Secularists Once Again Call For The Suppression Of Knowledge

by Frederick Meekins

Since the 1920’s or thereabouts, secularists have invoked the imagery of the Scopes Monkey Trial as evidence that conservative Evangelicals are bent on suppressing knowledge in the realms of science and literature.

Most following the news are no doubt aware of the ongoing angst on the part of unbelievers and Modernists regarding the propriety of introducing Intelligent Design into the Biology classroom since in their eyes suggesting anything but the materialist hypothesis (itself a faith-based assumption) diminishes the rigor of so-called scientific education. Instead, they suggest such ideas should be considered as part of the Social Studies or Humanities curriculum.

Yet such gestures of enlightened magnanimous compromise are little more than a canard. For when it becomes time to examine the metaphysical issues within what liberals previously promoted as the appropriate venue for such a discussion, they then cry Separation of Church and State. Thus, what they really want is a monopoly on the perspective taught across all of public education. Read More ›

Societies worse off “when they have God on their side” By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent September 27, 2005 The Times RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today…. [For rest of article, go here.] By the way, Gregory Paul, the researcher in question, is a freelance dinosaur paleongologist. One wonders about his expertise in drawing the conclusion that religion is bad for your health. Could it be that he had his conclusion ready to go and massaged the data to fit it? Say it isn’t so.

Steven Jay Gould tells us why in Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes. After conceding that critics of evolution had a strong case at the Scopes trial, Gould still thinks their intellectual descendants need to be neutralized: “They are a motley collection to be sure, but their core of practical support lies in the evangelical right, and creationism is a mere stalking horse or subsidiary issue in a political program that would ban abortion, erase the political and social gains of women by reducing the vital concept of family to an outmoded paternalism, and reinstitute all the jingoism and distrust of learning that prepares a nation for demagoguery.” Is this debate about science or cultural control?

Leading Cardinal Redefines Church’s View on Evolution
By CORNELIA DEAN and LAURIE GOODSTEIN
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