Mr. Moderate

Today I watched a C-Span show where Al Gore talked about his latest book, The Assault on Reason. Gore clearly recognizes the problem: reason is getting shoved out of public dialog. But he also clearly misperceives why that is happening. The advocates of God have realized that they are in a battle against rational thought and that they have been loosing since at least the Enlightenment. What we are witnessing in the arena of public discourse is just the most obvious examples of them fighting back. And, unfortunately for those who associate rational thought with civilized behavior, God is winning, and reason is on its way out.

We have reached a point where one of the most-proven of all scientific theories, Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, is actively disbelieved by at least 40% of the population (and at least 3 serious Republican candidates for President). How could we reach such a state of affairs where a scientific theory becomes a matter of public debate?

This is all part of a conscious process which began back during the Reagan presidency, but which really got going good after the Republicans took control of Congress in 1995. Once the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, President Bill Clinton tried to get along, and didn’t use his veto pen anywhere near often enough. So, the Republicans were able to slip in legislative provisions, like the Data Quality Act, which allow “any interested party” to raise objections to any scientific study that is in any way to be considered as part of the process of forming public policy, even if the government itself paid for the research. Essentially, a politically-controlled body takes scientific research and subjects it to a sort of “science court” proceeding where the political popularity of the scientific findings are judged, usually according to the expenses paid by the various lobbyists on one side or the other of the measure. In the usual case, all of the paid lobbyists are on one side and all of the poor scientists are on the other, so science loses. This is how we got to the point where we are now with global warming. The government allowed a small group of paid lobbyists to “debunk” the peer-reviewed findings of the government’s own scientists, and the government-paid “final report” of those scientists frequently was edited by political hacks to make the findings attune more directly with the policy objectives of the Republicans.

Well over 70% of Americans believe in God. So, its not surprising that if God is on one side of an election, and rational thought is on the other, reason loses, unless reason can bring a lot of money and political activism to the table. Thus it is not surprising that enemies of Darwin’s theory have twice taken control of the school board of the State of Kansas, and have had to be twice defeated after imposing their silly religious biases upon all of the school children of Kansas, much to their educational detriment.

Business wants trained biologists, not trained Bible thumpers. When Kansas elevates Bible thumping over the science of biology, it puts all of its students in peril of not being employable if they happen to wish to pursue a job related to biology in any way. As we do more things with biology, there are increasing numbers of jobs in biological fields. Working for agriculture or drug companies are only the most obvious. Bible-thumping Kansans need not apply for those jobs.

However, for entirely political reasons, the radical religious right seems quite willing to chase all biology jobs overseas and impose its will upon a nation which seemingly lacks the ability to respond. With science now a matter of political debate, it has been relegated to the status of wrestling and game shows on television. I would not buy stock in the Discovery Channel if this trend keeps up. Sooner or later, there will be a movement to ban the Discovery Channel and all its sister channels from cable television. It is only a matter of time unless the believers in rational thought can mount a counter-attack against God.

Of course, a believer in reason could easily point out that there is no inherent conflict between God and science. However, that misses the point. The debate is over whether the fundamentalist God-believers or the rationalist science-believers are going to have political power. In that debate, rational thought is the issue under discussion, and the power goes to those who disbelieve in its efficacy. Every reasonable statement out of the advocates of science is just another blasphemy to the God-believers. There is no middle ground, again because it is a fight to the death over who takes control over the political direction of our government. For the past 12 years, the advocates of God have had the upper hand, and they will not willingly yield back any part of the massive power they have accumulated in that time. The bulk of the electorate is focused on other “more important” issues (like the War in Iraq), probably deliberately so. I’m not certain this is true, but it sure begins to look like the attack on Iraq was a deliberate distraction, undertaken precisely because President Bush knew there was no way out once we went in. What other reason can you list for why we went to war with Iraq when Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction (and the weapons inspectors President Bush sent there knew it) and when Iraq had nothing at all to do with the 9/11 attacks (and again, the Bush administration clearly knew it)?

The sad part is that the 2008 race for President is shaping up to be a “war election,” and that almost always means a Republican victory. And that is exactly what the armies battling science in the name of God want to see: another Republican President!