Last night Tyler, our World Can’t Wait scientific expert, arrived in Fayetteville ready to prove that the world is more than 10,000 years old and dinosaurs did not walk side by side with humans in the Garden of Eden. We discuss the Defend Science statement. Is science, the scientific process and scientific thinking itself, under attack by the Bush administration? Why is science important and why must it be defended, including by scientists who don’t normally enter the realm of politics?
It is clear that the Bush Regime is suppressing the science that doesn’t fit it’s religious, political and economic agenda. This is happening on many fronts: from stem cell research, to global warming and evolution. This anti-scientific worldview has genocidal implications where, for example, in Africa the Bush Regime has cut funding to clinics that provide contraception based on the false notion that HIV can be prevented through abstinence only. But the problem is bigger than just these issues. The Bush Regime is aiming to create a high-tech dark ages, where the obedient masses are locked out of the ability to think critically, and scientific inquiry is confined to a technological elite that focuses on the narrow necessities of industry and military. In the context of war, environmental destruction, and sweeping economic changes that are uprooting livelihoods, the people are hungry for an explanation and the Christian theocrats give them an easy one. They are preying on people’s ignorance – an ignorance created by rural isolation and a bad public school system. They want to disarm the masses from the ability to understand the way the world works and leave them waiting for Armageddon. Think about the Biblical notion that the Fall of Man happened because of Woman seeking knowledge. It concentrates a lot of what this bus tour has been taking on, from Jackson to Eureka Springs.
As we drive up into the scenic Ozarks, we pass cute little churches and shirtless blond kids playing on tire swings in front of their houses. Is this God’s Country – the place that every Christian Fascist, no matter where he grew up, waxes nostalgic about – the place that people like Tom Tancredo want to recreate by kicking out the Mexicans and enforcing biblical law? Of course, what they don’t mention is that people in God’s country can’t find jobs, the kids are hooked on meth, and they have to spend $20 on gas just to drive to the nearest Walmart to buy underwear. The Ozarks, I also learn on the drive to Eureka Springs, is the oldest mountain range in America” ironic since many of the people that live here believe that the earth is only 10,000 years old and was created in 6 days.
We are going to Eureka Springs, quite possibly the most polarized town in America. On the one hand, it is a gay couples resort town, where Adam and Steve go on vacation, and gay bars with rainbow flags line the main street downtown. It is “a hole in the bible belt” as one local shopkeeper called it. On the other hand, Eureka Springs has a population of just over 2000 people and 36 churches. It’s an internationally famous destination for its Passion Play that has been watched by some 7.2 million people. The Passion Play folks have recently opened a controversial Creationist museum that promotes biblical literalism and faulty pseudo-science. Of course this same biblical literalism also calls for stoning “sodomites” to death! How do these two communities live side by side without conflict? I don’t know” it’s sort of like the twilight zone.
When we get to Eureka Springs we split into teams for outreach, building for a 5:00 “evolution teach-in” at a park downtown (the museum has already told us that we will be immediately kicked off if we enter their property). Allen and Rafael talk to a librarian at the little public library who’s excited about World Can’t Wait and thinks it’s irresponsible to brainwash people with creationist mythology. We talk about the Patriot Act and disclosure of library records” but the person we should talk to, she says, is Kate, a local science teacher [see interview]. Overall, we are amazed at the response we get in this “hole in the bible belt.” We don’t meet anyone in the liberal downtown area that openly supports Bush or the creationist museum. We tell people that we are not against religion, but we are against theocracy, and everyone seems to agree. Places like this really can become bastions of resistance in the struggle to drive out the Bush regime and reverse this Christian fascist trajectory.
At 5:00, we set up our evolution displays: one depicting the tree of life (the emergence of different species from a common ancestor), a history of the earth (showing when the earth was formed, the emergence of life, and the evolution of species up to the present), and the Skulls of hominids including homo sapiens and the intermediate species connecting us to the apes. The local media and other passers-by come to snap pictures and talk. The reporters from “The Lovely Citizen” newspaper, in particular, are very happy were here. One of them, actually one of the founders of the newspaper, is quitting his job soon to become a full time activist because of the gravity of the situation in the world. He says he may even organize a chapter in Eureka Springs and will mobilize people for October 5th!
At 7:00 we head back up to the creationist museum so that those of us that haven’t been inside yet can check it out. All of our questions are answered. How did Noah fit all the animals, including dinosaurs like brontosaurus, on the Ark? Well, he only took baby animals. Didn’t the predators eat the herbivores? Well, that’s why God invented hibernation. Did dinosaurs really coexist with humans, like in The Flinstones? Well there is fossil evidence from Texas showing a human footprint in the same rock layer as a dinosaur footprint [actually it is well known that some Texans in the 1930s chiseled it into the rock as a carnival diversion]. Aren’t we descended from monkeys? No, God made Man in his image” as the explanation says: God made Man, and God made Ape, but God did not make Ape-Man [notice the use of sensational language invoking something like a half-man half-beast rather than scientific language like homo-erectus]! What about Lucy, the missing link? Well, Lucy’s skull was fabricated out of plaster by some conniving evolutionists (kind of like those abortionists) and that knee cap that proves she walked upright doesn’t really belong to her. Some of it is just blatant lying, quoting fundamentalist “professors” and God to legitimize their case. Sometimes they are more sophisticated. They invoke relativism to create a “debate” of a settled scientific fact: Some scientists say this, but others say that, and they are both using the same fossil evidence to justify their previously held convictions, so therefore the “debate” between evolution and science is not a scientific debate but an ideological debate. On one level this is true; the “debate” is a clash of worldviews and ideologies. But the fact is: evolution can be proven scientifically, if you are using the scientific method and not lies!
Off to Little Rock to perform a “non-traditional marriage” between Church and State. We stop at Walmart in the small impoverished town of Berryville to pick up some materials for the street theatre tomorrow. As we”re sitting in the parking lot, a woman comes up to the RV to ask who we are. We tell her we are part of an organization called World Can’t Wait: Drive Out the Bush Regime! She raises her hands up to the heavens, screams out, and tells Cici “Bless your heart. Thank you, thank you!”