Did they or Didn't They? Another dilemma for the opponents of Intelligent Design

Opponents of Intelligent Design seem to be very conflicted about what to say concerning Iowa State University denying astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez tenure because he supports Intelligent Design.

On the one hand, ID opponents seem to think ISU should have denied him tenure for thinking ID is science, since, they say, it clearly is not science. On the other hand, it is hard for them to admit that this is what ISU did, since, if they do, they would be supporting misrepresentation by the University and the tenure committee about what their decision was based on.

To put the dilemma another way, if you don't admit that he was denied tenure because of his support for Intelligent Design, then you look like you're slightly out of touch with reality, since the evidence appears to be pretty damning. And if you accept that Gonzalez was denied tenure on the basis of his support for Intelligent Design, then you have to admit that ISU and his tenure review committee were dishonest.

So the choice for ID opponents involves which horn of the dilemma they want to impale themselves on.

Over at Panda's Thumb, Mike Dunford seems to favor the first horn. He says, in the face of the of the e-mail evidence, he is "unconvinced" that ID played a significant role in tenure denial for Gonzalez. Well, you can see some of the e-mail remarks documented by the Discovery Institute here and see for yourself. This is the kind of evidence that, under any other such circumstances would be considered definitive, but which, in the intellectual fever swamps of scientism just simply cannot be admitted:

Given the notorious track record of the entire anti-evolution movement when it comes to quoting scientists, I'm somewhat reluctant to accept the quotes provided at face value, particularly since the DI has not made the full text of the sources available for examination. Even if all of the quotes the DI uses do accurately capture the spirit of the full emails they are taken from (and does anyone want to offer me odds on that), I still don't think they've made their point.

It makes you wonder whether the anti-ID crowds assertion that Gonzalez was treated fairly is a falsifiable belief, doesn't it?

A slightly more lucid Jason Rosenhouse over at EvolutionBlog finds the second of the two horns of the dilemma a less painful alternative. He admits that, indeed, ISU appears to have considered Gonzalez' belief in ID in its decision, and was simply dishonest in its denials:

... [H]ad the ISU physics department stated forthrightly that he was being denied tenure because his advocacy of ID pseudoscience was hurting the department and plainly hampering his scientific work, there might have been no reason for this blog entry.

But they didn't, at least not primarily. Instead they publicly denied that Gonzalez's ID advocacy played a significant role in his tenure denial. One member of the department, John Hauptmann, wrote an op-ed in which he argued, preposterously, that Gonzalez did not understand the scientific process and that was the reason for denying him tenure. I reported on this sorry essay here.

In other words, Dunford is concerned with the honesty of the advocates of ID, but Rosenhouse is admitting a virulent case of dishonesty in it's own ranks.

Some days you just can't win.

The Left's "Two Minute Hate"

In his classic novel, 1984, George Orwell writes of the "Two minute hate": a periodic event in which members of the Party are gathered together before a video screen featuring images of Emmanuel Goldstein and his followers: the enemies of the State. Participants are worked up into a frenzy of hatred and vitriol directed against people who, later in the story, turn out to be completely fictional.

So worked up do the participants become during the Two Minute Hate that they even attack the telescreen in front of them. The object of this political ritual is to solidify the support of each individual to the Party by uniting them in hatred against its enemies.

For the increasingly strident Tolerance Police, the rhetorical equivalent of the Two Minute Hate is becoming a daily event.

The most recent object of their hate is State Rep. Jim Gooch of Kentucky, who landed himself on the national news by holding hearings at the state capitol questioning one of the left's new dogmas: global warming. The telescreen is turned on, images of Gooch, ensconced in his chair as head of the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee appear before the audience (courtesy of the KET), and then they start into their jeering and cursing, eventually working themselves up to such a fever pitch you wonder whether they'll hurt themselves.

It is becoming a frequent, and increasingly alarming sight.

Now I too am against the rape of the environment, particularly as it manifests itself in things like mountaintop removal. Besides being bad stewardship of the land, it's just plain wrong.

To say that global warming is happening, or that global warming is the result of human activities--or that it can be corrected by human actions whether it was caused by them or not--are not unreasonable positions, whatever you think about their accuracy. What is unreasonable is the level of personal acrimony and ad hominem vitriol that are increasingly being employed by those who believe these things.

In a recent Louisville Courier-Journal editorial Gooch was term a "a global warming denier." Ooh. Did you catch the rhetorical allusion there? Sounds very similar to "Holocaust denier" to me. So now people who have legitimate beefs with the mistake-riddled rhetoric of Al Gore are akin to David Duke.

Got it.

"Jake" over at Page One Kentucky, an increasingly intemperate voice of the political left in Kentucky, insists, "Rep. Jim Gooch needs to resign immediately." Why? Because this "embarrassment," this "uneducated...fool," this, ...this "idiot" disagrees with "Jake" on a controversial environmental issue.

Check.

Then there are the gals over at "Kentucky Women: Power, Passion, and Politics" (with an emphasis on the "Passion"), who recently announced, "Speaker Jody Richards, it's time for Rep. Jim Gooch to be removed off this committee!" A suggestion in response to which Speaker Richards kindly patted them on the head and told them he didn't think he ought to do that, and didn't they have some cookies to go bake or something?

Okay, he really didn't say that last part, but it would have been fun to see their reaction if he had.

And besides, you don't "remove" someone "off" something, you just "remove" them--one possible reason the word 'Grammar' does not appear in their title along with the words 'Power', 'Politics', and 'Passion'. And why should we be such sticklers about a linguistic trifle?

Let's cut to Larry Dale Keeling. Larry, are you there? Go ahead Larry:

Introducing the main speaker at an interim legislative committee meeting Wednesday, Chairman Jim Gooch mistakenly pronounced what should have been a silent 's.'

As a result, Viscount ("v’-kount," according to Random House Webster's College Dictionary) Christopher Walker Monckton became a "vizz (rhymes with fizz)-count."

Although Rep. Mike Cherry, D-Princeton, got it right when he later addressed Monckton, several other lawmakers on the panel repeated the "vizzcount" mistake often during the course of a lengthy meeting.

Thanks for that report Larry. The Herald-Leader's Larry Dale Keeling will be back next week with a report on he, personally, pronounces the words 'Versailles' and 'Athens'.

