Science Postage Stamps Spoof

The zine Stay Free! has done this wonderful spoof of the U.S. Postal Service's recent stamp series (ironically or perhaps bravely) honoring great American scientists at a time when science is under attack in this country. My husband recently returned from a show at the Catherine Clark Gallery in San Francisco with a little warning sticker, to be placed on hotel Bibles, that reads:
This Bible contains material on creationism. Creationism is a parable, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material was written by normal men almost two thousand years ago and shoudl be aproached with an open mind and critically considered.


Smart, contagious agit-prop of this kind is necessary when school districts are fighting to replace sound scientific teaching with religious speculation. When the editor of a highly respected medical journal published a report that showed in study after study fetuses didn't feel pain until twenty weeks, she was bombarded with hate mail from people who clearly don't understand or care about the exacting, rigorous standards that go along with publication in scientific journals. (I mean, if you're going to believe in God, couldn't you at least consider that he may have made fetuses not to feel pain until a certain point? I've had many a Christian argue with me that God wanted the holocaust to happen for reasons we mere mortals can't comprehend. Why is this any different?) When, as the evidence for global warming piles up ever higher, so too do the adamant denials of its legitimacy. Why? Because the people who are saying it also appear to care about preserving the planet and are therefore, in some people's minds, environmental wackos, God's request in Genesis to be good stewards of the earth be damned.

To grapple with the stubborn refusal of so many to believe the evidence, I keep coming back to the prescient George Lakoff who argues that we ignore facts which don't fit into our "frame" or world view. It's not comforting, but it explains a lot.

But here's what really chafes my hide. When medical science does something that a Christian wants it to do--like reverses infertility or keeps a prematurely born child alive or relieves serious back pain, it's immediately declared a "miracle"! Upon that, I must call bullshit. If it's an act of humans, if it can be explained by someone, if it was developed over years of study, training, trial and error, then it is definitely not a miracle--no matter how your brain must struggle to comprehend it. I find it extremely offensive when religious people on the one hand ridicule and dismiss science only to turn around, when they benefit from it (for science is agnostic in whom it helps), and steal the glory from those who rightly deserve it and hand it over to God, who frankly has received enough glory to last an eternity.

The worst part of this for me is the fact that I do not find science and faith incompatible. In fact, I recently wrote about a rare-yet-wonderful meeting of the two in my review of John Barrow's "The Infinite Book." Yet I find myself taking a combative stance against people of faith because they refuse to see the evidence that's plainly before them, choosing instead to bat at it like a pesky mosquito that just won't go away.