More than anything, the debate offered Republicans voters, and the
nation, a chance to see the cast of candidates side by side for the
first time. The debate was at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library,
with Nancy Reagan sitting in the audience.
There were revealing moments that went past the well-rehearsed lines
by all the candidates. Three of the candidates Mr. Huckabee,
Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and Representative Tom Tancredo of
Colorado raised their hands to signal that they did not believe in evolution.
NY Times, May 4, 2007
Today, not only in peasant homes but also in city skyscrapers, there
lives alongside of the twentieth century the tenth or the thirteenth.
A hundred million people use electricity and still believe in the
magic power of signs and exorcisms. The Pope of Rome broadcasts over
the radio about the miraculous transformation of water into wine.
Movie stars go to mediums. Aviators who pilot miraculous mechanisms
created by man's genius wear amulets on their sweaters. What
inexhaustible reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance, and
savagery! Despair has raised them to their feet, fascism has given
them a banner. Everything that should have been eliminated from the
national organism in the form of cultural excrement in the course of
the normal development of society has now come gushing out from the
throat; capitalist society is puking up the undigested barbarism.
Such is the psychology of National Socialism.
Leon Trotsky, "What is National Socialism", 1933
Last night I attended a terrifically enlightening and entertaining
lecture titled "What do Creationists Believe About Human Evolution"
at the Museum of Natural History by Eugenie Scott, the executive
director of the National Center for Science Education.
It gave me a chance to hook up with Marxmailer Mike Friedman who is
working on a PhD in evolutionary biology at City University in New
York out of the Molecular Systematics Laboratory at the Museum. His
thesis involves a study of the Coral Snake and its non-venomous
relatives from the standpoint of "co-evolution".
I first met Mike about 20 years ago when we were both involved with
Nicaragua Solidarity in New York. He had left the Trotskyist movement
in order to enjoy a more productive personal and political life, as
had I and thousands of other ex-Trotskyists.
Although I had a superficial understanding of creationist "science",
the talk really gave me a much better idea of what it was about and
how important it was for people like Eugenie Scott to challenge it.
As she put it, if they were simply about propounding theology, nobody
would really care. But when they try to represent themselves as doing
science, they must be answered.
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2007/05/18/creationist-science/
--
www.marxmail.org
