023 – Transcript

Just Right Episode 023

Air Date: September 20, 2007

Host: Bob Metz

Created using AI. Errors may be present

Station Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this program are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of 94.9 CHRW.

Clip (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “In the Hands of the Prophets”)

Vedek Winn:
Do you believe the Celestial Temple of the Prophets exists within the passage?

Keiko O’Brien:
I respect that the Bajoran people believe that it does.

Vedek Winn:
But that’s not what you teach.

Keiko O’Brien:
No, I don’t teach Bajoran spiritual beliefs. That’s your job. Mine is to open the children’s minds to history, to literature, to mathematics, to science.

Vedek Winn:
You are opening the children’s minds to blasphemy and I cannot permit it to continue.

Bob Metz:
Good morning London. It is Thursday, September 20th. I’m Bob Metz and this is Just Right on CHRW 94.9 FM, where we will be with you from now until noon.

No, no, not right wing. Just right. Good morning and welcome to the show.

Yes, it is Just Right. I’m Bob Metz. You can call in 519-661-3600 if you want to join in on the conversation. And before I forget, this being September 20th, I should certainly take the point to wish my mother a very happy birthday. She’s 79 years young today and if I get to be that old, good for me. And she’s still kicking and babysitting the kids and the grandkids and all that kind of stuff, so we should all have it so good.

Happy birthday, mom. But aside from that, I don’t think she’d be too happy with some of the subject matter I’m picking today. Because if you didn’t guess from the opening clip there, we’re going to talk about faith funding, the general state of education in Ontario, the whole concept of creationism coming into the school system possibly, and other issues regarding faith teaching. These two issues are kind of overlapping in so many ways. Faith-based school funding has emerged as the most controversial issue so far in the run-up to the October 10th vote, reads the front page of the London Free Press on September 15th. If you saw that feature on the faith debate poll shows it’s a hot potato, written by James Wallace and Antonella Artuso. Yeah, it has been a hot potato.

I don’t know that it’s really that hot a potato. I think the real reason that the faith debate has become such a controversial issue in this provincial election is because it has emerged as virtually the only one that most voters can grasp onto that really distinguishes Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals from John Tory’s Progressive Conservatives. If you’ve been watching the newspaper and commentary analysis of each of the party planks, especially in the Post and other papers like that, you’ll see almost identical budgetary figures being offered, commitments to the same social programs, all those programs that Canadians have grown to love, and both are on the green with envy bandwagon, and each is committed to a tax-funded state monopoly on the provision of healthcare services and education services. So, on the issue of faith funding, Ontario voters can finally grasp onto something that actually appears different to them.

It seems different between the two parties, other than their own personal scandals or their personalities as such. So finally, in Canada, here in Ontario, we have a controversial issue, and of course, if you’ve been following Canadian politics, you know that controversial means we have a disagreement of opinion, and that is what’s considered controversial in Canada and in Ontario. Tory proposes to spend $400 million to bring 53,000 students in Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and other faith-based schools under the umbrella of public education, reads that Free Press article. To qualify for funding, those schools would have to accept conditions, including standardized testing, provincially accredited teachers, and agree to teach Ontario’s curriculum. Tory has proposed to appoint former Premier Bill Davis to head a commission to look at the process to integrate faith-based schools into the public system. And of course, Bill Davis is the guy that extended Catholic full funding to the high school system, and also gave us many of the implementations of the Hall-Dennis Report, which led to child-centered learning and a growing illiteracy rate in the province of Ontario, which we’ll be talking about a little later. It’s a bad idea, McGuinty says. He says, we want our kids coming together in the same classroom, sitting side by side from various faiths. So the McGuinty plan is to celebrate diversity through sameness.

There you go. Is it really a different plan from the Tory plan? Another article just for consideration before I draw into some major conclusions here is one by Christina Blizzard, also appearing in the London Free Press, September 15, in conjunction with Antonella Artuso. Northerners Grill Premier about forestry support. That’s what the headline says, but the content is not that much about forestry. Apparently at a Sudbury Rotary Club meeting in Thunder Bay, Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty said that extending full funding for faith-based schools would mean $500 million less for public education and put at risk funding to keep Northern and rural schools open.

In his own commentary appearing in the National Post on September 10, McGuinty wrote, It seems the Tories still haven’t learned. They would pull $500 million, that’s half a billion dollars, out of the publicly funded schools and give this to private religious schools instead. Now I think really that’s kind of convoluted thinking and a little misleading. If he wants to do what he wants to do, say take over the faith-funded schools and integrate them into the public school system, he would still have those extra students to deal with and they would still cost approximately the same amount of money to educate. Any extra expenditure on the part of the government would come out of the taxpayers’ pocket, not necessarily the school system or the health care system. All of these things are competing for tax dollars. So you can’t say when they’re going to spend more on X that it will definitively come out of Y, because really it’s all coming out of one pocket and that’s the taxpayers’ pocket.

