Rhizome 12/19/14:
In Philosophy Now (issue 105:
https://philosophynow.org/issues/105/Th ... _Mysteries :which many of you (the non-subscribers (won’t be able to access (and, yes, I am pimping the magazine (Toni Vogel Carey, in the article “That Mystery of Mysteries” presents some disturbing statistics concerning the number of people in the world that still buy into the creationist myth:
“• In Great Britain, few besides evangelicals paid attention to creationism before 2002. But by 2006 a BBC poll showed that 4 out of 10 in the UK thought religious alternatives to Darwin’s theory should be taught as science in schools. Only 48% were for the theory of evolution; 39% were for creationism or intelligent design, and 13% were undecided.
• On the Continent too, 40% said they believed in naturalistic evolution and 41% favored ‘theistic evolution’ or recent special creation; 19% were undecided.
• With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, creationist missionaries began founding new societies in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Russia and the Ukraine. In 2006 Poland’s minister of education repudiated the theory of evolution, and his deputy dismissed it as “a lie.”
• In Brazil, by 2004 “the overwhelming majority favored teaching creationism.” And in a strange twist, the aggressiveness of the Protestants there confused and confounded the Catholic majority.
• From the mid-1980s in Turkey, the minister of education wanted to replace evolution-only with a model of teaching both evolution and creation “fairly.” And all public school science teachers there received complimentary copies of Scientific Creationism.
• Not all orthodox Jews accept the idea of evolution, and in 2000 Jewish antievolutionists in Israel and the United States formed the Torah Science Foundation, under the influence of Rabbi Schneerson, who denied that evolution has “a shred of evidence to support it.”
• In Asia, despite very stiff competition Korea has managed to emerge as “the creationist powerhouse.” The British magazine New Scientist was right on the money, it seems, with its 2000 cover story: ‘Start Worrying Now’, because “From Kansas to Korea, Creationism is Flooding the Earth.” “
(And I reprint the above with either much gratitude to Philosophy Now and Carey or with a very sincere apology. I only do so because I feel it to be information important enough to be shared.)
Now what I would especially like to zero in on is:
“In Asia, despite very stiff competition Korea has managed to emerge as “the creationist powerhouse.””
I would also note a recent HBO documentary that describes the tragedy of a young South Korean couple that managed to kill their baby, through neglect, because of their addiction to a video game that they were actually making money off of by selling cyber-tools they had gathered throughout their gaming experience.
Now we might try to pass this off as some kind of peculiarity of South Korean culture. But let’s be honest. We’re all sick with technology and, in the process, have developed a sense of entitlement about it that folds in the face of reality. Take, for instance, recent reports that since the price of gas has gone down, people in America are starting to buy bigger vehicles. I mean how delusional and suggestive of denial is that? All they’re going to do, by raising demand for fossil fuels, is raise the price right back up –put aside the environmental impact. It’s simple economics. And let me tell you from personal experience: the main draw of internet philosophy lies in the instant gratification of instant publication. So while the South Koreans might be a little more prone to that addiction, they may well serve as the extreme that explains the whole. What makes it disturbing is that that extreme addiction is occurring parallel to being a “creationist powerhouse.”
You have to consider how our addiction to the fruits of Capitalism (in the face of our possible annihilation through man-made climate change, the depletion of our natural resources, and the dismantling of our democracies through global Capitalism (could lead to denial that, in turn, could lead to us turning to less than rational explanations of our world.
In other words, the reason so many of us are turning to creationist and other religious mythology may well be that it is the only way we can sustain hope and keep doing what we are (eating our cake and having it too (by denying the consequences of our activities and laying it all on some transcendent and benign father figure.
Basically: religion remains the opiate of the masses. It allows us, like spoiled children, to pray (or beg (to keep our I-pads.