Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at 
Bruce Chapman, president of the creationist Disco. Inst., complains about "young adults talking about politics and making fools of themselves in television and radio interviews." This is already rich, coming from a group that hosts such intellectual lowlifes as Johnny West and Billy Dembski. But the comedy doesn't stop there.
Chapman, whose organization encourages school administrators to disregard advice offered by the leading scientific societies, explains that:
many no longer learn much history in school, they no longer study "civics" (the way our form of representative government functions) and they are ignorant of the crucial cultural legacies of our civilization (from the Bible to Shakespeare to you-name-it). They always were ignorant of basic economics, and, of course, still are; but that is another story. … today's political correctness emphasis and feel good, everyone-is-a-winner psychology drive out attention to traditional humanities studies. Not only is class time lacking for teaching the history and culture of our civilization, there sometimes is almost a hostility to these topics ("dead white males" and all that).The thing is, these and Chapman's other whinges could as easily be applied to his own employees in the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture. They exploit a naive sense that "it's only fair" to present everyone's perspective on every damn thing, even in a science class where we have fairly straightforward ways of determining that some ideas are simply wrong, and that others don't fit the basic criteria to be considered science, let alone considered in a science classroom. Not only is class time lacking to cover even basic topics in science class, but someone keeps stirring up hostility to science based on irrelevant and inaccurate complaints about the moral implications of those ideas.
Everyone isn't a winner. To choose one example from history, William Paley was not a winner. His proto-IDeas failed as science, as philosophy, and even as theology. Chapman and the Disco. crew were always a bit foolish in their attempts to resurrect Paleyism, and they are hypocrites for complaining about other people using their same tactics in the humanities.
Comments
Chapman said, Jefferson's argument often is not even regarded as relevant now. I suppose he forgot about what Jefferson said about religion and government.
But what hole has he had his head stuck up? There are so many older people who show themselves to be at least as foolish as the youngsters Chapman may have heard. Heck, we even "elected" one as our president.
Posted by: mark | February 27, 2008 5:43 PM