However ridiculous we may find their beliefs, I hope you would agree with me that creationists are living, feeling human beings. They can be hurt, same as you or I. If you prick them, they bleed the same red blood, and their tears are just as wet and salty.
Christians, more generally, do not consider their religion to merely be a set of beliefs. They often say “it’s not a religion, but a personal relationship with God”, which besides being a rhetorical trick to set Christianity apart from and above religions they correctly recognize as false, also reveals something of how central Christianity is to their lives.
It is a framework, a lens through which they view reality, including themselves. What they see through the lens appears much the same as what you or I see, but with vastly different meaning. A rose still appears red and still smells sweet, but to a creationist, it’s a literal work of art. Not something which evolved, but a masterful demonstration of the creator’s power and intellect, deliberately engineered for aesthetic appeal.
Likewise with clouds, trees, birds, sunsets…and humans. Not soulless walking, talking assemblies of atoms animated by the laws of physics but individually sculpted, cherished creations of a cosmic father! What perspective could be more beautiful and inspiring? Nevermind ebola. Nevermind cancer, malaria or the candiru. But I digress. About half of US Christians are creationists according to Pew polling data. They were careful to word the question in a way which removed all doubt as to its meaning, specifying a young Earth. (“Do you believe all life on Earth appeared in its present form less than 10,000 years ago?”)
For the creationist half, which differs from moderates mainly in that they do not lie to themselves about the meaning of Genesis as most probably intended by its authors, humans are just as artificial as the Earth. Which is to say that we did not develop over time into our present form, we’re engineered, like organic robots.
Earth was architected specifically to be a habitat for humans, primarily, with all plants and animals amounting to living appliances meant to service various human needs. The ancient Hebrew conception of the cosmos described in scripture resembles a sort of domed, snowglobe style terrarium wherein Earth is a flat disc supported on pillars, topped with a solid dome called the firmament
While moderates are only in denial about Genesis, both moderates and creationists are in denial about what Biblical cosmology entails. Vanishingly few moderates are Flerfers. Not all creationists are Flerfers, but all or nearly all Flerfers are creationists. It breaks down along a spectrum of Biblical literalism, something like this:
It makes perfect sense though, from the perspective that we’re all ants in Yahweh’s ant farm. That he delights in each of us, proud of his finest creation, which he prizes even above the angels (the canonical reason for Satan’s rebellion). That’s a very cozy, uplifting, affirming view of the world and humanity’s place in it. Earth is but a stage upon which we play the starring role.
You might recognize then how emotionally important that conception could be to someone who truly believes in it, heart and soul. How it’s a central, inextricable component of their identity. Contradicting any of those claims isn’t just a dry, academic matter for creationists (or even moderates, to a lesser extent). It’s invalidating their very identity. “Epistemic violence”, as critical theorists call it.
Now, let’s say you have a creationist coworker. A friendly, likable guy you have no beef with. But he’s really, really invested in the alternate reality he lives in, mentally, 24/7. It upsets him deeply, erases his identity and makes him feel invalidated when you contradict it. Are you therefore morally obligated to humor him?
Be honest with yourself now: It would cost you exactly zero dollars to humor him. So why not? Let’s say you’re both geologists, or fracking engineers, or archaeologists, or history professors. Topics like the timescales that sediment deposition, erosion and petrification take place on will come up frequently. It doesn’t pick your pocket or break your leg, in those instances, to refrain from specifying Earth’s true age, instead scaling your estimates down to a sub-10,000 year timeframe.
“But I shouldn’t have to!” you protest. Your colleagues don’t agree. It’s normalized to them, because you live in a red state. “What’s the big deal? It’s called being a kind person” they tell you. If it’s no big deal for them, they reason, then you’re the problem. “Don’t you support creationist rights?”
Must kindness come at the expense of honesty? Just because most other people in your community don’t personally have any reservations about affirming a young Earth for the comfort of their creationist coworkers, does that mean you’re wrong to? Is their ordering of moral priorities more definitive and valid than your own? Is this the proverbial bridge which you must jump off of, if all your friends have?
“Creationist rights” sounds positive and defensible on the surface. Why shouldn’t they have rights, same as anybody else? But what specific rights do they mean? It can’t be the right to drive, they already have that. It can’t be the right to marry, they have that. By process of elimination, we eventually arrive at what they really mean by that phrase, but won’t openly say. It’s the one right they need most, but don’t yet have, and it’s not a right anybody else has either.
