Intelligent Designer: Evolution for Politicians

by John Janovy Jr

Overview

In the United States today, four words are political hot buttons that no elected official in his or her right mind responds to with deep and honest understanding, although all respond in ways that seem to reveal strong beliefs they hope are congruent with those of the voting majority. These words are: homosexuality, abortion, immigration, and evolution. For all four words, and the areas of daily life they refer to, Americans’ levels of education and religious affiliations drive political opinions and eventually public policy. These words thus are embedded in a complex socio-economic fabric of court decisions, state and federal law, school curricula, theology, and downright hostility toward neighbors who hold different beliefs, no matter how well founded in the reality of human biology those beliefs may be.
None of the cultural conflicts surrounding these words seem resolvable, primarily because of the battles between belief and desire on the one hand, and nature on the other, a war that probably has been fought ever since the origin of human consciousness some time in the early Stone Age or before. In essence, this war is between what we want to happen, and what in fact really happens, here on Earth. But the modern culture war, especially as it is fought in the United States, is actually about what our nation perceives itself to be, and it is sustained by those whose strong, and legitimate, religious beliefs are deeply intertwined with their equally strong, and perhaps not so legitimate, political agendas. This proposed book—Intelligent Designer: Evolution for Politicians—is intended not so much to win a skirmish over one of the hot button words, but to inform an audience that is disinclined to delve into the academic tomes on the so-called “creation-evolution controversy.” When aspiring presidential candidates get asked, as they have in during past preliminary debates, whether they “believe in evolution,” then Intelligent Designer is, or at least should be, required reading for the electorate.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940011483745
Publisher:	John Janovy, Jr
Publication date:	08/23/2011
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	469 KB

About the Author

About the author: John Janovy, Jr. (PhD, University of Oklahoma, 1965) is the author of seventeen books and over ninety scientific papers and book chapters. These books range from textbooks to science fiction to essays on athletics. He is now retired, but when an active faculty member held the Paula and D. B. Varner Distinguished Professorship in Biological Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His research interest is parasitology. He has been Director of UNL’s Cedar Point Biological Station, Interim Director of the University of Nebraska State Museum, Assistant Dean of Arts and Sciences, and secretary-treasurer of the American Society of Parasitologists. His teaching experiences include large-enrollment freshman biology courses, Field Parasitology at the Cedar Point Biological Station, Invertebrate Zoology, Parasitology, Organismic Biology, and numerous honors seminars. He has supervised thirty-two graduate students, and approximately 50 undergraduate researchers, including ten Howard Hughes scholars. His honors include the University of Nebraska Distinguished Teaching Award, University Honors Program Master Lecturer, American Health Magazine book award (for Fields of Friendly Strife), State of Nebraska Pioneer Award, University of Nebraska Outstanding Research and Creativity Award, The Nature Conservancy Hero recognition, Nebraska Library Association Mari Sandoz Award, UNL Library Friend’s Hartley Burr Alexander Award, and the American Society of Parasitologists Clark P. Read Mentorship Award.