Woo for kids

1. Girl Scout honored to teaching kids creationism – A Wisconsin teen, Annie Wichman, received the Girl Scouts of America’s highest honor, the Gold Award, for. . .

. . .amassing a library of creation literature for her church, building a model of Noah’s ark, and teaching creationism to elementary schoolers. She called her project Alternate Universe.

Now according to the Girl Scouts of America, this was not an endorsement of creationism but rather the award honors personal fulfillment and community involvement:

“…something that a girl can be passionate about—in thought, deed, and action. The project is something that fulfills a need within a girl’s community (whether local or global), creates change, and hopefully, is something that becomes ongoing.”

But it’s interesting how this at least superficially seems to mirror a topic I was discussing yesterday, Bill Maher being given the Richard Dawkins Award for promoting atheism. I disagreed with the choice given Maher’s infamous status as someone who promotes quack medicine while condemning real medicine. But a lot of people argued that he’s strictly being honored for his efforts with atheism and that his other beliefs shouldn’t play a factor in the decision regardless of how “religulous” they are. In this instance, I don’t actually know how the Gold Award process works and if every girl who completes their project receives the same award. But if not and this is a special award that she was being singled out for achieving, I would have definitely thought twice about choosing a girl who promoted pseudoscience as her project to be the recipiant of the high honor, lest it appear to be a tacit endorsement of evolution denialism.

2. The Secret for kids – The writers of the scam known as “The Secret” are now out to get your kids with a new book called “The Secret to Teen Power.”

3. A Christian couple, Ginny and Jim Maziarka of Wisconsin, are out to cleanse their local library of weapons of mass destruction that I like to call books. Specifically, sexually explicit books. Even more specifically, books that talk about homosexuality. And even more specifically, books with the title “Baby Be-bop,” about a gay teenager, which they claim is “explicitly vulgar, racial and anti-Christian”.