“Creationist rights” isn’t about them, it’s about you. It means their right to legally force you to humor them, under penalty of losing your livelihood and potentially being blackballed, depending on the prevailing politics where you live. Also their right to teach their beliefs to your kids unimpeded, but that’s another article.
It’s been said that my right to swing my arms ends at the tip of your nose, expressing the limitations of individual freedom. This is directly at odds with creationist rights, which don’t defend the individual creationist’s right to life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness (which they already are guaranteed) but rather amount to an intentionally misleading euphamism for curtailing the rights of others by not only silencing them, but forcing them to make statements directly or indirectly affirming a set of beliefs they don’t share.
This brings us to where shit really gets hairy, the question of what side the government ought to take. It’s one thing to discuss the social pressure to humor your coworker’s beliefs, “going along to get along”. We all tend to make the unexamined, self-flattering assumption that our own moral philosophy is simply common sense that every reasonable person ought to agree with (Fuck ’em if they don’t! Shun the monster!! How could anyone come to different conclusions than I have??)
It’s a horse of a different color, however, when the government starts passing laws which actually require you “go along to get along”. Before, workplace tolerance policies may have required that you remain silent rather than contradict your coworker on matters central to his belief system. But now, you’re no longer to remain silent. You must speak, and what comes out of your mouth had better be in full agreement with his understanding of reality and how he relates to it, or you’re fired.
“But they can’t do that! Creationism is proven to be untrue by science!” Doesn’t matter, for two reasons. The first is that creationists are numerous, politically influential, and don’t agree that their beliefs aren’t scientific. They in fact have written reams upon reams of literature purporting to make the case that science backs up their beliefs.
They’ve gone so far as to erect entire bogus universities and research institutes to mirror secular ones, in order to create the appearance of equivalence. From their POV, if you disagree it’s because you’ve not read their finest academic literature, and it’s “not their job to educate you”.
You and I may see through this farce, but creationists and their sympathizers do not. “Creation science” has science in the name, you see. If it says “science”, or “theory” (as in “critical theory”) then it must be scientific rather than simply an ideology, with the ulterior motive of effecting social change.
The second reason why it doesn’t matter whether creationism is true, is that there’s not actually a law on the books anywhere which requires us to decide what’s moral based upon what science tells us is true. Perhaps the world ought to be that way, but it simply isn’t.
Law isn’t decided according to truth, but according to the will of the people, and the constitution. Most people don’t vote for laws based on truth, but their own desires. Which is to say, how they want the world to be, and that’s very often at odds with how science says it actually is.
So, whether it be established that a belief is true or false makes no difference to our analysis, only how emotionally important it is to those who hold it. We must not hurt their feelings, at any cost, including everyone else’s freedom of speech.
Fortunately, there exists a show-stopping legal precedent which ought to forever prevent such a law from passing. The so-called “compelled speech doctrine” established by cases like West Virginia Board of Education versus Barnette, which concluded public schools could not require students to recite the pledge of allegiance. The basic principle is that freedom of speech, a right enshrined in the first amendment, includes the right not to speak.
There exist some exceptions, such as laws requiring advertisers to disclose important truths about their products (like warning labels on cigarettes) but at least so far, nobody has succeeded at carving out an exception to the compelled speech doctrine for emotionally important beliefs, no matter how central they might be to the identity of those who hold them.
For this reason, advocates for a law requiring compelled speech affirming creationism in the workplace naturally turn against free speech with the ferocity of hungry, swarming piranha. They mock it as “freeze peach”, caricaturizing its defenders and making furious, impassioned emotional appeals against upholding that line in the sand, where one person’s individual freedoms end and another’s begin.
“Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences!” they say, with the unspoken, subtly threatening subtext that they, or their supporters, will always be the ones deciding what the consequences are and who receives them. “There are limits! You can’t shout fire in a crowded theater!” they protest, attempting to make the case that if creationists self-harm because being contradicted hurt their feelings, it’s your fault. A particularly insidious reframing, since it means dissent is equivalent to violence, and thus may be met with actual violence in return.
Perhaps they imagine the rules will only be bent for them, when if we make an exception for one class of people, eventually we must open that door to everyone. Everybody must agree with every belief, even beliefs which contradict one another, in order to continue enjoying hot meals and indoor lodging.
