I started school in a two-room building: grades 1 to 4 in one room; grades 5 to 8 in the other. One teacher in each room taught all four grades. I don’t remember first grade very well – the teacher left at the end of the year. I am pretty sure it was not my fault. Now keep in mind that reading the Bible every morning was the standard for all grades at that time. But my teacher in grades two to four went a little above and beyond the normal practice. As a member of a “plain” sect, she considered it her duty to lead the little heathens to Christianity. She offered a free Bible to all students who managed to memorize 20 verses. I memorized my verses – “Jesus saves” was my favorite because it was the shortest – and got my Bible with my twenty underlined in red. That would be illegal today (not the underlining), and rightly so. Teachers may not teach religion, although contrary to what many folks seem to think, students may bring their Bibles to school, read them, and pray their
When your car needs repairs, do you ask the first person you meet on the street what to do? Certainly not – you take it to an auto mechanic. When your home heating system breaks down in the middle of the coldest night of the year, do you call your doctor? Of course not – you call a heating expert. It would appear that calling an expert for help with situations beyond our normal experience is just common sense. So why is it that the farther removed a problem is from our everyday experience, the more likely it is that we will rely on our “gut feelings” or self-proclaimed “experts” for help? But that seems to be the case. Seemingly normal people will ignore the warnings of tens of thousands of scientists who have devoted their entire adult lives to studying climate change and the associated problems, and heed the anti-science ranting of talk radio pundits. As with any large group there are a few scientists who swim against the tide, and when one of these is discovered, his op