# Can decent people and anti-intellectuals form a society together? (Part 2 of 3) Date: 2026-01-28 Next Part: https://disrael.github.io/blogs/raw/can-decent-people-and-anti-intellectuals-form-a-society-together.part3.md Previous Part: https://disrael.github.io/blogs/raw/can-decent-people-and-anti-intellectuals-form-a-society-together.part1.md --- > You see there in Revelation 5, the same kinds of categories in Genesis 10 — geographical, political, familial, linguistic. But there again, you also see there are no racial categories. Again, at least in terms of how we understand race. So the Bible definitely has human categorization, but it uses categories that are not quite the categories that we use in North America. But this form of intellectualism just opens a can of worms that anything in a 1900+ year old book can be used as if it were scientific evidence. Or, as Stephen Miller does, you can appeal to an anti-intellectual God [without mentioning the bible](https://www.faithfullymag.com/p/stephen-miller-spoke-in-the-spirit): > We built the world that we inhabit now, generation by generation. And we will defend this world. We will defend goodness. We will defend light. We will defend virtue. You cannot terrify us. You cannot frighten us. You cannot threaten us. Because we are on the side of goodness. We are on the side of God. The whole practice of having pastors read an already anti-intellectual book for you and tell you what to believe from that book sets up Miller to do well with Christians. #### Exhibit D — you not only have to teach science but the latest science and adult learning too If you can, fairly quickly from an evolution point of view, breed a German Shepard to have strong guarding instincts, then why can’t humans vary tremendously from each other in profound ways? Science has, until recently, been rather supportive of racist thinking. Traditional biology textbooks described genes as a “blueprint for life”. That’s simply not true and modern biologists realize that there are contributions at all human levels — DNA, [cells](https://www.noemamag.com/cells-not-dna-are-the-master-architects-of-life/), organs, culture, etc. The German Shepard example is deeply flawed as you can teach a German Shepard to behave in almost any fashion. Even on base tendencies, what humans call race is [nowhere near as defined](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/09/claims-of-pure-bloodlines-ancestral-homelands-dna-science-says-no/) as purebred German Shepard. > Human history is rife with contentions about the purity (and superiority) of the bloodlines of one group over another and claims over ancestral homelands. > More than a decade of work on ancient human DNA has upended it all. > Instead, Harvard geneticist [**David Reich**](https://genetics.hms.harvard.edu/faculty-staff/david-emil-reich) said on Monday, increasingly sophisticated analysis of genetic material made possible by technological advances shows that virtually everyone came from somewhere else, and everyone’s genetic background shows a mix from different waves of migration that washed over the globe. If you’re not subscribed to science and keeping very up to date, you still live in a world where human genetic diversity is way greater then it actually is. And even if you stay up to date enough to know that race is nonsense, you might still believe in an old fashioned version of gender. You wouldn’t realize that children are [gender detectives](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-025-01629-8) who implement what they learn: > This basic gender identity knowledge (e.g., I am a girl!) sparks children’s motivation to seek out information about their gender group (e.g., girls play with dolls) so they can match their behavior to their understanding of gender (e.g., I want a doll!; Martin & Ruble, [2010](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-025-01629-8#ref-CR32 "Martin, C. L., & Ruble, D. N. (2010). Patterns of gender development. Annual Review of Psychology, 61(1), 353–381. > https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.093008.100511 > > ")). Children’s active search for gender knowledge leads them to amass a large amount of gender stereotype information throughout early and middle childhood (Martin & Ruble, [2004](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-025-01629-8#ref-CR31 "Martin, C. L., & Ruble, D. (2004). Children’s search for gender cues: Cognitive perspectives on gender development. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13(2), 67–70. > https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.00276.x > > "); Miller et al., [2013](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-025-01629-8#ref-CR38 "Miller, C. F., Martin, C. L., Fabes, R. A., & Hanish, L. D. (2013). Bringing the cognitive and social together: how gender detectives and gender enforcers shape children’s gender development. Navigating the Social World, 306–313. > https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199890712.003.0056 > > ")). Research examining the development of stereotype knowledge has found that children tend to learn gender stereotypes for activities/toys and appearance by preschool, occupations around age 5, and personality traits throughout the elementary years and into adolescence (Miller et al., [2006](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-025-01629-8#ref-CR37 "Miller, C. F., Lurye, L. E., Zosuls, K. M., & Ruble, D. N. (2009). Accessibility of gender stereotype domains: Developmental and gender differences in children. Sex Roles, 60, 870–881. > https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-009-9584-x > > "); Ruble et al., [2006](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-025-01629-8#ref-CR42 "Ruble, D. N., Martin, C. L., & Berenbaum, S. A. (2006). Gender development. In N. Eisenberg, W. Damon, & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: vol. 3, social, emotional, and personality development (6th ed., pp. 858–932). John Wiley & Sons Inc. > https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470147658.chpsy0314 > > ")). More recent research has highlighted the important role of appearance stereotypes and how appearance and personal attractiveness are especially central to girls’ early gender development (Halim et al., [2018](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-025-01629-8#ref-CR18 "Halim, M. L. D., Gutierrez, B. C., Arredondo, M., Bryant, D., & Takesako, K. (2018). Gender is what you look like: Emerging gender identities in young children and preoccupation with appearance. Self and Identity, 17(4), 455–466. > https://doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2017.1412344 > > "), [2024](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-025-01629-8#ref-CR19 "Halim, M. L. D., Russo, L. N., Echave, K. N., Tawa, S., Sakamoto, D. J., & Portillo, M. A. (2024). She’s so pretty: The development of valuing personal attractiveness among young children. Child Development, 95(5), 1659–1675. > https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14104 > > "); Miller et al., [2009](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-025-01629-8#ref-CR36 "Miller, C. F., Trautner, H. M., & Ruble, D. N. (2006). The role of gender stereotypes in children’s preferences and behavior. In L. Balter & C. S. Tamis-LeMonda (Eds.), Child psychology: a handbook of contemporary issues (2nd ed., pp. 293–323). Psychology.")). The research on developmental trends within specific *domains* (e.g., activities, appearance, occupations, traits) underscores the multidimensional nature of gender stereotype beliefs (Miller et al., [2024](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-025-01629-8#ref-CR39 "Miller, C. F., Wheeler, L. A., & Woods, B. (2024). A multidimensional examination of children’s endorsement of gender stereotypes. Social Development, 33(2), Article e12725. > https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12725 > > ")). Having old fashioned ideas about race or gender is corrosive to society. Anti-intellectuals sell these lies as the glue that bonds a society together. --- **[Continue reading Part 3 of 3](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/raw/can-decent-people-and-anti-intellectuals-form-a-society-together.part3.md)**