Does Knowledge Breed Ass-Sex?

Two excerpts from two different articles, both published in the New York Times in the last week:

In Kansas, Darwinism Goes on Trial Once More

By JODI WILGOREN
May 6, 2005

TOPEKA, Kan., May 5 - Six years after Kansas ignited a national debate over the teaching of evolution, the state is poised to push through new science standards this summer requiring that Darwin's theory be challenged in the classroom.

In the first of three daylong hearings being referred to here as a direct descendant of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, a parade of Ph.D.'s testified Thursday about the flaws they saw in mainstream science's explanation of the origins of life. It was one part biology lesson, one part political theater, and the biggest stage yet for the emerging movement known as intelligent design, which posits that life's complexity cannot be explained without a supernatural creator.


Gay and Straight Men React Differently to Sexual Odors

By NICHOLAS WADE
May 9, 2005

Using a brain-imaging technique, Swedish researchers have shown that men and women respond differently to two odors that may be involved in sexual arousal, and that homosexual men respond in the same way as women.

The two chemicals, one a testosterone derivative produced in men's sweat and the other an estrogen-like compound found in women's urine, have long been suspected of being pheromones, chemicals emitted by one individual to trigger some behavior in another of the same species. The role of pheromones, particularly in guiding sexual behavior, has been well established in animals but experts differ as to what importance, if any, they have retained in human mating.

The new research may open the way to studying human pheromones as well as the biological basis of sexual preference. The study, by Dr. Ivanka Savic and colleagues at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, is being reported in Tuesday's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

I wondered after reading these two articles whether conservative factions of our country would be trying to tear down science if it perhaps told them more that they wanted to hear.
That thought led me to imagine a nightmare world (part Fahrenheit 451, part 1984) where there is no Left, no science, and the country is run by the Christian Right. In that futuristic world of horse-drawn carriages, home-churned butter and Lawrence Welk, the nation's most renowned "scientists" will get their "degrees" from Bob Jones "University," and conduct studies linking abortion to the melting of the polar ice caps.
In this world I imagine myself re-named "Chocolate Flava," after the book I have chosen to memorize and pass down to posterity. I try to escape to the woods to live in peace with the other Satan-kissing literate slimeballs, but I am hounded by police, who I imagine will be dressed like the Spanish Inquisition in the Monty Python skit and are led by my boss, Paula. I will be caught, and after extended torture and interogation, executed in some sort of barbaric way, possibly stoned, possibly burnt alive. With my death, Zane is lost to future generations.