Faith Is Not Science  

I ranted about this elsewhere earlier this week, but Dan Gillmor says it better.

There are any number of depressing aspects to President Bush's endorsement of teaching creationism in classrooms (Time) earlier this week. Oh, it was couched in the artful lingo of so-called "Intelligent Design" that fools no one but those who choose to be fooled.

When religious doctrine is given equal footing with the scientific method, and when political leaders push for this, America does itself enormous damage. In a time when other nations are educating their young people, something this nation is all but abandoning with a perverse determination, education based on faith instead of evidence gives our competitors another edge.

Then again, faith without evidence -- no, faith despite amply contrary evidence -- guides so much of America these days. Fiscal recklessness, putting unpayable debts on our children's backs, rules in Bush's Washington. Environmental recklessness, pretending global warming is just a theory, rules in Bush's Washington. Military recklessness, going to war under false pretenses and then fighting with too few soldiers while putting our other interests at risk, rules in Bush's Washington.

So why not pretend that natural selection, for which overwhelming scientific evidence exists, is just one two plausible "theories" of humanity's rise -- a total abuse of the word "theory" as used in science.

I keep wondering, as this bogus debate continues, why one important set of American leaders is missing in action. No, I'm not talking about Congressional Democrats, who've long since misplaced whatever spines they once possessed, much less Republicans who seem entirely willing to infuse theocracy into our system in order to stay in power.

The MIA leaders are business leaders. They should be shouting from the rooftops, insisting to the politicians they control on other issues that devaluing serious education is a criminally foolish devaluation of America's future.

Where are our business leaders? Perhaps, thinking in the trans-national way they do these days, they're figuring they can stay silent and let America slowly wither. After all, there will always be a huge supply of well-educated and ambitious people elsewhere, right? Well, that's a theory, anyway.