Nathan Bond's TART Remarks

The Church of England has expressed deep concerns about the spread of creationist views as it prepared to unveil a website promoting the evolutionary views of Charles Darwin.

A Church House spokesman admitted that the treatment of Darwin’s theory of evolution by Victorian clerics was wrong.

The spokesman reacted to the furore caused by The Rev Professor Michael Reiss who claims to have been misquoted in calling for creationism to be taught alongside evolution. (See  Creationism… not again!)

My first reaction to this news was one of surprise – pleasant surprise! Then I read that the spokesman continued that science and religions were “perfectly compatible”… Yeah, right, Mr Spokesman. There is an expanding universe between science and religion.

The Anglican leadership is sufficiently smart to realise that it is futile to reject evolution and that such rejection will irreparably damage the credibility of Christianity and the church. Therefore the church makes overtures to indicate its savvy… but the church is not willing to let go of the folderol that is Belief – and therefore accepts evolution, for instance, but without rejecting the myth of creation. “It’s compatible, see!”

Ag pleazse! Tell me another one!

This dog won’t hunt, your lordships. We ain’t all suckers, you mendacious miscreants.

The US National Academy of Sciences recently issued a spirited defence of evolution as the bedrock principle of modern biology, arguing that it, not creationism, must be taught in public school science classes. (See Evolution ‘must be taught’.)

This sound advice comes at a time when the current occupant of the White House favours American students to be instructed about “intelligent design” alongside evolution as competing theories. “Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought,” President Bush said in 2005. At a time when Presidential candidate and Republican winner in Iowa (the Churches, Corn and Conservatives state) recently progressed his campaign on the turkey wings of “I do not believe in evolution”.

Teaching children that the supernatural is responsible for the natural, teaching children that “God” originated or created and manages the universe and life is the single most anti-intellectual malefic act imaginable. It dumbs down entire generations. (See Suffer little children.)

There is as much “evidence” for “God” and its creation as there can be mustered for the stupefying idea that Gordon the Garden Gnome spake everything into existence some 15 minutes ago – complete with memories and historical records – before positioning itself in the south western corner of my humble garden, near the fish pond mind, turning itself into a plaster likeness of its former glory.

Yet the NAST report stated that the idea of evolution can be fully compatible with religious faith: “Science and religion are different ways of understanding the world. Needlessly placing them in opposition reduces the potential of each to contribute to a better future.”

What utter booboisie pap! What extraordinary bunk! NASTy! How, for crying in a bucket, does “religion assist in understanding (the world)?” (See The things we do know.) I heartily concede that religion is a perfectly acceptable and undoubtedly accurate explanation for agnosy. Much like narcotics is a just explanation for substance addiction. (See Science and Religion.)

I am sick and tired of this sucking up to the religious. I am embarrassed by sceptics and scientists fuelling the Religious Wrong‘s Bronze Age tarradiddles cloaked in Dark Age fear and ignorance dressed up as a legitimate alterative for scientific explanation.

“Science and religion are different ways of understanding the world”? Good God! What, in the name of Zeus, is next, by Vishnu? Chemistry and alchemy different ways of understanding? Astronomy and astrology? Neurology and phrenology? Cosmology and the Flat Earth Theory? Anti-retroviral treatment and the South African Health Ministry’s sweet potato diet?

In my home country, South Africa, a senior clergyman recently declared that he believes in the creator god. Like one Mr Huckabee in the Yoonighted States. When good people say well intended things that are entirely devoid of fact and evidence the very future of humanity is compromised. It is as critically important as that. Period. No “accommodation” of ignorance can be tolerated. (See Tolerance.)

Evolution must, of necessity, be taught in schools. For many more reasons than the simple fact that it is the basis of biology. (See Suffer little children.) Creationism too, must, of necessity, be taught in schools. For reasons similar of teaching myth and fairy tales as human endeavours of the imagination.

Creationism is bunk. Period. The cheap tuxedo is in tatters*.

* Spokesperson for the National Center for Science Education in the USA, Nick Matzke, called Intelligent Design “creationism in a cheap tuxedo”.

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