Another edition of “What’s Cary Tennis been smoking?” He’s been a lot better lately, so there’s not been any reason to write posts wondering about the potency levels of his preferred smoking materials, but today’s column is a doozy. The guy who writes in has a Bible-thumping friend, and the letter writer is an atheist, and they have fun with their contentious differences. It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt, right?* Now his friend, who teaches at a church school, is being pressured to teach young earth creationism to the kids, and the guy is fixing to do it, after going through a hefty process of convincing himself that he’s really considered the evidence, which is impossible, because honest engagement with the evidence in this case leads to one conclusion—evolution is the reality. I don’t say this lightly. We all have biases and prejudices that color our views and in many cases, the evidence is hazy enough that people can have real disagreements with no real conclusion. This isn’t true in the contentious debate between evolutionary theory and Adam and Eve. Objectively, one side has marshaled an irrefutable amount of evidence and the other is blowing smoke out their asses.
So what his friend is doing is that he already decided to bend over for the bullshit and is looking for a rationalization for it, so he doesn’t have to admit that he’s a wanker. Our letter-writer, however, is livid. He thinks teaching creationism is a form of child abuse, and while I think the term is overheated, I agree that using children in service of whack-a-doodle ideologies is cruel to children, especially in cases where your lies to them could have serious, long-term negative consequences on their job prospects. (The whole classroom, for instance, is automatically seeing any chance of going into sciences plummet through the floor because of this stuff.) Tennis, however, has one of his goofier answers, which is for this friend to dispassionately treat the misuse of these children as if he’s reading a book on anthropology.
Science is based on careful and dispassionate observation. So why wouldn’t the atheist, as a scientist, confine his observations to the observable surface and ask, What survival value does this ritual have? How do these adherents cluster, and what is their food supply? How do their myths connect to other areas of their lives, and how do they support their organic survival? What possible emotional phenomena could these stories be used to deal with? And what is the great attraction and benefit of this cultural practice?
And begs the guy to embrace “tolerance” as it’s increasingly defined by the right wing, which is playing like crazy patriarchal cults are equally valid to yours. He even compares religious diversity to racial diversity, making the wingnuts crap their pants in joy (though if he were defending Islam, that would be a different story), because that fits into the “Christians are so oppressed” whine they’re working.
Look, religion is not a race, and it’s arguably not even a culture. It’s an idea, and as such, it’s up for debate and criticism. Creationism is oh-so-cute, but I bet Tennis would be choking on his Cheerios if he found out the church was teaching something like whites are a superior race to everyone else (a common teaching in fundamentalist churches, though less so over time). This guy’s in the right to be angry with his friend for misusing these children in the service of the adults’ delusions, and the only question is whether or not he fights with his friend with the full understanding that it might end the friendship and not work anyway, or if he lets it go. But I’d say that if he wants to fight the dude, whip out the double barreled shotgun. Don’t half ass it. Point out that creationist teachings are linked to a socially conservative ideology that is both sexist and racist, and that the hand-waving about the Holocaust and other such nonsense is projection. Point out that no reputable scientists that understand the subject think creationism is anything but malarkey. Point out that these lesson plans function to cripple the students’ possibility of entrance into the mainstream of American society, and that while adults have a right to opt out, depriving children of the right to make the choice for themselves is wrong. If he’s still listening, give him a primer on why creationism and intelligent design are so wrong.
Or don’t, and just refuse to speak of it. Most friendships have areas of disagreement, even about moral behavior. What you can put up with in terms of misbehavior from your friends varies from person to person. Some people can be friends with say, a serial cheater, and some people can’t suffer that. But sanctioning the horrible behavior by pretending it’s nothing but a cultural oddity is going too far.
*I wonder whether or not the atheist in this situation has had cause to consider the ramifications of his friend’s most likely ugly views on women’s rights.
37 Responses to “We can’t just squish and hug these problems away”
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Why does Sasquatch need a knife?
And is that toilet paper?
any chance of going into sciences plummet through the floor because of this stuff
Not to agree with the wingnuttery at all, and no way nohow do I want anybody being taught young-earth creationism in school, but the above would probably depend on the age of the kids, what kind of school it is, and what their educational futures look like.
