Just in case you thought pedophilia was a Republican thing

This just in: hypocrisy is not limited to Republicans. Check out this very informative article on David Horowitz's webpage on "The Left's Pedophile Problem."

How to Win Friends and Influence People (and have them say nice things about you later on)

It's so seldom that people actually say nice things about me, I couldn't resist reprinting Francis Beckwith's recent remarks in one of the comment sections of the Right Reason blog. Frank is one of the most logically forceful and articulate evangelical scholars writing today. He is the author numerous books and articles, and is one of the foremost experts on the issue of the constitutionality of Intelligent Design in schools:

BTW, Martin Cothran was instrumental in my embracing of political conservativism. While in graduate school in southern California in 1983-84 (while we were both studying for our MAs at the old Simon Greenleaf Univ, which has since merged with Trinity in Deerfield IL), Martin scolded me when I called myself a "moderate." Then he bought me a subscription to the American Spectator and encouraged me to read National Review, Bill Buckley's UP FROM LIBERALISM, and Newt Gingrich's WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY. I then went on to devour Gilder's WEALTH AND POVERTY, Hazlitt's ECONOMICS IN ONE LESSON, and Schaeffer and Koop's WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE. From there I read Schlossberg's IDOLS FOR DESTRUCTION, Novak's SPIRIT OF DEMOCRATIC CAPITALISM, and Robert Cord's SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE.

Also, Martin's a huge Chesterton guy, having done his MA thesis on Chesterton's work. This inspired me to read ORTHODOXY and a collection of Chesterton's writings that Martin had bought me as a gift.

I am semi-literate only because of Martin Cothran.

Thanks, Martin.

Take care,
Frank

What he doesn't mention (probably because he has forgotten) is that he was also prochoice at this time. I remember many evenings debating the issue with him at JoJo's Coffee Shop. It makes my heart glow to think that I may have had a hand in bringing the author of Politically Correct Death, the best demolition job of the prochoice position ever written, over from the Dark Side.

Scientists who doubt Darwinism

I recently had a reporter express her considered opinion that there were "no scientists" who didn't accept Darwinism. I wish had had this list at my fingertips at the time. It is a statement signed by 600 scientists saying, "“We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”

Domestic Partner Benefits on Catholic Radio

I was on WMJR 1380, Catholic Radio, this afternoon on the issue of Domestic Partner Benefits at UK. Interest in this issue appears to be increasing.

UK's domestic partner policy on "Front Page" with Sue Wylie

I will be the guest on tomorrow's "Front Page with Sue Wylie" on Lexington's 590 WVLK-AM at the 11:00 hour on the issue of domestic partner benefits at UK and U of L.

Is Intelligent Design Science? (cont.)

My latest post over at Right Reason in response to Ed Darrell, a science teacher, on whether Intelligent Design is science:

Ed,

You ask me, “Can you propose a test of science that you think ID can pass?” My answer to that question is, I don’t need to, because I have not made the claim that ID is science. I don’t know whether it is or not, and am not sure it matters a great deal, except to people who think science is the only legitimate form of inquiry. But I am curious, as a cultural observer, about the enthusiasm with which the scientific establishment has attacked ID, an enthusiasm that results in reckless assertions about what science is and isn’t that bring even theories well within its own domain into question.

You, on the other hand, have made the dogmatic claim ID is not science. Yet you have yet to produce a definition of science that excludes ID that does not at the same time exclude positions such as string theory which—whatever their actual scientific merit—are quite clearly scientific theories. In past posts you have produced several, none of which you wish to stick to when push comes to shove. As soon as it is pointed out that one criterion would exclude some commonly acknowledge scientific theory, you move on to another, and the cycle repeats itself, World Without End, Amen.

You also, I think, drastically overstate your case when you make assertions about ID such as that “there is no theory”, that “no one works in the field”, and that “there is no scientific insight.” The second one is demonstrably false, the other two are highly suspect subjective judgments.

This is coupled with an overstatement of the merits of string theory. You claim that it is “based in real observations”, yet the debate within the scientific community over string theory is centered on the very fact that it is NOT based on real observations, and because of this there are no “experimental paths” (your words)—not even any conceivable “experimental paths” that are not fairly ludicrous (see Perseus’ last post).

I’m not saying ID is science. I’m saying that, based on what scientist themselves say about string theory, that IF string theory is science, THEN ID is science—by the same criteria. I am not making a categorical assertion; I am making a condition hypothetical assertion. You keep disputing this assertion, but you cannot produce any one criterion by which ID is excluded and string theory is not. You have not produced any criterion (any one you will stick to anyway) that would result in the consequent of my conditional assertion false when the antecedent is true.

