The composition of my family dictates that I watch too many kids’ movies. But, when I read this column by Michael Gerson (h/t Tipsy), I started thinking of the seagulls in the Disney movie, “Nemo;” the ones who form a mob, mindlessly chattering “mine, mine, mine.”
Gerson’s column uses Christine O’Donnell, darling of the Tea Party and Republican Senate candidate in Delaware, and her statements about the First Amendment as a jumping off point. O’Donnell has boldly declared that the First Amendment does not speak to the separation of church and state. This was even bolder inasmuch as it was done in a crowd of lawyers and law students; akin to going to a medical school and declaring that the heart has nothing to do with circulation.
Gerson’s column discusses the widespread belief among Tea Partyists that the United States is, and always has been, a Christian Nation. Knowing the history of the 16th – 18th centuries, and the ideas motivating the Founders, makes this a losing proposition. But O’Donnell seems to be one of those folks with such a beautiful mind she is unwilling to waste it on tedious details like Thomas Jefferson’s Deism and the racking religious wars that were recent history when the Constitution was written.
But, Gerson says that this isn’t really about true history or racism or bigotry. Rather, this religious angle to the Tea Party movement is “nostalgia for an idealized past in which government was smaller, social ties were stronger, and America was a Christian country.”
I realize that the Tea Party is something of a Rorschach test where you project your own views onto it. Proponents see the movement as championing their own views about government and minimize the less attractive aspects. Detractors see only the whack jobs playing dress up and carrying misspelled, racist signs. But, it’s fairly clear that these folks are against. Against “what” is somewhat open. (I’m reminded of the Overkill album entitled simply, “I Hate.”) Whatever they’re against, they want to “take this country back.” From whom is left conveniently undefined. And that’s where I find the resemblance to the seagulls. The opposition I see with my version of the Rorschach test has an “It’s Ours and They can’t have it” flavor to it. “Mine, mine, mine.”
Jason: I’ve been watching attempts to enforce a particular view (Biblical literalism) on a particular branch of science since the early days of Duane Gish and “Creationism”. It’s a history of steady retreat, legally and “theoretically”, from Six Day Creation 6000 years ago to the the gooey fluff of Intelligent Design, the only “scientific” hypothesis designed solely to skirt a US court decision (and rake in tax-emempt contributions). “Oh, sure, evolution exists” is not the development of a line of thought from those (that) movement(s); it’s the breastworks of a hastily-prepared fall-back position.
“Evolution” is both an observable fact, an inference drawn overwhelmingly from decades of observation and discovery, and the logical conclusion from modern-day results in fields as distinct as geology and genetics. Meaning no disrespect, it manages to move forward regardless of whether you agree or not, and has resisted the hammer-blows of a thousand Apologists without denting.
As Todd pointed out, what you are suggesting is the insertion of cosmogony, and metaphysics, into the teaching of biology; courses might as well be moved to the comparative religion department at that point, or maybe a lit course specializing in sci-fi. My own point is that the focus on “Evolution” is a canard, a relic of the 19th century objection of Biblical literalists to Darwin, and prima facie evidence that such people do not really understand the scope of their pronouncements. Teaching children that there are “alternatives” to the fact of evolution, and to extrapolations from the observation to that fact which are at this time as grounded as anything in science, is to teach them that the whole of biology could blow away in an instant.
Doghouse: I don’t disagree much with your comment. However, I do want to point out that 200 years ago, medical professionals would “bleed” you if you were sick, as they thought too much blood was the issue. 500 years ago, people and scientists were generally convinced that the earth was flat. Before that, people and scientitsts were mostly convinced that the sun revolves around the Earth. Accepted science has been wrong before, and it will be wrong again.
Don’t get me wrong, if I had to pick between evolution and ID, I’d pick evolution. However, I do wonder at how amazing evolution is, that it created (1) flowers, which need bees to reproduce, and (2) bees, which need flowers to reproduce, at the exact same time (or that they both mutated to be mutually necessary). I also wonder how the complex and dependent cell structures which comprise our eyes were created by random mutation.
Paul, what I’m suggesting is this: that the scope of the argument is bound, at least factually, by precedent, not by reliance on anecdote or the notion that past practice–of whatever sort, architectural inscription, 18th century social organization, or partisan political acts from the 1950s asserting a particular point of view–trumps present understanding or future action. Eighteenth century anecdote may be informative, to the extent that it gives us information about the authors’ intent; for example, we have Madison’s writings about the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. The fact that one could pay one’s taxes to one’s church, in a time of travel by horseback and seventy years before we fought a bloody war to determine the supremacy of the Federal government. It might be relevant, provided we were all still Northern Europeans who lived in small villages with a church as its cultural, social, religious, and geographic center, but we aren’t. It would certainly be relevant if you could demonstrate that words have meanings which are concise and unalterable across time and changing experience, that they can be understood without interpretation, and that the authors of the Constitution understood this to be the case and expected future generations to behave accordingly. I welcome you to try.