Getting a whiff of creationism in 2nd grade, having other adults on hand to thoroughly debunk it, and then getting a real science class in your totally secular middle school which prepares you for a more advanced reality-based high school science curriculum is probably not a problem. Teaching young earth creationism to wingnut-in-training high school students at one of those non-accredited Christian “Schools” ™ is an order of magnitude worse, because it will actually have an impact on their college prospects just a couple years down the road.
Not to mention that telling a science-inclined young child about creationism might actually inspire her to go out and learn more so as to be able to thoroughly debunk you in front of her more kool-aid inclined peers.
Look, religion is not a race, and it’s arguably not even a culture.
Religion and culture/identity are extremely tightly intertwined, and it’s a mistake to ignore this. I know you hedged your bets with the word “arguably,” but your characterization is not true.
As for Cary’s answer, he has a lot of nostalgia about family and friendships that causes him to split 2000 words pontificating on the value of maintaining relationships that aren’t worth keeping. Personally, I typically just skim Cary’s answers to get the gist of what he’s saying and then read the Salon letters, which are invariably better and more to the point.
As for what I’d do, I’d accept that my friend is going down a path that has him falling off the deep end, and I would gradually disengage myself from that friendship.
I have to disagree with The Opoponax.
I know some local kids who were taught creationism in their church. When they reached middle school and “real” sciences classes that do not in anyway support creationism, they just went to class and did the work, and then turned around and said that no evolution was a lie, and god just made all that stuff look the way it did, but in the end creationism is the only truth. They fought with their classmates over it repeatedly. They have made it pretty well through high school now, and the beliefs are the same. Nice kids too. So if they hadn’t been taught a bunch of lies as young children there is every reason to believe that they wouldn’t believe a bunch of lies now.
Dude, have you ever been in the jungle? What sort of self-respecting Sasquatch would NOT fashion a forge, mine iron, and pound out a metal blade in order to protect itself from the dinosaurs and hunt early Xtians?
Amanda, do you know the origin of that picture? Is it actually anti-Darwin propaganda or a brilliant satire? My day would be much brighter if I knew that there were people who thought a picture of Sasquatch—you know, half-man, half-ape—carrying a knife operates as evidence of Creationism.
Also disagreeing with the Opoponax.
I don’t doubt that some kids will get over and around their upbringing somehow, but they are still working at a disadvantage. My story, which I’ve told on this blog before: My public Southern high school wouldn’t teach evolution, sexual reproduction, or genetics beyond Punnett Squares. We mostly studied plants in AP Bio. Plants are safe. But three of the four AP exam essay questions concerned evolution, sexual reproduction, and DNA.
I was the only kid that passed that year (because I was a big sci-fi reader) and opted out of the intro levels of science in my college. But if I had approached that exam with only what my high school gave me, I would have been disadvantaged in a science major by both knowledge and course credit. That’s a real, material effect of this nonsense right there.
Eh, nevermind. I clicked through the picture. I hadn’t noticed the link. It’s German WWI anti-anarchist propaganda turned into a creationism satire. My day is slightly less bright.
Oh, and when will Salon fire Cary?
Opo, I’m not saying it’s impossible for a kid in this situation to rectify the gaps in education, but creating the gaps in the first place puts them at a severe disadvantage that will take a lot of work to overcome. There’s a lot of research in how introducing disadvantages, even very early in education, has lifelong effects. Individual outliers always exist, but the bulk of people will not be able to overcome a disadvantage.
That’s why women in the sciences is an issue. Just the subtle discouragement early on is a huge obstacle in the broad scheme of things.
Religion and culture/identity are extremely tightly intertwined, and it’s a mistake to ignore this. I know you hedged your bets with the word “arguably,” but your characterization is not true.
A culture is a composite of customs and ideas, and religion is part of that. Any cultural idea is up for grabs, but arguing against a culture is silly. Ah, Germans being so German! Yeah, that makes no sense. But you can argue like, okay the Autobahn is it good or bad? The German education system, how is that working? Religion is equally up for criticism.
