And it’s a right embarrassing spotlight to be caught under, I imagine. A couple of years ago, The New Republic polled various well-known conservatives about their position on evolutionary biology; Digby reviews their responses, and they’re a mess (I also summarized their views diagrammatically way back then). Most wouldn’t be caught dead admitting to believing the kind of nonsense Ken Ham favors, so they’re spluttering evasively and many are embracing with great relief the concept of Intelligent Design.
Digby is making the point that it reveals how uncomfortable the leaders of the conservative movement are with the actual beliefs of their base, but I think it shows something else, too. Intelligent Design has always been a bridge or enabler; it isn’t as tainted with snake-handlin’ bible-quotin’ old school fundamentalism as outright creationism, so the big shot conservative intellectuals are willing to harrumph over it and wax pontifical in its favor, without dirtying themselves with biblical populism; meanwhile, the creationist hoi-polloi can look up to it as an intellectually respectable, cleaned-up and pseudo-secular version of their myth. Very few people on either side actually believe it, but it won popularity as a middle ground where neo-con and religious right could meet.
“I don’t believe evolution can explain the creation of matter.” – Pat Buchanan, The American Conservative
Similarly, I don’t believe Atomic Orbital theory bottle can explain Keynesian economics.
Uh, minus the “bottle”.
Hell, Chris, even with the “bottle”, it makes more sense than old Pat does.
Intelligent design is creationism in a lab coat. The coat doesn’t fit, it is stained from previous misadventures and it serves no function except as window dressing at a religious fancy dress ball.
My take on it? The neo-cons don’t believe a word of it; they are cynically exploiting the credulous believers while trying not to look like inbred yokels to the rest of the world.
“…while trying not to look like inbred yokels to the rest of the world.”
And failing.
“Very few people on either side actually believe it, but it won popularity as a middle ground where neo-con and religious right could meet.”
And let’s face it: certain self-professed scientists also loved debating its merits in oh-so-civilized discussions in classrooms and elsewhere. The Internets’ Archives are filled with examples of friendly backslapping and collegial banter between so-called defenders of science and ID-peddling philosophers, mathematicians and pseudo-scientists.
Chris Harrison wrote:
Clearly you haven’t seen Escaflowne. Evil Isaac Newton for teh Win!
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Interesting body of responses. Even the nutty Pat Buchanan is careful about his “don’t believe” response. The rest, with individual reservations, seem very pro-evolution.
But then again, these are from the educated end of the conservative spectrum.
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I think Atrios defined it best as pegging it as a new way for conservatives to affirm they are on board with the program.
But it also goes deeper than that. Grover Norquist’s bit is particularly enlightening: sure God created everything, but they point is public schools shouldn’t be teaching anyone anything because they shouldn’t exist! So we have to kill capital gains taxation!
Meaning that whatever its purpose is, ID is objectively a tool to keep the ‘values voter’ (that supposedly cares about Christianity, gay-bashing and unburnt flags, as well as no BJs in the White house) marching along with the privatize-deregulate-slash the programs wing of the movement, or at least make the co-existence inside the same ideological walls a bit less embarrassing or patronizing (in both directions).
And Tucker Carlson was so servile and house-broken it was sickening to read. “I don’t know the -real- answer, but I’m sure God did it! How it happened? Well, we’re not keen on the specifics, but God could have made it all in any way he wanted, which he -did-! Are you getting it down that I said God did it and the dogmatics are the _other_ guys?” I din’t think I ever actually saw panic condensed in written form, but it’s there; he won’t deviate one micrometer from the party line, and the mere impression that he migt be doing it without knowing it makes him all sweaty and jumpy.
I remember being a kid and wishing Brazil (my country) would become more like the US. Now it -is- becoming true, except the other way around. Gah.
The neo-cons are shamed in comparison to real libertarians, the ones who DON’T think that religion should be in charge of running the country.
Ronald Bailey, Reason, 9/2003
Neo-Cons like to claim that they are libertarians “with a small ‘l'”, and with their economics they are close to Libertarians, but they love that whole authoritarianism thing.
I like reading Bailey almost as much as reading P.J. O’Rourke; when he isn’t liberal-bashing, or hacking at greenies he gets things pretty close to spot-on. He’s just not as funny as P.J.
“But then again, these are from the educated end of the conservative spectrum.”
In addition to having a Harvard MD, Charles Krauthammer was science advisor to the Carter White House and a Mondale speech writer.
This is an ideologically mixed group. Pat Buchanan is, like Joseph Sobran (who was fired from National Review in 1993), a paleocon who opposes neocons on a wide range of issues.
Best laugh I’ve had all day, tears running down my face laughter.
Poe’s Law indeed!
The yokels don’t believe in creationism either. It’s a fantasy they like to pretend to, but they all know better.
