Sneaking Intelligent Design into Schools
By Bruce Walker (08/09/08)
Bobby Jindal, who may well be the next Ronald Reagan, has cruised through the Louisiana Legislature a new law which will allow schools in Louisiana to use the best materials available in teaching children about such hot topics for Leftists as Darwinian evolution and global warming. The ACLU and other predictable enemies of religion have already begun hissing at the new statute, warning that any attempt to introduce - gasp! - the Bible into public education will be met with a legal blitzkrieg.
Jindal, an exceptionally gifted biologist who also was responsible for Louisiana’s university system at a remarkably young age, knows much more about both public education and the gaping holes in officially sanctioned Leftist “science” than any of his critics. The “trick” used to make this bill constitutionally valid was to allow schools to use the best material available and to engage in lively intellectual debate. The Left simply wants schools to be a “re-education camp” in which any concept of Judeo-Christian values are purged utterly. Interestingly, the very term “re-education camp” was invented by the Nazis and the very dogma which the Nazis slavishly worshipped was Darwinian evolution. Expecting Leftists to stop fighting simply because they are intellectually and morally wrong is foolish: The attacks on any sensible law that allows open discussion in schools of different theories will continue, no matter what.
Unless…Unless the modern Nazis who want to re-educate notions of a Blessed Creator out of our young meet a more potent foe. How could we do that? Here is an idea. Recognize that the objection which ACLU has is not to religion in the public arena, but rather the Judeo-Christian theological and moral tradition being expressed in the public arena. It does not file lawsuits, for example, to prevent Native American mythology from being studied in the classroom or to keep students being assigned to write essays on Voltaire or Buddha. Pre-Columbian pantheism, the militant atheism of the French Enlightenment or even the lackadaisical atheism of the Siddhartha are not the enemies of the Left. The enemy is the God of Abraham. This bigotry also ties in closely to the Leftist hatred of Judaism and of Christianity, which restrains them from wholesale social engineering.
But the Left also has a glaring blind spot. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” – that ancient Arabian axiom is the perfect explanation for the love affair that Leftists have with radical Islam. The Soviets, though formally atheists, were potent supporters of Islam since the very first years of the USSR. The Nazis and also the Fascists supported and were supported by radical Islam. Why? Radical Islam has the same visceral hatred of modern, civilized Judeo-Christian society that Leftists have always felt. This has led to some remarkably inconsistent behavior by the Left.
European nations have begun to allow Sharia to be used as a component of family law, when the couple are Muslims. Feminists in America are extraordinarily mousy in squeaking the tiniest objections to the savage, misogynist misdeeds that are pandemic in radical Islam. When Moslems want tax dollars for foot baths and similar public subsidizing of their religion, where are the giant headlines in the New York Times? The silence of the Left to the aggressive insistence by radical Islam that it be given state sanctioned status in America and in Europe is a truly deafening quietude.
So why not piggy-back on Islam? Do Moslems believe in Darwin? Did Allah create the world and all its creatures, human and animal? Is the God of Abraham not also, albeit in a form not recognized by most Christians and Jews, the God of Mohammed? How do Muslim parents feel about Darwin being taught as the only explanation of the origin of man? How do Muslim children feel about being compelled to sit in a classroom, lectured by an agnostic, using texts written by an atheist who insists that not only does Allah not exist, but that real education prevents us from even contemplating the existence of Allah?
How culturally insensitive these Leftists are! How bigoted Darwinians are against Islam! Pity the poor young Moslems being forced to swallow as “truth” those doctrines absolutely contrary to the Koran! Allah did not create the universe, they say? Then “they” are guilty of hate crimes against the Muslim community. The state requires those who believe in the Prophet to be intolerantly instructed by militantly atheistic educational systems? Then the state persecutes Islam!
How would Leftists respond? Would they wage rhetorical war against Islam? Do any Leftists seem that brave? Would they allow Islamic Creationism to be taught – as part of their “cultural awareness” – but deny Judeo-Christian Creationism to be taught? The truth, of course, is that Christianity and Judaism are infinitely more tolerant and intellectually serious about evolution than Islam. Intelligent Design, after all, is not a literal reading of Torah. It is simply the concept that evolution itself was guided by a greater intelligence – an idea that would hardly have troubled Plato or Aristotle. It is the very intellectual merit of Intelligent Design that horrifies Leftists: God could well be real. Understanding, as a matter of the mind, that God can exist in a rational universe has proven vital to the progress and decency of mankind. It is something worth our battle.
So while Governor Jindal presses true science, inquiry without bigotry for or against the idea of God, let us begin to challenge Moslems to stand with us to keep Allah, the Creator, at least present in our public education systems. If Moslems really believe Islam, they will stand with serious Jews and Christians on this issue. People of a Book, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and a few others, were always given an intermediate status between Moslems and atheists. Moslems are bound by their faith to resist, first and foremost, atheism.
Will the atheists of Leftism stand up as firmly against Moslems as they do against calm, reasonable and good-spirited Christians and Jews? It is an issue worth testing. It is worth testing not only to stop Darwinism as a new, awful religion, but because the very willingness of too many Christians and Jews to give up on God impresses Moslems – the wrong way. How can Moslems believe that Jews and Christians have religious faith when so many cave in so quickly on an issue as salient as creation itself? Once Moslems see that modernity need not mean the death of God, then they may begin to view Christianity and Judaism more benignly. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” On the issue of totalitarian Darwinism, Islam and its followers may well be friends indeed.
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