Matt,
The sasquatch poster is, IIRC, a detourned WWI anti-German (or “anti-Hun” to use the terminology of the time) poster. Could be a WWII poster, though. I’ll try to find an image of the orginal.
The picture is satire. If you want to look at all of it, click the link. I love Austin’s stuff.
Have I yell that I think Salon.com is pure fluff?
heh
My bad about sasquatch — shoulda clicked the link before commenting! But I was right about the Hun being involved somehow…
My public Southern high school wouldn’t teach evolution, sexual reproduction, or genetics beyond Punnett Squares. We mostly studied plants in AP Bio. Plants are safe. But three of the four AP exam essay questions concerned evolution, sexual reproduction, and DNA.
Yes, but that is high school. Though I find it hilarious that there exists a high school which would offer an AP Bio course that did not do what AP courses were designed to do, which is teach to the AP exam.
I’ll also admit to having attended a high school which ignored evolution and any aspect of genetics that would conflict with fundy theology. I still managed to go on to become an anthropology major, which included several required courses pertaining to evolution and human genetics.
Of course, I lucked into coming from a non-fundy home where the love of knowledge was considered an incredibly important value to hold. I was encouraged to learn about anything that piqued my curiosity and given plenty of material to fill in the gaps in my shitty bible belt education.
Amanda, I fully agree that teaching creationism even to young kids creates potentially damaging gaps in their education. But teaching a 7 year old creationism does not actively prevent them from ever pursuing a career in the sciences the way that teaching creationism to a 17 year old would.
Why does Cary Tennis assume that atheists are all rationality, all the time? Who on earth approaches friendships, morality, and children using the scientific method? Not all atheists are scientists at all, and not even all scientists are that cold-hearted. “Stop caring so much about it, you’re an atheist so you must be good at that” is stupid, stupid advice.
“Don’t Teach Our kids They Come From Apes”…Teach Them Apes Came From Men Who Fell From God’s Grace By Rejecting Christianity!…
Don’t Teach Our Kids Invisible “Germs” Cause Disease…It’s The Influence Of Bad Astrological Signs!…
Don’t Teach Our Kids The Earth Orbits The Sun…Look Outside!…
Don’t Teach Our Kids The Earth Is Round…It’s Turtles All The Way Down!…
Did this poor creature just accidentaly cut his dick off?
BTW, seriously, when I first saw that poster, I half expected to find out it was going to be made into another tee shirt smearing Obama….
I’m getting so pissed about how low this campaign has already gotten, and then realizing how much lower it’s going to get before it’s over, I start bracing myself before the shit even hits the fan…
yes, hence why he wasn’t able to pass his genetic info on to the next generation and thus eventually evolve into a human. duh!
I don’t know that teaching young-earth creationism is more wrong than teaching other values/beliefs that probably are taught in the Sunday school classes at this guy’s fundie church. If the letter writer doesn’t back down from other disagreements with his friend, I don’t know why this would be an exception. At the same time, I’m not sure why creationism makes him more mad or upsest than any of the other stuff. Personally, I’m more concerned about the long-term political ramifications of teaching children that the United States was founded as a Christian nation (which they likely teach, too).
As a side note, there are a decent number of evangelical Christians, including creationists, working in the sciences. They just work in other stuff. I find that a lot more curious and baffling and perhaps more worthy of anthropological investigation (how do they live with the cognitive dissonance? etc.).
The way I see it, there are two possible courses of action here. Either you care so much about this issue that you can no longer be friends, or you decide that you can agree to disagree. You cannot actually force your friend to change his mind, take a stand, or quit his job.
I have a few friends whose beliefs about this sort of thing drastically diverge from mine. I’m willing to just not EVER talk about it, if it’s a very close old friend. But if it was just some member of my social circle I didn’t actively like that much? Yeah, if it was bad enough I’d probably just drop them.
Cary Tennis is a moron who loves to hear himself talk? What else is new?
Creationism is a method to manufacture, not breed, more Duggars. Little minds in big bodies. Perfectly adapted to mindless, tedious labor and working for very cheap wages.
