There is no hope for democracy if our fellow citizens accept fairy tales.
Does anyone know of an internet source detailing what percentage of the American population believed in the Genesis account when I was a boy in the 1960s? I recall reading that a much smaller number of our fellow citizens accepted this ludicrous idea back then, but I cannot cite a source at this time.
I know that intelligent Christians of a bygone era, such as C.S. Lewis, considered the Genesis account to be mythic. The growth of this superstition is the most impressive triumph in the history of snake-oil salesmanship.
The Concord Monitor today prints an op-ed by Reverend Richard Learned, apparently a minister for a "liberal" denomination which most Baptists would consider demonic. He calls for a truce in the Creationist/Evolutionist war:
I am certain of my call to the ministry and my baptism by the Holy Spirit. I have faith and that faith is a positive part of my life.I have no real problem with this position, which was once far more common among religious folk than it is today. But:
But it is a gross misuse of faith to insist that the accepted unknown remain forever as absolute truth.
Faith is assuring and comfortable. Scientific inquiry is exciting and a little scary. The two can co-exist. It is not a war. There is no need for name-calling.There is indeed a war.
My own views, as I've stated before, are caught 'twixt Gnosticism and agnosticism. Two thousand years ago, the Gnostics not only recognized Genesis as myth, they considered it a bad myth, a low and deceptive fable even when taken in purely symbolic terms. They made an interesting but not very successful attempt to rewrite the story.
My views hold that there is good and there is evil. Good is knowledge; evil is ignorance. Knowledge alone is salvific. What chains mankind is not "sin" (which is defined by most conventional American Christians in purely sexual terms) but ignorance.
There can never be a truce in the war between Good and Evil.
Belief in Creationism is, therefore, an absolute Evil. The who have spread this superstition, those who robbed America of the intellectual glories she inherited from the Enlightenment and the Renaissance, must be considered denizens of the same moral plane inhabited by murderers and rapists.
No, I do not consider that sentiment overblown, and I will never apologize for it. We must never be fearful of stating that Creationists are bad people, enemies of human progress. In the battle of ideas, they are the Nazis, the soldiers of dark forces which we must forever oppose.
I am not engaging in "name-calling": I am engaging in definition.
There can be no truce, no reconciliation in the war against pseudoscience.
13 comments:
I think there's another way to interpret the poll. I'm someone who likely would have answered I believe in both, but not because I believe the people-played-with-dino stuff.
Most nonradical Christians and Jews believe the old testaments are factually limited but useful in context of their spiritual messages. These books are fallibly translated from thousands of years of oral history eventually written as best the fallible authors could with limited vocabulary. They shouldn't be taken literally, like the radicals do, but the spiritual message, at least to me, is that God in his creation of Earth guided the evolution that we now know, as our mental and social capacities evolved to know this. One "day" in the Bible clearly is not one day as we know it. That's ludicrous, but that's what the radicals who call themselves Creationists say.
There is a sane and spiritual middle ground.
At first blush, anyway, I wouldn't take a poll using the term "creationism" in this context as defining me as "Creationist," big C.
I see the question asking only if I believe in God AND evolution. I do. One could debate that I would interpret the question wrongly, but I think I would not be the only one thinking this way.
Hmm, I would suggest that most of these supposed "beliefs" are just conveniently tossed out to mollify the interviewer . What does belief in "creation" or "god" have to do with everyday life as you fill your SUV's gas tank with fossil fuel? Religion and "faith" is merely ancient folklore and mythology. As my late father said, "Religion is fine, as long as you don't take it seriously."
By James K. Sayre
sayresayre@yahoo.com
Keep in mind that a majority of the American public also believes in ghosts, and in angels, and in UFO's. These may be irrational beliefs, but I wouldn't say they are necessarily born of ignorance, nor would I call such believers evil.
However, when the holders of non-scientific beliefs organize into a political force that tries to enforce their beliefs on those who don't hold such beliefs, evil is afoot. And we've see plenty of that, for sure.
And I suspect that in the long run, Christians will pay a very high price for their meddling.
By the way, I watched Elmer Gantry again the other night. What a fabulous performance by Burt Lancaster!
