Friday, February 13, 2004
"Get up and fight like Apes!"
Yes, mammal friends, it's time to once again get all hopped up about evolution deniers. Just recently Georgia's highest education authority tried to remove all mention of 'evolution' from that state's public school textbooks. Only the impassioned intervention of former president Jimmy Carter halted this process. Governor Sonny Perdue failed to wade into this 'controversy.'
This would be laughable if it weren't so serious.
I should note: I am a believer, so don't tar me with a 'secular humanist' label (almost worse then being called a liberal in some crowds, eek!!). Yet, I can separate my beliefs from what rational policy should be in a diverse world. Of course my own conscience and beliefs inform my actions but not to the point of denying the obvious. And that is my problem with fundamentalism of every stripe. It yields not a whit to culture, modernity, science or reason. Karen Armstrong's wonderful book The Battle for God gives great detail in a very balanced way of how fundamentalism came to be a major force in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the last century. It should really be required reading for anyone who seeks to understand conflicts in the Middle East, Israel and the West Bank, or even people still trying to re-live the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1920 here in our own backyards.
In many ways the concerns of fundamentalists are all of our concerns (the overly-fast pace of the modern world, the removal of defined guideposts of morality, decency, and humanity). The problem is they seem to approach these critical issues by returning to a 'golden age,' the major theme of which is an unyielding reliance on whichever holy book they tend to value. This view ignores the fact that religion always has been more art than science, and various interpretations of those books have always existed--when allowed. How many versions of each of these religions are there?
Fundamentalists fall into the trap of believing their view to be unerring, not just to themselves or their own sect, but universally to all of humanity. This of course, leads automatically to the creation of 'lesser than' groups in the world. Eventually this logic taken to an extreme explains how we end up blowing ourselves up in buses full of school children or marching entire cultures into gas chambers or justifying human slavery.
It's all just got to end.
Yes, mammal friends, it's time to once again get all hopped up about evolution deniers. Just recently Georgia's highest education authority tried to remove all mention of 'evolution' from that state's public school textbooks. Only the impassioned intervention of former president Jimmy Carter halted this process. Governor Sonny Perdue failed to wade into this 'controversy.'
This would be laughable if it weren't so serious.
I should note: I am a believer, so don't tar me with a 'secular humanist' label (almost worse then being called a liberal in some crowds, eek!!). Yet, I can separate my beliefs from what rational policy should be in a diverse world. Of course my own conscience and beliefs inform my actions but not to the point of denying the obvious. And that is my problem with fundamentalism of every stripe. It yields not a whit to culture, modernity, science or reason. Karen Armstrong's wonderful book The Battle for God gives great detail in a very balanced way of how fundamentalism came to be a major force in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the last century. It should really be required reading for anyone who seeks to understand conflicts in the Middle East, Israel and the West Bank, or even people still trying to re-live the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1920 here in our own backyards.
In many ways the concerns of fundamentalists are all of our concerns (the overly-fast pace of the modern world, the removal of defined guideposts of morality, decency, and humanity). The problem is they seem to approach these critical issues by returning to a 'golden age,' the major theme of which is an unyielding reliance on whichever holy book they tend to value. This view ignores the fact that religion always has been more art than science, and various interpretations of those books have always existed--when allowed. How many versions of each of these religions are there?
Fundamentalists fall into the trap of believing their view to be unerring, not just to themselves or their own sect, but universally to all of humanity. This of course, leads automatically to the creation of 'lesser than' groups in the world. Eventually this logic taken to an extreme explains how we end up blowing ourselves up in buses full of school children or marching entire cultures into gas chambers or justifying human slavery.
It's all just got to end.
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