Thomas Friedman has got it right. The world is getting flatter, but not because of globalization. The erosion of the wall separating church and state is threatening to take us back to a time when common belief was in a flat earth.
The assault on government by the religious has escalated in the last few years, essentially because this administration is viewed as supportive of religion's role in government--a necessary position for a Republican trying to get through a bitter primary against a war hero.
The decades old battle over the teaching of evolution in the schools is being refought, at the very moment in history that our Supreme Court is mulling over the constitutionality of displays of the Ten Commandments in government venues. Creationism has received a reality TV makeover and has been repackaged as Intelligent Design.
Some may view this as benign acquiescence to the majority religion in the country, but it is extremely important that we understand what we are giving up when we give dogmatic belief and scientific theory equal footing.
The discipline of science requires replicatable proof, derived from experiment and observation, before we are permitted to accept any theory as a basis for further scientific inquiry. Religion requires faith in laws that have not been proven. Unproven scientific theory is modified over time, with the introduction of new information. Religious belief requires that people modify their premises to conform with doctrine.
Science applies the same rules to everyone, and everybody can participate, as long as the rules remain intact. When you devalue a scientific theory like evolution, which has not yet been conclusively proven, by equating it with a religious "theory" like creationism, which can never be proven, you create two separate sets of rules. For a democracy, there is nothing more dangerous than that, because the only thing left to settle the argument is force.
This is what came to mind when I read the recent New York Times article On Autism's Cause, It's Parents vs. Research.
Here, we clearly have a subset of the population that has taken on faith the idea that thimerisol preservative in childhood vaccinations is the cause of autism. These parents, based upon their own observations, which suggest a causal link because of the timing of the development of the disorder, believe in the face of all scientific evidence to the contrary.
If policy is altered to conform with their beliefs, we will be taking a great step backwards in modern health. However, if someone should undertake a true scientific study to determine the cause of autism, perhaps, we will take a great step forward with development of treatment or even a cure.
Will we walk a flat earth, or sail over the horizon to a yet-unseen future? Believe or explore?