Gallup introduced a curve ball in their question setup, not using the classical formulation of 'creationism' whatsoever.
It didn't ask, is the Genesis account true, and the entire world created in a 6 day period within the past 10,000 years. Rather, not asking about classical creationism at all, it restricted the question to the creation of mankind alone, and whether mankind was the result of millions of years of evolution from lesser forms of life (with or without God's guidance of that process), or if instead mankind was created in its current form all at once by God within the past 10,000 years.
So, far from being the truth that (this poll says) 66% of Americans think the WORLD was created in the past 10,000 years, the poll results definitively refute such a claimed number.
Why? Because 38% of those answering said mankind evolved over millions of years from less developed forms of life (with God's guidance of the process), and 14% said mankind evolved over millions of years from less developed forms of life (and God had nothing to do with it).
Let's do the math. 38 and 14 total to **52%** who believe mankind has evolved OVER MILLIONS OF YEARS from lesser forms of life. Far from 2/3rds of Americans believing the WORLD is 10,000 years old, less than 50% of those questioned believe MANKIND is around 10,000 years old (leaving entirely open the question of the age of the world, which wasn't the subject of any questions).
So, how did they get the 66% figure? Well, they did NOT get that figure, as it relates to the WORLD being 10,000 years old or younger, at all. And obviously, right there 'below the fold' as it were, that number is fairly clearly the result of the way in which the question was asked.
For look at these two questions. When asked if 'evolution,' defined directly thereafter as the notion that mankind evolved over millions of years, is true, those who said definitely true, combined with those who said probably true, amounted to 43%, whereas those who said definitely NOT true, or probably not true, totaled 44%. THAT is a dead heat, and statistically identical, NOT the 2-1 ratio of evolution deniers that is claimed, let alone a 2-1 majority in favor of the notion of the world being 10,000 years old.
When asked directly about 'creationism,' immediately defined thereafter in the question as the idea that God created mankind in its present form within the past 10,000 years, THEN you get a 66% total combined figure of those answering definitely true, or probably true.
In other words, it is an ARTIFACT of the way the question is asked and about which concept, and does not mean at ALL, in any way, what has been described by Joe in this topic.
And to describe ignorant beliefs as EVIL is more than bizarre. Ignorance, like knowledge, is morally neutral, in my view. Does it matter if Saturn, or rather Jupiter, has more moons, in a MORAL SENSE? Hardly. Arguably, some knowledge, while factually accurate, has little or no application but for evil, such as the technologies for nuclear weaponry.
Frankly, just as correct science can be evil in this sence, there is a good societal use for incorrect, false, or ignorant religious notions, despite their falsity. For moral actions are hard enough to encourage with the God/Devil/Heaven/Hell story, let alone if we wipe that slate clean, and try to encourage moral behavior for no other reason than that it is nicer, or some people will approve of you more.
...sofla
Joe, for what it’s worth, I agree with anon here. Silly poll, or else foolishly interpreted or reported. These thoughts CAN and DO coexist in the minds of loads of REASONABLE people, and it is quite easy to make sense of that, as C.S. Lewis did; he recognized the power of myth in expressing matters of faith and understandings of reality and spirituality.
So, first of all, you’re just not correct to make the analogy that coexistence of these ideas in one mind, depending on one’s understanding and interpretation of the two concepts, is like claiming grass is both green and purple. The poll’s validity hinges on how these concepts were used in the poll-taking, as anon points out.
All that being said, I would caution you PROFOUNDLY that your insistence on taking on the Gnostic perspective (all these dualities; how do you keep them straight??) places you at as great a risk as the fundamentalists take, precisely BECAUSE you would dare to claim this duality of good and evil!
The Gnostics were no less absolute in their insistence on this dichotomy than the evangelicals are today, and their claim that knowledge is always good and ignorance is always evil can be just as wrong and just as damaging and just as foolish as any position that posits a good/pure/correct way over against a bad/impure/wrong way.
It’s the splitting of things that leads us astray and pits us one against another. Your statement that ‘there can never be truce in the war between Good and Evil’ is just as wrong and damaging and foolish as any evangelical preacher who says THE VERY SAME THING!
