The Nappy Cat Chronicles

Dazed and confused at the Brunswick County school board meeting in Brunswick County, NC:

“It’s really a disgrace for the state school board to impose evolution on our students without teaching creationism,” county school board member Jimmy Hobbs said at Tuesday’s meeting. “The law says we can’t have Bibles in schools, but we can have evolution, of the atheists.”

The topic came up after county resident Joel Fanti told the board he thought it was unfair for evolution to be taught as fact, saying it should be taught as a theory because there’s no tangible proof it’s true.

“I wasn’t here 2 million years ago,” Fanti said. “If evolution is so slow, why don’t we see anything evolving now?”

The board allowed Fanti to speak longer than he was allowed, and at the end of his speech he volunteered to teach creationism and received applause from the audience.

When he walked away, school board Chairwoman Shirley Babson took the podium and said another state had tried to teach evolution and creationism together and failed, and that the school system must teach by the law.

“Evolution is taught because that’s what the General Assembly tells us to teach,” Babson said, adding that she doesn’t agree with it, but that students must learn it to graduate.

Now, I’m 100% sure that Joel thinks he’s a nice guy. He runs some sort of nonprofit ministry and it looks like he and his wife have adopted two children and live as pleasantly fruity Christians:

I have been and continue to be a blessed man. God has given me a family that I am thankful for. I have been married nearly 13 years. I have been back in North Carolina since 1997. My focus is living the life that is pleasing to God so that it leads others to Him.

There are a lot of earnest Joels out there who will continuously organize and whine. The Joels are half of why I support the teaching of the creation myth in place of evolution provided the school board approves.

The consequences of teaching creation as science encompass the other half of my support. It’s fun to organize and it’s fun to fight. But, the darkness that follows the expulsion of scientific inquiry is not fun. And, if the residents of these school districts are not brave enough to confront the lies of the Joels, they deserve to suffer under the patriarchy and the emotional and psychological brutality of organized religion.