And until you can, my assertion stands.

You also ask, “Other than string theory, is there any science that comes close to being as completely vaporous as ID?” I addressed this in an earlier post when I cited Martin Gardner’s observation that atomic and molecular theory were once in the same position as string theory is now. I suppose it was fair then (as it is fair now in the case of string theory) to criticize these theories as being bad science. And, apparently, that is exactly what happened. But I have never heard that anyone said that it wasn’t science at all. My understanding (limited as it is) is that quantum mechanics was also in such a state in its early development.

These theories have since panned out—to a greater or lesser extent. But that doesn’t mean their early status excluded them from being science altogether, which is what you are saying about ID.

Finally, you have criticized ID for the lack of papers published in scientific journals. I always find this criticism highly amusing. On the one hand, say its critics, ID isn’t science. And one of the reasons it isn’t science is that it has published so little in scientific journals. But when an editor does allow the publication of an ID article in a scientific journal, he is professionally and personally vilified because he published an article on ID, when (as everyone knows) ID is not science. I’m referring to the Richard Sternburg case, of course—after which, no editor who values his professional reputation is going touch a pro-ID article with a ten-foot pole.

ID is not science because its papers don’t get published in scientific journals; and its papers don't get published in scientific journals because it isn’t science. They’ve got ID coming and they’ve got it going.

How convenient.

Herald-Leader runs Domestic Partner Op-Ed

My article on the University of Kentucky's plan to provide benefits to live-in sexual partners (see full text below) ran in this morning's Lexington Herald-Leader.

C-J runs article today on Intelligent Design in the classroom

Last Friday, I was working on a comment for the "Right Reason" blog on the issue of Intelligent Design (see below) when Mark Pitsch of the Louisville Courier-Journal called to ask what I thought were the main issues involved in selecting a new state schools chief.

During the course of the conversation, he brought up the fact that outgoing Commissioner of Education Gene Wilhoit said that it would be a mistake to hire a comissioner who believes that Intelligent Design should be taught in public schools [and note here that he brought the issue up, not me]. I responded that I thought any candidate who said that, ipso facto, Intelligent Design should not be taught in schools should be automatically disqualified.

This is the comment that made its way into the story that ran in the C-J today. In fact, the story is largely about the Intelligent Design issue as it relates to schools.

My comment will obviously rankle the anti-ID crowd in the state, and will (here comes a prediction) be interpreted to mean that I believe that there should be some requirement that Intelligent Design should be taught in every science classroom in the state. But that is not what I said.

There are three possible positions you can have on the issue of teaching about Intelligent Design in schools. The first is that it should be taught; the second that teachers should be allowed to teach it or not teach it, as they see fit; and the third is that it should not be taught. My position is that it should be up to the teacher (the middle position). And my remark about candidates being automatically disqualified for taking the latter position (that it should not be taught) was based on my belief that such a position betrays an extreme secularist attitude about how schools should handle scientific and religious questions that we have had entirely too much of in our schools over the last 50 years or so.

I will have more to say on this issue in the future, but suffice it to say here that I predict this issue will become a hot one over the course of the next year. Why? Because it is already a big national issue. Add to that the fact that the state media is enthusiastic about covering it. The stars don't get any better aligned on a public issue than they are on this one.

Is Ugly really only Skin Deep?

A response to Gina Alfonso at the new and very good blog The Point, on whether the new television series, "Ugly Betty," is an indication of a healthy reacknowledgement of realism in the media or a further indication of what Richard Weaver calls the "failure to make distinctions." Gina argued the former. I wonder if, in fact, it is the latter:
Gina,

I'm not sure I agree with you here. It seems to me that there is a lot of ugliness in the media and popular culture these days--all mixed in together with the less ugly. Look at cartoon animation anymore, where bad drawing seems to be the standard.

Couldn't we as easily say that the fact that in movies like Suspicion, beautiful women were cast preciselyl because they were beautiful, and that there was some acknowledgement that beauty in fact existed and was clearly distinguishable from ugliness?

Maybe what you call "realism" is really just part and paracel of the modern failure to acknowledge any clear distinction between beauty and ugliness, just as there is a failure to acknowledge a distinction between truth and falsehood, and good and evil.

Just a thought.

By the way I have also posted this at my own blog, http://www.vereloqui.blogspot.com.

