The Good Atheist

I don’t like you, Alberta. You aren’t like all the other provinces in this country which are generally reasonable. In the rest of Canada, religion and government don’t mix. We generally try to be tolerant, polite, and nice. Now you apparently all want to be cowboys, having gone ahead and passed Bill 44. Congratulations, you have the distinction of being worst than Texas when it comes to education.

How is this even possible you ask? Well, Bill 44 requires that school boards notify parents when “controversial” subjects are being discussed in order to give them the chance to exclude their children from even listening to them. This refers almost exclusively to the two topics most Bible loving Albertans fear the most: Evolution and homosexuality.

Usually nothing ever happens in Canadian politics, so I’m actually shocked that this piece of legislator went through. It’s a testament to how terrified parents are that their kids might not inherit the same prejudices they have. Can you imagine how scared they must be that their children would actually be tolerant of homosexuality, or worse, think that human beings are related to Chimpanzees?

If Evolution is a controversy then so is any major scientific theory. How can anyone graduate high school in this country without learning that all living organisms descend from a common ancestor, and that species change and adapt themselves to their environment through minute mutations that give them a survival advantage? What are they going to answer on their biology exams: that the earth is only six thousand years old? How fucking embarrassingly stupid an answer is that?