Kentucky Grants Creationist Theme Park $43M In Tax Incentives

The state of Kentucky has granted a "creationist theme park" $43 million in tax incentives.

Plans for the construction of a "creationist theme park" in Kentucky are moving right along, with the state's tourism board on Thursday granting the project $43.1 million in tax incentives.

The theme park -- dubbed Ark Encounter -- is backed by both Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear (D) and Answers is Genesis, a Christian organization that also built a similar attraction, the Creation Museum.

Read more at TPMMuckraker

9 Bills That Would Put Creationism in the Classroom

State governments are grappling with massive budget deficits, overburdened social programs, and mountains of deferred spending. But never mind all that. For some conservative lawmakers, it's the perfect time to legislate the promotion of creationism in the classroom. In the first three months of 2011, nine creationism-related bills have been introduced in seven states—that's more than in any year in recent memory:

Read more at Mother Jones

Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom

Did you know that Sunday, January 16 marked the anniversary of the enacting of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, authored by Thomas Jefferson?  This law provided for the separation of religion and state.  Take a moment to read it over.  Here is an excerpt:

Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

Read more at The Religious Freedom Page

New high school biology books recommended by state

A state panel has recommended that the top education board in Louisiana adopt new high school biology textbooks that teach evolution as fact, with many who testified before the board stating they were against emphasizing evolution as a theory, or the inclusion of intelligent design.

A state panel recommended Friday that Louisiana's top education board adopt a new batch of high school biology textbooks, despite complaints that evolution is taught too matter-of-factly in the books. 

An advisory council, made up of educators and lawmakers, voted 8-4 to recommend that the new life science textbooks be approved for use in high school classrooms. The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will make a final decision on the books next month. 

"There is no major research university in this country that teaches intelligent design or anything like that. It is simply not science," said Kevin Carman, dean of the LSU College of Science. "We need our textbooks to be focused on what is scientifically accurate and not religion." 

 Read more at The Times-Picayune

Texas education board to consider rule on Islam's portrayal in textbooks

Following the previous controversy raised by the new Texas school book standards earlier this year (including amending the teaching of slavery, the Civil Rights movement, and inclusion of the "conservative resurgence of 1980s and 1990s," the Moral Majority, Phyllis Schafly, and the NRA), the Texas Board of Education is meeting next week to address what they call "Muslim propaganda" in world history books.

Just when it appeared the State Board of Education was done with the culture wars, the panel is about to wade into the issue of what students should learn about Islam.

The board will consider a resolution next week that would warn publishers not to push a pro-Islamic, anti-Christian viewpoint in world history textbooks.

Read more at Dallas Morning News

Life Begins At Conception, Says New Mo. Law

A new law in Missouri now declares that life begins at conception.

It's a question that has perplexed philosophers, theologians and scientists for thousands of years.

Pythagorean Greeks, early Christian church fathers, Talmudic rabbis, Sunni and Shia scholars, Hindu Brahmin and modern bioethicists have grappled with the fundamental, ultimately unknowable, mystery: At what point in our biological development are we infused with a soul?

At what point do we become human?

Missouri lawmakers have declared their answer. By withholding both his signature and his veto, Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon signaled that he agreed and recently allowed the legislative answer to become state law.

Read more at Huffington Post

S.D. candidate urges pastors to endorse candidates

Republican gubernatorial candidate Gordon Howie on Friday urged South Dakota churches and their pastors Friday to defy federal law by endorsing candidates.

By law, churches that endorse or oppose candidates or parties risk losing their tax-exempt status.
Howie, a state senator from Rapid City, said he believes the 50-year-old tax law is an unconstitutional violation of freedom of speech.

"Pastors have a constitutional right to speak freely. When you look at our history, you see the people who led the charge for independence, the people who led the charge in civil rights, those were spiritual leaders, those were pastors," Howie said.

Howie faces four other candidates in the June 8 primary to determine the Republican Party's candidate for governor in the fall election.

Cross at Center of Legal Dispute Disappears

A seven-foot-tall Latin cross in the middle of both the Mojave Desert and a Supreme Court case on the separation of church and state has been stolen, federal officials said Tuesday.

The cross, made of metal tubing reinforced with concrete and bolted to a base on a rock, about 200 miles east of here, was discovered missing Monday.

