“For what a man had rather were true, he more readily believes.” — Francis Bacon
“Because it takes nothing on faith, science is inherently antiauthoritarian, and a great equalizer of political power. That is why it is under attack.” -Shawn Otto, The War on Science, p. 41, Minneapolis (2016 )
So-called “pro-lifers” view the “ball of about one hundred fifty cells constituting a five-day-old embryo as deserving of the same moral and legal protections as fully developed human beings.” Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science, New York (2005), p.2
The Florida Board of Education Chair said in 2019 that he “won’t support any evolution being taught as fact at all in any of our schools.” https://churchandstate.org.uk/2019/08/new-florida-board-of-education-chair-i-wont-support-any-evolution-being-taught-as-fact-at-all-in-any-of-our-schools/
The March 2014 Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores decision by the Supreme Court ruled that three kinds of pills are abortifacients that are not, in fact, abortifacients. The scientific definition of pregnancy that was adopted by the federal government states that pregnancy occurs when a fertilized egg is implanted in the uterine wall. Religions define pregnancy as occurring when an egg is fertilized. Many eggs are flushed naturally. Is nature (or “God”) performing abortions? The court sided with Hobby Lobby even though the ruling was contraindicated by federal regulations and the scientific definition. — Shawn Otto, The War on Science, Minneapolis (2016)
More than a third of Florida’s New College teachers will not return for the 2023 Fall semester due to the governor’s “Dumb-Down” policies affecting the school. https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/2023/07/18/new-college-florida-ridiculously-high-number-faculty-are-gone/
“15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense”
“Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don’t hold up.
By John Rennie on July 1, 2002
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/15-answers-to-creationist/
That is a tiny sample of a large list of stories about the anti-intellectualist movement in the United States about efforts to restrict knowledge in the American population. As the U.S. continues to embrace policies that refute science, reason, and logical analysis, we can expect another nation or other nations to pick up the slack. In that event, America will become just another second- or third-world country fighting for survival in a world that finds it irrelevant.
My interest in the dumbing down of my country began sometime prior to 1957 when I was a pre-teen. In that year the Red Scare created in large part by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Unamerican Activities Committee fizzled to an end. but long before that, the curiosity of a child led me to a pursuit of knowledge not based on magic, superstition, or opinion. I wanted to know.
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A man in a red suit stood on a roof, Standing next to the chimney and waving to the crowd of holiday spectators below. My parents had driven my brother and me across town to see the Christmas lights and Santa and his magic reindeer. Santa didn’t go down the chimney, he only waved and ho-ho-hoed at the crowd below. It was the reindeer that held my attention, though. They didn’t move. And they glowed by a light within. I realized that the deer were plastic, and that Santa was never going to go down the chimney because he was too big and his red suit was too clean. It’s all fake, I told myself.
I continued to feign belief in Santa for the goodies it got me on Christmas morning, but I had become convinced that Santa was a story made up by adults to entertain kids. Disbelief in Santa soon led to skepticism about elves and fairies and unicorns. By the time I entered high school, I was aware that magic men did not walk on water, donkeys didn’t talk, kangaroos didn’t migrate from Australia to Israel to hop a boat, and stories of zombies and walking dead were…well, stories. Those tales led to a love of literature and reading the Bible resulted in a love of poetry. But even a child can be skeptical of extravagant claims, even those made in so-called “holy” books.
An adult told me that God punishes non-believers by torturing them an eternity. An authority figure who I respected attempted to indoctrinate me into religion with some Christian dogma so obviously fallacious that even a post-toddler saw through it. Then, a third-grade teacher refuted the school’s science book by telling the class that condensation and evaporation did not exist; God made the rain, she said. Later, a senior warrant officer demanded that I formally deny my atheism or receive a court-martial and a dishonorable discharge. I believed him. I learned later that his threat was illegal. I had grounds for a lawsuit against the US Navy.
A thread of anti-intelligence weaved through those experiences, and others. Each demanded that I suspend reason and accept their demands for belief or face certain punishment. Each demanded that I suspend intellect to accept the speaker’s version of reality on faith- that is, on opinion and indoctrination. The lessons I learned in my science books made sense; I could grasp the concepts and the reasoning behind the claims. I struggled to believe the stories about a magic man who lived in the sky, who created humans by speaking them into existence, and who would consign me to a burning pit of fire forever if I questioned that story. Now, in the age of a resurgence of 1930s-style of fascism, anti-intelligence legislation rolls out of Washington, D.C., and American state capitals with metronymic frequency.
The leap into the denial of the existence of supernatural beings was automatic. It lay in waiting from the moment that I realized those plastic reindeer weren’t real.
I turn first to the Wikipedia web site and its citations first when seeking definitions. The opening segment of the “Intellectualism” page reads: “Intellectualism is the mental perspective that emphasizes the use, the development, and the exercise of the intellect; and also identifies the life of the mind of the intellectual person. In the field of philosophy, the term intellectualism is synonymous with rationalism, knowledge derived from reason.
My concern is not with those “who scorn intellectuals, but those who hold in contempt formal education, critical thinking, and intelligence in favor of magical thinking. It is magical thinking above all in my experience that has pushed the United States down to such levels of anti-intellect that our leaders (and I use the term loosely) are too often represented by the likes of James Inhofe, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, and Antonin Scalia, where they could use their fundamentalist (and therefore, unthinking) religion to force American laws into line with their unscientific, irrational and uninformed opinions. We are told we must teach children a creationist view of science disguised as “Intelligent Design,” and that our religion requires us to enact laws that dictate the control the bodily autonomy of women. Christianity forces itself on Americans with totalitarian authority in its passage and enforcement of anti-abortion laws by citing the Bible as a source of the “abortion is murder” meme. That, of course, raises the question: why do we give a flying frog what the Bible says?
Religion IS anti-intellectualism. But we all hold beliefs and opinions that run counter to the rules of reason and logic. So, is the belief in a supreme being so bad?
Well, yes, it is when you work to force those beliefs and opinions on others through the power of legislation and the courts. The separation of church and state does more to keep society sane and in search of truth than any magic man in the clouds could do.
Fundamentalist religion is not alone in its drive to dumb down Americans. The current batch of legislation from around the country reveals a white supremacy strain in the teaching of American history. Educators are told that they cannot teach the role of blacks in America’s past through the contents of Critical Race Theory and books like Nikole Hannah-Jones’ The 1619 Project. The anti-intelligence faction believes (that is, of the opinion) that truth is what consensus believes. Are so concerned with the feelings of a few delicate sensibilities that we will deny our own history?
We can only engage in the uncharitable and un-Christian hope that the rest of the world is engaged in the same Dumbing Down process as America has embraced. Otherwise, we might well see third world nations outpace us in scientific advances. Is that the fate the holders of power in Washington wish for us? It certainly seems so, doesn’t it?
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Suggested Reading:
Forrest, Barbara & Gross, Paul R. Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design. Oxford, 2004.
Freeman, Charles. The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason. Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.
Hofstadter, Richard. Intellectualism in American Life. Vintage, 1963.
Jacoby, Susan. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. Metropolitan, 2004.
Jacoby, Susan. The Age of American Unreason. Pantheon, 2008.
Levitin, Daniel J. Weaponized Lies: How to Think Critically in the Post-Truth Era. Dutton, 2017
Mooney, Chris & Kirshenbaum, Sheril. Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future. Basic, 2009.
Otto, Shawn. The War on Science: Who’s Waging it and Why it Matters. Milkweed Productions, 2016.
Specter, Michael. Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives. Penguin, 2009.
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