As I have noted, Things are Happening in my real-life life that are making attention to the blog a wee bit patchy. However, I still have occasion to check the news and opinion sites I enjoy, and thus I came across an interesting tidbit not so long ago. And by “interesting tidbit,” I mean “news item that makes me weep for my country.”
Via TPM:
Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) tore into scientists as tools of the devil in a speech at the Liberty Baptist Church Sportsman’s Banquet last month.
“All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell,” Broun said. “And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”
According to Broun, the scientific plot was primarily concerned with hiding the true age of the Earth. Broun serves on the House Science Committee, whichcame under scrutiny recently after another one of its Republican members, Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), suggested that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses against pregnancy.
“You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth,” he said. “I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.”
Broun — a physician, with an M.D. and a B.S. in chemistry — is generally considered to be among the most conservative members of Congress, if not the most. He drew national attention in 2010 for saying he did not know if President Obama was an American citizen. [emphasis despairingly added]
If that doesn’t make you reconsider the benefits of a monarchy, I don’t know what will.
A few very brief thoughts:
1) Embryology denialism is a new concept for me. Since developing embryos are something that we can actually see with our own eyes (with the help of microscopes of various kinds in the earlier stages), I have no idea how Braun can quibble with embryology as a science. It makes an artform of epistemic closure.
I await his upcoming press release linking the theory of gravity to ACORN.
2) In all seriousness, this man serves as an exquisitely painful example of why I cannot possibly consider voting Republican in the foreseeable future. He serves on the House Science Committee and doesn’t believe in science!! And his Party put him there.
I don’t oppose the GOP because I am dead-set against conservatism. Conservatism has much to recommend it. I oppose the GOP because stupid, crazy people seem to have ascended to remarkable heights under its auspices.
3) Related to point #2, this makes (at least) two people on the Science Committee who evince a startlingly moronic grasp of what science is, how it works, where it comes from, what it means, etc.
Over to you, Kent Brockman.
4) (I apologize for the need to hit caps lock now. It cannot be helped.)
OH, MY GOOD GOD IN HEAVEN THIS MAN IS A PHYSCIAN??!? HOW CAN YOU BE A PHYSICIAN AND NOT BELIEVE IN EMBRYOLOGY? ARE THERE OTHER MED SCHOOL CLASSES HE WOULD REPUDIATE IF THEY CONTRADICTED HIS INTERPRETATION OF DEUTERONOMY?? PHARMACOLOGY? PHYSIOLOGY? ANATOMY?
ATTENTION, PATIENTS OF DR. PAUL BROUN — RUN FOR YOUR EVER-LOVING LIVES!
Thank you. I feel better now.
When you look at the video it’s pretty clear that he’s being held hostage by angry deer who are making him say this stuff.
Also, on that note…
My observational experience of people with an affinity for hanging around taxidermied animals is now a set that consists entirely of Paul Broun, Berrett Brown, and that family from Texas Chainsaw.
I for one, welcome our new cloven-hoofed overlords!
I think the next time Rep. Dr. Broun gets the flu, he ought to prescribe himself the same quantity and kinds of medicine that he would have given a patient in the 1950’s. Evolution being a Satanic lie and all, he should be just fine. If Darwin turns out to have had the better of it, though, I’ll just call that an “everybody wins” situation.
Nah, too modern. Penicillin was around in the 1950’s. He should use leeches.
I await his upcoming press release linking the theory of gravity to ACORN.
They do not “drop”. God places them on the ground.
Win.
/facepalm
First of all: Oh, good Lord.
Second: having a degree in science does NOT make you a scientist. What makes you a scientist is DOING SCIENCE, which is he the opposite of doing if he’s basing all of his conclusions about the world on “God’s word.”
Also: physicians can do science and they can practice medicine, but these are two entirely different focuses of medicine. Some do both. If he’s rejecting embryology, I’m guessing he doesn’t even do the latter too well.
It bears repeating: Good Lord!
I readily concede that “doctor” does not automatically indicate “scientist.”
However, medicine is a science-based profession, and a certain baseline understanding of science is necessary for its competent practice. One would hope a similar baseline understanding of science would inform one’s membership on the House Science Committee, and it appears those hopes would be misplaced.
(I realize that this is essentially in agreement with what you were saying.)
Out of sincere curiosity:
How much of a medical school education should cause cognitive dissonance to people like this guy? How much compartimentalization do you think he needed to do to pass medical school?
I don’t think he meant “embryology” the way you mean it.
I think he means embryology to mean Recapitulation theory: the theory of how embryo development mimics the stages of evolution… the baby first looks like a tadpole, then a chicken, and so on. “Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny”, if you will. This theory has since been abandoned.
