CT Blue

For better or worse, the United States has been the source of most of the world’s cultural innovations in the past century or so. On the plus side, we gave the world rock ‘n roll, jazz, and ..well, I’m thinking. On the minus side is just about everything else.

Despite years of cultural imperialism it has seemed that Europe, at least, has been largely resistant to our most dangerous cultural trend: the rise of unreason and fundamentalist religion. Not so anymore, apparently, where at least in Northern Ireland they have seen us a demand for “teaching the controversy” about evolution and raised us by “abusing the language of rights and equality” in order to put religious delusion on a par with science. They have taken the religious right’s strategy of posing as the victim to new heights.

Last month Nelson McCausland, DUP assembly member and Northern Ireland culture minister, wrote to the trustees of National Museums Northern Ireland about how “to ensure that museums are reflective of the views, beliefs and cultural traditions” of the region. This included a more specific stipulation – referring explicitly to the Ulster Museum, the letter called for alternative views of the origin of the universe to be accommodated. In other words, creationism was to be incorporated into the museum’s natural history displays. That an elected minister should make such a suggestion is a development that should be taken seriously.

McCausland claimed that a third of the Northern Irish population believe in creationism, and said that “the diversity of views” on this should be reflected in the region’s museums. Calling it “a human rights issue and an equality issue”, this could have been viewed as an honest, but seriously misguided attempt to improve diversity in museums. However, shortly after the letter was made public, theCaleb Foundation, a group which “promotes the fundamentals of the historic evangelical Protestant faith”, revealed that it had previously met the minister to discuss the presentation of evolution in the Ulster Museum’s nature zone exhibits. They called this “wholly misleading propaganda” and claimed they were responsible for the content of the minister’s letter. As a fellow DUP member,Mervyn Storey, sits on the Caleb Foundation Council, this seemed plausible. McCausland himself is a Protestant fundamentalist, and what began to emerge was the pushing of a personal, religiously-informed viewpoint rather than the expression of a minister’s opinion formed on the basis of expert knowledge of the heritage and culture sector.

According to the Caleb Foundation, they have a civil right to their own facts, and a further right to have those “facts” foisted off on the rest of us as equal to – well, to actual facts- you know, the old fashioned kind. It would be interesting to know if they favor extending the same right to anyone who cares to come along with yet another creation myth. Flying spaghetti monster, anyone?

I must say that as a student I would have been very much in favor of this approach to education. Who was the nun to tell me that 1 and 1 is 2? If I sincerely believe it is three, aren’t my views entitled to respect, indeed, shouldn’t they, like the creationist delusions, be accorded equal weight to those held by the mathists, who insist on cramming their version of mathematics down our throats? What a wonderful world it would have been, not to know much about science books, but still having the right to be an A student.