Revival Meeting at the Church of Darwin

So now they're having revival meetin's at the Church of Darwin. Click here for pictures of the singin' and clappin' at this years revival, which commemorates the Dover v. Kitzmiller decision striking down Intelligent Design.

HT: Ed Brayton.

A Dilemma for Darwinists

The new crop of atheist Darwinists argue that the Resurrection of Christ is impossible because there are so many observations of people dying who, in fact, stay dead. But at the same time, they claim it is possible (indeed, for them, necessary) that life came from non-life despite the equally impressive number of observations of living things generated always and only from other living things.

Despite just as much evidence against one as the other, they accept the latter and reject the former. Why? Because it fits their worldview. But somehow, I suspect, they will continue to claim they are more rational than their religious peers.

Go figure.

Overheard in a book review, one Darwinian to another: "Shhh! Don't say that!"

In an interesting review of several new books on Darwin in the New York Review of Books, Richard Lewontin has good things to say about Jerry Coyne's book, Why Evolution is True. But he criticizes him for what he feels is giving too much away to Darwin's critics:

Where he is less successful, as all other commentators have been, is in his insistence that the evidence for natural selection as the driving force of evolution is of the same inferential strength as the evidence that evolution has occurred. So, for example, he gives the game away by writing that when we examine a sequence of changes in the fossil record, we can

determine whether the sequences of changes at least conform to a step-by-step adaptive process. And in every case, we can find at least a feasible Darwinian explanation.

But to say that some example is not falsification of a theory because we can always "find" (invent) a feasible explanation says more about the flexibility of the theory and the ingenuity of its supporters than it says about physical nature. Indeed in his later discussion of theories of behavioral evolution he becomes appropriately skeptical when he writes that

imaginative reconstructions of how things might have evolved are not science; they are stories.

While this is a perfectly good argument against those who claim that there are things that are so complex that evolutionary biology cannot explain them, it allows evolutionary "theory" to fall back into the category of being reasonable but not an incontrovertible material fact.

The text here is hard to parse at points, but he appears to be saying that Darwinists should not permit the slightest speck of doubt (to borrow a Chestertonian phrase) on their spotless machine. Lewontin even puts "theory" in double quotes, just to emphasize the term's status as scientific dogma.

And Lewontin is right, as a Darwinian dogmatist, to be upset at what Coyne seems to be admitting here (I'm relying on Lewontin's account, not having read the book), which is that any set of facts, if it can be given a Darwinian interpretation, must be given a Darwinian interpretation. This seems to be a common procedure: if a Darwinian interpretation is feasible, it is also, therefore, imperative.

Some theories get all the breaks.

The Great Scopes Myth: The convenient lie lives on

Time Magazine has a story the town of Dayton, Tennessee is still dealing with what is popularly termed the "Scopes Monkey Trial." The 1925 trial became a national obsession when the national media descended on the town, turned it into a circus, and then made fun of it.

The Time story continues to do what the media has traditionally done when reporting on the trial: falsify history:

Though Bryan and the creationists initially won this fight, the law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools was eventually overturned in the 1960s. [emphasis added]

The Butler Act which was the subject of the trial did not "prohibit the teaching of evolution." It did prohibit denying the literal account of man's origins, however, and the press took it from there.

And then, of course, there was Inherit the Wind, a play based on the trial that simply falsified history to make its preachy point which was then made into several even more preachy movies.

Oh well, the Great Scopes Myth (part of the larger Darwinist Myth) must be sustained in the national consciousness--all, ironically, in the name of truth.

Will the creation/evolution be fair?

As a commenter on the previous post about tonight's mock trial at Northern Kentucky University has pointed out, those who have doubts about Darwinism shouldn't necessarily be pleased with the debate from a practical standpoint. According to Art (who is a UK Professor of science, I believe), the gentleman who is cast in the role of the defense's chief witness is "an honest-to-goodness nut case, a charlatan whose ideas wander way, way beyond the bounds of earnest intellectual discourse."

Of course, sometimes I get the impression that Art might consider anyone who doesn't accept Darwinian theory as a nut case and a charlatan, but I'm perfectly willing to take that back if he has more specific criteria (which he's welcome to mention here).

Here is the press copy on the man in question:

Scott's chief witness will be the real-life Dr. Ben Scripture, who received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Notre Dame in1998. Dr. Scripture has earned degrees from the University of California at Berkeley (a A.B. in zoology) and Grace Theological Seminary (M.Div.). Dr. Scripture has published articles in the Journal of Biological Chemistry and the Journal of Molecular Biology. He hosts weekly radio programs, "Scripture on Creation" and "That's What Scripture Says" on radio stations in Fort Wayne, Ind., and Indianapolis, and on the Good News Network stations covering the southeastern region of the U.S.

On the one hand, he's apparently credentialed, but on the other, he is apparently at the far right end of the spectrum on the issue, believing in a literal six-day creation. I don't happen to share that view, but I also don't think someone is a nut case for believing it.

