Intolerance - One of this

Intolerance - One of this blog's big themes since nearly the beginning has been discussing examples of intolerance - mainly from the left, naturally (Everyone from the New York Times to the Minnetonka Sun-Sailor is busy illuminating conservative intolerance).

One example we've looked at: a Texas Tech professor who refuses to write recommendations for Biology students who don't profess a belief in Darwinism. This conceit seems to be a strange throwback to the pre-Scopes Trial era, when Darwinism was seen to be a path through a wilderness of superstition.

But today, Darwin's theories face mountains of legitimate scientific skepticism, while even the most empirically acceptable theory of the origin of our species can't begin to speculate how life on Earth, and the wondrous process of its evolution, began (which, of course, is perfectly acceptable to people of faith who regard their Bibles, Torahs and Qurans as allegories rather than literal pre-history). A few scientists furtively admit that nobody can empirically refute the existence of God - which horrifies a lot of scientific fundamentalists.

Nonetheless, the battle lines on this issue, as many others (abortion, social issues, politics of many stripes) are drawn around a very fundamental split - faith in God versus faith in Institutions. Institutions include government, academia, whatever.

The guys at Powerline have a great piece on this split - as reflected in the TexTech flap - today:

The great fault line in our society is not economic. It is cultural, and specifically, religious. What motivates liberals to launch their increasingly wild and intemperate assaults on conservatives is, in most cases, their fear and hatred of the "religious right." (This is, I think, what principally motivates the Bush-haters, whose venom is so puzzling to those of us who see the President as--whether one agrees with his policies or not--an obviously good man.) It is an article of faith (and I mean the word "faith" very literally) that religious people are dumb, irrational, retrograde, and doomed to extinction.

The article - and the pieces they link to - are all worth a read.

Posted by Mitch at February 2, 2003 08:13 AM