So there’s a common complaint among some of the pious that we liberals pick and choose our morality rather than ordering the prix fixe meal they offer.
The editors at Worldchanging found an admonishment to that sentiment in a series of responses that Spiked got when they asked scientists what would be the one thing they’d like to teach the world. Dr. Phillip Ball says he’d like people to grok that science isn’t a smorgasbord either:
To take one little example, someone who does not believe in relativity will need to come up with another explanation for why gold is yellow rather than silvery, as well as why we cannot then calculate the correct trajectory of the planet Mercury. These deep theories of science form a more-or-less integrated whole, even if the structure gets fuzzy around the edges. Science, unlike art, is not ultimately a matter of taste.
Katha Pollitt’s take comes with considerably more snark:
Under the new plan, creationists could continue their efforts to wreck science education and dumb down their kids–but first, they would pledge to abstain from any real-life benefits of evolutionary theory. Flu vaccines, for example, rely for their effectiveness on yearly reformulation to account for the evolution of the influenza virus. No evolution? Achoo for you!
Gwyneth Jones (WisCon 29 GoH) latches on this in her novel Life. In one section, the protagonist has an overseas gig on a former Malaysian island annexed by an Islamic Indonesian government. The rulers enforce the hejab, ban mobile phones and the web, but are happy to pay her firm for in-vitro fertilization and more exotic reproductive technologies
Daz, a human rights lawyer, sets us straight about all this hypocrisy. It’s nothing to do with Islam. It’s about controlling communication, you dorks.
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