A Brave But Hopeless Fight

Oh, goodness, am I pissed off.

I just got done reading today’s New York Times. According to a new poll (I should stop reading polls, ‘cause I always get pissed off about something), 42 percent of Americans are strict creationists. Now, I’m not talking about people who think God created the world and evolution is part of his grand scheme, or anything like that. I’m talking about people who believe that “living beings have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.” People who believe that evolution simply does not exist. Period. Read that statement in quotation marks again, the one they all decided best expressed their opinion. There is no other way to interpret it than to say that these people, nearly half our population, believe evolution is bullshit, a false theory top-to-bottom and beginning-to-end.

I’m an adult. I’m aware that intelligent people can have divergent views, and that the fact that someone disagrees with me does not automatically make that person an idiot. But really, as far as evolution goes, have these people not been paying attention for the last century and a half? Evolution is real, it is really where we come from, and it is the exact reason why life in all its diversity exists on this planet. Get over it.

If this offends your religious beliefs, I'm sorry (well, not really). If you want to believe that some god created all the matter in the universe and crammed it all together really densely so we could have a Big Bang, that’s fine with me. Hell, it might even be true, though I don’t believe it myself. If you want to believe that evolution is part of God’s plan, that in the laws of genetics we’re seeing the divine brushstrokes on life’s canvas, that’s okay too. But make no mistake; whether it’s a simple physical algorithm or the design of some deity, evolution is the real thing. Its reality cannot be denied by any intelligent, honest observer.

If I may, I’ll let Dan Dennett weigh in here:

The fundamental core of contemporary Darwinism, the theory of DNA-based reproduction and evolution, is now beyond dispute among scientists. It demonstrates its power every day, contributing crucially to the explanation of planet-sized facts of geology and meteorology, through middle-sized facts of ecology and agronomy, down to the latest microscopic facts of genetic engineering. It unifies all of biology and the history of our planet into a single grand story. Like Gulliver tied down in Lilliput, it is unbudgeable, not because of some one or two huge chains of argument that might—hope against hope—have weak links in them, but because it is securely tied by hundreds of thousands of threads of evidence anchoring it to virtually every other area of human knowledge. New discoveries may conceivably lead to dramatic, even “revolutionary” shifts in the Darwinian theory, but the hope that it will be “refuted” by some shattering breakthrough is about as reasonable as the hope that we will return to a geocentric vision and discard Copernicus…

The evidence for evolution pours in, not only from geology, paleontology, biogeography, and anatomy (Darwin’s chief sources), but of course from molecular biology and every other branch of the life sciences. To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant—inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write.[i]

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There’s been a lot of talk lately about evolution and whether it should be taught in the schools, or whether it should be taught alongside “intelligent design” creationism. The President definitely thinks so, because he says “that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought." This is true, of course, and I’ll skip over the irony of hearing these words from this supremely incurious and close-minded man.

For the moment we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and pretend he believes what he’s saying. Even so, he’s wrong in this case, because the only thing that should be taught in a science class is actual science. And my friends, intelligent design ain’t it. As Dennett notes in a separate article, “no intelligent design hypothesis has even been ventured as a rival explanation of any biological phenomenon. This might seem surprising to people who think that intelligent design competes directly with the hypothesis of non-intelligent design by natural selection. But saying, as intelligent design proponents do, 'You haven't explained everything yet,' is not a competing hypothesis. Evolutionary biology certainly hasn't explained everything that perplexes biologists. But intelligent design hasn't yet tried to explain anything.”[ii]

If you want to teach children about the “debate” between creationists and evolutionists, teach it where it belongs, in a Political Science or civics class. This argument has nothing at all to do with science. And, to tell you the truth, I don’t think it has very much to do with religion, either.

Follow me on this: I don’t know if the people pushing intelligent design really even believe in it themselves, though certainly the people following them do. I don’t think you could pull off a hoax like this if you weren’t pretty sure what the actual facts were; it would like running a pyramid scheme without knowing about money. I am skeptical about the beliefs of the people behind this “intelligent design” effort. I think this is part of a political agenda rather than a matter of faith for them. The leaders on the right may not actually be religious people, but they all have to use religion to get their agenda in motion.

Personally, I blame Karl Marx (or, more accurately, the frequent misinterpretation of his work) and the Soviets (to a far greater extent) for this. Marx famously called religion the “opiate of the masses.” Now, Marx had no faith himself, but he wasn’t condemning religious belief in and of itself. He was condemning the power of the priesthood. Marx saw the priesthood in the same way he saw the capitalist class, as a group keeping the people powerless. The Bolsheviks took this idea and ran with it, to the point of basically destroying the Russian church after the revolution.

