Bobby B.

I occasionally have a thought that nags at me, so here it is:

During the Soviet occupation of Russia, the arts and sciences (Lysenkoism is one example) were pressed in to duty to push the party line. Unfortunately this had a devastating effect on the quality and imaginativeness of Russian literature in the 20th centure. How many authors of the stature of Tolstoy and Dosteovsky were there in the 20th Century?

For example: http://www.helsinki.fi/~bhellman/summary.html

"At the first congress of the Union of Soviet Writers, where Marshak spoke about children's literature, socialist realism was made the obligatory method for all creative work. From the many conferences on children's literature that were arranged henceforth, it was easy to see that literature had now become a party matter. The main problem, often to be discussed but never to be solved, was how to unite ideological demands with acceptable literary quality. The purges of the thirties also had a detrimental impact on children's literature. "

Force fitting literature into a socialist mold, effectively hamstung the literature. I think the same can be said for some creationist organizations requiring an oath of fealty to their cause, it effectively hamstrings their version of "science".

Any thoughts on this? I'd like to post it over at TW if I can strengthen the idea.

caritas

Isaak Babel was certainly a great Russian writer during early Soviet times. Had he not been silenced by socialist realism then purged in the 30s to die in Siberia he might have approached a Tolstoy.
Oh, I guess that makes your point though

Duvenoy

Hmm, yes. I hadn't given it any thought.

I wonder what writers and artists are working there today. I wonder what they're coming up with. Certainly, they have a lot of material to work with.

doov

Coragyps

Not just hamstrings, but kills and buries it. I agree that you have a very good parallel there - surely some books are around on Lysenkoism and how it destroyed a generation of Russian biology, and screwed agriculture over into the bargain. The thought processes at AiG and ICR are identical to the Stalinists' as far as "purity of ideology" goes. There must be a good article - hell, maybe a master's thesis - in your idea.

Kevbo

Of course, creationists would retort that the atheistic communism of Russia was suppressing the God-given theory of creationism

:boohoo:

Peez

Of course, this does not stop creationists from claiming that Stalin was inspired to evil by Darwinian evolution (as irrelevant as that would be even if it was true):

Why evolution breeds monsters like Hitler, Trotsky, and Stalin

Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao et al: The Role of Darwinian Evolutionism in Their Lives

STALIN'S BRUTAL FAITH

What Happened When Stalin Read Darwin?


Peez

Joe Meert

JM: Interesting. I am SLOWLY writing a book titled "The Golden Idols of Young Earth Creationism". In the introductory chapter (sure to win me friends with ye-creationists) I note precisely the parallelism between communism (senso lato) and ye-creationism.

