Letters to the Editor
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ultimate authority
Embracing of Creationism is not a rejection of science (you can't reject that which you do not know) it is a rejection of authority.
In fact, it's the opposite. Creationism embraces the ultimate authority -- the Bible. As interpreted by ministers who are themselves figures of authority.
You suggest creationism is some kind of good old American rebellion against the establishment (accepted science).
There is a truth there, in that fundamentalist ministers often try to sell it that way to their flocks.
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Wilson
I'm not going to flame you, just disagree with you. Atheism means one thing and one thing only: disbelief in a god. There is nothing more. No other precepts, doctrine or dogma. Nothing. Atheists are liberal, libertarian, conservative and probably other flavors. There are strong atheists and weak atheists - one is willing to make the declarative statement "There is no god", the other says "based on the evidence, I do not believe". Not a religion, just one view of one thing.
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Raise your hand if you believe in evolution...
For all you who raised your hand, wrong answer.
It bugs me how leftists say we believe in evolution and not creationism. Evolution is not a question of belief.
So when a creationist says "I don't believe in evolution", say "I don't either since evolution is all about facts and not belief."
Ask them, "do you believe that 2+2=4"? Is that even a question for belief or a straightforward fact?
So let's all agree to NOT believe in evolution. Let's just accept it as a darned-good hypothesis with plenty of evidence to support it.
Rich
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ok let's review
1. sort of, not really
2. I hope so
3. depends what you mean
4. Not planning on Sweden. The cost of living is far far far too high for legal alien residents. The fact that it's the #1 destination for Iraqi expats today has more to do with aid organizations. Anyway most people don't emigrate as refugees.
5. It's actually quite easy to have dual/multiple citizenship. True enough that many countries erect barriers but for the most part they are financially driven. Though they really bristle when you point this out to them, for instance, you can in effect purchase Canadian citizenship. Many people leaving Hong Kong when it reverted did just that.
6. I don't fear it. I pointed that out. It doesn't worry me at all.
7. America doesn't have open immigration. It has a weird system of quotas that are promptly ignored once enough people ignore them.
8. Embracing creationism is a fad. America has had prior epochs of fundamentalism, like in the 1830s when many people then thought the world was coming to an end and they were all going to heaven. Joseph Smith's Mormonism is just the most prominent of those movements. Sooner or later they always abandon fundamentalism for decades before it reemerges again. Populism and fundamentalism rose and fell in the 1890's, 1920's to some extent in the 1950's and from about 1995 onward.
9. America has always been a little bit anti intellectual, xenophobic and has always flirted with fascism to some degree. That's why periodic populist movements like William Jennings Bryan (Pre Scopes monkey trial) always had traction and socialism (E.V. Debs) really never did. It's just part of our national character.
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Adam and Eve and sin
I don't have time to read through all of the comments here, and I doubt anyone will have the energy to read mine,so maybe someone has pointed this out-- but anyone familiar with Genesis should realize that the sin which cast Adam and Eve out of Paradise wasn't having sex, but disobeying a direct command from God not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil--which they did because they wanted to be like God. God told his creation to be fruitful and multiply, and we don't know if Adam and Eve had any children in Eden, or exactly when and where Cain and Abel were born. Then again, if it was Paradise.....(sorry, visions of an afternoon free of squabbling and tattling are almost too much to bear!).
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Creation without Evolution is Illogical
Let's start with the basics. New lives are created daily in two different ways, sexual and asexual. Asexual re-creates itself. Sexual requires the masculine and the feminine. The function of the masculine is to provide protection through genetic diversity, food and shelter. Masculine does not reproduce. Reproduction is synonomous with Re-Creation. The feminine is the creater of new life in asexual and sexual reproduction.
In human reproduction, the feminine XX and masculine XY chromosomes, 3X:1Y, pare and repair to form a new human. In humans, the masculine sex are born with feminine reminants, nipples and a prepuce. The function of the prepuce is to protect and enhance sexual desire. Its botanical sexual counterpart, the Calyx, has the same function. In creationist cultures they have to cut off the prepuce to prove their creation rightious according to Abraham according to Adam. In nature this is unnecessary.
Creation of life without a womb, asexual or sexual, is illogical. Claims that our creator is a masculine father are illogical and cause a schizm in reasoning. Once one can see that creation is a feminie atribute, then logically she evolved herself into us and everything else.
There are natural laws set in place at the beginng of whatever it was, that cannot be changed without an equal or oppisite reaction. Sometimes it takes thousands of years for us to repare the damage we caused by going against nature.
More time should be spent in caring for the least of us, the children, because they will become us. We may even be reborn as them as far as I know. Shame on those creationist for pumping all that money into their pride instead of the needy children. It's Hippocrasy.
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ultimate authority part II
"There is a truth there, in that fundamentalist ministers often try to sell it that way to their flocks."
Which was my point, evolution becomes a hot point because authority figures create a climate of absolute authority with regards to it.
It is not that people are accepting creationism because they are stupid; it is that they are rejecting a science that is being pressed on them without explanation.
There is no mystery to fundamentalism; there is only what is put forth. Explanations are easy, and are offered at the drop of a hat. To truly understand evolution, you need to understand exactly how the biochemistry of cells work. Not just be able to name the parts of the cell which could have just as easily come forth fully formed from the head of Zeus, but understand how the elemental atoms of the molecules that make up the hydrocarbons that make up everything interact. Without that knowledge evolution is just another God creating things in its own image. To reject this popular but unknowable God for an easier to understand God is as American as apple pie.
There is a really good film called “insignificance” in which there is a scene where an actress (ostensibly Marilyn Monroe) explains to a scientist (Einstein) the theory of relativity. Upon her completion a smiling scientist asks the actress if she understands what she just told him, to which she say no, but that she knows it. This of course upsets the scientist, because simply parroting back a theory without understanding what it means is no more knowledge of science than parroting back your belief that the moon is made of green cheese because it is what someone told you.
Fundamentalists can claim an embattled status because their way of life is embattled. And Americans by and large love an underdog, which this embattled belief system is. It is an underdog because when faced against real understanding of science or theology it crumbles into so much dust.
The way to combat creationist science is to teach actual science, not the rote memorization of taxonomy that passes for biology today, but the true understanding of the world.
If you want to see creationism go away, let it be taught in schools but insist that science be taught as well. The truth will set us all free if we trust in children to understand it, and not continue to force an English major’s view of science upon them.
(My apologies to all English majors, for that last crack, but I do feel your over representation in the teaching force has lead to some of our problems with scientific understanding in this country.)