alberta embarasses itself again

A proposed bill here in Alberta will instruct teachers to warn parents in advance of teaching "controversial" subjects (to the religious right, anyway) such as sexuality and evolution. They would then be allowed to opt their children out of the class in question. Rather than going on a second rant I'm just going to post my letter to the Alberta Education Minister Dave Hancock, who wholeheartedly supports this tripe.

Dear sir,

This letter regards the recent bill that allows parents to opt their children out of classes teaching—amongst other things—the Theory of Evolution.

In writing this letter I run a great risk of echoing word-for-word those who would do the same, as I will be stating what can only be described as the obvious to those educated in the matter. Unfortunately, the obvious sometimes bears repeating: evolution is both a theory and a fact, making it as educationally valid as the Theory of Gravity or the composition of water as two Hydrogen atoms and one Oxygen atom.

“Facts,” to quote the eminent Harvard biologist, the late Stephen Jay Gould, “are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts.” While Einsteinian and Newtonian Gravity have been debated, apples have not hung suspended in the air, and similarly our descent from apes remains no less factual while biologists debate the exactitudes of how this came to pass. Indeed, from the observed evolution of bacteria or fruit flies in the lab to the abundance of transitional fossils discovered to date, evolution is beautifully apparent to those who investigate the matter (I’m willing to bet the affronted parents have not!).

Apples may float of their own accord someday, but this possibility does not bear mention in our children’s physics textbooks. That evolution is treated differently is a consequence of the intrusion of politics and religious interest into public education. This intrusion is an affront to the ideals of a free and multicultural society such as ours, and must be turned away from. I believe the abandonment of this ill-conceived bill will make a worthy first step.

Alan Byers

intelligent design and the hypocrisy of the christian right

Not a half hour after returning Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul (Kenneth Miller's eloquent and well-reasoned response to the Intelligent Design movement's attacks on evolution) to the library, I was linked via Facebook to a collection of photos featuring the outraged responses (prepare for some (at best) eye-rollers) of tea-party conservatives to Obama's financial response to the recession. What struck me is a simple dichotomy of thought in the American Far-Right, but interesting enough that it bears a few words.

Wielded with glee by American Conservative movements seeking a resurgence in the teaching of Creationism in schools, Intelligent Design - in a manner feigning science - dismisses the notion that nature alone, unguided by some manner of, well, intelligent designer, can achieve the sort of complexity and grand functionality they see in the universe. (A more astute observer might see most designs as too complex, almost as if they had been evolved from forms of a different purpose, while scoffing at the notion that despite 99.9% of total species having gone extinct, life's design can be considered "functional," but I digress.)

At any rate, this line of reasoning struck me as oddly familiar. It took the angry, scribbled signs of the tea-party photos, decrying the intrusion of socialism into the White House, to communicate it: those who would support planned economics, the very enemies of these shouting, sign-holding mammals, show the same sort of incredulity when faced with the idea of a self-governing, "free" economy. Indeed, the trust Conservatives place in the free market theory is discarded whole-sale when applied to Biology. When one reads of Locke's Invisible Hand, guiding an economy not from the top-down, but rather from the unrestricted monetary decisions of the individual integrated across the entire population, one can't help but be reminded of Darwin's self-correcting genetic algorithm, unaided by any external force save for natural selection (with which the markets share more than a few similarities!). With respect to life as a system, intelligent design is a-okay, but with respect to the economy as a system it's positively Satanic!

So why all the faith in this sort of economic Darwinism, while Intelligent Design, with a level of intervention and Big Brother-ism that would redden the face of any McCarthyite, gets the thumbs-up as well? In all likelihood it's a simple manner of camps and clans supporting what's expected of them, heedless of the hypocrisy they court. Or perhaps at it's core is the American drive for individualism, fed by economic liberty and affronted by the idea that we're just another drop in a purposeless, directionless gene pool. I'm no more qualified to answer this question than any other, but it's an interesting question nonetheless.

religious violence and the case of vince li

The trial of Vince Li, who seven months ago stabbed, decapitated and partially cannibalized 22 year-old man Tim McLean on a Greyhound here in Canada, has come to an end with the unsurprising declaration that due to his mental ill-health, he cannot be held criminally responsible for his actions.

A letter writer wrote in to today's National Post griping about how, while Islam suffers through a reputation of being violent and hateful, Christianity gets off scott-free when (the writer assumes the Christian) God commanded Mr. Li to kill (and - to prevent his regeneration - dismember and partially eat) Mr. McLean, thinking him a demon.

Oversimplification is a tempting tool to use when winning people over to the side of your argument, but it can never be said that actions borne of a sick mind are ever simple. Even to someone such as myself - a layman to psychology - it's blindingly obvious that Li did not kill because of his religion; he killed because he was a paranoid, delusional schizophrenic off his meds. Rather than masterminding the gruesome act, Li's religion merely acted as a medium through which he interpreted his delusions, nothing more. Let it never be said I'm unfair when it comes to religion's relationship with violence.

However, the letter writer attempts to skirt around a simple and obvious fact: that religion - including but not limited to his own - can and does convince otherwise sane people to commit acts of hatred or violence. The list is long of perpetrators of such acts who are smart, educated members of the middle (and even upper) class with absolutely no prior records of mental ill-health.

So no, this is not a matter of preferential treatment for some religions, and unfairly bad raps for others. This is the judgement of each action on its own individual basis; sometimes religion itself is to blame, sometimes not.