[Mb-civic] The timeless truth of creation - Jeff Jacoby - Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

The timeless truth of creation

By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist  |  October 2, 2005

HAVE YOU heard about Flying Spaghetti Monsterism? FSM is a 
four-month-old ''religion" founded on the belief that the universe was 
created by an invisible flying clump of spaghetti and meatballs. This 
blob of pasta, FSM's ''followers" say, uses its ''noodly appendage" to 
play an ongoing role in human affairs. For example, it tampers with 
carbon-dating tests to make the planet seem older than it is, so that 
any evidence of evolution is actually the work of the spaghetti monster.
FSM was concocted in June by Bobby Henderson, a recent college graduate 
with a degree in physics. When the Kansas Board of Education took up the 
question of teaching intelligent design as an alternative to Darwinian 
evolution, Henderson wrote an open letter (posted at www.venganza.org) 
demanding equal classroom time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism as well.

As religious spoofs go, it wasn't exactly Monty Python's ''Life of 
Brian," but it was good for a chuckle or two. No doubt that was all the 
reaction that Henderson was expecting. If so, he underestimated the 
eagerness of many Darwinists to paint supporters of intelligent design 
as either moronic Bible Belters or conniving religious fanatics. 
Henderson's ''religion" became a cult hit, promoted on other websites 
and covered with relish in the press. The Washington Post reprinted 
Henderson's letter verbatim. A New York Times story was headlined, ''But 
Is There Intelligent Spaghetti Out There?"

At least Henderson couched his disdain for intelligent design in humor. 
Other Darwinists, many steeped in ideological antipathy to religion, 
resort to insult and invective.

''It is absolutely safe to say," the Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins, a 
leading Darwinist, has written, ''that if you meet somebody who claims 
not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or 
insane." Liz Craig, a member of the board of Kansas Citizens for 
Science, summarized her public-relations strategy in February: ''Portray 
them" -- intelligent design advocates -- ''in the harshest light 
possible, as political opportunists, evangelical activists, ignoramuses, 
breakers of rules, unprincipled bullies, etc."

Ironically, Charles Darwin himself acknowledged that there could be 
reasonable challenges to his theory of natural selection -- including 
challenges from religious quarters. According to the sociologist and 
historian Rodney Stark, when ''The Origin of Species" first appeared in 
1859, the Bishop of Oxford published a review in which he acknowledged 
that natural selection was the source of variations within species, but 
rejected Darwin's claim that evolution could account for the appearance 
of different species in the first place. Darwin read the review with 
interest, acknowledging in a letter that ''the bishop makes a very 
telling case against me."

How things have changed. When John Scopes went on trial in Tennessee in 
1925, religious fundamentalists fought to keep evolution out of the 
classroom because it was at odds with a literal reading of the Biblical 
creation story. Today, Darwinian fundamentalists fight to keep the 
evidence of intelligent design in the diversity of life on earth out of 
the classroom, because that would be at odds with a strictly materialist 
view of the world. Eighty years ago, the thought controllers wanted no 
Darwin; today's thought controllers want only Darwin. In both cases, the 
dominant attitude is authoritarian and closed-minded -- the opposite of 
the liberal spirit of inquiry on which good science depends.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/10/02/the_timeless_truth_of_creation/
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