America is caught in a conflict between science and God

[Briar]

America is caught in a conflict between science and God

A new exhibition on Darwin's life and work is a defiant gesture against US biblical literalism

Martin Kettle

...

New York's Darwin exhibition - which will reach London for the Darwin bicentenary in 2009 - is a model of its kind. It takes you comprehensively and fascinatingly through the great scientist's life story. But it is the exhibition's deeper message that matters most in modern America. It asserts without shame, fear or compromise that Darwin's theory of evolution is, quite simply, true. In other modern democracies this is an uncontroversial statement. In modern America it is an act not without bravery. That is why, for instance, corporate sponsors have run a mile from a £1.7m event that elsewhere would have them queueing up for the privilege. It is why this exhibition - unlike, say, the Fra Angelico show on the other side of the park at the Metropolitan Museum of Art - is reported on the news pages of US papers as well as the arts and leisure pages. It is why Newsweek magazine's US edition this week has Darwin's picture on the front cover, while Newsweek's international edition, addressing a more relaxed readership perhaps, opts for a cover on John Lennon.
Reflect on this. Only one out of four Americans believes life on earth today has evolved through natural selection. Three-quarters of Americans, in other words, still do not accept what Darwin established 150 years ago. Just under half of all Americans believe the natural world was created in its present form by God in six days as described in Genesis. They believe, incredibly, that the earth is only a few thousand years old.

...

Since 9/11 you often hear the argument that the liberal western world must study and learn more about Islam in order to better comprehend the fundamentalist Muslim mind. Maybe so. But you do not often hear people advocating similar inquisitiveness about the fundamentalist Christian mind. Perhaps that too ought to change, especially if we want to understand an America in which religious feeling is growing, not shrinking, and in which the outriders are becoming more audacious intellectually and politically by the day.

I challenge any British visitor to go into a good American bookshop and not be amazed at the scale and subject matter of the religious books on display. A few blocks from the Darwin exhibition, there is a Barnes & Noble bookshop where there are shelves and shelves of the stuff - Bibles in profusion, yards of Judaica, vast tomes about Mormonism, apparently serious volumes about Oprah Winfrey's spiritual significance in modern America. Particularly fascinating is the Religious Fiction section. Believe me, we're not talking CS Lewis here. Check out the biggest shelf presence of the lot, the Left Behind series of novels by "prophecy scholar" Tim LaHaye with Jerry B Jenkins - 60m volumes sold so far - and you will get an inkling of the intensity of the apocalyptic "holy living in an unholy age" crusade against science in modern America.

...

We live in a world dominated by the United States. The US claims and asserts military and economic -and moral - primacy in that world. And yet, not least in the estimation of many of its people, the US is not like the rest of the world. In their eyes, it is a special place whose specialness is part, and even proof, of a divine purpose. It is but a small step from there to say that divine claims should take precedence over science, and rhetoric over reason.

...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1651333,00.html

[aquart]

1. not possible.

if god exists, then god created science and evolution is one of god's processes...and possibly a major form of god entertainment.

if god doesn't exist, then science is on its own and god isn't in the running.

[ClintonTyree]

2. Amazing.......

it floors me to think that almost half the people in this country believe in creationism. They take Bible stories literally; woman being crafted from Adam's rib, the story of Noah and the Ark, Jonah and the Whale, changing water to wine, walking upon water and other such stories.
I think people tend to look at these stories and myths with today's eyes. They don't stop to think of how ignorant and superstitious people were in those days, that very few of them could even read or write. "Miracles" occurred daily, things that we would accept as basic Science. Natural phenomenon were seen as signs from an angry god and people believed it as so.
Today's people should know better, but they insist on equating our knowledge today with the knowledge (what little of it there was) of that time.
Oh well, I'm never going to change one of their minds and they certainly aren't going to change mine. They WANT to believe and it's hard to convince someone that what they've held as fact for years is nothing more than myth. They'll resist that until the end. I guess it's a moot point. Either you have unending faith or you don't and I'm one who will take the Scientific route every time.

[scarletlib]

3. I see that you too are an acolyte of His Noodliness

[TallahasseeGrannie]

5. I have to comment on the Spaghetti Monster

his noodley appendages are pointed at the end. This makes them look rather like... parasitic worms. Pasta is squared at the end.

Is this simply artistic license, such as Modigliani stretched virgins, or is there some underlying hidden message?

[maxsolomon]

15. i dunno if they REALLY believe in creationism

or they just SAY they do when asked - out of rote behavior, or fear of admitting to anyone that the bible is not literal history.

[Smarmie Doofus]

4. I'd say "between science and anti-science".

My Latin is as rusty as a thirty year old nail but the infinitive root might be "scere" meaning "to know". So it might be best to think of the conflict as one between "knowing" and "not knowing". Or knowledge vs. ignorance.

It would be interesting to know where Kettle gets the 'three in four Americans rejects Darwin" statistic and how that compares to other cultures... western and non-western. Not that I doubt that we are on the short end of the barbarianism-scale.