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION
(With apologies to Karl Marx and Frederick Engels)
A spectre is haunting science and education in the United States--the spectre of young earth creationism. It is time for the powers of science and reason to exorcise this spectre of mysticism and bigotry.
For those who may only be dimly aware of the young earth creationist movement, a brief explanation is necessary. There exists, in the United States and to a lesser extent in Australia and elsewhere in the world, a group of fundamentalist Christians who hold that the Bible is the final word on all matters spiritual and scientific. Their goal, although often thinly disguised as education reform, is to remove evolutionary science (including old-earth geology) and replace it with a ‘literalist’ interpretation of the bible1. Specifically, the fundamentalist belief is that the Universe, the earth and life were created in six literal 24-hour days and that a cataclysmic global flood destroyed all life on earth except for a the family of Noah and a complete sampling of all animal life (including now extinct species) taken aboard the ark2.
No doubt, the forces of fundamentalism will take issue with the comparison of communism to the anti-evolution movement presently on the rise in the United States. I argue that the comparison is not strained. Just as Marx and Engels viewed the bourgeoisie as a hindrance to a Utopian society so also do the fundamentalists view the scientific establishment as the modern bourgeoisie. Marx and Engels took their case to the proletariat and argued that an uprising could, in fact would, overthrow the bourgeoisie and replace it with a society ruled by reason and the common good.
The philosophy contained within the communist manifesto can be readily applied to dogmatic fundamentalism. Young earth creationists have effectively painted the modern scientific community as the bourgeoisie from which many evils arise3. However, the history of modern communism is one of dismal failure. The bourgeoisie became more powerful, the proletariat more depressed and Utopia more elusive than ever4. Despite these failures, young earth creationism (and more correctly Christian fundamentalism) has adopted an almost Leninistic attitude toward revolt. Lenin5 argued that the proletariat would not rebel on their own because they had no revolutionary consciousness. This consciousness, argued Lenin, must be brought to them by their intellectual leaders who must act in unison, and without dissent, in order to facilitate the upheaval. Mao Tse Tung, China’s most revered communist leader, took inspiration from Marxist thinking and agreed with Lenin’s assessment. Both leaders understood that indoctrination into the communist mode of thinking was critical for its future success6. Indeed, one need not look far for comparisons between Lenin’s philosophy and that of the young earth fundamentalists. Henry Morris7, the former head of the Insitute for Creation Research (ICR), adopts an almost Maoist philosophy when he states:
“The whole world needs to be won, and the young to be trained in the knowledge that this world and all its inhabitants were created by the great God and our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore are the objects of His holy standards, His saving love, and His coming Judgment. The Lord has raised up ICR for such a time as this—not only ICR, of course, but also many other creationist ministries in these latter days, and all must be involved.”
Compare the above statement to Chairman Mao’s speech to the youth of China in 1939:
“When the youth and the whole nation are mobilized, organized and united, Japanese imperialism will be overthrown. Each young person must shoulder his responsibility. You must each be different from before and resolve to unite the youth and organize the people of the whole country for the overthrow of Japanese imperialism and the transformation of the old China into a new China. This is what I expect of all of you”

I want to be perfectly clear that I see belief in God and young earth creationism as two very separate issues. Belief in a God does not require one to adhere to the tenets of young earth creationism nor does the acceptance of evolution require disbelief. Young earth creationism is best viewed as a separate religion. The religion is loosely based on Christianity, but many of the beliefs of young earth creationists are clearly extra-biblical. The ICR also demands that each of its members take an oath to uphold this belief system (see http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-085.htm). In fact, although the ICR goes through gyrations to separate ‘scientific creationism’ from ‘biblical creationism’ in the end there is no distinction as noted in the final paragraph of ‘tenets’:

“Even though the tenets of scientific creationism can be expounded quite independently of the tenets of Biblical creationism, the two systems are completely compatible. All the genuine facts of science support Biblical creationism and all statements in the Bible are consistent with scientific creationism. Either system can be taught independently of the other or the two can be taught concurrently, as the individual situation may warrant.”

Cheers

Joe Meert

Peregrine

The funny thing is that the former Soviet Union forced Lamarkism on biologists. After the fall, former Soviet biologists were celebrating because they now could adopt Darwinist principles in their research. They said that Soviet rule set them back decades in biology and medicine.

Bobby B.

Thanks for the input everyone!

JM - that's good stuff! Thank you...you said it far better than I ever could, but I'll still cobble something together (in my version of substandard English) and post it over there at TW.

Bob Betz

theyeti

You can try if you want, but it won't make them bat an eye. The creationist mind is in a closed loop. It begins with the truth of creationism and then interprets everything around that. They'll just say that "evolutionism" is doing the same thing, and that scientists have been bullied and hamstrung by ideological orthodoxy for many decades now from accepting the truth of creationism. They'll say that scientists are in danger of losing their careers if they question "darwinian orthdoxy", which of course is complete bullshit, but remember that it must be true in their world. If you point out the ideological asperations of creationism, they'll just go post-modernist on you and claim that all science reduces to ideology, which of course defeats their previous claim, but don't expect consistency out of them. Your only choice then is to dig through a mountain of historical data to show how and why the evolutionary viewpoint has been useful and the creationist one hasn't. At which point you'll be subjected to quote-mining and various other jaw-dropping misrepresentations of the history of science. By the time you manage to defeat these canards, the discussion will have been derailed onto a subject that the creationist is more comfortable with, like how the big bang violates causality, or how evolutionism was responsible for commie-nazism.

theyeti