On Chasing the Mis- and Uninformed

I haven’t written about the intersection of science and religion in a few weeks, but as the Categories on the right sidebar indicates, I have more than just a passing interest in the topic.  Interestingly enough, the current candidates for the Republican presidential nomination are providing some fodder to ponder.

Michelle Bachmann recently mentioned that God used the east coast’s earthquake and hurricane to get Washington’s attention about Washington spending. Although she is known to proclaim her theological beliefs and interpretations, she is now passing the comment off as humor. If her intent was humor, she exercised a poor choice of words. If she intended to proclaim a theological belief, she not only does not speak for all Christians, her theology does not represent the majority of Christians. After all, God did not cause of drought in Texas to warn the nation against Governor Rick Perry!

Shortly after announcing his candidacy not all that long ago, Governor Perry made an interesting statement about evolution – so I took some time to read the Texas science standards for high school. Although I can make the argument that Governor Perry’s statements about what educators teach in Texas is false, I acknowledge that cracks exist in the standards that could allow religious points of view into the science classroom – a notion that the US Supreme Court ruled against in Edwards vs. Aguillard (1987).

I know that Governor Perry does not stand for the same theology and science that I do, but reading the comments from readers after the articles about his statement was more disturbing to me than what he said. Although I disagree with some of the comments, but too many comments contained numerous misconceptions and misinformation about science, evolution, religion, and the interchange between them that reinforce my notion that too many people are either misinformed or not informed about the topic. I write about this topic because of the misinformed and the not informed.

Although I have not officially crunched the numerous myself (at least not yet), membership in Christian denominations supporting science and evolution easily outnumbers membership to the contrary. It would not surprise me if the split is at least 60/40, and maybe more – thus a larger gap than polling suggests. Then again, I also believe those numbers would support my notion that many churches are not teaching their flock about this issue – thus contributing to the misinformed.

Meanwhile, Governor Perry and Michelle Bachmann continue to rely on engaging the emotions of a misinformed public through their bamboozling rhetoric and their personal theological view. I tagged this video a few months ago waiting for the right time as the comments in this video also support the divide and the notion of the malinformed – yet giving promise & hope of the informed.