But that isn’t even really the point. If, as McGuinty argues, it would be better to have everyone under the same system, a tax-funded monopoly, then the government would still have to spend more in order to accommodate the extra students leaving the private schools and filling the state schools. So you’ve got the extra expense right there. And although McGuinty is trying to make the faith funding issue about money, this is really one issue that’s not about the money, because both options offered by the PCs and Liberals—funding private schools directly or absorbing the students from the private schools into the state schools—would essentially cost the same. I don’t think the money issue is that dramatic. Each option adds government expenditure. Leaving things as they are now at the very least does not increase government expenditure per se, because right now the kids in the private schools in question are having their education paid for by their parents and perhaps by other private interests.

What I think the issue is really about, and we’re seeing some definitive declarations to this point, is about what will be taught in the schools. And one must never forget that he who pays the piper calls the tune. It’s an old saying, and it holds true. So it’s interesting because I just heard in a radio interview a London Liberal incumbent, Khalil Ramal, who made it very clear: it’s not about funding, it’s about bringing people together. He said it’s the best way to integrate people, have a society with one vision, one future. Basically, that was what he was seeing as the advantage to having everyone under one school system. Now of course, Tory’s scheme would achieve the same end, really, because if in order to accept taxpayer funds for the faith-based schools, they have to meet certain conditions that will be imposed by the government relating to curricula, etc. So really, in the end, I think that the faith-based funding issue is less about the money for the government than it is about integration.

We are the Borg, resistance is futile, you have to join the collective and be the same as everyone. But to drive the point home, locally here we have of course Freedom Party leader Paul McKeever running in the riding of London West here in London, and in a presentation that he gave to one of the local groups here in London, he made it very clear that it’s already been decided what can happen when government starts funding supposedly private schools. And in a press release issued yesterday, he warned that the Progressive Conservative proposals to fund religious schools with taxpayer dollars would deprive participating religious schools of constitutionally entrenched protections of their religious freedom.

Now you might say, well, how can that be? Well, basically the courts have already ruled that once a school accepts tax funding, its policies, curriculum and learning environment can be overruled if they discriminate on the basis of such things as even religious belief or custom. And if you want to have an example of how this has already been enacted and it happened in the Catholic school system, there was a case brought before the courts referred to as Hall versus Powers. It happened in 2002 when a fellow named Marc Hall, who was a gay male student at a Catholic high school in Oshawa, commenced legal proceedings against the Durham Catholic District School Board because it refused to allow him to bring his boyfriend to the high school prom.

Now, of course, homosexuality is basically contrary to Catholicism, and the school resisted this kind of thing, but of course once the courts decided they had to let him in, and that was all there was to it, whatever they wanted distinctive about their religion was overridden by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. So that’s a very important thing to be aware of. In truth, education taxes and tax-based funding for schools give governments and the courts control over the curriculum and the learning environment. And that’s really why the rational solution is to give that control back to the parents so they can decide what that learning environment is, of course within certain guidelines and issues of that nature. But in arriving at its decisions, the courts cited very certain decisions. For example, why did the court make the decision for the reasons it did in the case just cited? And the court stated that when, as here, a publicly funded school board establishes and implements policies of general application, it is subject to the Charter. And then it cited U.S. authorities, the judge in the case, which just goes to show you that even decisions decided in other jurisdictions can have an impact on what happens in your own jurisdiction, because often when the courts are presented with a situation that might be unique or different, they do look to other jurisdictions to see what was done there. And apparently the Canadian courts looked at a United States Supreme Court case in Bob Jones University versus the United States, which recognized that the state has a right to insist that public funds will not be used to subsidize discriminatory practices even where it is asserted that those discriminatory practices are founded on sincere religious beliefs. And in explaining the decision to force the school to let the student bring his boyfriend to the prom, the court made clear that in coming to the decision that I have, I have considered that the board is, in law, a religiously oriented state actor. So isn’t that interesting that once even says that the state is becoming an actor in the actual religious aspect of it itself? So again, we have to be very clear that the equality provisions of the Charter will trump the religious freedom guaranteed by the Charter. It’s already been decided in the courts. So it’s a very dangerous thing for those parents and those religious groups who are concerned about their faith and want to preserve it in some way and be able to do that to accept this government money. It does come with strings attached. Now, when we come back after this break, we will be talking a little bit more generally about the education system such as it is in broader terms.

Be right back after this.

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Clip (George Carlin):
We somehow got lucky. Got into a school where the pastor was kind of into John Dewey and progressive education, and he talked the parish, talked the diocese rather, into experimenting in our parish with progressive education and whipping the religion on us anyway and see what would happen with the two of them there. And it worked out kind of nice. There was a lot of classroom freedom. There was no, first of all, there were no grades or marks, no report cards to sweat out or any of that. There were no uniforms. There were no sexual segregation, boys and girls together, and the desks weren’t all nailed down in a row. They were movable desks and you had new friends every month. It was nice. A lot of classroom freedom. In fact, there was so much freedom that by eighth grade many of us had lost the faith. Because they made questioners out of us and they really didn’t have any answers.

