Category Archives: Social Studies

Friends, I wanted to update you on our progress as we begin to finalize all plans for this year’s Rouge Forum Conference.

I would invite you to please visit the conference website: www.rougeforumconference.org for information related to hotels, maps, the schedule of papers and professional developments (67 presenters involved in 37 presentations), as well as the overall conference schedule. Presenters, in particular, please visit the paper sessions link to be sure that the information about your presentation/panel/performance is accurate.

As far as the overall conference schedule goes, let me highlight a few of the events going on:

Thursday night, 3/13, we’ll kick things off at 7:00 at the Blue Mountain Coffeehouse and Wine Bar, located at 400E. Main St., right across from the Louisville Bats Baseball Stadium. We’ll be entertained by spoken word and jazz, featuring Janiece Jaffee. Come hungry because you can purchase dinner there.

Friday, 3/14, we’ll begin with a welcome from the Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs at Bellarmine University, Dr. Doris Tegart. After two sessions of paper presentations, we’ll break for lunch. You’ll want to stick around for lunch since we’ll be engaged by our first speaker of the conference, Dr. Milton Brown. Dr. Brown is a retired professor/administrator/teacher. His distinguished career has been dedicated to the anti-racist and civil rights struggle and it will be a pleasure to welcome him back to Bellarmine. (For those who have ordered lunch for this day, or still wish to do so, please reply this week and let me know whether you would prefer a turkey, ham, or veggie boxed lunch, provided by our friends at the Loop Deli.)

After another session of papers, our afternoon will conclude with a panel discussion which I’ll moderate involving radical/revolutionary pedagogy and featuring Dr. Nancy Patterson (Bowling Green State University), Mr. Greg Queen (Fitzgerald High School), and Dr. Joe Cronin (Antioch University). After a break for dinner, the evening will conclude with another panel, entitled “No Child Left Unrecruited?” This panel on the potential school to military pipeline will be moderated by Dr. E. Wayne Ross (University of British Columbia) and will feature Dr. Faith Wilson (Aurora University) and Dr. Rich Gibson (San Diego State University). Most events for this day will be held in Frazier Hall, which is located in the Brown Activities Center. See the map at the conference website.

Saturday, 3/15, will kickoff with a few words from the dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Louisville, Dr. Blaine Hudson. After professional developments on critical literacy and green education, as well as two paper sessions, we’ll break for lunch and be engaged by a panel discussion on the student assignment situation in Jefferson County. You may recall the Supreme Court recently found Jefferson County’s student assignment plan, largely based on race, to be unconstitutional. Moderated by Dr. Blaine Hudson (University of Louisville) and featuring Dr. Tracy K’Meyer (University of Louisville), Mr. John Heyburn (attorney), and Mr. Dwayne Westmoreland (Kentucky Youth Advocates), this panel will explore what led to this decision and what is next for Jefferson County. (For those of you have ordered lunch for this day or still wish to do so, please reply this week and let me know whether you would prefer chicken salad or veggi boxed lunch, provided by our friend, Tess Krebs).

After one final paper session, the afternoon will conclude with two talks, both of whom are charter members of the Rouge Forum, Dr. Rich Gibson and Dr. E. Wayne Ross (who will provide our keynote address). It should be energizing to hear them both speak on the state of the Rouge Forum, education, and resistance. Both have been longstanding vanguards in the struggle for justice in education, schooling, and the work place.

After dinner, the evening will conclude with some spoken word and music, featuring our speical guest, jazz pianist, Harry Pickens, as well as the local band, The Uprising. Most events for this day will be held in the Red Barn. See the map of U of L’s campus on the conference website.

Finally, we’re excited to be concluding the 2008 conference on Sunday, 3/15 at 10:00 at the Braden Center located in the Kentucky Alliance against Racist and Political Oppression Headquarters, located at 3208 W. Broadway. Here, we’ll wrap up the weekend with reflections on the conference, as well as a discussion of next steps and possible action. (This later start time will give folks an opportunity to grab breakfast at one of the premier diners in the country, Lynn’s Paradise Cafe on Barrett Ave.)

We look forward to hosting you at the conference. If you need anything, please let me know.