Good article. Too bad one has to go to the UK to read this in msm.

[Briar]

6. Strictly speaking

isn't this two kinds of "knowing"? The IDers and Creationists would argue that the Bible provides them with an infallible source of knowledge. Perhaps what we need to distinguish is between two kinds of thinking, one of which is open to testing "knowledge" against reality, the other of which thinks that such testing of their "knowledge" is redundant and even blasphemous.

[Demeter]

8. Sorry. I See No Knowledge, and therefore, No Knowing In Religion

Religion can't deal with facts. It is a right-brain activity.

[Briar]

10. Religion

defines facts differently.

In "The Battle for God", Karen Armstrong argues that the current noxious fundamentalist rigid mindedness developed because the religious felt that scientific explorations of the observable universe threatened a belief in the existance of God. Bible colleges and suchlike sprang up using superficially scientific method to establish the primacy of religious explanations of creation - but their evidence came not from observation of and experiments in the real world but from the Bible - they see their position as just as logical as the scientific one since it is derived from Logos itself.

The frightening (one of the frightening) aspects of all this is the apparent consequence that these people are living in a world which they see totally differently from secular people. They don't need science or reason to explain it - they have a thought-system which makes perfect sense of it to them.

Another frightening consequence is the way it feeds into a belief (as evidenced by David Ignatius in another thread on this page) that they live in an exceptional country with a divine mission to save the world.

This Messiah Complex certainly terrifies me!

[HereSince1628]

7. Fundamentalists' antiDarwinism is but a petty threat compared to

the rightwing's broader rejection of scientific findings and replacement with literally politically correct findings.

IMHO anti-evolution is near harmless. Being a global conglomerate, biology isn't going to alter it's beliefs based on spirituality in any one country, even if that country is the United States. Science as a whole is safe from Anti-evolution forces. The power of comparative biology (whose justification is shared biologic heritage) is rather more threatened by animal rights groups.

In terms of general domesetic issues evolution per se plays almost no direct role role in research the has primary or seconday effects on the economy or on the application of scientific findings to government policy.

That is not the case with the Bush administration's war on scientific research as it concerns practical applications of science interacting with government regulation, in areas as broad as medicine (particularly pharmaceuticals), environment, agriculture, mathematics/statistics, etc.

THIS antiscience effort applied in an attempt to overcome the knowledge expertise of regulatory agencies negatively impacts every American, effecting the air we breath, the water we drink, the food we eat, and our general safety.

There are literally dozens of anti-anti-evolution threads in DU every month with scores if not hundreds of responses.

Isn't it odd that the Bush war on science goes on and on with attack after attack with so very little comment?

[RC]

9. My contribution to the local newspaper web discussion

I think it fits in here. So far no one has seen fit to attack it.

Should creationism be taught along with evolution in schools?

Human Beings have evolved to be so intelligent they can rationalize absolutely anything.
Don't understand some natural phenomenon? Ok, god did it. Not just any god either, "The Christian God." And not just any ol' Christian God either, your very own Christian God. You know the one YOU worship in YOUR church. That church across the street does things differently. They don't do it right. In fact some of those people in that church across the street believe in... Gasp... Shudder... Oh no... Evolution!
Give me a break here. If this god of yours was so powerful as to be able to make the universe and everything in it, do you really think he/she/whatever would be so petty as to want some semi intelligent life form on a wet rock on the edge of some average galaxy, to bow down and worship him/her/whatever?
Talk about humanizing God. Wanting to be looked up to, to be worshiped is a human trait. Shouldn't a real God be above and beyond that?
Wouldn't he be more concerned about how we live our lives, treat our neighbors, get along with those different than us, instead of wanting to bomb them back into the stone age. Helping others live a better life instead of killing them for their possessions?
But that is what Intelligent Design does. Humanizes God. Your God is a magician. He snapped his fingers and uttered a few words 6000 years ago and poof, here we are. Some slight of hand, huh?

http://www.in-forum.com/talk/index.cfm?id=1786&talk_page=2

[Briar]

11. Good points, RC! n/t

[Wise Doubter]

12. Funny stuff !!

Guy No1 : Do you believe in God ?
Guy No2 : No

*BANG*

Guy No1 : Do you believe in God ?
Guy No3 : Yes
Guy No1 : Do you believe in MY God ?
Guy No3 : No

*BANG*

Any questions ?

[Wise Doubter]

13. Missed it, by that much...

Who came first Adam or Atom ??

[Demeter]

14. I Don't WANT to "Know" the Fundamentalist Christian's Mind

Just looking at their behavior and works, I know that their madness does not appeal to me, nor is there much an untrained person can do about such insanity.

Fundamentalists did not found this country, they didn't write the Constitutions (state or federal), they did not build its industries nor support its charities and arts, and they scoffed at and destroyed the best public educational system in the world. They are parasites at best, sucking the lifeblood out of the American dream and making a mockery of her principles. If anybody belongs back in the closet, it is the fundies.