And, Lou:
The USA is culturally Christian-Judeo,The Judeo part just means we include both New and Old Testaments,which some people dont understand.
I believe the point is, if I remember my high school algebra, that one can subtract “Judeo” from both sides of the equation without effect. Christians adopted a particular set (far from all) of Jewish religious texts. And if I’m remembering my high school comparative religion correctly, Jews have so far rather obstinately refused to reciprocate.
And at the rate spiritual trends are going, by 2030 or so I expect to start hearing about the Wiccano-Christian tradition, based on the fact that the Church borrowed all those pagan holidays.
Paul,
You are exactly right. Science has been wrong before and it will be wrong again. New hypotheses will be put forward, tested, and some will survive and create the best theory availabe.
Intelligent design has had its chance to demonstrate its validity and has failed the test. It has been rejected by the scientific community because of its weakness. But who knows, someone maybe it could become the dominant hypothesis. But until then, it is just one of thousands of tried, but rejected hypotheses.
Like life, science evolves.
Doghouse Riley poined out:
I believe the point is, if I remember my high school algebra, that one can subtract “Judeo” from both sides of the equation without effect. Christians adopted a particular set (far from all) of Jewish religious texts. And if I’m remembering my high school comparative religion correctly, Jews have so far rather obstinately refused to reciprocate.’
Lou Says::Whether Jews have refused to reciprocate need not be part of the equation.Judaism doesnt need Christianity to be whole,but Christanity needs Judaism to tell the complete Christian history.
Its also not part of the equation that certain Protestant thinking has eliminated catholicism from the history of Christianity. Somehow Jesus had to become a Protestant,although nobody says it too loudly,or dares explain it in mixed company.It’s just one of those ‘logical assumptions’ that some fundamentalists make to keep their religion pure.
Oh, science is frequently wrong, though seldom at the top of its lungs, unlike the rest of us. But certainly it should not be tarred with the actions or beliefs of “medical professionals” before the advent of the scientific method. The theory of humors is more faith than fact. (And, by the way, learned men of Columbus’ time did not believe the world was flat; the mast of a ship is the last thing that disappears over the horizon. The ancient Greeks had noted the earth’s shadow on a lunar eclipse, and calculated the earth’s circumference to an astonishing accuracy. There are plenty of examples of science getting things wrong, but that’s an example of pop history being largely bunkum.)
And, as Stephen J. Gould once noted, in the early 20th century Einsteinian relativity replaced Newtonian mechanics, but apples did not hang suspended in mid-air in the interim. No one says “this is true for all time”; what we can say is that, at present levels of understanding, it requires a certain level of perversity to believe otherwise, and one which is unjustified by the history of scientific error.
Now then, as for the classic ID “objections” to that Evolution it supposedly doesn’t disbelieve: in fact Darwin–absent any knowledge of genetics–answered both questions, and we can improve upon only the first: in fact today there are two major subgroups of animal eyes, and they share a common evolutionary heritage before diverging (though they still overlap); there exists today every type of “eye” from simple photoreceptor to the eyes of the cephalopods, with every step in between, and then down to us; down because the evolutionary process (or the Beneficent Designer) managed to wire our eyes backwards, making them much less efficient.
As for flowers and bees, well, nothing says a symbiotic relationship had to begin that way; flowers which now rely on bees for pollination may have originally relied on some other species bees replaced. Similarly, the existence of the human papillomavirus has not baffled the Great Minds of Science.
I don’t have a chance to read through all the comments, but I will respond to plain Paul (not Paul Ogden).
Yes, Paul, you are right that democracy worked in the Dover situation in that the school board members who were pushing for ID were voted off the school board. I’m not sure where you get the idea that there is an .01 percent chance that ID is right. ID is simply creationism gussied up and using a different name. Proponents of ID know better than to allege that the earth is only several thousand years old, to be sure. ID is still creationism, however.
There is simply no need for public school teachers to “teach the controversy” or “acknowledge that there are alternatives” regarding evolution. There are no viable alternatives to evolution. The understanding of evolution has changed since Darwin’s time, just as our knowledge of appropriate medical practices have changed over time. That the understanding of evolution has advanced does not mean that ID is a viable alternative.
Anyway, I’m concerned however that you think it should be up to the members of public school boards to decide what is and isn’t science. Public schools have an obligation to teach what is correct according to the best information available at the present time, not what some people, in their vast scientific illiteracy, want to believe in. People who want their kids to learn about “alternatives” to evolution need to teach them at home or send them to a private school that is willing to teach ID.
