I am sure that anyone reading this blog is aware of the elective Bible course that is to be offered in the Odessa, Texas school district. While I don’t have any particular problems with this course (it might even open the eyes of some kids), I dislike the manner in which it was being justified, so here is the letter that I sent to the Editor:

An article on the elective Bible course to be offered in the Odessa (front page April 28) caught my eye. Mr. Johnson made a comment, on the Odessa bible course, that “How can students understand Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” or Handel’s “Messiah”, if they don’t understand the reference from which they came?” This is sloppy or biased reasoning. I could easily counter with, “How can students understand Cranch’s “Judgment of Paris” or Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyries”, if they don’t understand the references these came from? Since the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools likes to bandy statistics around to show the strength of their efforts, I feel that the full story should be shown. There are approximately 105,000 school districts and 38,000,000 Junior High and High School students in this country and ONLY 292 districts and 107,000 students have opted for a bible class. That is .03 % of the school districts and students in the U.S. opting for such. I know that taken alone, their figures look good, but when the full picture is shown, you see that either the National Council is ignorant of the truth or they are attempting to manipulate the outcome through prevarication. I have no problem with a elective Bible course, it might even do some good; I just have a problem with inane justifications and misuse of statistics!

The Texas legislature is attempting to pass a bill that will make it illegal for Homosexuals to foster a child. A local “loving” Christ Cultist wrote a letter to support that attempt that was chockfull of hate and skewed statistics. Here is my rebuttal to that letter:

Mr. Williams’ letter (Apr 28) brought to mind the saying of a wise old man, “There are lies, d*amn lies, and then there are statistics!” His myriad of very skewed and biased figures, on percentages of Gays that molest children, percentage of population that is Gay and how often a sister or a daughter of a lesbian will likewise be a lesbian, are damning indeed. That is, until you realize that 99.2% of American child molesters are Christians and 76% of the American population is Christian, with 28% of those Christians attending church at least once a week! Now the data tells me that we can not trust Christians to foster children, that Gays are much more trustworthy as foster parents. Can you see how statistics can be used? Mr. Williams needs to understand that we are actually discussing people here, not numbers in someone’s ledger or in a report. These are individuals with all the desires, likes, dislikes and basic beliefs of the average American. For every child molester, Gay or Straight, there are several thousand people of either persuasion that are not molesters that are decent caring parents of theirs or foster children. A person’s sexual persuasion is no guarantee that the individual is a “safe” choice as a foster parent. There are many more ways to screw up a child’s life than molesting them or “making them gay”. A quick look around, at all the social dysfunctional people in this world, will show that!

I don’t know about you folks, but I hate skewed data and inane justifications from people with an agenda - religion or not! - Heimdall