john e morrisey:
“making me think that for many this is a political debate, not a scientific debate”
Of course it’s a political debate. Creationism is not science, so this “argument” isn’t by any stretch a scientific debate.
But it is an argument ABOUT science – about why it is wrong for people to try to derail and discredit science itself, just because they are miffed that some of their cherished (but irrational, and certainly unscientific) beliefs aren’t getting enough shrift out there in the marketplace of ideas.
Scientists react angrily to creationist nonsense being pushed at them because the people pushing it, if they get their way, will cripple the teaching of critical thinking in our schools. It makes me angry too. The idea of little kids rocking back and forth like those madrassa kids, reciting illogical and anti-intellectual “sacred” texts, and arguing for ideas like the Earth being flat (as one of Egypt’s major universities does officially even today, for example), makes me cringe.
Believe what you like, but dragging society back several millennia to ridiculous, irrational beliefs? No thanks! Leave me and my kids out of it.
