archived: 25 Sept - 1 Oct, 2005 Back Next
VOODOO, CREATIONISM, EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY: CAN THEY
COEXIST?
[Authored by Donald B. Ardell*]
If a large percentage of Americans favored voodoo, should medical students be taught proper ways to slaughter a chicken, induce deep trances and cast out evil spirits? How far should we go to accommodate true believers, particularly when the faithful embrace positions at odds with the modern world?
If enough people want such a thing, would you favor the teaching of voodoo arts in medical schools? After all, aren't we Americans big on letting everyone choose his/her own poisons, so to speak? Why not let students and patients decide? Isn't that the American way?
These questions were sparked by a recent poll conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (see "Teaching of Creationism Is Endorsed in New Survey," New York Times, August 31, 2005). The poll showed that 42 percent of Americans believe "living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time." Amazingly, yet another 18% of the 48% who consented to the idea of change over time sated their belief that such changes were "GUIDED" by a supreme being. They, too, are basically deniers of evolution! Their position is one of trying to square science with religion despite the preposterous assumption that a god or a thousand gods, perhaps, somehow chose to micro-manage the evolution of humanoids over eons of time.
The Pew poll results show that a majority of adults, not just those without a high school education, do NOT accept modern science (which holds that ALL living organisms evolved over time).
Most who favor a scientific outlook on the origins and history of life consider Adam and Eve to be a religious myth, parable, apocryphal story or something appropriate to religious beliefs. The tale is viewed as no more a part of the real world than Mickey Mouse is part of zapus hudsonicus (the meadow jumping mouse family). Science holds that changes have occurred over time at the genetic level, that our genes mutated and recombined in different ways over the millennia during reproduction and that new characteristics affording survival and reproductive advantages emerged, little by little and bit by bit-as humans evolved into our current state (homo sapiens). Scientists call this process of differential survival and reproduction "natural selection," a key feature of the theory of evolution. Unfortunately, natural selection has not been mentioned much in Sunday schools or promoted by religious leaders; on the contrary, it has been rejected by the powers who educate the faithful in favor of a vague belief called creationism (or strategically for purposes of the teaching of biology - "intelligent design"), which essentially teaches that a Grand Wazoo did everything, out of nothing, in seven days. Or, was that six, not counting a day off?
By the way, Mickey Mouse evolved, too. He did not exist in his present form when created on November 18, 1928. Instead, he began as a rabbit! He wasn't named Mickey, either. He was "Oswald," and he had long ears and a tail. After a while, Mickey evolved to the point where he had bulky eyes and a long tail, with arms and legs as skinny as sticks. The hands were ungloved, his body was shaped like a pear, he wore red trousers, two large white buttons, big shoes and he was black. His tail was eventually dropped, an adaptation designed to save the cost of animation. But, I digress.
Are you not appalled, chagrined, mortified and flummoxed by the above noted Pew survey finding? Or, perhaps not, because you always suspected that a lot of Americans were, scientifically speaking, rather hair-brained bipeds?
Given such widespread enthusiasm for anti-science in our schools, is it not a wonder that this nation EVOLVED into the kind of democracy we enjoy today? How, for example, did the framers gain support for a national system of self-governance featuring a wall of separation between church and state with guaranteed rights of political minorities? How was the idea of free speech and a free press built into the Constitution and protected over the centuries? What about all those provisions for protection against military and police abuses-how did these rights survive varied challenges over a few hundred odd years? Similar questions could be asked of other great features of living in the USA, including those limitations on the power of corporate monopolies, the restrictions on special-interest monies that prevent undue political influence of certain powerful groups, the cherished universal access to needed medical care we all enjoy, our sound educational system that we hold as a basic right of every child, our reliable electoral systems and so on. (For more on this theme, see John Nichols, "Bush Vs. History," The Nation, August 26, 2005.)
Well, OK, so maybe a few of these things are not holding up so well but surely that's just a temporary situation, don't you think? Or, is our society evolving, too, in ways quite different from what Thomas Jefferson and most of the framers in the late 1770's would have desired?
Well, it will be interesting to see how our country evolves if we settle into a faith-based democracy, with or without voodoo medicine or Adam and Eve biology.
No matter, try to always look on the bright side of life. Be well.
