[lbo-talk] Frank on election

kjkhoo at softhome.net kjkhoo at softhome.net
Fri Nov 5 19:13:05 PST 2004


At 5:36 pm -0500 5/11/04, Doug Henwood wrote:
>>Most recently, in Gallup's February 19-21 poll, 45% of respondents
>>chose "God created human beings pretty much in their present form
>>at one time within the last 10,000 years or so," the statement that
>>most closely describes biblical creationism. A slightly larger
>>percentage, almost half, chose one of the two evolution-oriented
>>statements: 37% selected "Human beings have developed over millions
>>of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this
>>process" and 12% chose "Human beings have developed over millions
>>of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in
>>this process."

I think one can live with the 37% of divinely-guided evolution -- it's at least indicative of a willingness to accept current knowledge, while holding on to a religious belief.

And actually, you can't blame them either. So many of the nature programmes, the popularisations, present nature as if it had some design and intentionality, that things are the way they are today because of fulfilling some goal. And it's easier to wrap one's head around an ordered complexity from a grand design, than of one emerging out of the randomness of differential survival.

Moreover, belief in a divinely-guided evolution is fully compatible with a respectful relationship with the environment and with the idea of stewardship.

It's more than time to take an aggressive stand on values -- our values vs their values, and our practices vs their practices. The religious right has been allowed to get away with the good slogans: who is not pro-life, or for moral values, against which pro-choice begins to sounds mean and narcissistic.

Against their "trustworthy", there's not only the fact of lies and the practice of systematic lying, of corporate sleaze and corruption, but we have the "caring for people" (those listing this as a central quality voted 3:1 for Kerry).

Against their "family values" is the fact of their divorcing in similar proportions as everyone else, which no manner of rationalisations about the "godless" "fornicators" and "co-habitors" can erase. There are their teen pregnancies in about the same or higher proportion than the secularists, controlling for race.

kj khoo



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