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StrangerThan -> RE: Creationism in public schools (10/6/2008 3:48:10 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: brainiacsub
quote:
ORIGINAL: StrangerThan
[snip...]
The idiocy behind refusing to debate it or discuss it is the idiocy that always comes when people won't talk. It's kind of how you end up with groups of people hating each other because of color, because of beliefs, because they just live in a different place.
It's stupid. I see no reason it can't or shouldn't be debated. Taught? No. Debated? Absolutely.
Stranger, here is the problem. The Evangelical Christian right does not want the topic debated. For them, Creationism is a matter of fact and should be taught as such. They do not believe that Evolutionary Theory is a viable alternative to Creation as presented in Genesis. In fact, they do not believe in teaching anything that might discredit the Bible as anything but the infallible word of God. The ongoing discussions about teaching Creationism in public schools is a political debate, not a theological one. What people don't realize is that the religious right has a very powerful agenda and an equally powerful lobby. They are politically savy enough to recognize that they must take small steps to achieve the ultimate goal - eliminate the teaching of evolution as science. A small step for them in this moment is to have Creationism 'debated' as an alternative to Evolutionary Theory. They are using the exact same political tactics to overturn Roe v. Wade - criminalize late-term abortions, require parental notification, eliminate public funding of abortions for the poor - because these are things that moderate Americans can agree on. The far right lobby has publicly admitted many times that this is part of an overall strategy to create precedence to overturn the existing abortion laws.
Now, back to the teaching of Creationism...the election of someone like Palin to a powerful political office is beyond the wildest masturbatory fantasies of the far right. Does Palin actually believe that the Earth is 6,000 yrs old, that dinosaurs co-existed with man, that evolution is junk science? I don't believe that she is that stupid. After all, where does she think all the oil in Alaska came from? She must have some understanding of the science of oil...but I could be wrong. But she is exactly the vehicle that the far right lobby needs to further their agenda, because I believe she is too stupid to recognize that she is being used.
I find all this discussion about the science, theology and philosophy of Evolution vs Creationism to be quite fascinating. I have enjoyed reading this thread, but too many have retreated to their own corner rather than step out of the ring and watch the bigger fight. Everyone loses if the lobbists win this one.
I understand the problem brainiac, probably better than a lot of folks because I was raised in a fundamentalist household. I understand the lobby, sway these folks have, and the intent behind a lot of their actions. The first 12 years of life were immersed in it. It took about 20 more years to come to terms with myself. The pivotal event came during a time when I was an outdoors reporter and used to cranking out articles, editorials and short stories every week. It started with a dream I had - one you'd almost classify as a nightmare except there was nothing truly horrific about it, just a deep sense of something being unsettled and not quite right. I started writing it as a story and ended up chronicling a good portion of my own childhood. The process of writing it shed a lot of light and clarity on who Stranger actually was and probably more importantly, why he was who he was... if that makes sense. Grin.
Folks often take divergent paths when reaching that kind of realization. Some attempt to divest themselves completely from the indoctrination those early years contained. Others continue to exist in that duality where they put the teachings on one side, what they perceive as reality on the other side and rarely let the two mix because they can't rationally explain belief in the face of science. Some fall back to those early years and carry all kinds of emotionally and mentally destructive burdens with them thereafter - things like guilt, being ashamed of who or what they are, of seeing themselves as somehow broken because they can't live up to what they were taught and be human at the same time. Some outright rebel, and some of those end up doing things they later regret without realizing the root cause of it.
I'm not a psychologist, nor do I have all the answers. I'm sure if I did some research I'd find reams and reams of material on the emotional and mental ramifications and complications that can present themselves later in life. I just know that for me, I reached a type of equilibrium that brought my own sense of peace. One aspect of that is that I was damned tired of people telling me what to think, what to believe, what to feel. I'm one of those people who don't see this in black and white terms. After all, one of my questions to those who are so adamant about evolution being wrong is that, if God was intelligent enough to create life, wouldn't he be intelligent enough to give it the ability to survive in the face of changing environmental pressures, to adapt, to... evolve? The issues are really only clouded if one stands on either side of the spectrum and insists that side is the one and only truth. Die hard creationists and evolutionists both do it to the nth degree while at best ignoring the other, at worst attempting to denounce the other. I'm shrugging here but it's only if you insist on a literal translation of things that there is a problem assimilating both as possible. The bottom line though is that no one can state categorically what the truth is. If they could, there would be no debate.
I've been around enough to know that science itself evolves, that what we know or suspect we know in terms of the past and present can and most likely will change. Every discovery sheds new light, and sometimes that light illuminates shadows in the picture that we thought we'd already understood. I see this process as linear, sort of like putting together a puzzle and seeing more and more of the picture with each new piece that falls into place. And that puzzle is monsterous. Hell, we can't even say for certain what happened a thousand years ago in many cases. Find a fragment of text and someone will spend a lifetime trying to ascertain it's validity. What I see on both sides is a deserpate need to be right, and in that context, I see a fragment of jaw bone given life with actions and habits that are often simply supposition on one hand, while creationists scramble to find holes in anything that casts doubt on their literal interpretations on the other.
Whether or not one side will eventually be proven right is beyond the point. The point is, what Stranger has come to accept internally, and that is that there is no reason there can't be truth on both sides. Boil that down to the basics and essentially it means at some point something occurred that led to us ending up on top of the food chain in the present day. Evolution is a fact in that time line. I'm comfortable in the fact that I don't know the exact path or the exact forces that created that path. I'm also comfortable nailing either side to the wall who states categorically that this happened or that happened when all either side has when it comes to that moment in time is faith in their own understanding.
Where that leads in terms of debate is this, if you sequester it, bury it, refuse to allow it, all you really do is allow both camps to squat on their territory and scream insults at the other. The only folks who migrate back and forth between those camps are the folks who have enough internal insight to understand the position of both. If you're going to change minds, or find some common ground where both can exist, the only way to do that is bring both sides to the table and find that common ground. Anyone who thinks that doesn't have to happen hasn't been paying attention in the last 2-3 decades. There is sufficient force in the fundamentalist movement to change your life regardless of whether or not you want it changed. That's a big part of the fear with this election. You're not going to stop that by sitting in one camp yelling insults across the river at the other side.
I'm not about telling either side they're wrong because I personally found a way to assimilate truth in both. What I am about is painting the extremists for what they are. The elitists exist on both sides and are part of the problem, not the answer.
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