Monday, October 31, 2005
Fundamentalists Embrace the Post Modern
Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, Linda Doherty quotes Christian educators from down under as saying no approach to science is "value-neutral" and that both Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and intelligent design "have their own strong ideological foundations."
It seems like only yesterday that those on the cultural right, including Christian fundamentalists, we decrying post-modern scholars for their assertion that all knowledge claims are arbitrary, and that no one is ultimately more objective than any other. In those days, the right was convinced that there really is such an animal as "absolute truth."
Today, however, we find these same forces locked in a passionate embrace with Post Modern thinking. Intelligent design, they say, may not be value neutral, but then neither is science. Each are based on ideology. There's no way of determining the truth in any objective sense. So, we might as well teach both.
Now, Red State Rabble is not one of those who reject Post Modern thinking out of hand. We tend to agree that what we see is influenced by how we see it. We also believe that cultural habits, ideas and customs help shape our knowledge -- and that goes for science, too.
Even so, science has something else going for it that we should not lose sight of: it's evidence based. It tests its hypotheses against the natural world.
That testing of hypotheses against the natural world is something that intelligent design can't do. The worst part about ID isn't that it's not value neutral. It's that it's valueless.
It seems like only yesterday that those on the cultural right, including Christian fundamentalists, we decrying post-modern scholars for their assertion that all knowledge claims are arbitrary, and that no one is ultimately more objective than any other. In those days, the right was convinced that there really is such an animal as "absolute truth."
Today, however, we find these same forces locked in a passionate embrace with Post Modern thinking. Intelligent design, they say, may not be value neutral, but then neither is science. Each are based on ideology. There's no way of determining the truth in any objective sense. So, we might as well teach both.
Now, Red State Rabble is not one of those who reject Post Modern thinking out of hand. We tend to agree that what we see is influenced by how we see it. We also believe that cultural habits, ideas and customs help shape our knowledge -- and that goes for science, too.
Even so, science has something else going for it that we should not lose sight of: it's evidence based. It tests its hypotheses against the natural world.
That testing of hypotheses against the natural world is something that intelligent design can't do. The worst part about ID isn't that it's not value neutral. It's that it's valueless.
