Can someone explain why some conservative spokespersons feel they are competent to speak about scientific subjects when their conclusions are so far from science? Take the historic case of fluoride in the drinking water. Some 60 years ago far right-wing folks feared that there was a dark communist conspiracy to turn Americans into automatons if the government succeeded in fluoridating the water so as to fortify everyone’s teeth. Dentists had found that the proper amount would have this salutary effect, but somehow the right decided that Big Government was up to no good. So politicians ran on the platform that they would oppose this ominous addition that today safeguards the teeth of right and left. But no one apologized for the fear-mongering silliness of yesterday.
Likewise the biblical science of exegesis had to endure the unscientific denial of human evolution from other life forms, such as apes, when the extreme right said this was wrong. We of course see that the right had opted for a fundamentalist and literalistic reading of the first two chapters of Genesis, as though this were the governing way of reading what ancient Hebrew authors wrote in order to teach that God was the origin — or genesis — of humanity. Even though Jesus himself copied this long established way of teaching adults by means of parables, or non-historical stories, some conservatives thought it was heresy to read early Genesis as parable instead of as history. And so politicians still run on platforms that condemn evolution, even though they have no scientific credentials with which to speak on the subject.
We Catholics have the advantage of Pope John Paul II teaching that we may subscribe to any of the various evolution theories as long as we admit that God started and guided the process. But the window-opening Vatican Council, whose 50th anniversary we observe this fall, made legitimate what Catholic Scripture scholarship had adopted from progressive Protestant exegetes. The council said in its document on Revelation that we are to read any part of the Bible the way its human author intended us to read it, without changing or ignoring his intention. This we discern by scientifically noting what figures or forms of speech he used, careful to read history as history but parable as parable. A good modern translation of Scripture helps the reader with these questions of interpretation.
But beyond fluoridation and evolution we today have a much more immediate and pressing matter: global warming. Is it because progressive Al Gore called this an inconvenient truth that some conservatives feel compelled to deny it? Or is it that big business stands to lose profits when it is compelled by law to clean up emissions it puts into the air, water and ground? Is this what the right really means when it urges us to throw off the encumbering strictures of meddling, interfering government?
Richard W. Miller, who teaches ecological justice at Creighton University, wrote in a recent Commonweal article “Global Suicide Pact,” citing NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies James Hansen and Ohio State University climatologist Lonnie Thompson: “. . .virtually all climatologists are now convinced . . . , ‘that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization.’ While those who deny that the planet is warming and/or that humans are the primary cause form a distinct minority in this country, representing only 26 percent of the U.S. population — and only 2 percent of those who publish in climate science. . . ,” the large majority is hardly aware of the problem’s immediacy.
We can thank irresponsible politicians for this last. They run on platforms dictated by corporate polluters who do not want to see regulations imposed, claiming that do-gooders make impossible demands on them, bent on their socialist agenda to regulate everyone. But is not the quality of air and water central to life itself, outweighing the profit motives of big business?
Politicians see campaign donations as their air and water. As such they are beholden to donors who pay a pittance compared to what they would have to spend if adequate regulations were enacted. Of course such safeguards cost money. But life and health preempt the bottom line. This is why it took acts of Congress to require seat belts and fuel-efficient engines and catalytic converters and hundreds of other requirements.
Beware when you see TV commercials with government-mandated print at the bottom identifying the Gigantic Oil Institute or some such outfit that presented the ad seeking to deregulate big business.
at the bottom and then tap “Add to Home Screen”