Of course, he might not mean Recapitulation theory… but Recapitulation theory being abandoned was used as an example of how we can’t trust those evolutionists back when I was one of the YECs handing tracts out on the beach.
Oh, so by “embryology” he means “an obscure and outmoded embryological theory.”
I guess that makes a modicum of sense? At least insofar as a “science comes from Satan” diatribe can be understood to contain anything sensible at all?
Please understand, I don’t *KNOW* what he meant.
But when I read his quotation, my brain immediately flashed to this picture.
Since that’s the only explanation that makes any sense at all, I’m inclined to agree with your interpretation.
Is knowledge of this (again) obscure and outmoded theory rife amongst Broun’s ilk?
And only with this crowd would willingness to reexamine and abandon unsustainable beliefs/theories be considered a bad thing.
Is knowledge of this (again) obscure and outmoded theory rife amongst Broun’s ilk?
In the Young Earth Creationist circles, very much so. (At the very least, it was discussion fodder in my YEC circles.) It’s given as an example of how often evolutionist thinking is wrong and, since it’s wrong so often, you can’t trust it… as compared to the Book of Genesis which *IS* something you can trust because it’s not wrong.
Ditto, JB: the discredited Haeckel embryo drawings.
http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/embryology_04.html
[I’m personally fine w/evolution, FTR, and find creationism theologically embarrassing. However, it’s actually a academic argument. Can a creationist still be a productive citizen? Computer scientist? Astrophysicist? M.D.?
Yes. The physical world of 2012 works the same for the creationist as it does the evolutionist.]
“Can a creationist still be a productive citizen? Computer scientist? Astrophysicist? M.D.?”
I would say yes, yes, probably, and maybe.
I waiver a bit on the last two because as I understand those two fields (which is cursory, at best), there seems to be certain core theories that are fundamentally opposed to creationism, so I’d need to know more about how the individual in question approached these differences.
And I should also say that, on the first one (productive citizen), I’d argue that his believe in creationism has zero bearing on his ability to fulfill that role. I wouldn’t say that he is a productive citizen IN SPITE of being a creationist. If he is a productive citizen, than he is a productive citizen who ohbytheway happens to be a creationist. And while I can’t really summon an example now, I’m sure there exists folks who are productive citizens because of their belief in creationism.
You can probably be an excellent engineer or computer scientists (well, unless you do data mining — evolutionary programming is a solid and common technique in data mining) and be a Creationist.
You’d probably make an okay doctor, as long as you compartmentalized certain aspects — but given the happy “that’s micro, not macro” handwave every Creationist I’ve ever met uses, I’m sure the doctor would be able to handle the appearance for drug-resistant strains of bacteria well enough.
Mind you, a Creationist could make a decent practicing doctor. A research one? not so much….
Morat gets it. Creationism doesn’t dispute “micro” evolution, that is, adaptation and mutation that leads to “speciation”:
http://creation.com/speciation-conference-brings-good-news-for-creationists
Bold face mine, and I feel the need to once again note that I’m not a creationist, but have taken the time to hear them out anyway in my studies of religion and American history. Creationism presents a nettlesome challenge to the “free exercise of religion” guaranteed by the First Amendment and the right to freedom of religious conscience that is an even older American tradition. Creationism offends the empirical modern mind, but I think most folks don’t realize that for practical purposes, it’s a difference that makes no difference. The physical world works the same regardless of how you believe it came to be.
“Creationism offends the empirical modern mind, but I think most folks don’t realize that for practical purposes, it’s a difference that makes no difference.”
Excuse me, but bullshit.
The problem with people’s distrust of young Earth creationism (which is clearly what Broun is discussing in this video) is not simply difference of fashion, as you seem to suggest. The problem people have with it is that it is highly dubious, and demands the suspension of reliance upon scientific method as a way to find predictive theories about the natural world in favor of hierarchical religious dogma.
If you believe that YE creationists (as opposed to, say, IDers) buy into scientific medical concepts such as micro-evolution, come to Oregon – the State is in the process of convicting quite a few of criminal negligence for letting their children die because such theories, though demonstrably provable, were anathema to YEC dogma.
YEC in modern America isn’t simply an “alternate theory to Darwinism,” it’s a belief that the findings of demonstrable scientific phenomena should be discarded (and, in public school, be made illegal to teach) in those instances where it does not correlate with a very niche version of scriptural interpretation.
YEC doesn’t just dispute the validity of evolution, it disputes the validity of geology, astronomy, astrophysics, planetology, thermodynamics, non-evolutionary branches of biology, chemistry, and just about every other branch of the hard sciences. YEC eschews the principles of falsification, parsimony, correction, and empiricism.
