I showed you a few things yesterday that make a case for fighting creationism. But it’s more than just shoddy science education we’ve got to worry about: creationism is far more than just the idea that god-did-it and Jesus rode a velociraptor. I don’t need to babble at you, though. ACE school survivor Jonny Scaramanga is here to tell you what other odious ideas creationism supports, and why it’s a damned good idea to oppose it. (Feminists take note, please. This stuff has direct relevance to the issues we face.)
We should be worrying about creationism. But everyone is worried about it for the wrong reasons. Yes, creationism is false, and young-Earth creationism is particularly ridiculous. But with thousands of false beliefs in circulation, why should we particularly care about creationism? It doesn’t make much difference to my daily life whether or not I accept that all life on Earth shares a single common ancestor, or that the planet is 4.54 billion years old. Even in science, there are limited areas where the fact of common descent is immediately relevant.
The trouble is that the areas of fundamentalism which are truly oppressive— the denial of women’s rights and bigotry against LGBTQ people, for example—are intimately bound up with creationism. You’ll notice that, amid its busy schedule of producing pseudoscience, Answers in Genesis has found time to oppose gay marriage. There aren’t a lot of copies of The Selfish Gene in Quiverfull homes, either. These facts are not coincidences.
To explain why, we need a brief detour.
Cliffhanger! Read on here. Once you’ve finished that, move on to part two: Creationism is inherently homophobic and misogynistic.
For decades, creationism was also used to justify racism, but you’ll rarely hear about that now. It’s comparatively easy to ignore biblical racism, because it is mostly buried in parts of the Bible that evangelicals rarely mention. Sexism and the denial of gay people’s identity, on the other hand, are right there in Genesis 1-3 (at least the way creationists read it). So while conservative white evangelicalism has been able to move away from explicit racism fairly easily, I think the same transition with homosexuality would be more difficult.
Let’s get to the scriptures.
Then polish your why-creationism-matters reading off with homeschool guru Kevin Swanson‘s vision for America’s future. Doktor Zoom reports:
Swanson presents a number of basic assumptions about knowledge that need to be reformed, starting with a rejection of Thomas Aquinas. We won’t list all of his points; these give you a flavor:
1. We must obliterate the dualist distinction between sacred knowledge and philosophical knowledge, once and for all. To pretend that there can be religious neutrality in education is disingenuous at best, and will only do damage to the Christian faith. Hopefully, we have learned this lesson after 800 years of losing ground
2. We must teach the fear of God as the beginning of knowledge and wisdom in every classroom and in every textbook (whether public, private, or home school).
This should be fairly easy, although those first two are going to maybe require a few revisions to the First Amendment, we think. We’re not sure whether Swanson is expecting the corrupt secular government to have already fallen by the time his ideal reforms come in, or if it will be a gradual takeover by Christians who just nudge the schools and courts in the right direction. And once you have the basics in place and all education is based on the Bible, then maybe some remnants of secular philosophy and literature can still be preserved, if only to show us how the world fell apart:
5. We must avoid setting our children at the feet of unbelieving authors and philosophers until they are matured in their understanding of a biblical worldview. When we teach non-Christian literary works, we must set the thesis [the Bible] against the antithesis in sharp contrast. This author is preparing a high school and college curriculum for the liberal arts student that will do just this. As Western civilization disintegrates, succeeding generations must understand the forces that contributed to its demise, as well as the ideas that will rebuild new cultures in the years to come.
Christianists are working to impose their terrible ideas on the rest of society. We have to be prepared for that, and counter their ideas effectively. If we care about science, education, religious freedom, LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, and non-Christian literature, we have to oppose this bullshit. The more we know, the better we can do that.
My impression both before and after reading this is that the underlying struggle is over what shall determine what people see as true. The Bible, evolution, etc., are all just game pieces in this struggle.
One side believes that Truth comes from experience and thought and is available to all. Science is based on this principle.
The other side believes that whoever is in power gets to decide what is true. Creationism is their (current) stalking horse. They use religious ideas mostly because religion is a good source of well-known ideas that don’t depend upon evidence, but they’re happy to use non-religious sources as well, such as racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc. The point is to get the population used to the idea that the beliefs they live by should come from their superiors (e.g., Fox News) and should not be tainted by them thinking for themselves or considering their own experience.
Creationism is the smoke screen used to cover for the ridiculous Adam & Eve fairy tale that Abrahamic religion is based on. Change the subject to anything so people won’t notice the stupidity underneath.
Religious people are always longing for the ‘good old days’. If there is ever a time in the future when fundamentalism goes out of fashion you can be sure that the very next generation will bring it back again.