I want to be sure to thank my partner, Gina Stiens, as well as my friends and colleagues–Mary Goral, David Owen, Sonya Burton, Judi Vanderhaar, Wayne Ross, and Rich Gibson–for their help in pulling this 2008 conference together .

in solidarity. adam

Adam Renner, Ph.D
Associate Professor
School of Education
Bellarmine Univeristy

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By Mickie Klugman-Caspi (Boston, MA).

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http://mithuro.com/presscuefiles/december/21st_century_Iwo_Jima.jpg

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Below is a commentary piece from the December 19, 2007 edition of Education Week, describing how the high-stakes testing environment created by the No Child Left Behind Act is squeezing social studies education out of the curriculum in the elementary grades.

“Why We Need to Save (and Strengthen) Social Studies”
By Judith L. Pace
Education Week
Published Online: December 18, 2007
Published in Print: December 19, 2007

Commentary

Amid the chorus of much-needed criticisms of the No Child Left Behind
Act, hardly a note has been heard in the media about the “squeezing”
of social studies, a significant consequence of the pressure to raise
test scores in reading and mathematics. Only a tiny body of published
research on the problem exists, but it, along with widespread
anecdotal evidence, indicates that high-stakes accountability based
on reading and math scores is marginalizing the social studies
curriculum in elementary schools.

Surveys have reported reduced instructional time in various states,
and organizations such as the National Council for the Social Studies
have responded with letters and statements to Congress. Social
studies educators have begun to lobby their lawmakers. But the
apparent mainstream acceptance of drastic reductions in the amount of
time and attention given to one of elementary education’s core
academic subjects is shocking. We are in danger of losing a
generation of citizens schooled in the foundations of democracy—and
of producing high school graduates who are not broadly educated human
beings.

In my own state of California, where history/social studies is not
tested until 8th grade, this trend began with the state’s Public
Schools Accountability Act of 1999, and has accelerated with the No
Child Left Behind law. The social studies squeeze occurs
disproportionately in low-performing schools with large minority and
low-income populations that are under intense pressure to raise
scores. And this, too, has alarming implications for educational
opportunity and civic participation.

In one of the few qualitative research studies on this topic, the
University of California, Riverside, researcher John S. Wills
examined the dilemmas faced by teachers in a poor, rural school in
California when social studies instruction was curtailed by high-
stakes-testing demands in other subjects. He found that teachers
managed these dilemmas differently, but with a common consequence:
Elements of thoughtful teaching were eradicated. Wills asks whether
the drive for accountability is leading not only to lost content
knowledge, but also, and paradoxically, to the elimination of
thoughtful, student-centered instruction “disproportionately from the
education of poor students and students of color.”

Anecdotal evidence is disturbing, and cries out for more systematic
investigation. Some large school districts in California and other
states have now virtually eliminated social studies instruction from
all of their elementary schools, and some middle schools. Many
students are not getting social studies instruction until the 10th
grade. Teacher-educators, including myself and colleagues at other
institutions, have discovered that elementary school preservice
candidates are not having an opportunity to observe or practice
social studies teaching. Especially in schools where teachers are
required to spend more hours on reading and math, often using
scripted programs, little time is left for social studies. With the
advent in California of science testing in the 5th grade, this
subject, too, will trump social studies.

This past spring, I interviewed 5th grade teachers in three Northern
California districts about the teaching of social studies for a small
pilot study. My sample was skewed, because many teachers in low-
performing schools declined the invitation to talk and I purposely
recruited teachers who love history. Still, the interviews were
revealing, and may hold some significance for other school systems
nationwide.

The apparent mainstream acceptance of drastic reductions in the
amount of time and attention given to one of elementary education’s
core academic subjects is shocking.
In the suburban, high-performing district I studied, teachers
reported that history is a centerpiece of the curriculum. Although
this district’s report card de-emphasizes history-social science, its
teachers are free to give the subject area priority in their classrooms.

The other two districts in my study were urban, with a wide range of
schools represented. Teachers at these districts’ low-performing
schools talked about the huge difficulty of teaching social studies
in the face of such daily curricular requirements as 2½ hours for
reading and language arts, 1½ hours for math, and a half-hour for
English-language development. Teachers at high-performing schools,
meanwhile, spoke of having some flexibility in making curricular
decisions because of their high test scores. District mandates need
not apply, it appears, in better-performing schools.

