Now, about that "evolution" argument...

OK, so I got lazy and took last week off. It's true. I've been involved in a couple of on-line arguments, and I've become addicted to an evil, destructive drug known as "Fallout 3." (Trust me, it's better than crack, and you don't have that whole pesky "you're under arrest" thing to worry about...)

Well, I was casting about for a new point to annoy people with, and realized that a guy named Brian Byrne made the point much better than I ever could.

(OK, maybe not "better," but at least "more succinctly." I mean, really, I have this unfortunate habit of rambling on for paragraphs at a time, simply because I'm in love with the sound of my own voice. I should be ashamed. I'm not, of course. But I should be.)

So I'm going to be lazy this week, too, and reprint his entire entry, fully attributed, of course.

The Holocaust AND Darwin in the Same Week?!?

The Vatican chipped a wee bit from the religious ignorance boulder yesterday when they acknowledged that Darwin was right about that whole evolution thing. In doing so, they officially gave the kiss-off to Intelligent Design, more or less dismissing it out of hand, as any thinking person has already done.

I'm not Catholic, and I don't want to fall into the trap of gushing on and on about how something I'm not now, nor have ever been a part of, is sooooo much better than what's closer at hand. That said, it strikes me as particularly powerful, the degree to which the Vatican seems to have actual scholars actually thinking about these issues, as opposed to the American fundamentalist Protestant approach of creating a think tank to generate misinformation that flies directly in the face of painfully obvious science.

Granted, the Vatican’s scholarship only goes so far in the face of their continued anti-straight-male rights positions, and I also seem to remember something about a coverup and some kids? Something. Still, let’s give them credit for cracking a book.

Another important point that’s brought up in the article:

Professor [Marc Leclerc, who teaches natural philosophy at the Gregorian University] said that too many opponents of Darwin – above all Creationists – had mistakenly claimed that his theories were "totally incompatible with a religious vision of reality," as did proponents of Intelligent Design.

I would say I’m baffled by the fact that nobody in the American Taliban has stood up and acknowledged this idea (really, could all-powerful God have NOT created things He knew would evolve?), but doing so would remove a hugely popular bludgeon from their arsenal in the ongoing, completely fabricated culture war. The idea that Christian ideals and ideas are being persecuted by a callous Liberal Elite Establishment is key to keeping the wedge between fundamentalists and everyone else firmly in place. They keep their people feeling alienated, their alienation unifies them, and they flock to the polls when another W shows up on election day.