The Discrete Harm of the Radical Right

One can argue the subtleties of politics forever but politics should deal with political issues, political issues related to how the body politic makes its wishes known to the government and its leaders. Science is not a political topic. The truth of science does not attach from the approval of the people nor is it contingent on popular support. Pluto would still be a planet if astronomers counted "votes." Evolution would be a felony to teach in the South of the United States if the beliefs of a significant percentage southern citizens had their way. Even many evolutionists sometimes fear speaking against the inclusion of Intelligent Design---its proponents make it sound like such a "fair" thing to do. We include various theories of the causes of the Civil War, why not various theories on human origins?

The answer? We do include challenges to Darwinian evolution or any other scientific theories when new data become available and when the data can be tested and verified. Science is never a certainty. If you hear a scientist proclaim the truth and the truth for all time, you can know that you are not hearing a genuine scientist. He/she would be a charletan---as bad as the creationists. We can teach competing theories of the Civil War's origins because the causes are mixed and the perceptions of the scholars derive from different sets of data depending on their personal notion of how history works. Is history a function of the great people who lead societies? Is it based on raw economics? Is it based on the interplay of human and natural resources? We cannot state absolute answers to those questions because there is no "scientific test" on which we can base their validity. History employs a scientific approach to gathering data and assessing the data but it is also a humanity with some artistic factors impacting the outcome of the scholar's work. History is maleable in terms of how we reach historical "conclusions," science is not.

Science refers to the laws of science as they describe how the natural world works from the bizarre world of the quantum particles to the unthinkably large "world" of the universe(s). Science provides us a way to understand the cosmos without relying on mythology or the supernatural. It provides answers to the questions of how things work which can be tested and either confirmed or disproven. "Knowledge" which is not subject to verification does not fall within the range of what science can address. On this point alone, Intelligent Design and its more ignorant cousin, Creation-Science, are not suitable for the science classes or the texts because those who argue for the inclusion of those anti-science approaches procalim that their ideas cannot be tested and either verified or disproven. They are clearly based on the Judeo-Christian bibles and are faith based as opposed to being testable theories of science. That those ideas are in the bible does not automatically make them untrue but it does make them unscientific since those "truths" come from a supernatural source which science cannot address.

These battles over evolution and other specific notions of science will continue so long as most Americans employ a mythological paridigm rather than a rational, modern worldview. However, the assault on science and the rational world view that America experienced as a nation during the Bush years especially and continuing in the demogoguery of the Radical Right not only set America back in relation to the work the nation needed to be doing on climate change as well as the work medical scientists should have been doing with stem-cell research but it also contributed to an undermining of reason and science as the language of the 21st Century. The data were conclusive on climate change the entire time Bush was assailing the concept, yet, at the end of his term, Bush changed his position and declared climate change to be well-founded. He changed his mind when there was nothing that scientists had not been proclaiming for years. His change was a political decision, not one based on new scientific data. His position on stem-cell research did not change but that was because his position was based on his faith, so-called, rather than science or the facts. As such, his was not an appropriate basis for establishing policy for the nation.

Too often those who argue for a rational approach to the world and those who rely on the scientific paradigm are political liberals who are so enthralled with the rights of the individual to believe as he/she chooses that they refuse to speak up as louldy and emphatically as they need to when they hear others espouse non-sensical attitudes about and towards science and scientific ideas. American liberals too often forget that the founders of American democracy, on which all the rights of citizens are based, maintained to a person that democracy cannot work without an informed electorate. If as a matter of "liberal" open-mindedness, ideas which threaten the future of America and the future of those children being taught in the public schools are not challenged in the public forum, it amounts to a genuine threat to America's national security. If such a significant threat had its origins abroad, Americans would declare war on the perpetrators. We should do the same at home. Citizens have a Constitutional right to the religious beliefs of their choice. They do not have the right to impose those beliefs on others or on the curriculum of the science classrooms of America.

America has maintained an anti-intellectual attitude throughout its history. In the early years, practical knowledge was required for survival and what the pioneers referred to as "book learning" seemed to have little value. Even then, that attitude was specious but to continue those provincialisms into the 21st Century is an affront to the promise that America once gave the world and the promise Americans made to themselves to strive always for the best. Science and religion need not be at war. Science deals with the natural world and religion is supposed to deal with matters of faith. Never the twain shall meet.

The two approaches to knowledge employ different techniques and seek different kinds of truths. Americans need face this truth if their nation is to continue as a beakon of progress and enlightenment---if, indeed, anyone still looks to America for those inspirations. America was the first government in the world to be based on a secular theory of government without a mention of anything divine. John Locke and Thomas Jefferson proclaimed that nature had endowed humans with natural rights and and then argued for the right to revolt against any government that trampled those rights. Then, to preserve those rights, a new government was put into place. The new American government was not anti-religion but it asserted for the first time that the people were the source of all political power and that the power came from the ground up rather than from the heavens down. Remarkable. And worth a fight to preserve.