Simple example: A family’s dog dissappears for a few weeks, then returns pregnant. What would the family believe the offsping might be? They might be half wolf, half coyote, maybe even half fox, but not half stoat, seal, skunk, salamander, sparrow, spider, or sycamore. Obviously the people have a general idea of how related different species are, and the only way species could be related would be in the past. Ergo evolution.
Even illiterate farmers have theories of evolution, and they put their theories to use trying to crossbreed what they think are closely enough related to be able to produce offspring, both with plants and animals.
That’s the reality 6 billion people on this planet know.
Religious people will see nothing wrong with breeding roses or orchids in the real world, then pretending they don’t believe in evolution while they pretend dead people live invisibly in the sky.
Sort of off topic question for PZ: How have have your student’s attitudes toward evolution changed over the course of your teaching career? Is there a general trend one way or the other? Or have some years been better than others?
Thank you so much for your blog! It’s a ray of light in a dark and cloudy sky.
I’m the wrong person to ask. Since I’ve got a bit of a reputation, I’ve been discovering that the creationist students all go running to the other faculty for heartfelt talks and words of solace and reassurance, so I’ve been hearing less about them firsthand, and more about them secondhand.
I know we still get occasional students who are creationists. I think I frighten them, although honestly, in my lectures I try to let them know that their beliefs aren’t relevant, all that matters is understanding the evidence.
John Derbyshire has been a pretty vocal opponent of ID, creationism and so on. I rather like him for being a curmudgeon. A cheerfully racist, homophobic curmugeon, but in an eccentric old English way.
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PZ, that “reputation” may be a better gift to all your students than a gushing river of soppy sympathy.
I had a geometry teacher in about the 9th grade, a certain Miss King, the only black woman teacher I ever had. She was merciless about the right answer, and showing up on time, and bringing your geometry tools – compass, protractor, etc. – to class. She never gave an inch on any of that, and any time you fell short, there was a price to pay.
Looking back on it, as I did many times over the years, she was perhaps the single most memorable teacher I had in my entire high school career. The critical lesson she got across to me, along with all the geometry, was that sometimes there was one right answer, and all the wishful thinking and arguing and begging for partial credit because you’d gotten close DIDN’T MATTER.
It was an important lesson in grown-up reality: If you got the wrong answer, you got the wrong answer … and YOU were the one who lost points for it. There was nobody to beg or complain to. Later, if your checking account was 7 cents overdrawn, YOU had to pay a $35 in fees for the checks that bounced. If you were ten minutes late for the meeting, the client was gone and YOU missed the deal.
You might wish for cuddles and fuzz, but a lot of life was iron and sharp edges, and it was something you had to know. Miss King was the only one who taught it.
I’ve wished many times over the years I could find her and thank her for it.
Wherever you are out there, Miss King – I never even knew your first name – of Douglas MacArthur High School of Houston, Texas (in about 1968), I would really like you to know what an impression you made on me. And thanks.
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I’m pretty sure it was The New Republic, not National Review, that polled prominent conservative commentators vis-a-vis Evolution vs. Creationism.
Look folks, this really isn’t that hard.
Dispute gravity and you end up a red stain on the sidewalk. There is no “penalty”, per se, for disputing evolution. There’s actually a benefit, in that you get a bunch of mindless rubes to manipulate in the bargin. What’s not to like about creationism or ID?
It always strikes me that all of these people of “faith” are really actually quite faithless – otherwise they’d be afraid to tell their lies.
The idea that neocons might have two minds about Evolution/Creationism goes nicely with a common interpretaton of the works of Leo Strauss. Writings should have esoteric meanings for the elite and exoteric meanings for common consumption. What is told to the the general populace are “noble lies” – myths to keep them in line while the elites are the ones that can deal with the truth. Creationism is probably one of the noble lies to keep people happy, religious and manipulable. Evolution is a “deadly truth”, something that could be disruptive to what they believe should be the natural order of things in the political sphere. This would mean lip service to Creationsm while supporting Evolution in research and higher levels of learning and only to biologists.
So, the proper neocon will have serious doubts about any truth in Creationism, but they cannot say that for general consumption.
Hooboy, Nat Cynic, that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms, there. Neoconservative power is waning, yes, but there’s still a vastly powerful group out there that believes America is too liberal and pluralistic, and needs (in the words of Machiavelli scholar and neoconservative mentor Strauss) a “single public orthodoxy” that governs the public and private lives of its citizens. It’s enough to send Orwellian shivers up my spine. Yours, too, I expect.
George Bush may be out of office at the end of next year, but Neoconservatism isn’t going anywhere, and the Michael Ledeens amongst us will live on…
Obviously I’m bothered by the conservative view on creationism, but there was another reply which bothered me in a different way. William Kristol dodges the question of teaching evolution in the schools by saying, “I managed to have my children go through the Fairfax, Virginia schools without ever looking at one of their science textbooks.”