It would be interesting to know what person Art considers to be the least nutty non-charlatan representative of the creationist side.

But Art's main point has to do with the question of whether the creationist side will be adequately represented. I have been around long enough to know that when such "debates" take place under the auspices of institutions that are hostile to those views, often the worst representatives are chosen to give the unpopular view. Art is right about that. If you doubt it, just go back and watch PBS's "Judgment Day".

Whether this is one of those cases remains to be seen I suppose. But, as I mention on the other post, there are two questions here: the first is the question of free and open discussion if important issues, and the second is the question of whether that discussion is done in a fair and representative way.

We already know where the pro-evolution side is on the question of free and open discussion in our educational institutions: they're against it. Whether the institution now promoting the free and open discussion does it fairly is something we'll have to see about.

Darwinists who don't want to debate

If you thought the scientific community was a place of free and open discussion, you'd better think again. Northern Kentucky University recently announced a mock trial involving a fictional public high school teacher who is fired for teaching creationism in a biology class. The program is part of a series the university is sponsoring on controversial issues. But there are some people who don't want the debate to happen at all.

According to Inside Higher Ed, NKU University president James C. Votruba has received hundreds of e-mails asking him to call off the debate. It isn't the conservatives who are complaining, says the article, "scientists are." “Evolution is science and creationism is faith,” Vortuba told the online education magazine, but, he added, that's no reason to be afraid of a debate on the issue.

But there are those in the scientific community who think otherwise, and their voices seem to be growing louder by the day. “What this really is is an attempt to contrive a debate between science and superstition in which the superstition side gets to pretend they have equal status. [sic] And, of course, science issues are not settled in a courtroom, ever,” said PZ Myers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota at Morris, whose weblog Pharyngula, purports to be a watchdog on anti-evolution activity.

Myers is just one of many voices that in recent years have tried shout down any debate about issues involving human development and origins on the grounds that any debate would give undeserved credibility to the anti-Darwinist side. The dogmatic tone Myers strikes is one being heard increasingly among those who hold to Darwinism, the reigning paradigm in the scientific community.

Earlier this year, advocates of Darwinism strongly opposed a bill passed by the Louisiana State Legislature that advocated objectivity, logical analysis, and critical thinking skills in the discussion of science and other controversial issues in state schools, claiming that the measure was a thinly veiled attempt to impose creationism in the classroom.

When you are reduced to arguing that objectivity is a creationist plot, you'd better start revising your public relations strategy. And when you have to abandon the very principles that you advocate on every other occasion in order to protect your beliefs, it's probably time for an intellectual gut check.

Tolerance and diversity are the academic watchwords when it comes to views that challenge other dominant paradigms, so why are they abandoned so quickly when it comes to discussion of controversial issues like evolution?

Why is there such a fear of debate?

"Within the larger scientific community, the issue is settled, but in the public policy arena, it’s not a settled issue,” Mark Neikirk, executive director of the university’s Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement, told Inside Higher Ed. Scripps Howard, along with the university’s law school, is sponsoring the event. “In the real world, there is a public policy debate over how to handle this topic. Many Americans believe in intelligent design. Many Americans believe it should be taught."

Advocates of Darwinism are understandably frustrated. Despite the fact that they have had control of the nation's science education for decades, a majority of American's still hold to some form of creationism, or at least intelligent design, a broader theory that would include creationism but also includes those who belief in some form of evolution guided by a designer.

Maybe one of the reasons there are so many people in this country who maintain a suspicion of Darwin's theory is the behavior of those who are its most ardent advocates. If the evidence for Darwinism is as airtight as its advocates claim, then why are they so opposed to the discussion of the issue in an academic forum?

In other words, their failure to convince the larger public may turn out to be their own fault.

Does social Darwinism necessarily result from scientific Darwinism?

Given the discussion on a previous post about the racist nature of the textbook that the Darwinists defended in the Scopes Trial, I should probably mention exactly what I believe about the relation of Darwinism to certain social beliefs, such as racism and eugenics. If I don't, there are a few commenters here at this blog who are always poised to jump to conclusions about what I believe, and they're likely, in their customary manner, to misinterpret what I have said about this issue.

Several readers interpreted what I said a saying that racism was at issue in the Scopes trial rather than creationism. That interpretation is problematic, mostly because that is not what I said. I was observing the irony that the people who view the Scopes trial as this great victory for progress have completely forgotten what was in the book which was being defended in the trial.

There are two mistakes you can make about the connection between Darwinism and racism: the first is to say that the two are scientifically or philosophically connected; the second is to say that the two are not historically connected. The first mistake is often made by opponents of Darwinism; the second by its advocates.

Darwinism does not necessarily entail racism, and yet it is clear that the two have been historically connected. In other words, while Darwinism might not logically imply racism, it was seen to imply it by many people throughout recent history. You don't have to take Richard Wickert's word for it: just read Social Darwinism in American Thought by Richard Hofstadter, the Pulitzer Prize winning historian who was probably the most widely regarded historian of the progressive era in America.