One nasty side effect of teaching is that the kids learn. Once they figure out logical fallacies, it is very difficult to “appeal to authority”. They alos decline to take employment with Mr Puppetsock or put up with his ‘needs’. You think the recent spate of child-molester prosecutions is odd? No, the DAs figure on a new Federal Administration that will put these sh*ts behind bars for deacades. Think Monica Gooling would? After all, these are clean, white Christians and the evil secularists are anti-religion.
Dumbing down schools into charter or religious skools has the happy effect of making the Bushies bright by comparison. You think the SlutTwins will have their kids in a public school? No, their offspring will be exposed to education, even if, like GW, they never imbibe. So, if you attend a skool, you are never going anywhere.
the SlutTwins
Could you please stop besmirching the reputation of good sluts everywhere by NOT comparing us to the Bush Twins?
Teaching creationism doesn’t just have long term consequences on their job processes, it teaches them how to ignore facts, that reaching a conclusion that is contrary to fact is good and correct. This affects all their thinking in the future; rather than “being taught how to fish”, so to speak, they’ve been taught how not to catch fish. Sure recipe for starvation. That’s one big reason why people like Bush still have over 1/4 of the population thinking he’s doing a good job; why people don’t see the “attack Iran” propaganda for the BS that it is even thoiugh they just went through the “attack Iraq” propaganda.
Saying that young-earth creationism is about religion is like saying that female genital mutilation is about religion. Both practices are undertaken by groups with a strong religious identification, but their origins are in both cases with older tribal practices, not with the religion itself. Even the effing Jesuits, who are pretty much the definition of virulent religiosity, don’t take young-earth creationism seriously.
their origins are in both cases with older tribal practices, not with the religion itself.
How so? You’re right about FGM, but sorry, I don’t see how young-earth creationism has to do with anything except religion. It’s the fundiest of fundies trying to force science to agree with the precise wording of their chosen scripture. It’s not rooted in any ancient cultural tradition I’m aware of.
It goes hand-in-hand with the American tendency toward anti-intellectualism, but that’s hardly an “ancient cultural tradition”.
Jesuits don’t like it because, like most Christians, they don’t believe in a “literal interpretation” of the bible. In fact, if it were a deeply rooted cultural tradition, it wouldn’t be such a minority position — just about all European-related cultures would find themselves clinging stubbornly to it. See for instance the way massive numbers of otherwise secular people find themselves celebrating Christmas, a holiday with ancient European roots.
Op:
YEC is based on a (somewhat questionable) literal reading of one particular chunk of text in a work where different passages conflict with one another (there are several creation stories, for example) and where the people in question pick and choose which chunks of scripture they’re going to enforce with all they’ve got and which ones they’re going to ignore (ham, shellfish, poly-cotton, camels and the eye of a needle).
Furthermore, almost no one even in so-called evangelical circles took it as a crucial point of doctrine until sometime in the 70s. Even when you had the Scopes trial, people weren’t arguing that the earth had to have been created in 4004 B.C.
So I don’t think it’s about religion as much as it is about tribal identification. It’s a way of setting yourself off from the rest of the world. Maybe “initiation” would be a better way to talk about it, because as soon as you commit yourself so something that bugf*** crazy, you’re pretty much immovable on everything else: you’ve abjured reason on its most basic level, and there’s very little going back.
almost no one even in so-called evangelical circles took it as a crucial point of doctrine until sometime in the 70s.
Which proves it can’t really be related to any long-held cultural belief, aside from something general like “idiocy”, which unfortunately is probably a small part of just about every culture on the planet.
When people say that FGM is more about tribal affiliation than religion, they don’t mean “people only do it to prove that they are part of a subgroup really super ultra-crazy Muslims”, they mean that it has connections to much older practices within the communities that do it. Practices that predate Islam by millennia. Which is why educated, moderate, and even relatively secular members of said communities still tend to practice it — it’s kind of like how most atheists celebrate Christmas.
