Post b y Jim Newman
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This from NEWSER.
A group opposed to the teaching of evolution has won a major victory in the Deep South—of the Korean peninsula. A creationist group has successfully petitioned South Korean publishers to remove several references to evolution from high school textbooks, Nature reports. The group—set up by the US Institute for Creation Research in the ’80s as Christianity spread across South Korea—says it wants the “error” of evolution removed from textbooks to “correct” students’ view of the world.
Biologists complain that the government did not consult them on the issue, but merely forwarded the group’s petition to publishers. “When something like this comes to fruition, the scientific community can be caught flat-footed,” a director at the National Center for Science Education tells the New York Daily News. “Scientists are not by their nature political.” Polls show that some 40% of South Koreans don’t accept the theory of evolution, about the same proportion as in the US, but much greater than in Canada and in many European countries, io9 notes.
This from Huff
According to Nature.com, a group called the Society for Textbook Revise mounted an effective petition drive and is claiming credit for the removal of the evolution “error” from student’s textbooks in order to “correct” their understanding of the world.
Now what’s wild is that liberals bemoan and apologize for colonialism and imperialism and seek multiculturalism while bashing objective measures of morality and culture but do not complain about international missionary work. Why not stop modern colonialism in the form of missions? I hear well meaning liberals of all ilk provide pious support to parents who say their child is going to do missionary work. What would their reaction be if I said my child was going to bring imperialism to Africa? What if I framed the question correctly? My child is going to pressure indigents to follow Western religion whether they like it or not–oh no I won’t use force but rather psychological support along with material aid. Why is that better than saying we are going to teach children science, math, and psychology?
The current situation in South Korea is because of missionary work in the 1980′s. Not some ancient news of Franciscans or Jesuits but modern era missionary work. We have got to stop this predatorily imposition of religion under the guise of good works and emergency field support. Helping those in aid should not be an excuse to wear flair to convert and then dupe these poor people who are desperate for help by giving them some insane story supporting the religion of the day.
We give way too much latitude to mission work and frankly mission work is the right hand of colonialism. So much so that slaves when they became free, and then later citizens, clung to the religion of their missionaries like barnacles to wharf wood.
Modern missionary work is nothing more than modern colonialism and western religious imperialism. Multiculturalists who claim desires of neutrality in world cultures display their opposite view when they support the work of missionaries. When you are at soccer, baseball, or football and that mother or dad come up and start to brag about their child going into mission work be sure to state that you hope they are providing the science, math, and social skills necessary to economic and political growth–and not some lame religion that does nothing but sabotage their ability to succeed in the modern world, while emphasizing the supernatural fears of a country by concatenating yet another set of bronze-age, supernatural fears.
That you hope their promulgating religion doesn’t kill that country’s citizens’ ability to participate in the bigger world of international science, technology, and peace.
Jim Newman, bright and well
So at least a few (40% of South Korean) Asians aren’t as educationally rational and overachieving they’re cracked up to be. It is beyond comprehension that so many otherwise bright and seemingly rational people can embrace the obvious mythologies of religion.