A large plywood box had covered the top of the cross for several years, making it look like a big wooden lollipop, while a lawsuit over whether a religious symbol could stand on public land made its way through the courts. That box disappeared Saturday, said Linda Slater, a spokeswoman for the Mojave National Preserve, where the cross is, or was, located.

Does the National Day of Prayer Violate Church-State Separation?

Today, in cities across the country, public events will mark the National Day of Prayer 2010.

There is no problem when Americans -- including public officials -- gather to pray. In fact, for people of faith, every day should be a day of prayer. Questions properly arise, however, when the government, by an official act of Congress, urges citizens to engage in a religious exercise.

As citizens, Americans share a long history and proud tradition of religious liberty. As individuals with diverse beliefs, however, Americans do not share a common religion or participate in the same religious practices. A day of prayer might be appropriately encouraged by our country's various religious leaders -- but it should not be called for by civil magistrates, Congress, or even the president.

Supreme Court Sides With Interior on Mojave Desert Cross

The Supreme Court ruled today that Congress and the Interior Department acted properly when they used a land transfer to solve a dispute over a cross on display in the federal Mojave National Preserve.

The case, Salazar v. Buono, stemmed from a 2001 lawsuit challenging a cross erected in 1934 by the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Frank Buono, an Oregon resident who had served as an assistant superintendent in the park and was a regular visitor, claimed the memorial to World War I veterans was unconstitutional because it gave the impression that the government was advancing a particular religion.

By a 5-4 margin, the Supreme Court ruled today that lower federal courts were wrong to dismiss as "evasion" the federal government's effort to transfer the land underneath the religious symbol. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the opinion (pdf) for the majority, arguing that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had failed to consider the profound "dilemma" posed by the case.

The Religious Case for Church-State Separation

Here we go again.  On April 15 a federal judge in Wisconsin ruled that the National Day of Prayer, slated for May 6, was unconstitutional. The usual voices have been heard rising in objection (Sarah Palin and Franklin Graham among them) and, proving yet again that President Obama is no radical, the administration announced its own plans to challenge the decision. One can make a reasonable case that the weight of custom puts the fairly banal idea of an occasionless, generic day of prayer (how many of you even knew that we have had such a day every year since 1952?) on the safe side of the Establishment Clause. But the right is, as ever, taking things a beat too far. Lest anyone try to convince you that God should be separated from the state, Palin said, our Founding Fathers, they were believers.

Governor Palin's history is rather shaky. Religious liberty—the freedom to worship as one chooses, or not to worship—is a central element of the American creed. Yes, many of the Founders were believing, observant Christians. But to think of them as apostles in knee breeches or as passionate evangelicals is a profound misreading of the past. In many ways their most wondrous legacy was creating the foundations of a culture of religious diversity in which the secular and the religious could live in harmony, giving faith a role in the life of the nation in which it could shape us without strangling us. On the day George Washington left Philadelphia to take command of the Continental Army, the Rev. William Smith preached a sermon at the city's Christ Church, saying: "Religion and liberty must flourish or fall together in America. We pray that both may be perpetual."

Textbook cases - As Texas shows, school book content must not be left to interest groups. California, take note.

Oh, those disingenuous Texans. Pretending to bring ideological balance to history textbooks when what they're really doing is weighting the books so heavily with conservative mores, you'd expect the state's backpack-laden school children to list to the right.

If the revisions proposed by the conservative faction of the Texas Board of Education are adopted in May, the state's textbooks will raise the study of the inaugural speech of Confederate President Jefferson Davis to the same level as that of Abraham Lincoln. They will downplay the role of Thomas Jefferson, in part because he coined the phrase "separation of church and state," and will imply that the Founding Fathers were Christian even though historians have found evidence that not all of them held Christian beliefs. The internment of a relatively small number of people of German and Italian heritage during World War II would be emphasized to make it appear as though there wasn't a racial component to interning more than 100,000 Japanese Americans. This amounts to just plain disinformation.

U.S. history textbooks could soon be flavored heavily with Texas conservatism

The nation’s public school curriculum may be in for a Texas-sized overhaul, if the Lone Star state’s influential recommendations for changes to social studies, economics and history textbooks are fully ratified later this spring. Last Friday, in a 10-to-5 vote split right down party lines, the Texas State Board of Education approved some controversial right-leaning alterations to what most students in the state—and by extension, in much of the rest of the country—will be studying as received historical and social-scientific wisdom. After a public comment period, the board will vote on final recommendations in May.