Rick Perry was enjoying breakfast with a mixed force of supporters and hecklers at a café in New Hampshire today, when he had a bizarre encounter with a creepy woman and the child she decided to use as a sock puppet. The point was to set up a “gotcha” moment to hammer Perry about creationism.
Personally, I don't have much use for creationism. I’ve got no problem with anyone’s sincere religious belief, and I’m all in favor of asking devastatingly tough questions of evolution scientists, along with every other form of scientist. Questions are romantic poetry to the true scientist. I prefer to keep science and religion carefully and respectfully separated, at least until we get to the quantum physics level, when all bets are off.
On the other hand, I don’t recall creationists seeking to impose their religion on the entire nation through economically destructive laws and regulations. They don’t claim the mantle of “settled science” and force the rest of us to pay billions of dollars in tribute, like the climate change zealots. There are no fraudulent creationist emails from East Anglia, no falsified “studies” passed off as objective truth, no creationist “hockey stick” graphs. They haven’t used Hollywood to shovel their propaganda for decades, or filmed advertisements in which children who doubt creationism are blown to bloody shreds. They haven’t shut down industries, or replaced incandescent light bulbs with hazardous chemical warheads. Their boots are not upon my neck, nor are their hands in my wallet.
As it happens, an even more instructive collision between religion and politics occurred yesterday, in the town of Atkinson, Illinois. There President Barack Obama thrust his demand for unquestioning faith in Big Government upon a skeptical farmer, who wanted to know if his business would suffer from impending regulations on dust, noise, and water runoff.
The high priest of the State replied, “If you hear something is happening, but it hasn’t happened, don’t always believe what you hear.”
He advised the farmer to contact the USDA. “Talk to them directly. Find out what it is you’re concerned about. My suspicion is a lot of times they’re going to be able to answer your questions and it will turn out that some of your fears are unfounded.”
At a great cost in time and sanity, Politico reporter MJ Lee bravely attempted to follow the President’s advice. The resulting adventure in bureaucratic obfuscation must be read in its entirety to be appreciated. Spoiler: getting a straight answer from God is easier.
This illustrates a sharp contrast between creationism and Obama’s true religion, nobody-creates-anything-ism. Whatever they’re up to in Texas biology schools, it cannot be as dangerous as the worship of the State laced through virtually every course taught in public school. Not to trivialize the deep questions about life’s origins and our biological destiny, but Obama’s religion requires far more blind faith and complete ignorance of objective reality.
Even now, as the economy drowns beneath a wave of bureaucracy, the government is so far in debt that we had to stop using the word “billion” because it’s too small, oceans of “stimulus” money vanish into thin air, fraud siphons away staggering amounts of cash, every single economic development is described as “unexpected,” America’s credit rating has been downgraded, unemployment is stuck at record highs, and people are dying because the federal government decided to push guns into the hands of Mexican gangsters, Obama still answers a penetrating question from a worried businessman by telling him to have faith.
Note that Obama, the supposedly omni-competent President who can manage the auto and health care industries better than hundreds of private-sector executives, did not know the answer to this extremely pertinent question about the activities of his deficit-fueled mega-government. He’s presumptively better qualified to spend the future’s wealth than the people who will grow up and live there, but he doesn’t really know what his countless czars and agencies are doing right now. He can only mumble bland assurances that it’s all for the best, and offer completely unjustified assurances that if you call the leviathan State to get the straight story, a knowledgeable person will pick up the phone.
A distressingly large number of people have been raised to believe that all of life's problems must be addressed by the State, and their time should be spent petitioning for its aid. Showing up at public events to beg the President for a house or a job is fine, but if you do anything bold to help yourself, the regulators await. Even kids with lemonade stands are learning that truth. Obama's faith in the State produces a level of stasis and inertia that few of the world's older religions could achieve, especially since most of them regard sloth as a sin.
I don’t worry about evolution much these days, because I’m preoccupied with the urgent need for de-evolution.