Taking a position that only exchanges terms and concepts yet arrives you at the VERY SAME SENTIMENT does not elevate you above your opponent!!
Case in point: your taking a position that insists on a perpetual war between good and evil makes you sound just like Bush!!
Forgive the obvious insult, but you earned it.
For you to assert that YOU are not ‘name-calling,’ that YOU are instead ‘defining,’ is just – forgive me – pompous and arrogant, and quite frankly, off-putting.
I can list in less than a minute about a million ways in which knowledge has come to be a very very BAD thing for humans, including global warming and the threat of a nuclear holocaust, not to mention all the awesome minor weapons we see, like cluster bombs and thermobaric bombs and biological warfare (oh my!). Hence, the Eden myth resonates in many rich and meaningful ways, way beyond sexual innuendo, at least for me.
This does NOT make me stupid or bad or evil!
And if you think for one second that science has the corner on the market for ABSOLUTE TRUTH, then you are not only engaging in scientISM, but you are exhibiting – forgive me again – an ignorance of just how science actually works.
As a trained and occasional scientist, who has not only been down in the trenches with these efforts of hypothesis testing and concept- and reality-building, I can tell you that there is NOTHING absolutist about the enterprise AT ALL. In fact, those scientists who approach their work that way are quickly exposed as not scientific AT ALL. In fact, the very prospect and project of science – if truly adhered to – is about the business of shattering the very concept of absolutes! At least modern science has unfolded that way; after Einstein upended Newton’s absolute laws, even Albert’s replacements hav been up from grabs.
Take for a first argument the very fact that science is an enterprise of inquiry; to ask a question PRESUPPOSES that whatever is understood as explanation cannot necessarily be absolute!!
Take as a second argument the history of science. Thomas Kuhn (with whom I feel the need to announce here as a shameless power play, I actually had lunch with once) himself exposed the folly of scientific absolutes by pointing out the PROCESS of science (even though he called his treatise ‘the STRUCTURE of scientific knowledge’), and the fact that – at any given point in the history of science – there is this continuing movement BEYOND the established canon of ‘knowledge’ that is currently accepted as the paradigm (actually, Bernowski made the point better, but whatever). The process itself is fascinating, as it exposes the fact that it is always REALITY that forces us to recognize the limits of our various (presumptions of) explanations.
Science is therefore a PROCESS, and – BY DEFINITION – it can NEVER BE ABSOLUTE!!
(yes, I do LOVE Whitehead, for any fellow geek out there who recognizes this stuff)
There is NO war between good and evil, and NO war between knowledge and …whatever hell you have ‘defined’ by this dichotomy, except as we insist upon it in our pointy little heads. Except as you expose the war between those inspired and reviled parts of your own SELF (and this observation is true for ALL of us, all of humanity, in the generic). Anyone at such odds within him or herself, pitting absolutes to reject out of hand and embrace without scrutiny against one another, will inevitably make regrettable decisions and take regrettable actions. Here is why:
Whenever one accepts the premise of a conflict of ANY kind, especially a WAR, one necessarily narrows the field of vision to this singular dimension of dichotomy. Whenever one’s vision is narrowed, one’s ability to even see alternatives, to consider other dimensions, is virtually eliminated.
Here is another, related, reason why: Accepting a war or conflict or dichotomy – especially in absolutes – also expresses poor adaptability to differences and obstacles in the world. Those who are able to adapt are FAR more likely to make REASONABLE decisions, precisely because they are capable of accepting a broader range of possible perspectives and solutions. Consider this astounding wisdom of George Bernard Shaw:
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
Which brings us right back to the gazillions of ways in which knowledge can be seen to be a curse, which again brings us to the myth of Eden (I never in my life considered a sexual interpretation of that myth; how, um, narrow).
You don’t have to trust me on this, Joe, but for what it’s worth, I’ve been in the ‘knowledge’ business for several decades now, and I have to tell ya; it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. I left the music business in the 70s believing that surely to god there would be more sanity and reason and less egos and emotion in academics. HA! Big fat royal rosy HAH!! The only difference I have been able to see is that, because of the level of intelligence of the players, the inevitable manipulations and politicking exhibits far more potential for outright and abject cruelty; the stupidity is just ‘smarter’, but there is still trickery.