In essence, the data point to a social studies divide, caused by the
confluence of high-stakes accountability and school segregation by
race and class.

Perennial debates over whether social studies is even a valid
academic subject are an unfortunate distraction. The social studies
wars, though real enough in academia, are irrelevant to
schoolteachers and their students. At the elementary level, the
social studies curriculum is, appropriately, an integration of
history, geography, economics, sociology, anthropology, and political
science. And California’s standards for “history-social science,”
while flawed, constitute a serious and substantive document.

Why must we save social studies education for all students? A
voluminous literature, written by scholars, curriculum makers, and
practitioners alike, speaks convincingly to that question. I will
only add—at the risk of repeating bad news—that, internationally,
public opinion of the United States, both its government and its
people, worsens every day. The domestic and international issues
facing us are so complex and pressing that, to preserve democracy as
we know it, citizens must have some depth of historical, political,
and cultural understanding. Making good decisions requires that. It’s
one thing to have a nation of diverse opinions, which is crucial for
democracy, but opinion before knowledge, or without tolerance, leads
to demise. We’ve seen more than enough evidence of that in recent years.

Granted, social studies education historically has had its problems.
The quality of instruction and students’ attitudes toward the subject
often have been found lacking. In many classrooms, teachers rely on
textbooks and lectures that trivialize, even distort, the subject
matter. But examples of excellent social studies education also are
abundant.

We must now address inequality by improving the quality of teaching
and the curriculum in poor, segregated schools.

We need not only to save, but to strengthen social studies education.
Many argue that young people today are not educated to care about
political matters, understand complex issues, make informed
decisions, and contribute to a just society. Studies point to a
glaring gap in civic knowledge based on test scores correlated with
socioeconomic background and race or ethnicity. While ineffective
school practices may fail to address the current realities of
students, especially students of color in economically disadvantaged
circumstances, throwing out the baby with the bath water is certain
to exacerbate the biggest evil in our education system—inequality.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision this year to disallow the use of
race in school assignments has set back progress toward racial
integration. We must now address inequality in other ways, the
foremost being by improving the quality of teaching and the
curriculum in poor, segregated schools. We are cheating already
marginalized children if social studies is squeezed out of their
elementary school education. We also are setting up their high school
history teachers for failure. Worse, we may be paving the way for
potentially dire consequences for our democracy.

I am not ready to support testing in social studies in elementary
schools; we need less standardized testing, not more. (Social studies
is “high stakes” in states such as Virginia, and there the press for
“cultural literacy” has turned elementary school teaching into a
coverage craze.) We need fewer mandates that dictate classroom
schedules and scripted curricula. Policymakers must understand that
subjects like social studies actually develop reading and writing
skills in meaningful and enriching curricular contexts. When teachers
have resources, such as time for planning and good professional
development, many become passionate and knowledgeable about teaching
social studies, which goes a long way toward engaging students in
powerful learning.

For now, however, the situation calls for educational researchers to
carefully document the problem, how it plays out in a variety of
school settings, and what its consequences are. As Stanford
University’s Linda Darling-Hammond says, we practitioners and
scholars must educate our government about how to educate our children.

Judith L. Pace is a professor in the University of San Francisco’s
school of education.
Vol. 27, Issue 16, Pages 26-27
December 19, 2007 |

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At its annual meeting in San Diego last month, the National Council for the Social Studies passed a resolution sponsored by The Rouge Forum calling for it members “to do whatever they can to bring the Iraq war to a speedy conclusion.”

Founded in 1921, National Council for the Social Studies has grown to be the largest association in the country devoted solely to social studies education. NCSS engages and supports educators in strengthening and advocating social studies. With members in all the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and 69 foreign countries, NCSS serves as an umbrella organization for elementary, secondary, and college teachers of history, geography, economics, political science, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and law-related education. Organized into a network of more than 110 affiliated state, local, and regional councils and associated groups, the NCSS membership represents K-12 classroom teachers, college and university faculty members, curriculum designers and specialists, social studies supervisors, and leaders in the various disciplines that constitute the social studies.

