Last week, I spent most of my evening hours lying in bed. With three concerts and the final performance of Hedwig approaching, I knew the weekend was going to be hellacious (P.S. I was right), so I guess I was trying to store up some energy. Or maybe I’m just getting old and fat and lazy. Who can say?
Anyway, lying there cuddled up with J-no and the hounds, I got to watch most of the PBS series Evolution. Eight hours later, I can truth fully say that the series didn’t live up to its trailer–but of course, how many features do? It was good, yes; great, nyet. It was all pitched a little low, I think. I’d heard most of that back in high school.
The one exception to this intellectual mediocrity was the segment devoted to faith and science. As a product of PBS, I’d have expected the series to come down pretty heavily on the “evolution” side of the argument. Interestingly enough, though, the bulk of the piece was devoted to Christians–particularly young, intelligent, devoutly Christian college students attempting to reconcile their studies in geology, biology, and anthropology with creationism and their own belief systems. The producers really seemed to identify with these academics, searching for a place to put their faith in a world filled with godless material facts.
Admittedly, this made me uneasy. Like a couple of you out there, I was raised Southern Baptist. Luckily, my family belonged to a pretty liberal congregation (no, that’s not a contradiction in terms), so I didn’t suffer quite as many scars as I could’ve, had I been raised in a church full of bible-thumpers. That’s not to say my relationship with Christianity was an easy one, though: to this day, the whole concept of organized religion makes me kinda queasy, and fundamentalists–with their literal interpretations of the King James Version of the bible, itself a translation many, many times over–drive me straight up the wall. So as I’m watching this segment of Evolution, these people filled with both scientific knowledge and blind faith, I notice my body tensing up: my fingers are curled into fists, my shoulders are flexed, my jaw is clenched. I like to think I can handle anything, but apparently, some things hit a little too close to home.
I like that, though. Although watching the piece made me uncomfortable, it was a pretty nifty experience–as I said, about the only one worth remembering. It put me on the defensive, made me think. In a good way.
So it was with interest that I clicked on a banner this morning, placed on the New York Times website. It read: A Critique of PBS’s Evolution. Little did I know, the sponsoring organization–The Discovery Institute–is in no way related to the much-revered, science-oriented Discovery Channel. No, the Institute is essentially a conservative Christian scientific think-tank (there’s your contradiction, Mary), and their criticisms, while technically grounded in science, belie a pronounced anxiety toward Darwin. Frankly, these folks can’t even acknowledge the rationale behind evolution–a sure sign that they’re fishing for a counter-theory that might or might not have any grounding in material fact.
Now, I’m sure lots of people–Christians and Hindus and atheists alike–had issues with the series. And although PBS is commonly seen as a media “good guy,” I know that like any corporate entity, it’s faulty. But these guys at the The Discovery Institute… They’re just plain creepy. Propaganda disguised as science.
Of course, that’s what the Christian Right says about evolutionism.
Lucky for us, there are more than a few folks out there ready to do battle with ’em.
sturtle [dot] com 