They’d fall back on, well, it’s a mystery. Oh, thank you Father. Mystery, I don’t know what’s he talking about? Mystery.

Clip (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “In the Hands of the Prophets”, Vedek Winn):
Mystery. Bajoran spiritual leader dictate what can or can’t be taught in my classroom. And maybe we need two schools on the station. One for the Bajoran children and another for the Federation.

Clip (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “In the Hands of the Prophets”, Commander Sisko):
If we start separating Bajoran and Federation interests…

Clip (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “In the Hands of the Prophets”, Major Kira):
A lot of Bajoran and Federation interests are separate, Commander.

I’ve been telling you that all along.

Clip (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “In the Hands of the Prophets”, Commander Sisko):
Nobody’s saying that there can’t be spiritual teaching on the station, Major. But can it be in addition to what’s taught in Mrs. O’Brien’s classroom?

Clip (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “In the Hands of the Prophets”, Major Kira):
But if she’s teaching a fundamentally different philosophy…

Clip (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “In the Hands of the Prophets”, Keiko O’Brien):
I’m not teaching any philosophy. What I’m trying to teach is pure science.

Clip (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “In the Hands of the Prophets”, Major Kira):
Some might say pure science, taught without a spiritual context, is a philosophy, Mrs. O’Brien.

Clip (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “In the Hands of the Prophets”, Commander Sisko):
My philosophy is that there is room for all philosophies on the station. Now, how do you suggest that we deal with this?

Clip (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “In the Hands of the Prophets”, Major Kira):
I’m not sure you can.

Bob Metz:
Well, of course, that might be exactly how a lot of people feel about this debate. Who says Star Trek is about science fiction and fantasy? It’s about the provincial election in Ontario right now. Welcome back. Just Right with Bob Metz on CHRW 94.9 FM.

You can call in 519-661-3600 if you care to join in on the conversation or comment. It’s interesting to note, even with the suggestion of two schools being required when you have two completely different kind of cultures or belief systems, that in Canada you have to understand that Roman Catholic funding, and it’s a sad thing to say, but a lot of this debate has now turned into quite a few expressions of anti-Catholicism because people don’t like the idea of a separate Catholic school system separate from the public school, and they claim that it is generally discriminatory and unjust. And in that respect, they are correct. Nevertheless, it was enacted before Confederation, this agreement that there would be separate school boards. 1863, in fact, the Scott Act was set up to give separate school boards autonomy over their education system. But in terms of what to do, if you’re one of the people that thinks there is room for differing philosophies, and I am one of those, there is a solution. You don’t force one group to pay for the other. It’s just as simple as that.

You have to allow for choice and for responsibility in that choice, which is really what we see a flight from here. Everybody wants the other guy to pay. And with that in mind I bring to your attention two fairly similar yet very contrasting editorials that both appeared in the London Free Press. And I know the authors of both of them, they’re both friends and acquaintances I would like to think, but I’m going to be sort of picking more on one side than the other here. One of the articles was by Rory Leishman, and the other one was by Michael Coren, and they just appeared recently in the Free Press. The first one from September 15th, McGuinty didn’t do education homework, says Rory Leishman in the London Free Press. And just to get to the meat of his article, he points out that the province’s Education Quality and Accountability Office reports that only 64% of grade 6 students passed a standard for reading during the past two years while in mathematics only 59% passed this year, down from 61% last year.

Now of course this could be bad news indicating poor performance, or I think it could be good news too, depending on how you look at it. Maybe they raised their standards and found out that fewer people could achieve that standard. I guess it’s bad news in the bigger picture, but still you cannot tell from that fact alone what you’re dealing with.

You have to look at a larger picture. But Rory goes on. He says, on one point in the educational debate, Tory and McGuinty are agreed.

In Tory’s words, Ontario’s public school system is one of the best in the world. And this is what Rory disagrees with. He says, this contention is wrong. Ontario public schools are not even the best in Canada. And then he goes on to compare some Ontario stats to those of other provinces, which I won’t bore you with right here. But he continues, the McGuinty Liberals are committed to maintaining the educational status quo. They adamantly oppose any increase in school choice for Ontario parents. Whereas in contrast, the Progressive Conservatives promise to extend public funding to faith-based independent schools.

Such a half measure is insufficient, he says. The government should offer all parents educational vouchers equivalent to the average cost per student in the publicly funded schools. And to deal with the fear of schools teaching unsocial behavior or dangerous beliefs, Leishman emphasizes—and I have to agree with him on this particular point, especially isolating it from the larger picture—the government should specifically shut down all subversive hate-mongering schools and associated houses of worship, whether they’re publicly or privately funded. The funding doesn’t matter in that case.

