Krauthammer Hits the Thumb on the Nail

Charles Krauthammer put out one of his worst columns ever today: "Let's Have No More Monkey Trials." He starts out by smearing the idea of separation of church and state and then ends by appealing to the religious right to avoid teaching creationism because it would "undermine the faith"! This column needs to be read to be believed.

The half-century campaign to eradicate any vestige of religion from public life has run its course. The backlash from a nation fed up with the A.C.L.U. kicking creches out of municipal Christmas displays has created a new balance. State-supported universities may subsidize the activities of student religious groups. Monuments inscribed with the Ten Commandments are permitted on government grounds. The Federal Government is engaged in a major antipoverty initiative that gives money to churches. Religion is back out of the closet.

Note the package-dealing of the silliness of the ACLU with the legitimate separation of church and state. Our government indeed has no business using taxpayer money to promote religion, but the inveterate looniness of the ACLU makes for a convenient way to categorize separation of church and state as a cause of the lunatic fringe. It does not matter whether one thinks the ACLU chose a wise battle, say, by fighting against the placement of a creche in a municipal display. The ACLU does enough other things -- wailing like banshees over the "gulag" at Gitmo for example -- to make their involvement in the cause of secular government easy fodder for those who, like Krauthammer, do not take the issue seriously. With this setup, Krauthammer seamlessly follows through to make such ill tidings as state-run universities supporting religious activities and federal funding of religious ministries to the poor sound like good news.

So this column is all the ACLU's fault? Not quite. What is really, in fact, making it easy for Krauthammer to paint a legitimate cause -- keeping the government out of the business of promoting ideas (including religion) -- as a witchunt, is the fact that the government meddles in almost every conceivable sphere of our lives. The very idea of the government not owning most parks and war memorials is inconceivable to most people. Ditto for a wholly private educational system. Or complete abolition of the welfare state. (Since when did religious charities not receiving funds from the state become persecution?) Nearly every case of government promotion of religion mentioned favorably or not by Krauthammer in this column would evaporate were the sphere of government influence to be reduced to its legitimate function: that of protecting individual rights.

But Krauthammer is no capitalist, as evidenced by his glee over the fact that student religious groups and religious charities can -- at long last -- suckle at the government teat. Were there no state-run universities, there would be no issue of why the government funds, say a Marxist organization, but not a religious one. And were the government not already confiscating money on a colossal scale for poverty relief, more donations would flow into the coffers of charities, religious or otherwise. Government programs, like those related to contraception and other forms of birth control, so detested by most religionists, would not be getting federal funding, either. But the benefits of a lack of government funding to religion's competitors in the marketplace of ideas is not my concern here, except for the fact that it throws Krauthammer's fundamental motivation into starker relief. Krauthammer, like other members of the religious right, does not oppose government force when it is used to expand the influence of religion.

Except, apparently for Krauthammer, when it comes to the teaching of creationism! This is where the piece gets really interesting, for the chickens come home to roost and he doesn't even seem to realize it.

... [T]he Roman Catholic Church rejects "neo-Darwinism" with the declaration that an "unguided evolutionary process--one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence--simply cannot exist."

Cannot? On what scientific evidence? Evolution is one of the most powerful and elegant theories in all of human science and the bedrock of all modern biology. Schanborn's proclamation that it cannot exist unguided--that it is driven by an intelligent designer pushing and pulling and planning and shaping the process along the way--is a perfectly legitimate statement of faith. If he and the Evangelicals just stopped there and asked that intelligent design be included in a religion curriculum, I would support them. The scandal is to teach this as science--to pretend, as does Schanborn, that his statement of faith is a defense of science. "The Catholic Church," he says, "will again defend human reason" against "scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of 'chance and necessity,'" which "are not scientific at all." Well, if you believe that science is reason and that reason begins with recognizing the existence of an immanent providence, then this is science. But, of course, it is not. This is faith disguised as science. Science begins not with first principles but with observation and experimentation.

"If you believe that science is reason?" What if you don't? Or what if you think that reason is subordinate to faith as a means of learning about the world? Then Krauthammer's arguments will mean nothing to you. And suppose you're a government official as well, say a member of a school board?

To teach faith as science is to undermine the very idea of science, which is the acquisition of new knowledge through hypothesis, experimentation and evidence. To teach it as science is to encourage the supercilious caricature of America as a nation in the thrall of religious authority. To teach it as science is to discredit the welcome recent advances in permitting the public expression of religion. Faith can and should be proclaimed from every mountaintop and city square. But it has no place in science class. To impose it on the teaching of evolution is not just to invite ridicule but to earn it.

And suppose, further, that you regard the "ridicule" of which Krauthammer speaks as a badge of honor? (As I believe one of the Beatitudes implies.) You will vote to have creationism taught alongside or even instead of evolution.

Krauthammer's argument will fail precisely because faith and reason are opposite approaches to knowledge and not just on the narrow question of evolution. A government official who feels like he can get away with making decisions based on faith will do so, and the results will not necessarily please Krauthammer.

And just as there are two opposing theories of epistemology presented here, reason and faith; there are two fundamental, corresponding ways for men to interact, by persuasion or by force. The only way to achieve Krauthammer's nightmare scenario of creationism being taught in public schools is to compound the illegitimate institution of public education with a failure to prohibit the state from promoting religion. In this way, men of faith, who have no arguments to offer for their position, will have the only possible means to ensure the spread of their views, force, at their disposal.

If Charles Krauthammer is sincerely interested in the teaching of evolution (and in the continued ability to practice his own religious beliefs openly for that matter), he will cease advocating government establishment of religion and fight ferociously for greater limits to be imposed upon the power of government over the lives of ordinary citizens.

But George Washington puts this issue far better than I can. "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

-- CAV

Updates

8-2-05: Corrected bad wording. (HT: R-E, who has scooped me on something in my own back yard!)