Because the Bolsheviks were radical leftists, conservatives around the world came to identify all leftists with this movement, which makes as much sense as identifying all conservatives with fascists. The idea was that any liberal had necessarily to be Godless and anti-church. This isn’t true; I’ve known many very religious liberals, including most of my family, but due to the constant harping of this theme from conservatives for the last 150 years, it is widely believed. It follows, according to the logic of the Right, that anything that strengthens religion weakens the Left. Therefore, for a lot of the leadership on the right, campaigns like “intelligent design” and the elimination of evolution from school curricula (to say nothing of posting the Ten Commandments in our schools and courthouses and related infringements on the freedom of religion) serve a political purpose that doesn’t actually have anything to do with the religious beliefs being stressed.

In other words, these irresponsible people are keeping our nation’s children stupid for cynical political gain. This is why, although I’m not really mad at my friend Tom (a creationist), I’m severely and perpetually angry at people like Bill Frist and Tom DeLay. If the only way you can cement power is by distortion, at the expense of schoolchildren, you shouldn’t have power at all.

* * * * * * *

So, it’s been a week since I declared my intention to cut back on my drinking for a while. I know you’re all just dying to find out how that’s gone. Has it been a success? Well, that depends on how you define “success.”

Certainly I’ve had less to drink over the last week than I had been drinking immediately prior to the decision. So that’s something, anyway. On the other hand, I’m still drinking more than I should be. I didn’t drink at all on Friday, and on Saturday had just the two beers, as according to plan. But it was all downhill from there:

Sunday—A whole bottle of cheap wine.

Monday—Ditto.

Tuesday—Two beers and three glasses of whiskey

Wednesday—Trivia Night. Lots and lots of whiskey and water at the Union. Dunno how much, but at least seven.

So, a lot more than I’m supposed to be having. Last night (Thursday) I didn’t drink anything at all…a small victory in a war I’m bound to lose. I checked out Leaving Las Vegas last night in hopes of inspiration, but I doubt that will work any better than my frequent rewatching of Barfly does. It definitely doesn't help to see a drunk as a romantic hero. By this time tomorrow I'll see in myself a picture of the doomed struggle of all humanity against an uncaring and deteriorating Universe.

I feel a bit like Bridget Jones, reporting my daily alcohol intake like this. It’s too bad I didn’t count my cigarettes yesterday, or the amount of calories I ingested (as far as calories go, I wouldn’t know how). Incidentally, if Bridget Jones is supposed to be a fairly plain, somewhat dumpy young woman, why in the world did the producers get Renée Zellweger (one of the sexiest women on Earth) to play her?

Anyway, yeah, a losing battle with the booze. I do this resetting thing once or twice a year, but it usually goes much more smoothly than this. I seem to have fallen into a self-destructive pattern; I thought I had outgrown the tendency to do this. Back in my early twenties, when I was devastated by the breakup of my relationship with Bonnie Sioux, I was like this, but I didn’t think it would ever happen again; frankly, I didn’t think anyone else could hurt me that much (if you’ll pardon my being soft for a moment). It’s been a tough summer, and I’ve needed a crutch.

I guess all I can do is try not to drink too much tonight, and then try not to drink too much tomorrow, and not set any particular limits in time or quantity. I wonder if that’s a cliché. I’ve never attended an AA meeting (nor do I ever plan to), so if anyone out there has, please enlighten me on which truisms are current with that crowd.

I don’t want to quit drinking, but I’d like alcohol to be a companion rather than a crutch. I’m having trouble working out the difference, though…the boundary isn’t as clear as I’d like it to be. Whiskey should come with an owner’s manual, although it could be argued that the owner’s manual for drinking is already printed firmly in my head, and I just choose not to refer to it as often as I ought. Certainly no one has more experience than I have in that area.

* * * * * * *

Anyway, all that being said, I’m off to visit Nikki at the Union, prior to getting together with my brother to pirate a few DVDs. Well, pirate is too strong a word, really. What I want to do is put them on videocassettes. See, I’ve got all these eight-hour cassettes, and it’s great for TV shows. I’ve already fit the whole first season of Cheers onto one, and now I’m working on the West Wing and some more Cheers. But those bastards in the DVD industry put that stupid copyguard thing on a lot of the discs (though not the West Wing…I love those people), so before I can tape them I have to rip the DVD with the copyguard removed. It’s very aggravating, ‘cause it takes like two or three hours to do one disc. Still, it’s worth it. And I don’t feel even a little bit guilty, ‘cuase I’m doing this for myself, and not to sell the copies like the Chinese do. I paid for these damn things, and I want every episode on a single tape so I don’t have to constantly change discs or whatever. If the companies don’t like it, they can sue me (as I’m sure they will if they find out). Anyway, got to go. Love to all. Wish me luck in the losing battle, though so far the wishes aren’t doing me much good. I appreciate them anyway.

[i] Dennett, Daniel C., Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Simon & Schuster, 1995 (pp. 18, 46).
[ii] Dennett, Daniel C., “Show Me The Science,” New York Times, 8/28/5.