[Changleen]

We've had a lot of 'Jeebus' threads recently, and far from getting boring as they probably should, they've actually made for some good debate.

I think this nicely reflects a growing trend in America today - The rise of the religious right.

In Europe and in fact he entire rest of the first and most of the second world, religion happily co-exists with science, each knowing their place in society:

Science providing the progress and innovation vital for continued economic growth and understanding of our place in the universe and religion providing a focus for communities to grow around. In actual fact, the 'religious' aspect of religion has in most places become less and less important as people understand more about life and death and the nature of things. For a great number of people in the world now, especially the 'christian' world, the idea of burning bushes, and parting seas are largely irrelevant much as the story of Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy are irrelevant to an adult. Church attendance in most of Europe continues it's long slow slide towards nothing.

But for some reason the US bucks this trend. Religion is more of an issue now than at any point in the last, well, actually probably since the inception of the US itslef. Why is this? Why is creationism, and it's new 'spun' clone, ID, getting so much airplay? To most of us abroad it seems a very puzzling thing that anyone would want to entertain such flawed ideas about a debate which is from the early part of the last centuary, laid to rest for most people before they were even born.

Is this rise of religion a response to the rise of militant Islam? Is it real at all? Is it a cynical tactic of leaders to control people's opinions? Why are some people so responsive to these simple answers?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucas/20050807/cm_ucas/goodoldamericanknowhowishobbledbyknownothings

GOOD OLD AMERICAN KNOW-HOW IS HOBBLED BY KNOW-NOTHINGS

Whatever happened to good old American know-how? What became of those twin emblems of our national character -- ingenuity and resourcefulness?

The nation could use a bit of those right now. Even as global petroleum reserves peak, we have no national program for developing alternative energy sources;
NASA's shuttle program has been suspended indefinitely for fear of another disaster; and the South Koreans and others are outstripping us in vital genetic research.

The Pentagon is so desperate to attract a new generation of scientists and engineers that it is sending mid-career researchers to screenwriting school, hoping they'll write movies depicting scientists as flashy heroes. But that won't help much if President Bush is going to declare war on science.

Just last week, the president poked a sharp stick in the eye of modern biology, telling reporters that high schools should teach "intelligent design." This view challenges evolution by inserting a divine force into scientific theories about the origins of life.

According to The Washington Post, Bush, in an Oval Office meeting with a group of Texas reporters on Monday, said, "Both sides ought to be properly taught ... so people can understand what the debate is about. ... Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought."

Like so many Americans who misunderstand scientific consensus, the president seems to think there are two valid scientific views about evolution. There are not. There is a side that teaches science -- that which can be tested and retested against the evidence at hand. And there is the side that favors teaching religion in high school biology classes. (No matter how much proponents of "intelligent design" try to clothe their views in the apparel of science, it is what it is: religion. Whose intelligence? Whose design?)

Bush also reiterated his opposition to broadening federal funding for stem cell research, despite growing Republican support for funding for less restrictive research. This nation used to be exuberant about scientific achievement, confident (even arrogant) about our ability to solve any technological challenge, comfortable with the possibilities of scientific research. When the Soviets stunned the world with the launch of Sputnik in 1957, the United States rushed to the barricades with money for science labs and math classrooms. There was no conflict among mainstream Christians about promoting scientific advancement.

But that was then. Now, this country is led by a cult of religious fundamentalists who wish to impose their narrow thinking on the rest of us. The dogma advanced by Bush and his ilk disputes more than a century of scientific thought that relies on the foundations of Darwin's theories. It discounts the pain of countless sick and handicapped citizens, who might benefit from advances in stem cell research. It ignores the growing scientific prowess of other nations, including China and South Korea, where, just last week, scientists announced the successful cloning of a puppy -- a stunning development.

Never mind that millions of Christians, including me, are quite comfortable with the teaching of evolution, since it neither attempts to confirm nor deny the existence of a Creator. Never mind that countless believers support broadening research on donated embryos that would otherwise be destroyed. The absolutes of a narrow minority rule the day.