To suggest that science and creationism are just two ways of interpreting the same data to get to the same place – or that rejection of it is due to some kind of comedy of manners – is ridiculous.
Actually, you proved my point, Tod, especially with the “bullshit” part and your clear anger here.
ME: Creationism offends the empirical modern mind
THEE: The problem people have with it is that it is highly dubious, and demands the suspension of reliance upon scientific method as a way to find predictive theories about the natural world in favor of hierarchical religious dogma.
Yes, I believe that was implicit in my original remark. If not, you make it quite explicit here.
ME: “…but I think most folks don’t realize that for practical purposes, it’s a difference that makes no difference. The physical world works the same regardless of how you believe it came to be.”
That’s the empirical claim you need to address, without emotion or anger. Further, the First Amendment problem remains. The Constitution does not ban God, and my plea for tolerance both legal and social is that an accommodation can be made without threat to the republic.
And on the sophistic level, if God did indeed create the universe 14 billion years ago, I find the claim that God created the world 6000 years ago closer to the empirical truth than the position that there is no creator-God atall. So there’s that.
;-p
>o? Virtually all creation theorists assume that Noah did not have with him pairs of dingoes, wolves and coyotes, for example, but a pair of creatures which were ancestral to all these species, and probably to a number of other present-day species representative of the ‘dog kind’.
And think that all canine (and presumably other sorts) of speciation happened in only a few thousand years? In other words, they either can’t do the research on mutation rates or can’t do the math. [1] Or, alternatively, think that canines “evolved” through purposeful, directed change, that is, more creationism.
The thing is, science is a logically connected series of theories derived from observation and conclusions drawn from them. Which is why the sort of cherry-picking and rationalization required to justify YEC is harmful in two ways: not only does it lead to false beliefs, but it values rationalization of absurdities over reasoning. (Which explains a lot about the state of the GOP, of course.)
1. Or, I would not be surprised to find, posit some connection between the cataclysms is Genesis and increased mutations. Velikovsky lives!
If the choices are:
A) God created the universe 6,000 – 10,000 years ago
B) God created the universe c. 14.7 billion years ago
C) There is no God to have created the universe
What the creationist must confront, without emotion or anger, is that explanations for natural phenomena that incorporate the intervention of a sentience are of little to no scientific utility. Science is in that sense instrinsically atheistic. That does not require that a scientist be an atheist. It requires that the religiously-faithful scientist not offer “God did it” as an explanation for the subject of the scientisti’s inquiry.
Mike Schilling’s example above of the ‘alternative’ to the theory of gravity (the objects are placed there by God) is instructive. Any “placement theory” physicist would be roundly laughed out of a meeting of the physics faculty at any respectable academic institution. So too would be an “intelligent falling” advocate. This is not disrespect for religion or faith. This is not politically-correct orthodoxy and it is not the result of a sinister conspiracy. It is an understanding that what was just said was not science at all.
An explanation of “God did it,” or even “God created the universe such that this would inevitably happen,” is not science. It is theology. If you want to teach “God did it” about the existence of sentient human life, speciation of fruit flies, apples falling on mathemeticians, the rotation of the Earth around its axis, or the disappearance of my car keys, have at it. What I would ask is that you neither a) demand the imprimatur of governmental approval of that message, for the sake of the Constitution, nor b) claim the imprimatur of “science” for that message, for the sake of truth.
Good replies; counsel for the defense stipulates most all of it. Still, most of the protests are academic and don’t get to
The physical world works the same regardless of how you believe it came to be.
Further, counsel for the defense argues for religious tolerance on both the legal and social levels, the letter and spirit of Amendment the First. I happen to have the below in my clipboard from my other blog re a discussion on whether America begins with “fourscore and seven years ago” as Lincoln insists in 1863—1776—or with the Constitution in 1787.
Either way, I think steamrolling the creationists is not only intolerant, it’s unwise.
_____________
I think the Constitution permits both a religious nation and an unreligious one, a conclusion my erstwhile blogbrother comes to in his excellent
http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Secularism-Hunter-Baker/dp/1433506548
In the end, I do argue the social utility of religion [and am obliged to since the existence of God can’t be proved empirically, let alone “endowing” us with certain rights]: John Adams, a papism-hater and generally hostile to organized religion and its dogma, wrote that as bad as religion is, the world would be even worse without it. On that very modest premise I too proceed.
And I do think we watch too much Law & Order. One can love the law, but without a vision, the people perish.
“The law no passion can disturb. ‘Tis void of desire and fear, lust and anger. ‘Tis mens sine affectu, written reason, retaining some measure of the divine perfection. It does not enjoin that which pleases a weak, frail man, but, without any regard to persons, commands that which is good and punishes evil in all, whether rich or poor, high or low. ‘Tis deaf, inexorable, inflexible.
