Equivalencies: NOLA School District Embraces Evolution; Tenn. Preacher Says It Caused School Shootings

In the one step forward, one step back department, we have the heartening news that the school board for Orleans Parish, Louisiana, has voted to explicitly bar schools from teaching creationism or adopting “revisionist” history standards. On the other hand, a Tennessee pastor told his church last Sunday that mass shootings are the inevitable result of “government schools” which are nothing more than “mind-control centers” teaching little more than “junk about evolution” and “how to be a homo.” Still, the pastor is not (yet) running a school district, so maybe America came out slightly ahead on this one.

The rules in Orleans Parish explicitly reply to revised Texas history standards, which insist that Joseph McCarthy was fully justified in seeing commies everywhere and that emphasize the contributions of Phyllis Schlafly and the National Rifle Association to American freedom. The new rules state:

“No history textbook shall be approved which has been adjusted in accordance with the State of Texas revisionist guidelines nor shall any science textbook be approved which presents creationism or intelligent design as science or scientific theories,”

Further, a second rule bars teachers from adding creationism to the classroom on their own initiative:

“No teacher of any discipline of science shall teach any aspect of religious faith as science or in a science class,” it reads. “No teacher of any discipline of science shall teach creationism or intelligent design in classes designated as science classes.”

So there you have some happy news! And now, your Dok Zoom sings the blues: In Fayetteville, Tennessee, pastor Sam Morris of Old Paths Baptist Church had a very serious explanation as to why someone might shoot 26 people with a semiautomatic rifle:

“We get all up in arms about 20 children being shot in a day care but we don’t give one good-glory rip about the 4,000 that were removed violently from the wombs of their mothers [in abortion procedures] the same day,” he explained. “I believe they use children and Christmas and all that to pull on our heart strings about gun control. That’s what it’s all about.”

Because obviously, mass shootings are never about guns or mental health. Nothing new there. So, Pastor Morris, what else led to this massacre?

“Why do you still send your kids to the governmental schools?” the pastor asked the congregation. “What’s behind this shooting that we saw on Dec. 14 in Newtown, Connecticut and the other one’s like it? What’s going on. Well, number one, deception… I got news for you, when you kicked God out of schools, you’re going to be judged for that.”

Morris insisted that “humanism” in schools taught Lanza that he was God and “he can just go blow away anybody he wants.”

Yes, we remember the day they went over that. It was in You Are God 101. We took turns practicing our maniacal laughter, too. Morris then went on to explain why even the very act of biological classification is of the Devil:

“When I got in high school, man, I started learning all this kingdom, phylum stuff, all this junk about evolution,” he recalled. “And I want to tell you what evolution teaches — here’s the bottom line — that you’re an animal. That’s what it teaches. So, you’re an animal, you can act like an animal. Amen.”

Got that? he just out-Broun’d Paul Broun himself!

“So, here you are, you’re an animal and you’re a god! So, what are we going to teach you about in school? Well, we can teach you about sex, we can teach you how to rebel to your parents, we can teach you how to be a homo! But we’re definitely not going to teach you about the word of God! Amen.”

We are almost starting to think he didn’t pay especially close notes in school. That is almost certainly it. Or maybe we were the ones not paying attention, but we are pretty sure we’d have remembered being told that we were animal-gods. (Your Doktor Zoom would want to be Coyote the Trickster, because fun!)

Pastor Morris closed with a rousing defense of Christian homeschooling and carrying a gun at all time:

“They think homeschoolers are a bunch of crazies, man. But I’m going to tell you something, I’ve never seen a police officer or a metal detector at a home school. Never. Amen. Now, there’s plenty of guns at my home school. Amen. I guarantee you we’re not going to have a mass shooting at any of the schools that are represented in this building today. I guarantee you, if there is a shooting, it won’t last very long. Amen.”

Say, Pastor Morris? You know who else was a homeschooler with plenty of guns in her home? Yeah, Nancy Lanza. Amen.

Gluttons for audio punishment can listen to Pastor Morris’s rant at RawStory.

[ThinkProgress / RawStory]

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