And Praying is as Evil as Prosecuting Homosexuals
By Mona
My old pal tristero — whom I first met in comments years ago at what is now an essentially defunct blog — is one damn fine ranter. We do not always agree, but I do owe him credit for being the first to clue me in that the anti-evolution IDers at the Discovery Institute were heavily populated and funded by true theocrats known as Dominionists/Christian Reconstructionists. Further, I had not realized the Reconstructionists had grown in influence to the point of being concern-worthy — having previously encountered them only during a class on Religion in America in the mid-80s, when they were yet quite outré. Tristero was the first to alert me that they were no longer exactly marginal.
He posts at Digby’s place now, often on evolution. Today, he takes issue with Nicholas Kristof of the NYT who equates, on the one hand, dissing Obama on the basis of race or HRC on the basis of gender with, on the other, getting all intemperate with Huckabee and other evangelicals on the basis of their religion. Tristero offers a true and valid rejoinder to Kristof, to wit: immutable characteristics are not the same as ideas one chooses to propound, and especially when one incorporates them into one’s political rhetoric.
But as is his wont, dear tristero quite jumps the shark when he concludes:
Denial of evolution is on a par with flagellation, eugenics, and female genital mutilation.
Uh, no. Not even sort of.
“Our side” does ourselves no good when any of us spew such things.
Comment by Dave W. —
February 3, 2008 @ 1:10 pm
This is kind of a side point, but I believe tat Tristero takes his name from The Crying Of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. One of the best books I have ever read. Not the best, but up in the top 5. Highly, highly recommended. Especially for 9/11 Skeptics.
Question: Is this Tristero really Pynchon?
Comment by First Little Pig —
February 3, 2008 @ 1:41 pm
It does no good to give evolution deniers a pass. Burn them as they would burn witches I say. Facts and evidence, please. Anything less is bane to humanity’s progress.
Comment by Mona —
February 3, 2008 @ 1:54 pm
Riiight. And the “facts and evidence” show that the majority of American religionists who don’t accept evolution would burn anyone, including “witches.”
Look, like it or not, a majority of Americans don’t accept the theory or fact of evolution. My strong hunch is that this includes the majority of people in my rural, Midwestern corner of the world. But if I were burned out of my home with a parsel of kids, this community would rally around to provide shelter, food and otherwise assist.
Superstitious and magical thinking will always be with us; while we cannot allow those beliefs to result in policies that directly harm non-consenting others, a purge mentality against this common human phenomenon (superstition and magical thinking) is also frightening. Belief in the healing power of crystals is not the same is advocating human sacrifice to appease the gods, and failing to accept evolution is not = torture.
Comment by Tony P. —
February 3, 2008 @ 1:55 pm
Mona contrasts religion with “immutable” characteristics such as race and gender. It’s a valid point, but not absolute: some people do change gender surgically, and Michael Jackson has famously given surgical race change a shot.
Obviously, the vast majority of people do retain the race and gender they were born with. But let’s note that the vast majority of Muslim children are born to Muslim parents, Christian children to Christian parents, and so on.
Thus, on both immutability and heritability, religion does bear some resemblance to race and gender.
– TP
Comment by Undertoad —
February 3, 2008 @ 1:55 pm
Greets from Memeorandum!
I’m a Moderate who would like to find a way for these sides to find ways to disagree without it turning into a complete hate-fest, which I believe hurts everyone.
I am certain of evolution — the evidence is quite undeniable if one takes the time to look at it. Governing from a position of biblical rhetoric is kind of offensive to me.
And yet Huckabee was elected fair and square by the people of his state. And there’s the disconnect; it’s really their fault, if you want to call it fault.
We have all these different schools of thought in this country. It seems to result in nothing but vitriol these days.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
February 3, 2008 @ 2:12 pm
Mona’s right–in fact, it goes even further. People who reject evolution are wrong, but they aren’t necessarily idiots or conservatives (not that those two things are the same). I know some Christians who are or were intelligent design believers who are either political moderates or outright liberals. And also quite intelligent, except on the subject of Darwin.
Comment by TGGP —
February 3, 2008 @ 2:57 pm
I agree that “evolution skeptics” seem to lower their effective IQ when on the subject. I mentioned some squabbles I’ve been in on the subject here, and I may have another post up in a bit on further discussion of it.