In the Two Minute Hate there is no time for reasoned discourse or for the presentation of evidence for your position, which is why none of Gooch's critics even bothered to offer any in any of their criticisms of him.

The sole exception was Randall Patrick, the editorials editor of the Winchester Sun. He at least made the attempt, although not a very spirited one. "Maybe the reason the chairman didn't invite any scientists," said Patrick, "is because it's hard to find one who doesn't believe global warming is happening at an alarming rate and is caused in large measure by the burning of carbon fuels."

C'mon, Randall, how hard did you look? Ever heard of Reid Bryson, Emeritus Professor of Meteorology, of Geography and of Environmental Studies, Senior Scientist, Center for Climatic Research, The Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies (Founding Director), the University of Wisconsin, Madison? Huh?

Apparently not. It just so happens he's widely regarded as the father of climatology. Here's what he says, despite his nonexistence:

All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd. Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air.

Or how about Carleton University science professor Tim Patterson, who says that global warming will not bring about the downfall of life on the planet, and that much of recent research indicates that “changes in the brightness of the sun” are almost certainly the predominant cause of global warming since the end of the “Little Ice Age” in the late 19th century?

He must be imaginary too.

And what about Timothy Ball, professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg and Chairman of the National Resources Stewardship Project in Canada, a group that argues that "CO2 is very unlikely to be a substantial driver of climate change and is not a pollutant," and that "global climate change is primarily a natural phenomenon..."?

Want more? Go visit the NRSP's website for a long list.

And why should Patrick mention scientists who he could easily have googled on the Internet when he could simply repeat discredited claims by Al Gore about "an article in Science magazine in 2004 found that out of 928 randomly selected peer-reviewed articles that have been published in scientific journals over a 10-year period, not one doubted that human beings are the cause of climate change"?

Is Patrick aware that an English social scientist reviewed the methodology used in that study and found that the author did not actually read all 928 studies, but only the abstracts? In reality, only about 50 of those studies said it was a crisis, and some actually disagreed, the remainder saying it was unknown.

Does that prove the global warming is not a problem or that humans aren't contributing to it? No, of course not. But it does prove that there is a legitimate debate in the scientific community about it and that people who disagree with the scare talk on global warming are not ipso facto a bunch of crazies.

But it's hard for people to know this, so loud is the screaming and hollering during the Two Minute Hate.

A polite response to an impolite Darwinist about why we should uncritically accept Darwinism

Well we've got a little debate going on here on Intelligent Design. I'm going to bring some of the comments out on the main blog so we can talk about some of the more important aspects of this debate in the broad daylight, and to show the lack of logic that seems to plague the proponents of Darwinism.

Let's first talk about one comment from "Motheral," who, like so many people who post on Internet boards, uses a pseudonym to hide his identity. I have said numerous times before that this habit of anonymity is the technological "Ring of Gyges" that allows the person to be as rude and insulting as he wants to be without ever having to personally face anyone.

Not only is this really bad form, but I've always wondered why you would even want to pad your rhetoric with invective if your arguments are good? Isn't a crushing logical conclusion at least as personally satisfying as hurling an epithet? In his last post he compares me to the former Iraqi Information Minister. C'mon. This is like using a pitchfork in battle because you have had all your real weapons taken away.

Motheral needs to lose the attitude and address the argument.

I said that Ed Brayton over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars was assuming what he was trying to prove when he said that bias is okay in a program covering the debate between Darwinism and Intelligent Design because Darwinism is correct. Motheral disagrees. Fine. Here is his reponse:

Ed is not "assuming" anything. He's observing that evolution has been proven to be THE useful and workable scientific explanation for the observed diversity of life on Earth; and that ID/creationism has simply never been able to cut it as "science." The scientific debate here is completely one-sided, because creationism has never brought anything to the table. Therefore, it is perfectly appropriate for a TV show to recognize this fact by giving the most weight to the winning arguments. The "bias" you're going on about comes from this reality, not from PBS.

Now here is Ed's argument:

• Darwinism is correct.
• Bias is okay when it is shown in favor of a correct position.
• Therefore, bias in favor of Darwinism is okay.

If you put that in the larger context of the debate about whether Darwinism is correct, how can you say that he isn't assuming what he is trying to prove? Check out the first premise. Then, in Motheral's response, he argues that Ed is not assuming what he is trying to prove because he is correct!

Huh?

Ed isn't assuming what he is trying to prove because Ed is correct? Talk about turning the fallacy of principio principi into an art form!

If the debate is about whether Darwinism is correct, then obviously assuming Darwinism is correct is assuming what you are trying to prove. And simply reasserting the major premise in a circular argument is no refutation of the fact that it is circular.

Here we have a debate between two competing theories of how we got here, and one side wants the rest of us to assume, at the outset of the debate, that it is correct. Then they want the rest of us not to notice when they do it. And if we do notice, then they'll call us nasty names. Finally, despite all this, they demand that we recognize how rational and intelligent they are.

Now I'm confident that the Darwinists can do better than this, and that they can do it without personal insults and hyperbole.

C'mon Motheral, let's see if you can do it.

Judging "Judgment Day", continued

I had posted a comment about the recent PBS slam on Intelligent Design, "Judgment Day," over at Ed Brayton's blog, Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and it elicited a little discussion. But the post is getting old over there, and so I decided to take up some of the issues Ed and a couple of others brought up in response, and the commenters can post here if they like.

I made the same sorts of remarks on Ed's blog that I have already made here, mostly having to do with the fact that "Judgment Day" was not a balanced presentation of the issue of evolution and Intelligent Design. There was the usual rude ad hominem attacks here and there that plague the blogosphere, but most were pretty much to the point. Ed's responses were reasonable, so I wanted to respond to a couple of points he made.

Here was his response to one of my posts:

There is no doubt that the producers of the show were biased toward the evolution side, nor that the dramatizations portrayed the other side in a bad light (though in many cases, that was quite justifiable - reality paints them in a bad light). But here's the only question that really matters, I think: was there any claim made that was untrue? I don't care whether one side got a rebuttal while the other didn't, I wanna know if the rebuttal was true and accurate or not.

Unlike a few of the program's defenders, Ed is intellectually honest enough to admit the obvious bias in the program, but argues that the bias is irrelevant and that the only thing that matters is the accuracy of what was presented.

