[nasional_list] [ppiindia] Dinosaurs, evangelicals and the state
- From: "Ambon" <sea@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <"Undisclosed-Recipient:;"@freelists.org>
- Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 12:11:53 +0100
** Forum Nasional Indonesia PPI India Mailing List **
** Untuk bergabung dg Milis Nasional kunjungi:
** Situs Milis: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia/ **
** Beasiswa dalam negeri dan luar negeri S1 S2 S3 dan post-doctoral
scholarship, kunjungi
http://informasi-beasiswa.blogspot.com
**http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4469590.stm
Last Updated: Saturday, 26 November 2005, 12:07 GMT
Dinosaurs, evangelicals and the state
By Justin Webb
BBC Washington correspondent
Should the views of the religious right, many of whom are Republican
party supporters, be adopted by the US government? In Washington, Justin Webb
considers the implications and asks whether politics and religion make a good
mix.
Should dinosaurs and religion mix?
We are having dinner at the house of some friends who are supporters of
President Bush.
Their five-year-old son, a classmate of our children, takes me upstairs
to see his collection of dinosaurs.
Little Meade is a passionate palaeontologist and this is a land of plenty
so the room heaves with prehistoric life.
I am suitably impressed, but unknown to Meade I am not here to admire the
bone structure of the dinosaurs.
I am in this room on assignment, because in modern America Meade's
dinosaurs are at the heart of the travails of a political party and I need to
find out something about Meade's parents which will affect our relationship.
I need to know what they told him about when the dinosaurs existed.
Millions of Americans, most of them supporters of the Republican party,
believe that the world was created only a few thousand years ago as per the
account in Genesis and the dinosaurs can only date from then, so the
Tyrannosaurus Rex romped around with Adam and Eve.
In other words these Americans, heirs to every scientific advance in
history, deny rational accounts of how the world came to exist.
And Meade's parents - I know his mum teaches Sunday school - might be
among them.
I put the question to Meade: "When did the dinosaurs live?"
According to some, the age of the Grand Canyon is open to debate
There is an agonising pause as he considers it. American children are
wonderfully earnest and Meade is not going to be rushed.
Eventually he says it is in a book his Dad bought him.
We hunt the tome, find it, open the page and behold a diagram which has
been explained to Meade.
It all floods back.
The dinosaurs, he informs me with great authority and aplomb, are
millions and millions and millions of years old. I could have hugged him and
his parents; we are, after all, inhabiting the same mental planet.
But many modern members of the Republican party, including some in
positions of great power, do not seem to be living on that planet.
Central question
As the nation recovers this weekend from the worldly pleasures of the
wonderfully inclusive festival of Thanksgiving, a festival which can appeal
equally to atheist and Bible-basher, it seems to me that the central political
question facing everyone here, far more important than any to do with Iraq or
the deficit or Guantanamo Bay, is whether or not the Republican party, after
decades of flirting, has finally got into bed with an irrational sect.
Describe an American as a Roman Catholic and you say nothing about his or
her political and social beliefs.
In the state of Kansas they have succeeded in getting the science
syllabus altered so that teachers can tell their pupils that God made
everything in its current form
Left-wing flower-power Democrats can be Catholics, so can right-wing
socially conservative Republicans.
American Jews, Hindus, even Muslims are not politically defined by their
faith.
But evangelical Christians, operating inside the Republican party, have
coalesced their energies and their resources around a set of beliefs on
homosexuality, abortion and Darwinism which place them on the authoritarian
right of every political question and at odds with science campaigning. For
instance, to tell visitors to the Grand Canyon that this wondrous sight is not
millions of years old, which it is.
Backlash
In the state of Kansas they have succeeded in getting the science
syllabus altered so that teachers can tell their pupils that God made
everything in its current form - a change the National Academy of Sciences said
"would put the students of Kansas at a competitive disadvantage as they took
their place in the world."
This is serious stuff and Republicans who are not evangelical Christians
have in recent weeks been organising a fight-back.
They have noticed two things. Number one, that the zealots are spending
more energy fighting Charles Darwin than cutting taxes, and number two - and
this is much more important - that the zealots outside Kansas are not receiving
the support of the nation at large.
Did the board lose the election because they opposed evolution?
In the town of Dover, Pennsylvania, the local school board managed this
year to get warmed up, creationism infiltrated into biology classes, and here
is what happened.
A couple of weeks ago all eight members of the board who were up for
re-election lost their seats.
"If there is a disaster in your area," the tele-evangelist Pat Robertson
told the people of Dover, "don't turn to God - you just rejected Him from your
city."
Mr Robertson is an important man: the former Attorney General John
Ashcroft teaches at his university, and his views are sought on Supreme Court
candidates and foreign affairs.
Republican doubts
But should those views govern the Republican party?
Many members think not, particularly since President Bush is himself in
such dire trouble now.
He famously told an interviewer that when deciding to go to war in Iraq
he listened to the authority not of his dad but of a Higher Father.
And, Republicans are daring to think, if not quite say, out loud: "Look
where that got him."
From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 26 November, 2005
at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World
Service transmission times.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
Give at-risk students the materials they need to succeed at DonorsChoose.org!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/wlSUMA/LpQLAA/E2hLAA/BRUplB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
***************************************************************************
Berdikusi dg Santun & Elegan, dg Semangat Persahabatan. Menuju Indonesia yg
Lebih Baik, in Commonality & Shared Destiny. http://www.ppi-india.org
***************************************************************************
__________________________________________________________________________
Mohon Perhatian:
1. Harap tdk. memposting/reply yg menyinggung SARA (kecuali sbg otokritik)
2. Pesan yg akan direply harap dihapus, kecuali yg akan dikomentari.
3. Reading only, http://dear.to/ppi
4. Satu email perhari: ppiindia-digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
5. No-email/web only: ppiindia-nomail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
6. kembali menerima email: ppiindia-normal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
ppiindia-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
** Forum Nasional Indonesia PPI India Mailing List **
** Untuk bergabung dg Milis Nasional kunjungi:
** Situs Milis: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia/ **
** Beasiswa dalam negeri dan luar negeri S1 S2 S3 dan post-doctoral
scholarship, kunjungi
http://informasi-beasiswa.blogspot.com **
Other related posts:
- » [nasional_list] [ppiindia] Dinosaurs, evangelicals and the state
