NYT OpEd: The Day the Enlightenment Went Out

[BlueEyedSon]

This election confirms the brilliance of Karl Rove as a political strategist. He calculated that the religious conservatives, if they could be turned out, would be the deciding factor. The success of the plan was registered not only in the presidential results but also in all 11 of the state votes to ban same-sex marriage. Mr. Rove understands what surveys have shown, that many more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in Darwin's theory of evolution.

This might be called Bryan's revenge for the Scopes trial of 1925, in which William Jennings Bryan's fundamentalist assault on the concept of evolution was discredited. Disillusionment with that decision led many evangelicals to withdraw from direct engagement in politics. But they came roaring back into the arena out of anger at other court decisions - on prayer in school, abortion, protection of the flag and, now, gay marriage. Mr. Rove felt that the appeal to this large bloc was worth getting President Bush to endorse a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage (though he had opposed it earlier).

snip

Which raises the question: Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?

I don't THINK SO!

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/opinion/04wills.html

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

1. Can people believe in both?

Yes - stop being so narrowminded!

[BlueEyedSon]

2. Pick a side, Faith or Reason.

You must be SOOOOO confused!

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

10. Fuck you!

[BlueEyedSon]

13. Now THAT'S how to apply reason to an argument.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

14. You know you're a REALLY intelligent person

This place has gone to hell

Oh wait - by believing in hell I'm just an irrational idiot!

[shrike]

22. Plenty of Catholic clergy double as biologists, astronomers,

etc. Mendel was a monk. (And yes, I know what happened to Galileo). So science and faith are not mutually exclusive.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

23. Careful - they can't coexist

:eyes:

[OnceAndFutureTruth]

20. Could it be we go wrong precisely by framing it in either-or terms

I'm just throwing it out there. Because maybe where the left goes wrong is in expecting a purity that is not entirely realistic. A sort of leftist form of "Either you're with us, or you're against us."

[BlueEyedSon]

30. An appropriate response to zero tolerance for reason

is zero tolerance for faith.

I'm not happy it came to this, but I didn't start it!

[Beware the Beast Man]

31. That in itself is quite reasonable.

:eyes:

[OnceAndFutureTruth]

34. Should we follow? ...or lead?

My point still is that if we are so smart, we should find a way to reframe the debate so Enlightenment ideas are palatable to more of the population. We've let "them" frame the debate for too long.

[BlueEyedSon]

35. OK, "framing" is not the only problem

1. Public education.
You know it sucks and is getting worse. People do not have the resources to appreciate or even know what "reason" is. The world is a complex and nuanced place, and the simplicity of Bible stories and religious edicts are easy to understand by comparison. (Not to mention that they are incompatible with "reason".)

2. The Media.
I forget which newsman said this: "my purpose is not to tell people what to think, but what to think ABOUT." So aside from distorting the facts, the echo chamber of cable news indoctrinates people to THINK ABOUT irrelevant things. Is Lacy Peterson the biggest crime of the century? Is gay marriage really a threat to ANYTHING? Why waste time on it? Is marriage in jeopardy at all? Maybe sex in the MEDIA is a bigger threat... that and Viagra. People have no idea which issues/news stories are "more important".

As a result we have simple-minded impressionable people, basically perpetual children, who are fed crap on the TV. Because in the reason-based world there are no absolutes, faith (i.e. religion) amounts to moral laziness.

[OnceAndFutureTruth]

40. What I mean is, the right has successfully framed the debate for years

They have used such tactics as: making "liberal" a dirty word; making the voicing any reasonable objection, "whining"; using the term, "liberal elite" as if all liberals are wealthy and powerful, calling liberals "big spenders" to imply that the things liberals want to spend on are illegitimate, and on and on. The left has struggled with those definintions, but has not made a significant effort (or at least, not an effective one) either to define ourselves, or to provide alternative, more positive definitions.

