http://www.walter-c-uhler.com/Reviews/dumbing.html
November 10, 2005
Dumbing Down for Jesus:
Kansas Board of Education Approves Challenges to Evolution
By Walter C. Uhler
Whenever I contemplate the evil and incompetence spewing from the
administration nominally headed by President George W. Bush
--especially the evil and incompetence surrounding the decision to
invade and occupy Iraq--Jacques Barzun's unforgettable warning about
"the menace of the untaught" overloads my brain.
Today, however, I must blame the Kansas Board of Education for
sparking another "Barzun overload."
(It even beat out Pat Robertson's asinine claim that the good citizens
of Dover, Pennsylvania voted God out of their town when they voted to
oust the school board clowns who had slipped "intelligent design" into
Dover Area High School's biology curriculum.)
But, my thoughts about the menace of the untaught weren't the result
of Kansas' 6 to 4 vote to adopt new science standards that require
Darwin's theory of evolution to be challenged in the classroom.
[Jodi Wilgoren, The New York Times, Nov. 9, 2005]
After all, nothing can claim to remain a working theory in science
unless it continuously and successfully withstands repeated attempts
to render it false.
Like Bush, but without his shameful atmospherics, genuine scientists
should say:
"Bring 'em on!"
Neither did Barzun's warning come to mind simply because the supposed
challengers to evolution, intelligent design propagandists and
creationists, have never submitted their inchoate mumbo jumbo for
similarly rigorous scientific scrutiny.
Anyone who's read, Why Intelligent Design Fails, already knows,
"Intelligent design, like older versions of creationism, is not
practiced as a science.
Its advocates act more like a political pressure group than like
researchers entering an academic debate.
They seem more interested in affirming their prior religious
commitment than in putting real hypotheses to the test."
[Matt Young and Taner Edis ed., Why Intelligent Design Fails: A
Scientific Critique of the New Creationism, p. x]
In fact, "Barzun overload" didn't strike until I read that the Kansas
Board redefined science itself, "so that it would not be explicitly
limited to natural explanations."
[Wilgorin]
Although now might be the time to decry this most recent "menace"
permitting "supernatural" hocus pocus into biology classrooms, I
prefer instead to suggest that the vote by the conservative ideologues
of Kansas is a dangerous first step toward retarding its biology
students to educational levels found in 13th century Europe.
After all, it was in 1215 that the Fourth Lateran Council officially
promulgated the doctrine of transubstantiation.
Consequently, untold thousands of Christians were told to accept on
faith that, during the Eucharist, the whole substance of the bread and
the wine literally was converted into the body of Christ, with only
the external appearance of bread and wine remaining.
Presumably, today's defenders of intelligent design would have
responded to the Lateran Council's transubstantiation in the same way
they do to evolution:
"Nature alone cannot explain life's complexity."
Unfortunately, as happens with most mass superstitions, zealots
transformed this supernatural "Host" superstition into hysteria when
they "began to worry that these living wafers might be subjected to
all manner of mistreatment, and even physical torture, at the hands of
heretics and Jews."
[Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of
Reason, p. 99]
According to Sam Harris, "Historical accounts suggest that as many as
three thousand Jews were murdered in response to a single allegation
of this imaginary crime" of "host desecration."
[Ibid. pp. 99-100]
Today, millions of Americans still take Holy Communion and as many as
91 percent of America's Christians still believe in the Virgin Birth.
Now, the good citizens of Kansas are asked to believe in supernatural
science.
What's next?
A high school science curriculum devoted to the question "How many
angels can dance on the head of a pin?"
In fact, intelligent design is as bereft of hard evidence as is the
myth of the Virgin Birth.
And it's hardly an accident that it appeals to the same faith-based
crowd.
Yet, as any Bible student knows, "the earliest references to Mary
(like Mark's gospel, the first to be written, or Paul's letter to the
Galatians) don't mention anything unusual about the conception of
Jesus."
[Nicholas D. Kristof, "Believe It, or Not," The New York Times, August
15, 2003]
Second, as Paula Fredriksen explains in her study, Jesus of Nazareth,
King of the Jews, "creative use of the Septuagint" (the Greek version
of the Jewish Scriptures), "clearly shapes both synoptic birth
narratives," those written by Matthew and Luke. [p 27] "The tradition
that Jesus' mother was a virgin at the time of his birth, for example,
draws on prophecy available only in the Greek version of Isaiah 7:14:
In the original Hebrew, the word that stands behind the Septuagint's
parthenos, 'virgin,' is aalmah, 'young girl.'"
[Ibid]
Third, as the great Catholic theologian Hans Kung concluded, "the
Virgin Birth is a 'collection of largely uncertain, mutually
contradictory, strongly legendary' narratives, an echo of virgin birth
myths that were widespread in many parts of the ancient world."
[Kristof, "Believe It, or Not"]
Fourth, as the intellectual giant, Harold Bloom, observed:
"Nobody can say for sure who wrote the four Gospels, or precisely when
and where they were composed, or what source material was relied upon.
None of the writers knew Jesus, or ever heard him preach."
