We Respect ID-Proponents, but Cannot Endorse ID

We Respect ID-Proponents, but Cannot Endorse ID

I want to know why the religious right is afraid.

Hundreds of years ago, when monotheism was a glimmer in the eyes of revolutionaries, they were afraid. They vandalized temples and murdered clergy, terrorizing a Pagan majority that, to be fair, had marginalized the upstarts.

They are still afraid, even now that Paganism is marginalized and the aforementioned guerrilla tactics, unused. Every movement to add to their lives is seen as a threat to their lives. Offer them the opportunity to know and live among stable same-sex couples and their children, and they insist that their families will self-destruct from proximity. Offer them the chance to choose not to have an abortion, and they will panic at the inevitable concession: that they must allow others to choose to have them. Give their children descriptions of the natural world as we have observed it, and they wail that the spiritual world is being squashed out of reality.

Get over it, religious right-wingers. We aren't trying to get rid of you. Truth is, we couldn't if we tried. You outnumber us socially and politically. You control more money. Your children outnumber our children and, even after a generation of conversions, your side will still be bulkier than ours. Most importantly, Pagans teach tolerance. We welcome the diversity your existence brings. We are not trying to stomp you into extinction.

What we are trying to do is live in relative harmony and allow everyone that intangible treasure that you so dearly want, but so begrudgingly give: Freedom.

Freedom is knowledge. We know that the most plausible scientific theory that applies to the origin of our species is evolution. We also know that evolution doesn't prove or disprove God. Therefore, intellectually speaking, evolution has nothing to do with God. We want to share this knowledge with our children and, because we want to give freedom to all, with your children as well.

We also want to instill a curiosity that isn't fostered by concrete fact. We want the children of the world to stand tip-toe on the knowledge of yesterday and catch a glimpse of the discoveries of tomorrow.

Above all, we want our children to be safe, certain and sane.

Intelligent Design steps on the toes of freedom. It seeks to discredit observations by minimizing their value in the real world. It seeks to drag God into a subject that wasn't addressing Him (or Her), essentially calling for divine interruption. It crushes curiosity. And, it has the potential of biasing children against one another, laying a foundation for discrimination and violence.

We cannot tell our children that evolution holds no sway. We have seen bacteria evolve beneath the microscope. We know it happens. We have seen genetic mutation cause changes in populations of animals. We have followed the fossil record like a dotted line, using our own intelligence to fill in the gaps. (A thousand lashes to the “missing links” who died under conditions that weren't favorable to fossilization. It is, after all, their fault that gaps exist.) We cannot tell our children to ignore knowledge.

We cannot tell our children that God belongs in science class, any more than we can instruct them to assign emotional value to numbers. Just as mathematics, with its cold, hard facts and strict formulae, leaves little room for the application of love and hate, the scientific focus on measurable phenomena makes it mutually exclusive to theology. As our children become adults, their knowledge will be colored by their emotions and values. However, we cannot expect them to understand the boundaries between subjects if we blur them so early.

We cannot tell our children that the answer to unanswered questions is “God.” The idea that science cannot answer a question, simply because it has not answered it yet, cripples young minds. We do not know what causes Crohn's Disease, how to cure AIDS or what lies at the center of a proton. That does not mean that God causes Crohn's, only God can cure AIDS, and God is at the center of protons. Filling in blanks in this way encourages children to stop looking for answers.

We cannot tell our children that one God is better than another. We cannot endorse any Higher Power over any other. To do so is effectively dividing classrooms into “right” and “wrong” sides. It is condemnation to those presumed “wrong,” and has the potential to scar all children in an irreversible way. In order to avoid this, we must abbreviate Intelligent Design: A Higher Power or Powers created life in some way. This statement cannot even be classified as a hypothesis, as it is completely untestable, let alone a theory.

Let's be honest, religious right. You aren't worried that your children will find out about science. You aren't even contesting the evidence of evolution as we have observed it. What's really bothering you? What are you really afraid of? In your mind's eye, you may see the homosexual family across the street as a threat, but they have never demanded that you give up a relationship that they feel is abhorrent. Do you see Pagans as militants who would destroy the church your ancestors built? Take a clearer look at us. When we say we value freedom, we mean yours, too.