more tim burke, this time on intelligent design. every time i read burke's site, i can't wait for the day when i, too, will be able to write for upwards of five minutes without being pulled back to my "real" job. (sorry, real job. you're a great job. a necessary job. a painless job. but you do not generally involve the sorts of research and writing that i really love.)

burke's point about id believers on the brink of losing their faith puts me in mind of a high school friend who once told me, in a bout of rather impassioned honesty, that he would lose his faith if he ever found the bible to be less than literally true.

is this why fundamentalists feel persecuted? i would probably feel persecuted too, if much of my national culture were espousing facts that seemed designed to bring my entire worldview, and in fact the source of my survival and salvation, crashing down on my head. as a progressive christian, i've been blessed with a faith that can interact with the real world even when it doesn't agree with the real world. i don't need genesis. i don't need the virgin birth. i haven't decided whether i need a literal resurrection, and i'm not sure that matters.

so what happens when our fundamentalist friends (i have lots!) decide they've had enough? enough, that is, of being told and exposed to things that threaten their brittle faith? some of them will go live in rural areas, forsaking the real world almost entirely. but some of them will go to patrick henry college, major in government, get jobs in the white house, found conservative political organizations and try to roll back those pesky facts -- a gambit at which, distressingly, they've lately been quite successful.

also, given that we liberals like to argue that discrimination, etc., is at least somewhat in the eye of the beholder, where's the line between healthy debate that happens to make fundamentalists quake and actual religious persecution? does it exist?

[p.s.: this little exploration brought to you by twelve minutes that should have been spent on a model jury charge.]