Barbelith Underground > Head Shop > Intelligent Design, Creationism, And Rightwing Social Memes

I wanted to pick something up from the very first page of this thread (remember, when it was about intelligent design, creationism and rightwing social memes?). As I understand it, one of the original purposes of this thread was to think about whether or not there was a necessary relation between certain scientific/religious beliefs and certain social beliefs or agendas:

when the conservative types try and impose a non-evolutionary meme on society, [do] they at some level mean this to affect all elements of that society?

I'm fascinated by this relationship between the propagation/transmission of scientific* knowledge and wider social memes (for want of a better world), though it's a knotty problem and I haven't got anything very clear or articulate to say about it. I think it's fairly clear that scientific* knowledge is related to social memes, in both a cause-and-effect way (if a society weren't concerned with a particular problem it wouldn't fund it; the dissemination of scientific knowledge changes the way a society conceives of itself and its place in the universe), but that that relationship is neither deterministic nor simple. The same theory of evolution, for example (not even taking into account differences of opinion within the scientific community), can be read in either 'progressive' or rightwing/conservative ways, depending on what 'Grand Narrative' or social story it's linked to (a story about the innate perfectibility of humans and human society; a story about the interrelation between humans, other animal species and their environment, with a moral about the need for biodiversity; or a story about the absolute rule of genes over animal/human behaviour and instinct, with a moral about the Nature-given right of men to rape women, humans to slaughter animals, and so on).

Part of the problem, really, is a wider problem about the teaching of science in schools - because most children will only study a little bit of (mostly inaccurate - I mean, do we really think that even if evolution is taught in all US public schools, children are going to come away with anything like an adequate understanding of the current state of debate within evolutionary biology?) science. And that science tends to be strongly linked in to a cultural/social narrative (even beyond the narrative about education which determines what gets taught in the first place).

So... what am I saying? I suppose I'm wondering what other stories can be told about intelligent design - is it the case that ID is less multivalent, less ambiguous, less able to be read in a variety of 'moral'/cultural ways than evolution? (If so, why? I'm getting back to this quasi-conspiratorial idea that intelligent design is almost designed to come attached to a particular ideology: is that what differentiates it from 'proper science'? Is 'proper science' always something that's more open to multiple readings, multiple cultural contexts?

Also wondering about to what extent "what gets taught at public school" is more a question about the decision-making processes, the cultural narratives and priorities of a society, than about what actually gets taught at public school; and in general, what people think about the relation between science and philosophy-politics-Zeitgeist-cultural-narrative.

*I'm calling intelligent design and creationism scientific here because the debate is specifically being fought over these theories' right to be called scientific - their right to be taught as science, to be thought of on the same ground as scientific evolutionary theory (literally, in the case of BC Tours - the ground of the museum).