Tuesday, May 10, 2005
A few blocks from our Kansas home, in a field near the elementary school both of Red State Rabble's daughters attended, is a small limestone outcroping. Over the years, we've often walked the dogs there, and sat a moment to rest and wonder at the fossil shells embeded in that sedimentary rock.
Kansas was once covered by a shallow inland sea that stretched from here to the Colorado shore. It was home to giant sharks, a fearsome marine reptile called the mosasaur, and pteranodons, a flying reptile. If, like RSR, you're interested in this sort of thing, there is a fabulous website, "Oceans of Kansas Paleontology: Fossils from the Late Cretaceous Western Interior Sea" maintained by Mike Everhart that is loaded with pictures of the sharp-toothed mosasaur fossils and other fascinating information about the history of that remote time.
Red State Rabble finds it highly ironic that the battle line between science and reason on the one hand, and zealotry and ignorance on the other, have been drawn in a state that is so extraordinarily rich in the fossil evidence of our evolutionary past.
RSR has seen the excitement and curiosity in our daughter's eyes at the sight of marine fossils so far from the sea. The worst thing about intelligent design, and its country cousin, creationism, is that it seeks, quite openly, to deny our children a chance to experience for themselves that sense of wonder and to replace it with some stern, all-knowing, Old Testament God.
We don't hear much about the "Sermon on the Mount" here in Kansas anymore.
Kansas was once covered by a shallow inland sea that stretched from here to the Colorado shore. It was home to giant sharks, a fearsome marine reptile called the mosasaur, and pteranodons, a flying reptile. If, like RSR, you're interested in this sort of thing, there is a fabulous website, "Oceans of Kansas Paleontology: Fossils from the Late Cretaceous Western Interior Sea" maintained by Mike Everhart that is loaded with pictures of the sharp-toothed mosasaur fossils and other fascinating information about the history of that remote time.
Red State Rabble finds it highly ironic that the battle line between science and reason on the one hand, and zealotry and ignorance on the other, have been drawn in a state that is so extraordinarily rich in the fossil evidence of our evolutionary past.
RSR has seen the excitement and curiosity in our daughter's eyes at the sight of marine fossils so far from the sea. The worst thing about intelligent design, and its country cousin, creationism, is that it seeks, quite openly, to deny our children a chance to experience for themselves that sense of wonder and to replace it with some stern, all-knowing, Old Testament God.
We don't hear much about the "Sermon on the Mount" here in Kansas anymore.