I mean, if you find a terrorist cell, you’re going to get rid of it regardless of who’s funding it. But just as Leishman blames the PCs for only adopting a half measure, I would say the same with respect to his argument regarding a voucher proposal. It too is a half measure. It still keeps the government in the driver’s seat. And although it may appear to be a step in the right direction, it could actually in some cases where it has been be a step backwards in the United States in some places. Because the government gets to determine how much the voucher is, what conditions are attached to it again. A lot of the same things stay in place. And the parents still will be making their choice based on what the voucher will offer in a sense. It’s almost like having to deal either with a public or a private insurance company.

Now, consider instead this article I just couldn’t believe that I saw in the London Free Press. The September 8th London Free Press editorial by Michael Coren, titled Public Education in the Buff. Unbelievably, and I mean in a very pleasantly surprised sense of the word, and quite rightly, Coren states a very blunt truth.

One that I personally share, but I do know a lot of people misunderstand it. And he says, we would be better off scrapping the entire public education system and allowing parents to spend their money on their children’s education as they see fit. The system does not need to be tampered with, it needs to be destroyed, he says. And although I wouldn’t go down to destroying a system, I certainly think by giving a choice to people, a true choice where parents do pay for their own kids and things of that nature, that either the public system will improve or fall under its own weight. Coren then cites what I will call—he didn’t call it this, but I’m going to call it—the seven stupid things people believe about public education. And when we say public education, by the way, we of course do mean government-funded education.

Really all schools are public in the sense that if you meet certain criteria to get into a school and whatever they require, that you can buy your way in if they have the room. Just like anything, space is always an issue. And that’s one of the first myths that Coren gets into, that large class sizes are a problem.

He says this is a ghostly fetish that has to be exorcised. They’re invariably irrelevant and are used as an excuse by incompetent teachers. There were large classes for years in Canadian schools and they produced literate, civilized young people. It’s less the number of people in the class and the quality of the person in charge, he says.

And I totally agree with that. I know I was in large classes and people didn’t have a problem with it. And when people did have a problem, they got individual attention, even 30, 40, 50 years ago. Number two, kids get along and are socialized in public schools.

And again, Coren says this is nonsense. Wealthy people live in wealthy areas and send their kids to schools attended by offspring of other wealthy people unless they’re really left-wing and the kids go to enormously expensive private schools. And he cites Stephen Lewis and Michelle Landsberg sending their son, Avi, to Upper Canada College as an example of what he’s talking about. It’s funny too because I have given presentations at Upper Canada College a few times and you can see that even there some of the same values are being expressed that you find in the public school system.

And number three, like grasps to like, he says. Ethnic groups do sometimes mix in the public schools, but there are groups and gangs and all sorts of segregation even within the public school system. As for socialization, it’s largely meaningless. In any way, children are socialized in all sorts of places. It’s not the job of schools to socialize but to educate. Some of the most mature and well-adjusted young people are homeschooled. Again, is that an argument for public schools that you have to mix them? This is certainly one of the key ones that the McGuinty Liberals are using and they want everyone to be under the same roof learning the same things.

Even in an economic sense, I don’t think you really want that to happen. You want people to have a broad range of skills. Otherwise, you get huge groups of people who are all competing for the same skills. If you teach, say, women to be secretaries and men to be computer technicians, you’re going to have an oversupply of both and then that will drive both of their salaries down. These things have to be determined more by the marketplace and that’s another reason why people should be choosing the education that they pick so that they can get a feel for what their talents are versus what the market is demanding. Of course, education is not just about skills and jobs and that’s true.

Now, here’s number four according to Coren. Children are not indoctrinated into any religion or ideology in the public system. Again, these are myths, what he’s calling myths. And he says this is rubbish. Moral relativism and sexual deviancy are core values and not to believe in them is to be a heretic worthy of metaphorical flames.

Secular humanism has become aggressively fundamentalist within the public schools. Now, this is probably the point where I sort of agree with the sense of what he’s saying. I just don’t agree with the exact terminology or language. I think I might call myself a secular humanist and yet I would agree with him that moral relativism is a problem in a lot of the schools and in the sense of not teaching that this value is worth this and this is worth that, but teaching that there really are no values, that they’re all relative, that one is as good as another, which is simply not true, but that’s a subject for a whole other debate and I think that’s something I’m going to be dealing with in much further detail in a show upcoming in the very near future, perhaps even next week if I can do it. Number five, fifth myth of Michael Coren, that kids receive a first class education in the publicly funded schools.

Pass the medication darling, he says, I’m going to pass out. Too little homework, too few expectations and acceptance of the down market and a fear of challenging kids and God forbid failing them. Well, a lot of people feel that that’s the case. I talk to people in the public school system and they tell me that their kids are doing a lot of homework, so these are broad brushes of course and they just generally go over the whole system because there’s always pockets within the system where things are not the same as the generality.

