Of religion and sports bras

I suppose it's part of the nature of blogging that items sometimes catch my eye that might seem on the surface to have no logical relationship to one another. But sometimes they just call out to me, and at least my chosen title is more thoughtful than my second choice: Americans -- Smarter Than We Look.

• The more religious leaders try to narrow our minds to accept only their view of the universe, it seems, the more Americans cling to our tradition of stubborn individualism. MSNBC reports this afternoon that "a new survey finds most Americans don't feel their religion is the only way to eternal life — even if their faith tradition teaches otherwise." Maybe the most startling finding: "57 percent of evangelical church attendees said they believe many religions can lead to eternal life," in direct contradiction to the teaching of most of their church leaders. Thinking for yourself -- there's just no substitute.
  
  
• All this second one really needs is the headline: "Sports bra saves U.S. hiker trapped in Alps." But will she send a thank you note to Brandi Chastain?

Holy Huckabee, indeed

In a spare moment this weekend I spent some time with Newsweek's profile of Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, the new man to beat in the Republican half of the Iowa caucuses. Disagreements on policy issues aside, he seems like a decent enough guy until you get to the part where he doesn't believe in evolution. Yes, it seems Pastor Huckabee (he's a Baptist minister) is a Biblical literalist, including on the subject of creation.

Now, personally, I've always found it puzzling why people on both the right and the left have so much trouble reconciling faith with science. The tale of creation as told in the Torah (a.k.a. the Old Testament) and the scientific narrative of the Big Bang and evolution have always sounded to me like two different ways of telling the same story. The conflict feels somewhat manufactured by the hardcases on both sides who insist they must be a hundred percent correct, and therefore the other guys must be a hundred percent wrong.

Be that as it may, it still startles me when an otherwise responsible, intelligent human being states with rock solid certainty that evolution is fantasy and creation fact, because the Bible told them so. (I've often wondered exactly how many bullocks these folks slaughtered on their stone altars that week.) And yet, in some parts of the country, there are actually schools trying to get accredited to offer master's degrees in science education for teachers who want to teach creationism. Which is fine, if you want to teach at a privately funded religious institution. But you don't teach tenets of faith as scientific fact in a public school -- at least, not in America. For that, you have to go someplace like Iran.