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07/10/2005: Fertile Grounds for Beliefs...
This is what you should expect when trying to enshrine one fundamentalist religious belief in the Public realm or the Law: Equal Time for each and every other fundamentalist religious beliefs.
It's All Happening at the Tulsa Zoo:“…A determined creationist somehow talked three of the four zoo directors, including Mayor Bill LaFortune, into the addition by arguing that a statue of the elephant-headed god Ganesh at the elephant house amounted to an anti-Christian bias toward Hinduism.
…
…. [T]he directors "clarified" their vote to say they intended no monopoly for the Adam and Eve tale but rather wanted "six or seven" creation myths afforded equal time. There was the rub: there are hundreds of creation tales properly honored by the world's multifarious cultures, starting with the American Indian tribes around Tulsa.
You want creationism? How about the Cherokee buzzard that gouged the valleys and mountains? And why should Chinese-Americans tolerate neglect of P'an Ku and the cosmic egg at the zoo, or Norse descendants not speak up for Audhumla, the giant cow?
The futility of this exercise was emphatically made clear last week when a crowd of critics demanded reconsideration. With the speed of the Mayan jaguar sun god, zoo directors reversed themselves, realizing they had opened a Pandora's box (which see). In stumbling upon so many worthy cosmogonies, Tulsa did us all a favor by underlining how truly singular the evolution explanation is, rooted firmly in scientific demonstration….”
To keep crossing that boundary between Church and State prohibited by our Constitution invites this kind of logic and power for any religion to dominate our institutional governing body and to enact and amend these rules to conform with the prevailing beliefs that are held by a majority at that time and subject to equal time by each and every other major religion…but most people [and particularly fundamentalists] would be bothered by this outcome. It's treading into dangerous territory to step on to that slippery slope based only on one's faith in not falling to the bottom.
Luckily, cooler heads prevailed at the Tulsa Zoo and reconsidered this "Creationist Exhibit." Second thoughts are a creative characteristic of Homo sapiens, and the Tulsa Zoo directors did well by theirs. They were fortunate to have Ganesh, known to true believers as the remover of obstacles and the god of harmony, on the grounds.
Karen on 07.10.05 @ 06:28 AM CST