The question that arises, of course, is whether, by virtue of this historical connection, Darwinism itself is implicated in the uses to which the theory has been put. After all, if the harnessing of a belief for unjust causes makes that belief itself unjust, then what about Christianity, which has been used as an excuse for bad behavior on a number of occasions itself.

Is that a relevant comparison?

In the case of Christianity, there is nothing in the religion itself--other than the passionate devotion people have to it--that lends itself to warfare or persecution. It would be hard to glean that such things are the proper activity of a Christian, for example, from the teachings of Christ. And, in fact, the commonest means of criticizing Christian behavior has traditionally been an appeal to Christianity itself. Christians are seldom criticized for following their religion by the religion's detractors: they're much more often criticized for not following it. Hypocrisy is the commonest charge against the misbehavior of Christians, a criticism that would not be possible if the alleged practitioners of it were seen as really acting on their faith.

With Darwinism, however, the case is less clear.

We know that as a matter of historical fact that social Darwinism finds fertile soil in secular or atheistic belief systems. Social Darwinism often (though not always) results from putting one part scientific Darwinism with one part philosophical naturalism. And those who are interested in guarding against the cultural virus of social Darwinism can be excused for being just a little concerned when they see similar cultural alignments forming in their own time.

In the past, the danger has come from a sort of secular conservatism. Hofstadter points to people like William Graham Sumner as the chief culprits: men whose conservatism consisted solely in their aversion to accelerated social change and egalitarianism, and who championed the "bring yourself up by your bootstraps" individualism that you hear so much of from some conservative quarters today--but who had no use for either of the foundational pillars of morality: revealed religion and natural rights. It was a philosophy that thrived during the industrial revolution. This was in stark contrast to the traditional Burkean conservatives who, unlike Sumner, believed in the authority of tradition rooted ultimately in divine revelation and the rejection of rationalism. The difference mirrors in some ways the differences we see today between neoconservatives and traditionalist conservatives.

Today, however, the threat is much different--although just as potent. I have said before that when the idea that humans are no different fundamentally from animals gains acceptance, there are two possible results: either animals must be treated like humans or humans can be treated like animals. The first result we see in much of the modern environmental movement; the second we see in the increasing devaluation of human life. Often, in fact, we see a bizarre combination of both: the person who is appalled at the killing baby seals, but who has no problem with, say, partial birth abortion. One of our two major candidates for the presidency falls into this category.

In the 20th century, Darwinism was hijacked by the advocates of the Superman. In the 21st century, it is not the believers in any Nietzschian faith intent on enslaving the living who pose a threat, but the more apparently civilized proponents of biotechnology who would enslave--or eliminate--the yet to be born.

The old allies of Darwinism thought that the theory implied that some men are lower than others; the new allies of Darwinism are much more egalitarian. We are no longer dealing with those who believe that some men are like animals: we have advanced beyond that. We are now dealing those, more civilized some thing, who hold that all men are like animals.

Such is cultural progress in our time.

"The greatest evil is not now done," said C. S. Lewis,

in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even on concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted ofices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.

When such distinctions become fuzzy, as Darwinism can reasonably be said to do in the case of man and animal, there's danger on the horizon. And the problem becomes even more severe when you add to this new anti-human attitude the powers acquired from biotechnology. Armed with both a philosophy that undervalues human life, and a technology to change that life, are we supposed to feel safe?

The great British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge once appeared on a BBC program featuring South African surgeon Christian Barnard, who performed the world's first heart transplant. Why, Muggeridge wondered, had the first heart transplant been performed in that particular country? Ian Hunter, the author of Muggeridge's biography, relates the story:

Muggeridge ventured to enquire whether the first heart transplant had been done in South Africa because the research, personnel, and surgical facilities were better there than anywhere else in the world, or because the vile doctrine of apartheid had so devalued human life that human beings could be seen as spare parts for experimentation. (Malcolm Muggeridge, p. 216)

The same question could now well be asked about procedures such as cloning, and some forms of stem cell research, as well as abortion, one of whose staunchest institutional supporters, Planned Parenthood, was founded by a woman who a prominent advocate of eugenics: Margaret Sanger. Is it purely a coincidence that those who are the most prominent advocates of abortion and human cloning find themselves on one side of the evolution issue and those who oppose them on the other?

It could be plausibly argued that Darwinism is not at fault for being so easily employed in such deadly causes. Abusus non tollit usum: "the abuse of a thing is not an argument against its proper use." Yet there is something disconcerting about a philosophy that so easily lends itself to such repeated complicity in assaults on human dignity.

The problem is that the people who are the most vociferous in the defense of Darwinism against such charges, saying that it is the philosophy of scientific materialism that is at fault, not the scientific theory of Darwinism itself, are occupying the same offices as those who adhere to the offending philosophies. And they're not occupying themselves with restraining their colleagues since they're too busy looking for creationists under the bed.

