The Christian Paradox

Pharyngula posted yet a link to another brilliant piece on Christianity and politics published in the August issue of Harper's, but this time it's a revealing look at the general state of Christianity in general in the United States, and how it relates to the reality of Christianity as we know it in the United States (and, I'd argue, to a lesser degree in the good ol' Great White North as well).

Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. This failure to recall the specifics of our Christian heritage may be further evidence of our nation’s educational decline, but it probably doesn’t matter all that much in spiritual or political terms. Here is a statistic that does matter: Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture. The thing is, not only is Franklin’s wisdom not biblical; it’s counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans—most American Christians—are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.

Asking Christians what Christ taught isn’t a trick. When we say we are a Christian nation—and, overwhelmingly, we do—it means something. People who go to church absorb lessons there and make real decisions based on those lessons; increasingly, these lessons inform their politics. (One poll found that 11 percent of U.S. churchgoers were urged by their clergy to vote in a particular way in the 2004 election, up from 6 percent in 2000.) When George Bush says that Jesus Christ is his favorite philosopher, he may or may not be sincere, but he is reflecting the sincere beliefs of the vast majority of Americans.

Professor Myers' comments were spot on in this regard. Knowing the Bible like the back of your hand is definitely NOT a requirement for being a Christian. Memorizing the Ten Commandments is one thing; actually living them (whether you are conscious if that or not) is something else entirely. If you'll pardon the aside, on one list-serv I belonged to years and years ago, the moderator chastized my friends there for not citing scripture in their discussions. A few months later they were all too happy to gang up on me and subject me to constant verbal abuse due to my Catholic upbringing (and were trying to convince another one to stay, either to serve as their personal anti-Catholic punching bag, or to try to "convert" her to "real Christianity").

Anyway. The fact of the matter is that a lot of Christians just don't know their faith as well as they think they do. Oh, they go to church, boycott laviscious and demonic books like Harry Potter, and try to keep their kids from dating until they're 40, but at the end of the day, just how much do they really know about the teachings and philosophy of Christ? Would they actually want to know, or would they feel more comfortable believing that the Bible tells them that it's okay to be rich and greedy with no compassion or sympathy for those in need?

...Depending on which poll you look at and how the question is asked, somewhere around 85 percent of (Americans) call ourselves Christian. It is true that a smaller number of Americans—about 75 percent—claim they actually pray to God on a daily basis, and only 33 percent say they manage to get to church every week. Still, even if that 85 percent overstates actual practice, it clearly represents aspiration. In fact, there is nothing else that unites more than four fifths of America. Every other statistic one can cite about American behavior is essentially also a measure of the behavior of professed Christians. That’s what America is: a place saturated in Christian identity.

This is an interesting distinction. Is the United States a Christian country, or is it just a country that says that it is? If anything, the idea of America as a country defined by it's Christian identity is far more apt than America as a "Christian Nation". Again, you can say, think, or believe yourself to be Christian, but is that really the same as being one?

But is it Christian? This is not a matter of angels dancing on the heads of pins. Christ was pretty specific about what he had in mind for his followers. What if we chose some simple criterion—say, giving aid to the poorest people—as a reasonable proxy for Christian behavior? After all, in the days before his crucifixion, when Jesus summed up his message for his disciples, he said the way you could tell the righteous from the damned was by whether they’d fed the hungry, slaked the thirsty, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger, and visited the prisoner. What would we find then?

Now, before I go on, this is Republican America we're talking about -- you know, George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheny, etc. etc. etc. I don't need to tell you what the answer to that question is, now do I?

This Christian nation also tends to make personal, as opposed to political, choices that the Bible would seem to frown upon. Despite the Sixth Commandment, we are, of course, the most violent rich nation on earth, with a murder rate four or five times that of our European peers. We have prison populations greater by a factor of six or seven than other rich nations (which at least should give us plenty of opportunity for visiting the prisoners). Having been told to turn the other cheek, we’re the only Western democracy left that executes its citizens, mostly in those states where Christianity is theoretically strongest. Despite Jesus’ strong declarations against divorce, our marriages break up at a rate—just over half—that compares poorly with the European Union’s average of about four in ten. That average may be held down by the fact that Europeans marry less frequently, and by countries, like Italy, where divorce is difficult; still, compare our success with, say, that of the godless Dutch, whose divorce rate is just over 37 percent. Teenage pregnancy? We’re at the top of the charts. Personal self-discipline—like, say, keeping your weight under control? Buying on credit? Running government deficits? Do you need to ask?