Now I've already said that, from PBS's perspective, I think it has an obligation to be impartial. But I think the biggest problem with Ed's position is that it basically assumes what it is trying to prove. It basically amounts to saying, "Since evolution is true, a treatment that assumes that it is true, no matter how biased it is, is perfectly acceptable." Lack of balance is okay, as I have said before, if it is for a good cause.

Well, that may be acceptable to the people who already accept Ed's position, but the question is why it should be convincing to those to whom it is presumably directed: those who haven't made up their minds yet, and who are wanting to see a fair argument between the two positions so they can make up their own minds on the basis of the best arguments on both sides.

It seems to me colossally arrogant for anyone advocating a position to say that the other side just doesn't deserve to be treated fairly because they're wrong. That kind of arrogance makes me doubt the rest of what they think. And it this kind of arrogance that turns not a few people off to the Darwinist position.

It may be correct to say that what the program as presented was accurate (although I seriously doubt it), but what if PBS put together a pro-ID documentary that was technically accurate, even by the admission of its opponents, but so deficient in its presentation of the Darwinist position, and so biased against Darwinism that it gave the impression that ID was the more reasonable position? And suppose further that the program billed itself as "educational", and gave no hint in its promotional material that was in any way unbalanced or polemical in nature?

Can you imagine the outcry over at places like Dispatches from the Culture Wars? And can you see them being mollified by the argument that, since ID was true, the program was justified in being unbalanced?

Didn't think so.

Yo, Ed, this is a debate. People expect debates to be fair.

If the Darwinists want to convince the general public, they'd be get their noses out from up in the air and their feet back on the ground.

One of the posters on Ed's blog, Troublesome Frog (obviously not his real name, although if I were to find out he was from one of certain parts of my state, it would not be out of the question) brought up another point related to this:

Of course, it's also worth remembering that this documentary was less of an in-depth examination of ID vs evolution than it was a retelling of exactly how the ID crowd got its collective ass handed to it in court. Given that, chronicling the "smoking guns" that lead to the decision makes a lot more sense than diving into the detailed defenses the ID proponents try to give on the scientific front.

Well, yes and no. The program was ostensibly about the Dover trial, but one of the two major examples I gave of bias had to do with the part of the program that went beyond the trial and presented the case for and against Intelligent Design outside of the context of the actual trial. That part of the program had little to do with what happened at the trial and was the most biased part of the program. And besides, if the part that didn't have to do with the trial was blatantly biased, why should anyone believe the part about the trial itself?

I think that programs like "Judgment Day" are in the same category as movies that are supposed to be portraying historical person or events. If they're going to pretend to be about historical events, then they have some kind of obligation to portray events with reasonable accuracy. In this respect, Judgment Day was the Oliver Stone version of events in Dover: one part history, two parts polemic.

As I have said before, those of us who are viewing the debate from the outside can be excused for getting very suspicious that the debate is rigged in favor of one side. I have posted here before about the Richard Sternberg incident, in which the editor of a Smithsonian Institute scientific publication, Sternberg, published a peer reviewed paper favorable to Intelligent Design, after which he was harassed and vilified by advocates of evolution.

The irony here, of course, is that the very people who are saying, "If you ID people really want to prove your case, then get papers published in peer reviewed journals" are the same people who will read out of polite society any editor who has the temerity to actually publish such an article, decidedly reducing the numbers of editors who will ever be willing to publish such papers in the future. No science editor in the civilized world is going to publish a pro-ID article now--not at least if he values his career.

So folks, I'm just tellin' ya: if you continue take positions like this one--that it's okay to treat positions with which you disagree unfairly in programs that clearly give the impression that they are giving a balanced presentation--you're just giving your opponents more ammunition.

Now I suppose some opponent of ID could say, "Yeah. I'm sure you're real concerned about helping the case for evolution. Thanks for the advice." And there is a certain amount of truth to that. But, you see, I am pretty confident, knowing how arrogant ID opponents seem to have become, that they will completely ignore any advice I have to give, and will continue to rig the debate in ways that will make them vulnerable to legitimate criticism.

Just watch.

Judgment Day for PBS

The chief problem with the more radical opponents of Intelligent Design (they're not all unreasonable) is that they think they are exempt from the normal rules of fairness and rationality.

They're were a few reasonable criticisms of my piece from Wednesday about the PBS program on Intelligent Design, but many responses simply shirked off my point about the program being biased. I made two observations which, so far, no one has contested:

First, the program had two parallel extended segments explaining each position: one on evolution, the other on ID. The segment on evolution was uninterrupted by any rebuttals from the ID side. In the segment on ID, however, a rebuttal from the evolution side was included on every point about ID.

Second, in the dramatized course scenes, a number of cross examinations by the anti-ID side were shown, while no cross examinations of the anti-ID side by the pro-ID side were shown.

Now journalistically-speaking these are about as egregious as it gets. The prevailing belief among the more rabid of the anti-ID crowd seem to be that it was simply okay that the program was biased: bias is okay, they seem to suggest, as long as it is for a good cause.

Is this really the position the opponents of Intelligent Design want to take?

Now I have gone back and looked at the PBS description of the program on its website, and although the documentation for the program nowhere explicitly claims that it is impartial, the language it uses obviously seeks to give the impression that is offering some kind of impartial treatment. Over and over it uses the word "educational". And most people take the word "education" in a sense that distinguishes it from "propaganda" or "indoctrination".

Nowhere on the site does it say that the program is what it is: a polemic against Intelligent Design.

Look, I have said here before that I really don't have a hard and fast position on the issue of common descent. I've said that I think anyone who publicly declares that they know for a fact what happened millions of years ago is blowing smoke. It's hard enough trying to figure out what happened a couple hundred years ago, or a couple thousand. I'm a skeptic when it comes to exactly how we got to be what we are.

The one thing I will hang my hat on is that our human nature cannot be purely a natural product because then our rational and moral faculties would be without explanation. In other words, Naturalism cannot explain the processes we employ to determine if anything--including Naturalism--are true, or whether any of our actions are right or wrong.

The concepts of truth, falsehood, validity, right, wrong, beautiful, or ugly simply make no sense in a consistently Naturalistic world, and our only choice is between holding to a worldview in which they make sense, in which case we can keep using them, and one in which they do not make sense, in which case we have to simply give them up.

