Alberta, March-April 2006
16
ALTERNATIVA Latinoamericana
ENGLISH SECTION
By Nora Fernández
There is a battle being waged
across the United States over the
teaching of evolution. Intelligent
Design (ID) a new form of
creationism challenges evolutionary
science. Proponents of ID claim that
their ideas help explain what
Darwinian evolution cannot.
Complex living things, they argue,
could not exist without an invisible
"designer". They advocate
aggressively in favor of equal time
for ID and evolution in the science
curriculum of schools across the US.
Challenging Evolution
Challenges to evolution by
religious forces have been
persistent in the US.
Fundamentalist's claims that Earth is
between six to ten thousand years
old are also part of it. In the old days
biology texts in the US omitted
including evolution to ensure their
use in most states of the country.
After the War, however, the
demands of the US state for better
science ended with creationism in
many states to ensure a science
curriculum that would prepare
students to develop knowledge that
would ensure that the US could
compete with the USSR and other
countries. Also, in 1968, the
Supreme Court ruled it
unconstitutional to ban the teaching
of evolution. As a result of these
setbacks creationists launched a
new strategy and started to
advocate for the teaching of both
evolution and the new subject of
"creation science".
Behind the advocacy for ID is
the Center for Science and Culture,
a right wing think tank created in
1996 funded mainly by religious
groups interested in extending their
evangelical doctrines. The religious
right is no longer satisfied with
including evangelical doctrines in
religious class but wants to pass
them as "science". Their strategy is
to insert ID into the scientific
mainstream and use it to create an
opening that would allow increasing
amounts of religious doctrine to
pass as science. President Bush
helped by introducing the "No Child
Left Behind Act" which favors
curricular decisions to be made at
state level rather than by local
schools.
Intelligent Design creates
confusion among parents without
presenting arguments backed by
evidence. Although most scientists
agree on the validity of Darwinian
evolution, as well as or better
established than Einstein's theory of
relativity or the DNA model of
Watson and Crick, defenders of ID
present evolution as "just a theory."
In doing so, they give the impression
that there is a challenge to its
credibility within the scientific
community, but there is not.
Naturally, scientists are not fooled
by this strategy but the general
public may end up believing that
there is controversy on the topic.
Religion versus Science
The concept of evolution
applies in biology through natural
and artificial selection and
demonstrates that plants and
animals change over time through
environmental pressures. It
contradicts biblical teachings.
Similar ideas and concepts about
the transformation of our planet
over time also contradict biblical
accounts. Geology, documents the
Revelation versus Reason,
and the hope for a better world
changes that our planet has
experienced over billion of years.
History, Sociology and Anthropology
proove that human societies are
also not static, human societies
change over time in response to
internal and environmental
pressures.
Evolutionary theory may be
particularly threatening to
creationists but science is in general
a threat to those who would prefer a
static, unchanging world. In
particular for the right, and some
members of the elite, a changing
world is a challenge. There are
social implications of change that
can be worrysome. If human
societies have evolved, changing
over time, new forms of social
organization can be expected in the
future. Such thoughts can scare
people whose main goal in life is
maintaining a status quo that favors
them and defending what they have.
Darwin, Marx and Freud are
often hated together. Their
understanding of humans as rational
and symbolic animals and their
material-based view of life, which
spread widely and rapidly, highlights
issues previously understood in
terms of morality as best understood
in terms of the interactions between
biology and the environment, or the
ongoing relationship of nature and
nurture. if societies have changed
over time wouldn't be only natural to
expect them to continue to change,
evolve into maybe better societies
with the help of knowledge and
science?
Although fundamentalism may
be tempting to some members of the
elite, it is not so for others. Some
are very aware that throwing away
the teachings of science and the
benefits of technology can put them
at risk of losing the ground they
have gained thanks to both of them.
History can tell us...
History also confirms that the
price of limiting the creation of
knowledge can be high, even higher
than simply loosing the ability to
compete with others. A good
example of the importance of
understanding, predicting and
applying science is the plague that
affected Europe in 1348-49. It was
the greatest biomedical disaster in
European, and possibly world,
history. It wiped out at least a third of
the population at that time. Due to a
lack of knowledge, medicine could
do little to alleviate the disaster.
Fourteenth-century medicine could
amputate limbs and cauterize
wounds, but it attributed disease to
imbalance in bodily fluids and their
main instrument of diagnosis was
eyeballing the color and consistency
of urine. Doctors could do little to
help end the pestilence; their
primary remedies were simply
enemas and bloodletting and they
didn't know what they were trying to
fight. Norman Cantor in his book, In
the Wake of the Plague, writes
about it:
"Fourteenth-century doctors
never identified the emergence of an
anthrax epidemic among humans.
Because the first stages of bubonic
plague and anthrax are identical
flu-like symptoms and high fever-
they thought the anthrax attack on
human society was the familiar
bubonic plague. Some physicians
were puzzled that a minority of
plague victims never developed the
distinguishing buboes...that give
bubonic plague its name."
The contradictions between
"revelation" and "reason", in
medieval times, were present and
Islam, Judaism and Christianity,
dealt with them in different ways.
Religion conflicted with Aristotelian
views the science of the day.