(emphasis mine)

Huh? Gays and Lesbians destroying marriage in America, eh? Looks like you "Christians" are ruining it just fine on your own, guys.

AlterNet: The Religious Left Fights Back

This story from AlterNet was so good that I have to repost this in its entirety, since it captures so well what I've been trying to articulate in the past two posts I've made (excluding my post on Konfabulator). I really recommend that you read this, if you've got the time; it's a story which also sums up my own feelings very well.

The Religious Left Fights Back
By Van Jones, AlterNet
Posted on July 28, 2005, Printed on July 29, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/23725/

Rabbi Michael Lerner is stirring up trouble again -- thank God.

Earlier this week, Lerner was the main organizer of a national gathering in Berkeley, California, for the religious Left. His "Spiritual Activism" conference was intended to help launch a much-needed new initiative: the Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP).

Lerner has been the spark-plug for many progressive, faith-based undertakings over the years, including Tikkun magazine. But this latest effort is an order of magnitude more challenging than anything he has attempted thus far. And given the stakes for our ailing would-be democracy, the birthing of NSP may prove to be his most important calling.

Lerner wants to help forge a new alliance of "religious, secular and spiritual, but not religious, progressives." This alliance will someday expose and challenge the cancer of American consumerism. And it will oppose the religious Right's abuse of scripture to promote war, intolerance and ugly corporate agendas.

By itself, those two goals would warrant full-throated support from all progressives. But don't be surprised if the good rabbi's efforts also draw some serious "boos" from many parts of the Left, as well. That's because Lerner's bravest and hardest work is aimed much closer to home.

He wants to do more than just minister to the mall-lobotomized masses or give the fundamentalists a well-deserved spanking. He also wants to challenge the Left's chronic and toxic bias against religious feeling, expression and people.

Lerner hopes to end "religio-phobia among progressives." And such efforts will not be welcome among a great many rabidly secular progressives.

As for me, I will be praying for the Rabbi's success. I am an African-American Christian who was raised in the American heartland. When I moved to the cosmopolitan coasts of Connecticut, and later California, I ran headlong into shocking levels of anti-religious bigotry among progressives.

I literally have had liberals laugh in my face when I told them I was a Christian. For awhile, I felt self-conscious about telling other activists that I preferred not to meet on Sunday mornings, because I wanted to go to church.

It is still commonplace to hear so-called radicals stereotyping all religious people as stupid dupes -- and spitting out the word "Christian" as if it were an insult or the name of a disease. I thought progressives were supposed to be the standard-bearers of tolerance and inclusion.

I certainly know the monstrous crimes that have been committed through the ages in the name of religion, or with the blessings of religious people. But I know a few other things about religion, too.

I grew up in the Black churches of the rural south, listening to the stories of my elders. As children, we heard about the good, brave people who had poured their blood out upon the ground so that we could be free. We learned how police officers had clubbed and jailed them. We learned how Klansmen had shot and lynched them. And how the G-men from Washington had just stood by and doodled in their notepads.

We learned of marches and mayhem, freedom songs and funerals. We saw images of billy-clubbed Black women on their hands and knees, searching for their teeth on Mississippi sidewalks -- crawling while still clutching their little American flags. We felt pity for the children who spent long nights in frigid jail cells, wearing clothing soaked by fire-hoses, while their bones -- broken and untended -- began to mend at odd angles.

We saw pictures of Black men, like our fathers, hanging by their necks -- their faces twisted, their bodies rigid, their clothes burned off -- along with their skin. And we saw photos of carefree killers, sauntering home out of Alabama courtrooms -- their faces white and sneering and proud.