On the one hand it is inexorable to the cries and lamentations of the prisoners; on the other it is deaf, deaf as an adder, to the clamors of the populace.”—Adams, Argument in Defense of the British Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials (4 December 1770).
“I think steamrolling the creationists is not only intolerant, it’s unwise.”
Trouble is, the weight of facts and arithmetic and logic, have a tendency to steamroller weak arguments.
The steamrolling is political, one tyranny for another. “Inherit the Wind” is a filthy lie, and has poisoned the American polity almost beyond imagining. William Jennings Bryan was a liberal, you know. 😉
http://www.doesgodexist.org/SepOct96/ExposingTheLieInheritTheWind.html
Etc.
Tom,
Why do you consider yourself the “defense” here?
You misunderstood me, Tom. There IS no difference between “micro” and “macro”. In fact, those terms (as I recall) are ones coined by Creationists to mean (basically) “evolution i can’t deny” and “evolution i can deny”.
The difference between micro and macro is the difference between taking a single step and moving a foot — and taking 5000 and moving almost a mile.
The terms themselves betray a total misunderstanding of the concept, an attempt to make discrete a continuous process.
I see my newphew irregularly. Once every few weeks if I’m lucky. And each time, he’s much bigger. But despite the fact that my data-points are irregular, I am quite proper in concluding that he grows as a continous process — and not magically jumps up a size or so in discrete steps.
So with evolution — we only have data points, which make a continous process look discrete. Cladistics helps — it’s a much more elegant and precise way of viewing things. I don’t know if they teach that in high school biology now, but it certainly helps illustrate the concepts far better than the rather arbitrary class/species/genus stuff.
An astrophysicist who believed in young earth creationism would be laughed out of any room he chose to share with his coworkers. More importantly he would be forced either to regard the entirety of the data he deals with as fraudulent. The constants involved with astrophysics require a universe that’s billions of years old.
There’s no way around it.
It’d be like an engineer who doesn’t believe in thermodynamics.
That’s what y’d think, nob. However…
Dr. Lisle graduated summa cum laude from Ohio Wesleyan University where he double-majored in physics and astronomy, and minored in mathematics. He did graduate work at the University of Colorado where he earned a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Astrophysics. While there, Dr Lisle used the SOHO spacecraft to investigate motions on the surface of the sun as well as solar magnetism and subsurface weather. His thesis was entitled “Probing the Dynamics of Solar Supergranulation and its Interaction with Magnetism.” He has also authored a number of papers in both secular and creation literature.
http://creation.com/dr-jason-lisle
Absent any further affirmative argument, the defense rests.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/10/14/new-creationist-tactic-telling-the-truth/
That is…pointing out a crackpot isn’t a good tactic to show creationists can be decent astrophysicists.
Lisle isn’t a real creationist, he’s a squish:
Perhaps the answer is much simpler. Perhaps the definition of time that God uses in Genesis 1 is observed time, not calculated time. In other words, had there been an observer standing on Earth on Day 4 of the Creation Week, he or she would have seen the stars being created on that day. This is certainly the impression we get from a straightforward reading of Genesis. The insightful reader will at this point realize that this view implies that the stars observed on Day 4 were ‘actually’ created years—even billions of years—before Day 1, according to calculated time. This view suggests that God created stars ‘before’ the beginning of time (if such an idea is meaningful) in such a way that their light would reach Earth on Day 4. This idea will be addressed in detail later.
It’s the same kind of handwaving the Clarence Darrow character uses in Inherit the Wind. A true Creationist says “Six days, bitch!
Sorry, gentlepersons, you haven’t read the whole thread.
We start with a Congresscritter who says that modern science is “lies straight from the pit of Hell”. He’s defended by pointing at a scientist who handwaves about how science doesn’t really contradict the Bible.
That’s goalposts moving at warp speed.
So long as we’re just moving the time/space AROUND the goalposts, the goalposts themselves aren’t violating relativity, Mike.
Is Lisle’s work on solar magnetism invalidated by his creationism? No. You guys haven’t read the entire thread, where your objections have already been addressed in good faith. I have spent two afternoons of sincere work on what has been a principled discussion [thanks to all], and have nothing more to add at this time.
My thesis is about the validity of work like Lisle’s, but far more about Harriet McBryde Johnson for reasons that should be clear to gentle readers.
Singer’s just a theoretician. Putting those ideas into practice requires a believer.
OMG WHAT I’D GIVE TO HAVE THAT ADORABLE TORTOISE GROWING INSIDE ZAZZY!!!
