Tuesday the Rabbi didn't want me to vote

Rabbi Daniel Lapin doesn't want me to vote.

Here are his criteria for who should vote for which candidate:

Choose the statement that comes closest to your belief: A: People occupy this planet on account of a lengthy process of unaided materialistic evolution that transformed primitive protoplasm into Bach, Brahms, and Beethoven. B: People occupy this planet because a benevolent God created us in His image and placed us here. If you chose “A,” John Kerry is your man. If you chose “B,” the only way to retain your integrity is to commit your vote to George W. Bush.

The problem is, there are any number of people who believe evolution is the process by which God (or the Gods) created all living things, us included.

But this huge voting bloc has just been told not to vote for either candidate, or maybe for both of them.

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One of the reasons I have this bee in my bonnet over evolution is that so many people, who I otherwise support, cast the issue as either/or.

Either you believe the scientific evidence that points to evolution, or you believe in god. And what's more...

You see, by choosing “A,” you are unavoidably affirming that other than for some superficial biological differences, such as brain size and opposable thumbs, you think that people and animals are similar. From here it follows logically that as animals, smart and sophisticated animals perhaps but animals nonetheless, we are products of our natures just like denizens of the zoo or occupants of the farmyard. It should also be said that like those animals we are in need of a zookeeper or of a farmer to care for us. Like cows and sheep it is appropriate that we deliver all our productivity to the farmer and like lions in the zoo, it is appropriate that resources like food are distributed to all animals equally. Resembling animals, we ought to dismiss the quaint notion of “family” along with such terms such as “evil”, “soul”, or “faith”. Needless to say, homosexuality is perfectly “natural” and harvesting the young for their skins or stem cells is perfectly “normal”.

Well, the evidence for common ancestry of all animals, and indeed for all living things, is overwhelming. There are arguments about the details, such as the relative importance of various mechanisms, but the evidence that we did, in fact, evolve, is beyond refutation.

By Daniel Lapin's "logic", since I accept the scientific evidence, I must now abandon any codes of morality. He has decreed that I can't have both, and I refuse to lie about the evidence.