We learned how the very best of humanity had faced off with the very worst of humanity -- each circling the other under the same summer sun. That epic struggle had elevated southern back roads and backwaters onto the Great World Stage. And the fate of a people -- along with the destiny of a nation -- hung in the balance, for all to see.

In the end, we children cheered, for the righteous did prevail. More than that, they performed one of the great miracles in human history: They transformed American apartheid into a fledgling democracy, tender and delicate and new.

All progressives today proudly celebrate that achievement -- and rightly so. But one key fact seems to escape the notice of today's activist crowd. The champions of the civil rights struggle didn't come marching out of shopping centers in South. Or libraries. Or high school gymnasiums.

To face the attack dogs, to face the fire-hoses, to face the billy-clubs, these heroes and she-roes came marching boldly out of church-houses. And they were singing church songs. They set an example of courage and sacrifice that will endure for the ages. And as they did it, they prayed on wooden pews in the name of a Nazarene carpenter named Jesus.

The implications are clear for those who seek today to rescue and redeem U.S. society. The facts are simple and profound: The last time U.S progressives captured the national debate and transformed politics, people of faith were at the center of the movement, not stuck in its closet.

As a descendent of enslaved Africans who were told that God (and not capitalist greed) required their degradation, I know the crimes of the Christian church as well as anyone. But as a child of the civil rights movement, I also know the power of Christian faith, the power of moral appeal and the power of spiritual strength -- to break asunder the bonds of servitude.

And in our do-or-die effort to set things right in America, it is time for U.S. progressives to return to the bottomless well of soul power that sustained the slaves and defeated Jim Crow.

That is why I applaud Rabbi Lerner's efforts. He is standing in a long tradition of faith-honoring Americans, who have helped lead the charge from barbarism toward democracy. In the 1800s, escaping Africans fled enslavement through the bedrooms and basements of Quakers, along the famous Underground Railroad. In the 1980s, religious congregations led the Sanctuary Movement. Their efforts opened up U.S. cities to Latinos who were fleeing U.S. President Ronald Reagan's violent and covert interventions in Latin America.

The Rabbi's new efforts also resonate today. Reeling from the steady string of recent defeats, even the most hard-core U.S. activists are seeking deeper meaning and spiritual sustenance in their lives. At the same time, previously apolitical "spiritual types" are getting involved as activists for the first time -- to defend the Earth and her people from the predations of the Bush agenda.

Rev. Jim Wallis' most recent book, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, struck a chord this year and became an instant bestseller. Rev. Frances Hall Kieschnick (spouse of Working Assets wunderkind Michael Kieschnick) is taking steps to start a Beatitudes Society, to give more voice to progressive people of faith. Similar efforts are springing up on smaller scales all across the country.

Somewhere, in all of these stirrings, I see the seeds of a wisdom-based, Earth-honoring, pro-democracy movement -- one that affirms and applauds religious and spiritual impulses, while opposing fundamentalism, chauvinism and theocracy. Over time, this kind of progressive movement has the potential to win -- and win big -- in the United States. To be honest: it is probably the only type of progressive movement that stands a chance in a country as religious as ours.

Such a movement is within reach. But progressives must abandon the old pattern of reducing the Great Faiths to their worst elements, constituents and crimes -- and then dismissing all other facts and features. It is not just stupid political strategy. At a moral level, it is a form of blindness and bigotry that is beneath all of us.

My prayer is that a critical mass of progressives can agree on two basic premises.

Number one: Any progressive approach to "faith in politics" that ignores the awful crimes of religiously-inspired people is dishonest, inauthentic and can never achieve emancipatory ends.

Number two: At the same time, any approach that fails to honor and embrace the positive contributions of religiously inspired people is also wrong-headed, and it foolishly and needlessly shuts progressives off from our own history, achievements and present sources of vital support.

I believe that Rabbi Lerner has come up with a thoughtful, sensitive and wise approach, worthy of broad-based affirmation. He aims to: "build an alliance between secular, religious and 'spiritual but not religious' progressives -- in part by challenging the anti-religious biases in parts of the liberal culture (while acknowledging the legitimacy of anger against those parts of the religious world that have embodied authoritarian, racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic practices and attitudes").