I might add, bees are not the only pollinators. Butterflies, bats, birds, humans, the wind and other things, both living and inanimate can be pollinators. The declines of both honeybees and bumblebees are alarming, nevertheless.
Paul, no offense intended, but you are getting your arguments from somewhere, whether it is a book or some website, I don’t know. I have both read and heard nearly the exact same arguments from creationists about bees and flowers and the complexities of the eyes before.
Pila: No offense taken. At one point in time, I was as confident as most of the posters here that evolution was 100% guaranteed fact. A decade ago, I was asked by an ID believer the same questions regarding bees and flowers and eyes that I asked here. I could not answer them. That fact rasied doubts in my mind about the certainty of evolution. That is why I am sympathetic to the ID argument, even though I do not necessarily believe it.
Regarding your school board question, my understanding is we have delegated the authority/responsibility to determine curriculum to the office of the school board. The ID/evolution question is a question of curriculum. If not the local school board, who else should be the determiner of what science is taught in schools? For example, do we teach global warming, which is more disputed than evolution (but still a theory that it appears a majority of the scientific community believe), as 100% fact? How far do we go towards disputed theories? 51% mean it should be taught?
Paul,
I recently scanned the Kitzmiller v. Dover case.
First, I believe that curriculum requirements are a matter of state mandate, not local boards.
But the trial judge made two important finding, amoung many.
ID is not science.
Teaching ID is promoting religion.
I whole heartedly agree with the Judge’s analysis. But that is just my analysis, although had I been on the bench in that case, I would have found similarly.
Pila,
Who decides what is correct? Let’s get away from the firestorm of ID and talk about any number of things, from the Communist takeover, or people’s liberation of Cuba, or as Paul suggested, Global Warming/Cooling.
To me, whole purpose of school was that a group of local people (later known as “The Government”) decided it was better to pool their resources and have a single school from those resources to teach what the community wanted.
Just as you find it disturbing that people might like to decide in each community what it is they want to teach, I find it very disturbing that you would accept a top-down implementation of what is true and what is false.
You better hope that the people that are making the decisions about truth are people that you trust, and that they stay in power forever.
Jason,
“Just as you find it disturbing that people might like to decide in each community what it is they want to teach, I find it very disturbing that you would accept a top-down implementation of what is true and what is false.
You better hope that the people that are making the decisions about truth are people that you trust, and that they stay in power forever.”
The “top-down” approach in academic fields is called knowledge taught by those who are experts by way of education, experience, and/or skill in their field. And as scientifc disciplines, they are self-correcting and move forward through the scientific method.
will take that over petty cranks, bar-stool savants and well-intentioned boobs that populate the school boards in places like Dover, Pennsylvania, and half of Oklahoma and Tennessee.
In areas where I have knowledge and expertise, I can objectively determine “truth” and “falsity.” In other areas where I lack such knowledge and expertise, I generally defer to those that work in those areas.
Regrettably, I am lacking in omniscience. Perhaps I should work on that.
as for curriculum, it is developed and chosen at the local school corporation level by the locally elected school board. The state in Indiana does not specify curricula nor pedogogy (how it is taught) other than the school has to provide x number of minutes of certain subjects like math, reading, english etc. The state developed standards for each subject area at each grade level. This covers the information the state wants covered, but the local school board chooses which materials it will use and how it will be taught. Teach ID as part of a course of religion history is fine, but it is not a science and should not be presented as such.
@ Paul: I’m not a scientist, but evolution is not a disputed theory as far as I can tell. Has the theory advanced since Darwin’s time? Yes, it has. Has there been any serious, testable, valid dispute as to the validity of evolution? The answer is a resounding no. Global warming is not disputed among credible scientists, either. Yes, you can find kooks, industry flacks, gadflies, and other assorted eccentrics both within and outside the scientific comunity who may dispute global warming and/or promote ID. That’s no reason to pretend that there are legitimate “controversies” to teach to children in public schools, especially when it comes to ID, which is nothing more than creationism in fancier duds.
I realize that in this age of Wikipedia, Youtube videos, books by authors and publishers with specific agendas, and so on that it may appear that there is a lot of evidence to support ID or to dispute global warming. There isn’t.
“Separation of church and state” cannot be found within The Constitution, but somehow Cristine O’Donnell is the dumb one?
Wait, so you’re saying she’s free to ignore generations of Supreme Court precedent?
The Constitution doesn’t use the word “tank” either; nor did the Founders contemplate tanks when it wrote that Congress had the power to “raise and support Armies.” So, if O’Donnell was very much against tanks and said the Constitution doesn’t say anything about allowing Congress to pay for the Army to have tanks, we shouldn’t mock her?
Tanks = Necessary and Proper for raising armies.