Adam and Eve and the "theory" of evolution and all that jazz ...

(Above: click to enlarge. A dash of Robert Crumb's version of Genesis to set the Sunday mood).

Let's change the pace a little.

Oh sure it's great news that Cardinal George Pell thinks he's a stout-hearted republican, as well as a fiscal conservative ready to teach Italians a thing or two (but sssh, not a word, not a whisper about the Vatican scandal will you find in Italy (Part Two)).

And it's equally exciting to see that Phillip Jensen has come out fighting with his take down of Barry Jones in Even Barry Jones Gets it Wrong.

According to Jensen, the hapless Bazza got the details of the High Court decision regarding the school chaplain program completely wrong, and Jensen isn't having any of it.

As usual, according to Jensen, the democratic majority of Christians are being denied their right to persecute gays and women, and to teach their superstitions in the classroom, while being handsomely funded by the taxpayer to make it so.

Oh those agitated angry Anglicans, once again with their exemplary Christian thought and scholarship marginalised.

It turns out that Jensen is very keen on confrontation:

It requires a great love for other people to confront them about their lives. (The Two-Pronged Strategy of a Master Evangelist).

Or a good deal of insolence.

But while the Sydney Anglican site offers some tasty tidbits, is it enough?

Oh sure Kara Martin offers up a nicely luddite Susan Greenfieldian warning about digital technology, and the harmful threats it contains in Old wisdom for a new world. If that Satanic computer or social media calls to you, repent:

Distractions: try and single task, and be truly present with whom you are with. In a search for constant connection, remember the wisdom of having God as your primary connection through prayer and the Bible.

Yep, there's nothing like a goat herder's textbook to ward off the dangers of bits and bytes:

Information as idol: focus on knowledge and wisdom ahead of data and information, and spend more time thinking about fewer things.
Truth and authority: question truth by consensus or crowdsource, and look at sources of truth, for a better authority.

Indeed. And since we were reading all this on the Sydney Anglican website, it was time to hie away in search of truth from better authorities.

Come on down, Republicans of Kentucky, and sock it to us about the teaching of evolution. Thank you Senator David Givens, Republican, Greensburg:

"I think we are very committed to being able to take Kentucky students and put them on a report card beside students across the nation," Givens said. "We're simply saying to the ACT people we don't want what is a theory to be taught as a fact in such a way it may damage students' ability to do critical thinking."

A perfect exemplar of critical thinking. (And the very thing the Anglican website warned us about).

Fancy an unkempt scientific theory damaging students' ability to do critical thinking! As opposed, to say, reading the Old Testament to learn about the wicked ways of a wrathful god.

Credit here to Linda B. Blackford for her story for the Lexington Herald-Leader, which turned up in the Kansas City Star under the header Kentucky's GOP lawmaker question standards for teaching evolution in schools.

Amongst other juicy quotes, this one from Rep Ben Waide, Republican Madisonville, caught the eye:

"The theory of evolution is a theory, and essentially the theory of evolution is not science — Darwin made it up," Waide said. "My objection is they should ensure whatever scientific material is being put forth as a standard should at least stand up to scientific method. Under the most rudimentary, basic scientific examination, the theory of evolution has never stood up to scientific scrutiny."

The contradiction has always puzzled the pond, and here it's all the more poignant.

The United States has been a powerhouse of science and scientific achievements. That's how they've managed to put Curiosity on Mars, and yet at the same time, they have political representatives who can only be described in Jethro Tull's album title's words as being as thick as a brick.

The pond hasn't gone on about the rover, if only because everyone else has, but it's de rigeur to drop in every now and then at the NASA site to check up on the latest pictures and activities (as you can do here).

Meanwhile hapless educationists in Kentucky are caught up in a political bunfight about the meaning of "theory" as used to describe a scientific theory, as in say, the theory of gravity.

Here's Hart County school superintendent Ricky Line contributing to the confusion:

"When it says evolution as if there is no other option, then over time our students are going to assume that is the only option when there are other options out there," Line said.

Uh huh. Like Adam and Eve and the dinosaurs being cast out of the garden of eden, and the dinosaurs being disallowed a lifeline on Noah's Ark.

It's fun to joke about it, and even after the Scopes trial, the sensible parts of the United States came back to deliver more epic science, so maybe it won't have a lasting impact.

At worst, all it means is that students in Kentucky won't have much to offer the United States science program in the next little while if the politicians have their way ...

Which perversely brings us back to Michael Jensen, as we await with bated breath his final chapter in his epic seven sins of Sydney, and his contribution in Preaching Theological Anthropology:

Michael, do you believe that Adam was a real, historical person?
Michael Jensen 17 October 2011 10:41pm:
In short, yes ...

Oh dear, click your heels Dorothy and you could end up in Kansas.

What on earth could he have meant? Even your average Catholic theologian is these days prepared to accept Genesis as a nice fairytale, a metaphor, a mythology, more elevated than Santa Claus but in the same vein. Even arguing that the real became myth doesn't make any sense, in much the same way as it's impossible to take too seriously the role that Romulus and Remus play in Rome's foundation myth.

Amazingly there's even a website designed to prevent Sydney Anglicans from deviating from a literalist reading of the old testament into, depending on your view, dangerous heresy, or at long last a feeble grasp of reality. (here it is exposing Michael Jensen as a naughty liberal wolf in conservative clothing).

Of course it's important for evangelical Sydney Anglicans to believe in a real Adam, because that's the reason women have to take second place on the great theological stage.

Here's Mark Thompson in Sydney Anglicans 111. Complementarian ministry trotting out Paul writing to Timothy one more time:

Let a women learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbirth—if she continues in faith and love and holiness, with self-control. (1 Tim. 2:11–15)

Good luck Mr. Jones, scribbling away in Stupidity is on the rise in our age of enlightenment.

It turns out that what you said regarding the school chaplain program was almost an aside, just one vexing issue amongst many, but naturally Phillip Jensen, being profoundly tribal, took it as an attack on his turf, and more importantly on maintaining taxpayer funding for religious schools.

Funny, or at least ironic, that you should have mentioned the tribal mind in your diatribe Mr. Jones ...

The pond also must take issue with you, or at least your header. It's a vexing argument as to whether stupidity is on the rise, or is at the same extraordinary level it's always been at since biblical days.

One thing's for sure. It'll be a long time before Sydney makes any decent contribution to the Mars program, at least if the Anglicans have any chance to maintain their rage about a decent, Adam-formed Christian education ...

(Below: the Kentucky creationist v. Darwin story spread a little further afield, turning up at Huffington Post here, where they appended some slides of creationist monkeys pondering life's biggest questions, and in other sites always willing to pay attention to wacky, zany fundamentalists, such as the Daily Kos, here).