Fantasy Island: The dwindling refuges of creationism.

Sunday morning, as snow approaches Washington, I throw a swimsuit in my travel bag and fly off to Key West. Twice a year, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Ethics and Public Policy Center bring journalists to this hedonistic outpost to talk about faith and values. It's an odd trip from cold to hot, from secular to pious to prurient. Everything feels upside down. Maybe that's the point.

Our first topic is creationism. In Washington, reporters look at the polls—42 percent of Americans think life has existed in its present form since the beginning of time—and fret that fundamentalists are running the country. But in Key West, historian Ed Larson invites us to look at it the other way. Darwin's Origin of Species, flanked by Biblical criticism, positivism, Marxism, and Freudianism, blew traditional beliefs and mores off their hinges. Conservatives and some progressives saw an oncoming dark age of materialism, relativism, and eugenics. Radical ideologues like H.L. Mencken and Clarence Darrow scorned faith. Denominational universities turned modern. After the Scopes trial, the media abandoned churches. E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, and other anti-prophets have declared war on faith in the name of science. Neuroscientists are trying to reduce consciousness and religious belief to biology.

In the courts, religion has steadily lost ground. The Supreme Court struck down classroom religious instruction, mandatory school prayer, sanctioned Bible readings, and "creation science." Fearing conflict, schools purged discussions of faith even from their social science curricula. Social conservatives retreated to their churches, radio stations, and home schools. Larson calls it a "fundamentalist subculture."

The phrase fascinates me. I've always thought of subcultures as decadent and left-wing. Key West is full of them. Down the block from the conference site, you can buy penis-shaped lighters and bikinis that say "your face here." In our hotel rooms, the staff has left fliers announcing "Fantasy Fest 2005," which begins the day after we depart. On our coffee tables, Key West magazine shows what's in store: drag, geishas, nudity, leather, S&M. The lobby is already festooned with movie stills from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.


http://www.slate.com/id/2131663/