(Sneak preview: This column submitted today to the San Angelo Standard-Times.)
Just finished surfing the web
a bit to check, and science has not yet come back with anything on what makes
the right wing so cussed and so brainless.
We are going to have to be patient.
But this, our Texas
Math skills and U.S. history
aside, boneheadedness in our state government is most glaringly and tragically
evident in the area of science. Recent
efforts of our state legislature and governor to put a brutal sharia on women’s
health highlighted this deficit, as does a tireless spite-fest to undermine and
defund the beneficent Affordable Care Act.
By the same right-wing
Republican token, we might expect the willful ignorance of climate-change
denial to flourish where so much wealth comes of raping the earth night and
day.
Such pandering by sold-out
politicians invariably includes an obsequious connection to Christian
fundamentalism, so it’s little wonder they grapple and contend with our having
rights based on the values of humanism and instead churn out the toxic products
of spiritual darkness.
Buddhism identifies the
“three poisons” involved: Anger
(meanness), greed and stupidity. We all
have some of this blend in us, of course; there is help for it in the light of
a good religion, but a bad religion can only make things worse.
There is in Texas a perennial
skirmish within false religion’s war on science that is at least as embarrassing
and tiresome as the crimes mentioned above.
I refer to the State Board of Education’s commitment to the abject folly
of Bible creationism.
My earliest opinion letters
to the San Angelo Standard-Times addressed this, way back in the 1980s. In those days, busybodies Mel and Norma
Gabler of Longview lobbied the Textbook Selection Committee to considerable unfortunate
effect, but from that zany endeavor – perhaps ironically – there has been
descent with modification and development of an antievolution cadre of some
diabolical sophistication.
According to the Texas
Freedom Network, of six prominent creationists invited to review biology
textbooks and influence their publication for Texas and America, some even have
doctorates – and one of those is in molecular and cell biology! (Never mind how a man can hold such a degree
and retain in his heart an animosity for science; a zealous handful are
apparently able to accomplish the contortion.)
Only half of the half-dozen
are engineers (traditionally a discipline overutilized as “scientists” of creationism),
to include a Baptist university’s professor of engineering, a chemical engineer
who’s a business instructor, and a systems network engineer.
There may be a Christian
schoolteacher or two, and then it made this ol’ Aggie hang his head to learn
that a chemistry prof from A&M has made himself available to the quixotic
contingent. They all probably will
reflect some grudging advancement over the “dinosaurs-walked-with-men” sect and
aggressively favor the euphemism, “intelligent design.”
But even these champions of
the fantasy could not effect serious destruction. The danger to science education comes from
the 60% of high school teachers identified in a notable study ([Berman, Michael
and Plutzer, Eric. "Defeating
Creationism in the Courtroom, But Not in the Classroom," Science 28
January 2011) as "cautious," i.e., prefer to avoid lending their
support to “either view.” It is these
brave souls who are really working for the creationists, since they allow
fervor to trump knowledge and effect a de facto "balanced treatment"
in their classrooms.
Bleating platitudes about
“both sides” only gives aid to the creationist dream of having a leg to stand
on.
SGTex
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