David French, a conservative commentator
wrote this article for the National Review online, where he basically said
us, meaning the secular "left", as he put it,
we spent way too much time talking about creationism,
we spent way too much time attacking, criticizing creationism.
And what he says is,
"Yeah, a lot of Evangelicals especially, are creationists,
but for them
it's a very low priority." He called it a "soft" priority,
as in "this is not the thing they're talking about all the time in church.
This is not the thing that they obsess over all the time."
So, why are we so obsessed with it? He basically told us: "Chill out."
"This is not a big deal, but you guys make it out as a big deal every time."
And he's so wrong about that! So, let's talk about why
we should be interested in creationism and we should keep attacking it
because this is a problem that's not going away.
And we need to be very vocal about why it's problematic.
First of all, there are members of Congress
who are creationists.
And if that wasn't bad enough, some of those members sit on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.
The people who are in charge of making decisions about science funding
and the future of science in our country
don't accept the most basic principles of science.
That should be a problem for all of us. It's one thing if, you know, grandma doesn't believe in it,
but when elected officials don't believe in it,
we should be freaked out.
If you remember from 2008 when they had those
big debates with all the Republican presidential candidates,
at one point they even asked, "How many of you don't accept evolution?"
And three people raised their hands.
Like they were proud of this.
That's ridiculous! The three potential presidents
said, "No, I don't believe in science.
I think the universe is only a few thousand years old."
These are the sort of people
who want to get elected to the highest office in the nation.
That's why we should be concerned,
because this isn't just a small fringe group of people.
It's not like it's just Ken Ham in his little bubble in Kentucky.
These are the people who make the decisions in our country, who are in charge
of billions and billions of dollars,
who don't believe in evolution, who don't accept evolution,
and that should be terrifying to everybody.
Number two: we ought to be caring about the scientific literacy in our country.
French doesn't seem to care that a majority of people in our country
are not scientifically literate.
In 2012, Gallup did a poll where they asked people:
how do you think humans came to be in this world? You know, do you think God created you in your present form
less than 10,000 years ago?
Did we evolve with God's help,
or did we evolve naturally without God's help?
And 46% of people that they surveyed
said that they believe in creationism: the universe is only a few thousand years old.
And like another 30 some percent said that God guided evolution, and there's no evidence for that either,
but nearly half our country
said they are creationists.
And who are these people? They're not elected officials, not all of them;
but a lot of them are science teachers, I assume.
A lot of them sit on school boards. A lot of them make policy decisions.
When you have a nation filled with people
who don't accept basic scientific knowledge as fact anyway,
you are saying: "We're totally fine with
uneducated ignorant people
running very important parts of our, you know, democracy here."
And maybe, you know, as a conservative, he's totally fine with having
the ignorant populace here.
But I'm not. I want intelligent, educated, science accepting people
running the show wherever is possible.
And that's not a slam on religion. I'm fine with religious people running
school boards and all that stuff,
but I think if you want to
run science curriculums, if you want to write science curriculums, if you are teaching it,
you ought to say, "Yeah, I accept science and what it tells us."
Finally, we are still fighting battles today over the teaching of creationism in public schools.
You would have thought this ended, you know, decades and decades ago.
And even the infamous Dover decision, of the Dover School District, happened less than 10 years ago. That put a stop to intelligent design in public schools.
But even today there are school districts all over the country
that are trying to "teach" the controversy.
A controversy that doesn't exist.
Or they're trying to put intelligent design back into schools.
Those lawsuits
always happen because there are science advocacy groups that are
fighting those battles across the country.
If David French was right and creationism was a low priority issue,
we should not be seeing those battles all over the place,
but they're happening, and someone's got to fight those battles.
So, either he's just ignoring all of that,
or he doesn't think that's a problem. And in both cases,
he's wrong.
As long as we have to keep fighting these battles over
the most basic of scientific knowledge,
yeah, then we got to pay attention where creationists strike.
Overall, this isn't even just about creationism.
This is about our country's ability to think rationally.
And if you can't accept the logic that explains evolution,
and how it works, and you can see all the evidence, and totally dismiss it,
I'm afraid of how that's going to play into your decision making
with anything else you do.
When the facts are right there
and you could look at all that and say,
"Nope, I'm going to believe my story book instead,"
I'm really worried about the decisions you're gonna make as
hopefully a rational human being. I'm worried about that.
If creationism really is a non-issue,
then I would like to see some more evangelical pastors tell their congregation
about how evolution is
not a controversy and everyone should just accept it.
But most of them will not do that, because they know it would create chaos within the church.
This is not a battle they want to pick because they know
that most of these congregations-- These pastors know that their congregations won't have it.
That's why we have to keep fighting this. This battle is not over.
Even though the proof has long been verified,
the battle's still raging on.
So, it's not that we care too much about it.
It's that we don't care enough about it.
This is too important an issue
to just let slide like David French wants us to do.
We have to keep criticizing creationism,
and fighting back against it whenever we see it, and whatever it comes into play.
My name is Hemant Mehta and I write at FriendlyAtheist.com
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