strange ideology

One of the things that strikes me about the Kansas ID controversy, summarized by red state rabble is how strange the results are when conservative christian ideology gets translated into law. We've all seen examples before, one of the most poignant ones is the stem cell debacle where researchers are allowed to use old stem cell lines but not develop new ones. OK, say for a moment that abortion really were the modern US equivalent of the Nazi Holocaust--as many pro-lifers would undoubtedly say--would you want to allow the equivalent of measuring ear-to-nose size ratios on the corpses of those already killed as long as you don't use freshly slaughtered victims? Hell no, but that's more or less what's allowed under current Federal law from the point of view of conservatives who went about writing those laws. Similarly with the ID-evolution debacle in Kansas where we have this mix of church lady and wicked witch of the west--



--mentality coming through, albeit in a different way. This time around, the definition of science is to be changed to allow the teaching of intelligent design, but as far as I can tell right now, there doesn't seem to be much stopping individual teachers from first teaching it and then calling out what a bunch of crap (scientifically) it all is. Beyond that, as the rude pundit puts it: this elevates atheism to a religion in order to allow other "religions" into the classroom. Strange ideology.

In an unrelated recent conversation about the history of large US cities and how they even today follow the often religious philosophies of their founders, a contrast was put forth between the hierarchical nature of Boston vs the egalitarian nature of Philadelphia. The idea being that Boston, founded by Puritans, is still a place where achievement is ranked primary even if that means its on the backs of others while Philadelphia, founded by Quakers, is still a place where the primary goal is to bring everyone up to the same level and amassing wealth is not the most virtuous civic trait someone can possess. I won't go into more detail than that, partly because there are books about this topic, but what sort of ideological underpinnings do the above decisions on stem cells and intelligent design teachings have?

A stem-cell decision that allows use of already dead fetuses or high-school teachings that are open to possibly harsher critique than if they had never been introduced in the first place, well, that's not Mormon ideology, I'd say. Probably not quaker either. Is it Puritan? Maybe. Is it Southern Baptist? I would say rather not. Where does this strange ideology in today's conservative movement find its roots?


No monkey business here!