Humanitarian

When analyzing the capitalist culture in America, it is interesting to note the rampant Christian fundamentalism that still survives as a remnant of feudal times and remains a highly potent social force. That an irrational practice like religion can not only coexist but collaborate with capitalism, a theory born of the enlightenment that thrives on logic and instrumental reason, is somewhat curious - especially when religion (due to the dawn of a consolidated mass media and cripplingly powerful corporations) is no longer necessary as a propaganda tool or as a means to control the masses.

Yet, even in an otherwise rationalized society, these vestiges of the past remain a powerful component to our society. The 2004 election, according to popular myth, was decided by "moral values" voters (the fact that the exit polls showed 20% voting on moral values is not nearly as telling, to me, as the fact that nearly 40% of the country believed that Iraq had ties to Al Qaeda during the majority of the campaign). The Christian Right is also continuing to make its voice heard in the classroom, and I'm sure all of you have heard about the case in Georgia in which stickers denouncing evolution were to be put on the back of science text books, a full 80 years after the "Monkey Trial," the famous battle between creationists and evolutionists about what was to be taught in the classroom.

What purpose does believing in creationism serve, and, as I have jokingly asked friends, if evolution is true, why haven't creationists gone extinct? At first glance, there doesn't appear that the ruling powers would have any interest in its constituency believing in creationism.

However, as a narrative about human existence, the myth of creation complements the ruling ideas and values brilliantly. Whereas the theory of evolution views human beings who have developed by chance due to complex biological interactions, who are no different than any other animal and certainly not superior; creation tells the story of God's chosen ones, created in his own image, special, free to plunder and rape and pillage the earth and all those who are not God's own. Once a society falls into the mindset that one group is chosen and one group is to be exploited by the chosen, it follows that the "chosen" group will get smaller and smaller as time progresses; it is easy to go from saying that only homo sapiens are God's chosen group to saying that only rich, white, Protestant, heterosexual, male Americans are God's chosen group.

Without creationist ideas defining our cultural outlook, on what grounds could our society deem itself superior to other societies? Because we were God's chosen ones, we felt we were justified in committing genocide against the Native Americans, enslaving Africans, or bombing Hiroshima; because we were God's chosen ones, we feel no grief or guilt towards laborers who work in sweatshops for a dollar and fifteen cents a day because of our neo-liberal policies. If creationism were to ever lose influence and were not replaced by a similar narrative, would the populace really allow such policies to continue? In a way, creationism serves the same function as the concept of reincarnation serves in Buddhist and Hindu societies; if one assumes that God is playing an active role in the world and has created it to his liking, or if one assumes that all humans are living out a karma which they have brought upon themselves, there is no need to be compassionate to anyone.

And many on the right feel that, since God is actively controlling the world, there is no need to be compassionate, if tragedy should befall anyone (except a white, male, heterosexual American), then it must have been God's will and there is no need to attempt to help them. It is therefore a fundamental misconception for anyone to think that people on the right care about tortured Iraqi prisoners, starving children on the costal regions of Sri Lanka, or 150,000 dead Sudanese. Most people on the left take it for granted that most Americans will feel some compassion towards the victims of the US' atrocities, but a great many of our fundamentalist citizens couldn't care less. These people see nothing wrong with murdering Arabs to control oil, after all, God made that oil and those Iraqis for our purposes.

Therefore, the fight against creationism is not merely the fight against an annoying remnant of the past, but rather, a fight against the very narrative that justifies a brutal empire in the mind of so much of its population, the exact same narrative from which the concept of 'Manifest Destiny' was originally propounded.