In dealing with Mr. Hovind's post of yesterday, it crossed my mind that someone randomly stumbling across this blog might look at its contents and wonder just why it is that Ken Ham and Kent Hovind seem to receive so much of my ire. Surely they are harmless, this person might argue, just fringe kooks, one in Kentucky and the other in jail. Why take the time and effort to attack them and their arguments?
As much as I wish that I could dismiss them as simple loons, crazy but harmless, to regard them as such would be a dangerous underestimation of who they are and what power they hold. Fringe they are, but to dismiss them because of that would be premature. The numbers of people who either actively follow them or accept what they believe puts these two in the majority, not a small minority as so many of us would like to believe. Whether it is on a literal, six-day creation, Noah's Flood or the alleged young age of the earth, poll after poll of Americans agree about these issues, whether in a simple majority or at least in a plurality.
This is why we fight. This is why I will not shirk my duties by refusing to stand up for good science and the use of reason. It affects us all, and if these people are allowed to win, we will all suffer for it, as a country and as a species.
Surely, the skeptical reader might say, even if creationists (or their Intelligent Design proxies) could insert their beliefs, we wouldn't really suffer for it? It would be understandable for someone to make that claim, but that is a misguided sentiment at best. We would surely suffer, because the attack on evolution is simply one front on the wider war of irrationality against science. Beyond attacks on the good science of evolution, there lie attacks against stem cell research and climatology, attacks on the science and technology underlying alternative energies. Each attack, whether it is purposely designed for this or not, will weaken a facet of science and medicine that will leave us lessened as a country. Already, other nations begin to surpass us in stem cell research and "green" technology as they realize that support for those two areas in the United States is sketchy at best. What ailments could be cured if we would look seriously at stem cells? Diabetes is a major ailment in this country, and it is only rising. Stem cells have the promise of curing it, but nothing will happen in light of the block-headed opposition to it in this country. For the people who want to end our dependence on foreign oil, alternative energies like wind and solar offer a way to do so, but irrational fear of the new, and the strange notion that "green energy" is a socialist plot to turn America into the U.S.S.R. stymies this promising new line of technology in its infancy.
And this is but a foretaste of things to come, if we don't stand up and fight against the creationists, against the deniers and against those who want to keep yearning for what was rather than looking to what may be.
The assault upon evolution in particular is just the wedge. If they can cast down one of the greatest ideas in science, endlessly supported by many different kinds of evidence and the cornerstone of modern biology, then that will mark the beginning of their attack, not its end. After evolution has been overthrown, the creationists will go on to attack astronomy (which demonstrates an old universe), geology (a 4.5 billion year old Earth), climatology (also demonstrating an Earth older than creationist fantasies, and showing the effects of fossil fuel consumption), cosmology (an old universe), chemistry (the elements as well speak to an old earth). No area of science will be safe from their madness. As science, and scientific research, is crippled, the United States will continue its long decline. Were this point to be reached, unlikely thought it seems, it would not be inconceivable that, their power waxing, an American theocracy could be installed.
That is why we have to stand up and speak out, in public and in private, in support of evolution, and by extension all of science. If evolution is not defended, if the creationists are allowed to win the day, all of science will follow, and the gains of the last three hundred years would be lost. At heart, that is what this struggle is about. Will we go forward with science and reason...or will we allow all society to be dragged back to the ideas and mores of the past, a new dark age presided over by the likes of Ham, Sarfati, Morris and Hovind?
That is the stark choice before us. There is no middle ground between the two.
We must keep up the fight against the creationists, on every front, and every day, until they are, at last, defeated.
As much as I wish that I could dismiss them as simple loons, crazy but harmless, to regard them as such would be a dangerous underestimation of who they are and what power they hold. Fringe they are, but to dismiss them because of that would be premature. The numbers of people who either actively follow them or accept what they believe puts these two in the majority, not a small minority as so many of us would like to believe. Whether it is on a literal, six-day creation, Noah's Flood or the alleged young age of the earth, poll after poll of Americans agree about these issues, whether in a simple majority or at least in a plurality.
This is why we fight. This is why I will not shirk my duties by refusing to stand up for good science and the use of reason. It affects us all, and if these people are allowed to win, we will all suffer for it, as a country and as a species.