And this one’s an interesting one. Number six, public education was supposed to end illiteracy. It did, says Coren, but that was many years ago. For a generation now, the slide has been the other way. And teenagers are being accepted into universities without the ability to spell basic words and with no grasp of concepts, history, or of original thought. And seven, the public system is free.

No way, says Coren. It costs a fortune and is extravagant and inefficient. It’s bureaucratic and political and fails pupils, parents, and teachers who want to do the right thing. And in conclusion, he calls the public system just naked, absolutely naked. Get dressed and grow up and give us back our cash, he says. Well, without some of the vindictive parts of it, I certainly agree with the tone of what he’s saying and certainly with his solution that people should basically pay for their own education. I’ve had relatives in poor countries in the world where they had public education and they avoided government education and they avoided it like the plague, even as poor as they were or as not rich as they were, let’s put it that way, they still chose to send their kids to private schools and often incurred large debts to do so. And I’ve seen people here in Canada do the same thing and it’s not the rich who are clamoring for private schools.

I just have seen very few so-called rich people doing that. It’s the general middle class person who wants to make sure his kids got a good education. And just to close this part of it up, the Financial Post TD Bank report reported by Rebecca Penty says poor literacy costs Canada billions. And in this TD Bank report, it indicated that 40% of youth lack literacy skills and roughly half of adults have inadequate literacy and numeracy skills. We’ve seen a steady deterioration of Canada’s trend rate of productivity growth, says Craig Alexander, the TD Bank Deputy Chief Economist and author of the report.

This is an interesting fact. He says an increase in literacy of 1% would mean a $32 billion increase in national income. Three times the returns on investment in machinery according to Mr. Alexander. So basically investing in people is a better payoff than investing in machinery, he said. And of course that’s true because if you have the better trained people, they can build the machinery for you. And of course that’s the problem we had last week when we had Arthur Milnes talking about what was happening in Afghanistan.

They got a lot of labor but not very much knowledge and science and technology to help that labor to make it more productive. So if you improve literacy, you’re also going to improve civic engagement. People are more likely to vote if they can read the ballot, he said. And of course in addressing the issue of poverty and the influence poverty plays in poor literacy, the report stresses that there are poorer countries in the world that have better literacy scores than we do. But that’s basically the general view of the whole education system.

Now when we come back the other issue that has spun out of this and of course that’s the issue of creationism versus evolution and what some people in the community have been saying in our newspapers and we’ll be back right after this.

Clip (Comedian):
I think teachers and lawyers should flip salaries. I think that better yet, I think teachers should take on students on a contingency basis where they earn an eventual percentage of the child’s adult earnings. This would certainly light a fire under a teacher’s ass to stress the basics and we need to return to the basics in this country when you stop to think that only one of the three Rs actually starts with the letter R.

Clip (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “In the Hands of the Prophets”, Keiko O’Brien):
Is there a place in your school for the Prophets?

Clip (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “In the Hands of the Prophets”, Vedek Winn):
No. I admire you for standing by your convictions even though I disagree with them. Please believe me, I want to find a way to allow these children to stay in your school.

Clip (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “In the Hands of the Prophets”, Keiko O’Brien):
I’m sure the children and their parents are happy to hear you say that. Let me be the one to make the first concession. I will no longer request that you teach anything about the Celestial Temple. Just don’t teach anything about the wormhole at all.

Clip (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “In the Hands of the Prophets”, Vedek Winn):
Ignore it?

Clip (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “In the Hands of the Prophets”, Keiko O’Brien):
Find other ways, other things to teach the children. And when we get to theories of evolution or creation of the universe, what then?

Clip (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “In the Hands of the Prophets”, Vedek Winn):
We’ll face those issues when we come to them.

Clip (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “In the Hands of the Prophets”, Keiko O’Brien):
I’m a teacher. My responsibility is to expose my students to knowledge, not hide it from them.

The answer is no.

Bob Metz:
Of course, that very suggestion—don’t teach anything about evolution or creation or teach them side by side—are two of the proponents on both sides of this issue. Again, that’s an example of what I would call moral relativism.

One by totally avoiding the fact that there is a difference between these two approaches. Now, the whole issue, it was only a matter of time before the real issues behind the faith funding controversy really began to surface and it’s already been happening. And one of them is what I would call an irrelevant issue of creationism versus evolution.

By irrelevant, I mean what should be irrelevant to politics and the political debate, but certainly not to the greater philosophical issues pertaining to the nature of existence and things on that level. Which I do want to spend some time on. And again, I plan to do that in the very near future, but today we’re going to stick to more of the education issue. The political debate is about forcing some people to pay for the education of others, irrespective of the nature of that education. And that’s why we’re fighting about it. That’s why we argue over these things. But the reason that the debate exists in the first place and the reason why there are separate private schools and differing beliefs is of course generally obscured or evaded inside the whole debate politically speaking.