This is even more complicated for some of the reasons you allude to, although I have a somewhat different take. Have you ever taken a writing class? I took some technical writing classes at one point. I can remember the instructor and the text really emphasising the need to KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE in order to be able to communicate with them. It is clear to me that liberals need to do that more effectively in order to garner more votes. In an odd way, we ourselves do just exactly what we claim our opponents do, imho. We see things in black in white, or more accurately, we see the other side in black and white terms. We assume that all people who are religious are "dumb" and fail to see how such a broad definition is offensive to many, not to mention inaccurate. Would YOU vote for a party calling YOU "dumb"? We frame any sort of religious debate in either/or terms, such as made in your example #1, above. We present "reason" and "faith" as if they are mutually exclusive and for many people, they are not. So we lose a lot of people. We need to look at how and what we communicate. And make some adjustments. This will not be easy, but if we are really so smart, we can figure out how to do it.

[bloom]

36. If the Democrats want to exclude people from the party

that believe in God - they might as well just give it up now (63% of the population).

We could have a party of people who do not agree that "The Bible is the actual word of God and it is to be taken literally, word for word" - since they only make up around 33% of the population.

But if we didn't make that a "requirement" - we would have an easier time.

---------
Table 1. Percentage Saying "I know God exists and I have no doubts about it" by Nation in the 1991 International Social Survey


Percent
Rank

Philippines
86.2
1

Poland
66.3
2

United States
62.8
3

Northern Ireland
61.4
4

Ireland
58.7
5

Italy
51.4
6

Israel
43.0
7

Hungary
30.1
8

Austria
29.4
9

New Zealand
29.3
10


Table 3. Percentage Saying They Definitely Believe "The Bible is the actual word of God and it is to be taken literally, word for word," by Nation in the 1991 International Social Survey



Percent
Rank

Philippines
53.7
1

Poland
37.4
2

United States
33.5
3

Northern Ireland
32.7
4

Italy
27.0
5

Israel
26.7
6

Ireland
24.9
7

Slovenia
22.3
8

Hungary
19.2
9

Austria
12.7
10


http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/bishop_19_3.html

[cornermouse]

39. Driving off people who vote for your candidate is

foolish in the extreme. If you can't agree 100% at least you should show respect.

[BurtWorm]

3. The optimal words are "more fervently"

And the answer is no. Sorry.

[BlueEyedSon]

7. Quote on faith from Ron Suskind's "Without a Doubt"

"This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts," Bartlett went on to say. "He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence." Bartlett paused, then said, "But you can't run the world on faith."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/101704A.shtml

Fucking red states voted for POPE not for PRESIDENT. He's not supposed to be your spiritual leader, idiots!

Get your superstitions out of my government!

:puke:

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

12. Eat shit - I am a devout Catholic and I and everyone in my fam went Kerry

[BlueEyedSon]

16. Hey, what happened to civility? Too bad lack of it is not a "sin".

;)

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

24. Civility? It voted red

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

11. whatever

[BurtWorm]

19. Okay, I may be letting my anger over the election close my mind.

Let me try to open it a little.

Maybe your belief in the Virgin is of a different nature from your belief in evolution? I suppose there might be some mystical sense in which the Virgin was anunciated (wink, wink) and the result was a miracle working Son of God. In the universe in which evolution works, however, you must know that Virgins don't get anunciated and magic is strictly an illusion. What I was getting at before is that if you believe fervently in a magic universe, you probably cannot believe in one that obeys the laws of nature as we perceive them with anything resembling an equal amount of fervor.

Or can you?

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

21. Ah yes - very good - people cannot believe in science AND tenets of their

religion. I'm sick of trying to discuss things with children

[BurtWorm]

25. Not consistently. Can they?

Can you believe in both magic as reality and magic as illusion? I don't know. It doesn't seem likely.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

26. ok - have a nice day

[BurtWorm]

27. Thanks for answering the question.

;) (And believe me, you answwered it!)

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

28. yes - I'm going to go back to my magic

happily

[BurtWorm]

29. Abracadabra!

:hi:

[Cocoa]

4. bye bye to reality-based governing

:hi:

[caber09]

5. GOD GAYS GUNS

The election was tilted by religious zealots who fuck their altarboys, but are against gay marriage, who have never served the country, but love guns. Dying is the generation that saved the world, in charge are now the hippies/dodgers who became conservatives and the young who dont know what its like to sacrifice. We have become the religious fanatics our ancestors fled in Europe, we have become the zealots that were the Nazis, and the idolizers who were the Japanese...in a word after saving and changing the world, we have become the enemies weve defeated.