Surely, the skeptical reader might say, even if creationists (or their Intelligent Design proxies) could insert their beliefs, we wouldn't really suffer for it? It would be understandable for someone to make that claim, but that is a misguided sentiment at best. We would surely suffer, because the attack on evolution is simply one front on the wider war of irrationality against science. Beyond attacks on the good science of evolution, there lie attacks against stem cell research and climatology, attacks on the science and technology underlying alternative energies. Each attack, whether it is purposely designed for this or not, will weaken a facet of science and medicine that will leave us lessened as a country. Already, other nations begin to surpass us in stem cell research and "green" technology as they realize that support for those two areas in the United States is sketchy at best. What ailments could be cured if we would look seriously at stem cells? Diabetes is a major ailment in this country, and it is only rising. Stem cells have the promise of curing it, but nothing will happen in light of the block-headed opposition to it in this country. For the people who want to end our dependence on foreign oil, alternative energies like wind and solar offer a way to do so, but irrational fear of the new, and the strange notion that "green energy" is a socialist plot to turn America into the U.S.S.R. stymies this promising new line of technology in its infancy.
And this is but a foretaste of things to come, if we don't stand up and fight against the creationists, against the deniers and against those who want to keep yearning for what was rather than looking to what may be.
The assault upon evolution in particular is just the wedge. If they can cast down one of the greatest ideas in science, endlessly supported by many different kinds of evidence and the cornerstone of modern biology, then that will mark the beginning of their attack, not its end. After evolution has been overthrown, the creationists will go on to attack astronomy (which demonstrates an old universe), geology (a 4.5 billion year old Earth), climatology (also demonstrating an Earth older than creationist fantasies, and showing the effects of fossil fuel consumption), cosmology (an old universe), chemistry (the elements as well speak to an old earth). No area of science will be safe from their madness. As science, and scientific research, is crippled, the United States will continue its long decline. Were this point to be reached, unlikely thought it seems, it would not be inconceivable that, their power waxing, an American theocracy could be installed.
That is why we have to stand up and speak out, in public and in private, in support of evolution, and by extension all of science. If evolution is not defended, if the creationists are allowed to win the day, all of science will follow, and the gains of the last three hundred years would be lost. At heart, that is what this struggle is about. Will we go forward with science and reason...or will we allow all society to be dragged back to the ideas and mores of the past, a new dark age presided over by the likes of Ham, Sarfati, Morris and Hovind?
That is the stark choice before us. There is no middle ground between the two.
We must keep up the fight against the creationists, on every front, and every day, until they are, at last, defeated.
Ah, easy mate. It would never come to that. In fact, the opposite seems true to a very great many. We're about as close to a theocracy as I am to being eight feet tall and ruling the world with my enormous personality. All in all, I'd say both will survive and this is certainly not worth losing any sleep over -- or is that resultant from excess coffee drinking? At any rate, enjoy your break.
ReplyDeletePerhaps not a theocracy, but surely a plutocracy. Brady is right in one very disheartening way...that so many Americans are so dismally ignorant of the basics of modern science should be something that disturbs all of us who have had an adequate education and are able to use reason instead of superstition to order our lives. The "thugocracy" that runs PA and WI and FL today thrives because of a populace that is so easily led by propaganda from the "right." Be afraid...be very afraid.
ReplyDeleteWith the spate of recent bills to create a mysogynistic bastion of relagating women to breeding machines and the backdoor legislation to demonize free thought or differing opinions, I'm witnessing a shift that is quite reminisant of the Taliban with their religious courts and death penalty mentality for perceived offenses against"God". Like the current move to make a miscarriage of a pregnancy capital crime punishable by death; I guess their medical knowledge of the freequency of natually occurring miscarrieges would wipe out about one third of the female population who would be unfortunate to conceive by what ever means.
ReplyDeleteThe conservative fringe has gone too far on their grasp for power in this country, when the freedom of religion will no longer include freedom FROM religion. Like the Taliban they demand that everyone will follow their beliefs or perish...I for one will resist.
Herla, yes, indeed I was drinking a bit of coffee when it wrote this (Seattle's Best, not bad). I debated over whether to include the sentence on a theocracy, but decided to keep it. I stand by that line; I fear that such an occurrence, though it would be veiled here rather than open (a la Iran), is not as unlikely as we might wish to think. I have no doubt that a number of Americans not only wish for but would welcome a theocratic state here (and the creationists certainly number among them), though of course they are not a majority, nor even a plurality.
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ReplyDeleteI think you are correct on that one.
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