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this poll: its simplistic true or false framing.
"Do you believe in evolution?" is also simplistic and wrongly framed. Modern science is not a matter of belief. It is a matter of formulating theories for the purpose of PREDICTABILITY. These theories only incidentally "explain the universe." They are NOT final. They are working hypotheses. And if sufficient FACTS are accumulated to point to a DIFFERENT, more reliable theory--reliable in PREDICTING the behavior of things--scientists will drop one theory in favor of another.
There are ENORMOUS problems in our modern theory of science. One of them is that science often hasn't taken into consideration our very limited perception. We are like tiny little intelligent ants crawling around on our tiny little blue marble in a HUMONGOUSLY, UNIMAGINABLY GIGANTIC universe. We've learned to extend some of our perceptions with devices (telescopes, microscopes), and with imaginative constructs, but we are still extremely small, limited and myopic. Thus, we often encounter surprises. Weird objects in the cosmos that don't fit any known rules of physics. Bizarre creatures at the bottom of the sea that live on sulfur not oxygen. We are still in a VERY EARLY, exploratory stage of our own planet, with some very limited forays out to nearby objects. THINK of all that WE DO NOT KNOW. Have never seen. Cannot perceive with present instruments. Can't even imagine. If the universe were a football field-sized meadow, what we know of it is one molecule of water on one blade of grass.
We do have brains that reach out and try to fathom it all. But we're not very far along that path. We are the subatomic particles inside that one molecule of water, on that one blade of grass, trying to see both what we are and where we are, and trying to see outside of ourselves to that vast "other." That vast "other" is what defines us, really. What we DON'T know. And it is indeed vast--both on the microscopic and the macroscopic levels.
We can blow up at atom. But we still have barely a clue as to what an atom is. It appears to be swirls of nothing swirling around nothing. And if you "split" it, it blows up.
Get down below that level, and "things" become REALLY strange, like objects out of a magician's hat, that appear and disappear, and act across distances, and annihilate each other and become non-existent.
And the theories about all this change from day to day. One day you hear it's the Big Bang, the next day, nope, it's the Big Collapse; then it's String Theory. The thing that everything is made of--that tiny nothing--still blows up. We're stuck on that. We like that. Godly power to blow everything up. But we don't know why it forms rabbits or chrysanthemums or human beings. Or why almost all the big objects that we can perceive in the cosmos are round or in swirls. Do we understand gravity? No. Do we understand galaxies? We do not.
And a good part of the knowledge that we seem to be acquiring more swiftly with every generation results from research funded by corporations, or quasi-government/corporate entities, that have their own purposes of manipulating matter and making a big profit off of it--accumulating wealth. This has led to an extremely unhealthy social and natural environment, in which people catapult from "product" to "product," in swirls of polluted air and water, and never find happiness. And that's just to mention the more benign products--automobiles, toothpaste. The industry of science also creates horribly lethal weapons and "terminator seeds" and is now in the business of patenting the very elements of life.
The pure science of discovery is all mixed up with the science of profit. And science in general thereby develops a NEED to be believed in--a sort of dogmatic edge to it. To get people to buy things, you have to convince them that science has "improved" them. People have to BELIEVE in the "wonders" of science. It becomes almost a religion, with scientists as the new priesthood.
I think a lot of people have become deeply scared and almost crazy with the combination of an unhealthy social and natural environment--indeed, an environment that seems to be attacking us, literally, with global warming; and a social environment that has been ruptured into predator and prey. In some urban environments, we are little better off than ancient cavedwellers hiding from the leopard, and lighting fires (turning on our TVs) to fend off fear and alienation. No wonder that some turn to the old truths of established religions (science being the upstart quasi-religion, to some) for comfort and reassurance. Religions tell us who we are, or try to. They are often modern peoples' only link with the past--and in America that is especially true. In Europe, you have buildings and monuments around you that are thousands of years old, constant reminders of your links with the past. Often your family--your lineage--has been there, in that place, for an even longer time, almost forever. How different it is in most parts of No. America where a building is deemed "old" at 50 years or even younger, and is demolished, to make way for the "new." Throwaway buildings. We still remember not being here. Almost everybody's grandparents came from somewhere else. And it is quite fresh in the minds of newer immigrants. In America, the past is often ripped up behind you. My high school (in Calif) no longer exists. My college no longer exists. The vineyards and orange groves of my youth are gone. The miles of sand dunes at the beaches are paved over and crowded with condos. Stability and roots are often disdained in this ever-reinventing-itself country. Religion can become the rock or the tree you cling to, as the landscape is whisked away.
