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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2005-12-27

An Important Point On the ID Debate

I'm not one who gets terribly worked up over the teaching of evolution in the schools--like most things, students get hit over the head with this stuff the whole time they're in "soft America", but still have the wherewithal to come to their own conclusions once they're out in the "real world."

But what does bother me is when the Courts begin to declare what can and cannot be accepted as science, creating their own sort of Scientific Creed. Paul Campos of the Rocky Mountain News makes the point rather eloquently in this morning's paper:

A sure sign that a belief system has triumphed over its opponents is that it stops thinking of itself as a belief system at all. Instead it becomes "what every rational person knows to be the case," or "simple common sense," or, more concisely still, "the truth." In other words, the truly orthodox never think of themselves as orthodox. This allows them to crush all dissent to their orthodoxy with a good conscience, since what reasonable objection could there be to sincere attempts to stamp out self-evident falsehoods? . . .

Another interesting feature of orthodoxy is that it tends to cause a species of mental retardation in otherwise intelligent people.

In the same way that the "science" of global warming has become part of the classroom--without contrary opinion offered--and the same way that liberals choose to ignore the advances of science that SHOULD have changed the rationale for Roe v. Wade, the Evolution Orthodoxy has now entered that realm of liberal thought that is, far more than what the political Right is capable of enforcing, sacrosanct territory in the liberal mind. The unwillingness to entertain the debate is evidence itself of the weakness of the argument, and represents a tragic devolution frrom what "liberal" is supposed to mean.
Posted by: Michael / 12/27/2005 09:41:00 AM

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