If the great story of the last century was the conflict among various political ideologies -- communism, fascism and democracy -- then the great narrative of this century will be the changes wrought by astonishing scientific breakthroughs. What seemed science fiction just yesterday will become an overnight reality: cures for Alzheimer's and spinal cord ruptures, the development of advanced robots and nano-technology, an incredible lengthening of the human life span.

The United States stood in the vanguard of the fight against communism and fascism, ensuring that democracy survived the last century and would flourish in the next. But in the race for scientific hegemony, we've tied a white lab coat to a stick and are waving it at Asia: We surrender.

 

[Changleen]

More:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/04/AR2005080401824.html

Ignorance Is Bliss; Sometimes It's Policy

The ranch at Crawford hardly compares with the Forbidden City, but George W. Bush has something in common with the Ming emperors of China: He seems determined to make his great nation less ambitious and more ignorant.

He wouldn't see it that way, of course, but the emperors didn't see it that way either. And I don't know how else to explain policies and pronouncements that make the quest for knowledge conditional on politics. That is a prescription for decline.


In the early 1400s the Ming emperor Zhu Di made China into the world's leading maritime nation, sending huge fleets on missions of trade and exploration as far as the Swahili coast of Africa. It should have been just a matter of a few years before Chinese sailors discovered the Americas. But Zhu Di's successors, influenced by court politics, called home the fleets and forbade them to sail again, forfeiting the riches of the New World -- and five centuries of global domination -- to an underdeveloped backwater called Europe.

I guess it's a general rule of political dynasties, in China as well as in Texas, that the blood thins with successive generations.

Examples? Well, there's the way Bush insists on hamstringing American scientists who are trying to explore the potential medical benefits of therapies involving embryonic stem cells.

You are excused if your eyes glaze over at the mention of the words "stem cells," but it's enough to know that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, in a rare display of backbone, has challenged the president over his suffocating restrictions on federal funding for stem cell research -- and also that the fight is akin to arguing over what kind of lock to put on the barn door while the horse frolics in the next county.

While our leaders disagree, stem cell technology is being developed and advanced in laboratories all around the world, especially in Asia. South Korean researchers have arguably pushed farther than anyone else. At the moment it's still a long shot that embryonic stem cells will prove to be a panacea, but if they do it's increasingly likely that the key discoveries will be made elsewhere -- not in the United States.

And there's no real reason for Bush's position except politics. All that Frist and other reasonable people want is to be able to experiment on surplus embryos from fertility clinics, embryos that otherwise will be destroyed. But the radical pro-life lobby won't be reasonable, so Bush does his best to keep the United States on the sidelines of what is, at the moment, the most exciting field of medical research.

Then there's this administration's almost comical insistence that the firm scientific consensus on global climate change is some kind of mass hallucination. "What global warming?" they ask, as mean temperatures rise, Arctic ice melts, tropical diseases march north and hurricanes rake poor Florida in swarms.

The much-maligned Kyoto treaty isn't the point. Treaty or no treaty, it looks as if sooner or later the world is going to have to find a way to prosper without spewing so much heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Other nations are busy trying to develop technology and coping mechanisms to prepare for that day. When it comes, we'll be at or near the back of the line.

Maybe we'll line up all our obsolete SUVs along the coast to try to hold back the rising sea.

To round out the trifecta, the other day Bush reiterated his support for teaching "intelligent design" in America's schools along with evolution, as a way of exposing students to different points of view. This really borders on madness.

Intelligent design isn't a scientific theory at all; it's a matter of faith -- Creationism 2.0. Faith is a different kind of truth. Charles Darwin's landmark discovery of evolution, with a few minor modifications and additions over the years, has proved to be one of the sturdiest and most unassailable scientific theories of all time. To the extent that science can say anything is true, evolution is scientifically true. Done. Settled. As Walter Cronkite used to say, "That's the way it is."

To teach American children in science class that intelligent design is an alternative explanation of how birds, anteaters and people came to be birds, anteaters and people is simply to make American children less well educated than children elsewhere.

By all rights, we ought to remember the Ming dynasty for discovering America; instead, we think of gorgeous pottery but not much else. China's current leaders seem determined not to make the same mistake.