The resolution was passed by the NCSS House of Delegates, which represents its affiliated councils. The NCSS Board will vote on the resolution at February 2008 meeting.

Last year the NCSS House of Delegates tabled a similar resolution submitted by The Rouge Forum.

Ironically, the College and University Faculty Assembly of NCSS failed to support a motion calling for an end to the Iraq war at their annual meeting, which was held in conjunction with NCSS. CUFA had passed resolutions calling for an end to the Iraq war in four previous years.

NCSS House of Delegates Resolution (passed)

07-04-1. A Call for a Public Stand

Rationale: NCSS standards documents and position statements consistently identify citizenship education as the primary purpose of K-12 social studies. These statements argue that concern for the common good and citizen participation in public life are essential to the health of our democratic system. If, as NCSS consistently argues, effective social studies education prepares young people to identify, understand, critically analyze and take action to solve the problems facing our diverse nation in an increasingly interdependent world. Then it is incumbent on social studies educators and their primary professional organization to take actions in the public arena that are consistent with the stated purposes of the profession.

07-04-1. A Call for a Public Stand
BE IT RESOLVED: that the National Council for the Social Studies urges its members, associated groups and communities: To take a public stand as citizens on behalf of the values and goals taught in social studies and necessary to the practice of our profession; and To do whatever they can to bring the Iraq war to a speedy conclusion.

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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/11/13/intelligent_design/print.html
Salon.com
The evolution of creationism
After their notorious legal defeat, intelligent design proponents are resurfacing with insidious new assaults on science.

By Gordy Slack

Nov. 13, 2007 | Two years ago, Pennsylvania federal Judge John Jones III handed down a stunning decision that many said would take down the intelligent design movement. But American creationism doesn’t die. It just adapts.

Decades earlier, when the courts deemed creation science — proto intelligent design — a religious view and not constitutionally teachable as science in public schools, it adapted by cutting God off its letterhead and calling itself “intelligent design.” The argument for I.D., and for “scientific creation theory” before it, is that evolution isn’t up to the task of accounting for life. Given biology’s complexity, and natural selection’s inability to explain it, I.D. thinking goes, life must be designed by a, well, designer. I.D.ers skirted any mention of God, hoping to avoid getting snagged on the First Amendment’s prohibition against promoting religion by arguing that I.D. was just a young and outlying science.

In the Pennsylvania case, Kitzmiller v. Dover, Judge Jones ruled that if you want to teach intelligent design in science class, first you have to show that it is a distinct species from its earlier, creationist form, not just a modified type. You’ve got to show us the science part, he said. Besides, Jones declared, your intelligent designer is obviously God.

The six-week trial — the focus of a Nova documentary, “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial,” airing Nov. 13 — addressed a host of heady questions. What is science and how does it work? Can evolution account for the diversity of life we see on earth? What is religion? Can science say anything about the existence of a creator and still be science? It also examined the motivations of a local school board that tried to smuggle creationism into its high school biology curriculum. The judge’s decision — that I.D. was not science and that the school board was trying to promote its members’ own religious views — was followed by a short period of shock from the I.D. community.

But like bacteria adapting to antibiotics, creationism has slimmed down once again, this time shedding even a mention of an intelligent designer. A new textbook put out by the Discovery Institute, the Seattle think tank that promotes I.D., doesn’t even have the words “intelligent design” in its index. Instead of pushing I.D. explicitly, “Explore Evolution: The Arguments for and Against Darwinism,” promoted as a high school- or college-level biology text, “teaches the controversy.” Teach the controversy is the new mantra of the I.D. movement.

“We want to teach more about evolution,” says Discovery Institute’s Casey Luskin, “not less.” The “more” they want to teach, of course, is what they see as evolution’s shortcomings, leaving an ecological niche that will then be filled by intelligent design.

But not all creationists have embraced the strategy. Many responded to the Dover trial by coming out of I.D.’s big tent, which once gave shelter to young earth creationists, old earthers, academics interested in I.D.’s hypotheses, and anyone who wanted to promote a Christian-compatible view of science. Judge Jones’ decision was like a lightning strike on the big top, sending many of the constituents running home through the rain. Creationist groups like Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research, and Reasons to Believe are now attacking I.D. for not having the guts to call its designer God or to be explicit about such key questions as the age of the world. (Answers in Genesis’ answer: about 6,000 years.)

