Unleash the Hounds! (link roundup)

There are lots of articles and essays of interest to modern Pagans and Heathens out there, more than our team can write about in depth in any given week. Therefore, The Wild Hunt must unleash the hounds in order to round them all up. 

Ken Ham’s organization, Answers in Genesis (AiG), has filed a suit, making the claim that the National Park Service denied to one of its members a research permit due to his Christian beliefs. According to the case filed this month, Dr. Snelling of AiG was interested in collecting rock samples at the Grand Canyon National Park to “investigate geological phenomena from the perspective of one who believes in the truth of the Old and the New Testaments.” Park officials denied the permit, offering him alternative sites and reportedly calling the proposal “outlandish.” Americans United agrees with the decision, saying, “AiG as an organization has little regard for sound science.

Unleash the Hounds (link roundup)

There are lots of articles and essays of interest to modern Pagans and Heathens out there, more than our team can write about in depth in any given week. Therefore, The Wild Hunt must unleash the hounds in order to round them all up. 

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Just one day after PantheaCon closed its doors the 2017 conference, the city in which its hosted was devastated by unexpected and historic flooding. The L.A. Times called it “the worst flooding to hit Silicon Valley in a century.” In the weeks prior to PantheaCon, the area was hit with heavy rains, eventually causing the local reservoir to overflow and sending excess water into a creek that runs through the city.

The intersection of religion and public education

For most of the United States, public school is out of session, and children are outside making mudpies, playing ball, climbing trees and building Minecraft fortresses on small electronic gadgets. Nobody is thinking about school. Well, almost nobody. June is “Public School Religious Freedom Month.” Or, at least it is in Pennsylvania; the state in which the historic 1963 Schempp case began.

Creationism in the Schools: ACLU versus Hugoton

On April 22 and 23rd Hugoton Public Schools of south-western Kansas sponsored an in-school assembly called “Dinsosaur Lyceum.”  Designed for middle and high school students, the hour long assembly offered a detailed introduction to Paleontology and Earth Science complete with a mobile museum containing dinosaur skeletons, fossils and other pertinent replicas. On the surface the concept is excellent especially when you consider that rural Hugoton is a 3 hour drive from the nearest natural history museum. However, there is one big problem. The program was developed and hosted by The Creation Truth Foundation (CTF), an organization whose purpose is to help bring about “a return to all of realities of Biblical Creation” through education.  According to its mission statement, the non-profit’s goal is to combat what founder Dr. Thomas Sharp repeatedly labels a growing “paganistic” lifestyle in America.  “The West has become Pagan,” he warns, using the term pagan as a synonym for secular.  Together with his colleagues, Dr. Sharp has produced “a host of support materials and services to aid your delivery of a sound science curriculum based in Biblical Creation.”

A week prior to the Hugoton assemblies, the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri received a complaint from a concerned Hugoton citizen whose identity has never been publicly revealed. Shortly after, the ACLU’s Legal Director Doug Bonney and Attorney Heather Weaver sent a letter to Superintendent Mark Crawford calling for the immediate cancellation of CTF program.

“There’s Still Christianity in the Public Schools?”

Heck Yea! As a whole, we, Americans, live in a Christian-based culture. Our calendar alone demonstrates that fact. If this were a Jewish culture, we could shop at Wal-Mart on Dec 25th. If this were a Pagan culture, the 12,000 lb Times Square crystal ball would drop on Oct 31st – not Dec 31st.