Creating an argument, but in reverse

Many years ago I wrote for Quest Magazine. The lead story in the April 1982 issue was my piece on The Creation Debate. On the cover was a microscope, a pair of eyeglasses, and two books – the Holy Bible, and The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. To do the story, I interviewed the curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum, president of the Ontario chapter of Creation Science, university professors of geology, zoology and other disciplines, a high-school science teacher, a bureaucrat with the Ontario Ministry of Education, scientist David Suzuki, and a creationist with 100 Huntley Street.

I looked at that article the other day, and two quotes jumped out. One was from Suzuki. I had told him about an August 1980 Gallup Poll in the U.S. which said 40% of American adults believed in the literal interpretation of the Bible. Suzuki said, “I don’t believe it.” The other quote was from the creationist, and here’s what he said: “If you believe in evolution, then there was no man Adam, so you must deny the original sin, so you don’t need redemption and don’t need a redeemer, which denies Jesus as our Savior.”

He couldn’t buy into evolution because of his religious convictions. Was there any science at work here? No, because he started with a conclusion and fit his life to that. Which brings me to Gary Goodyear, the Cambridge, Ontario chiropractor who is Canada’s Minister of State for Science and Technology.

The first time a reporter asked Goodyear if he believed in evolution, he refused to answer on the grounds that he is a Christian. He said asking him about his religion was inappropriate. A few days later he was on TV, was asked the same question, said of course he believes in evolution, then gave a long-winded diatribe that didn’t make much sense.

Apparently, Canada’s Minister of State for Science and Technology is a creationist. Some people think there’s nothing wrong with that, but I’m not one of them. I don’t care what anyone believes, but a creationist sure as hell shouldn’t be Minister of State for Science and Technology. That would be like installing the last CEO of AIG as Minister of Finance, a beer-swilling potbelly as Minister of Sport, or a free-school advocate who disapproves of grades, tests, and curriculum as Minister of Education. But a creationist as Minister of Science? I could see George W. Bush making an appointment like that, but am surprised at Stephen Harper. It once again shows that Cabinet appointments in Canada have nothing to do with suitability for a portfolio, and everything to do with politics. Speaking of Bush, after being elected President, he was asked about evolution and said, “Well, the jury’s still out on that one.”

It is?

Twenty-seven years ago David Suzuki was wrong to so casually dismiss the results of that U.S. Gallup Poll. He was wrong because this ain’t no small group. From time to time I have spoken to those who fervently believe that the earth is a few thousand years old. Some of them have university degrees. They painstakingly build an argument that creationism deserves as much face time as the ‘theory’ of evolution, and say it should be taught in our schools. They are totally off base because creationism is about religion, and that’s all it’s about. It has nothing to do with science. Likewise, evolution has nothing to do with religion, and has only to do with science.

Exploring the origins of mankind is sensitive ground for some of those who claim to know God, but apparently, many Americans know Him. A recent Gallup Poll said only 39% of them believe in evolution, while another Gallup Poll said one-third of Americans believe the Bible to be literally true. (I’m surprised it wasn’t higher.) But then this also depends on who does the polling and who reports the results.

For example, the National Center for Science Education, which “defends the teaching of evolution in public schools,” said 58% of Canadians accept evolution, while 22% think God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years. On the other hand, a Canadian Press-Decima Research Poll said 34% of Canadians go for evolution, and 26% opt for God-made human beings of recent vintage. That still leaves a whopping 40% out of the picture, but was good enough for the Canadian Catholic News to report on it this way: ‘Poll shows Canadians divided on role God played in human creation.’

This was their spin on things. When one reports on polls, of course, it’s all about spin, and two groups particularly good with spin are politicians and creationists.

Those with unbridled faith in religion – whatever the religion – will never present a cogent argument on this subject. They can’t. They are too grounded in religious fervour and dogma to look at it intellectually. Just go back to that 100 Huntley creationist quote from my 1982 Quest Magazine story: “If you believe in evolution, then there was no man Adam, so you must deny the original sin, so you don’t need redemption and don’t need a redeemer, which denies Jesus as our Savior.”

Thus, evolution must be false since it goes against everything this man was taught at Sunday school. But I have news for him. Ever since Darwin’s 1859 revelation, there hasn’t been one shred of evidence, apart from religious belief, to support creationism. Likewise, in the past 150 years, the evidence supporting evolution is a slam dunk; if evolution isn’t a fact, then the earth might as well be flat, and the sun might as well revolve us.

Here is one final quote to mull over: ‘There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed by the Creator into a few forms or one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.’

Who said that? Why, Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species.