No word from Louisiana science group on atheist conspiracy

The Louisiana Coalition for Science thinks it has the smoking gun in its case that SB 733's requirement that objectivity characterize science instruction in the state is a creationist plot: that pro-Intelligent Design groups supported it. SB 733 is the Louisiana legislation that has caused Darwinist science groups to come out in public opposition to critical thinking and logical analysis, and that was recently signed into law by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Here is the offending language:

The State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, upon request of a city, parish, or other local public school board, shall allow and assist teachers, principals, and other school administrators to create and foster an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning. [Emphasis added]

No comment yet from the organization concerning why documented atheist opposition to the bill doesn't prove that there is a conspiracy to impose atheism on Louisiana students through opposition to the bill.

Gay Penguins and the Inductive Argument from Hell

So far as I know, there is no name for a particular kind of science article in which an observation is offered of some sort of animal behavior, and then, under the Darwinian assumption that humans are simply advanced animals, concludes that the behavior is somehow indicative of how humans too should be able to act.

This week's model for human behavior comes, via Scientific American, from the Central Park Zoo, and involves two male penguins named Roy and Silo.

The first order of business in such an article is to make the behavioral observation. In this case, we find animals engaged in deviant behavior. We go now to the action in Central Park: "Two penguins," says writer Emily V. Driscoll,

native to Antarctica met one spring day in 1998 in a tank at the Central Park Zoo in midtown Manhattan. They perched atop stones and took turns diving in and out of the clear water below. They entwined necks, called to each other and mated. They then built a nest together to prepare for an egg. But no egg was forthcoming: Roy and Silo were both male. 

Robert Gramzay, a keeper at the zoo, watched the chinstrap penguin pair roll a rock into their nest and sit on it, according to newspaper reports. Gramzay found an egg from another pair of penguins that was having difficulty hatching it and slipped it into Roy and Silo’s nest. Roy and Silo took turns warming the egg with their blubbery underbellies until, after 34 days, a female chick pecked her way into the world. Roy and Silo kept the gray, fuzzy chick warm and regurgitated food into her tiny black beak.

Where are the Jerry Falwells of the animal world when you need them?

After the behavioral observation, comes the generalization. It is not only these animals who have decided to lead a life of bohemian extravagance: it turns out that such scandalous behavior is common in the animal kingdom:

Like most animal species, penguins tend to pair with the opposite sex, for the obvious reason. But researchers are finding that same-sex couplings are surprisingly widespread in the animal kingdom. Roy and Silo belong to one of as many as 1,500 species of wild and captive animals that have been observed engaging in homosexual activity. Researchers have seen such same-sex goings-on in both male and female, old and young, and social and solitary creatures and on branches of the evolutionary tree ranging from insects to mammals.

After the behavioral observation and the generalization comes the human application, which consists of asking why it is that humans are so out of touch with their more distant evolutionary relatives. Here it is (you knew it was coming):

These observations suggest to some that bisexuality is a natural state among animals, perhaps Homo sapiens included, despite the sexual-orientation boundaries most people take for granted.

This scientific reasoning procedure--from observation of the behavior of particular animals, generalization to the entire animal kingdom, and finally the application to human beings--takes the following form, when stated as a syllogism:

Proposition #1: Birds do it
Proposition #2: Bees do it
Proposition #3: Even educated fleas do it
Conclusion: Let's do it, lets fall in love (with someone of the same sex)

It's not exactly a model piece of logical deduction. In fact, it's the Inductive Argument from Hell. But publications like Scientific American seem willing to ignore this weakness in the interest of social progress. The main problem is that if humans are to accept bisexuality as normal because it is not uncommon in the animal kingdom, then wouldn't humans be forced to find acceptable other, less becoming behavior which is even more common in nature?

What, for example, about sexual promiscuity in general? In a March 18, 2008 story in the New York Times, Natalie Angier explains that our tendency to condemn acts of adultery like that on display in the famous case of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer ignore the prevalence of such behavior among non-human creatures:

It’s all been done before, every snickering bit of it, and not just by powerful “risk-taking” alpha men who may or may not be enriched for the hormone testosterone. It’s been done by many other creatures, tens of thousands of other species, by male and female representatives of every taxonomic twig on the great tree of life. Sexual promiscuity is rampant throughout nature, and true faithfulness a fond fantasy.

Of course, I'm against letting Spitzer off the hook simply because his behavior is reflected in other species, and yet there is something about the process of comparing his behavior to that of the great grey shrike and the freshwater flatworm, as Angier does, that seems to throw the universe into balance.

In any case, if we are supposed to accept bisexuality because of two penguins in Central Park, then why not promiscuity? Romantic sponges, they say, do it. Oysters down in Oyster Bay do it. What, then, is preventing us from doing it as a part of the normal course of human affairs?