That is a formulation that the vast majority of progressives should be able to adopt, affirm and cheer about. And I proudly say to it, Amen, brother Lerner ... Amen!

Attorney Van Jones is the national executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, California.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/23725/

Arrogance Redux

While I disagree somewhat with Karen's charge of discombobulation, I wanted to make my argument more clear:

A) Many on the "Left" are just as guilty of arrogant, out-of-touch, self-righteousness as many the "Right".
They have plans and grandiose visions of a better world, surely, just like the neo-Cons and the Christian Fundamentalists. But are any one of these visions truly practical? The Fundamentalists want to establish an Atwood-esque Theocracy akin to Taliban-era Afghanistan, while people on the Left have equally lofty goals of environmental sustainability which seem to have no reasonable basis in reality; The Nature Conservancy's stance of "OMG we have to kick out all of the native people off their land so we can save it!" and the Canadian Green Party's seemingly one-track focus are good examples of this. Yes, your goals are truly admirable. But how do you plan on actually acting on these goals?

B) The amount of appreciation, level of integration with, or even respect for moderates and/or religious liberals is dismally minimal.
This is where my own personal experience comes into play: people I've met who use their position as being on the Left to justify their bigoted, irrational and prejudiced hatred of religious traditions. I'm sorry to say this, but not even some professors and grad students I know here are wholly above such emotions. Granted, I understand why they and Renee feel the way they do given their life experiences, but it's indicative of the fact that people on the left are more than willing to divorce themselves from a potentially significant source of support through their apparent universal disdain for the value and role of religion. I think that a whole lot more could be done if more people on the left were more willing to talk to and include religious liberals. Sadly, it seems that they view us as nothing more than a peripheral footnote in their collective history.

And here's really what I wanted to say, in so many words:
C) Because of A and B, many initiatives carried out by the left will suffer greatly and may even fail.
As an aside, I think that the number of religious liberals out there is greater than many people think. For example, I think that the number of Christians who support gay marriage is more than the conservative Christians would lead you to believe. I think that the images of religious liberals as the minority is because a lot of people of faith do have a vague sense of liberal (or at the very least, non-Conservative) beliefs -- social justice, economic equality, LGTBQ/Women's rights, etc. -- but they just haven't really closely identified with them. Because of this, there is no apparently strong and cohesive identity for liberal Muslims or liberal Christians the way there is for the conservatives, and as result, it's clear that the "Christian Left" or the "Muslim Left" is itself very weak as a social movement.

Now, what does this have to do with points A and B? By being more vocal and more organized, we can go a long way towards solving both those problems. Without the support of religious liberals, in the general public eye liberals will be more and more marginalized and with them, much of their message. Additionally, it will give more and more "mainstream" people of faith a more visible and viable alternative to the arguably insidious movements carried out by religious conservatives. And finally, it will help to convince more and more "common folk" that being a liberal is more than just being a tree-hugger or some radical protester; that it's a legitimate and respectable way of approach social and political issues.

Without this support, the amount of people who stand to be convinced of the virtues of these movements (for environmental conservation or social/economic/political justice) would, I argue, be considerably less than it could be. That means a weaker, and more marginalized left with less support among people who are of more "mainstream" socio-political ideals. Which means that there are less voices being heard than there could be, supporting things like conservation and human rights.

In short, everyone wins. Everyone has something to gain from a tighter integration of liberal religious faith groups with the main body of the "Left". The only thing left standing in the way of a more stronger, united Left are egos and self-righteous arrogance, really.

I'm not suggesting that this is a panacea that will drive the Republicans or the Conservatives into oblivion, but it'll at least make alternatives to them more practial, stronger, and more accessible to The Rest Of Us.

Reaping the Whirlwind

The big news in "the industry" is that Yahoo, in a pretty unexpected move, bought out a company called Pixoria, responsible for a highly controversial Mac/Windows program called Konfabulator. To make a long story short, Konfabulator was a program that wasn't just any program: it was actually a program that allowed you to run litttle mini-programs called "widgets". These were little applications that you could easily have on your desktop to use at your beck-and-call, from monitors measuring wi-fi signal strength to news readers that could stream today's headlines right to your desktop. When Apple released Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, the big announcement was an interesting feature called Dashboard, which allowed you to...well, run litttle mini-programs called "widgets" that you could easily have on your desktop to use at your beck-and-call, from monitors measuring wi-fi signal strength to news readers that could stream today's headlines right to your desktop.