All we keep getting from the books and blogs she is compiling are stupid, non-tortoise references to stupid, non-tortoise fruits.
Well then, I guess you don’t get it, Morat. “Macro” evolution covers variation and mutation, and a creationist could have discovered penicillin or the Higgs boson or any other practical science work. You’ll have to show me to the contrary in their own words and not yours. Until then, I’ll take my leave if it’s OK.
Good catch.
If I know the subjects and their jargon well enough, I would know make a digression ending in “Ontology recapitulates Philology”.
He can’t even spell his name right!
This is in my top 3 reasons for leaving the GOP and not looking back. Of course, one of the other reasons is that they don’t seem to understand what the word ‘conservative’ actually means…
On my mobile so I am going to keep this brief but my side of the aisle’s relationship with science is the main reason I am tempted to change to Independent after this election. I have a post in the works that will dovetail nicely with this.
I look forward to reading it.
This is why I can not support the Republican party or any Republican candidate. Ever. Full Stop.
It’s one thing for a Teabilly like this to get elected to Congress from some backwater district. Out of 435 Congressional seats, this is going to happen now and then. But for the Republican leadership to put someone like that on a Committee concerned with the precise area of this person’s most heinous ignorance is unconscionable and extremely irresponsible. It’s like they’re deliberately setting out to put the absolute worst people possible in positions of power and responsibility.
It bespeaks utter contempt for the American people. Like putting the Delts from Animal House in charge of the Homecoming Parade committee.
When they do this sort of thing in an area that I’m somewhat competent to judge, like Science and Tech, why should I believe that they’re acting any more responsibly in areas where I have less knowledge or expertise and less ability to judge? Why the hell should I trust these fucks with anything?
Well,
I think that’d be a pretty damn awesome homecoming parade, personally.
/TOGA
But, as a (now formerly) Registered Republican, I am 100% in line with your first sentence. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I vote Republican again. They want to take women back in time to the pre-suffrage era, and I’m damn well not going to help vote them into power.
Tom is correct. Creationism offends the empirical modern mind indeed.
Creationism takes a stance of certainty. The creationist thinker has an answer that satisfies her. She holds that answer prior to exposure to empirical evidence, and should that evidence contradict her answer it is either made to conform or discarded.
This approach is anathema to the modern empirical mind, which takes a stance of inquiry. The scientific thinker uses a particular method to answer any question that arises, and accepts whatever empirical evidence will give her more clarity with regard to the true answer. She is willing to abandon beliefs that are no longer sustainable when a sufficient body of evidence has amassed to contradict it. This manner of thinking is incompatible with YEC belief.
For this reason, YEC believers can be excellent physicians, but not scientists. The inquiry of doctors is of a very concrete kind, focused on diagnosis of how a patient is. The why is irrelevant, except as pertains to the diagnosis at hand. But once a sufficient degree of true inquiry enters the picture, then dogmatic certainty must be abandoned if the inquiring spirit is to flourish.
If enough evidence accrued to give credence to the chronic Lyme diagnosis, I would jettison my current skepticism and announce my change of heart. (I do not believe the evidence as currently exists is sufficient to make me do so.) I would like to believe that I have a scientific mind in this regard. But if I were to hold to my beliefs regardless of what arose to challenge them, then I would be no scientist, and a lesser physician. Since creationism is unlikely to inform how a patient is diagnosed or treated, it need not interfere with how competent or compassionate (the two characteristics of a good doctor) any given physician is.
One of the things we were taught was that this wasn’t about science at all, but that it was a dialectic. If it was just about testing things and retesting and hypotheses and all that scientific method crap, no one (not even the Creationists) would mind. The point, we were told, was that this was about *TEAMS*. There was Team Us and Team Evil out there (that’s a paraphrase but that gets the gist across).
Here are a bunch of quotations from so-called scientists, they’d say, and then they’d give us a bunch of quotations that indicated that this wasn’t about science at all but that it was personal on the part of the anthropologists and biologists and whatnot. It wasn’t about science and testing and retesting and hypotheses, it was about proving the Christians wrong. Nebraska Man was a big favorite. Some guy found a tooth. Another person said that this tooth is a tooth from the missing link. Another guy drew a sketch of Hesperopithecus haroldcookii. And it turned out that it was a tooth that actually belonged to a type of pig or boar. Piltdown Man is another big one.
The focus was never on how people make mistakes and then the mistakes are fixed when they’re found, the focus was *ALWAYS* on the crowing noises the so-called scientists made when they discovered “proof” of human evolution… which demonstrated that this was about sides and not science.
And since neither side used the scientific method, why not choose the side of good rather than the side of secular humanism, communism, and abortion?