And of course, once our political leaders McGuinty and John Tory got into this whole thing, they stepped right into it, I’ve got to tell you. It’s not one of those issues that you really want to talk about. It kind of explains why for so long Jim Chapman on his show here never ever wanted to discuss religious issues because he said there just was no resolution to it. So I find it very ironic that today he’s on the side of faith funding given how long he avoided the issue for so many years in terms of even discussing those basics. Of course, he’s talking about it from a point of view of what is discriminatory and unfair.

And if that’s as far as you look at the debate, well, maybe that’s as far as it is, but it’s not going to solve any problems. I was looking at some of the letters to the editor in the London Free Press, just brought some samples with me here. And you can see people have very strong opinions on both sides of the debate. For example, Ralph Smith on September 16 under the heading Religion Unworthy of Public Funding in the London Free Press. He says the letters to the editor on September 10 illustrate why religion should not be funded by my tax dollars.

Given that the churches are property tax exempt, they should be able to indoctrinate their own adherents. As an example, he cites another letter by Tom Taylor, which a number of people criticized because it was titled Creationism Makes Sense Over Evolution. The statement that only people of minimal intelligence believe in evolution is laughable, says Mr. Smith. Spare us from the rantings of these people who are still clinging to the tales told by their mommies and daddies. So we kind of hear what his point of view is.

Then there’s David Nielsen, September 17. Christian contempt is the heading. And he also criticizes the Tom Taylor letter Creationism Makes Sense Over Evolution. He says in that letter, Tom Taylor displays a lack of understanding of basic science bordering on contempt. Most Christians accept that the earth has evolved as scientists have described under the caring love of God.

Yes, atheism has led to such abominations of society as communism and Nazism, but theocracy has led to the Spanish Inquisition, pogroms, jihad, and apartheid. Now, I take some issue with part of David’s commentary there in the Free Press. And I would say that it’s not what a person doesn’t believe that causes the consequences of his actions, but what he does believe in.

And what he does hold to. Both communism and Nazism were caused by very specific belief systems, not by non-belief systems. And I discussed both of those in great detail on just two shows very recently, a week before last and a week before that as well. And what’s interesting is that a lot of the beliefs that were shared by both communism and Nazism were also shared often by Christians and those of various other faiths. So the issue of atheism with respect to those political systems is really irrelevant. You cannot judge someone by what they do not believe in. I don’t believe in Martians. I don’t believe in a lot of things that I think do not exist. And if you’re going to judge a person on that, then you’re going to be led to a number of false conclusions.

And of course, the greatest one, the debate is that people who are believers in deities think that it’s not possible to be moral unless one is. Which again is something that I will get into in detail on a future show. Here’s another letter which I thought was a little puzzling, especially given the title. Evolution puzzles, says Barb Stropel, September 17th. And she wrote, is there an evolutionist who could answer three simple questions? One, where did the very first cell come from? Two, where are living evidences of evolution around us, such as a dog running around in the process of becoming some other species? And three, where are the fossil evidences of evolution, the missing links? I understand that Charles Darwin puzzled over that question himself.

Well, you see, it just shows you what this funding debate has revealed in people and some of the arguments that are coming out of them and what’s really motivating them at the heart. And to her first question, where did the very first cell come from? It’s not a question of where, although we have some ideas, because really that question’s unanswerable in a literal sense. But how did the very first cell come into being? And I think there are several theories.

We haven’t proven all of them yet, but most are based on the same scientific principles. When she asks where are living evidences of evolution around us, such as a dog running around in the process of becoming some other species, evolution never states that one species turns into another in that sense. Whatever each stage of evolution is called with respect to a specific single species, one is still dealing with that single species. And if you’re looking for living evidence of evolution, it’s amazing that people ask this question because we see it in front of us all the time.

It’s just amazing. I cite any human being or animal’s gestation period during which you can see millions of years of evolution compressed into, say, nine months in the case of the human being. You will see from two single cells a life form developed through many stages of evolution into a full grown complex human being. But at every stage of this development, we are still dealing with a single species. The species hasn’t changed.

It’s just at a different stage. Now imagine if instead of this happening in nine months, if it happened over a period of, say, 100, 200, 300 million years, then the stages, say, that we might call the second trimester, let’s say, might be almost considered a separate species in the sense of having existed for such an expansion of time and having reproduced on its own. So you can see the idea of evolution right there in front of you. It’s called the miracle of birth for heaven’s sakes. And you can see where literally two cells combine, grow, and turn into something that is very different from the two cells that began.

But it’s not a different species. And third, not knowing where the missing links are is no grounds for dismissing a theory in which we do have a lot of pieces of the puzzle. But in any event, science will always ask the question, and unfortunately, faith closes the door on seeking such an answer, opting for what I think is a non-answer of creationism, but I’ll get into details of that later. I really think in many ways that a belief in creationism is very non-religious in a sense because religion is supposed to be about morality, defining good and evil, about human relationships and interrelationships.