And then there is cannibalism. Cannibalism too is a common occurrence among the brutes. In a National Wildlife Federation article titled, "Eating Among Friends," by Dave Brian Butvill, we are regaled with manifold examples throughout nature of animals whose diet includes even members of their own nuclear animal families. "Cannibalism is surprisingly common in the animal world," says Butvill, "and biologists are discovering that it often makes good evolutionary sense to eat what you are":

I would say that the majority of animal species that are carnivorous might, at some point in their lives, engage in cannibalism if the right conditions are present,” says David Pfennig, a biologist at the University of North Carolina who studies the behavior. And in some cases, he and other scientists are finding that it makes perfectly good sense to eat among friends—even when you’re the meal.

Yes, I know. You are less appalled by animals eating others of their own kind than by the fact that there actually exist specialists in animal cannibalism in our universities. But there you have it: from the African Lion to the dime shaped fingernail clam, says Butvill, animals are having their close relations for dinner on a daily basis--and they are not surviving until the dessert course.

Cold Cape Cod clams, 'gainst their wish, do it. Even lazy jellyfish, do it. They all do it. So what's holding us up? Nothing, if Darwinian ethics is all you have to go by.

Obviously, there are some forms of animal behavior that are already common among humans. I am thinking specifically of the female histiostoma murchiei, a mite, which tries to create a husband upon her own specifications. But using the behavior of animals as a model is a dangerous business. The Ichneumon wasp tortures other insects; the female rheobatrachus, an East Australian frog, takes her young into her mouth and swallows them; and then there is the hippopotamus (a species in dire need of an Emily Post), which attracts its mate by urinating and defecating.

Where are the articles in science magazines touting these behaviors as models for human beings?

Finally, I'm trying to recall if there has ever been a case in which a woman has, immediately after a particularly romantic encounter with her mate, turned on him and eaten him. But if it ever were to happen, can we expect the Darwinists to come to her defense by pointing to the female redback spider? This spider (and here is where Darwinian ethics meets its Waterloo), along with a number of other spider species, eats the male immediately after mating.

It is, admittedly, a dastardly reversal of the more normal human sequence, in which the human female first makes dinner for the male, and only then submits to the conjugal act, but it is normal for many kinds of spiders. Is there any reason then, from a Darwinian perspective, to consider it abnormal if it were engaged in by humans?

Of course, farmers have known about the strange things that animals do for millenia. My stepfather was telling me just the other day about taking my boys out with him to feed the cattle, only to find, when he reached the herd, one of his two bulls directing his romantic attentions toward the other. Farmers are fairly familiar with this kind of behavior, but, innocent of the advanced Darwinian perspective, they have never attempted to derive a moral lesson out such incidents.

Besides, why it is that the higher animals (that's us, say the Darwinists) should model their behavior along the lines of the lower animals? I mean, isn't that one of the benefits of being a higher animal: that you can look down on those lower than you in the natural scheme of things, shake your head, and feel smug about your more civilized behavior?

If you can't do that, then what's the point of being a higher animal? That's what I'd like to know.

So while I am happy to know that Roy and Silo have found some sort of domestic bliss, I think in the final analysis, that there are few human lessons we can draw from it, other than that maybe there are Central Park Zookeepers who need something else to do.

The "Of Pandas and People" fallacy

An anonymous commenter on a previous post seems singularly impressed with the argument that Intelligent Design is the same thing as creationism because references in a pro-Intelligent Design book called Of Pandas and People to "creationism" were changed in later editions to "Intelligent Design". What the editors did, claim ID critics, is to simply use a search and replace function to change the words.

I don't know that this is true. I'm sure I could find out by doing a little research, but I'm still trying to figure out why I should care.

I have asked the anonymous poster to tell me logically how this proves that Intelligent Design is the same thing as creationism, but all I seem to be getting in response is a repetition that it happened. This poster is not alone in his enthusiasm for this argument--or rather, this assertion. There are apparently a lot of ID critics who think this constitutes some kind of impressive case against Intelligent Design. They too are mum on exactly why we are supposed to be impressed.

If there were a book that discussed "materialism" and someone went through and replaced the term with "Darwinism" would that mean the two were the same thing? And why should anyone be surprised that some of the same arguments that can be made for creationism can be made for Intelligent Design? Obviously all creationists believe in Intelligent Design. But it does not follow that all those who believe in Intelligent Design believe in creationism. Need we point out that just because all materialists believe in common descent it does not therefore follow that all those who believe in common descent are materialists?

But I have thought a little more about it, and I'm beginning to think this idea--that simply replacing terms in a book can actually establish the identity of two different things--has some interesting possibilities. I mean if you could actually change reality by changing terms in a book, just imagine what you could do! In fact, if simply using the search and replace function can actually change things, then we don't need arguments anymore at all. Why bother making arguments when, with a few keystrokes, you can simply change your opponent's positions?

If I can change Intelligent Design into creationism by simply using my keyboard, then why can't I change Darwinists into believers in Intelligent Design by the same mechanism? But that would be boring. If I'm going to change Darwinists into something, why should it be human? We could revive endangered and extinct species this way. All we would have to do is a little hunting and pecking and, presto, we could have the Caribbean monk seal back!