_______
Junkie: Don Ardell holds degrees from George Washington University, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Stanford University and The Union Institute in Ohio. He was member of the Trustees of the National Wellness Institute for eight years. Ardell is one of ten Americans given the Healthy America Fitness Leaders Award in 1991 by the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, Allstate Insurance Company and the U.S. Jaycees.
Ardell publishes an email newsletter. You can subscribe to his newsletter for your personal health at this link: Don Ardell’s newsletter. He is also the Director of Seek Wellness that has a very interesting and informative website: Seek Wellness.
From a political perspective, Ardell’s column in TPJ today, his fist but hopefully not his last, is a clarion warning to Democrats that the radical Republican assault on science could have profound implications for America.
REPUBLICAN FRACTURE?
Democrats have their fault lines, but so do Republicans. This article, written by Mona Charen and published in Conservative Voice, denotes a large fault that is developing:
It's not possible, is it?
Rep. Tom DeLay did not say that the Republican Congress had achieved a "victory"
over wasteful spending?
What a sense of humor!
Who are these Republicans? A little over a month ago, when House members were departing for the August break, the Republican leadership circulated a flyer listing 12 "Ideas for August Recess Events." Among these were, according to The Washington Post, "stop by a military reserve center to highlight increased benefits," "visit a bridge or highway that will receive additional funding," or "talk up the new prescription drug benefit for seniors." That sound you hear (is it a ka-ching?) is the sound of Republican principle melting in the hot sun of Washington, D.C. Gone is the heady talk from the days of the Republican Revolution in 1994, when whole departments and agencies were to be eliminated. Today, the corpulent state gobbles up taxpayers' money, and it is Republicans who declare that no "offsets" can be found for the new spending natural disasters will require.
Nonmilitary and non-homeland security spending increased by $303 billion between 2001 and 2005, according to the American Conservative Union. Only eight members of the House of Representatives and 11 senators voted against the $286.5 billion transportation bill in August, the most lavish public works bill in U.S. history. The Washington Post reports that the mammoth bill contains 6,376 earmarked projects including "a $2.3 million grant for the beautification of the Ronald Reagan Freeway in California; $6 million for graffiti elimination in New York; nearly $4 million on the National Packard Museum in Warren, Ohio, and the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich.; $2.4 million on a Red River National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center in Louisiana; and $1.2 million to install lighting and steps and to equip an interpretative facility at the Blue Ridge Music Center, to name a few."
And now President Bush, whose greatest sin in his first term was failure to wield the veto pen, has joined enthusiastically in the legalized looting of the taxpayer. . . .
President Bush's Sept. 15 speech from New Orleans, while graceful and touching, contained no hint of humility about the reach of federal power or the capacity of government to get things done. "We'll not just rebuild," he declared, "we'll build higher and better."
This is not a conservative perspective. The people of the region need immediate help and comfort, but why must we rush headlong into a rebuilding program, particularly one funded and controlled from Washington? The president pronounced that "Americans have never left our destiny to the whims of nature, and we will not start now." That sort of hubris can get you into trouble. . . .
Finally, there is the Democrats' favorite topic -- the perennial matter of race. Suddenly, Republicans seem to have suffered an attack of amnesia. The president attributes poverty in New Orleans to a history of racial discrimination and proposes, as Stephen Moore coined it in The Wall Street Journal, a "GOP New Deal."
In truth, as conservatives have patiently argued for 25 years, poverty in America today is primarily a matter of culture, not race. It is the result of family disintegration above all. Republicans have reduced poverty in America dramatically -- especially that of black children -- by welfare reform. There is more to be done on that front, but not by adopting the liberals' mantra about racism.
Republicans seem to be forgetting not just their principles but their own past successes -- and that is an invitation to failure.
This is the same President who attacked Al Gore during a Minneapolis campaign speech in 2000:
Gore offers an old and tired approach. He offers a new federal spending program to nearly every voting bloc. He expands entitlements, without reforms to sustain them. 285 new or expanded programs, and $2 trillion more in new spending. Spending without discipline, spending without priorities, and spending without an end. Al Gore’s massive spending would mean slower growth and higher taxes. And it could mean an end to this nation’s prosperity.
It is the same Republican Party that is leading America to an end of its prosperity.
Last Update: 03/23/2006