Autumn 1999 -- Volume 37 No. 4

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Why not call it Treason?

by Frank R. Zindler

hat if the KGB, the Chinese Secret Service, or Islamic Jihad - in an effort to subvert America’s preeminence in the world - enlisted the aid of agents here in the States to destroy the teaching of science and, thereby, to render America helpless to compete economically, scientifically, agriculturally, medically, and militarily? What if these agents set about terrorizing science teachers into avoiding all topics in science that go beyond the world’s understanding in 1859?

What if, by means of millions of dollars worth of propaganda and the usual sort of blandishments to which politicians are vulnerable, they brainwashed and seduced our federal and state legislators into believing that the theoretical foundations of plant and animal selection were wicked and evil, and America ceased to improve its agriculture?

What if these agents convinced future oil and mining engineers that the geologic column was useless, and America lost the ability to find oil and strategic mineral deposits? What if they managed to distort the teaching of thermodynamics to the point that no one was left - except the subverting nations - who could apply thermodynamics in the fields of physics, engineering, and medical science? What if they convinced legislators-to-be that the sun goes around the earth instead of vice-versa, so that eventually our space program - with all the attendant domestic and military spin-off - was phased out? What if these agents demoralized our children into thinking that humans can only deteriorate - that human improvement is impossible?

And what would you think if they spent fortunes building fake colleges to train science teachers, giving their graduates certificates to teach biology, geology, chemistry, etc., but had actually trained these people in demonology, witchcraft, and alchemy? What if these graduates managed to fill up the science faculties in our high schools and colleges?

If these agents were caught in the act, with what crime would they be charged? Treason, perhaps? Without a doubt.

But what if, when apprehended, it was found that they were not actually in the employ of these foreign entities? Rather, they had done all these things on their own - because their religion demanded it? Would it be any less treasonous?

By now you recognize the program outlined as that of “scientific creationism” - the Trojan Horse of religion brought within the walls of science education. If the creationists have their way - and they’re having more of it all the time - all this will come to pass.

The debacle in Kansas - where the state school board recently eliminated the subject of evolution from the curricular topics to be examined in statewide testing - is merely a rare example of creationists failing to achieve their sabotage by stealth. Quite by accident, their treasonous acts have become widely publicized. Usually, their destructive achievements draw little or no notice. In Ohio, for example, state science curriculum guidelines since 1994 have left out “the E-word.” Precious little evolutionary science is being taught in Ohio, you can be sure. And it is just as bad around the country, even in places where evolution remains technically part of the curriculum. The creationists have so terrorized science teachers (many members of public school boards are creationists) that very few have the courage - or foolhardiness - to make sure their students are solidly grounded in the realities of science.

The situation is even more parlous now that most of the presidential candidates have come out in favor of “equal time” for superstition and science. Not only have the most visible Republican candidates come out in support of pseudoscience, even Vice President Albert Gore has waffled on the issue.

With satellites beaming creationist idiocy to every nook and cranny of our planet, and with books, movies, and even Internet sites devoted to the subversion of science, we enter the new millennium in the midst of a bitter irony: The technology of the twentieth century CE is being used to disseminate the science of the twentieth century BCE. Instead of entering the twenty-first century, we shortly could very well find ourselves stuck in the mire of the eighth.