I spent the day before Easter doing two things that I rarely do: listening to fundamentalist Christian radio and watching episodes of CSI, the popular crime drama.<\/p>\n
The experience brought home a weird, and probably permanent, dichotomy in American culture.<\/p>\n
On the one hand, millions of us tune in every day to listen to a portrait of the world that is starkly hostile to most of the basic conclusions of modern science.<\/p>\n
While driving, I heard various preachers offering what they viewed as factual evidence that the earth is only a few thousand years old.<\/p>\n
Evolution? A fable cooked up by delusional scientists. Geology — obviously misguided. <\/p>\n
One sermonizer laid out a detailed argument for the notion that the Second Coming and the end of all things earthly will occur on May 11, 2011.<\/p>\n
The logic and methodology of this approach to understanding the world is, literally, Medieval. <\/p>\n
It begins and ends with the conviction that the Bible is unequivocally factual. It is science as well as theology.<\/p>\n
Anything that we observe which seems to contradict the texts of the Holy Book must, by definition, be false.<\/p>\n
While this fundamentalist view permeates the radio waves, a very different culture can be found in the episodes of CSI.<\/p>\n
On the wildly popular television whodunit, scientists are sages. <\/p>\n
Their methods and techniques — all products of the secular Enlightenment — are raised to almost mythical status.<\/p>\n
They sort infallibly through the world’s complexity.<\/p>\n
They are intellectual, fearless and operate with a Sherlock Holmesian clarity. Their goal is nothing short of Truth.<\/p>\n
This conception of how science works is nearly as fabulous as the stories told on Christian radio. <\/p>\n
Of course, the makers of CSI don’t pretend that they’re offering a straight story — the show is, after all, fiction.<\/p>\n
But I wonder how many television viewers understand the distinction. <\/p>\n
I also wonder how many Americans manage to live in both of these worlds simultaneously. <\/p>\n
There must be millions of us who listen by day to radio preachers, who claim that science and its foundational thinkers are deeply misguided.<\/p>\n
And then we tune in faithfully to watch those same scientists raised to the status of heroes as they corral the bad guys.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, it seems like these two outlooks can’t possibly co-exist in one head, let alone one society. <\/p>\n
But we’ve been muddling along together, scientists and preachers, at least since the Scopes trial, and probably much longer. <\/p>\n
Your thoughts? Comment below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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