Some family values to pay such little attention to what his children are doing in school.
I note further up ( # 11 ) …
“Neo-Cons like to claim that they are libertarians “with a small ‘l'”, and with their economics they are close to Libertarians, but they love that whole authoritarianism thing.”
Errr – what about “Christian Libertarians”?
Yes, I know, it is a contradicyion in terms, since, a theocracy is the most evil form of tyrrany known, but they exist.
Try “Vox Populi” – and yes, I have asked them how they reconcile these views, and got no answer.
They’ve got another trick, which they seem to have picked up from the neo-cons and the Stalinists, as well ….
If you state something faily obvious, that they don’t like, you get hit with accusations of “unjustified assumptions”, and they demand evidence.
But when you suggest that something like “god” is an unjustified assumption, they go all huffy.
I think it’s called double standards or something.
Hmm, I know we are dealing here with bigger problems than this, but I actually don’t even like it when one someone says s/he believes in evolution.
If someone would ask me if I believe in evolution, I would say something like ‘No, I am not a believer, but in my opinion, evolution so far is the only reasonable explanation for the existence of species.’ Maybe someone will ever come forward with an alternative reasonable theory, but until now I haven’t seen one. This is more than semantics, it is about the problem that the creationists, and more importantly the crowd that has not really thought about it, tend to think that evolution is just another religion (hence their ad hominem attacks on Darwin). Religion does not provide an alternative theory; it provides the alternative for putting forward a theory at all.
I think it’s useful to distinguish between the people who actually believe in creationism, as opposed to those who sometimes pretend to believe in creationism, or who pretend not to disbelieve in creationism – like a number of those people quoted above in the original post.
I think that the Intelligent design movement is simply a way of pretending to believe or pretending not to disbelieve in creationism; it’s necessary to pretend to have a scientific theory consistent with the idea that god created the universe, because no body with any claim to be some sort of public intellectual could really believe that the world was created in 6 or 7 days, that dinosaurs coexisted with humans and all died in the Flood, that the kangaroos and koalas successfully floated to Australia after the Flood (and left no fossils behind in the Middle East, where they boarded the Ark), or that God stopped the sun in the sky so that the Israelites could continue slaughtering their enemies (even if this really means that the world and not the Sun stopped rotating for a few hours without ending all life on Earth) – and so on, ad infinitum. And of course the pretence is necessary if you want to keep on side with the base of people who do really believe these things. These pretenders are political cynics – the end justifies the means or they are doing it for money (the people at the Discovery Institute or whatever).
But what about the real creationists? Why do some people “really” believe things that many of us think are completely absurd? My interpretation is based on reading some comments from a very serious young creationist, some time ago on “Pharyngula”, I think, and trying to understand his thought processes. I think that in addition to poor education and indoctrination by their parents, for the ones that don’t get over this, it is because the alternative is even harder to accept. If each of us starts where we are in life because of luck, contingency, or chance, then except for that luck I could be a starving Zimbabwean or a Palestinian or an Iraqi. But if it is possible for me to have been one of them, what does this mean for how I should want to see them treated; maybe their different point of view about people like me has some justification. Maybe my relative privileges – even if I am a poor American I am a lot better-off than someone living in Zimbabwe – have no objective justification.
I think that many people who are Creationists are actually profoundly self-centred; they believe that God created the Universe and that everything that happens is part of an unfolding plan because everything must lead to them.
“I think that many people who are Creationists are actually profoundly self-centered; they believe that God created the Universe and that everything that happens is part of an unfolding plan because everything must lead to them.”
And then the creationists, with their usual complete lack of irony, criticize *us* for being the arrogant ones, what with our sciency science and big brainy science brains.
And when Bush says he thinks “both sides” ought to be taught, I mean, he can’t really believe that, can he? He’s really being disengenuous, right? The government supports lots of evolutionary research, not intelligent design “research,” am I right?
This is a little out of date (2001), but I found it interesting in that the author unabashededly and barefacedly states that the true value of a scientific theory for conservatives lies in its political utility. No reason to believe that he and those who think like him have changed the way that they think. Admittedly Horowitz attracts fringe types.
Roy,
I think you misunderstand the religious mindset. It is perfectly possible to both believe in magical fairies causing the rain, and still look for approaching cold fronts. It’s difficult for a modern person to understand, one who expects there to be a single self-consistent system of logical explanations, but for most people the system they use is relative to the kind of use of that system. The fairies did it, by the storm front. Or, I’ll sacrifice a goat to win my court case and hire a good lawyer (a problem at the Miami federal courthouse – particularly cleanup).