No Respect for Knowledge

It seems that our old friends, the creationists, the Christian fundamentalists, are up to their old tricks again. A recent New York Times article, Creationists on Texas panel for biology textbooks, told of how these reactionaries have again wangled their way into the process and business of selecting biology textbooks. These religious fanatics have hated and feared the concepts of the variation of species, natural selection, an ancient earth, and evolution in general, since the days of Darwin’s first edition of On the Origin of Species.

Their hatred of evolution and Darwin stems from their fundamentalist love of ignorance and myths. We could be as generous as they profess to be and call it a matter of faith, but creationists despise, and have such little respect for knowledge, that being generous assigns to them a gentler motive than their actions support, and as a result only encourages them to foster the world into darker times.

The fear they have of knowledge and science of course relates directly to their struggle to retain control over free-thinking minds threatening to challenge their domain. For a long time scientists quietly sat back, thinking how quaint creationists were, until they commandeered local school boards, and attacked and attempted to weaken rigorous scientific study with biblical myths in the guise of Intelligent Design.

There also came about a junction of religion and governance when the Republican Party and its presidential hopefuls choose to adopt the same ignorant fundamentalist notions. The real core of this union was reinforced when the idea of climate change was added to their shared menu of anti-science choices. The fundamentalist/politician alliance appears, at first, to be a nothing more than a mutual agreement to ignore decades, and in the case of evolution, more than a century of meticulous, painstaking study, exploration, and observation, without ever having to call up supernatural or divine intervention as an explanation. But it still is not all that simple.

What complicates the amalgamation of religion and politics is the common denial of science in general, and of evolution and climate change in particular. Like the peculiar union of the two groups, the connection between evolution and climate science is difficult to pin down – until we look at motives. The situation is similar to the logic sequences: if A then B, if B then C, therefore if A then C. Substitute the “facts of evolution” for A, “climate change evidence” for B, and “validity of science” for C. The last thing Christian fundamentalist and Republicans want to recognize is the validity of science. If either evolution or climate change is shown to be well-founded then they fear the the other may be shown to be equally well-founded, thus countering their myths and motives.

The trick is that each group, in a negative model of A-B-C, complements the other’s denial and dread. The fundamentalists fear evolutionary science challenging their myths (A), so they also question climate science (B), hoping to invalidate the scientific method (C). On the other hand, Republicans fear the EPA reacting to climate science (B) by implementing new regulations to protect the environment, so they also question evolution (A) to help invalidate the scientific method (C). And then both groups strike at science education and textbooks by diluting, eliminating, and distorting any science that challenges their myths.

Either path, the church- or the politically-driven, leads to planned ignorance and a modern version of the dark ages, in which knowledge is always seen as the culprit and in reality is always the true victim.