Battleangel

Source: The Guardian

Creationists, pro-lifers and conservatives now pose a serious threat to research and science teaching in the US.

They only wanted to air a theory known as Intelligent Design. ID holds that the living cell is “irreducibly complex”, like a mousetrap. Remove the spring from a mousetrap and it isn’t just an inferior mousetrap; it isn’t a mousetrap at all. It had to have been created by an intelligent designer. It was the same, they said, for cells, and so life must have been designed by some kind of intelligence. Critics called this “stealth creationism” - religious dogma masquerading as science - but the ID proponents got their way, thanks partly to wording in President Bush’s new education bill.

Or maybe you were an Aids activist, elated by the president’s unexpected (and genuinely revolutionary) announcement in the State of the Union address of $15bn in funding for fighting the epidemic worldwide - and then surprised to find that only around 10% was destined for the Global Aids Fund, while the rest would be funnelled through US agencies, where it is more likely to be accessible to American abstinence-only groups campaigning against condoms …

John Marburger, Bush’s new science advisor, was informed that the role would no longer be a cabinet position. The White House had decided that “they don’t need that level of scientific input,” Allan Bromley, the first President Bush’s science advisor, said glumly at the time …

Critics speak with similar alarm about other theories that have been getting a new airing recently, on Aids and abstinence and global warming, for example - theories presented as rival scientific ideas asking only for a “fair hearing”. “It’s a very good rhetorical strategy, because it appeals to the very American sense of openness and fair play,” says Miller. “But there’s something called the scientific process, you know - involving open publication, criticism, and rejection of things that aren’t convincing. We don’t teach both sides of the germ theory of disease and faith-healing. Evolution isn’t in the classroom because of political action or court decisions. It’s in the classroom because it made it through, it stood up to scrutiny and became the scientific consensus. It fought the battle and won.”

Its 0930 in the morning and I already wish to kill someone. Argh! What about having religion classified as a mental disorder once and for all? Does no one have the courage to step forward?!
Reasoning like this really annoys me. I’m a firm advocate of technocracy myself, i.e. the rule of science (government by technical experts), where decisions are made by experts and not by the use of some flimsy religious or political ideology. What is happening here is the exact opposite - idiocracy.

Idiocracy - Neologism. From Gr. idiotes (layman) + kratia (rule). Literally, rule by laymen. Idiocracy denotes government by those who lack specialized education and training. It is not meant to imply a lack of intelligence.

So, when do we liberate the US?