My True Feelings

Well, in a comment that supergoober left, he asked me this question, and I do feel obliged to answer it. But before I get to that, I looked at the settings, and got rid of the ID and word verification restrictions - just didn't realize that I had them on (or even what they were), but all is well, now. Also, you may notice that partway through the blog, paragraphs are separated by bullets. For some reason, as I typed, and hit enter after a paragraph, there was no additional space inserted. When I tried to put space in by editting this post after publishing, it wouldn't register the extra spaces I inserted, so I just added the bullets to break up the otherwise monolithic text. Sorry.

So, I figure that I will start with the goob's question:

My question for you is why DON'T you have a problem with:
folks who believe in Creationism as a scientific theory? who treat the Bible as
a scientific and historical document? who believe that homosexuality is an
abomination? and for that matter, to folks on the extreme Left and Right who,
via policy and law, effort to design a world based on their narrow views of what
a moral, just, and righteous society should look like?

Honestly, I do have a problem with those people, and with many others who cling to patently ignorant ideas. But if I let every little thing like that get to me I would have slit my wrists long ago (and trust me, I have enough desire to do that anyway, that I don't need to give myself additional reasons). In all seriousness, however, I think that you understand that I am intensely bothered by extreme religious beliefs - people who cling to an idea with unshakable faith can be very persuasive and very powerful. I am more frightened, however, of people who cling to religious beliefs but do not acknowledge them as such. Those are the people who are really dangerous and try to remake the world according to their narrow set of ideals.

But in actuality, we all have this tendency. All of us have an idea of the ideal society, and feel that our way is the best, and, I suppose, would impose that on others if we could. A vision for a moral, just, and righteous society is not bad, and I do not believe that most evangelicals in a position of power in America would remake the society in their image. It is not possible given the prohibition against establishment of a religion (which has bloated out far beyond the founders original ideals into a nebulous concept of "separation of church and state").

The greater danger comes from people whose faith is dogmatic but is in a more conventional, secular issue. I'll give you an example: Palin is pro-life. Period. End-of-story. She will not be able to pass a federal law banning abortions, even if she were president. Any executive order would be unenforceable, she couldn't write or sponsor legislation, if she had help in the Legislature, it would never pass, and even a conservative supreme court would strike it down. However, suppose Obama has an unshakable faith in the "windfall profits" tax. He has a number of different options because the issue can be framed in a way to promote class divisiveness, and there are many in the legislature who would help to pass this merely to shore up support from people who can be swayed by class envy. It would probably not ever reach a court challenge, and it would have far reaching implications in the fact that the government had set the precedent of deciding what is "too much" profit. This is a huge step towards an unsustainable socialized economy.

How about another example - one that actually occurred, and was very popular and is still causing deaths in the millions to this day. It has to do with a religious fervor coupled with Michael Moore style deceit, and a profound lack of care for the ramifications of an action. I am talking about the ban of DDT that Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring helped to push through. So thoroughly have her ideas pervaded our society, that even my mention of the chemical probably conjures up ideas of dead condors and poisoned children. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Carson was an excellent and passionate writer, and in the early sixties (1963, I think) she wrote a groundbreaking book. Its title was frightening and evocative. With the widespread use of DDT, birds were dying in record numbers, and one day soon we could face a Spring without the sounds of birdsong. It is poetic, tragic, and moving, but it is patently untrue. Fortunately for us, it came after we had eliminated mosquito borne malaria through its use. While I will agree that there was significant overuse of the pesticide that was creating DDT-resistant strains of crop pest, we could have easily curtailed the use of the pesticide for those applications. The decline of the condor and the eagle has roots in an earlier problem - the fact that many states had bounties on large predatory birds and mammals, or ignored the hunting of those animals even if there were no bounties. As a result, the populations had been decimated up to the early forties, and were protected under law around 1958 (check the date, I'm really not sure). The populations had started to rebound by the time she was touting the dangers of DDT, and, although they were not anywhere near there pre-bounty numbers, they were recovering. She used innuendo, blending of rhetoric with carcinogens and nuclear scares (very real in that era), and related pesticides with other drugs that were not even closely related. She tied DDT into chemical weapons research for WWI and WWII, which was totally untrue, and she made bold statements connecting DDT and thalidomide (the drug that was a morning sickness cure that caused horrible deformities in infants) as part of our rush to use something new without knowing the consequences. She conveniently ignored that the FDA had never approved thalidomide, and that the European and Canadian method of testing drugs on their population was largely to blame for this disaster. She cherry-picked data that supported her, and there were no scientists who read the book that did not have major criticisms of the "science" in it. However, it was very moving, and swayed people and politicians alike, and DDT was banned in the US. For a while we continued to produce it for other nations, but eventually people didn't like that either - if it is too dangerous for us, they reasoned, why should we ship it to other parts of the world to be dangerous to others?.

