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President George W. Bush favors teaching both evolution and
"intelligent design" in schools, "so people can know what the debate
is about."
To proponents, intelligent
design is the notion that the universe is too complex to have
developed without a nudge from a higher power than evolution or
natural selection.
To detractors,
intelligent design is creationism _ the literal interpretation of the
Book of Genesis _ in a thin guise, or simply vacuous, about as
interesting as "I don't understand," as has always been true in the
sciences before understanding is reached. Accordingly, there cannot be
a "debate."
The teaching of
evolution has long been difficult in the United States. Now a national
movement has emerged to promote the teaching of intelligent design in
schools.
The issue has
famously surfaced in a courtroom in Dover, Pa., where a school board
is requiring students to hear a statement about intelligent design in
a biology class _ and parents mindful of the Constitution's
church/state separation have sued the board.
In the interest
of fairness, perhaps the president's speechwriters should take him
seriously when they have him say that schools should be open-minded
and teach all points of view.
So far, however,
the curriculum has not encompassed one obvious point of view:
malignant design.
Unlike
intelligent design, for which the evidence is zero, malignant design
has tons of empirical evidence, much more than Darwinian evolution, by
some criteria: the world's cruelty.
Be that as it
may, the background of the current evolution/intelligent design
controversy is the widespread rejection of science, a phenomenon with
deep roots in American history that has been cynically exploited for
narrow political gain during the last quarter-century.
Intelligent
design ribes the question whether it is intelligent to disregard
scientific evidence about matters of supreme importance to the nation
and world _ like global warming.
An old-fashioned
conservative would believe in the value of Enlightenment ideals _
rationality, critical analysis, freedom of speech, freedom of inquiry
_ and would try to adapt them to a modern society.
The Founding
Fathers, children of the Enlightenment, championed those ideals and
took pains to create a Constitution that espoused religious freedom
yet separated church and state. The United States, despite the
occasional messianism of its leaders, isn't a theocracy.
In our time, Bush
administration hostility to scientific inquiry puts the world at risk.
Environmental catastrophe, whether you think the world has been
developing only since Genesis or for eons, is far too serious to
ignore.
In preparation
for the G8 summit this past summer, the scientific academies of all G8
nations (including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences), joined by
those of China, India and Brazil, called on the leaders of the rich
countries to take urgent action to head off global warming.
"The scientific
understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify
prompt action," their statement said. "It is vital that all nations
identify cost-effective steps that they can take now, to contribute to
substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas
emissions."
In its lead
editorial, The Financial Times endorsed this "clarion call," while
observing: "There is, however, one holdout, and unfortunately it is to
be found in the White House where ... George W. Bush ... insists we
still do not know enough about this literally world-changing
phenomenon."
Dismissal of
scientific evidence on matters of survival, in keeping with Bush's
scientific judgment, is routine. A few months earlier, at the 2005
annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, leading U.S. climate researchers released "the most
compelling evidence yet" that human activities are responsible for
global warming, according to The Financial Times. They predicted major
climatic effects, including severe reductions in water supplies in
regions that rely on rivers fed by melting snow and glaciers.
Other prominent
researchers at the same session reported evidence that the melting of
Arctic and Greenland ice sheets is causing changes in the sea's
salinity balance that threaten "to shut down the Ocean Conveyor Belt,
which transfers heat from the tropics toward the polar regions through
currents such as the Gulf Stream." Such changes might bring
significant temperature reduction to northern Europe.
Like the
statement of the National Academies for the G8 summit, the release of
"the most compelling evidence yet" received scant notice in the United
States, despite the attention given in the same days to the
implementation of the Kyoto protocols, with the most important
government refusing to take part.
It is important
to stress "government." The standard report that the United States
stands almost alone in rejecting the Kyoto protocols is correct only
if the phrase "United States" excludes its population, which strongly
favors the Kyoto pact (73 percent, according to a July poll by the
Program on International Policy Attitudes).
Perhaps only the
word "malignant" could describe a failure to acknowledge, much less
address, the all-too-scientific issue of climate change. Thus the
"moral clarity" of the Bush administration extends to its cavalier
attitude toward the fate of our grandchildren.
Noam Chomsky
Distributed by The New
York Times Syndicate
Psicolinea November 2005
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