Tuesday, August 30, 2011

INHERIT THE IGNORANCE

Apparently, in order to be supported by the GOP's base, a presidential candidate must debase him/herself and announce to the world his/her distrust of science. All of the presidential contenders, save for Jon Huntsman, have proudly voiced their doubts about Evolution as settled science, thus making monkeys of themselves in the eyes of enlightened minds in all corners of the world. All corners except in America, where we are at the bottom of the heap in all surveys that ask what percentage of our population accepts Evolution. Only Turkey is lower than we are.

This will warm the hearts of wilfull know-nothings and ensure that their children will carry on in their tradition of believing in a book written by Bronze Age superstitious, women-hating, old men. Good on them.

No amount of evidence will ever dissuade these types from their inscient world view. And as the presidential popularity polls show, the dumb and the ignorant will surely inherit the top Republican polling spot.

Here is Richard Dawkins, eminent ethologist and evolutionary biologist with his take on the lastest embarrassment from the GOP, Governor Rick Perry:

 
"There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown in high office. What is unusual about today’s Republican party (I disavow the ridiculous ‘GOP’ nickname, because the party of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt has lately forfeited all claim to be considered ‘grand’) is this: In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today’s Republican Party ‘in spite of’ is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job.

Any other organization -- a big corporation, say, or a university, or a learned society - -when seeking a new leader, will go to immense trouble over the choice. The CVs of candidates and their portfolios of relevant experience are meticulously scrutinized, their publications are read by a learned committee, references are taken up and scrupulously discussed, the candidates are subjected to rigorous interviews and vetting procedures. Mistakes are still made, but not through lack of serious effort.

The population of the United States is more than 300 million and it includes some of the best and brightest that the human species has to offer, probably more so than any other country in the world. There is surely something wrong with a system for choosing a leader when, given a pool of such talent and a process that occupies more than a year and consumes billions of dollars, what rises to the top of the heap is George W Bush. Or when the likes of Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin can be mentioned as even remote possibilities.
A politician’s attitude to evolution is perhaps not directly important in itself. It can have unfortunate consequences on education and science policy but, compared to Perry’s and the Tea Party’s pronouncements on other topics such as economics, taxation, history and sexual politics, their ignorance of evolutionary science might be overlooked. Except that a politician’s attitude to evolution, however peripheral it might seem, is a surprisingly apposite litmus test of more general inadequacy. This is because unlike, say, string theory where scientific opinion is genuinely divided, there is about the fact of evolution no doubt at all. Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well.
Evolution is not some recondite backwater of science, ignorance of which would be pardonable. It is the stunningly simple but elegant explanation of our very existence and the existence of every living creature on the planet. Thanks to Darwin, we now understand why we are here and why we are the way we are. You cannot be ignorant of evolution and be a cultivated and adequate citizen of today.
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There are many reasons to vote against Rick Perry. His fatuous stance on the teaching of evolution in schools is perhaps not the first reason that springs to mind. But maybe it is the most telling litmus test of the other reasons, and it seems to apply not just to him but, lamentably, to all the likely contenders for the Republican nomination. The ‘evolution question’ deserves a prominent place in the list of questions put to candidates in interviews and public debates during the course of the coming election."
Richard Dawkins wrote this response to Governor Perry for
On Faith, the Washington Post’s forum for news and opinion on religion and politics.

4 comments:

  1. I am just waiting for the book burning parties to start.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Perhaps there should be international prize for the most infamous dumbshit in the world, the single most unimportant person holding back the wheels of progress: The ‘Ignobel Prize.’

    Norway wouldn’t touch it. May I suggest The Sovereign State of Texas? My only concern is that first winner of this ignominious prize is likely to be the next president.

    Scratch that idea. Republicans already have a monopoly.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Haven't you heard? The earth is flat and the moon is made out of cheese. Fred Flinstone is a historical character and Atlas holds the world on his shoulders.

    I plan to become wealthy in this era of knownothingness from my newly founded bumper sticker business, the Ignorance Series. Some samples:

    I'm ignorant and proud of it.

    Honk if you're ignorant too.

    I support God and Rick Perry.

    God is Rick Perry.

    I ain't related to no damn ape!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Some did manage to make a lot of money during the last Dark Ages. I say the last for obvious reasons. I hope there's some opportunity for me in the ignorance business too -- I mean with the end times coming so soon -- maybe even next year.

    I enjoy Dawkins' books too. Evolution after all is as fundimental to understanding a great many things as Einstein. Too bad our own species' evolution has stopped, intelligence no longer having anything to do with success in passing on our genes and may be a negative factor for survival.

    But refusal to understand science isn't a random thing. It's a protective dementia, an effective protection against having to modify our comfortable and primitave notions and those notions are comfortable because they ignore the implacable indifference of nature to us, our planet and in fact anything stable in the universe. We are utterly helpless and ultimately doomed; an invisible dot on the infinately long timeline. How can one maintain the egotism behind our culture in light of this? One denies and one persecutes as though anything in this universe will indicate that we ever were here a billion years from now -- or ten billion, or ten thousand billion.

    ReplyDelete

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