Dinosaurs, evangelicals and the state By Justin Webb BBC Washington correspondent Should the views of the religious right, many of whom are Republican party supporters, be adopted by the US government? In Washington, Justin Webb considers the implications and asks whether politics and religion make a good mix. Should dinosaurs and religion mix? We are having dinner at the house of some friends who are supporters of President Bush. Their five-year-old son, a classmate of our children, takes me upstairs to see his collection of dinosaurs. Little Meade is a passionate palaeontologist and this is a land of plenty so the room heaves with prehistoric life. I am suitably impressed, but unknown to Meade I am not here to admire the bone structure of the dinosaurs. I am in this room on assignment, because in modern America Meade's dinosaurs are at the heart of the travails of a political party and I need to find out something about Meade's parents which will affect our relationship. I need to know what they told him about when the dinosaurs existed. Millions of Americans, most of them supporters of the Republican party, believe that the world was created only a few thousand years ago as per the account in Genesis and the dinosaurs can only date from then, so the Tyrannosaurus Rex romped around with Adam and Eve. In other words these Americans, heirs to every scientific advance in history, deny rational accounts of how the world came to exist. And Meade's parents - I know his mum teaches Sunday school - might be among them. I put the question to Meade: "When did the dinosaurs live?" According to some, the age of the Grand Canyon is open to debate There is an agonising pause as he considers it. American children are wonderfully earnest and Meade is not going to be rushed. Eventually he says it is in a book his Dad bought him. We hunt the tome, find it, open the page and behold a diagram which has been explained to Meade. It all floods back. The dinosaurs, he informs me with great authority and aplomb, are millions and millions and millions of years old. I could have hugged him and his parents; we are, after all, inhabiting the same mental planet. But many modern members of the Republican party, including some in positions of great power, do not seem to be living on that planet. Central question As the nation recovers this weekend from the worldly pleasures of the wonderfully inclusive festival of Thanksgiving, a festival which can appeal equally to atheist and Bible-basher, it seems to me that the central political question facing everyone here, far more important than any to do with Iraq or the deficit or Guantanamo Bay, is whether or not the Republican party, after decades of flirting, has finally got into bed with an irrational sect. Describe an American as a Roman Catholic and you say nothing about his or her political and social beliefs. In the state of Kansas they have succeeded in getting the science syllabus altered so that teachers can tell their pupils that God made everything in its current form Left-wing flower-power Democrats can be Catholics, so can right-wing socially conservative Republicans. American Jews, Hindus, even Muslims are not politically defined by their faith. But evangelical Christians, operating inside the Republican party, have coalesced their energies and their resources around a set of beliefs on homosexuality, abortion and Darwinism which place them on the authoritarian right of every political question and at odds with science. They are campaigning, for instance, to tell visitors to the Grand Canyon that this wondrous sight is not millions of years old, which it is. Backlash In the state of Kansas they have succeeded in getting the science syllabus altered so that teachers can tell their pupils that God made everything in its current form - a change the National Academy of Sciences said "would put the students of Kansas at a competitive disadvantage as they took their place in the world." This is serious stuff and Republicans who are not evangelical Christians have in recent weeks been organising a fight-back. They have noticed two things. Number one, that the zealots are spending more energy fighting Charles Darwin than cutting taxes, and number two - and this is much more important - that the zealots outside Kansas are not receiving the support of the nation at large. Did the board lose the election because they opposed evolution? In the town of Dover, Pennsylvania, the local school board managed this year to get warmed up, creationism infiltrated into biology classes, and here is what happened. A couple of weeks ago all eight members of the board who were up for re-election lost their seats. "If there is a disaster in your area," the tele-evangelist Pat Robertson told the people of Dover, "don't turn to God - you just rejected Him from your city." Mr Robertson is an important man: the former Attorney General John Ashcroft teaches at his university, and his views are sought on Supreme Court candidates and foreign affairs. Republican doubts But should those views govern the Republican party? Many members think not, particularly since President Bush is himself in such dire trouble now. He famously told an interviewer that when deciding to go to war in Iraq he listened to the authority not of his dad but of a Higher Father. And, Republicans are daring to think, if not quite say, out loud: "Look where that got him." From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 26 November, 2005 at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. 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Well, if we try to keep the religious folks out of politics, shouldn't we also keep any and all special-interest groups out of politics? I mean, religious views are nothing more than special-interests, aren't they? What's the difference between the political powers of, say, abortion rights activists, surely a special interest group, and the "religious right"? Religious people are, like many people in the world, trying to get their own voices heard in the world of politics and government. Why not? If we don't let them voice their opinions via the vote, shouldn't we also disallow atheists and agnostics? Baron Max
You have a point Baron, but politics should be about politics regardless of the past time of the politician. No special interest group should be mixed with politics. Imagine a country run by Greenpeace? I even agree with Greenpeace on most things, but running a country, I don't think so. People should try to run a country based on politics alone. In a modern country like the US that should be true enough. It doesn't matter if the politicians are religious or not, but they should understand they need to separate the two. I'm not even convinced the republicans are doing this because of their religion, I think they are playing off of the publics high Christian values in order to get away with lots of things, such as gaining support for the war, greed and self interest.
