And the band played on..

Here is a fascinating insight into the mind of the fundamentalist Christian; a Kansas school marching band thought they were being distinctive by printing some tee shirts for an upcoming performance at a festival called "Brass Evolutions 2009"; the shirts had the following picture on them, i.e. depicting the ascent of man but with a trumpet twist.

Unfortunately for the band they ran smack bang into the wall of ignorance that is Christian evolution denial; several "concerned" parents objected, and in what looks like a blind panic the top brass of the school capitulated and ordered the band to destroy all the offending garments. In a statement the teacher involved with the band said,

"I was disappointed with the image on the shirt. I don’t think evolution should be associated with our school."

Let that little gem sink in for a second, this is a teacher dismissing at a stroke one of the pillars of modern science education over an ancient story about an apple and a talking snake. In equally baffling statements one of the senior officials of the school said that "the district is required by law to remain neutral where religion is concerned", so apparently the staff at this school believe evolution meets the criteria necessary to be considered a religion.

The additional pinch of irony here is that this particular picture conveys a bunch of "evolutionary" ideas that are simply wrong, first we have evolution portrayed as a directed process, i.e. that modern humans somehow represent the goal of evolution (i.e. why aren't Orang-utans the goal of evolution?) and secondly that humans descended from modern apes, again wrong.

Of course no one really cares about a bunch of tee shirts in a mid-western town that no one has heard of outside of Missouri, however it illustrates nicely how even in the most secular country in the world, religion still operates in the teeth of opposition to reason.