So DDT was completely banned, and here is the problem. There has never been a case where DDT has caused any physiological problems. Several scientists regularly consume tablespoons of the stuff at demonstrations to show how safe it is to mammals (receiving upwards of 2000 times the dose that most animals in the wild and workers in industries affected would be exposed to). Here is the real kicker, though. DDT is the most effective pesticide for controlling diseases like typhus and malaria - the two biggest insect-borne killers in history. Since the ban, Africa has been particularly hard hit, but so has the rest of the world. In total, more than 500 million people have died in areas where DDT spraying could have prevented the transmission of these diseases. This high mortality rate has crippled third world countries and kept them in constant states where there is no chance of economic viability, damning the surviving population to subsistence existences. Let me give you an example of the positive impact of DDT. South Africa began spraying in 1946, and by 1948, malaria had dropped to 10% of the cases reported in 1943. By 1950, most of Central America had wiped out malaria, dengue, and yellow fever because of DDT. Most places could count on complete eradication of these diseases in 20 to 30 years of use. It is not harmful to humans, however. In Georgia, in tests on DDT, men ingested 35 milligrams daily for 2 years and suffered no ill effects. None of this mattered, however.

Such was the power of this secular but profoundly faith-driven belief that more than 1/2 a billion people have died worldwide as a result. That's about 8% of the world's current population, so, supergoober, if you want to know what really frightens me, it isn't religious kooks who are out about the fact that all they have to back up their arguments is faith, its the secular kooks who have total faith and are willing to sacrifice millions on the altars of their belief system. Ironically, that bitch had cancer, with respiratory infections on the side, and died of a heart attack at age 56 in 1964 (and no, she was not exposed to DDT, that didn't cause her cancer). My fervent hope is that if hell does exist, she is there, treading on her little road of good intentions that are actually shards of glass flaying her feet, ankles, and calves, and that she is suffering the most horrible torments imaginable, and that some of the five hundred million plus deaths for which she is personally responsible are there to torment her as part of their eternal bliss. So know you now a little of why I am passionate about science and actually using your brain in concert with your heart. But I suppose I have digressed somewhat from my original point. (BTW, I think that the jackassery surrounding the fervor over global warming could go in this direction, too, but that is for a later date - sorry if I have offended by saying that, but rest assured that I will back up what I say with facts).

All that having been said, let me go back to something supergoober mentioned - creationism. It is not science. There is no way any idiot should ever confuse a creation myth that they believe in with scientific fact. Anyone who advocates its teaching in a public school is an ass, and should be flogged soundly for thinking anything so preposterous. If you want to teach that crap as "science" in your biblical school - fine by me, that's your right, but your still an idiot. But I also oppose the deification of Darwinian evolution by morons who have no clue about Darwin or about the faults in his theory, or that punctuated evolution is probably a more accurate interpretation of the way things have happened. Not to mention, they conveniently ignore his contributions to the early eugenics movements, racism, and his actual endorsement of "social Darwinism" in his book, The Descent of Man. This one book had a hand in promoting racial superiority theory, controlling reproductive rights of the poor and unfit, and advocating the abandonment of virtues like charity that promote survival of the "unfit". To look at Darwin without these is almost as bad as trying to claim creationism is science. Do not try to justify your belief in evolution with outmoded science from a hundred years ago - Darwin has almost as many mistakes as Lamarck, get with the program and deal with modern biology. Okay, this is probably just a pet peeve of mine, but Darwin is not the f***ing Messiah of science. The biologists who have toiled since and made actual improvements in their field of study are largely ignored by ignorant masses trying to lay claim to some pretense at knowledge by throwing his name around with the same religious fervor that creationists have. I just wish people would modernize their scientific references, I guess. So yes, creationists who try to push their views as science can go f*** themselves. If you want to believe in that as a creation myth, so what.

As to the moral, just, and righteous society, all major religions pretty much say the same thing about this, so I don't really need to retread this ground. In fact, most evangelicals fall in line with majority worldviews - I don't think that makes them right, but it makes it harder to maintain your (and my) views on many issues. And even the most ardent evangelical does not advocate the killing of homosexuals - they fall back on the "hate the sin, not the sinner" line to avoid that issue - but throughout much of the rest of the world homosexual conduct is punishable by death (stoning to death in much of the middle east for example). As strident as most evangelicals are, they do not quite get to the level of nuttiness in this country because of that little phrase, "hate the sin, not the sinner"; a mantra they use to make themselves feel better about their repressive tendencies. Where is this discussion going; I really don't know, but suffice it to say, I fear the Devil I know less than the Devil I don't.