The re-election of George Bush seems to have encouraged the Religous Right to become more vocal. I used to identify myself as a Republican, but with the RR become more and more intwined with Republican politics, I decided I didn't want to be there any longer.

Now, the RR is challenging school text books that teach the Theory of Evolution. They want teachers to add a section of Intelligent Design to the curriculum. And by Intelligent Design, they mean "On the first day God created the heaven and Earth." They don't mean to teach Native American creation beleifs, Buddhist creation beliefs, Hindi creation beliefs, or Australian Aborignal creation beliefs. And they sure don't mean that they will teach the Theory of Evolution is Sunday School to balance things.

Most creationists argue that evolution is not a fact, but a theory, and that teachers should be teaching it that way, and expressing other teachers. But I don't hear them saying Physics teachers should be teaching alternatives to the Theory of Gravity. I don't hear them saying that since the Copernican model of the solar system isn't described in the bible, we should go back to the Ptolemaic version.

A couple of decades ago, the late Isaac Asimov wrote a short story that was published in his magazine. In it Moses was dictating the opening pages of Genesis to his brother Aaron. He started off by saying "Sixty billion years ago. . ." Aaron objects. He says that papyrus costs to much to record Sixty billion years of history. He has to trim the story. When Moses asks how much, Aaron looks at the papyrus on hand and says "Six days."

That's the theory I subscribe to: the Universe was created by, for lack of a better word, a Master Watchmaker, who has let the Universe run by a set of laws and principles. As humanity learns more, we understand the laws and principles better, but we still need to learn more. I don't have any problem looking at the latest dinosaur fossil discovered in Montana and saying, wow, isn't God amazing?

So as the RR tries to push us back into the caves of ignorance, I find myself more and more distanced from the Republican party. The sad part is, I'm in the monority.