Happy New Year to one and all. Hope that this first day of 2006 found you in the arms of the one you love, in the mood for happiness, in a creative state of mind, making a spiritual breakthrough, an intellectual advance, a scientific discovery, etcetera, et al.
I was listening to Glenn Beck, a conservative talk show guy whose style is less confrontational than Rush or his contemporaries, but whose message is just as manipulative and idiotic as the rest.
What he talked about was the "debate' about intelligent design and why it is that scientists are so afraid of allowing a course in intelligent design to be conducted in high schools (I presume) as a science class. Well, of course, there is and never was a debate about intelligent design because intelligent design is just creationism dressed up in fresh language and posing as scientific theory.
What Beck (and the proponents of ID avoid saying is just that, that ID is creationism posing as science). Hell, even the conservative courts wouldn't entertain the notion that intelligent design even begins to reach the standards that science must meet in order to be recognized.
What Beck and his cheerleaders fail to explain to the gullible fans of his show is that ID has no scientific basis whatsoever. It cannot be tested (as required by science), it cannot be observed and proved (as science requires) and it cannot be studied outisde the bounds of its own dogma. It is, by its very existence, NOT SCIENCE!
I don't mind if ID is taught, certainly it could fit nicely into a class on social theory or the history of human thought or some other forum that considers human morality, thought and spirituality. No one said ID could not be taught. What the proponents insisted upon and what most of us disapprove of is teaching it as science.
To do that would be to lie to our children; to purposely obfuscate and blur the facts to students.
It's baffling how these good Christian folk can support lying for the sake of furthering their narrow-minded viewpoint. Where is their morality? Where is their honesty? It's truly obscene that the Christian right decided to play out its little drama on the world stage, pretending to have innocent motives, claiming that their cause was in the interest of open-minded exploration and upholding the values of science. Absurd!
Well, Beck asked the question: "How many people refuse to look at the truth just because it doesn't fit their view of the world?"
My answer: Well, we know of one person for sure – Glenn Beck. Beck pretends to be open-minded and reasonable while espousing the proposition that ID is a scientific theory that deserves a place in the classroom as such. And I believe Beck knows full well of the absurdity of his argument. He's just reading from the Christian conservatives' playbook and ticking off the same talking points as his brethren. Hell, there's not an original thought anywhere in his argument and, I believe, not a sincere bone in his body. Beck, like others of his ilk, is a liar for the Lord, so to speak.
Of course, i don't believe in the God of America's Christian Coalition so I don't struggle with myself about the morality of getting what I want by hook or crook – I know it's wrong and unethical and immoral so I try not to do it. But Beck and his crew, I believe, really think the end justifies the means. That seems to be the new Christian morality.