Creationism Must Be Eradicated

[unhappycamper]

But how did Noah fit all of those dinosaurs? …


Creationism Must Be Eradicated
By Juan Gabriel Vásquez
By Virginia Gillenwater
September 8, 2007


Over the course of four months I have come across three articles that, for different reasons, are worrisome to me. The first one I want to mention, an interview that the magazine Cambio did with Rodolfo Llinás , begins by discussing the debate between science and religion, between evolutionists and creationists. Fortunately, Llinás is quite clear and hardly tolerant of superstition: “Creationism must be eradicated,” he says. The problem for me is that the interview accepts what the media in the United States seem to accept, which for years now has come to prevail in many areas: that the debate exists. And no: it does not exist, or it only exists in the so-called Bible Belt - that region of the United States where sects impose their laws. For the average inhabitant of San Francisco or New York, creationism, despite the support it has received from the Bush Administration, is no more than a symptom of the same fundamentalism that has also produced, among other gems, the Ku Klux Klan.

The second article appeared in The New York Times and wasn't an interview, but rather a news article. The subject was the opening of a new museum in the Southern state of Kentucky, one of the bulwarks of Evangelism . The museum presents scenes of dinosaurs (Tyrannosaurs, Apatosaurs) that would belong in any museum of natural history - if not for the prehistoric children that accompanied the animals. But are dinosaurs not assumed to have disappeared millions of years before human beings came into existence on Earth? Yes, that's what science says: but this is the Creation Museum, funded and financed (it cost $27 million) by an organization with a more than eloquent name: Answers in Genesis, or in other words, "The answers are in Genesis." And visitors can buy their tickets and reassure themselves: everything that the bad people outside say (that God didn't create the world in six days; that mankind came from monkeys) is a lie. The museum teaches that Noah’s ark existed and dinosaurs were on it.

The big problem with creationism and other Christian fundamentalist beliefs is precisely their openly absurd character. We had ascribed these beliefs to an isolated group of inoffensive extremists, people deliberately blind and a bit ignorant, but who have the right to think what they want: and we were mistaken. Those extremists are slowly winning the favor of disoriented believers all over Latin America, and they are combat-ready: they want to alter the study materials at schools so that Darwin himself is eliminated; they want investigations into the human genome to stop. But the surprising thing is that none of this is new. And here's the last of the three articles I mentioned.

It appeared in the Spanish edition of the magazine Letras libres, and is a commentary written by H.L. Mencken (one of the greatest North American critics of the first half of the 20th century ), which describes the trial carried out in Tennessee - another one of those Southern states - against John Thomas Scopes, a biology teacher accused of teaching Darwin’s Theory of Evolution . We are in 1925, but these same words can be heard and read today. To accept that man is a mammal, said the prosecution, would be to destroy morality and promote infidelity. By putting science over Genesis, the teachers were turning their students into assassins. Finally, the defense lawyer asked whether the defense would be given the opportunity to present its evidence. And the prosecution responded: “He who attacks the foundations of Christianity doesn't deserve the right to an opportunity.”


Rest of article at: http://www.watchingamerica.com/elespectador000006.shtml

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. would be to destroy morality and promote infidelity.

Can we edit out of the bible the parts where this one and that one had x number of wives, or was it 72 virgins??? Heh.

[The2ndWheel]

2. This is the problem with centralizing any idea/ideology

That centralized idea/ideology must eradicate anything that isn't the same in order to survive and continue to expand. As true with science as it is with religion. Neither can tolerate diversity. They are both centralizing institutions. By themselves, there is only so much damage either one can do(the same with people). Once they become a galvanizing force, that's when we see trouble start(the same with people).

Then again, centralization is also a form of diversity, as long as decentralization still exists.

Whatever way you go, it's a crazy world.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. How is science 'centralizing'?

It's based on others being able to reproduce results independently, and reviewing the theories that are produced.

[glowing]

4. Anyone who hijacks a religion that is supposed to teach love and

tolerance and turns it into an agenda that is bad for everyone, is in my opinion, inherently evil.

[EST]

5. Yeah, with at least a million different kinds of insects, that ol'

ark must have been a busy place.
The whole deal is that you can't destroy an ideology by stamping it out. You always get little brush fires popping up all over the place. Look at Nazism, for example--for close to a decade, no one would even whisper it, except to criticize it, but a couple generations later there are all sorts of little bunches of crazy bastards who don't or won't study history.

The real hope for reality seekers, whichever group they belong to, is to maintain enough muscle to define reality.
I see that, as long as religious elitists and fundamentalist wankers are involved in running anything, the catastrophic failures they wreak tends to make them self limiting. The most effective thing is to strengthen the church/state separation and try to keep the big stuff running with some modicum of efficiency and fair results.

The brush fires of "revealed truth" will always pop up, in every persuasion. If we stamped out everything we disagree with, it might become a rather lonely world.

[Buzz Clik]

6. Eradicating creationism makes no sense. The concept of creationsim is not the problem.

Throughout human history, various religious beliefs and superstitions have existed despite physical evidence to the contrary or, at the very least, scant supporting evidence for these beliefs. It is human nature to take comfort in believing in divine beings. This is not a problem until those who profit or derive power from religion decide to attempt to mute science. The people who are attempting to cram creationism into the realm of science need to be relentlessly shown to be mere power mongers operating only in their personal best interest.

Even discussions of "eradicating creationism" are contrary to the foundation of this country.

[happyslug]

7. Talk about fables, he repeats the ones regarding the Monkey Trial.

The Prosecution NEVER said “He who attacks the foundations of Christianity doesn't deserve the right to an opportunity.”. The reason is simple, the argument used by the Prosecution was NOT religious in nature (Through it was religious in derivation) but the simple one of Scopes violated a LAW of the State. The Law, as written, did NOT mention religion but forbade the teaching of Evolution by Public School Teachers BECAUSE THEY WERE BEING PAID BY THE STATE. In fact, until William Bryan Jennings said he would appear for the prosecution, Mencken SUPPORTED the right of the state to FORBID their employees from teaching Evolution (He changed more to attack Bryan then any other reason).

For more about the Trials see:
http://www.bradburyac.mistral.co.uk/tennesse.html

[Maestro]

8. I just want eradicated from public institutions mainly schools.

If the churches still want to promote a literal translation of the Bible and believe that God created everything 6 days and rested on the 7th so be it. I am just sick of talking about in public institutions.

[Cheap_Trick]

9. if the school district in which i was paying taxes

was teaching "creationism" or "intellegent design" in the classrooms, i would sue to get my money back. i'm not paying for kids to learn stuff they're supposed to learn in sunday school. that's for the individual's parents to do. unless sunday shools are going to start teaching evolution alongside their fairytales.

[Vidar]

10. Noah obviously had a fleet of supertankers, aircraft carriers & Howard

Hugh's "Spruce Goose".