Knowledge is A good thing, no doubt about it; I remind you of my deference to Franklin’s insistence on the education of the public. But it is not THE good thing. Knowledge, Joe, does NOT make one wise, and it is WISDOM that is our salvation, NOT knowledge. Knowledge requires discernment of small things, but wisdom – ah, wisdom – this requires great heart to embrace the universe, in all its dichotomies and contradictions.
It is only this capacity to embrace differences, in our neighbors and our own heads, that will bring us peace, both internally and individually and throughout the world. There will never be peace on this earth until we each find it in ourselves and extend it to everyone we encounter, no matter how different others might be.
Until we get this simple fact, we have no business expecting – and no hope for - effecting peace around us.
peace ;-)
Mr. Cannon:
Nice post, but you have inaccurately interpreted the poll.
To see the correct interpretation, go to my story on the topic in today's Christian Faith and Reason Magazine, online at http://www.christianfaithandreason.com/june_evolutionpoll.html
I blanched when I saw the length of dr. e's response (just above), but it was worth reading of word of it. And also that of sofla's, above that.
Joseph, there are times in life when a man must concede. Your post provoked an enlightening series of comments, but I think now is the time to find a graceful exit strategy.
QUOTE:
The idea that something can be both a wave and a particle defies imagination, but the existence of this wave-particle "duality" is not in doubt. ... It is impossible to visualise a wave-particle, so don't try. ... The notion of a particle being "everywhere at once" is impossible to imagine. (Davies, Superforce)
Surely, we all believe impossible, contradictory things all the time. I know I do.
Kate
Joseph, I liked your post and agree with most of it. An extensive public acceptance of the idea that the world is only 10,000 years old - or even the attenuated claim that humans only 'emerged' in the last 10,000 years - ought to be seen as a profound intellectual and social failure. These beliefs are essentially 'nuts', on a par with believing that there exists "a world of subterranean people accessed via a hole in Antractica". Just plain nuts. I'm not too quick, however, to dismiss the idea of a "God entity" or "God awareness" as spoken about by mystics across the ages and in various religions. Religion may be beneficial if it assists people to develop a healthy respect for their own dignity that goes beyond that merely assigned to them by their society. Some religious beliefs may stand as a useful moral balwark against Kissingers "useless eaters" mentality and as some kind of baseline, however fragile, against an unrestrained utilitarianism (eg. involuntary euthanasia of the elderly on economic grounds). There may be higher consciousness features to be found in some religious practices or dialogue. But that's about as far as it goes. The onus is with the God believers to prove their claims in any social discourse. Otherwise they should be ignored. Society ought to be secular, no ifs, buts or maybes. What I read into all this is a failure of secular social mechanisms. In the 50s and 60s people could have meaningful economic lives. They could support whole families on one income and their children could expect by hard work to go to university and improve their lot. Individual self worth and social identity had an economic backing. Not any more. Now people work multiple jobs just to stay off the streets or out of jail. Their social identity obtained through work is disappearing and the deeply held (some say, genetically based) urge to "belong" now can only find expression by returning to a more primitive, religious sense of social identity. Yep, it's all fiercely anti-intellectual all right and ought to be rejected. But we shouldn't hate the practitioners as "evil". With better funded education, decent wages and meaningful lives our jails and churches would likely be a lot emptier and the tent preachers would be out of business.
Anonymous 11:14 offers a profound insight to why an otherwise reasonably-educated people would choose to believe in fairy tales:
"...social identity obtained through work is disappearing and the...urge to 'belong' now can only find expression by returning to a more primitive, religious sense of social identity."
So very much of what goes on socioculturally is shaped by conceptions of "identity." Only in dr. e's field of psychology is identity given its full due. In larger events identity is wholly underestimated as a factor. For example, the American Civil War cannot be fathomed without seeing the evident clash between a rising urban industrial identity and the southern agricultural identity. In fact, identity acts as the glue that binds together the vast array of symbolic knowledge every human possesses, and uses to negotiate sociocultural reality. How can its importance be overestimated?