This all sounds fairly preposterous, of course, but that's what happens when you follow the logic of this kind of argument to its conclusion.

Well, I've got to go now. I'm traveling, just got to the hotel and about to dig into a burrito. Oh, wait, maybe I can write up a little account of it and just change all occurrences of "burrito" to "prime rib."

Yuval Levin responds to Stephen Pinker on "dignity"

Yuval Levin, former executive director of the President’s Council on Bioethics, responds at National Review Online to Stephen Pinker's article in the New Republic on "dignity".

Stephen Pinker questions Dignity in the New Republic

Stephen Pinker attacks the President's Council on Bioethics in a new article in the New Republic. He criticizes the idea of "dignity," propounded by the Coucil, as a "squishy, subjective notion, hardly up to the heavyweight moral demands assigned to it." In its stead, he proposes a reliance on "personal autonomy," the firmness and objectivity of which he never actually defends in the article.

It's getting a lot of attention and criticism. More on it later.

Pop Quiz: Which remark is more stupid? Stein's or Dawkins'?

L. Ron Brown at "The Frame Problem" takes Ben Stein to task for making careless remarks about science on the Glenn Beck show. Of course Brown employs the usual array of hyperbolic terms favored by Darwinists in such cases to describe Stein's remarks, in which he seems to blame "science" for historical atrocities. Were Stein's remarks careless? Sure they were. Shame on him. Were they examples of "Ignorance, deceit, and stupidity"? I don't think so.

I've been on plenty of television and radio interviews and I don't know if there is single one I didn't walk out of thinking, "I shouldn't have said it that way." But for every instance of hyperbole, there seems to be an equal and opposite incidence of hyperbole, and that is what we are getting from the Darwinists.

But let's face it, Stein's remarks were careless. Bad boy! An afternoon's detention I say.

But let's just remind the hyperreactive critics of Intelligent Design about their own record of stupid remarks made, not in the midst of a television interviews in which there is no editing option, statements made in carefully written statements in which they did have plenty of opportunity to make sure it said exactly what they wanted it to say.

Of this species of remark, my personal favorite is this one, by Richard Dawkins:

Odious as the physical abuse of children by priests undoubtedly is, I suspect that it may do them less lasting damage than the mental abuse of bringing them up Catholic in the first place.

If Stein's remarks deserve afternoon detention, Dawkins gets a week's suspension.

The Derbyshire Challenge: Is there a creativity crisis among Darwinists?

I will have to reiterate the rule about comments on my previous post about John Derbyshire's review of "Expelled" in National Review: You cannot have read the post if you want to comment. Your comments must be based on second hand information and hearsay--just like Derbyshire's review of "Expelled". I had to reject a post today that wanted me to know how "batsh*t crazy" I was.

This may very well be true, but the anonymous author admitted that he had, in fact, read the post. So into the ether it went.

Tsk, tsk.

Only one comment has met my challenge, betraying a clear indication that the author had not read the post. I'm disappointed by the lack of creativity on the part of all the ID critics who frequent this blog. Surely you can match Derbyshire's inventiveness in being able to write a confident sounding opinion of something you did not actually read or see.

I have not, however, given up hope...

ID: It's a Creationist Plot

There are people who apparently have a deep-seated need to believe that Intelligent Design proponents are really creationists in disguise, and that once they have control over the nation's schools, they're going to rip off their clever scientist disguises to reveal men in short sleeve dress shirts and horn-rimmed glasses who believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old. Acting on a preordained set of instructions, this view seems to suggest, they will proceed to outlaw any mention of evolution in schools, and will execute plans that involve, among other things, taking students on weekly field trips to Ken Ham's Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky.

It is a frightening vision of the future: a flood of creationism let loose on the nation's schools. The end of science is near, and to ride out the crisis, ID critics are building themselves a rhetorical ark and bringing the fallacies aboard two by two.

The charge that ID is part of some creationist conspiracy was recently reiterated by Larry Arnhart, the author of Darwinian Conservatism. Arnhart, a professor at Northern Illinois University, writes in a recent post about the "Rhetorical Blunder in Ben Stein's 'Expelled'," a blunder which has to do, he thinks, with what is really behind Intelligent Design.

The first thing you should do when you write about someone else's blunders is not to make them yourself in the process of doing so. It just looks silly. But Arnhart makes one that he repeats throughout his entire discourse on the inadvisability of blunders.

Arnhart makes the following statement about "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed":

This movie is the latest project of the Discovery Institute in promoting the political rhetoric of "intelligent design theory" as the alternative to Darwinian evolutionary science.

It is? In fact, Discovery Institute did not produce the movie. It was included in the movie, but so was Richard Dawkins, who, last time anyone checked, wasn't involved in the production of the movie either. If he had been, he would have had one less excuse not to know what the movie into which he walked with both his eyes wide open was about. The movie was actually produced by Premise Media, which has no organizational connection with Discovery.

