Wednesday, November 24, 2004
Guest Rant
While we're busy with "real life" we thought we'd share this contribution from a local musician:
In Cobb County, Georgia, the school board is mired in an ugly court case with the ACLU over a sticker, a parental advisory label of sorts, on the covers of high school biology textbooks: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." What they really wanted to say was "Science is a bunch of hooey."
A theory is a widely accepted explanation of observable or measurable principles in the world. It is used to explain the relationships between facts. Theories are considered valid until proven wrong. When a scientist promulgates a new theory, all the other the other scientists get really jealous and try to disprove it. If they can disprove someone else's theory, they are eligible for grant money.
We are all familiar with Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. No one has been able to disprove it because it is too hard to understand. He used very complex mathematics (cipherin') to prove, among other things, that nothing moves faster than the speed of light in a vacuum and that in Cobb County "everyone is your mother's second cousin." (e=mc2)
In the Bible belt, a lot of parents don't like Darwinism. They prefer the creation story from the book of Genesis. The book of Genesis should be studied in school...in English class. One can find the book of Genesis, as well as other selections from the Old Testament in any good anthology of world literary masterpieces. It is always "in the beginning", before The Iliad, before The Aeneid and before The Divine Comedy, even though the part where the second word of every sentence is "begot" gets a little tedious. (Scholars cut this some slack because Peter Roget didn't publish his first Thesaurus until 1852.) The book of Genesis, like all literary works has to be considered within its historical context. In biblical times, before the theory of germs and disease, the only way to prevent leprosy was to practice abstinence. (Zen koan of the day: "How do you practice nothing?") It would be thousands of years before a Polish astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus, published his theory of the solar system. (The earth and the other planets revolve around the sun and if you are on the Cobb County School Board, your head is up Uranus.)
Despite its scientific naivite', the book of Genesis and in fact, the entire Old Testament, is a great read. It has everything one would want in a great screenplay: nudity, falls from grace, murder, triumph over adversity and awesome special effects. It's no wonder that Charlton Heston jumped at the chance to star in "The Ten Commandments" and turned down a role in "The Adventures of the Compassionate Buddha."
Charles Darwin's "The Origin of the Species" is also a great read. It too has its moments of tedium: "Australopithecus afarensis begot Australopithecus africanus who begot Australopithecus robustus who begot Australopithecus boisei who begot homo habilis who begot homo erectus who begot Homo sapiens sapiens (modern humans) and homo sapiens neandertalensis. (Ron Artest)" It also tells a compelling story of how the genes of an organism can mutate and recombine over eons to produce a new and improved species. Agricultural scientists at Georgia Tech use these principles every day to develop new strains of peanuts that are resistant to disease and to ensure that each generation of sheep are even sexier than their parents. The theory of evolution helps explain why Komodo dragons only exist on a few Indonesian islands and helps pharmacologists develop too few new flu vaccines every year. Someday it might even explain why there are more three legged dogs on front porches in Marietta than anywhere else in the world.
Please feel free to forward this to anyone with the possible exception of the Cobb County School Board.