Why Conservative Christians Should Oppose Intelligent Design

Conservative parents of America, picture the following scenario. Your school district, led by various evangelical groups, has recently led a successful campaign to include the teaching of Intelligent Design in the public schools. The intent of those politicized right wingers was to use the ID argument to challenge the exclusive teaching of Darwinian evolution. Ultimately, they wanted to have the entire topic of evolution removed from the science classrooms. ID, with its false logic, appealed to the significant numbers in the community who could not grasp the extraordinarily complex processes that led to the universe and life. In time, the evangelicals believed, evolution would die from the shear audacity of its conclusions.

However, the new policy led to changes that most in the community had not considered. Intelligent Design argued that plain, common sense logic proved the existence of their God. Their arguments were simple and the implications of their arguments seemed apparent to the proponents of this "theory," as they called it. What happened in the biology class had stunned many parents because the teacher, once she was required to introduce Intelligent Design as legitiomate science, had to point out to the students that there was absolutely nothing in the data to support ID as a scientific theory. While questions about the specifics of some of the evolutionary processes remained unresolved, the theory proposed by Charles Darwin in his The Origin of Species in 1859 met all the requirements of a scientific theory.

After demonstrating the specious nature of the ID "theory," the good science teacher had then shown the studets how ID also failed to meet a single requirement of the scientific method established and accepted for hundreds of years. One step at a time, the teacher showed that ID missed the mark completely. The well informed science teacher could then explain the basic rules of logic and easily convince all but the most ideologically rigid students that the entire foundation and implementation of ID failed on every level. Its apparent logic was as specious as its science. The parents stood back in horror but still had not a clue how much more would come from their change in the science curriculum.

Since Intelligent Design had been deemed a legitimate area of scientific inquiry, the history teachers could include it in their discussions of the history of science or the history of social movements in the United States. If the school had classes in psychology, the instructor could discuss the psychological origins of religion and could legally include psychological theories that regarded the religious impulse as as response to fear and the human incapacity to face the meaninglessness of the life of an individual in the almost infinite universe. The school's sociology teacher could discuss the history of mass delusions and the ways in which those driven to power used religion and the fear of hell to manipulate the masses. How people like Hitler and Osama Bin Laden could use religion to advance totalitarian ideology. If the history teacher was good he also talked to his students about the intellectual history of their culture and discussed the merits of the various schools of thought. The world history teacher who had opposed the inclusion of Intelligent Design in the curriculum because he thought it represented a particular religion's world view rather than a viable scientific theory decided to make a point to the parents on the perils of injecting matters of faith into the classroom.

As the history class began its study of the rise of the world's great religions, the teacher walked to the lectern and began with the following statement, "Class, the entire premise of the Christian religion is absurd on its face. By examining it with the basic tools of logic, I will show you that the only possible logical inference one can make regarding Christianity is that the story makes no sense and requires not faith but wilful ignorance to be accepted by any thoughtful person--regardless of one's faith in a God. This teacher had put a great deal of thought into how he would make his presentation, being careful to limit his remarks to the issues of logic and reason rather than the faith of his students. As had been true throughout the history of America, the faith of an individual could not be challenged on the basis of whether or not it made sense. Matters of faith, by definition, do not have to be reasonable or logical. Intelligent Design, because it is a "scientific theory" does have to be logical and once the topic of religion has been introduced into the schools, any facet of it can be discussed.

Because Christianity is based on what the faithful call the Old and New Testaments, the teacher began the lesson in the book of Genesis but presented his case as a narrative on the basic arguments that provide the foundations of Christian theology. One by one he showed them how illogical the various parts of Christian theology were. Under the old curriculum, the teachers could not have done much of this because it would have infringed on the privacy of his students as well as it being an infringement of the 1st Amendment rights of the student. But, the entire argument about including Intelligent Design in the curriculum was based on what its supporters called logic. They looked at the creation and said that it was not "logical" to argue that it all happened by chance and evolution. Since they said that was illogical, they proposed that a creator god was the only reasonable explanation. So, with IDs inclusion in the curriculum the door is opened wide to challenge the "logic" of Christianity.

The whole ID argument goes against one of the most fundamental beliefs of all Christians and one of the most repeated statements of Jesus about the nature of god. That fundamental belief was that god and salvation were matters of faith---not science. One example lies in what Jesus is reported to have said to Thomas who asked to see the scars. Jesus said that those who believed without seeing---without physical evidence--were blessed in their faith. Those who value their faith and those who do not want their children's teachers to have the right to challenge their beliefs should unite to oppose Intelligent Design. They should realize how much of a threat to what they want their children to believe it is. Religion is a private matter, it is based on faith and it cannot and should not be held up to the demands of science and logic. It is not what you want.