Evolution: Scapegoat of the Right

by PraetorOne

When the far right goes looking for a scapegoat it doesn’t go halfway. The same people who talk about personal responsibility are the same people who blame evolution and the teaching of evolution in our class rooms for America’s social problems. That’s right friends and neighbors. The far right claims that if you teach children they are mammals they will somehow devolve into violent brutes and thugs. Additionally, many on he far right blame evolution for the eugenics and brutality of the the Third Reich and fascist Italy but that ignores the fact that those governments had hundreds of years of experience with conservative Christianity. In a similar vein those governments never completely rejected Christianity and merely adapted their versions of Christianity to adapt to the fascist regimes. In other words these were essentially Christian regimes

So what’s wrong with the far right’s take on evolution?

Well, to be perfectly frank it actually undermines the far right’s ideas about personal responsibility. Why should children bother to control themselves when the adults in their world are handing them a custom made excuse for bad behavior? “I can’t help being a violent, over-sexed thug–Charles Darwin made me do it.” Children need guidance, not excuses, and the far right, in its eagerness to blame evolution from everything from tooth decay to social decay, has managed quite nicely to provide a convenient excuse for violence and sexual promiscuity.

Moreover the far right ignores basic facts. In condemning evolution what the far right claims is that we would be more decent, peaceful, and civilized if we were to embrace the far right’s views on fundamentalist religion. But that ignores a basic truth. Our religious eras have often been our most violent and perverted. If we accept the Bible at face value without an inspired interpretation and accept a literal translation, we find ourselves being governed by a book and a religion which delegates women and children to mere property. Granted, Christ was highly compassionate where children were concerned, but the Old Testament is unrelenting in its violence and woman hating. We’re talking about a book which classifies women in the same category as oxes and asses and which looks upon new
mothers as unclean. Likewise the Bible prescribes the death penalty for very minor offenses, including sexual orientation, as if we should execute people for who they sleep with. And let’s not forget the Old Testament penalty for adultery–stoning to death.

Moreover the Christian era hasn’t exactly been a study in pacifism either. The Christians had no sooner taken over from the Pagans but what they were employing the power of the state (torture and executions) to establish Christianity as the state religion. In later centuries the Christian Europeans launched crusades against Muslims. And then there were the many witch hunts and The Inquisitions; We are all familiar with historical examples of how the authorities used torture, how they poked and prodded their victims with instruments of torture, but no one wants to call these people what they really were–the sexual sadists and serial killers of their eras. In addition sexual morals were often loose and libertine. Priests,
including popes frequently married and kept concubines. Of course to own up to any of this would be an admission that violent, depraved behavior took place PRIOR to Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. To do so would be an admission that right wing religion has, at times,been a source of sexual perversion and violence

This may come as a shock and a revelation to the far right, but true religion does not attempt to change the social order. Nor does it endorse violence. The same cannot be said about the far right. They have made it known that they do want to change the social order. Like the Puritans before them they see it as their duty to create a religious paradise here on earth. Indeed, some of them see it as their duty to prepare the world for Christ’s return, to create the circumstances under which he will return. As if the Almighty needs their help. That’s a far cry from evolution which is a scientific theory designed to explain our origin as a species.