The Book of Genitals

By AM Sunday, October 12, 2008

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I have no objection to all kinds of daft ideas being taught in comparative religion classes but in science what we should teach is what there is evidence for and children should be encouraged to examine evidence – Richard Dawkins

Bobby is not the only Storey to have made the news in recent times. Also considered newsworthy was the DUP politician Mervyn Storey. Given that political differences between the two men are no longer what they used to be, it should hardly surprise us that the news teams will home in on a similar area of activity – escapes. In the case of Bobby the media have reminded us of his escape from the H Blocks; for Mervyn it has been an escape from reality.

Mervyn Storey is one of these people who think nonsense should be tarted up in educational attire and then inflicted upon our children. It is called creationism, a ridiculous religious perspective which holds that the earth is only a few thousand years old and anyone doubting it should go and read the bible. Now the bible always made a good smoke during the blanket protest for those who enjoyed a puff but as reading material it would not have been highly sought after, its status being that of any port in a storm. Empty cell, bored stiff, nothing to read but the hate filled bible. Some succumbed.

Those sceptics that join Sam Harris in experiencing incredulity that the world was created ‘a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue’ are met with the type of response Richard Dawkins received in his documentary The Genius of Charles Darwin when he queried the basis of a science teacher’s assertion that the world was less than ten thousand year’s old: something to the effect that ‘I believe God because he was there and you were not and he knows better than you when he created the world.’

Listening to Mervyn Storey on BBC Radio Ulster attempt to describe the evolution process as being on a par with the immediate result of a massive bomb blast being the construction of a beautiful cathedral, the thought struck me that the man was indeed clueless. It is an old favourite plucked from the fundamentalist guide to stupidity which reveals a no-nothing approach to the world of science and evolution. No evolutionist bases their case against creationism on such a spurious contention. Conversely it is the illogic of creationism which rests on comparably intellectually indefensible founds. The biggest flaw in the Storey argument is that it merely raises all over again the problem it claims to have solved: how did an entity much more complex than any exquisite cathedral come into being? We are denied even the big bang theory to explain that. The absurd answer is that it was always there, was never created, never evolved. On the other hand what we scientifically know to have been there for billions of years is dismissed rather than explained away - explanation rarely figures in the non-thinking of the faithful - as having been there for only a few thousand years. There is something upside down, inside out, back to front about that.

Richard Dawkins is surely right in describing as sad the fact that ‘flat earthers’ are elected to power. ‘I think it's sad that people with ridiculous views do get elected because it suggests that the electorate is not sufficiently well-educated to see through them.’ Even worse when they become chair of the Education Committee. We would not want our children taught in school that the earth was flat – why should they be taught that the world is less than ten thousand years old?

Mervyn Storey thinks it would be an ideal situation that evolution not be taught at all. Moreover, he takes the view that creationism should be taught in the science class. Along with fellow DUP Assembly Member David Simpson, he pressed Catriona Ruane to include creationism in the science curriculum. ‘Creationism is not for the RE class because I believe that it can stand scientific scrutiny and that is a debate which I am quite happy to encourage and be part of.’ His Ballymoney Free Presbyterian church plans to bring speakers over from England to refute the views of Dawkins. Probably of the same quality that Paisley used to bring over such as former Spanish priest Juan Arrien to perform mock masses for the titillation of bible thumping eejits.

There is a place for creationism in schools. It should be stuck in the Religious Education class alongside other perspectives, none of which should be postulated as possessing any truth value whatsoever but simply studied as a social phenomenon much the same as witchcraft and superstition. Children should not be taught it but about it.

Thankfully there are enough people still around who take the view of blogger Johnny Guitar that

Had Mervyn Storey been born anywhere else in these islands it is unlikely that he would have been known for anything other than being the local buffoon who tried to spoil everyone's Saturday night by distributing peculiar Christian leaflets outside bars. Or perhaps he would have been that lone chap who ruins everyone's shopping trip on a Saturday afternoon by standing in a town centre shouting out lines from the book of Revelations into a loud hailer. But this is Northern Ireland and unfortunately here a halfwit can carve out a career for himself as a reputable member of the political establishment with relative ease.

Amen to that.