Culture and Life

by Rob Gowland

The Christian Right and intelligent design

It has been clear for decades that the Christian Right is on 
the attack. The post-War disenchantment with Churches that had 
allied themselves with Fascism had been countered by the US-
funded establishment of "Christian Democrat" political parties in 
Europe to counter the "menace of Communism".

Alarmed by progressive developments within the Catholic Church — 
the spread of Liberation Theology, the Encyclicals of Pope John 
XXIII (1960s) and the acceptance of the necessity of co-existence 
on "spaceship Earth" — and by similar moves towards liberal, 
democratic positions by sections of the Protestant churches 
(those that became the Uniting Church, in particular) — reaction 
went on the offensive.

The convenient sudden death of Pope John Paul I in 1978 allowed 
an extreme reactionary Polish cardinal, Karol Wojtyla to win the 
election for Pope (with a lot of US help). Equally reactionary 
fundamentalist Evangelicals were feted by the White House and 
given well-funded opportunities to propagandise and recruit via 
every means of mass media, from FM radio stations CB radio to 
cable television.

Three years later a reactionary politician named Ronald Reagan — 
a fundamentalist Christian who believed in the imminence of the 
Second Coming, Armageddon and "The Rapture" — was elevated to 
the White House.

The Christian Right had secured the most powerful position in the 
world for one of its own, who was also the chosen representative 
of corporate America.

Since then the religious Right, backed by the biggest corporate 
interests, have been in full attack, even while they were 
temporarily pushed out of the White House by Clinton. Now, of 
course, they are back with avengeance.

Literal interpretations of Biblical texts proclaiming Israel as 
the site of the ultimate battle with Satan underlie their fervid 
support for Israel. That may sound nutty (and of course it is), 
but the really scary thing is that it is true.

The Religious Right of the Republican Party in the US and their 
imitators in the Liberal/National Parties here really do believe 
such things.

And they want everyone else to believe them too. Hence their 
promotion of "Christian education" through fundamentalist 
Evangelical schools.

With their advocacy of "Creationism" and a Medieval belief in the 
Devil and such "instruments of the Devil" as witches and 
sorcerers, the "Christian schools" run by the Evangelicals should 
more properly be called obscurantist schools.

I went to high school with a fundamentalist. Charles and his 
entire family were members of (if memory serves me right) the 
Church of the New Jerusalem. "It's quite large in America", he 
assured us.

I don't know how typical his views were, but he had a deep and 
abiding hatred and contempt for Darwin and Evolution. The Theory 
of Relativity also came in for attack as yet another fraud.

Both concepts of course reinforce a scientific, materialist view 
of the universe, which seems to be their main "sin".

It is as important to capitalism as it is to capitalism's 
churches that people accept idealist philosophy as the means of 
comprehending "life, the universe and everything".

Although only materialist philosophy can provide the means of 
genuinely comprehending these phenomena and enable the human race 
to truly liberate itself, materialism would also awaken people to 
the actual role of religion, and the Churches certainly do not 
want that!

So right-wing governments bend over backwards to accommodate 
these preachers of ignorance. They even give serious attention to 
demands for "Creationism" to be taught in public schools as a 
legitimate alternative to Evolution.

As a system, capitalism uses its plentiful financial resources as 
well as its well organised media to promote the "anti-evolution" 
position, sometimes as a pseudo-scientific argument, sometimes as 
a defence of religion.

And here the Christian Right re-enter the picture, in the form of 
the Discovery Institute, a Christian think-tank in Seattle that 
promotes the "Intelligent Design" (or ID) concept.

This postulates a pseudo scientific position that even allows the 
partial acceptance of evolution: yes, the world is billions of 
years old; yes, species may, with time, adapt to suit their 
environments; but, no, all life did not emerge from some common 
ancestor or bunch of cells.

Instead, the ID spruikers claim, the biological complexity of the 
world proves that each separate species is the individual work of 
an Intelligent Designer, which you must admit is a really cool 
term for God.

And who are these people who are promoting God the Intelligent 
Designer? According to an article in The Spectator last 
October, "Most of the Discovery Institute's US$4 million annual 
budget comes from evangelical Christian organisations.

"One important donor is the Ahmanson family, which has a 
longstanding affiliation to Christian reconstructionism, an 
extreme faction of the religious Right that wants to replace US 
democracy with a fundamentalist theocracy".

Meanwhile, a pillar of the God-fearing, capitalist USA will be 
coming to Australia in 2005 to make converts to evangelical 
Christianity: Franklin Graham, an "evangelist" like his father 
Billy Graham (remember him?), attracted attention in 2002 with a 
public swipe at Islam.

But fundamentalist bigot or not, capitalism will give him plenty 
of covert — and even overt — support. And why not, like all 
evangelicals, he certainly supports capitalism.