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stillnotking
Joined: 18 Dec 2007
Location: Oregon, USA
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 Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2008 12:49 pm Post subject: Dinesh D'Souza ties creationism to the train tracks |
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I read and enjoyed Illiberal Education when I was in high school, and though my subsequent college experience was absolutely nothing like the fascist PC thought-control scenarios D'Souza gleefully described, I retain a soft spot for the book -- it's well-written, and as an appeal to genuine liberal principles, it strikes a chord. But something has happened: D'Souza has abandoned the Bill O'Reilly approach of singling out real injustices and spinning them into a massive conspiracy. He's moved on to full-throated intellectual dishonesty coupled with astonishing stupidity and tone-deafness. I already mentioned that he's written the dumbest post of 2008 concerning the Democratic primaries. That was obviously something of a throwaway, though. What really gets D'Souza worked up these days is the evil that is Darwinism:
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| The real problem with Darwinism in the public school classroom is that it is often taught in an atheist way. Textbooks by biologists like William Provine and Richard Dawkins routinely assert that evolution has done away with the need for God. The claim is that chance and natural selection have demonstrated that we can have design--or the appearance of design--without a designer. In this sense Darwinism becomes propaganda for atheism. |
Neither Will Provine nor Richard Dawkins has ever written a K-12 biology textbook, so he is obviously just pulling names from a hat here. But no high school bio text, whoever the author, is going to contain a claim that "evolution has done away with the need for God". The need for God is a personal and religious matter that has absolutely nothing to do with the empirical practice of biology. If some people take the fact of evolution as evidence against the existence of some god, well, that's their business, isn't it? Science has nothing to say on the matter. I freely admit that natural selection operates "without the need for a designer" -- it operates without the need for coffee breaks, too, but that doesn't seem to get anyone worked up.
Is there any way that a biology textbook could present the fact of evolution and the theory of natural selection in such a way that they would not constitute "propaganda for atheism", in D'Souza's view? Is science supposed to maintain a decorous silence concerning any feature of the physical world that might conceivably cause someone to reevaluate his religious convictions?
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| Typically evangelical Christians seek to counter this atheism by trying to expose the flaws in the Darwinian account of evolution. This explains the appeal of "creation science" and the "intelligent design" (ID) movement. These critiques, however, have not made any headway in the scientific community and they have also failed whenever they have been tried in the courts. |
Gosh, why ever could that be? Maybe because the "Darwinian" (and here D'Souza achieves the difficult aim of giving Charles Darwin too much credit for our understanding of life's history) account of evolution has held up under repeated, rigorous, and disinterested testing, while "creation science" is a collection of unscientific nonsense designed solely to "prove" an a priori fable?
I'm glad we agree on the train. Here come the train tracks:
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Fortunately there is a better way. Consider this: the First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits public schools from teaching or promoting atheism in any way. How do I know this? Well, the religion clauses of the First Amendment protect the "free exercise" of religion and at the same time forbid the "establishment" of religion. Courts have routinely held that the free exercise clause protects not only religious beliefs but also the absence of religious beliefs. If you are fired from your government job because you are an atheist, your First Amendment rights have been violated. In other words, the term "religion" means not only "religion" but also "atheism."
Yet if the free exercise clause defines religion in a way that includes atheism, then the no-establishment clause must define religion in the same way. So the agencies of government are prohibited from "establishing" not only religion but also atheism. This means that just as a public school teacher cannot advocate Christianity or hand out Bibles to his students, so too public school textbooks and science teachers cannot advocate atheism.
I'd like to see Christian legal groups suing school districts for promoting atheism in the biology classroom. No need to produce creationist or ID critiques of Darwinism. All that is necessary is to parade the atheist claims that have made their way into the biology textbooks and biology lectures. The issue isn't the scientific inadequacy of evolution but the way in which it is being used to undermine religious belief and promote unbelief. If the case can be made that atheism is being advocated in any way, then the textbooks would have to be rewritten and classroom presentations changed to remove the offending material. Schools would be on notice that they cannot use scientific facts to draw metaphysical conclusions in favor of atheism.
In this way Darwinism in the public schools would no longer be a threat to religion in general or Christianity in particular. |
Wonderful.
Now, what did I mean by the title? Just this: D'Souza has cornered himself into pursuing the worst possible strategy for creationists. Unpacked, his rhetoric amounts to the following:
1. The biological fact of evolution may incline students to become atheists, because biology can explain the complexity of life without needing a designer.
2. Schools are forbidden from advocating any particular religious stance.
3. Therefore, since evolution is a de facto advocacy of atheism, evolution should not be taught.
I've actually been waiting some time for the creationist position to devolve into this bald claim, and I'd like to thank D'Souza for staking out the ground. Assuming I am correct that there is no way for a school to teach evolution such that it would pass D'Souza's test of not "advocating for atheism", D'Souza has now concluded that in order to prevent students from becoming atheists, we must lie by omission: evolution is so poisonous to the religious mind that we cannot risk exposing students to it. This is the sort of lawsuit I would absolutely love to see brought against a school. It concedes the only real point: that evolution is the legitimate consensus of science. Once creationists give up on trying to "expose the flaws" in evolution or natural selection, they really have nothing more to argue -- other than D'Souza's last-stand position that evolution by its nature inclines people toward atheism and therefore should be banned under the First Amendment.
Anyone think the courts are going to agree with that one? And when they don't, well... where else is there for creationists to go? |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2008 1:00 pm Post subject: |
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People might enjoy listening to E. O. Wilson (sociobiology) and James Watson (DNA) talk about Darwin here: http://www.charlierose.com/guests/e.o.-wilson
(The interview on the right) |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2008 1:11 pm Post subject: |
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| I read and enjoyed Illiberal Education when I was in high school |
I never read the book, but let's just say that if it was anything like the other "anti-PC" rants that followed in its wake, I can't imagine that I was missing much. That type of writing usually amounted to some conservative saying that a campus newspaper somewhere refused to publish a letter from a right-winger, or that some English Department was teaching too many classes based on feminist theory, and then trying to claim that this was "censorship".
As for D'Souza's alliance with the creationists: well, he's a Republican, and Christian fundamentalists are a big part of the base, so I guess he knows who butters his bread.
What I find more interesting is D'Souza's recent attempts at forging a conservative alliance with Muslims.
http://tinyurl.com/65blwl
Not as crazy as one might think. From my admittedly limited experience with Muslims, they seem to be rather more socially conservative than your average left-leaning voter, and if it weren't for foreign policy, would probably be prime pickings for right-wing parties. At least in places where they've achieved a modicum of economic mobility. |
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