New extremist theological interpretations and tendencies crop up all the time — probably dozens can be traced to evangelical Christianity in the 70’s and 80’s, and yes, all of them probably have to do with the fundies finding new ways to differentiate themselves in a rapidly secularizing cultural landscape, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that young earth creationism is, in fact, a primarily theological belief which isn’t a vestigial leftover from some ancient custom.
Did anyone else notice the story yesterday about the chief astronomer at the Vatican positing that there are other sentient beings in the Universe. And that they may be better/smarter than us? Now that was a bit of a mind-blower to this naughty (ex)Catholic girl!
From the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7399661.stm
via Slashdot http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/14/2049224&from=rss
Well, I hope that the kids that get taught YEC like learning how to ask “and will you like noodles with that?” in Chinese, because that’s all the future US that they’re being fit for.
The older I get, the more cynical I get about the possible survival of the US. We’re a nation founded by geniuses on a population of religious flakes. They managed to tie us in a straitjacket for 200+ years, but now the population has managed to wriggle loose from the straps.
So what? Indulging the fundies will just continue the US’s slide away from the top of the heap. At some point, when the entire US population is formed of Duggars and equivalent folk and the US economy has collapsed to subsistence agriculture, people might start realizing that duh, the scientific method has its uses.
But I’m not holding my breath.
Conservative christians have been interpreting the literal bible for hundreds of years. American Evangelicalism (certainly in the 20th c.) has embraced creationism since the founding of Moody’s Institute and it’s reliance on dispensationalism.
Nonetheless, children need to be taught that we live in a very complex world which exists in a very complex universe and any simple answer usually needs to be treated with skepticism. As our economy falters and our country slips further and further behind the rest of the world, I am amazed that parents would choose to blind their children to science.
I think Cary misunderstands the atheist’s objections. He makes it sound like the atheist is just being uptight about the fact that his friend believes something different than him.
But the atheist and the fundamentalist have been good friends for 15 years, so it’s not like they’re strangers to principled disagreement. The atheist is furious because his friend has finally conceded that young earth creationism is a bunch of hooey (or at least deeply flawed). Suddenly, after all this conversation, the now-conflicted Christian turns around an agrees to teach young earth creationism to a bunch of innocent kids.
The atheist is pissed at what he sees as a lack of intellectual integrity on the part of the Christian. He may also feel disrespected because he invested all this time in getting his friend to see the error of his ways, and now his friend is just brushing that off like none of those soul searching conversations ever happened.
I’m not saying that the Christian necessarily deserves all that emotional blowback from his atheist friend. The Christian has just started doubting and it’s almost certainly unreasonable for his friend to ask him to make big waves at work because he’s unsure about the validity of creationism.
If I had an atheist friend who agreed to teach creationism as science for money, I’d have a hard time continuing to be friends with them because I’d be sure that they were knowingly and cynically deceiving children to the detriment of children and science. On the other hand, I’d cut a Christian friend a little more slack if I thought they were honestly conflicted about evolution. It’s hard to ask someone to take a firm contrarian stance on something they aren’t sure about yet–especially if their livelihood might somehow be affected.
Op:
I think we’re using two different definitions of “tribal” here.
Paul: I get that now, but your later use of “tribal” makes your first use of the word (in reference to FGM) incorrect. Also, the analogy just isn’t apt in any meaningful way.
He’s taking himself too seriously…
Imagine a country where lies are more valued than the truth…
I posted as much to the thread there…
“Imagine a country where lies are more valued than the truth…”
Whadaya mean, imagine?
That’s what I meant…
Read the comments on the Salon.com site, if you can…
To say what he said, that I quoted, is just so many trillions of light years from what anyone would and should think that has a somewhat public soap box that I was shocked… To say that ‘I favor people just making shit up over teaching the truth’ is just incredibly bizarre…
I’m still shocked.
To expound on that illogic, then why have laws, why have justice, why value truth? Why not have groups of people that believe their own concocted bullshit and then have turf wars over who is more wrong.
Sounds like the dark ages?
BTW: I do have stronger respect for Einstein. Nice letter Al… Nice letter… Wish I had the money to buy it…