Below, a list of 100 accredited scientists who doubt Darwinism. Whether they are able to function as productive researchers, etc. is the only question I pose. So too by extension Rep. Broun. [TVD don’t do truth claims, but neither doth he stipulate that the Constitution demands we presume that God isn’t a reality.]
List:
http://www.discoveringdesign.org/scientists.shtml
Not impressive, but the cupboard isn’t bare either. Again, we are examining only if and how a belief in creationism disqualifies a scientist or politician from a place at the table.
Neither in American political philosophy is the a priori assertion that there is a God as a First Principle [hence, “endowed by our creator”] unconstitutional. Even the secular Zorach decision [1952] had William O. Douglas admitting [albeit in dicta], “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.”
I admit there are arguments to be made against some GOPers’ “providentialism,” that God will take care of global warming, for instance. However, providentialism isn’t unconstitutional, and wasn’t even unfashionable until recently.
“And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment — let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.
With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace — a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.
Thy will be done, Almighty God.
Amen.”
President Franklin D. Roosevelt – June 6, 1944 [D-Day]
http://ncse.com/taking-action/project-steve
Doubts Darwinism ≠ creationism.
If one enters the inquiry with a preset answer already in place (eg. “God did it”) then one is simply not behaving as a proper scientist. If one enters the inquiry seeking to find empirical evidence that God exists, and willing to abandon belief that God did it if no evidence can be found, then one can be considered a true scientist. A person can find one answer (Darwinism, in this case) flawed and still be a scientist. A person cannot hold to a belief in the absence of evidence (creationism) and be a scientist, at least not as pertains to whatever question is at hand.
If there is empirical evidence of a Divine Creator, a true scientist should evaluate it and accept it. I am deeply skeptical that such evidence exists.
For a brief moment in time in the 80’s and 90’s, there was a post-modernist science criticism movement (holy cow! There’s a wiki page devoted to it!). If you hung out in those circles, I’m sure you remember stuff like “The Feminist Criticism of Special Relativity” and when Sandra Harding referred to Newton’s Principia Mathematica as a “rape manual”.
The idea was that science is a social construct in the same way that gender is, and its pretenses to objectivity are actually masks that hide an agenda: a hermeneutic of repression.
Anyway, these post-modern criticism tools were abandoned for some reason and the science wars just sort of fizzled out. I think that it was all of the “I refute it thus!” things that you can’t help but do a thousand times a day… well, abandoned until the global warming skeptics picked them up. I’m sure that their use will be handed off to the Creationists soon enough.
They handle these tools clumsily, though. Much like they handled “dialectic” poorly when they used it. These tools were not made for their hands.
And vice-versa, JB. Again, science asserting a philosophical hegemony over reality, as though there is no philosophy or philosophy of science.
Again, we are examining only if and how a belief in creationism disqualifies a scientist or politician from a place at the table.
I don’t believe I’ve disagreed with a word y’all have said, except on this point. Basically, your criticisms don’t go much further than disqualifying creationists from teach the origins of the universe. There’s some sort of tautology here.
I’m fine with evolution. I even think Intelligent Design is crap, I feel compelled to state yet again. But does the creationist deny there’s a Red Shift, or if not, measure it any differently than you?
If there is empirical evidence of a Divine Creator, a true scientist should evaluate it and accept it. I am deeply skeptical that such evidence exists.
TVD don’t do truth claims, as stated above. Just stopped in to clary what the creationists are about, and some of the popular misconceptions of them. And if there is a scientific falsifiability to philosophy and metaphysics, I wish scientists would just get on with it. Otherwise, empiricists gotta stop acting like they own the place–they’re just one stall in the marketplace of ideas and frankly it’s rather small and understocked.
Rationalism can get to God
http://secure.pdcnet.org/acpq/content/acpq_2011_0085_0002_0237_0267
and moral theology can get to a natural law where all men are created equal, the primary assumption of the American way. Burt, you laid out the question correctly
If the choices are:
A) God created the universe 6,000 – 10,000 years ago
B) God created the universe c. 14.7 billion years ago
C) There is no God to have created the universe
but I submit that on the grounds of utility alone, C) is the wrongest answer. The Monkey Trial was about man, not monkeys.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/monkeytrial/peopleevents/p_bryan.html
Steamroll these people if you want, but they were the backbone of Jennings Bryan liberalism beck in the day. Take away that foundation and if you hate ’em now, you might really not like what you get if you take it away.
I, like Jaybird, remember the movement in the 80’s (it was among the leftists that I used to argue with) where everything could be deconstructed as the hegemony of white patriarchal capitalist whatever.