My problem with many of the opponents of Intelligent Design in not primarily that they argue against Intelligent Design (I'm still trying to figure that one out myself), but that they argue on the basis of a worldview that does not allow them to argue at all.

Furthermore, I'm a scientific layman who can only judge what I don't know on the basis of what I know. And when I am trying to make a judgment, I get very suspicious when I see one side not judging the other by the best arguments for it, but the worst ones they can find.

"Hatchet Job: PBS's Dishonest Assault on Intelligent Design"

It may be that what "Inherit the Wind" did for the Scopes Trial, PBS's "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial", which aired to a national audience last night, will do for the Dover v. Katzmiller decision: A highly biased treatment of a famous showdown between Darwinism and its detractors.

But I don't think so.

"Inherit the Wind," the play (and, later, the movie) was, despite its misportrayal of the actual events of the Scopes Trial, a compelling piece of theatre that continues, years after its writing, to be performed and enjoyed. It's unsuspecting audiences have little clue of how inaccurate it is as a piece of history, and don't seem to really care, so gripping is the story.

"Judgment Day," however, is not nearly as compelling in its storyline as its predecessor, and it is much more evidently a piece of propaganda, wearing its bias on its editorial sleeve.

The program could well have been called "Hatchet Job: PBS's Assault on Intelligent Design." If anyone was seriously hoping they would see an objective and impartial presentation of the debate over Intelligent Design, they were quickly disabused of the notion.

The people who are advocates of the Dover policy, which would have mandated the teaching of Intelligent Design in Dover science classrooms (a policy which a number of ID advocates actually opposed, although that fact was never mentioned in the documentary), are either ignorant or evil; the opponents wise and reasonable. The actors who portrayed evolutionists in the not very convincing dramatizations are self-assured and confident; those posing as ID advocates are shown as bumbling and confused.

Repeatedly, opponents of ID get the last word. Troops of ID opponents in the scientific community were interviewed, but no attempt was apparently made to take advantage of the numerous members of the scientific community who have voiced doubts about Darwinism.

In the incredibly cheesy dramatizations, cross examinations of ID witnesses were shown again and again, yet no cross examinations by pro-ID lawyers of opponents were to be seen. ID proponents were consistently cast in a bad light.

In one scene, the ACLU attorney hired by the parents who sued the Dover School District to overturn its pro-ID policy asked ID proponent Michael Behe (a scientist himself) if, under his definition, astrology counted as science. Behe said that, yes, it did. The attorney (or, rather, the actor playing the attorney) then asked if astrology hadn't been proven false, to which Behe (or, again, the actor playing Behe) again agreed.

The viewer, of course, was supposed to be appalled at Behe's ignorance.

But, of course, Behe was right, as anyone with a passing familiarity with the philosophy of science knows. Astrology, under most definitions of science, is indeed science. It's just that it is bad science--something very different from non-science: a distinction PBS propagandists either just didn't know or conveniently ignored for dramatic effect.

The problem is not that astrology isn't science, the problem is that astrology doesn't work. If everything that has been shown not to work is ipso facto not science, then we would have to say that fundamental features of Isaac Newton's system were not science, since they have since been shown not to work. But nobody would say that--not even the propagandists at PBS.

Nor did any representatives of one of the leading advocacy groups for ID, the Discovery Institute, appear in the program. Why? Because the Discovery Institute asked that they be able to tape the interviews themselves so they could hold PBS to account for any editorial shenanigans such as those conducted by ABC's Nightline in an earlier interview with Discovery representatives.

PBS's response? No way, José. Accountability? Who did Discovery think they were dealing with here? Objective chroniclers of actual events?

One segment followed Eugenia Scott of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) on her sober quest to see if any of the supporters of Intelligent Design were religious, a finding that would prove, she thought, that Intelligent Design itself was religious. Cameras closed in to capture her grim realization that, indeed, some of them were.

One wonders what would have been her facial expression had she realized that the argument could be turned around on Darwinists themselves if it could be determined (as it already has) that some of the theory's adherents are atheists. That, of course, would go against the repeated assertion in the program that Darwinism is consistent with religious belief--at least if we used Scott's reasoning.

Logic is apparently not a strong suit at the NCSE--or at PBS.

Important distinctions were repeatedly glossed over in the course of the clumsy mischaracterizations. In a sort of scientistic mantra the narrator kept repeating that Intelligent Design was just another version of creationism, despite the fact that its most famous adherent, Michael Behe, does not dispute common descent--nor do some other proponents of ID.

In fact, there was not a single accurate explanation of Intelligent Design in the course of the entire program.

But the most blatant evidence of the lack of balance in the program was when it went into a long and involved presentation of the Darwinist position uninterrupted by any refutation from anyone on the Intelligent Design side, while every assertion of Intelligent Design was accompanied by a swift refutation from an advocate of Darwinism.

It was enough to give shamelessness a bad name.

I have said before that the scientific layman is in a difficult position: he has to listen to people who know a whole lot more than he does about the actual science of the matter. Unless he is familiar with logic or propaganda tactics (and how to defend against them), the only thing he can really judge is the objectivity, competence, and honesty of those who are making their case.

If the advocates of Darwinism cannot be trusted to follow the canons of journalistic integrity, then how can we trust them to follow the canons of scientific integrity? If, when we can catch them at it, we find distortions, half-truths, and outright fallacies, what are we to believe about them when we can't catch them? If they lie when they speak about what can be publicly known, how do we know they are telling the truth about what they have found in the privacy of their laboratories?

The program correctly pointed out the deceitfulness of one of the pro-ID school board members (on matters that did not have anything to do with the major questions about ID). But the dishonesty and carelessness of the propagandists at PBS far overshadows the petty deceit of one Dover parent.

If I'm a scientist who believes in Darwinism, I'm going to find "Judgment Day" very disturbing, and here's why: I'm going to be sitting there waiting for calls from my Intelligent Design friends who are going to ask me if the kind of objectivity on display in the PBS program is the same kind of objectivity I employ when dealing with scientific questions that bear on Darwinism.

This question puts Darwinists in an awkward position: either they maintain that the show was, in fact, objective and impartial, in which case their own credibility on any question, including Darwinism, goes down the tubes, or they're going to admit that the program was biased, in which case they can't consider the program anything other than damaging for their cause.