They don’t think of this, because their self-favoritism is invisible to them. It’s just “common sense” and “basic decency” in their minds, that they’re unicorns who merit special treatment. They don’t consider themselves to have an ideology, as Christians often don’t. They characterize their belief system simply as “how to be a good person”, which explains their total lack of sympathy for anybody who does not fall in line behind them.
I try not to assume malice when ignorance is explanation enough, but it’s also possible that they know full well that it’s a double standard they’re agitating to establish. That they see nothing wrong with double standards which advantage them. Maybe I’m naive for not assuming this, as opposed to marking it down to a lack of self awareness. They may well simply be wicked, on top of being pathologically dishonest.
It’s a source of much relief to me that this outcome can never happen in the US, at least without an extremely unlikely constitutional amendment. Religion is something of a special case that the founders of our nation already thought to get out in front of, establishing a wall of separation which among other things prohibits any religious test for office, forbids government to establish an official religion (or to interfere with any religion’s free practice) and so on. Contrary to popular impressions, no law requires candidates to swear on the Bible when taking office.
So, our creationist coworker is simply out of luck. He will have to learn to live with the frustrating reality that the world is full of all kinds of people who believe all kinds of things. Not everyone shares his beliefs, nobody is obligated to anyhow, and it was never reasonable of him to expect to be surrounded only by like-minded peers in the workplace.
This will likely infuriate him. People who know they’re not on firm, factual footing often are viciously insecure about it, which is why they crave the power to force every stranger they meet to bend the knee and confess Christ is Lord, as it were. But that simply isn’t a right anybody has, or should have. Learning to accept the autonomy of other human beings is part of life, even if they sometimes use that autonomy in ways that displease you.
But, as you’ve doubtless worked out by now, this article wasn’t really about religion. Supposing I needed to make it about religion simply because prior articles wherein I didn’t beat around the bush were targeted by flagging campaigns, then taken down?
Even on Hive, there are some emperors one may not point out the nudity of. Creationists are fair game, a popular punching bag on here, and make a great rhetorical device when testing for double standards. Can you sealion a creationist, for example? They like to broadcast their beliefs on public platforms but don’t welcome being challenged on those beliefs. Sealioning requires that the questions you’re asking have already been exhaustively addressed elsewhere, but creationists would contend that’s true of their claims, pointing you to their mountains of apologetics.
The point of this article wasn’t to pick on creationists (or anybody), they’re just the most politically correct/safest placeholder to represent the archetype of someone stubbornly committed to their delusions. That makes them a good general purpose point of reference for thought experiments like this one.
Yet they’re all around us and influence politics at every level, lest we forget, wrongly supposing that silly people shrivel up and vanish just because we think they’re silly. While they have lost the power to censor dissidents, other movements not so different from theirs have gained it. Modernized blasphemy laws, which determined truthsayers must fearfully, cautiously work around to get the message out.
I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that religion isn’t the only emotionally important belief which people use to define their identities. There are other, newer ideologies that the founding fathers could never have foreseen, so there exist no front-loaded protections in the constitution against their overreach.
It shouldn’t matter whether any of us personally sympathize with one ideology, but not another. Human rights isn’t supposed to be a popularity contest. If we’ll vote for compelled speech affirming the beliefs of a group we sympathize with, it’s hypocritical (and legally untenable in an egalitarian country) to deny that same power to other ideologies just because we regard them as demonstrably false, or politically distasteful.
With any luck, should saner minds prevail, none of this will become an issue. From where I sit, I see no plausible way around the compelled speech doctrine. Any group which defines its rights as including the right to compel verbal affirmation from strangers has gone down a blind alley, and will be butting their heads against the brick wall at the end of it until they accept that in fact they don’t have a right to agreement. Nobody does, nor should they ever.
There is solace, however, in the rights that we all do have: Liberty and pursuit of happiness logically include the right to wear the clothing we choose, within the limits of obscenity statutes. We have the right to change our names, to speak in a manner comfortable to us, to grow out or cut our hair and wear it as we wish.
Nothing at all prohibits individuals, within the boundaries of their own lives and belongings, from presenting themselves to the world in the manner they are most comfortable with. That’s the definition of creationist rights I can get behind, and which will always have my support.