Atheist's holiday

I, too, was tempted to respond to Russ Bray's Dec. 11 letter in the Gazette, but this writer has done so with such grace and goodwill that I am glad to have stayed out of it.

It is odd, and significant, when people are tolerant of other religions but intolerant of those with none at all. To me, unbelief is like inability to fly. I can flap my arms all I want, but it won't get me off the ground. No doubt, it is a great benefit to have faith in some organized religion, but belief has to come from deep within, and if it isn't there, I know of no way to make it show up. Perhaps unbelief is genetic, like homosexual orientation.

And no good Christian would ever belittle a gay man for being the way God made him, right?

Dim wit

The sad opportunists at the MT GOP E-brief quote with apparent approval a letter to the editor (newspaper unnamed) attacking Gov. Schweitzer for his "assertion that Christians, believing in the biblical account of creation, should not be allowed to serve in the state legislature."

The letter writer may have been dim enough to think he was telling the truth. Later in the letter, he writes, "In the Governor’s view, if you are a Christian, you are not as worthy as the non-Christian members within your own or other races, and that, my friends, is racism." The writer's inability to distinguish between religious discrimination and racism can hardly be the product of a rigorous mind.

But the E-briefers surely ought to know better. The writer's apparent reference was to Schweitzer's brief run-in with Roger Koopman, who made the case for a 6,000-year-old Earth. Schweitzer supposedly said that Montana didn't need people like that in the Legislature. Koopman saw that as an attack on his religion, but he had specifically argued that he didn't believe in a young Earth for religious reasons but based on scientific evidence.

That destroys his case. Mr. Koopman is entitled to whatever religious beliefs he wants. But he can't claim a religious exemption from attacks on his scientific beliefs. By their nature, scientific claims are open to challenge. If they aren't, then they aren't science.

Mr. Koopman, and the E-Briefers, want to be able to put up any old thing they fancy as unassailable scientific fact. And they want to be label anyone who disagrees as a religious bigot. But the dishonesty of their tactics shows who the real bigots are.

Whew

The Outpost has been put to bed for the week. I turned in final grades for Rocky Mountain College this morning, and I have a week before final grades are due for MSU-Billings. So I'm getting a bit of a breather today. I wasn't sure I would be able to hold my breath for a whole semester, but somehow I managed it.

So what will I do with today's break? Well, I won't waste it blogging!

Perfect solution

A student paper I read the other day said that one cause of teacher retention problems is a "lack of insufficient funding." And I thought, this man can fix that problem!