It felt apart for all the reasons mentioned here- no falsifiability, no ability to establish anything of consensus other than who could sling around the most loaded terms. I remember thinking at the time, how dangerous this was, and how it could just as easily be turned against the left.
And here we are.
Lib60, I actually understand your Triple Whammy, that leftish psychosis is the fault of the right wing, and it sez I gotta get out of this place with no more ado.
Had my say, and thanks to Russell for permitting me to have it. Peace.
Do they use the term “Darwinism”? If so, they have earned the same credibility as a relativity skeptic who calls it “Einsteinism” (i.e. as much as Andy Schlafly.)
The term is not relevant. Stipulated that creationism is nonsense, the above list only a quick grab to postulate the existence of scientists capable of credible work despite their their belief—young or old—in creationism. Or by extension, “Intelligent Design,” which isn’t an argument from design atall, but in divine intervention in the evolutionary process—think God leaving His fingerprints on the “irreducible complexity” of the eyeball or the flagellum. Feh.
Tom, you realize that’s a list of people that are signing on to ID, nor creationism…?
As an exercise*, Tod, pretend you’re on the defense team with me. I think my argument is clear and extremely modest, but I seem to be failing at it.
____
*You know, like your elegant
https://ordinary-times.com/blog/2012/09/a-heretics-pilgrimage-my-journey-to-the-2012-values-voter-summit/
Then we’ll talk about this one.
https://ordinary-times.com/blog/2012/10/on-why-tomorrow-nights-debate-wont-effect-the-election/
Heh heh. But first things first. Cradle-fundie Jaybird gave us the insider’s look at this creationoid stuff, mine is more the ex-altar boy studying Protestantism from afar late in life. Protestants of all stripes have told me I’m pretty good at it; I have no dog in the fight.
Tod, my reply is caught in Russell’s comment moderation queue. I gotta stop with the links I guess. The quick answer is that I see ID as dumb as creationism, it’s only a matter of degree.
I must repeat my core argument again—and believe me, it’s based on poking through the Creationist literature and websites:
Again, we are examining only if and how a belief in creationism disqualifies a scientist or politician from a place at the table.
I don’t believe I’ve disagreed with a word y’all have said, except on this point. Basically, your criticisms don’t go much further than disqualifying creationists from teach the origins of the universe. There’s some sort of tautology here.
I came to realize—by listening to them!—that they don’t dispute anything in practical modern science. The universe and the laws of physics and chemistry and whathaveyou work the same for them as they do for you. Us!, me included.
For the mere theist, creation is a miracle in the first place, whether 14 billion years ago or 6000. As a “believer” in the former, that the Big Bang precipitated the universe, the argument from design is even more elegant without divine intervention, that we are the Thought being Thunk* and here we are, gathered here together on Russell and Rose’s blog, talking about this via electrons in this moment in time from a thousand miles away.
______
*The Thought Thinking Itself? Something like that, I guess. But I consider meself more the Thunk than the Thought.
Tom, in the “anti-Creationist’s” defense, it should be noted that until recently, denial of the existence of any evidence of speciation was an important part of “Creation Science.” That has changed, but in a way that I find frustrating. That is, they’ve taken speciation into what they call “microevolution,” but include the sorts of speciation that occurs when populations are isolated, which is macroevolution by definition. I suppose that will change eventually: if you can eventually agree that speciation occurs, you can eventually agree that macroevolution is true, just that it happens on a much faster time scale (the more recent creationist view of speciation).
Jay, Harding didn’t refer to Newton’s Principia as a “rape manual.” She did use the phrase “rape manual” in making a rhetorical point about gender metaphors, in contrast to mechanical metaphors, in early modern science, and used Newton’s mechanics (she was contrasting, if I remember correctly, gender and mechanical metaphors) as an example, asking rhetorically why we don’t call them “Newton’s rape manual.” The quote has been taken out of context so often by people attacking feminism and a loosely conceived “post modernism” that, while I disagree with the point Harding was making, I tend to be more sympathetic to her than to her opponents, who are intellectually dishonest if they’ve read the book, or lazy if they haven’t. The same goes for Irigaray’s “sexed equation” quote. Richard Dawkins, by the way, is the greatest offender, but Nagel and of course Sokal are pretty bad as well. I get the impression that Dawkins read Nagel and Sokal and didn’t think he needed to read anything in context. He’s a bit of an ass like that.
I believe the direct quote from her book is when she asks “why is it not as illuminating and honest to refer to Newton’s law as ‘Newton’s rape manual’ as it is to call them ‘Newton’s mechanics’?’”
The question was intended to be rhetorical, I believe.
Yes, indeed, it was phrased as a question.