So let's see what the opponents of Intelligent Design do now. Will they admit that the program was biased and preserve their own integrity? Or compromise their integrity by not admitting what to any reasonable person is fairly evident--that the show was a hatchet job?

It will tell us a lot about those who are always lecturing the rest of us about intellectual honesty.

Higher Indoctrination, Part III: Intolerance is Diversity

Freedom is Slavery
War is Peace
Ignorance is knowledge

...and now: Intolerance is Diversity

There is simply no other adequate response to the self-flagellation now being administered by the University of Kentucky to itself than sheer amusement. Recently the student newspaper at the University of Kentucky (the Kentucky Kernel) printed a cartoon that used images of slavery to make a point, after which, someone pointed out that the image was insensitive to blacks.

The ensuing fit of mea culpas and the public confessions was followed swiftly by promises never, ever, ever to be so insensitive again and to more strictly observe Diversity in the future.

Diversity?

What does Diversity have to do with squelching anything, much less insensitivity? Wouldn't we, if we were really practicing Diversity, be allowing for such cartoons--whether they violate someone's idea of what is right and wrong or not?

In every dictionary I know, the word "diverse" is synonymous with "heterogeneity" or "variety". If we were really practicing Diversity, wouldn't we allow for such opinions to be expressed, no matter how objectionable they were? So how does Diversity get invoked in a process of limiting what can be thought or said?

How?

Well, anyone with the least familiarity with Newspeak knows how: you simply redefine words. Liberals, you see, have certain shibboleths which must go unquestioned. One of these is Tolerance, the other is Diversity. We must never, ever, be intolerant--except, that is, when some person or idea that has special protected class is offended. At that point we violate the first of these, Tolerance, and cover our posteriors by invoking the other, Diversity.

It's a sort of shell game using two shells: when we want to limit opinions with which we disagree, we violate the idea of Tolerance, and say we are doing it in the name of Diversity. And when we go against Diversity by limiting the opinions that can be expressed in regard to those groups or ideas we think ought to be protected, we invoke Tolerance to justify it.

We've gotten so good at it now that we don't even recognize it ourselves. And after all, isn't this one of the purposes of Newspeak? To so change the language that thought crimes cannot be committed at all because you will no longer have the vocabulary to commit them?

I haven't seen the cartoon, so I can't judge whether it was offensive or not. I'm going to assume it was. But I wonder, was it any more offensive toward blacks than some other cartoons at the Kernal (or the Lexington Herald-Leader) have been toward other groups toward which they have less sympathy, like conservative Christians?

In that case, intolerance is justified, and limits to Diversity are strictly enforced--all by the neat little trick of calling intolerance Diversity and lack of Diversity Tolerance.

Winston Smith would have understood it all very well.

Now They've Done It: Inviting a promoter of terrorism to speak at Columbia U. is one thing, but a homophobe?

Well, it appears that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has really done it now. Before his recent and controversial appearance at Columbia University, Ahmadinejad was known to support global terrorism, and was thought to be developing nuclear weapons for the possible use against the West. He also leads a famously repressive government.

These things are bad, of course. But they are just run of the mill bad guy qualities. Contributing to people who want to bring about mass killings and creating weapons of mass destruction are, let's admit it, just a little ho-hum anymore. After all, there's so many people doing it these days.

But the real perfidiousness of this man--the revelation that has sent shock waves across the politically correct world--was the shocking news that came in his Columbia speech: he is a homophobe.

That's right: a homophobe. And worse than that. He is a homophobe who doesn't believe homosexuals exist in Iran at all, which makes him, not just a homophobe, but a homo...something that means you don't believe in it at all.

Oh, the horror of it!

Of course, Ahmadinejad may believe homosexuals don't exist in Iran because he's killed them all. But that's nothing compared to the fact that he is a homophobe.

For Columbia University to invite the leader of a terrorist nation who wants to create nuclear weapons is one thing, but inviting someone who harbors homophobic thoughts to speak is quite another.

Does Columbia University really expect the American public to believe that they can't find a respectable terrorist who supports the gay rights agenda to speak at their school? Academic freedom is all fine and dandy when it comes to mass killing, but Columbia University clearly needs some remedial awareness training in the dangers of thought crime.

Sheez.

Do conservatives really dominate Kentucky's editorial pages?

WHAS-TV 11's Mark Hebert reports on his blog about a new report issued by Media Matters that purports to show that nationally and in Kentucky conservative political columnists outnumber writers on the opposite side of the political spectrum.

Media matters, a liberal media watchdog group... Oh, wait. Oops. Did I say that word? "Liberal"? Of course, I meant "progressive," as in "progressive media watchdog group." I forgot that you're not supposed to use the "L" word anymore. Liberals don't really exist. And besides, the word "liberal" is so, um, well, it's just got this very negative connotation to it.

I wonder how the word "liberal" got so unpopular? Anyway, ...

Media Matters claims that nationally syndicated conservative writers are run more often in newspapers than lib..., er progressives. Excerpt from the press release:

Conservative Syndicated Columnists Dominate Kentucky Daily Newspapers Each Week -- Conservative syndicated columnists appear a total of 54 times per week in Kentucky newspapers. Centrist columnists appear a total of 14 times, while progressive columnists appear a total of 34 times.

I have no doubt that this is true. Conservatives tend to dominate political commentary, while liberals tend to dominate the newsrooms--and the editorial boards of newspapers themselves. The difference being that conservatives views are marketed as "opinion," whereas liberal views are largely marketed as "news".

There I go again. Of course, I meant progressives. Liberals, remember, don't exist.

But Mark's headline is misleading: "Conservatives Dominate Ky. Editorial Pages." Is that what the report says? No. And if it does, it's wrong.

Note: I took my information from Mark's blog, since the report is apparently--at least from my several minute search for it--either unavailable or nicely hidden on Media Matters' website.

The report only considers nationally syndicated columnists. But syndicated columnists are only part of the content of a newspaper's editorial page. There are the staff editorials, written by the mostly liberal editorial staff of the newspaper, and the resident columnists for the particular newspapers, which also are largely liberals.

Progressive I mean.

If Media Matters were not trying so hard to find what it wants to find, it would add an additional study of the political registration of newspaper staff in this country--and in Kentucky.

But don't hold your breath.

A funny thing happened on the way to the laboratory: Another example of how the process is rigged against Intelligent Design

If there was ever any doubt that the process for determining the legitimacy of Intelligent Design is rigged against it, that doubt seems now to have been dispelled.

