Letters to the Editor
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Just a Kudos
Back in 1992 or so, when my BA degree so wet the ink hadn't yet dried, I picked up The Creationists and was positively enthralled with the book. Numbers clearly and concisely delineated the various camps of Creationism I'd witnessed as a child growing up in the Evangelical world. He further explained very clearly why most people in the US don't know much about Evolution.
My own mind had been set in 10th grade biology, when my Baptist teacher, a regular church goer and devout Christian, stood up on the first day and read us the first chapter or so of Genesis to fulfill a Louisiana law requiring that teachers teach creationism and evolution. She never mentioned Creationism again in our class because it wasn't science and she proceeded to teach what science - and specifically biology - was for the remaining 9 months. I learned from her to love biology, even though I'll always be a layman.
But I'd known too many well-educated people with views contrary to this. And in the media I'd seen somes dismiss creationists as uneducated rubes. It seemed like neither side was taking into account what the other side was actually like.
Numbers was the first person I'd ever seen take apart the whole issue without rancor or malice or an axe to grind on any side. In addition he wrote clearly with an easy style and I plowed through the book in less than a day, only to re-read it again a week later. It stuck with me and has colored everything I've said or seen or thought about the Creationism/Evolution debate in American culture.
Now I know, thanks to Salon, that Numbers has a background similar to my own: a devout religous family with ministers hanging off the branches of the family tree, all of whom who care for and love one another. I'm now aware that Numbers, like me, went to a Religous school for his bacheolor's. I also know that Numbers, like me, is an agnostic who would love to have a simple universe but knows better.
I'd just like to thank him for giving me a good a good structural framework for what I've observed all my life and a solid ideological means of communicating with the creationists I know.
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Dawkins crtiicism is always weak
I have yet to hear anyone who criticizes Richard Dawkins give a decent reason for doing so. Dawkins should compromise? He should try to get along? Give me a break.
Faith-based religion is delusion, and this delusion is controlling, and ruining, our country. We need more people like Dawkins who aren't afraid of being *impolite* to point out the madness of faith-based religion.
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Ronald Numbers seems like a good guy
I think Numbers makes a good point that, politically, it is important to put forth the idea that there is no conflict between science and religion.
But, it seems to me that fundamentally, there is. Accepting a Judeo-Christian god that controls the universe supernaturally goes against one of the major tenets of modern science (the rejection of supernatural explanations for events). However, rejecting such a god would be a fundamental rejection of what the vast majority of Americans believe in.
Politicians must and should compromise and pretend that there is no conflict in order to gain the trust of the majority of the country. They need to seem like the nice guys (like Numbers) who are not our to destroy cherished beliefs. But, scientists should never compromise on this. True scientists are not out to win the hearts and minds of lay people. They should be most concerned with applying the scientific method to learn about the world.
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but..uh, current evolutionary theory makes hash of all religious dogma
...and that's the problem. No matter how you try to finesse it, the bald truths increasingly revealed about the evolutionary history of life on Earth suggest, at the very least, that the Bible is, in fact, what it has always been: not the revealed word of God, but a bunch of fun fantasies spun by men who were (bad pun incoming) riotously fucked-up in various byzantine ways.
Evolutionary theory has gone a long way toward turning the Bible into nothing more than a bunch of Grimm Fairy Tales.
And that is why the fight to the death from those who simply cannot and will not accept that.
I liked the interview...although I did find the notion that evolution should not be taught in school if it's atheistic to be laughable. Evolutionary theory can't help what it is and what it does. It's simply a proven, factual record of life on earth. If it contradicts the fanciful fairy tales retold in the sacred book of one particular religious cult, we're not supposed to teach it? Ridiculous.
On the other hand, I thought the insight about Revelations was especially astute...that damned piece of idiocy has caused more trouble. It never should have been included in the Bible to begin with. The nut-case types back then were responsible for getting it included, and they are the direct progenitors of the nutcase types of today.
While I have respect for Mr. Numbers' position, I think I'm with Dawkins on this one: the continued brainwashing of such a large percentage of the human population with this dangerous foolishness of literal interpretation of the Bible, and a completely baseless belief in some kind of homo-centric divine creation, is too dangerous to be left unchallenged. And the history of religions in general proves it. Dangerous falsehoods in dangerous hands lead to nothing but misery, violence, and darkness.
Why should the truth accomodate itself to 90% of the population that is deluded, mostly by simple intellectual laziness??? Is a lie somehow ok if everyone believes it?
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Fallacy
Numbers seems like a nice guy, but he should have been called on his claim that "If evolution is in fact inherently atheistic, we probably shouldn't be teaching it in the schools". This would only be true based on the fundamentally incorrect assumption that Atheism is just another form of religion. Atheism is not a religion, it is by definition a rejection of all religion.
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Evolution and religion
Evolution is not fundamentally atheistic, but it IS incompatible with Christianity (unless you abandon all reason and rationality). The two are often conflated, given the tenacious grip that fundamentalist Protestantism has on public policy and scientific discourse in this country, but they are not the same.
If you accept that evolution is true, you are subscribing to the view that the creation accounts (there are two) in the book of Genesis are nothing but myths. That’s fine, since they have strong mythic elements and the scientific evidence for evolution is overwhelming. But on what rational basis do you then conclude that the whole story of the fall of man that follows is not also a myth? It too has strong mythic elements (snakes only talk in the world of make-believe, for one) and no independent evidence to confirm it. But if this too is just a story made up by a primitive tribal people living millennia ago, then there is no original sin, no need for redemption and no need for a savior. In other words, the whole foundation of Christianity as a religion crumbles, and you’re left with, at most, the feel-good philosophy of a somewhat deluded but generally nice guy who lived in the first century CE.
Most scientists have made an uneasy compromise with most religionists in championing the idea that acceptance of evolution is not in conflict with Christian faith or with the Bible in general, but this is simply a cop-out on both sides. There are certainly some flavors of religion that do not rationally preclude acceptance of evolution, but Christianity isn’t one of them.
Scott Stoeffler