****
Kate quotes Paul Davies to make a valid point, which is that we are not prohibited from believing that which we don't understand. (E.g. hardly more than a century ago if you believed stones could fall from the sky you were scorned by scientists; just because we didn't then understand what meteorites were didn't stop them from being real.)
However, Kate, Davies is utterly wrong to say that particle/wave duality is impossible to visualize or that a particle being everywhere at once is impossible to imagine. The problem is only that our conventional paradigm for reality is obselete. In another decade or so, Davies' statement will sound as silly as that of earlier physicists who claimed that rocks couldn't fall from the sky and that heavier-than-air craft couldn't fly. Stay tuned.
I'm the first anonymous. Unirealist, thank you for stating your second point clearly with anecdotes.
Your first point is true for many. As you say, I think this "in crowd" mentality is the only reason most people associate with religion. Weak-minded people need to have rules to feel they are conforming to something "good."
But it's not true of everyone. I'm sure plenty of people in the poll fall in the many shades of gray. I'm intelligent and well educated, and I believe in a spiritual force generally called "God," even without having gone to church for years.
I've had experiences that convince me, absolutely, there is some other force that doesn't fit our known parameters of the universe at this time and isn't just happenstance. What it is, I do not know. Until some better "known" comes along, I'm OK with calling it God, faith. I'm not so insecure to need to call it something else to satisfy the anti-God crowd, either.
If we learn these spiritual realities happen because of the alignment between parallel times, or aliens from outer space, or whatever, I'll change my position to the scientific reality.
Until then, I don't see it as unscientific, only unknown, and it's my faith that there's more at play than the science we have so far. God and science do not conflict for me. I can't identify with the good/evil vs science/God analogy, and would suggest holding that belief could leave one unreceptive to beneficial ideas.
I would add, with emphasis, so-called Christians the MSM present to you do NOT speak for the majority of Christians, and the Israel-is-right-no-matter-what Zionists don't speak for most American Jews (nor a significant number of Israeli Jews, I think). Don't let the media play you about the reality of religion for the vast majority of us who don't wear it on our sleeves.
Right on unirealist! If you live in Borneo you will adopt the beliefs of your culture, of evil spirits in the forest, of the necessity of ritual sacrifice, of wearing protective amulets etc. You will take these in the same way you take in your mother's milk....you will do it to socially survive because to be an outcast is the great fear in all societies. We overstate the extent to which we stand on our own two feet and form our own ideas. Mostly we are intellectual gatherers rather than hunters. We take what is in front of us. Few devote decades in a Tibetan monastery, practice rigorous yogas or complete degrees in philosophy. The driving force behind most religious belief is social identity. If we wish to reduce the effects of rampart anti-intellectualism and fundamentalist religion we must allow people to belong to a decent, caring society at the economic and social level. There are no shortcuts.
To Anonymous 9:33, please note that my objection was to people believing in fairytales, not to spirituality. And, if Joseph doesn't mind me speaking for him, that was his point, too. When Christians choose to believe in a virgin birth, or a parting of the Red Sea, or miracles of healing, I don't especially mind, because such events are reasonably possible, if unlikely. (Lizards can have virgin births, for example; an earthquake could have parted the sea; Jesus could have learned to heal with medicines in the Far East when he was there.)
However, to insist that the universe is ten thousand years old and was created in a week flies in the face of everything we know about the world. Likewise, to insist that god is a white-haired patriarch living in the sky is madness (or worse, He is an alien who really does live in the sky). To believe that the patriarch sees homosexuality as an abomination is crazy, since the other animals He created practice gay sex with vim and vigor. And so on. Beliefs of today's fundamentalists are full of such fairytales. I don't care if they want to believe in them, I just don't want the fairytales to dictate acceptable sociopolitical behaviors, which is exactly what the fundamentalists want.
To Anonymous 6:44, your comment is on point. I would only add that it is very difficult to make sense of the world without an identity to organize our knowledge, just as it is very difficult to make sense of our selves without a personal identity--which we call the ego. If you are going to live in Borneo with a tribe, it is inevitable that you will adopt the indigenous cultural identity, not only to socially survive, but also because the immediate world around you won't make much sense unless you do. Your cognitive behaviors will require it. But yes, with that qualification, I agree with you.
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