesus Saves leaflets and generally carrying on as if it was their rights that were taken away.)

Unfortunately for Jesus, this isn't a simple matter of majority rule. Communities don't get to vote Yay or Nay on this proposition. (Believe me, in WASP York County, there's plenty of ethical/unethical propositions that you wouldn't want anywhere near a ballot box.) This is our Constitutition being burned. If the courts were to allow this to continue, it's only a short hop to tell classrooms that it's okay to name that designer. Then some nutjob will uncover all the other nonsense in the Bible that pre-dates scientific study, like stuff about locusts and weather patterns and dinosaurs and menstruation and rotting meat. And then we will have fully undermined everything humankind has labored to discover and invent and understand for centuries.

After all, there's nothing left to think about if the ultimate answer is that God created it and there's no way we can ever understand why because he's so unknowably awesome.