But Arnhart's main objective in the article is to bolster the "It's a Creationist Plot" theory about Intelligent Design. "The folks at the Discovery Institute," he asserts, "have made a big mistake in their production of this movie." The mistake (which Discovery doesn't make) in making this movie (which it didn't make either) is a contradiction Arnhart claims to have detected:

On the one hand, the rhetorical strategy of the Discovery Institute is to say that "intelligent design" is not a creationist religious belief but pure science, and therefore teaching "intelligent design" in public high school biology classes does not violate the First Amendment's prohibition on establishing religion. On the other hand, the popular success of the Discovery Institute's rhetoric depends on appealing to Biblical creationists who assume that "intelligent designer" is just another name for God the Biblical Creator.

In other words, Arnhart is asserting that a position should be judged on the basis of who supports it, not by what it actually holds. This is rather strange reasoning for someone like Arnhart to use. If we applied this logic to Darwinism, of course, we could conclude that it is really atheism in disguise, since atheists unanimously support it. But if we did that, people like Arnhart would fuss and fume, and point out that a position should be judged on the basis of what it asserts, not who supports it.

Darwinists have clearly not developed a sense of consistency. Maybe Nature is saving that for the next step up in the evolutionary progress of their species.

In "Expelled," which Discovery made but really didn't, this contradiction, says Arnhart, is on full display:

When Bruce Chapman--President of the Discovery Institute--is interviewed by Stein, Chapman says that journalists distort the true position of intelligent design by saying that it's a creationist religious belief, because the "intelligent designer" is clearly God. Chapman vehemently denies this. But then for the rest of the movie, it's asserted that anyone who denies "intelligent design" is therefore an atheist who denies the existence of God!

Asserted by whom? Chapman? Maybe Arnhart could provide some evidence of this. I've seen the movie twice, and I don't recall this assertion being made by anyone in the movie. I could see, if the assertion was really made, that it wouldn't matter who made it, since Arnhart is operating under the assumption that the whole thing was produced by Discovery, and therefore any such assertion could be laid at the feet of Chapman, who is Discovery's director. But then we have already determined that that assumption is erroneous, haven't we?

I think what Arnhart means to say here (I'm trying to bail you out here Larry) is that the movie claims that anyone who is a Darwinist is an atheist who denies the existence of God. But note that it isn't proponents of ID who make this claim in the movie, but proponents of Darwinism in the form of people like Richard Dawkins. This has, of course, sent the ID critics into paroxysms of indignation because they seem to think that casting Dawkins in a lead role is somehow misrepresentative of the public debate over Intelligent Design.

The only adequate response to this is to point them to the sales figures of Dawkins books. And those by his fellow Neo-Atheists--Christopher Hitchins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett--haven't been too shabby either. The Darwinists who disagree with the Neo-Atheists, like Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Educators (NCSE), get upset every time anyone talks to Dawkins about this issue on the grounds that she and her more presentable colleagues are the ones people should be listening to.

Well, maybe they should. But are they? And who is Eugenie Scott anyway? Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion hit #4 on the New York Times bestseller list. How many books has she sold? If Eugenie Scott wants to be a big star in the next Ben Stein movie, then she's going to have to do a better job getting her literary career off the ground. That's all there is to it.

Eugenie, we'll be pulling for you.

To keep asserting that the Neo-Atheists are not at the heart of the debate over ID is to simply have ignored the press coverage of this issue over the last couple of years. These are, in fact, the people who are among the most visible opponents of Intelligent Design. And it isn't as if people like Scott were not included in the movie: they were (despite their lack of star power).

But Arnhart and other critics of the movie feel somehow that the makers of an admittedly partisan movie about Intelligent Design have some kind of obligation to comprehensively state their opponents' case for them in their little hour and a half. Here is a group of people who have control of virtually every scientific professional association, every public university science department, and every secular textbook publishing house--and they want the producers of "Expelled" to use the 90 minutes of equal time they paid for to make the other side look good.

Go figure.

I suppose we should be happy that ID critics have gotten religion on the issue of accuracy in the media, and are now so intent on preaching it to the mulitudes. But their conversion has come a little late, hasn't it? Where were the Defenders of Truth like Arnhart when PBS was doing a hatchet job on Intelligent Design in NOVA's "Judgment Day," which was supposed to be, not a partisan, but an unbiased account of the controversy? Well, the one most like Arnhart--namely, Arnhart himself--was praising it.

Arnhart attempts to sound unbiased on the Intelligent Design debate--a pose he strikes often on his blog:

The problem, however, is that both sides of this debate are caught up in a frenzy of rhetorical posturing that makes it impossible to have a thoughtful exchange of competing ideas.

If Arnhart is serious in his concern for ensuring that the debate over Intelligent Design is being conducted on Marquis of Queensbury rules, he would presumably observe them himself. But when, in the very act of condemning Intelligent Design proponents for misrepresenting evolution, he repeats the tired and discredited argument that ID is really disguised creationism, he descends to the very behavior that he laments in others: misrepresentation.

