From: salem@appserv.Eng.Sun.COM (Bruce Salem[CONTRACTOR])
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: The creationist conspiracy (was Re: The difference )
Date: 27 Aug 1992 12:02:05 -0700
Organization: Sun Microsystems Inc., Mountain View, CA, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: appserv

wsadjw@rw7.urc.tue.nl (Jan Willem Nienhuys) writes:

>Back to the main issue:  exposing the creationist conspiracy to 
>take over the world starting in the U.S.A. (what was the view of the
>late Ayatollah Khomeiny on Creation Science? )
>JWN

	I ascribe to the view that one must be aware of the larger
political view under which Creationism survives, that its presence
is felt to us primarily in legal and legislative challenges to
what is taught in American Public Schools, and that it is part of
a political alliance between some religious groups and the most
Conservative politicians in this country. At the Republican National
Convention just held there was a lot of rhetoric about views near
and dear to the hearts of Conservatives and some Christians. I don't
recall that there was any mention of Creationism.

	There doesn't need to be a conspiracy as such for Creationism.
It is part of a larger essentially political ajenda of reactionaries
to mitigate and isolate themselves from the complexities (freedoms
and responsibilities and problems) of the larger secular society.
That alot of this isolation is religiously based is manifest. Many
of the smaller and more extreme sects practice isolation of their
congregations and such isolation is part and parcel of the retiring
religious life in may times and places. There is a cloistered Carmalite
Convent where I live, for instance.

	Creationism is part of this effort to divorce groups of people
from the rest of society or to radically reform society along theocratic
lines. The threat of Evolution to the kind of thinking in Conservative
Christianity is that the latter is based on authoritarianism which
needs human origins and moral authority to become trancendant and
unasailable. Evolution, while it does not challenge belief in God, or
other major tenants of the religious life, is seen by this segment
of people as a challenge to the basis by which they wish to rid them-
selves of the influiences of secular society, or to transform it. The
major influience which they fear is that of compulsory education
with the curriculum that may include ideas, evolutionary ideas,
situation ethics, moral relativism, that they oppose. Attaching evolution
in the Public Schools is a way to sneak in these assumptions about
human nature and morals that are essentially religious in nature.

	One may note that this agenda has switched gears. George Bush
is in favor of the voucher system for education. That has the effect
of giving the Religious Right the means to set up their own schools,
funded with tax dollars taken away from the Public School System. I
am opposed to the voucher system in general terms because it is
devisive. It creates a nation of haves and have-nots and it would
result in the furtherence of the trend to a two-tier nation that
began with the Reagan Administration. The barriers between an underclass,
which does exist, and an upper class, would be raised by the type of
education they would receive. Creationism can be made moot, or be
part of a largely silent ajenda of Conservatives in the U.S. to
segergate society economically. Can the world of Max Hedroom be
far behind?

	This makes me think of the budget impasse in California, now
55 days old. The state has no budget. Businesses and agencies that
depend on state spending are suffering. It strikes me that the sticking
point is over what to cut and that the Republican Governor, Pete Wilson,
from San Diago County, wants to cut more from the Education Budget
than the legislature. If this continues many small businesses that
serve the disabled and many school districts will have to close or
declare bankrupty. The most vulnerable segments of our society are
the bigest losers in this. Children don't vote and the infirm and
poor people don't vote Republican. Wilson proposed an across the board
25% cut in welfare, especially for women with children. With reduced
educational resources, the voucher system, I don't know if he supports
that, but it wouldn't surprize me if he does. It may be part of
Wilson's hidden ajenda, which would score points with the extremists
in Southern California, to let the impasse pain those segments of
society those Conservatives wish to isolate the most, those who cannot
pay for their own education, those who are meant to belong to the
new permanent underclass and ignored. It would seem that Creationism
has become a peripherial issue with respect to the same goal of
Conservatives to isolate themselves from the problems of society
by creating a two tier society. I think that this approach will backfire
and that we all will have to pay the higher cost of dealing with
social problems we are now ignoring. The effect you also be far worse.
I am thinking of Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here", create a
permanent underclass with its problems ignored by a greying electoriate,
with crime out of control and you send in the National Guard to exact
a Final Solution. Some would say that was God's Will. Others would
tell me it is already happening on a less concerted scale, now.

Bruce Salem


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