Is Intelligent Design Science?

I posted this over at the Right Reason blog in the comments section of a post on Francis Beckwith's grant of tenure from Baylor University. Beckwith is the go to man on the issue of whether intelligent design should be taught in schools. In the Comments section, Ed Darrell argued against Beckwith's position on ID, which is that it should be allowed to be taught in schools:

I’m glad Perseus brought up the superstring point because I think this point is fatal to anti-ID position. The point is this: if the teaching of ID is to be banned in schools because it does not make falsifiable claims, then the teaching of superstring theory must be banned from schools on the same grounds. But it would obviously be ridiculous to ban teaching of string theory on such grounds. Therefore it should be considered ridiculous to ban the teaching of ID on such grounds.

It’s a classic modus tollens argument.

How does Ed try to escape the force of the argument? By presenting a weaker case argument: instead of saying ID is impermissible in schools on the grounds that it isn’t science, now the argument shifts to whether ID is “scientifically developed”. Notice the abandonment of the original position: that ID was impermissible because it wasn’t “science”. The criterion now has shifted from whether ID is “science” to whether it is “scientifically developed.” He is forced to abandon the first position because it obviously would disallow the teaching of string theory.

Martin Gardner pointed out in an article a few years ago that the problem with string theory was that strings were “irreducible mathematical abstractions.” He also pointed out that atoms and molecules were once considered to have a similar status, but eventually became “observables.” ““Whether this will ever happen to strings,” said Gardner, “is something no one can say. As of now there is no conceivable way to ‘observe’ them. It is possible there never will be.” [emphasis mine].

Now Gardner’s article was some years ago, and there may have been some progress in the status of strings as observables, but I don’t think so. But even if there was, that is irrelevant to the question of whether string theory is science. It was obviously considered science even when it was undeveloped. If it wasn’t, Gardner wouldn’t have been talking about it in an article on science. It was obviously assumed.

Ed says, “String theory is at least scientifically developed.” What does that mean? Has it been developed to the point that strings are observables? I’m not up on the most recent scientific literature, but even if it has not achieved this scientific benchmark, was it not considered a scientific theory even before this, albeit an “undeveloped” scientific theory?

It the criterion among the anti-ID crowd has now been abandoned in favor of the “scientifically developed” criterion (if, in other words, the criterion is no longer verifiability, but a certain state of development), at what point of development do we say that something is a scientific theory? And are we saying that if it is short of that benchmark, are we willing to say it isn’t science at all? And if we’re willing to say it isn’t science at all, then are we willing to say that at the point in time that all those other theories had fallen short of that mark (not only superstring theory, but atomic molecular theory), that they shouldn’t have been considered scientific theories? And if so, then why were they, in fact, considered scientific at the time?

Was atomic and molecular theory—when atoms and molecules were only irreducible mathematical abstractions—not scientific theory? These theories were quite obviously considered scientific at the time by “massive support in mathematics and physics,” the other criterion to which Ed appealed.

In a 1958 article by Freeman Dyson in Scientific American, Dyson mentions Wolfgang Pauli’s lecture in New York on his and Werner Hiesenberg’s unorthodox theory of particles. Niels Bohr was there. “We are all agreed,” said Bohr, “that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance to be correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough.”

“When the great innovation appears,” remarked Dyson, “it will most certainly be in a muddled, incomplete and confusing form. To the discoverer himself it will be only half-understood; to everybody else it will be a mystery. For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope.”

The question is: why is this standard applied to everything but Intelligent Design?

How to get a college education

There is an excellent reprint of an 1996 National Review article by Jeffrey Hart on how to get a college education--no matter where you are going here.

Hart wrote a pamphlet on this same issue a number of years back that was extremely helpful in guiding students who were going to behemoth state universities through the morass of academic trivia in such a way as to actually get a clue about Western civilization.

Modern academic institutions have basically given up on passing on the tradition of the Christian West, but Hart guide pointed out how, despite the curriculum, you can still claim something of your cultural inheritance.

I no longer have my copy of this pamphlet. If I come across it, I will post it. But this article addresses the same issue.

Highlands Latin School mentioned in C-J article today

HLS was mentioned in passing in a C-J article today on Prospect Latin School. The article is interesting anyway because it gives more information on what Prospect Latin School is (apparently, just a pre-school). HLS was mentioned as another school that teaches Latin in Jefferson County. It was also the only other school that was mentioned.

Here's the link to the online article: http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060929/NEWS0102/609290334/1008/NEWS01