Pundits cried bloody murder, that Apple trampled all over a poor developer by stealing his ideas - a concept that in my opinion, has been to a good extent addressed and even refuted by John Gruber, for reasons which are too arcane for me to get into.

Which brings us here to the Yahoo buyout. It seems that everyone wins: the developers, who get full backing from Yahoo, Mac and Windows end-users, who now get all of Konfabulator for FREE (the previous price was USD $25), and widget developers, who hopefully now will benefit from Yahoo's apparent willingness to open up widget development to more users, making it more accessible.

Having used it for two days under varying conditions (i.e. my desktop jammed full of widgets to only a bare minimum of those I need actually being active), I have to say that I sadly still have the same problems with Konfabulator that I did way back in 2003 when I first tried the early beta and 1.x releases of Konfabulator (the current version is 2.1):

1. Resource Usage. Konfabulator is a notorious CPU and memory hog, taking up system memory and processor cycles with considerable enthusiasm. Even when running by itself, with no widgets loaded, it can take up a very significant amount of memory. It's disappointing that nothing seems to have been done to deal with this problem, though it seems that it has improved from the early 1.x releases.

2. Third-Party Widgets. One of the problems with the new freeware release under Yahoo is that it's been now given a new version: 2.1. They must have done something to the program besides take out the registration stuff asking for a paid serial number because it seems to have broken a lot of widgets; ones that worked just fine in earlier versions, now don't. That isn't a fault of the developers, but it is a major problem.

Second is the fact, that well, I hate to say it, but there aren't really any "killer widgets" that make this tool indispensable. RSS reader? I've got NetNewsWire Light. Internet search from the desktop? I've got not only Huevos, but the internet search function in Another Launcher. And so on and so on. This isn't an insult to the people who've gone to the effort of making their own widgets...I actually have a lot of respect for them for what they've done, since making Konfabulator widgets is much more difficult compared to making widgets for Dashboard (another significant problem with Konfabulator). Just that I've yet to find the one widget with that certain something, that certain je ne sais quoi that makes both it and Konfabulator a must-have app.

But hey, that doesn't detract from the fact that Konfabulator is still an incredible app from people with an incredible history of user-interface development on the Mac. And you certainly can't argue with the price. And what's more, Windows users get to join in on the fun too.

If you've got a few minutes to spare, I think it's worth heading on over to the Konfabulator website to download it and try it out; it'll run on just about anything able to run XP and 10.2+. What have you got to lose? It's totally free, and chances are you might end up gaining some use out of it.

Bipartisan Arrogance

They say that you're a radical leftist liberal when you're young, and end up turning into a wisened conservative as you grow older. Maybe this is just a sign that I'm on the cusp of such a transition, and in another ten years I may end up voting Conservative, driving an SUV from my brokerage firm on Bay Street to my generic house in Richmond Hill built on razed mixed-deciduous forest.

Lately I've grown more and more annoyed and disenchanted by the general attitude I've gotten from people on the "left". Reading the stories on places like NOW Magazine and AlterNet, it's become more and more clearer to me that many (note: that's many, not all) people who call themselves "liberal" or ally themselves with the "left" have this incredibly inflated self-righteous view of themselves and the causes that they champion, as if their cause is the One True Cause to believe in.

Sound a little familiar to you? Replace words and concepts like "gay rights" with "Christian morality" and you get the same thing on the "right", virtually a mirror image. Doesn't this strike anyone as being more than a little disturbing?

