WHAT ROUGH BEAST? America sits of the edge

If we were not able or did not desire to look in any new direction, if we did not have a doubt or recognize ignorance, we would not get any new ideas. There would be nothing worth checking, because we would know what is true. So what we call scientific knowledge today is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty. Some of them are most unsure; some of them are nearly sure; but none is absolutely certain. Scientists are used to this. We know that it is consistent to be able to live and not know. Some people say, "How can you live without knowing?" I do not know what they mean. I always live without knowing. That is easy. How you get to know is what I want to know. The freedom to doubt is an important matter in the sciences and, I believe, in other fields. It was born of a struggle. It was a struggle to be permitted to doubt, to be unsure. And I do not want us to forget the importance of the struggle and, by default, to let the thing fall away. I feel a responsibility to proclaim the value of this freedom and to teach that doubt is not to be
feared, but that it is to be welcomed as the possibility of a new potential for hman beings. If you know that you are not sure, you have a chance to improve the situation. I want to demand this freedom for future generations.

Were the aggressive Darwinists of a generation or so ago threats to liberty and democracy? I suspect some fundamentalists Christians would say they were, but I'll bet you would disagree.

george

That is the good question.

I tried to make this point to another earlier, but it wasn't accepted.

'Democracy' is, if nothing else, inclusionary. If that is so, then one species of ideology becomes a threat to democracy itself - that species of ideology which excludes all but itself, which values only itself. Such a species of ideology is, prima facie, unique in a democracy.

The point is NOT that anyone believes in the resurrection or in an afterlife or that the bible is literally true. The point is that anyone, holding ANY belief set, becomes a threat to liberty and democracy when they ALSO hold that their believe set is the only possible TRUE belief set, and hense the only one upon which social arrangements ought to be founded.

You will, I'm sure, claim that 'liberalism' too holds that it is a superior ideology. But if you do argue that, then you are skimming past the most important element in this conversation....inclusion and exclusion.

A liberal, such as myself, seeks to limit only that which threatens liberty. There can be a church on every block, and I will not seek to close them. A parson can extoll any notion about biblical interpretation, and I won't ask him to shut up. People of any faith may pass on that faith to their children, and I won't insert myself into that family's dinner conversations. A fellow can retreat to a cave, and whip himself for ten hours a day, eating only ants and grubs, and I will not seek to have the police bring him into the sunlight.

As a liberal, I want whatever state institutions that exist to oversee all communitarian needs (highways, communications, schools, food production, etc) and to NOT involve themselves in the lives of individuals on the assumption that they have some superior knowledge as to what is good and bad for that individual (where others are not harmed, of course).

In this sense, liberalism means what Mill spoke of...freedom and liberty for the practical reasons of growth. But I also hold that such liberties of one's conscience and one's body and one's associations are rights intrisic to being a unique individual, a unique conscience entity.

Democracy is not threatened by freedom, it is threatened by the instantiation in social policy and laws of the beleifs of a single ideology which holds that is is the only valid social ideology.

Some 15 to18 percent of the Americna electorate count themselve among the religious right, following the teachings of leaders like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Their "pro-family" stance on domestic issues is well known and influential: limiting women in leadership, banning abortion and outlawing same-sex sexual relations. Their influence on foreign policy is less sensational, but arguably mor catastropic.

James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute in Washington, D.C., says the Christian Zionists share a similar worldlview with the neocons -- a world of absolutes, a confrontation of good and evil with no compromise, only endless confrontation or absolute victory. It's no stretch of the imagination to see the Bush administration as the populist incarnation of the same message, with it's "evil-doer" rhetoric and politics of perpetual war. Both the Bush neocons and the Christian Zionists also share suspicions about the global influence of the European Union and the United Nations -- though it's hard to accept that anyone in the White House, with the notable exception of the president, would beieve the religious right's claim that these two institutions are instruments of the anti-Christ.

In March, Businessweek reported that even "European geopolitical strategists with long ties to the U.S. -- people who can't be dismissed as nut jobs -- are convinced that religious beliefs are the primary motivation for the Bush administration." What matters even more, however, is the variety of Bush's religious revelation. Consider this possibility: for the first time in history, the leader of the single global superpower believes we are living in The End Times.

The fact is that a certain scientific (albeit not beyond question) description of the evolution of species has been put forward in our educational systems and been vigorously advocated by its supporters with exactly the same fervor and energy with which it was opposed by creationists.

That evolution, more or less as Darwin described it, has occurred over geologic time is beyond doubt. Whether or not it fully explains the origin and all of the diversity of known species is still an open question in science. Our growing understanding of the genome has raised some important questions at the intersection of biology and cosmology. Has there been enough time for all this progression to have occurred? Most assume without question that there has been enough. However the available mathematical models indicate the contrary is true. New things may yet emerge.