It’s not supposed to be about science or physics. So I would consider the belief in creationism, a religious one, sort of as almost a religious aberration caused by literalism, where people take religious symbols and the Bible and things like that literally and try to translate them into some sort of scientific proof of something. But interesting, another letter here by John Delnero has a very good way of stating something. He says the religious nature of creationism really doesn’t matter. What does matter is whether or not it has any evidence supporting it. So he says that basically because creationism doesn’t offer that evidence, it’s just simply an argument.

That’s why it’s not taught and why evolution is taught. And finally, of course, in this section, Beth Ballard writes in the September 15th Free Press, she says all beliefs are faith-based. And she argues believers in the theory of evolution should note that their beliefs are as faith-based as any others are. It takes faith to believe that everything we see in the natural world developed from a few particles. In fact, Darwin himself denounced his theory as untrue and impossible. Well, first of all, it’s not true that Darwin denounced his theory. It’s a bit of a ridiculous argument. But again, you can’t say that two arguments are the same and both faith-based. Faith is a means of acquiring knowledge. Remember, that’s what it means. It doesn’t mean hope or love or charity or any of those things. And so you have to deal with that faith-based, if you want to call it that, that has evidence backing it. So some of the things we believe may be faith-based, but at least we have evidence backing up that faith and we’re willing to change what we believe when the evidence changes.

And I think that’s really the key. So now when we come back, now I’m coming to another clip now, and I just wanted to warn you, on the other side of this clip, you’re going to hear me talking. It’s part of it was taken from a television show on which I also appeared. It was Christine Williams’ show, appearing with Anita Bromberg, who’s legal counsel for B’nai Brith.

And in that clip, we discussed a little bit about faith-based funding, and you’ll hear why some people are in favor of it. So we’ll be back right after this clip.

Clip (Star Trek: The Next Generation “All Good Things…”, Q):
Welcome home. Home. Don’t you recognize your old stomping grounds? This is Earth. France, about three and a half billion years ago. Give or take an eon or two. Smells awful, doesn’t it?

All that sulfur and volcanic ash. Really must speak to the maid. Q, is there any point to all this?

Clip (Star Trek: The Next Generation “All Good Things…”, Q):
Come here. There’s something I want to show you. You see this? This is you.

I’m serious, right here. Life is about to form on this planet for the very first time. A group of amino acids are about to combine to form the first protein. The building blocks of what you call life. Strange, isn’t it? Everything you know, your entire civilization, it all begins right here in this little pond of goo. Appropriate somehow, isn’t it? Too bad you didn’t bring your microscope. It’s really quite fascinating. Oh, look. There they go.

Amino acids are moving closer and closer and closer.

Clip from Christine Williams Show (Christine Williams):
I’m going to start with you on this one, Anita. Are you in support of funding for religious schools?

Clip from Christine Williams Show (Anita Bromberg):
Oh, absolutely. It’s being cited already by the UN, for example, as a basis of discrimination against discrimination. For multiculturalism that respects the rights of every community, treats them all equally. Educating a community along their cultural lines is fundamental to a multicultural community. And I think there’s a way of integrating it into the existing system without taking away from the public systems.

Clip from Christine Williams Show (Christine Williams):
Robert, how do you feel about this one?

Clip from Christine Williams Show (Robert Metz):
For me, of course, the bigger picture is I’m outside the box because I don’t believe government should be funding any kind of education in the sense of running the curriculum and running. I believe in universal education, but you pay your own and the government only helps the people who can’t pay for themselves.

I don’t believe in the institutionalized approach of funding. But it just strikes me that government funding of religious schooling is almost a contradiction in terms. You’re going to destroy whatever religion was left there because listen to what they’re talking about. The reason they want to do this is to manage religious diversity within the system.

And essentially what they’re going to do is water down whatever belief systems are there, which some people think is a good thing. Okay, that’s not the issue here, but that’s a consequence of this, I believe. And I think there’s a broader, almost a religious question, a moral one certainly. And that’s how can you, if you are of a belief that, for example, thou shalt not steal, how do you accept someone else’s money to fund your beliefs and your cause when perhaps they don’t share those beliefs and causes? To me, that’s what the government should not be doing, above all, because that’s going to create the varied divisions that they think they’re avoiding by being all inclusive and all that.

That’s what you see around the world, is everyone’s fighting for government money and it comes out as a religious debate.

Clip from Christine Williams Show (Christine Williams):
To see, Robert, just listening to you, it just makes the whole thing legitimately so, sound like it can be potentially quite confusing. My major concern on all this is the methodology. How is this going to be done? Now, yes, go ahead.

Clip from Christine Williams Show (Anita Bromberg):
But there are models that are existing now. A lot of the, most of the religious schools in the Jewish community, for instance, already are following a set curriculum by the Ontario government. They incorporate into their day a portion of the day is reserved for religious education. They make up for it by expanding the school hours. Most of the costs are paid by the parents.