[Jesus and Yahweh, p. 22]
Moreover, Bloom cannot "recall a single passage in the Synoptic
Gospels that unequivocally identifies Jesus as God: such status comes
to him only in John, and clearly emerges from that Gospel's battles
with those it angrily called 'the Jews'".[p. 5] Finally, "There is not
a sentence concerning Jesus in the entire New Testament composed by
anyone who ever met the unwilling King of the Jews." [p. 19]
Nevertheless, "According to Gallup, 35 percent of American believe
that the bible is the literal and inerrant word of the Creator of the
universe. Another 48 percent believe that it is the 'inspired' word of
the same--still inerrant, though certain of its passages must be
interpreted symbolically before the truth can be brought to light."
[Harris, p. 17]
Thus, "nearly 230 million Americans believe that a book showing
neither unity of style nor internal consistency was authored by an
omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent deity."
[Ibid]
Now tell the truth, should thoughtful Americans pay any attention to
what the faith-based crowd thinks about science?
Have even one-tenth of those 230 million ever mastered even one
college level biology textbook?
Scientific illiteracy aside, American Christians are quick to spot the
idiocy and harm springing from other religions--especially after 9/11.
Who wasn't outraged to learn that, in 2002, "the religious police in
Mecca prevented paramedics and firefighters from rescuing scores of
teenage girls trapped in a burning building. Why? Because the girls
were not wearing the traditional head covering that Koranic law
requires."
[Ibid, p. 46]
But that outrage pales when compared with the world's incomprehension
and indignation over the support American Christians provided for
Bush's illegal, immoral and thus evil "crusade" against Iraq.
When the world learned that Bush confided to Mahmoud Abbas, "God told
me to strike at Al Qaida and I struck them, and then He instructed me
to strike at Saddam, which I did," it didn't simply blame America's
Christian conservative President; it also indicted his fellow
true-believing evangelicals--many of whom, to this day, defend their
own complicity
[Dilip Hiro, Secrets and Lies, p.1].
Yet, Iraq aside, consider that "51 percent of Americans reject the
theory of evolution, saying God created humans in their present form,"
and "38 percent" believe that creationism should be taught instead of
evolution."
[Glenn Collins, "An Evolutionist's Evolution," The New York Times,
Nov. 7, 2005]
How many of these intrepid Christians have demonstrated the courage to
attempt to falsify Christianity, like scientists attempt to falsify
evolution?
Moreover, what harm results from the increasing American tendency to
substitute faith for fact?
I suspect that such a substitution virtually guarantees that America's
children will remain as ignorant as their parents.
Consider the illuminating essay recently written by Diane Ravitch,
"Every State Left Behind"
[The New York Times, Nov. 7, 2005].
Ravitch urged Americans to "recognize that we need national
[education] standards, national tests and a national curriculum."
Why?
Because, almost all states are dumbing down their tests in order to
report about "incredibly large proportions of their students [who]
meet high standards."
How do we know?
We know because their so-called high achievers invariably score much
lower when they take the standardized nationwide test.
For example:
"Idaho claims that 90 percent of its fourth-grade students are
proficient in mathematics, but on the federal test only 41 percent of
Idaho's students reached the Education Department's standard of
proficiency"
[Ravitch, The New York Times].
In New York, the numbers are 85 percent proficient in the state test,
but only 36 percent on the national test.
In North Carolina it's 92/40.
And for fourth grade reading proficiency, it's 87/26 in Georgia and
83/22 in Alabama.
State data for eighth grade readers is equally bogus.
"Texas reports that 83 percent met the state standard, but the federal
test finds that only 26 percent are proficient"
[Ravitch, The New York Times].
In Tennessee the disparity is 88/26 and in North Carolina it's 88/27.
Why do Americans allow themselves to be duped by such faith-based
state scores?
According to Ravitch, it's because, "the states function in a
political environment. Educational leaders and elected officials want
to assure the public that the schools are doing their jobs and making
progress. The federal testing program, administered for the past 15
years by an independent, bipartisan governing board, has never been
cowed by the demands of parents, school officials and taxpayers for
good news"--or a religiously inspired agenda.
Who politicized the Kansas Board of Education and the recently ousted
board members at Dover Area High School in Pennsylvania?
Conservative zealots; some of whom have even admitted to not
understanding intelligent design--and who certainly do not understand
what constitutes genuine science.
America needs to establish national education standards, national
tests and a national curriculum, if only to prevent the piecemeal
hijacking (one school district or state after another) of genuine
science by the inerrant Bible crowd or closet creationists.
It's a matter of America's national security.
Finally, as Olivia Judson (evolutionary biologist at Imperial College,
London) recently demonstrated, the substitution of "ideologies born of
wishful thinking"--such as intelligent design and creationism--can
have disastrous consequences for both the faith-based and fact-based
communities.
Speaking about the dreaded avian flu, Judson notes, "a few mutations
to a bird virus could--in the absence of a vaccine--mean the
difference between 60 people dead and several million."
["Evolution Is in the Air," The New York Times, Nov. 6, 2005]
"But the most important point is this: viruses and other pathogens
evolve in ways that we can understand and, to some extent, predict.
Whether it's preventing a flu pandemic or tackling malaria, we can use
our knowledge of evolutionary processes in powerful and practical
ways, potentially saving the lives of tens of millions of people."
[Ibid]
Then again, perhaps not.
Especially if the 51 percent of Americans who reject the theory of
evolution--or the Kansas Board of Education--have their way.
---
http://www.ElmerFudd.US/ http://www.rightard.org/ http://www.thedarkwind.org/
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