Some People are Afraid of Diverse Opinions

 Linda Holmes of NPR is not very 

comfortable with opinions that differ from hers.

There are people in this world who are against banning books and to a very large degree, I agree with them. I value free speech more than just about anyone else, so it heartens me when people say or write that ideas should not be suppressed. However, I find that some people like freedom of speech in theory only.

After writing about Chastity Bono's decision to become transgendered. I decided to spend some time reading articles on the subject. I found a large number that supported Chastity's decisions and since I disagree, I decided to post my arguments in the comments sections. Do the moderators of these websites value a diversity of opinions? While some of these sites allowed my comments to stand, I found that on other websites my comments disappeared. I thought that these authors liked freedom of speech, I thought that they liked diversity.

I was a bit surprised that Linda Holmes, who writes for NPR, wanted to remove my comments since she has specifically written about why books should not be banned. Perhaps Linda only likes diversity when everyone agrees with her. You might ask yourself whether the comments I wrote were inappropriate. Fortunately, I composed them using Microsoft Word, so they are still available. I have included them below and you can decide whether they were too offensive. I guess that the average NPR reader has eyes that are too delicate to read the word "genital".

(My comments are below)

People say that we should be tolerant. Should we tolerate stealing? Should we tolerate spousal abuse? Should we tolerate dieting to the point of death (anorexia)? Healthy people say no to these things and healthy people should not tolerate the genital mutilation that Chastity Bono practices and advocates.

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I love the way people use the word "hate". What it really means is that these are the people who disagree with them. Some people say that anyone who disagrees with them is "sinful", while other people say that anyone who disagrees with them is "hateful" or a "hater". Name calling is such a poor way to make a point. In my opinion, people who speak out against the transgender agenda are believers in health and wholeness. Someone like Chastity Bono who mutilates their genitals has harmed themselves mentally and physically. Their agenda is to be feared in the same way that healthy people fear anorexia or alcoholism. We would not want someone on television saying that binge drinking is a normal thing that should be accepted and healthy people do not want someone saying that genital mutilation should be accepted.

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Let's talk about Christianity. I am a Christian and I also teach that evolution is fact, I believe that the earth is about 3.5 billion years old, and I believe that the bible is filled with a lot of metaphor. In short, I am not a fundamentalist.

So, what would Jesus say to Chastity Bono? He would say to her, "woman, God loves you; sin no more". Anyone who knows Christian belief knows the phrase, 'love the sinner, hate the sin'. We all fall short of what we should be, which means that we are all sinners. That being said, one of the greatest sins is to say that bad things are really good.

Chastity Bono may be a nice person, she may turn out to be a great dancer, she may be charming or witty. As with all people, her life is a miracle and a story of great interest, BUT, her actions in recent years are unhealthy and diminish us all. All healthy people recoil from what she advocates.

Jesus would tell Chastity that he loves her, but that her actions are a tragedy and that to encourage other people to see them as right makes the world a darker place.

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(comment from another poster) "These stupid redneck bigots have no right to tell other people what to do with their lives."

Hmmm, what was it that we were saying about hatred? Besides, name calling does not make someone look intelligent. This sort of reasoning is usually found in elementary schools.

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Americans say that they are against genital mutilation and so they should be against Chastity Bono mutilating her own genitals.

Just as all healthy people are against girls starving themselves through anorexia or people drinking too much alcohol, they should also be against Chastity's self destructive spiral that has resulted in the scarring of her body and her mental health.

Chastity was such a sweet and precious child, it breaks my heart to see that the lost the struggle with her inner demons.

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I am amazed how people casually throw around the word "hateful". Is it hateful to speak out against alcoholism? Is it hateful to speak out against anorexia? Is it hateful to speak out against Chastity Bono mutilating her genitals?

I remember when Chastity was a sweet little girl and people tell me that she has grown into a kind woman. It makes me so sad that her self hatred has compelled her to strike out against herself. The tragedy is that her body will never again be right and whole, but I hope that her spirit can find peace once again.

Do You Really Believe in Evolution?

When the ink on my university diploma was still wet, I decided to become a high school teacher. As I studied to earn my teaching certificate, I learned that teaching programs are more concerned with ideology than subjects such as science, math, or grammar. One area of great concern was that the theory of evolution was under attack by creationists.

We were told that as science teachers we would be constantly assaulted by people who believed that some god created the universe, that people are different than animals, that humans have souls, and that certain dogma must never be questioned. When I finally began to teach, I did indeed run into students opposed to evolution. I taught physics, biology, and earth science and in nearly every class room, my science lessons were interrupted by students who found Darwin distasteful. They told me that a loving god would never create humans who were like monkeys. They told me that science could not be possibly right, because humans have a divine spark in them that sets them apart.

My instructors in the education courses showed a palpable dislike of creationist students whom they saw as the enemies of reason and enlightenment. Myself, I love science and truth with a nearly religious fervor, but I found that I could sympathize with the view that science can sometimes be at odds with what we feel must be right. As I learned about the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, I encountered ideas that were terribly counterintuitive and at times unacceptable. I didn’t like that the speed of light is a limit. If we are to accept relativity, then we must also accept that humanity will never be able to easily fly from star to star, because the distance are just too great. I couldn’t accept that some effects might not have causes, or as Einstein said, “God doesn’t play dice with the universe”. Einstein is just one of many good scientists who recognized how difficult it can be to accept the world as it really is. The Nobel Laureate physicist Richard Feynman is famous for saying, “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics”. There you have it, science sometimes asks us to believe things which are unbelievable or distasteful.

I want you to ask yourself a question: do you really believe in evolution? IF you say ‘yes’, are you truly convinced, or do you say ‘yes’ because it is trendy? Perhaps you only accept the teachings of Darwin because your friends do or because the people who go to the good parties with nice wine and cheese would look down on you if you said otherwise.  How well do you understand the ideas behind evolution? How well do you understand its implications?  Is it possible that if you really understood evolution, you might find creationism to be much more enticing?

Creationists have a number of books and web sites that explain why they find evolution distasteful, but why should the average educated person not embrace evolution? Let’s look again at the illustration above.

Here we see a modern human and the version that came before. In truth, the reality is much more complicated since there is not a clean change from one human species to the next. New species are born due to events such as mutations, bottle necks, and populations being isolated from one another. In reality, the modern human and the obsolete human lived side by side for a while, but what happened to the obsolete model? The painful truth is that his children died when the modern human hunted all of the deer, picked all of the berries and wouldn’t share any. The obsolete humans in desperation went to war with the modern humans, but their military techniques were inferior so they lost the battle, the war, and the right to exist.

If we look at the man walking behind the modern human, we must ask ourselves, was he nice? Were his children adorable? Did he sing songs? Did he laugh and cry? Why did his people all die? Did the world need to work that way?

In the theory of evolution we find that all humans have the capacity for competition and cooperation. Humans can be cruel as well as altruistic and kind. However, the story of evolution is one of cooperating with the people who will help move you forward and competing with the people who will hold you back. Evolution has ample room for kindness and generosity, but it demands that there be times of genocide.

Do we who consume wine and cheese at parties, shop at Whole Foods Market, never spank our children, and embrace diversity really have room in our world view for evolution? The creationists tell us that humans contain a divine spark, while Darwinists tell us that humans are simply another animal. Nature dictates that evolutionary progress can only occur through extinction and genocide. Which do we accept, the world that ought to be, or the less kind world that science claims exists?