RE: paleonet Re: time for gloves to come off

["Dr. Lisa E. Park" <lepark@xxxxxxxxxx>]

We live, at least in the US, in an age of religious fervor.  Our science and
math education is weakening and the US is reported to be losing ground in
its science and technology leadership.  I am not sure that relying on
rationalism and reason is an effective strategy, especially since our
elected leaders, such as Rick Santorum and Bill Frist appear to favor a more
religious rather than scientific perspective on the diversity of life.
While they are entitled to their opinions, they also control the
purse-strings for our science funding in this country; and that is why I
think that people are so concerned.  If they were all a bunch of crackpots,
we could indeed, laugh them off.  But, they are crackpots with billions, in
fact trillions, of dollars at their disposal, not to mention the future of
our society in their control.  If the US education system weakens any
further, our future generations will not be able to cope in our increasingly
globally competitive and technologically based society.

I am not sure what we can do.  NGOs could work.  A massive educational push
could work.  An economic depression in the US could work.  So could an
effective mid-term Congressional election.  I think most of us got into
science rather than political science because we really did not have to want
to worry about this stuff! ;-) Oh well.

I might be wrong, but I think what most people (in the US) feel is shock and
dismay.

Lisa

-----Original Message-----
From: paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk [mailto:paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk]On
Behalf Of BreandC!n MacGabhann
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 7:14 PM
To: paleonet@nhm.ac.uk
Subject: Re: paleonet Re: time for gloves to come off


> I think we will never make progress unless we get better organized
> politically.  Ideally we would form an NGO who's specific mission
> is to proactively and aggressively battle creationist movements.

I disagree completely. I can't stress this enough, any indication at all
that we take the creationist/ID movement seriously will ONLY serve to
increase the public perception that there IS a controversy. We CAN'T get
bogged down arguing details, because it makes it look like we have something
to argue against. There's NOTHING to argue against, their movement is based
on misquotes and nonsense. It's ALL PR, it's all spin. There's no substance
to it. And treating it like there's something to argue, discussing any
points with them will, WILL, be seen by the public as a tacit admission that
we think they are worth arguing against. And that serves their cause, not
ours.

What we could do, is set up a body as an advisory on science teaching in
schools. Join palaeontologists and geologists with physicists and chemists
to look at school science curriculums and propose changes. That way, we get
to discuss evolution in the context of school courses with appearing to be
involved in a debate with the ID movement.

We have to treat the ID movement as a joke. Laugh them off, wave away their
arguments as nonsense and waffle. Dismiss them as not having understood the
subject. Treat them as irrelevant. We have to make it look to the general
public like we don't see them as a threat. Make it look like we pity them
for their obvious misunderstanding of the subject. I'd almost like to call
their bluff and ask them to put forward a course in ID just to see the
content.

They have no leg to stand on. Let's not treat them like they do. This is not
a science debate, it's a PR battle and they're winning because we're
appearing to take them seriously.

Breandán

--
_______________________________________________
For the largest FREE email in Ireland (25MB) and 20MB of online file storage
space - Visit http://www.campus.ie