In general, you've got people on the left who, apparently, are shouting and screaming that for their cause (the just and good cause, naturally) to succeed, ALL aspects -- both good and bad -- of the other side have to DIE. And ditto of course, for the right. I've seen more and more in many places this general fundamentalist fervour. Which of course, leads to my personal beef: an apparent, well "persecution" (for lack of a better word, I suppose) of people belonging to religious traditions who do believe in liberal values, amongst people in the "leftist" movement itself. It's not really direct or explicit, but it's evident in the writing and thoughts of people who have this incredible, repugnant hatred of religion (and those who practice it) and justify it under the rubric of "being a liberal", as if that somehow justifies what you say and feel.

And this is what I have to say to those people: you're all a bunch of fucking idiots.

Believe it or not, you need people like the religious liberals. You need people like them to ground you in reality and ensure that people not belonging to either side see you as legitimate people for positive social change instead of tinfoil hat-wearing psychos shouting out slogans to "Smash the State". More importantly, you need people like them to open channels of dialogue to other people and to show them the meaning of what you fight for, and why they should support you.

But it seems like people like you just don't care, and would rather be caught up in your self-involved, self-righteous ivory tower. Pity you don't see the cracks in the foundation.

No, No, No.

I’m predicting that Bush and Benedict XVI will play much the same role in the distintegration of evolution (i.e., the ateleological materialistic form of it that currently dominates the West) as Reagan and John Paul II did in the disintegration of communism.

- William Dembski, The New Pope and ID, April 19, 2005

You have got to be kidding me.

And you know what? I don't know. I thought Catholics were supposed to be the evil turncoat-Christians who made a compromise with that evil philosophical naturalistic atheatelitical agnosticarian, or whatever-you-call-it movement. And now you guys are claiming that we're now on your side?

What a joke.

A removal of doubt

So I'm back. Not that it should come as a surprise to all five people who regularly read this blog, since I was out with Karen, Naomi, and Alex to the Renaissance Festival, and I've given Katherine a call, and tried to be online with Jennie as much as I could be, wonky DSL line notwithstanding. It's good to be back, and the culture shock wasn't quite as jarring as it was when I came back from my last summer at Jokers' Hill. I have to admit though, being in North America just isn't quite the same now, now that I've spent a month surrounded by tropical forest. I also learned to be less of an arrogant pompous smart-ass as I was before; I suppose Dan Brooks can take some comfort in the fact that I learned at least that much from him.

Right now I'm back at Jokers' Hill: this time I'm working for the director herself, Prof. Anne Zimmerman, on the Garlic Mustard problem that's been a major concern to her and others working on the reserve, along with my friend Anna. The fact that her boyfriend, and my friend Russell, who's doing a Summer NSERC for James Thomson is also there, is, of course, purely coincidental. :) It's really nice seeing them together, but it does make me think alot about Jennie, and the possibility of me visiting her this summer.

-

Just for kicks, I decided to drop in on VCF's website to see what they were up to, and that plus a recent conversation I had with Karen brought me back to a comment left by Mark Nutter on an earlier post I made on the Dover court case in Kansas. Here it is, in its entirety:

I've been following this for a while and feel like playing devil's advocate here. I agree in principle and I've posted quite a bit on the Kansas Kourt on my own blog, but I'm thinking, "What makes people think and act this way?" It's ironic, but it may be the same psychological principle that causes people to perceive intelligent design--we perceive a certain pattern and we feel certain that it represents an intelligent and intentional attempt to achieve a particular goal. The ID'ers see scientists speaking a certain way, and perceive it as a pattern of deliberately trying to sabotage faith in God. The pro-science folks (like me) see the ID-er's speaking a certain way and perceive it as a pattern of deliberately trying to lie and deceive. Maybe the perceived "evil intent" is really there, and maybe it's just a trick of perception.

Perhaps being skeptical of ID means we shouldn't be so quick to assume evil motives on the part of ID'ers, or else we risk falling into the same psychological pitfalls as they do. Granted, there are real issues at stake, and we need to take substantive and decisive action to oppose them. But on the level of human understanding, and character assessments and such, maybe we should cut them some slack--maybe they're just messed up and confused. God knows I've been there...

Karen mentioned that, and generally agreed with Mark on his points. And indeed, Mark does make a very valid, if not charitable, assessment of much of the ID movement. Thankfully I feel a lot more calm about it now so I hopefully won't sound like the thundering loud mouth than I usually am.

