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At least the kids were safe (James Gill)
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michae-@bellsouth.net
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Sep 26, 2007 05:37 PDT
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Creationists are Vitter's latest hookup
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
James Gill
U.S. Sen. David Vitter wants to give $100,000 of our money to a creationist group with a Web site that has said the theory of evolution "has no place in the classroom" and has blamed Charles Darwin for Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot.
Surely believers and non-believers can unite in declaring Vitter's pals to be a bunch of nuts. Regardless, the evidently unconstitutional intention here is to promote a sectarian ideology at public expense.
We were better off when Vitter, in between homilies on the sanctity of marriage, was blowing his own money on prostitutes. At least the kids were safe.
They will not be if the Louisiana Family Forum gets its way, although its director, Gene Mills, does his best to adopt a moderate tone, declaring that he wishes not to supplant but to supplement Darwinism.
That may do for starters, but creationists can be as cunning as they are zealous. The Web site leaves no doubt that they would ban evolutionary theory altogether if they could; there is no incentive to give equal billing to what they see as heresy.
Why creationists are so hostile to what, by any objective assessment, is scientific truth, is something of a mystery. Evolution is not incompatible with a belief in Providence, and Darwin himself said, "I intentionally left the question of the origin of life uncanvassed as being altogether ultra vires in the present state of our knowledge."
Vitter wants to give $100,000 to the creationist cause by means of an earmark in the labor, health and education bill. Earmarks are sneaky by definition, but this one is doubly so, its advertised purpose being to "develop a plan to promote better science education." The real intent is precisely the opposite, to undermine science education with religious propaganda.
Mills says Vitter's earmark came as "a bit of surprise," and nobody lobbied for it. But it can't have been that much of a shock, Family Forum members having earned Vitter's favor by working in his election campaign.
Mills, moreover, has praised Vitter for seeking "forgiveness, reconciliation and counseling" after being fingered for consorting with whores. To be both forgiven and counseled is presumably to be right with God and man.
That may work for errant politicians but it won't work in the classroom, although creationists have been quite successful in promoting the spurious idea that there are competing theories of equal validity about the origins of mankind.
As Mills puts it, "We think that in order to teach controversial topics successfully, you have to teach both sides." Most people, according to public opinion polls, accept the notion that it is only fair to expose students to creationism if they are also studying evolution.
But that would make sense only if the scientific questions really were unsettled. Creationists will always trot out the occasional deranged Ph.D. who supports their cause, but, to the vast majority of scientists, evolution is not up for debate. "Many of our teachers feel inadequate to address the controversies," Mills says. Of course they do. It is impossible to beat science with religion or religion with science, and it is pure mischief to manufacture controversies by forcing one into the other's sphere.
Vitter said he wants to subsidize what he regards as "an important program" that "helps supplement and support educators and school systems that would like to offer all the explanations." Let's hope he draws the line at that one about the moon being made of green cheese.
Some of the money in Vitter's earmark is supposed to pay for an evaluation of science education in Ouachita Parish, where the Family Forum last year persuaded the School Board that evolutionary theory should be both taught and pooh-poohed.
The evaluation is likely to reveal a certain amount of confusion among students. Imagine learning about Archaeopteryx in the morning and then being assured in the afternoon that the Lord created the world on Oct. 23, 4004 B.C.
Vitter has no business handing our money to the Family Forum, which, after all, must have friends in higher places than the U.S. Senate.
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James Gill is a staff writer. He can be reached at (504) 826-3318 or at jgi-@timespicayune.com.
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