It's interesting that "belief in evolution" (i.e., attachment to the Enlightenment, science, reason? --if that's what this true/false question means) is strongest in the countries that have the highest quality of life. The Nordic countries and France. The U.S. quality of life--which never reached the heights of those countries--has significantly deteriorated, at a fast clip, under the Bush junta. And hope is often gone here, too. We have a permanent underclass, getting bigger every moment. We have stopped addressing environmental problems, as a nation. Universal health care is a distant myth. The science industries of pharmaceuticals and high-end medicine, and the allied insurance giants, have stopped that cold. And accompanying this social depression is fundamentalist religion that tells you, a) God loves you, if no one else does; b) you are special or superior; and c) you belong somewhere--in this church community. And it further promotes a sort of fatalism--the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer, as it will always be; evil stalks the world, as it will always be; we will always have war--we must smite our enemies. No matter the contradictions--these rightwing beliefs are comforting.
The debate is not about evolution. It is about something else, something bigger. Possibly hatred of science, in its priesthood function as the "new religion." It cannot deliver happiness, as advertised. It has become a tool of profit and war. And although the fundamentalists can't see the contradiction here, either--that the science that they hate makes the war that they love possible--perhaps they are reacting, in an unconscious way, to the whoring side of science: its lies, its false promises, in the service of profit.
Science and religion used to be one. Pythagoras considered mathematics to be a religious endeavor. The Druids predicted eclipses and performed religious ceremonies, and were the repositories of vast stores of knowledge. Astrology--desire for connection with the stars--is the mother of astronomy. Scientists were called PHILOSOPHERS and were considered to be wise people--advisers to government, masters of many arts including medicine--and were expected to be more ethical and closer to the gods than other people. It is only later in human development that the functions of scientist and priest diverged. Has modern science become too narrow? Has it tried to make a quasi-religion out of this narrow, materialistic view--insisting upon "belief" in its theories? Has it alienated people with nuclear weapons, and oil spills, and air pollution, and spy technology and GMOs? Has it disassociated from wisdom?
And what of that vast, vast cosmos of Things That We Do Not Know? Is science too narrow, too compartmentalized, too bureaucratized, too corporate-driven, to address the really important questions? Why do atoms form THINGS--including us? Why are we conscious of this? Why do we see order everywhere, and try to create order? What is consciousness for? How is consciousness affecting our evolution? Is "social Darwinism" an adequate viewpoint? Why do we REJECT natural phenomena--such as letting the weak or the sick die or be eaten? Why do we seek to triumph over Nature? Why do we believe in God or in Gods? Why is this universal in human experience? And is there no room in our science classes for the why's of what we consider science? Why shouldn't the human NEED for higher wisdom be the subject of discussion in a science class? And why shouldn't the GOALS of a particular science be subjected to questions of ethics and wisdom? What is so frightening about this? Why NOT include Intelligent Design in a science class, since human beings SEEK design--and since the issue of what human beings seek is actually vital to every scientific inquiry? (Are we IMPOSING our designs upon the facts? Are we changing the behavior of electrons, or other objects, by HOW we look at them?)
I can understand being suspicious of the motives of POLITICAL rightwingers, and powermongers like Bush, and not wanting these malevolent people to dictate school curriculum. But they have seized and controlled the debate, haven't they? Have we considered that the SINCERE believers in Intelligent Design might have something to contribute to human advancement? Possibly even creative new lines of inquiry into what science is FOR? Or a more ethical and conservative approach to the IMPACTS of science on corporate behavior and on society as a whole?
We teach science in public schools, but perhaps we do not recognize that it IS a philosophy--a philosophy of materialism and rationalism that may be a skewed view of human life. And we don't teach any other philosophy! I repeat, science and religion were once one endeavor--and it was called PHILOSOPHY. We severed the two (--long story). And we may well be on the verge of PAYING for this severance, in the loss of our entire race, and all life on earth, in nuclear warfare or other destruction of our atmosphere. Science gone mad. Overly-rational science--science without ethics--in the employ of God-crazed fundamentalists. Where is the common sense--the enlightened humanism--between these two wildly opposite distortions?
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