Comment by Janus Daniels —
February 3, 2008 @ 8:21 pm
Mona, and everybody, you correctly identified this as a rant, a genre that, while properly based on fact, demands sarcasm & hyperbole, particularly at its summation. (Gore Vidal suggested printing the less literal speech in blue.)
Comment by Mona —
February 3, 2008 @ 8:44 pm
Janus Daniels: But flagellation (torture) and cutting out a young girl-child’s clitoris and surrounding tissues with glass, razor or whatever is handy — generally without anesthesia — are not reasonably or morally compared with holding a silly, ill-informed opinion about science.
Whether such comparisons are contained in a “rant” or not, they are misguided, and offensive to the victims of torture and women who have had most of their outer genitalia brutally sliced out.
The first of these things (denying evolution) is not like the others.
Comment by bad Jim —
February 4, 2008 @ 1:31 am
Tristero is actually the composer Richard Einhorn.
Compelling high school students to learn creationism instead of biology is a religiously mandated crippling of their minds, thus the comparison to flagellation and so forth which are also religiously mandated abuses. Huckabee’s offence is not merely being ignorant of biology, but rather insisting that students be kept ignorant.
I’d agree that the comparison to genital mutilation is excessive, since ignorance is easily remediable but mutilation is not.
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
February 4, 2008 @ 4:32 am
Not to be melodramatic about it, but people who truly, truly deny evolution are incapable of responding to epidemics, since genetic drift, mutation, and other such things are crucial to understanding their behavior. And on and on like that. Anti-evolutionists function in modern society only insofar as they are either ignorant of the consequences of their beliefs or hypocritical about them. I grew up around quite a few of the latter, colleagues of Dad at JPL and fellow Caltech alumni and their families, who simply disregarded what a denial of evolution meant when it came to other parts of science. And honestly, it was to their credit – when one’s creed pits one against reality, good intentions and a willingness to accept the rest of reality can be better than fidelity to the creed, and sometimes what feels like betraying the creed can turn out to be fidelity to deeper, stronger truths. But their creed itself if taken seriously and consistently would have made them that much less useful to the rest of us, and it’s not cheating to say so, or look at how dangerous that can be in some situations.
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
February 4, 2008 @ 9:51 pm
By the way, Tristero’s Visions of Light is a bogglingly excellent choral work. I’ve been trying to write a blog review of it for months, and it keeps eluding me, but…it’s wonderful. It’s rich and deep and satisfying. It reminds me of some of Arvo Part’s work, and some of Aaron Copland’s choral music, but it’s very much it’s own thing. I love it.
Comment by Timothy —
February 5, 2008 @ 10:29 am
I say we put the IDers in camps, just so we know where they are. That’s never worked out badly or anything.
Comment by dhex —
February 5, 2008 @ 11:55 am
most peoples’ beliefs re: biology have virtually nothing to do with their day-to-day lives. this includes some of my city folk friends who are all sorts of pissed about the ID people.
and those like me, who merely think creationism is amusing. it’s not like most laypeople – even those who are really angry about it – could actually give you a decent 12th grade science recap of what’s involved anyway. at least not face to face, away from the digital bosom of wikipedia.
Comment by Avram —
February 6, 2008 @ 9:10 pm
The place where the analogy of religion to race or gender is not immutability, but relevance. As voters in a democratic republic, we are supposed to choose our representatives based on how they’ll act on our behalf. A person’s thoughts and beliefs are highly relevant to this; race and gender, much less so. However, “religion” isn’t always as good a guide to a person’s thoughts and belief as we secular folks might believe.
If you actually read the Kristof piece, instead of just relying on a summary of it, you can see that he’s getting at the same idea. Just looking at the name attached to someone’s religion, and assuming that everyone who follows that same religion must think the same, does them a disservice. It reduces the actual diversity of human belief to a crude cartoon.
Bill Donohue and my friend Patrick Nielsen Hayden are both Catholics, but their political beliefs and habits of thought could hardly be more different. Mike Huckabee and Tony Camplo are both evangelical Christians, but their beliefs look pretty different. My own politics don’t have much in common with those of my fellow atheists Joseph Stalin and Ayn Rand.
Comment by Mona —
February 6, 2008 @ 9:24 pm
Avram wins the thread: