His Noodly Appendage

I saw a very cool website yesterday. It argued that the Kansas State Board of Education should adopt 'Flying Spaghetti Monsterism' alongside Creationism and Evolution in schools. As a result, I have written a letter to all of the members of the Kansas Education Board. I had no right to do so. It's none of my business.

Here's what I wrote:

Hi,

This is none of my business.

I am writing to you in large part because I was entertained by a webpage that I'm sure you're aware of, that parodies your position on teaching intelligent design by proposing a flying spaghetti monster (http://www.venganza.org/). Even though this joke was entirely at your expense, you seem like smart enough people to at least see the humour.

However, my position is not that of the spaghetti monster parodist.

I am not a resident of the United States of America - let alone Kansas. I am a New Zealander, and I live in the UK.

Nor do I share your religious beliefs. I find myself in a complex theological position that, for want of a better term, is best expressed as rational agnosticism.

To my mind, the Bible is a far greater book than merely a chronology of events and instruction manual all rolled into one. Even medieval scholars had ways of studying the bible that operated on several intellectual levels. Direct signification was the crassest and least interesting of these.

I am at a loss as to how thinking Christians can read Revelations purely as allegory and Genesis purely as literal history - and nothing else. This, to me, seems an offensively poor regard in which to hold this book - no matter who you think wrote it.

I am not the parent of a child in your school system - though I am a parent of a child in a school system.

So… there is no reason for you to entertain what I have to say. But I would like to say it anyway.

Teaching what you euphemistically call "Intelligent Design" is based on a false ontological approach. It doesn't matter whether Darwin was right or whether the world was made in 6 days or whether somehow both are true. That is, of course it matters, but not in the context of education.

Education is not about teaching children what is true.
It is not about teaching children WHAT to think.
Education is about teaching children HOW to think.

Teaching religion as science undermines this.

By all means, teach the bible. Teach about the other religions too. Teach geography. Teach languages. Anything that teaches children that there are other people in the world and that they have different bases for thinking the way they do. Teach understanding. Teach literature. Teach mathematics. Teach curiosity. Teach physics. Teach evolution.

What you must focus on is fostering prepared, agile, accomplished, creative and compassionate minds - not automatons who will accept dogma.

The Christian faith is robust and can withstand all sorts of rigorous questioning. Indoctrination is based on fear. A truth need not fear falsehood. As a famous Christian said - there must be something pretty powerful in Christianity if it's managed to survive 2000 years of Christians. Give your children the capacity to ask intelligent questions - and then you can help them find intelligent answers.

Children do not require collections of facts - and they certainly don't need exclusionary world views. They need ways of thinking - ways of understanding the world - frameworks for questioning. That's your job - not the distribution of moral imperatives.

And I do hope you show the children at your school the Flying Spaghetti Monster website and let it spark interesting conversations about parody, media, art, marketing (note the t-shirts for sale), online culture, faith, legislation, affirmative action - and all sorts of other fascinating topics that children would do very well to consider.

My apologies for poking my nose into your business when I clearly have no right to do so. I wish you all the best.

Sincerely,

Andrew Dubber