Type in “Florida” on Amazon.com and you will find titles including Weird
Florida, Strange Florida, and Oddball Florida. I am currently in Key Biscayne,
Florida, and, after looking out my window, I can report that everything looks
rather normal. Professor Itchy-Pants, my wombat friend who helps me organize all
the slide whistles, agrees.
So, maybe things do get a little crazy here – from wacky chads to zany feeding
tubes – but two things tend to stay consistent: insects the size of Volkswagens,
and Jews. In fact, this area has the highest concentration of Jews in the
country outside of New York City, with 113,000 in Miami-Dade alone. But,
suddenly the weirdness, strangeness, and oddballness has caught up with the
Sunshine State Semites.
Is this just how things naturally evolved here? Not if you ask the Intelligent
Design (ID) spouting rabbis and Jewish academics who took the stage at the Sixth
Miami International Conference on Torah and Science, which lasted from December
13th to the 15th.
Failing to grasp scientific concepts is no longer the exclusive domain of the
evangelicals and the Christian Right. Moshe Tendler, an Orthodox rabbi and
biology professor at Yeshiva University, declared at the conference, “It is our
task to inform the world [about ID].” He continued, “Unintelligent Design’ is
our ignorance, our stupidity.”
His quotes makes two things very clear: 1. Majoring in Biology at Yeshiva
University has about as much legitimacy as majoring in Ethnic Studies at Bob
Jones University, and 2. It is vital that mainstream, reasonable Jews separate
themselves from the extremism of these fundamentalists.
Intelligent Design, the new Creationism that rebukes evolution for failing to
recognize the role of a guiding supernatural power – Buddha, Yahweh, Zeus,
whatever – in the creation of life, is no crazier than most other religious
ideas by itself. It becomes dangerous, however, when it serves as a tool for
cramming religion into public schools, for smashing the divide between church
and state while filling the minds of children with convenient fairy tales that
make our country the laughingstock of all other industrialized nations. While
these rabbis may not be explicitly calling for ID to be taught in public
schools, their championing of the idea among Jews only fuels the fundamentalist
side of the debate that is raging on school boards and in courtrooms and
legislatures across the country.
Sholom Lipskar, who the Miami New Times calls one of Miami’s most
influential rabbis, asks, “If it’s accidental, then what’s the point? But if
there’s design, we’re here for a reason.” He adds that that ID should be taught
in school with chemistry and physics. Apparently, scientific progress can’t
compete with Lipskar’s desire to be the center of the universe. Should Lipskar’s
sense of purpose really be the driving force behind science education?
Questions like Lipskar’s are the result of a failure of imagination, and an
arrogant obsession with being able to fully understand everything in the world
and confirm the all-important role of humans. You’d think that Jews, of all
people, would appreciate the beauty in the struggle of the evolutionary path, in
the tenacious fight to thrive and propagate amid near-impossible conditions, in
the interconnectedness of all life. But, according to Tendler, “that is
irrational.”
If citing “a magic man in the sky” were an acceptable explanation for the
unknown, I would have done a lot better in biology in Middle School. Religious
fundamentalists of all faiths become a roadblock to progress and a threat to the
Constitution when they inject their beliefs into the public domain, notably the
public education system. Orthodox ideas that reek of sexism, subordination, and
archaic views of how the world works need to be dealt a final blow. Yes, we need
to evolve.
Unfortunately, religious fanatics are going to have the upper hand on science as
long as Bush is the President. Global warming, stem cell research, and evolution
have been transposed from the realm of science to that of theology,
Most American Jews have as much in common with Tendler and Lipskar as they do
with the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, or in Ohio, Kansas, and every
other place where Darwin has had to step into the ring with Jesus. The United
States clings to blind faith over scientific inquiry at its own peril.
For Jews, with a lineage that includes scientists like Einstein, Bohr, and Salk,
this descent into fundamentalist ignorance should be particularly disheartening.
But it should also be wake-up call for those in the United States who want to
distance themselves from the rabid anti-intellectual climate that favors
scripture over logic and reason. These Torah-thumping rabbis make it clear that
Judaism is no less susceptible to primitive doctrine and fanaticism than any
other religion.
Reasonable Jews should not be embarrassed by ID supporting rabbis anymore than
reasonable Christians should be embarrassed by the mindless ramblings of Falwell,
Dobson, or Pat Robertson, who recently claimed that, in addition to engineering
creation, God also has a malicious hand in Ariel Sharon’s grave health problems.
Everyone has the right to believe whatever crazy things they want to, but these
ideas belong in public education as much as a spare rib belong in temple, or in
our explanation of creation, for that matter.
The Conference in Miami is a clear sign that Jews need to resist outdated ideas
as much in our own religious sphere as in the broader political world. If we
don’t, religious pandering and political manipulation will continue to shackle
real progress.
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