Babes in Toyland

"As long as religious ideology was ensconced in places that were isolated from public purview, such as churches and synagogues, no one had a 'right', either ethically or legally to criticize, poke fun at, or demean religious values.

"But, it was the religious reich that 'came out' of their protected enclaves, into the 'market place of IDEAS' and demanded to SIT AT THE POLITICAL TABLE.

"And when you did that, you should have had to sense to understand that wanting to stand CO-EQUAL in a debate of IDEOLOGICAL imperatives put you in DIRECT lines of LEGITIMATE debate on those 'beliefs'

"What YOU want, is that same umbrella of protection you enjoyed as private believers while free to debate, bash, remonstrate, or promote political goals.

"Now you're being resoundly criticized, LIKE ANY OTHER POLITICAL IDEOLOGY would be, and whining your ass off.

"You want 'hands off' of your beliefs, then get the hell out of a public forum. If not, (which is your ABSOLUTE RIGHT) then stop whining because someone don't 'like you' or what you say."

Gary, of course, is pointing out something that is fairly apparent to the political community at large. If you are in the political arena, expect your own views and ideas to fall under scrutiny. And, given that it is the political arena, you should not expect that scrutiny to be impartial or even fair sometimes.

If the Christian Coalition want to be on the political stage, they need to realize that they, and their philosophy, will be subject to the same analysis, questioning, and even attacks that any other group, whether it be Libertarian, Liberal, or Environmental, receives.

This means they need to be able to answer such questions as: "What real-world examples do you have that your methods really benefit people?"; "How will you treat people who don't embrace your beliefs?"; and that most popular of political questions, "What's in it for me?"

Someone once said that where religion deals with Eternal Truths, politics in a democracy is the art of the possible, where things like truth and the nature of humans and the universe are malleable. It's no wonder that the Founders felt so strongly that there should be separation between church and state.

If "faith-based groups" want to be in the political arena, they have that right. But politics and religion each have a corrosive and detrimental effect on the other. Recent events show how this works: Congress coming up with the ridiculous idea that hanging Ten Commandment plaques in schools will make kids stop shooting each other, and for the faith-based groups, the crisis of confidence caused by the realizing that the same politicians who so vigorously enlisted their support in their war on Clinton were, themselves, no moral improvement, and in some cases even worse. Not only were they worse than Clinton (and some churches utterly disgraced themselves by handing out copies of that execrable smear job, "The Clinton Chronicles"), but some of them were as bad as what they were accusing Clinton of being! When Newt fell from grace, he didn't just reflect badly on the GOP; he reflected badly on fundamentalist Christianity. After all, he promoted them, and they promoted him.

Fundamentalist Christianity is losing the moral high ground, and quite a few people feel this isn't a bad thing. But it is bad for the followers of those religions, and that's something they need to address.

The other arena where religion figures to lose big is in opposing science. Religion ALWAYS does poorly here, since faith-based beliefs, by their very natures, cannot meet the empirical demands of science. Further, religion often gets itself into a bind in trying to extrapolate literal and physical "facts" from the verbiage of the Bible, which was written thousands of years ago by people who didn't know the earth was round, went around the sun, or that DNA existed and was mutable.

We're moving into an era of science where we can build life from scratch, create new life forms, and patent new variations on people. There's nothing science-fiction about that statement. It's here. It's now. In recent weeks, I've read of plans to genetically alter goats by adding spider DNA so they will produce spider silk substance in their milk, genetic modifications that changed the personality characteristics of voles, making these previously solitary animals gregarious, and even introducing jellyfish DNA into monkey embryos to make green glowing monkeys. It sounds like a Don Rickles joke. It's not. They successfully combined the germ plasm for the two species in Oregon the other day, and in a couple of months, we might have glow-in-the-dark monkeys.

People, this is very scary stuff. Eventually, they will come up with a human being whose DNA is patented. Never mind what the present laws say about such experimentation. It WILL happen. If not here, then in France, or some other place. Is such a person property? Does such a person have rights to their own reproductive processes, or does control of that go to the holders of the DNA patent?

Religion should be addressing these issues, and a thousand more just as complex and vexing. I don't expect them to have the right answers, but I do expect them to attempt to address the moral and ethical implications. And we're going to need all the help we can get on those.

So what is the contribution of organized religion to the political debate about this new biology technology? What do they think takes precedence over altered and patented human life forms?

They are attempting to stop the teaching of evolution, or at least take the absurd nonsense known as "creationism" and put it on an equal footing with the theory that is the basis for all the biological questions they are avoiding. They are taking the stance of "Don't address the problems. Just deny they exist". It will go down as a catastrophic failure of intellect and courage by Christianity in future years.

Religion should be addressing the moral fallout of new tools. Instead, we get political religionists who try to tell us the tools don't exist. For no better reason then that the Bible doesn't mention these tools. The bible knows what to do if your ox tramples your neighbors crops. But on DNA, it's a little bit vague. So people can try to build a ethical structure that will encompass new technologies from it, but it is sheer idiocy to say that because the bible doesn't describe it, the new technology doesn't exist.

Folks, political religionists specialize in sheer idiocy. By fighting the theory of evolution, that's EXACTLY what they are doing.

There hasn't been a major scientific advance since the 14^th century that didn't have strong opposition from organized religion. The Hubble Space Telescope had been in orbit two years before the Catholic Church finally admitted that Galileo was right. It took them 340 years to admit that mistake.