Aristotle assumed the eternity of
matter, while Judeo-Christian and
Moslem believe that in the beginning
there was nothing but God. Aristotle
also failed to support the doctrine of
the immortality of the individual soul.
The responses of each religion
differed.
In the Christian world,
philosophers were churchmen
conscious of the conflict between
revelation and reason and moved
slower than Arabic writers in dealing
with the contradictions. Still, their
work was protected from destruction
by fundamentalism because it was
carried out within the church and
under its protection.
The first Arabic intellectual
reading and commenting on the
issue of science and religion in
relation to Islam was Ibn Sina, or
Aviccena, who believed that God
doesn't concern Himself with people.
Later, Ibn Rushd, Averroes, the
greatest of Moslem philosophers,
also separated the world of science
from the world of "revelation". He
recognized the existence of a
"double truth" and said that the
ignorant must have their faith and
the learned will have knowledge of
this double truth. Naturally, Averroes
infuriated Moslem orthodoxy but his
ideas allowed reason to flourish.
The best minds of medieval
Jewry also tried to find
commonalities between "revelation"
and reason or science. There were
other Moslem and Jewish attempts to
deal with this relationship but they
mostly ended in defeat and disaster.
In the end, Islam turned away from
science; it was considered heretical
by religious leaders who were able
to get support from fanatical and
fundamentalist princes to destroy
rational speculation. This decision,
however, was linked to the general
decline of Islamic civilization; it
ended the great scientific and
philosophical movement in the
Arabic world. In later Islamic culture
as well as in Judaism mysticism
alone was allowed.
Today, the US is facing a
similar clash. It may be a sign of its
own decline, like in the case of Islam
in the middle age. It is informative to
understand history, it teaches us not
only about the past but also about
what to expect in the future.
Revelation is challenging reason, or
science, in the United States. Still,
the United States rose upon the
world like an empire on the wings
not only of power but also of science
and technology. As in the Arabic
world the move in the US is also a
political move. Thus, it may not be
enough for us to wait for science to
refute the claims of fundamentalism,
dressed either as creationism or as
intelligent design. It will require
political battling. People will need to
take a stand to protect themselves
and what they have. For us in
Canada, it may be challenging too;
we need to be alert to what affects
the US can and may eventually have
on us, particularly given the rise of
neo-conservatism in our own
country.
EDITORIAL:
Rage, rage
Rage, rage
Rage, rage
Rage, rage
Rage, rage
against the killing
against the killing
against the killing
against the killing
against the killing
of the light...
of the light...
of the light...
of the light...
of the light...
By Lil Brown
When I
arrived from
Argentina in 1977
someone asked
me to write about
what was
happening there. I
had been living in
Buenos Aires for
almost a year;
they wanted news
from people like me as there were
growing rumors about state terror and
kidnappings. I told them, however, that
the situation was too complicated, that
I had nothing new to say. In truth, I
didn't trust anybody enough to speak
out about the horrors people were
facing in the deceptive environment that
was the Buenos Aires of those years.
It was truly surreal because, at
the same time that theatres, coffee
places and bars were open, and while
people were attending sport events and
having fun in the nightclubs, young men
and women were being taken from their
homes and from the very streets of
Buenos Aires by the secret police and
by the army.
Both, police and army, separate
or together, were tearing down doors
and taking people from their beds,
often emptying their places and leaving
them as if no one had ever lived there.
Afterwards, their victims were taken to
well hidden torturing chambers,
covering their screams with loud music,
to have their lives ended by throwing
them from Air Force planes into the
sea. Yes, into the same waters that
bath the cost of the European style
city that is Buenos Aires, our "Paris" of
the South. It was too terrible for people
to believe; it was too dark, too
frightening. Who would have wished to
be the bearer of such news, certainly
not me at 21.
I learnt about some of these
things through friends who witnessed
them. For example, a couple who
managed a building in Pueyrredón
Avenue shared with me the events
concerning a woman and her daughter,
managers of a building across from
theirs, who, very afraid and crying, had
told them about what they had
experienced the night before. The
women had been forced to open their
main door of the building they managed
by persistent knocking and voices of
authority in the middle of the night.
They were pushed to the side and
pressed against the walls while
soldiers run upstairs to a suite and
brought with them, forcefully, a young
couple who lived there. The couple was
pushed into a truck waiting outside.
After this, the soldiers proceeded to
take from the suite anything of value
and departed with their human and
material bounty. Naturally, the women
were concerned about the destiny of
the couple as the entire operation had
been so brutal that they feared for both
young people. Furthermore, the women
had been sworn to secrecy under
threats and they no longer knew how to
react, as afraid of talking as of being
quiet b ecause these men could return
anytime to get rid of them, who
witnessed it.
On one occasion, while walking
on Santa Fe Avenue, I witnessed the
kidnapping of a couple. I was on my
way to meet someone and got lost in
the subway so I went up to the streets
to find my way downtown. I took Santa
Fe Avenue because it was familiar to
me. Santa Fe is large and wide, and
although it was night already there
were many people walking by me. As I
was walking, to my left and ahead of
me, I saw a cream colored Ford Falcon
stop and two men emerging from it
running. They run across Santa Fe