One of the topics where I never agreed with my former party is on the subject of evolution. Back when I was learning the theory, the Conservative Christian's only defense was "the Earth is 10,000 years old because the Bible says so!" Sadly as a work of science, the Bible has faired rather poorly in a historical sense. In fact, I think the Bible remains `Zero for However-many-times-we've-said-the-Bible-is-right-and-science-is-wrong.' And so for the most part 'creationism' went nowhere.
So how could the Religious Right get more people to accept their worldview? How could they impede the teaching of a science that they find offensive, while at the same time creating a wedge issue to further divide Republicans and Democrats? The same way they always do it, Pinky. They changed the rules of the debate, and now they're ready to resume their plans to take over the world!
Tom Paine really helped me understand a lot about God. In "The Age of Reason" (a must read for religious progressives), Paine explains how any time God supposedly tells man something directly, there's lots of room for interpretation. What did God mean exactly? Is pork really the meat of the Devil, or is it just kind of unsafe if you don't cook it right? But there is one thing created by the hand of God and not subject to interpretation, and that's creation itself. That sentiment
really changed the way I look at religion
and science.
And it took me forever to get this. When we first met, my wife tried to explain this transcendental notion by saying that she saw the hand of God in the patterns of her cat's fur. At the time I was still very `Capital C' Christian (at one point while we were dating I accused her of blasphemy), and I dismissed the idea derisively. "You see God...in cat hair?" As with most things in my life, I would later discover she was right the whole time. I just wasn't in the right frame of mind to hear or understand it.
If you accept the notion of a Gospel of Creation (which is really just saying that God created the universe, and it works the way He wants it to), then you understand this about science: Science is the process of understanding how God works in the universe. This is another one of my `core principle,' along with "The role of government is to help those who cannot help themselves."
Conservatives don't get this. They see science as something which denies God. I think Bishop John Spong once explained that the church hates science because it moves God `farther away.' We used to believe that God was in the clouds. Then we got up there and didn't find God. So we figured he must be on the other side of the stars. Then we figured out there is no `other side of the stars,' or rather it's farther away than we'd previously hoped. And so we become farther and farther removed from God.
You've heard the phrase "the Lord works in mysterious ways?" As with the Bible itself, religious conservatives take this saying literally. To religious conservatives God only exists in so much as there is uncertainty. It's a primitive understanding of religion. God used to smite people with thunderbolts, now we call it `meteorology.' God used to dispense justice in the form of a plague. Now we call them `viruses.' One of the last scientific areas left to this understanding of God is in the notion of where we came from. And on this front most Conservative Christians would like to have it both ways.
An overwhelming majority of `Red Staters' would agree that the Earth is millions of years old. And that dinosaurs and man for the most part didn't cohabitate the globe. They're even willing to admit that evolution exists in the areas where they can't prove it doesn't (more on that later...in their heads it all works out). But when it comes to mankind and evolution the past is simply prologue. That's where `Intelligent Design' takes over.
Intelligent Design teaches that there are two kinds of evolution-Macroevolution and Microevolution. Followers of the ID (or as I may soon call them `Monsters from the ID') school will quickly say they have no problem with the idea of `Microevolution.' And there's a good reason for that. Microevolution is observable and provable. Like when the Great Peppered Moth adjusted its camouflage to adapt to a pollution-scarred environment.
But where IDers draw the line is with Macroevoluion--the idea that Monday's pond scum is Tuesday's Tom Delay. Things don't change that quickly, you see. Such a change would take, literally, hundreds of millions of years and the Earth's only been around...wait, which side am I supposed to be on again? Personally I think it's foolish to say that there can be small changes over thousands of years, but not big changes over millions of years. But for a lot of people that's just too big a chunk of time to fathom. It's easier to think of the Earth as being only as old as human history, because trying to comprehend anything more than that could lead to a serious case of agoraphobia.
So it's a lot easier to say that God incubated the Earth for a couple million years, and once it was done "baking," he put man on it 10,000 years ago (or therebouts). Thus God remains mysterious and magical, and thus faith can be maintained. (On a lesser subconscious level, this notion also allows for the belief that Adam and Eve were white. You know, like Jesus.) And evolution can still exist for all those lesser organisms.