My general outlook on the ID people pretty much echoes what I told Karen myself: in looking at what people from the Discovery Institute, and their supporters have done and said (mainly in print), it's clear to me that these people aren't stupid. It's easy to think that they are, because of their position (at least, you'd think so if you weren't an evangelical or fundamentalist Christian), but I would argue that they aren't.

Evolutionary biology has one simple thing going for it: the weight of the scientific evidence that supports it. You may have heard endless rhetoric about the "evidence against evolution" or "evidence for creation/design" but that really amounts to little more than reinterpretation and distortion of data via an a priori framework that by default already favours a supernatural explanation. By its very nature, evolutionary biology relies upon explanations rooted in a materialistic and naturalistic perspective. That's what science is: science is not religious; it never has been and it never will be. For all of the whining and moaning and hand-wringing by Creationists, an appeal to supernatural causes is not scientifically justifiable, and there is simply no satisfactory philosophical or scientific arguement that it should be.

That being said, it becomes self-evident that Creationism is simply just an extension of a narrow view of Christianity, and that's where the issue of moral position comes into play. The ID proponents have consistently painted themselves as being supporters of a secular theory that purports to be as scientific (if not more so) than evolutionary biology. But how can that be if they have at their core a supernatural entity who is Himself beyond the investigation of conventional science?

This is the first reason why I believe in the inherent dishonesty and immorality of the supporters of Intelligent Design: they have lied, and continue to lie in press to the general public. They lie in their portrayal of Intelligent Design and its goals. For all of their talk of "fairness", it is really a smokescreen for a wider agenda. One needs only to read The Wedge Document to see what I mean. The second reason comes from my earlier paragraph on "evidence". They lie in their portrayal of scientific research in evolutionary biology; it's enough that they turn the long, hard work of many people in ecology and evolution into a distorted caricature of itself to suit their goals; it's even more incredibly infuriating and incredibly insulting to be accused of being "dishonest".

Which leads me to my third point. In spite of the countless corrections and debunkings of their arguements and their evidence, they still continue to use the same tired arguements in their crusade. They still look to the bacterial flagellum as their example of an intelligently designed "irreducibly complex" system, they still point to things like "CSI", "IC", and "NFL" as examples of their work, and they still use incredibly outdated arguements stretching back to Richard Paley -- arguements that have been long debunked -- as their shining examples of how ID works and evolution fails.

In short, despite the repeated, continual debunking of their arguements, despite the constant stream of work being done which demonstrates the presence and operation of evolutionary forces, they still continue to deny everything they see and hold fast to their beliefs, constantly trumpeting and parroting them to a public all too eager to listen.

Which brings me to my ultimate point. The people behind all of this are not stupid, and they have succeeded where science has failed: by communicating to the public. This is the ultimate example of how making the packaging of your product all shiny and sleek and sexy will always triumph over making a good quality product. It is the ultimate demonstration of vacuous marketing over scientific progress.

This is why I think that at at the very least, the leaders of the ID movement are inherently evil. They know what they are doing, and yet continue to do it; the fact that intellectual ID leader William Dembski charged the taxpayers of Kansas $200/hr. for his testimony while pro-evolution witness Pedro Irigonegaray went to the Dover trial FOR FREE speaks volumes to me about the motivation and mindset underlying the Intelligent Design and Creationist movement.

I'm sorry, but I can't buy into the arguement that this is all due to innocent ignorance on the part of the ID proponents. Perhaps that is true for many people who only casually agree with ID, but for the leaders themselves, it is inconceivable that they could simply be innocently ignorant of what they are doing, and it is inconceivable that they think that they are doing this all in the name of "Christianity". Even the most hard-core zealot will agree with me that lying is a sin. The only way they could be doing this is if they are the "ends-justifies-the-means" type of Christians who think that all churches should be like Landover Baptist Church. Maybe they are, but the rhetoric of even the most extreme of the ID proponents doesn't strike me as being that far gone. My point here is that religion, cannot be purely behind all of this.

So if the ultimate driving force behind this is not scientific honesty, and if it is not religious fundamentalism, then what else is there, really?