I concur. I don't really believe that special interest groups, religious or otherwise, should have any business in any government. None of that stuff belongs in governments as they should be choices made by individual citizens and are not really important enough, in my opinoin, to have any sort of pull in a logical government. That may be some of the reason why most, if not all to a certain degree, governments are illogical.
Special interest groups including religious ones do have a place in our society, as Baron Max says. The real question to me is, does the Republican party benefit from courting the fundamentally challenged? In the short term, it did help them appear to win two very close elections, and they have been high on that wave of power for some time now, but it's wearing thin. Most of America does not share the views of the so-called religious right. I don't think Bush and Co. even share those views, as evidenced by the corruption, dirty politics, warmongering, and war profiteering they exhibit. There will be a heavy price to pay for them, and the Republican party will need to retool in a more moderate direction if they expect to be in power in the long term.
Not at all. Politics IS special-interest, supposedly getting your special interest heard among all the special interests out there, and balancing these minority interests against the majority interest, like roads and banking regulation. What we need to keep out of politics is extremism. I group the radical environmentalists who burn SUV dealerships, the hard-core evangelicals who want to outlaw contraception, and the business-lobbyists who want all restrictions removed from business along with their tax obligation - they are all the same. They are extremists, and when you align yourself with an extremist ideology you by definition put yourself on a limb where there is very little room for maneuver. You ally yourself with a questionable logic, and you put yourself at odds with a sizeable proportion of the people. We've had lots of debates here about the merits of capitalism, socialism, communism, fascism and so on. I suggest that the best society is one that combines attributes of all of these without allowing any one ideology to become pre-eminent.
While I agree with you and with you idea of what "extremism" means, there are many who don't agree. And thus we're right back to square one ...which is "special interest groups". And if we outlaw one, then we must outlaw all of them. Then I'm thinking ......okay, let's do that, let's outlaw ALL special interest groups! Now ....just how do we enforce that rule/law? Does that mean that people can't have gatherings at their own homes, for example, to discuss political issues and make decisions of how they will vote? I've said it before, .....the way to do this, to keep the politicians from gaining so much power, personal power, is to limit their time in office! The crookedest man on Earth couldn't harm too much if he's only in power for four years. How much damage can he actually do ...even if no one catches him taking bribes, etc? And yet we allow them to stay in office for gazillions of terms, gain tremendous personal power and let them steal us blind ....and do little or nothing about it. TERM LIMITS FOR ALL POLITICIANS!! Baron Max
i didn't read all of the foregoing. as to the question "do politics and religion mix?" my opinion is: the government must conduct it's bussiness as if god does not exist. on the other hand the government must consider religion as being invented by society to save itself.
How can you ask (and expect) someone to stop believing in god? That's nothing more than like asking someone to forget that their married and have children when the work ...how can anyone do that? So on one hand, they conduct business while pretending that they don't believe in god, but at the same time, they give credit to god and religion for the society for which they work and do business? Wow, you sure expect a lot out of government workers, don't you? Baron Max
Yeah, sure! It means how *I* feel about some issue! If others don't feel the same, then their position on the issue is not "opinion", but stupidity and ignorance! How'd I do? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! But even so, you still should try to answer the guestions/points that I raised. Why didn't you? Is it because you've not fully considered you stance and don't have the answers? Baron Max
"Do Politics and Religion Mix? " Have you ever heard of Power Politics and Machiavelli. He lived at the very height of “religion.” Power Politics has gone far beyond anything Machiavelli could have imagined but today we simple call it "politics." But it is just religion evolved. This advanced Power Politics evolved WITH religion to be today’s politics so how can anyone separate the word politics from religion? What kept all the pervert priest hidden for thousands of years – was it religion or politics? Politics and religion, they have always been the same. And this Power Politics makes certain that the scriptures keep it that way.