Recently, Baylor University, an allegedly Baptist university, went back on agreement with William Dembski that would have allowed him to participate with one of its faculty members in a research project on information theory that had implications for the other theory that Dembski has made famous, and of which he is the best known exponent: Intelligent Design.

The project would have cost Baylor nothing, since the project was being funded by a grant from the Lifeworks Foundation. The grant was processed through the normal administrative channels at the school, and Baylor President John Lilley signed off on it. Then, about a month later, Dembski was called in to the office the Dean of Baylor’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, under whose auspices the research was to be done, and told the whole thing was off. Something about the "good of the department."

Dembski, who taught at Baylor from 1999-2005, gives on his website the whole seedy chronology of the actions of the Indian givers at Baylor who didn't actually have to give anything except their consent--and did, only to go back on their word.

There are two stories here: the first being that this is the same institution of higher indoctri..., excuse me, learning, that tried to run off Francis Beckwith, in part, at least, because he publicly advocated the legal case against excluding Intelligent Design from scientific discussions in public schools. The school finally had to back down in the Beckwith case on account of his formidable body of published scholarly work that, in another circumstance, would have had university officials beating down his door to hire him. Its handling of the Beckwith case became a public embarrassment to Baylor, as well it should.

But there is a more significant aspect to this case.

The opponents of Intelligent Design have for several years now deployed as their chief argument against it that the theory lacks research to support it. But a funny thing always happens on the way to the laboratory--or on the way to the publisher. Baylor's action takes its place alongside another recent event that shows just how determined are the scientific establishment in particular and the academic gatekeepers in general to squelch any critical reconsideration whatsoever of Darwinism.

The first was the treatment of Richard Sternberg, the editor of a publication of the Smithsonian Institutes's National Museum who published a peer-reviewed article which came to positive conclusions about Intelligent Design. The article's publication set off the academic equivalent of the Inquisition among the scientific community. Sternberg was personally vilified, his motives impugned, and his reputation besmirched--all because he had the temerity to take his colleagues at their word.

For years critics within the scientific community have been challenging Intelligent Design proponents to get their papers published in peer-reviewed journals. But when Sternberg actually let it happen, they came down on the perpetrator like a hammer. Put up or shut up, Intelligent Design scholars are told, but when they actually go to trouble of putting up, they are told to shut up.

Now we know where Lucy got the idea of snatching the football away just before Charlie Brown got a chance to kick it. The scientific establishment demands that Intelligent Design prove itself, but at the same time will do everything in its power to prevent it from getting the opportunity to do so.

The recent incident at Baylor is of the same genus. We are constantly hearing about the lack of research support for Dembski's theory. So you would think, in the interest of open scientific inquiry, that the same academic community that has been calling for Intelligent Design to prove itself would be supportive of actually seeing it get the opportunity.

Think again.

The opponents of Intelligent Design need to get together and decide whether they really want to give the theory a fair shake. If the scientific community chooses instead to stonewall every opportunity for the theory's proponents to prove it legitimate, then there will be no question why it happened--and it won't be because of any inadequacy in the theory.

If the critics want to say that the theory fails the test of science, then they're going to have to allow it to be tested scientifically. To tell Intelligent Design advocates that they must prove their theory scientifically, but that, at the same time, they will be systematically denied the means and the opportunity of doing so is hardly model behavior for a group of people who make such a show of objectivity and openmindedness.

My "Bad Sports about Sports" article in today's Courier-Journal

My piece on the attempt by public schools to punish private school athletic programs for their success (see my previous post with the full version here) ran in today's Louisville Courier-Journal. Their title is, "Bad Sports about Sports."

Keep circumcision safe and legal

A prominent gay blogger is calling for circumcision to be universally banned.

D. Stephen Heersink, who runs "The Gay Species" blog, argues that circumcision is against the Geneva Convention, which calls it "barbaric" and "inhumane". Hmmm. Circumcision is against the Geneva Convention, but abortion isn't? Boy, that certainly tells us something, doesn't it?

Heersink also argues that it "desensitizes" men. And we know how bad the problem of desensitized men is today, don't we?

Here in Kentucky we have people wanting to mandate a vaccine that prevents HPV for all middle-school girls because it would save lives. But recent studies show that circumcision dramatically reduces HIV transmission, so, by the same logic, we should mandate circumcision middle school boys, an idea I have advocated, tongue firmly implanted in cheek.

What I wouldn't give to see Heersink and Rep. Kathy Stein together discussing their views on circumcision.

Keep circumcision safe and legal.

New hate crime: putting a Koran in a toilet

We're filing this in the "Decline of Western culture" file:

Michelle Malkin asks the question, Which of these is a hate crime in America?

A) Submerging a crucifix in a jar of urine.

B) Burning the American flag.

C) Putting a Koran in a toilet.

According to a news report, a 23 year-old student at Pace University in New York was charged for the hate crime of C), putting a Koran in a toilet.

Go figure.

Postmodern Sex and Orifice Confusion

Okay, I'm thinking about how nice it must have been in better times to open up the newspaper and read about the latest good deeds of the local women's charitable society and all the nice things it was doing for foreign orphans or something. But thanks to things like the debate over the Holsinger nomination, we find ourselves opening up the pages of the local gazette and being treated to the latest apologetic for the legitimacy of trying to use the digestive system as if it were the reproductive system by those who seem to hold the dictates of biology is extremely low esteem.

Gee. I actually got through that whole paragraph without saying what I really would rather not talk about but can't seem to avoid because certain people want to talk very publicly about what they keep insisting, in the same breath, everyone ought to stay out of because it is their own private business.

"O shame, where is they blush?"

But there it is: prominently displayed on the editorial page of the Louisville Courier-Journal. We're arguing about anal sex. Ugh. It's enough of an indignity to have to talk about it in the first place, but do we really have to endure pious sermons on why it's a sin to consider such peculiar activity abnormal?

Here is Michael Cornwall, waxing eloquent (but not particularly logical) on why homosexuals should not be distinguished by their homosexuality despite the fact that that is, literally, their only distinguishing feature:

Gays and lesbians cannot be reduced to STDs and abnormal sex. Gays and lesbians enjoy an ample culture, in spite of the roadblocks placed in their way, complete with fulfilling, loving relationships.