So how can they get this argument out into the mainstream? You can't very well say evolution exists except for man who came into being via the spontaneous will of God. Science textbooks require some kind of proof, and you can't prove or disprove that man suddenly appeared one day in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The answer is simple. Create enough confusion over the Theory of Evolution so that it's just as believable as creationism.
One of the primary objections to the Theory of Evolution is the profound distaste Christians find in the notion of being descended from monkeys. "If man came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" Which is a good argument if that's what the theory of evolution says...but it doesn't...so it isn't. What the theory of evolution states is that man and monkey share a common ancestor. There's a big difference. Therefore the first problem to overcome with the IDers is the fact that they weren't paying attention when evolution was being taught.
Another argument the anti-science crowd likes to use is that "there's no evidence of a single transitional form in science." Famously this argument is made on behalf of creationists in the one format they find the easiest to digest and understand-- a cartoon. As you can read in the comic book world of the opposition, there is nothing transitional in the human body. Everything is there because it has a purpose and God intended it to be there. So if I may ask, what is the divine purpose of the appendix? Did God equip us with a self-destruct mechanism? It could be, I don't know. If it is I wish he'd use it more. What seems more likely is that it used to be part of something that did something else. The tailbone thing I think is kind of funny, too. If it has nine muscles attached to it, doesn't that mean it maybe used to be part of a tail?
As to transitional ancestors, the IDers are more or less surrounded by trees repeatedly asking "So where's this forest you keep talking about!?" We've found a lot of evidence of shorter, harrier things that look kinda like us, but the record jumps around some. And we've got no evidence of Darryl Hannah running around with dinosaurs millions of years ago. This is largely due to poor planning on behalf of our predecessors.
Unfortunately for us our ancestors didn't choose to fossilize themselves minute-by-minute, single file on a rock wall like some sort of evolutionary family portrait. "Hey...`Hardly-Any-Tail-Left' Mark? Get over here! We've got to fossilize you!" It takes just the right set of circumstances to create recoverable fossilized remains in the first place. If there are gaps in the evolutionary chain of fossilized remains, I'm more likely to believe it's because we haven't found them yet.
But none of that matters to the `Intelligent Design' crowd, because the point isn't to disprove evolution. It's to discredit it. The idea is to put forth a theory that you can't prove or disprove, but one which will be palatable to mainstream Americans. Then sew enough confusion about the `other' theory until you create an equivalency. Give people a false choice between a theory that embraces God and one which denies Him, and voila! You've just privatized Social Security! No, wait...sorry, same playbook, different players...Voila! You've just created an alternate theory completely unsupported by the facts, but one which a majority of Americans will demand be taught in our public schools!
All of this goes back to the idea that unless God works by `magic,' then he doesn't exist. And since science demystifies God we have to be protected from it. By my beliefs, this is actually blasphemous (not to throw that word around again...Lord knows I regret using it the first time). To deny science is to deny God. Evolution IS `Intelligent Design' if it's how we actually came into being. Do you honestly mean to tell me that we are still having "Galileo" arguments about science almost 400 years later?
It especially rankles me to see elected leaders pretending to speak on God's behalf when in fact they are doing the opposite. One such individual, Wyatt Bunker , lives in my community, and is currently trying to legislate textbook stickers. The language is innocuous. In fact, I would say you could possibly even make an argument for them under the right set of circumstances. But as you can see from the article, the textbook itself says almost the exact same thing as the sticker. So in much the same way that the FMA is less about `protecting marriage' and more about `smiting gays,' these stickers aren't meant to protect the fragile faith of our schoolchildren. They're meant to bring the church into the classroom. They're meant to distract, to create confusion. To blur the lines just enough to get their agenda in our public schools. Funny, isn't that what they accuse us of?
Originally I didn't get all that bent out of shape about stickers. At first it seemed kind of harmless. But now I realize it's not about teaching, it's about indoctrinating. It's the right trying to create yet another wedge issue by creating a false choice between being Godly and being immoral. And thanks to amprather getting me thinking about it, it's a fight I don't intend to back down from. Care to join me?