What Senator Brownback Thinks About Evolution
In today’s New York Times Senator Brownback, raging rightist and erstwhile presidential candidate has this article published: What I Think About Evolution
Many of you know that I have a short fuse on things ‘faith’ based so naturally you would expect me to respond to the Senator’s position. So here goes:
First, science does not seek to locate ‘truths’ in any absolute sense. Science acknowledges that there are no such thing as ‘absolute truths’ so it, humbly, seels to identify things that we cannot yet disprove. Or to use Karl Popper’s word, things we cannot yet ‘falsify’. It takes an enormous hubris for any human being to think, no less believe, that they have located the truth. The only people I know who think they have found such a thing are religious. Their arrogance is sickening. And it is dangerous since someone armed with the ‘truth’ is much more likely to attack those who somehow don’t see that ‘truth’. Religious zealotry with all its evil is founded on the specious, and pernicious, notion of ‘truth’.
Second, the Senator seems to suborn to religion the sole right to morality. He says: “Faith supplements the scientific method by providing an understanding of values, meaning, and purpose.” Apparently, in the Senator’s view, people of little or no faith cannot participate in discussions of these subjects. This is as hubristic as the first point. What is it exactly about faith that gives it this monopoly over morality, other than its self-appointed guardianship? Any system of ideology will always take unto itself the right to determine right and wrong. It gives it a leg up as it seeks to procur power. How convenient it must be for people of faith to luxuriate in the safety that morality is their way or the highway. I don’t suppose the Senator would like to explain the moral significance of all the religious wars that litter history. Or the precise moral message we are all to learn from the zealots who flew those planes into the World Trade Center. Yes they too were people of faith.
Third, the good Senator has his evolutionary theory wrong. There is no divide within biology over evolution. There is some discussion over details but the big picture is universally accepted. The Darwinian revolution is secure. Advocates of punctuated equilibrium are not at loggerheads with gradualists with respect to anything other than degree. Both sides would scoff at the attempt to cast doubt over the evolutionary enterprise by the Senator’s suggestion of divisions within the Darwinan ranks. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Fourth, the Senator gets it really wrong when says he would agree with evolution being defined as “small changes over time within a species”. That’s absolutely not evolution. No one suggests it is [other than the creationists like the Senator]. Notice the key words: “within a species”. The Senator and his fellow folks of faith cannot abide the notion that humans are descended along with all the other apes, from a common ancestor. It offends them. It means that humans are not divinely special or made in the image of God. It means we are part of an ancient lineage going back deep into time. Indeed it means, ultimately, that we along with all living things share a common starting point. It is not science that perpetuates the arrogance of anthropomorhism, it is religion. Darwin humbles us with our common beginning, and he helps us put ourselves into perspective. He secures our proper place amongst our peers. He does not demean our stature by inventing supernatural origins. Nor does he weaken us with fantasies of human superiority. He simply sets us where we belong: among the apes. The Senator presumably ignores the DNA evidence of just how close our relationship is with the other apes. Nor does that small difference provide him with a sense of wonderment at the immensity of nature and all its glory.
Fifth, the Senator finally comes out of his supernatural closet when he argues that empirical science has no right delving into origins. Nonsense. What seems to concern the senator most is the preservation of a “unique place” for mankind. He suggests that discussion of this special place lies beyond the realm of empirical science as is best “addressed in the realm of philosophy or theology”. He offers no supporting reason for this sweeping assertion. We just have to take it on “faith”. How convenient. No discussion. No need for messsy proofs. No need for all that silly talk about falsification or experimentation or testing. No. We are just supposed to leave all these really big issues to the adults. You know the ones who go to churches or mosques. The ones who have seriously studied the earth and its ways.
Finally the big one. The Senator cannot resist trotting out the creationist canard about atheistic religion masquerading as science. What twaddle. The creationists constantly lose their debate and so accuse the victorious rationalists as an being atheistic religion. It makes it sound as if their religion, usually some extreme form of Christianity, is under attack from “just another religion” and so the argument can be reduced to a “he said she said” format and so provide security for the faithful: they can continue to cling to their supernatural ways safe in the knowledge that their faith is better. It is after all just a clash of faiths, with evolution being a stalking horse for those nasty [and immoral by definition] atheists. This is the most evil and deliberately misleading statement the Senator makes. No Senator: science is a well documented, ethically secure enterprise that seeks to establish via a process of conjecture and refutation hypothetical statements about nature. Evolution is one of those statements. By contrast theology trucks no discussion, admits to no proofs, no evidence, no verification, no falsification, no discussion, no debate, no argument and no dissent. It just is. Take it or leave it. It is a leap of faith. It contradicts every sinew of modernity. It resists enquiry. It resists diversity. It despises thought.
No, no dear Senator. Your faith may be admirable to those who search for authoritarian dictatorships. Faith is the basis of the Taliban. Of the Evangelical rage against modern society. Of the Catholic desire to throw back the clock to before the Reformation. Faith is the underpinning of the Middle East conflict, of the troubles in Ireland and of countless such slaughters of the past. Faith is an abomination.
Put it another way Senator: when you fly home to Kansas who would you prefer to have built the plane? An imam or priest, or an engineer trained in the ways of science. Someone who built the plane based on faith, or someone who built the plane on tested, experimentally sound, unfalsified scientific principles? Would you perfer the engineer to have prayed he got it right, or that he “knew” he got it right? Reason is not a religion. Not now or ever. It is the way of understanding through open discourse and due process. It is not a religion.
It is the arrogance of faith that needs to be expunged, and replaced by the humility of reason. A rational person knows we can never know anything for certain. A faithful person already knows with certainty. There is no equivocation for the zealot because they have faith. Therein lies the difference. Our lives depend on reason triumphing over arrogance. The Senator unwittingly demonstrates how far we have to climb to safety.