In other words, we have a whole group of people who define and distinguish themselves by a particular act who are now complaining that everyone defines and distinguishes them by this act. Well, if their actions are not peculiar, their arguments certainly are. "'Normal' sexual expression cannot be characterized by intake and expulsion orifices," Corwall, who is apparently confused as to which orifice is which, assures us.

Then there is this logical specimen from Todd M. Read of Jeffersonville, Indiana:

According to his logic [the logic that says that certain orifices have certain purposes], the duality of the female vagina as an entrance and an exit should confuse the human race so as there would be no reproduction. I mean, if we are all "normal," wouldn't this conflict of interests end civilization as we know it?

I don't know who Todd M. Read is, but let's just hope, for the sake of the people of Jeffersonville, Indiana, that he's not an OB/GYN (or for that matter, a plumber). One supposes that in medical school, unlike certain lodgements in Jeffersonville, Indiana, there is little confusion as to which orifice is to be used for what purpose.

And speaking of plumbers, would anyone hire a piping professional (they're not calling them that now, but I give it five years) who didn't think it out of the ordinary to hook up the sewage pipes to the water pipes? Didn't think so.

And it only adds to the indignity of having to listen to all this that these people who are arguing for the normality of the multipurpose use of orifices (and that's the last time I'm ever going to use that word--I promise) don't even believe in normality in the first place. In the postmodern world, nothing has any purpose except that to which it happens to be put. You can't really apply that idea to anything practical of course: a 11/16" socket only fits an 11/16" nut (which is one reason you find so few postmodern mechanics). But, for some reason, there are people who think all this makes perfect sense when it comes to sex.

You just can't argue that something is abnormal with people who don't believe in normality at all, any more than you can argue with someone that a stick is crooked when they don't believe in such a thing a straight stick.

But I believe in such a thing as a straight stick, even though there are some people who apparently think that is controversial.

Higher Indoctrination at Kentucky's Universities: Part II: Reinterpreting the Birds and the Bees

Last time in our continuing series about the fun ways in which our state's institutions of higher education spend the tax money of conservative Kentuckians to fund left-wing ideology, we featured a course offering from the "Women's Studies" department at Lee Todd's University of Kentucky. But just so we aren't accused of special favoritism toward UK, let's take a look at the "Women and Gender Studies" department over at James Ramsey's University of Louisville.

Lest we worry that only UK students have access to indoctrination in special interest politics (and that would, of course, be inequitable, which is bad), we can comfort ourselves in knowing the following course is available to U of L students:

3516 201-01 Women in Amer Culture H CD2 (Hum), SAT 10:00-1:00, Heinecken, LF 130
3816 201-02 Women in Amer Culture H CD2 (Hum), TTh 2:30-3:45, Heinecken, DA 202
This class will introduce students to some of the major concepts and theoretical frameworks of feminism. We will investigate gender, race, class, and sexual systems through examinations of everyday culture. The course readings briefly outline the history and guiding concepts of contemporary feminism (s) and move into an investigation of the social realities currently affecting women in US culture. We will investigate the concepts of discrimination, oppression versus privilege, and domination and subordination. The readings stress the systemic nature of oppression, emphasizing the ways that race/ethnicity, class, sexuality, and gender intersect in our lives. We will also examine some consequences of inequalities including the wage gap, violence against women, racism and sexism in education, and the representation of women in the media. The course will further examine some of the proactive ways in which women have resisted and responded to these systems.

This class, of course, is the opposite of the other course U of L offers from a conservative perspective called,... oh, wait. I forgot. There isn't one.

What was I thinking?

Of course we could ask where this group of radical feminists, with a comfy perch at the university and a virtual ideological monopoly, gets off talking about being oppressed. They get a whole department to themselves, after all.

But if there isn't a course from the opposing perspective, wouldn't that mean that there was no diversity in the course offerings at U of L, and isn't diversity what U of L is all about? In fact, I could have sworn that U of L President James Ramsey used the word 'diversity' at least 672 times in his testimony before the House Health and Welfare Committee last March when he falsely claimed to legislators that U of L was not subsidizing its domestic partner benefit plan when it turned out that that's exactly what it was doing all along.

And didn't he say, somewhere in the midst of all those false statements, that U of L needed to be a diverse place in order to attract good talent? And surely we could trust him, since it would defy statistical probability for there to be that many false statements from one university president during the short time he was at the committee table.

It's all so confusing. But hold on. There may be cause for hope in this class, called, "Sociology of Gender":

11538 313-01 Sociology of Gender (Ssci), TTh 9:30-10:45, Marshall, HM 106, Soc 327-01
11540 313-02 Sociology of Gender (Ssci), Th 11:00-12:15, Marshall, HM 106, Soc 327-02
How were women imagined in Renaissance England? What criteria did people use to distinguish between “women” and “men”? In what ways were ideas about gender and sexuality related to other cultural discourses at this time? This class will explore these kinds of questions by analyzing the writings of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. We will focus our attention primarily on literary texts by and about women, but we will also survey a range of other materials such as anatomy books, religious treatises, legal documents, and popular pamphlets. In addition to formal essays and/or exams, students may be expected to post informal analytical response papers to an electronic course listserv on a weekly basis. Active class participation is a must.

Now most people do not know that, in Elizabethan England (that is the period of history when England was ruled by Elizabeth I, who, some speculate, was a woman), people apparently did not know how to tell the difference between boys and girls. But the crack historical detectives in U of L's "Women's Studies" departments are not letting their own belief that gender is socially constructed get in the way of helping the Elizabethans out.

Although some would argue that modern feminist ideologues, who think that boys are boys because their parents made them play with trucks, and girls are girls because their parents made them play with dolls, are probably not the best bunch of people to be offering advice to anyone on how to distinguish between the genders.

But this looks promising. They have apparently discovered anatomy books. Maybe there's hope yet.

Gay rights group lauds Jody Richard's adjournment of special session

The "Kentucky Equality Federation," a gay rights group based in Kentucky, is praising Speaker of the Kentucky House Jody Richards for adjourning the House on the first day of the special session called by Gov. Ernie Fletcher. Obviously, the group supports the action because it would halt consideration of legislation to halt domestic partner benefit plans at state universities. The group also criticized Fletcher for including the issue of domestic partner benefits in the session call.