Perhaps not surprisingly, the I.D.ers have adopted a persecution complex. “After Dover,” Luskin says, “there’s been an increase in the boldness of Darwinists who persecute I.D. proponents: researchers, teachers and students. The debate in the academy has intensified radically,” he says. “It’s just a lot more political.” He points to Guillermo Gonzalez, a physicist at Iowa State who failed to get tenure, allegedly because he is an advocate of I.D., and Richard Sternberg, a scientist at the National Institutes of Health who was “attacked” for publishing an article by Stephen Meyer, a proponent of intelligent design, in a peer-review journal Sternberg edited.

Evolutionary biologists respond that hiring a biologist who doesn’t accept evolution is like hiring a mathematician who doesn’t accept multiplication. That oversimplifies, but for better or worse, the battle has intensified and come out more into the open.

Recently, long retired chemist Homer Jacobson retracted a paper titled “Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life,” which he’d published in the journal American Scientist 52 years ago. Upon Googling himself, the 84-year-old Jacobson found that his old paper was often cited by creationists as evidence of the implausibility of life emerging from the prebiotic soup found on early Earth. Jacobson noticed some errors in his paper (it was a half-century old!) and, in order to keep neo-creationists from engaging in “malignant denunciations of Darwin,” he wrote a letter of retraction to the journal. Retraction of a scientific paper is rare, and doing it for political reasons is rarer still. The act provoked accusations of “historical revisionism” from Discovery Institute senior fellow William Dembski.

Following the Dover decision, some I.D.ers became more timid, or at least more evasive. John Angus Campbell, a Discovery Institute fellow and coauthor of a book about teaching I.D. in the schools, ran for a school board seat in Mason County, Wash., last week. During his campaign, he intentionally left his middle name out of his election materials and failed to mention his affiliation with the Discovery Institute. The camouflage strategy worked and he was elected.

I.D. will also be striking back in “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” a pro-I.D. documentary, to be released in February. Featuring conservative writer and political commentator Ben Stein, it portrays I.D. proponents as a group of iconoclastic firebrand scientists with the guts to go after the dogmatic Darwinists who have, the I.D.ers say, grown lazy and corrupt sitting atop a monopolistic theory with zero tolerance for dissent, within or outside of their ranks.

Stein told the New York Times that Darwin may well have been onto something with his theory of evolution, but that it is isn’t up to explaining the origins and diversity of life on its own. Plus, he thinks Darwinism leads to racism and genocide. If Stein had his way, he said, the documentary would have been called “From Darwin to Hitler.”

No, the battle between creationism and evolution is hardly over. The true believers in intelligent design and other forms of creationism aren’t about to lay down their worldview for a federal judge or anyone else. And polls show that about half of America is on their side. “Evolution remains under attack,” says Eugenie Scott, an anthropologist and a director of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit dedicated to teaching evolution in public schools. “If creationists have their way, teachers will eventually just stop teaching evolution. It’ll just be too much trouble. And generations of students will continue to grow up ignorant of basic scientific realities.”

— By Gordy Slack

Copyright ©2007 Salon Media Group, Inc. Reproduction of material from any Salon pages without written permission is strictly prohibited. SALON® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark of Salon Media Group Inc.

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CNN: Religious scholars mull Flying Spaghetti Monster

(AP) — When some of the world’s leading religious scholars gather in San Diego this weekend, pasta will be on the intellectual menu. They’ll be talking about a satirical pseudo-deity called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose growing pop culture fame gets laughs but also raises serious questions about the essence of religion.

The appearance of the Flying Spaghetti Monster on the agenda of the American Academy of Religion‘s annual meeting gives a kind of scholarly imprimatur to a phenomenon that first emerged in 2005, during the debate in Kansas over whether intelligent design should be taught in public school sciences classes.

Supporters of intelligent design hold that the order and complexity of the universe is so great that science alone cannot explain it. The concept’s critics see it as faith masquerading as science.

