Rakesh Bhandari:
> Look, Gordon, electro-shocking someone in manifest pain on command of
> reassuring white coated authorities is not analagous to the teaching of
> evolutionary theory (evidence of descent from common origins; theory of
> natural selection as main cause of evolutionary transformation) but to the
> force feeding of creationism on the basis of scriptural authority in the
> face of manifest evidence to the contrary.
The force-feeding of creationism on the basis of scriptural authority is not at issue in Kansas, as far as I know.
> What do you think inculcates submission to authority?
Force and fraud, usually. These may be subtle.
> It is not authoritarian to require that educated people have both
> understood the nature of the evidence for the claim that all life has
> evolved from a few or one simple life form and grasped the theory of
> natural selection.
It is authoritarian to require. In any case, it takes about an hour's reading to get the gist of evolution and natural selection; distribution of this information cannot be a great problem, and something else must be afoot. As I said, it appears to be whether or not a profession of faith in evolution, possibly in science in general, is required. Some people seem astounded that evolution, or anything scientific, could be questioned or doubted -- not a very scientific view, but there it is. Perhaps, as the fundies say, science _is_ becoming a kind of religion, along with liberalism and capitalism, held to be self-evidently (that is, mystically) true.
> The better one understands either of these, the greater
> chance one can develop reasonable criticisms of either or both (I would
> indeed support a struggle over the teaching of natural selection or ultra
> Darwinism as a dogma--but this is not at all what is transpiring).
>
> Indeed your anti elitism reads to me as a contemptuous disregard for the
> importance of ordinary people learning to think scientifically and grapple
> with difficult and disturbing ideas. It seems to me that you want to
> protect people from truth and science out of intellectual haughtiness.
However, I have not in fact advocated protecting people from truth and science, so my intellectual haughtiness must have been consumed in some other enterprise. I've simply noted that there are political questions about what is taught in school. A straightforward analysis of the situation in Kansas, as reported in the media and on the Net, indicates, as I said, that the theocratic shoe is not, in this case, on the Christian-fundamentalist foot. My analysis may be wrong, but no one has confronted it -- instead, responses have tended to rejustify the theory of evolution, which was never in question here, and to attribute hatred of science or intellectual haughtiness to me -- also irrelevant.
The question is: shall people be free to think and profess what they wish, or not? In the case of 2+2=4 or the rotundity of the Earth, most of us say no -- the need of the community for its children to acquire certain kinds of competence is held to override an obligation toward their freedom. I don't know if this applies to, say, evolution or General Relativity -- if so, I don't think anyone has said why. I know I could have lived my life as a creationist without much practical trouble. --
Gordon