I'll have to admit, Arnhart does look noble in his objective pose. But if you're looking for an unbiased view of the debate, you'll have to look to someone other than Arnhart, whose claim that he is monitoring both sides of this debate for rhetorical posturing is, alas, a rhetorical posture.

Ten ways Darwinists help Intelligent Design

An excellent rundown of how ID critics mishandled the campaign against ID and the recent movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." I'm telling ya', their lack of fitness for survival becomes more evident every day.

Part I
Part II
Part III

Richard Weikart on Darwinism and its consequences

Richard Weikart summarizes the findings in his recent book on the historical and philosophical connection between Darwinian ideas and Nazi eugenics policies.

This is quote-mining? C'mon

One of the Darwinists' favorite chants against ID advocates is "quote-mining". "Quote-mining" in the Darwinist lexicon, means quoting something they don't like. They repeat it like a mantra. The most recent example is from our old friend Evil Bender. In a recent post, he attacks Richard Wiekart when Wiekart quotes Darwin saying, in his Autobiography, that one “can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones.”

Bender, indignant that anyone could take Darwin at his word, begins the chant: "Quote-mining, Quote-mining..."

And his proof that Weikart is "quote-mining"? A passage which not only does not contradict what Weikart said, but actually backs it up. For some reason which I cannot comprehend, Evil Bender thinks the following passage backs up his point that Darwin believed in fixed, immutable moral standards:

A man who has no assured and ever present belief in the existence of a personal God or of a future existence with retribution and reward, can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones. A dog acts in this manner, but he does so blindly. A man, on the other hand, looks forwards and backwards, and compares his various feelings, desires and recollections. He then finds, in accordance with the verdict of all the wisest men that the highest satisfaction is derived from following certain impulses, namely the social instincts. If he acts for the good of others, he will receive the approbation of his fellow men and gain the love of those with whom he lives; and this latter gain undoubtedly is the highest pleasure on this earth. By degrees it will become intolerable to him to obey his sensuous passions rather than his higher impulses, which when rendered habitual may be almost called instincts. His reason may occasionally tell him to act in opposition to the opinion of others, whose approbation he will then not receive; but he will still have the solid satisfaction of knowing that he has followed his innermost guide or conscience.

Wow. What a statement of fixed moral principles this is. "Feelings." "Desires." "Recollections." "Social instincts." This is the basis of moral absolutes? Since when is "the approbation of ... fellow men" and the "the love of those" with whom you live the basis of moral objectivity?

I suppose Evil Bender is hanging his hat on the last part of this quote, where he talks about those special occasions on which someone follows their "reason." And what, precisely, does Darwin mean by this? Apparently something having to do with one's "innermost guide or conscience." Now there's something solid and unchanging. Makes you feel like putting on a tie dye t-shirt and firing up the ol' bong.

If this is quote-mining, I hope people like Wiekart keep digging.

I haven't read Darwin's Autobiography, so I can't say what precisely Darwin did or didn't believe about the foundations of morality. But from this passage, it doesn't look terribly hopeful. We know as a matter of history that Darwin was a decent person. On that, as far as I can tell, there is no debate. The debate is over whether a theory that postulates that a completely naturalistic origin of man undermines the rational foundation of moral belief. On that question the answer seems fairly apparent to some of us--and passages like this don't do anything to make it any less so.

Jacques Barzun on the relation of Darwinism and "woe in our day"

There are some people who seem to think the charge that Darwinism has some ideological connection with totalitarian regimes of the 20th century is an invention of Ben Stein. Here is Jacques Barzun, the legendary cultural historian, writing while these regimes were still in power:

[T]he evil world we live in is not a world which has been denied access to the science of Darwin and Marx and the theories and art of Wagner. Had their answers truly solved the riddle of the Sphinx, no obscurantism could subsist, for we are animated by--I will not say, the precise ideas of the three materialists--but surely by their deeper spirit, their faith in matter, their love of system, their abstract scientism, and their one-sided interpretation of Nature:

Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object of which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life ...

This is not Mussolini speaking, but Darwin, and his voice re-echoes in our ears:

War is not in contrast to peace, but simply another form of expression of the uninterrupted battle of nations and men. It is an expression of the highest and best in manhood.

This is the comment of Dr. Robert Ley, head of the Nazi Labor Front, on the war of 1940.

I am not saying that Darwin would have accepted the results of his "philosophy of nature," nor am I seeking three individual scapegoats in the past to bear the burden of our present ills, but I do say that the ideas, the methods, the triumph of materialistic mechanism over the flexible and humane pragmatism of the Romantics has been a source of real woe in our day.

Jacques Barzun, Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage, 1941, pp. 15-16

Is NeoDarwinism morally nihilistic?

An excellent post drawing out the logical implications of NeoDarwinism on the concept of morality, with a focus on Richard Dawkins and Stephen Pinker. Such criticisms always elicit rabid responses from Darwinists, which alone makes it worth doing.

There is no indication who runs this blog (Vulgar Morality), but it is very much worth visiting.