An Oregon State physics graduate named Bobby Henderson stepped into the debate by sending a letter to the Kansas School Board. With tongue in cheek, he purported to speak for 10 million followers of a being called the Flying Spaghetti Monster — and demanded equal time for their views.

“We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it,” Henderson wrote. As for scientific evidence to the contrary, “what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage.”

The letter made the rounds on the Internet, prompting laughter from some and vilification from others. But it struck a chord and stuck around. In the great tradition of satire, its humor was in fact a clever and effective argument.

Between the lines, the point of the letter was this: There’s no more scientific basis for intelligent design than there is for the idea an omniscient creature made of pasta created the universe. If intelligent design supporters could demand equal time in a science class, why not anyone else? The only reasonable solution is to put nothing into sciences classes but the best available science.

“I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; one third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence,” Henderson sarcastically concluded.

Kansas eventually repealed guidelines questioning the theory of evolution.

Meanwhile, Flying Spaghetti Monsterism (FSM-ism to its “adherents”) has thrived — particularly on college campuses and in Europe. Henderson’s Web site has become a kind of cyber-watercooler for opponents of intelligent design.

Henderson did not respond to a request for comment. His Web site tracks meetings of FSM clubs (members dress up as pirates) and sells trinkets and bumper stickers. “Pastafarians” — as followers call themselves — can also download computer screen-savers and wallpaper (one says: “WWFSMD?”) and can sample photographs that show “visions” of the divinity himself. In one, the image of the carbohydrate creator is seen in a gnarl of dug-up tree roots.

It was the emergence of this community that attracted the attention of three young scholars at the University of Florida who study religion in popular culture. They got to talking, and eventually managed to get a panel on FSM-ism on the agenda at one of the field’s most prestigious gatherings.

The title: “Evolutionary Controversy and a Side of Pasta: The Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Subversive Function of Religious Parody.”

“For a lot of people they’re just sort of fun responses to religion, or fun responses to organized religion. But I think it raises real questions about how people approach religion in their lives,” said Samuel Snyder, one of the three Florida graduate students who will give talks at the meeting next Monday along with Alyssa Beall of Syracuse University.

The presenters’ titles seem almost a parody themselves of academic jargon. Snyder will speak about “Holy Pasta and Authentic Sauce: The Flying Spaghetti Monster’s Messy Implications for Theorizing Religion,” while Gavin Van Horn’s presentation is titled “Noodling around with Religion: Carnival Play, Monstrous Humor, and the Noodly Master.”

Using a framework developed by literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin, Van Horn promises in his abstract to explore how, “in a carnivalesque fashion, the Flying Spaghetti Monster elevates the low (the bodily, the material, the inorganic) to bring down the high (the sacred, the religiously dogmatic, the culturally authoritative).”

The authors recognize the topic is a little light by the standards of the American Academy of Religion.

“You have to keep a sense of humor when you’re studying religion, especially in graduate school,” Van Horn said in a recent telephone interview. “Otherwise you’ll sink into depression pretty quickly.”

But they also insist it’s more than a joke.

Indeed, the tale of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and its followers cuts to the heart of the one of the thorniest questions in religious studies: What defines a religion? Does it require a genuine theological belief? Or simply a set of rituals and a community joining together as a way of signaling their cultural alliances to others?

In short, is an anti-religion like Flying Spaghetti Monsterism actually a religion?

Joining them on the panel will be David Chidester, a prominent and controversial academic at the University of Cape Town in South Africa who is interested in precisely such questions. He has urged scholars looking for insights into the place of religion in culture and psychology to explore a wider range of human activities. Examples include cheering for sports teams, joining Tupperware groups and the growing phenomenon of Internet-based religions. His 2005 book “Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture,” prompted wide debate about how far into popular culture religious studies scholars should venture.

Lucas Johnston, the third Florida student, argues the Flying Spaghetti Monsterism exhibits at least some of the traits of a traditional religion — including, perhaps, that deep human need to feel like there’s something bigger than oneself out there.

He recognized the point when his neighbor, a militant atheist who sports a pro-Darwin bumper sticker on her car, tried recently to start her car on a dying battery.

As she turned the key, she murmured under her breath: “Come on Spaghetti Monster!” E-mail to a friend E-mail to a friend

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press

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