There is some assistance from the community in subsidies.

Bob Metz:
And there you have it. That was from the Christine Williams show, which was aired, I believe, July 30th on the CTS television network, which you would have got on cable here in the London area.

And that was long before the current election writ was dropped. But you’ll notice that whenever—and this happens to me all the time when I’m on other debate shows—when I ask a moral question, everybody evades it or walks around it or just simply doesn’t answer it. I was not responded to in terms of—remember, this is a Christian network that I was on. So you would think that they might be interested in some adherence to the Christian axiom that thou shalt not steal.

Although many people think that if government does the thieving for you and a democratic majority approves of it, it is okay. But nevertheless, the question’s always evaded and people don’t want to answer it. But I thought interesting was Anita Bromberg’s response where she points out that even in the government-financed religious schools that do exist, parents still have to pay extra and still have to schedule additional time for the religious subjects and the subjects of special interest that they want to do. And I’m thinking, well, if that’s the case, where are you really getting further ahead, except just getting a freebie for that portion of your curriculum that is not religious, which of course wouldn’t have to be necessary in any case. You could always make religion a separate issue.

Now it may be that in a sense I’m sending a mixed signal here too, or a mixed message. On the one hand, I’m warning against state intrusion on religious beliefs because I do believe in a separation of church and state. I do believe that people have the right to believe whatever they want to believe in. But that doesn’t mean that I share the beliefs or respect the beliefs or think that it’s the right thing to do in terms of a rational belief system. I think mostly when I criticize religious belief, I am criticizing what I refer to as literalism, people who take so much of the actual possible and potential value of religion and turn it into a literal translation and then try to apply it to spheres outside of religion such as science and physics and technology and issues of that, which kind of reminds me a little of back in January 2000, a situation arose in the states where apparently the state of Kansas went through this and high schools were mandated by local school boards to offer religious curriculum and things of that nature.

And writer Robert S. Wieder in the January 2000 issue of Playboy magazine put together a very humorous little basic course catalog of remedial religion, which I thought might just for a little bit of humorous sense here have a lighter note on this, giving some ideas of what kind of classes one might be looking at in a supposed religious school in which the scientific subjects were twisted to the religion. And he gives some examples. For example, Physics 290A Modified Entropy Theory in which certain scientific assumptions regarding thermodynamics and the decay of matter are revised so as to take into account a bush that burns but is not consumed. Or how about Physics 290B, The Elementary Table? Study and memorization of a simplified table of elements which includes only those elements commonly and abundantly found in nature. This course explores the question, if you can’t see it, were you really meant to know about it? Or how about Archaeology 110, Carbon Dating, Schmarbin Dating?

Raises the intriguing scientific hypothesis, could not an all-powerful god make rocks appear to be billions of years older than they actually really are? That’s an interesting one. And how about Agricultural Economics 140B, Crop Storage and Nocturnal Divination? The art of employing traditional methods of dream interpretation to foresee and plan for years of extended famine and or plenty.

Emphasis on the significance of devouring. Also, why everything happens in sevens. Now what was really interesting, I know a couple of weeks ago we played some clips from an episode of Green Acres that literally took a shot at that very point where they all sat around and the guy had his wife who had her lumbago act up and that meant it was a good time of year to plant corn or just the way people arrive at decisions. And how about Health Science 402, Morality and Etiology, understanding the causal relationships between fornication and AIDS, masturbation and leprosy, pornography and insanity, secular humanism and cancer, and abortion and death by lightning. And then of course Mathematics 300A, Non-Satanic Numerical Systems, a pure math course in which all textbooks, handouts and board-written problems will exclude the number 666, the sign of the beast and use in its place the symbol zero. In lectures and presentations that number will be referred to as the numerals formerly known as the Prince of Darkness.

Oh you like that for a little bit of humor there. And then last one of course Food Service Science 120, Large-Scale Meal Preparation and Management Techniques. The challenge of feeding multitudes, creative use of loaf and fish extenders, the nutritional properties of milk and honey, manna explained and at the conclusion of the term each student will be required to plan and prepare a final supper for 12. Now how’s that for an interesting religious subject? And to leave this one with you just before we go, Law 901, Introduction to Higher Law, resolving questions of priority when confronted with conflicts between state or municipal statutes on the one hand and direct commands from the creator of the universe on the other. The special prosecutor as God’s emissary, why ACLU lawyers are going to hell and why you still have to pay parking tickets even when the end is nigh. And the end is nigh right now, that’s the end of the show for today. We’ll continue with some of the themes that I introduced today on future shows. So until next week, join us again when we will continue our journey in the right direction and until then…

Clip (Comedian as Sister Mary):
Hello, I’m Sister Mary Immaculate. How many Protestants does it take to change a light bulb? None, they live in eternal darkness.