Science has had a hard time during the pandemic, as
politicians around the world – and especially right-wing politicians – have sought
to ignore or underplay scientific advice. There has been particular tenson
where scientific and medical opinion have placed health above the economic
interests of the politicians.
Scientists know that their cutting-edge work may looks
shockingly primitive in future decades, but they share a determination to base
decisions n the facts as we know them, on the best evidence, on the highest and
most reliable achievements of science that we currently have. They may admit
the evidence is limited and even flawed, but it is the best we have, and has
weight because it is the best, even with its limitations.
At the same time, it has been increasingly clear that a very
large section of the global population is prepared – even eager – to believe
almost anything. That President Trump’s random pronouncements on the virus
carry more weight that the expertise of Dr Fauci, gained over a lifetime of
dedication to scientific truth, for example. Or like Boris Johnson’s boosterism,
and his rising poll ratings against the context of the worst handling of the
virus in Europe and the highest death toll.
Why is it that people are willing to believe anything ? Is
it that science and rational thinking are just too hard ? A failure of
education, perhaps ?
Believing the impossible is the home turf of religion. All
religions have worked hard to persuade people to suspend all belief in what
they can see with their own eyes, or otherwise know to be true. The result ? People
who cannot fill a rainy Sunday with useful activity look forward to a life
eternal beyond death. Pacific islanders regard the Duke of Edinburgh as a god.
Some protestant churches do not believe in evolution, and prefer the idea of a ‘young
earth’ which is a mere 6000 years old.
Tolerance in everything. And freedom of religious views and
the ability to express them. They are all part of the sometimes gaudy colour of
living.
But views that ignore the science, and do not fit with the evidence,
while interesting, are essentially irrational. That is, they could not continue
without suspending knowledge, awareness, science, maths, logic. They are, at
heart, at their centre, opposed to all attempts to understand the world
rationally.
Politics is about getting things done. Hence the
meretricious attraction of slogans such as ‘Get Brexit done’. Truth is already
a very visible casualty of politics today, and we might be forgiven for
thinking that politicians generally have little regard or use for truth. They
are more interested in gaining and holding onto power come what may.
Nowhere can the complex tension between truth, rationality
and religion be more clearly seen than in Northern Ireland. Until the NI
Agreement, entrenched religion and adversarial politics had led to endless
deaths and community savagery. The British penchant for partition, seen in the
middle east after the first world war, in Northern Ireland with the six
counties, and in India at the end of empire, ought to give pause to
consideration of the wisdom of partition in keeping apart religious groups
brought up on blood-and-thunder scriptures.
It is perhaps too easy to think of the political and religious
hard-liners in Northern Ireland as the Taleban of the UK. Doctrinaire,
factional, uncompromising, and unable to forget the atavism of history, they
seem a breed apart, and determined to accept change only on their own narrow
terms.
With the departure of Arlene Foster, the leadership of the
DUP – an organisation far right of centre – is up for grabs. The most moderate
DUP candidate, would, if considered as a member of the whole population, be
considered not even close to moderate.
But the DUP community might be tempted to elect a clearer
factionalist. One candidate rejects evolution (himself a terrific metaphor for
that view), rejects abortion, rejects the idea that the world is older than
6000 years, rejects all the evidence that loving relationships are not limited
to those between one man and one woman in marriage forever.
At best, this might be mere intolerance. But it is
essentially completely irrational. There is no logical argument which can
defeat irrationality. It would be like trying to argue with a falling piano.
And these religious views, however antipathetic to most people, and however unsupported
by any pretence of evidence, must be tolerated by all liberal enough to respect
other people’s sincerely held beliefs.
But in a politician ? In a leader of a political party ?
Surely these are problematic in someone who seeks control over people’s lives
through political power. How can such a person be trusted to work for the good
of the whole community ? How can anything be trusted when it comes from a
person with such little regard from objective truth, someone who prefers the
revelation of God, interpreted through ancient men (always men) and prepared to
believe seventeen impossible things before breakfast ?
‘We do not do God’, said someone in Downing Street, and yet irrationality
and a disregard for truth and facts still led us into the Iraq war and the savage
chaos that followed.
Politics is tough enough for those on the receiving end,
without electing to power those who cannot tell prejudice, mumbo-jumbo, and
rational argument apart.