Why Pope Benedict should lay low

(Posted in the ‘Full Comment’ Section of the National Post Online Edition, February 11, 2009)

The late Karol Wojtyla, better known as Pope John Paul II, was a man of courage and charisma, who stood up to the might of the Soviet Union and the Communist world, and who tried to improve relations of the Roman Catholic Church with other religions. Yes, he was deeply mired in age-old dogma that his institution is famous for, but he left much on the positive side of the ledger.

There is a story about him that many people may not know. In 1943, a Polish couple by the name of Jachowicz took in a two-year-old, Jewish boy whose parents would later perish in the Holocaust. Mrs. Jachowicz was a devout Catholic. She went to see a young parish priest, told him about the boy, and asked that he be baptised. The priest, none other than Wojtyla, asked what the boys’ parents had wanted. Mrs. Jachowicz said that their last request upon handing over their infant son was that he be told of his Jewish origins, and returned to his people if they died. Well, Wojtyla refused to do the baptism. He said it would be unfair to baptise him while there was still hope that his relatives might take him when the war is over. In fact, that little boy did survive, and was eventually reunited with relatives in the United States.

Which brings me to the current pope. How many people, especially non Catholics, recognize the name of Benedict XVI? His name isn’t nearly as familiar as that of John Paul II, which is probably a good thing. The current pope would do better to lay low.

An ugly story has reared its head in the Vatican. Richard Williamson is a British bishop who denies that six million Jews were killed by the Nazis. He was recently interviewed on Swedish TV, and said as much. Williamson is one of four members of the Society of St. Pius X. In 1988, these four men were excommunicated by the Church when they were ordained as bishops without the permission of the pope, namely John Paul II. Two weeks ago, the Vatican announced that it would lift these excommunications.

Williamson has gone on the record praising Ernst Zundel, who was the world’s leading publisher of historical revisionism, which is a nice way of saying the Holocaust was a hoax. It does Canadians proud to know that Zundel’s base was Toronto, where he lived from 1958 to 2000. He was eventually deported to Germany, and in 2007, a German court sentenced him to five years in prison. That never would have happened here, where freedom to incite hatred and discrimination is one that got away from our law-makers. In Canada, Zundel was found guilty by two juries, but later acquitted by the Supreme Court because his right to freedom of expression was said to have been violated by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

But I digress. Back in the 1980’s, after Zundel’s first trial in Canada was declared invalid, it was announced that there would be a second. At the time, I had a weekly column in the Sunday edition of the Toronto Sun. I wrote a piece saying how disgusting it was that Holocaust survivors would once again have to march into the courtroom to explain that they really were Holocaust survivors. That prompted a letter to me from a neo-Nazi. He said, and I remember this well, that Zundel is “a friend of mine and people who *** around with my friends wind up accident-prone.”

We got the police involved, and they charged him with making a threat. He was picked up, thrown into the cooler, and a hearing was held. The guy already had a criminal record, but had never been incarcerated. This is Canada, remember. To make matters worse, police found weapons in his apartment – guns, a slingshot with metal pellets, and a night scope, which is what you put on a rifle so you can see in the dark. At the hearing, the judge asked me to read the column I had written into the record. I did, and the judge said it was “very controversial.” When it was all over, the charges were dropped, and the neo-Nazi was let go, but ordered not to write letters to any newspapers for a year.

Pretty tough, huh?

I don’t have much sympathy for Nazis or Holocaust deniers. The term ‘Holocaust denier’ may not sound as bad as ‘Nazi,’ but show me a Holocaust denier who isn’t an idiot and an anti-Semite, and I’ll try to rationalize the legitimacy of the Flat Earth Society for you.

Where in the world does Pope Benedict XVI get off trying to reverse the excommunication of a member of his Church who denies the Holocaust? He now says that Williamson must recent his denial of the Holocaust in order to serve in the Church. Sorry, but it’s a little late.

Frankly, I don’t take much stock with the current leader of the Holy See. Not long after succeeding John Paul II, he created a firestorm when he made a speech implying that Islam could be equated with violence. He once said that American Indians secretly longed to be Christians. He has said that Orthodox churches were defective, and that other Christian denominations were not true churches. Before becoming pope, he said that Catholicism was the only true religion.

As a young boy in Germany, Joseph Ratzinger was a member of the Hitler Youth. For this, he shouldn’t have to apologize. He had no choice in the matter. But for all his statements and mis-statements before and especially since becoming Pope, he has a lot to apologize for. The mess with Bishop or non-bishop Williamson is merely the latest fiasco.

We should not treat Holocaust deniers lightly. Unfortunately, Canada’s record in this regard stinks, as does its record with Nazis who came here after the war. Why is this such an important issue? I’ll tell you.

“Never again” is a worthy and honourable mantra for the human race to profess, but we should not be optimistic about the future being free of such catastrophes. The biggest culprit isn’t even those who deny the past. The biggest culprit is something else within far too many of us. And that is complacency.