We have nothing to fear but fear itself...has become FEAR FEAR FEAR TERROR TERROR TERROR

America 2004:
male cheerleader=athlete,very macho, athlete =liberal pussy, not macho
intelligence = bad, ignorance= good
draft dodger - war hero, war hero- liberal whimp
druggy/alky= moral, combat vet, clean history= immoral
allies= saudi arabia vs allies= europe, canada, south korea etc
good on terror= love saudis weak on terror=never let saudis run usa

[VassarGrad]

6. War is Peace.

Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.

[bloom]

37. In the 1600s Puritans executed Quakers in Massachusetts

for being Quakers - and not thinking like Puritans.

And of course - there were all of those incidents with Native Americans and African Americans.

We have never been as great as we would like to think we've been.

[Village Idiot]

8. No one has called the USA

an enlightened nation for over 100 years! And for damn good reason!

[OnceAndFutureTruth]

9. How about we repackage the Enlightenment so it becomes palatable

to them? That probably sounds peculiar, but I'm serious. If we continue to loudly define half the nation as dumb (even if we truly believe this), are we going to get anywhere? Poople who are being attacked for being dumb are unlikely to listen to the points the attacker is making, no matter how valid those points may be.

These issues are so divisive: the progressives MUST find some way to get past them. The right has weekly access to a large proportion of the populace, in churches. What possible way can the left equalize this access? The only way, it seems to me, is to learn to use language in a way that makes sense to those that we are trying to persuade. How can Enlightenment values be presented in a way that makes sense to an Evangelical? I don't know, myself, but this is what we need to be looking at, imho.

I don't want to think the Enlightenment is dead. Long live the Enlightenment!

[BlueEyedSon]

15. Well, half the nation will always be "below average"

:)

How do you make Gay Marriage, Abortion and Evolution palatable to this lot? It can't be done. The right has has 30 years to frame the debate.

Abortion isn't "choice", it's "murder" for example (not unlike the phrase "death tax").

The problem is they vote lifestyle/culture/moral issues above economic ones.

[OnceAndFutureTruth]

17. But have we really tried to find a way to communicate?

Or have we just rolled over and given up when we have heard those terms? If we are truly so much smarter, then surely we can find a *new* way to reframe all that. Why just let the argument end with a term like "death tax", which is admittedly highly effective. Why not come up with yet a *new* term, that expresses what we want it too, and can also communicate effectively with those we want to reach? To communicate with these other people, we are going to have to understand them better.

We have *given* the right those 30 years to reframe the debate. We better start now on our side of it.

[Donkeyboy75]

32. Not true.

Half the nation will be below the median, not below average. I for one think that there are a lot of stupid fucks that put the average around the 35th percentile of intelligence.

Saying that you can't both have faith and be a scientist would certainly put one in the below category. :hi:

[BlueEyedSon]

33. On a pure Gaussian ("bell") curve, half are below the average.

Plus, I have not used the word "scientist" in this thread.

I maintain that one is faith-based or reason-based and that mixing the 2 will result in confusion.

[tngledwebb]

18. The evidence mounts.

In case you don't know, NYT is a subsidary of BushCo, and this is their 'liberal' slant to promote the Official Conspiracy Theory for Election 04. Ie it WAS a fair election, move along, nothing to see.

[BlueEyedSon]

38. Kick for the early birds

[Briar]

41. Oh dear

"many more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in Darwin's theory of evolution."

I wish he'd thought before writing that. One doesn't "believe" in evolution. It's a theory: one sets out to disprove it. It's valid only as long as it fits the facts. Virgin Birth and Creationism aren't theories - they demand total and unquestioning belief. Trying to disprove it would get one burned at the stake (and may do once again)! These are two totally different mindsets, and if the US is going to abandon critical reasoning and slump back into blind faith, that's a tragedy.