Krauthammer in TIME: Let's Have No More Monkey Trials

[question everything]

(Krauthammer is a conservative columnist who joins others to fear the monster that conservatives have created in the form of GWB)

Monday, Aug. 01, 2005

Let's Have No More Monkey Trials

To teach faith as science is to undermine both
By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

The half-century campaign to eradicate any vestige of religion from public life has run its course. The backlash from a nation fed up with the A.C.L.U. kicking crèches out of municipal Christmas displays has created a new balance. State-supported universities may subsidize the activities of student religious groups. Monuments inscribed with the Ten Commandments are permitted on government grounds. The Federal Government is engaged in a major antipoverty initiative that gives money to churches. Religion is back out of the closet.

But nothing could do more to undermine this most salutary restoration than the new and gratuitous attempts to invade science, and most particularly evolution, with religion. Have we learned nothing? In Kansas, conservative school-board members are attempting to rewrite statewide standards for teaching evolution to make sure that creationism's modern stepchild, intelligent design, infiltrates the curriculum. Similar anti-Darwinian mandates are already in place in Ohio and are being fought over in 20 states. And then, as if to second the evangelical push for this tarted-up version of creationism, out of the blue appears a declaration from Christoph Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna, a man very close to the Pope, asserting that the supposed acceptance of evolution by John Paul II is mistaken. In fact, he says, the Roman Catholic Church rejects "neo-Darwinism" with the declaration that an "unguided evolutionary process--one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence--simply cannot exist."

Cannot? On what scientific evidence? Evolution is one of the most powerful and elegant theories in all of human science and the bedrock of all modern biology. Schönborn's proclamation that it cannot exist unguided--that it is driven by an intelligent designer pushing and pulling and planning and shaping the process along the way--is a perfectly legitimate statement of faith. If he and the Evangelicals just stopped there and asked that intelligent design be included in a religion curriculum, I would support them. The scandal is to teach this as science--to pretend, as does Schönborn, that his statement of faith is a defense of science. "The Catholic Church," he says, "will again defend human reason" against "scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of 'chance and necessity,'" which "are not scientific at all." Well, if you believe that science is reason and that reason begins with recognizing the existence of an immanent providence, then this is science. But, of course, it is not. This is faith disguised as science. Science begins not with first principles but with observation and experimentation.

(snip)

To teach faith as science is to undermine the very idea of science, which is the acquisition of new knowledge through hypothesis, experimentation and evidence. To teach it as science is to encourage the supercilious caricature of America as a nation in the thrall of religious authority. To teach it as science is to discredit the welcome recent advances in permitting the public expression of religion. Faith can and should be proclaimed from every mountaintop and city square. But it has no place in science class. To impose it on the teaching of evolution is not just to invite ridicule but to earn it.

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/krauthammer/article/0,9565,1088869,00.html

[grytpype]

1. Wow, Krauthammer is normally 100% Bushist.

They've gone to far even for him, amazing.

[tritsofme]

12. Krauthammer is paralyzed from the waist down IIRC

So he has quite a vested interest in the advance of science.

[drhilarius]

2. I, for one, welcome the coming dark age...

I have been cultivating leeches and channeling the ether so as to make quit a tidy profit realigning the humours.

[Hissyspit]

4. that's hilarius, dr

:P

[question everything]

13. But will you have enough wood to burn heathens at the stake?

Oh, I know, that's why Bush "got wood.."

[BootinUp]

3. I feel strange when I agree with this slime ball. n/t

[uppityperson]

5. wow, I rarely even look at his editorials, too nasty and radical rw

[Evil_Ed]

6. This directly contradicts his recent TIME column...

...called "A Defense of Certainty." That was an awful tribute to the irrational, and got ripped to shreds but good in this article over at Smirking Chimp, originally published in the angry and hilarious Buffalo Beast.

[devilgrrl]

8. Buffalo Beast: Western New York's finest journalism

:smoke:

[Evil_Ed]

9. Hell Yes

they are. Great columns (including Matt Taibbi), and just plain funny stuff, too. I wish more people knew about them.

[Rainscents]

10. Evil_Ed... Welcome to DU!!!

:hi:

[Evil_Ed]

11. Thanks! I've done some lurking...

[question everything]

14. The puppet masters obviously are realizing that the puppet now

believes in its own power and is getting too far.

Let's face it - the real Republicans never had any ideology. They believed in small government when it was convenient to them to oppose taxing them to support social programs. And they support big government when other people's tax money is used to benefit them and their buddies.

They used pretty faces like Reagan and Bush II to talk to the masses and to say what they are being told to say. They certainly do not care for what Jesus said or would say or do. But, as Marx said, they cheerfully use it to get the votes of the ignorant church goers whose knowledge of the world comes solely from what their preachers say.

But when the puppet all of a sudden thinks - well there are a few working brain cells - that he can go on his own, all of a sudden they become alarmed. Not only Krauthammer here but also Frist and now Santorum.

[gratuitous]

16. I believe we have a winning entry

For Krauthammer to so disingenuously try to distance himself from an administration that is so perfectly aligned with his demented world view indicates that the Gorgon has slipped its bonds and is believing its own echo chamber.

So, get up and dance Charlie!* You called the tune, you might as well enjoy it. The piper will need to be paid and that right soon.

*Yes, I'm aware that Mr. Krauthammer does not have the use of his legs. Think of the statement as stinging irony.

[Tactical Progressive]

7. If Krauthammer is against teaching creationism

in school, then I'm going to have to give it another look. Maybe it's not all bad. My revised openess is arrived at through pure scientific experimentation: Krauthammer is wrong 100% of the time.

[Cha]

15. Let's face it ...bush is

too stupid to be president(sic).

[Norquist Nemesis]

17. Breaking News!

Krauthammer goes against the Christian Extremists and tells them they are not being persecuted! :wow: :wow: :wow:

"The half-century campaign to eradicate any vestige of religion from public life has run its course. The backlash from a nation fed up with the A.C.L.U. kicking crèches out of municipal Christmas displays has created a new balance. State-supported universities may subsidize the activities of student religious groups. Monuments inscribed with the Ten Commandments are permitted on government grounds. The Federal Government is engaged in a major antipoverty initiative that gives money to churches. Religion is back out of the closet."

I disagree with him that there was an on-going campaign to "eradicate any vestige of religion from public life", but the rest of that first paragraph is testament that Christians are NOT being persecuted.

[Supersedeas]

18. ahhhh, how dare you question the office of the Presidency

[ibegurpard]

19. Reap what you sow, pig

You helped create this monster and you'll have to live with the consequences with the rest of us.