Posted by
Jack Fisher on Saturday, August 30, 2008 12:03:40 PM
When Thomas Jefferson wrote his famous "wall of separation" line in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut the United States was the most secular nation in the world. Jefferson along with the rest of the founding fathers, some of whom were Christian and others of whom were Deists, saw the importance of keeping faith out of politics. But beyond the political arena, they saw the importance of keeping faith from intruding upon reason and how it should not be used as a way to circumvent logical thinking. The Constitution gaurenteed freedom of speech and freedom of religion. You're free to believe whatever you want so long as that belief does not intrude upon the natural rights of others.
But I've found in my experience that sometimes beliefs are taken too seriously and used to justify dogmatic morals based on old dogma. These irrational, misguided, and oftentimes authoritarian beliefs can lead to bigotry, racism, sexism, and homophobia. It crosses the line from being just an opinion, which is perfectly fine in a free society, to being an agenda, which is not.
Back in October 2006 then governor Sarah Palin of Alaska publically stated in the Anchorage Daily News that creationism should be taught in science classrooms along with evolution. Even though the Supreme Court has ruled numerous times that doing so violated the seperation of church and state, she and people like her won't give up even though evidence is not on their side. The whole concept of it being "just a theory" is a gross misue of the word theory in a scientfic context. The American Heritage Dictionary defines the word theory as follows:
A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts
or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is
widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural
phenomena.
Evolution has been tested exhaustively and creationism has not. Visit the site www.talkorigins.com to see just a small collection of that evidence and see for yourself just how irrational this policiy the now Vice Presidential candidate's views are.
So why does this matter? Why should it matter that Palin believes the theory of evolution is just as possible as being poofed into existance by an all powerful diety? Because beliefs are a reflection of character in that those who let their beliefs in religous dogma guide their decision-making process are more likely to abandon reason. And in a world as complex as ours, reason must come before faith especially in the highest levels of power.