Kentucky Equality Federation praises the wisdom of House Speaker Richards and the entire House of Representatives for immediately adjourning the special session called by Governor Fletcher. The House of Representatives voted to end a special legislative session called by Republican Governor Ernie Fletcher an hour after it started.

"The House of Representatives did what was right for Kentucky families and taxpayers," stated Kentucky Equality Federation President Jordan Palmer. "Governor Fletcher apparently has no core beliefs of his own, his decisions seem to be nothing more than a calculation of how he can stay in office."

Governor Fletcher added a ban on domestic-partner benefits at universities and public agencies to the agenda of the special session that could have cost taxpayers $60,000.00 per day to hold.

Kentucky Equality Federation supported Governor Fletcher's original statement that universities should determine their own policies. But the Governor changed his mind in the middle of an election year and added it to a 'laundry list' as a reason to call the General Assembly into session.

Several Kentucky universities and public agencies offer affordable health insurance to both heterosexual and homosexual couples.

Higher Indoctrination, Part I: Building a Bridge to the 1960's

As UK President Lee Todd and U of L President James Ramsey push programs that, to one extent or the other, use taxpayer and tuition resources to fund the health care benefits for the live-in partners of their staff, it is instructive to look at what else their universities are doing to try to build a bridge to the 1960's.

One interesting place to look is in the "Women's Studies" departments. A now common pseudo-academic fixture on college campuses, these programs have provided a beachhead for aggrieved feminists and neo-Marxists to push their special interest political agendas--all at government expense. Here is the course description for a class offered at the University of Kentucky, called "Feminist Philosophy," just one of many such courses:

PHI 540-001 Feminist Philosophy. This course will introduce students to some of the major contributions of feminist theory to philosophy. Although feminist theory is not monolithic--feminists disagree about many, many things--feminist theory always begins with the insight that women have been and continue to be in a subordinate position, and feminist theorists offer accounts of how this subordination is maintained and suggestions for how it can be overcome. It is also the case that feminist theorists today tend to recognize that the subordination of women is one form of subordination in an interlocking system of oppression. Thus, feminists writing today tend to be alive to the interlocking nature of racial, classist, regionalist, ageist, sexist, heterosexist, and ableist oppressions that are all to often inseparable--sometimes conceptually, and nearly always in the lived world. In this course, we shall be interested in seeing how feminist philosophers have contributed to these realizations by doing feminist work in the traditional branches of philosophy as well as in areas of inquiry not so tightly bound by traditional categories. We'll acquaint ourselves with these contributions by looking first at some different types of feminist perspectives and then by looking at feminist contributions to philosophical methodology, metaphysics, epistemology, and moral philosophy.
TR 12:30-1:45, Instructor: Joan Callahan. This course counts toward the GWS Minor, GWS Topical Major, or the GWS Graduate Certificate.

It's a frightening world for feminists, what with all the "racism", "classism", "regionalism", "ageism", "sexism", "heterosexism", and "ableism" surrounding them. And the people in third world countries threatened with starvation and violent death think they have problems! If they only knew how it was in the patriarchal West, they'd be happy with their lot.

That one political faction not only gets to teach classes at a publicly-funded university, but is provided with the platform of a whole major to expound its extremist doctrines is rather disturbing. It's tempting to wonder if there are any courses in UK's curriculum that treat the political conservative movement in a similarly flattering light. It's a temptation that anyone concerned with balance and integrity probably ought to avoid, if for no other reason than to avoid disappointment.

To sue or not to sue? Is that even the question?

I just noticed another article, in addition to several in the Lexington Herald-Leader and the Louisville Courier-Journal that quotes me as saying that The Family Foundation is considering suing the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville over their unconstitutional domestic partner benefit plans, this one at Diverse Issues in Higher Education.

And by the way, it does appear as if the word "diverse" is becoming as unusable in its traditional sense as the word "gay", another literary victim of the politicization of language. Where is George Orwell when you need him?

It might be good to explain however, how this line got started--the one that says that The Family Foundation has its finger on the legal trigger. It is the result primarily of reporters insistent questions about whether The Family Foundation was, in fact, considering such action. The answer I gave was that the Foundation, as has been the case since the beginning of the whole debate, was not excluding that possibility, and that it was, to use the philosopher William James's phrase, a "live option," which is just another way of expressing the principle: never say never.

This somehow got translated into the announcement that the Foundation was ready to file suit. The Attorney General then came out, after we had filed a request with him to review UK's new version of domestic partner benefits to see if it met the requirements of his earlier ruling, and said that he couldn't do that because the Foundation was considering legal action.

Two points:

• Assuming the Foundation was actively considering filing suit, since when did it become so easy to stop the Attorney General from doing his job? Is that all that you have to do to neutralize him? Threaten to take legal action? So all it takes to prevent the Attorney General from acting to uphold the constitution is to point your lawyer in somebody's general direction? That has interesting implications.
  
  
• Then there is the fact that the Foundation was no closer to taking legal action at the end of June than it was when the AG came down with his original ruling. That being the case, why would the AG be any less able to take action at the end of June than it was when it made its initial ruling?

Of course, all this could be considered moot with the Governor's announcement of a special session starting on Thursday that includes the domestic partner benefits issue in the call. It could, however, become very relevant if the Democrats decide to adjourn without action later this week.

Governor puts domestic partner benefits on the special session call

Governor Ernie Fletcher has placed the issue of domestic partner benefits on the call for a special session to begin this Thursday.

Excuses, Excuses

I was quoted in three articles on the Attorney General's failure to make state universities comply with his ruling on domestic partner benefits:

"State won't issue new opinion," The Louisville Courier-Journal (7/1/07
"Family Foundation pushes Stumbo to act," The Lexington Herald-Leader (7/1/07)
"Group pushes for legal action on UK's benefit plan," The Lexington Herald Leader (6/30/07)

The AG is saying that because the Family Foundation is considering legal action, he can't do what he said he was going to do when he rendered his original opinion; namely, enforce it. In other words, he is saying that you can actually prevent law enforcement officials from enforcing the law simply by threatening a lawsuit against the people who have broken it.

That's a novel view of the law.

In fact, The Family Foundation has always viewed legal action as an option, but it is no closer to taking it now than it was when the AG issued its first opinion. If it was able to issue an opinion then as to UK's original plan, why can't it do it now on UK's newest plan?