Jay, in general, that is left out, as is all of the preceding context. She’s not calling it a rape manual, she’s making a point about the language, specifically what amounts to figurative language, that was used to shape early modern science. I get irked when people like Dawkins treat it as somehow absurd. Wrong, maybe, but not absurd. Particularly when it’s clear Dawkins has never read it, or Irigaray.
I find her use of the terms “illuminating” and “honest” to be illuminating, though.
Assuming, of course, that the question was intended to be rhetorical.
That’s all great, Tom, but it’s not the Constitution which is at issue. The Constitution demands neutrality from the government. As to you and me, the Constitution demands that the government not take adverse action against you or me for choosing A), B), or C) and urging others to do the same. Beyond that, the Constitution is silent.
It is science, not the Constitution, that demands that divine intervention be eschewed as an explanation for a natural phenomenon. The distinction between this posture on the one hand, and denying the existence of God on the other, is important to bear in mind.
The Constitution does not demand that one adopt a theistic mindset, nor an atheistic one. It also does not demand that one adopt a scientific mindset when holding or discharging the duties of public office. Neither do the voters of Georgia’s Tenth District nor the Speaker of the House of Representatives, hence the current employment of Paul Broun.
“The Constitution does not demand that one adopt a theistic mindset, nor an atheistic one.”
But there’s a difference between “you can’t do things that overtly and immediately benefit religious organizations, when you would not do those things for nonreligious organizations” and “you can’t do anything that even acknowledges the existence of religious organizations”. The latter is a de facto pro-atheist position. The latter is the position that people keep insisting the government take.
“you can’t do anything that even acknowledges the existence of religious organizations”. The latter is a de facto pro-atheist position. The latter is the position that people keep insisting the government take.
It never ceases to amaze me how fragile “religious organizations” (by which I assume you mean churches?) are in the US. Why is it so hard to understand that science deals with issues, theories and hypotheses that can be proved? God’s involvement in creation, speciation, geology, astronomy or whatever the next obsession will be cannot be proved and so has to be taken on faith – which is where it climbs down from the stool in the science lab and sits in the pew.
Catholic doctrine, as explained to us in third grade, is this: where there is no doubt, there can be no faith. If you want to have your doctiness accommodated in whatever aspect of life you choose, you are seeking certainty, and that is not the same as faith. If anything it’s a sign of a lack of faith. The world is full of things that challenge our faith: how can a loving God allow poverty, pain, war, famine to exist? why does God not intervene when His followers are threatened or killed today, as he used to do in the Old Testament? If we demand evidence, then we are rejecting faith. And only faith will bring you closer to God.
The Catholic Church, even in the US, has had no problem accepting evolution, a 5 billion year old earth, a 16 billion year old universe, etc. in its worldview. Maybe it was being burned on the whole Galileo thing, but on the whole popes have been pretty down with scientific advancement over the recent centuries.
dociness = doctrines. Not sure where that came from.
Sounds right, Burt. Sorry if I seemed to dispute that. As long as Divine Providence figures in there somewhere, of course. Divine Providence can work within the laws of physics.
Then there’s the question of miracles of course. I think as long as we leave them in the realm of the unexpected—that unscientific cures like prayer do not always work, then we might be able to come to an accommodation with Christian Science, etc.
And there is also the Muslim metaphysics of “The paper burns because Allah wills it to burn.” We’ll see if that one pops up as time goes by.
😉
This is an interesting conversation but it seems late to interject myself, however, I’m going to stick in $0.02 right here:
It is science, not the Constitution, that demands that divine intervention be eschewed as an explanation for a natural phenomenon.
This actually isn’t quite right, although PZ would certainly like to stick the science goalpost right there.
The attribution, “God did it” isn’t unacceptable, it’s just uninteresting. It’s giving up on finding an actual physical explanation for an empirically measured phenomenon. The proper answer is “we think it’s likely that it’s This” or “we have insufficient empirical evidence to come to a conclusion about what is causing this”. You can’t discount the possibility that “God did it” is the answer to the first question, but it’s very difficult to have sufficient evidence that God did it, and it’s impossible for “evidence” == “empirical evidence”.
The trouble, of course, is that a lot of scientist think that science is by definition closed. We don’t know that this is the case. We suspect it is, and it likely is at the very least “closed enough” for any possible set of human purposes when it comes to evaluating empirically observed phenomena, but there you go.
As far as tests go, I will disagree with Tom that rejecting Creationism, or ID, or theism or whatever you want to call it is essentially unAmerican. It’s unAmerican to use it as a test for office, either way. I’m on board with that. I think you can be a Creationist or more specifically a YEC or for that matter you can be a crystal-healer Gaia-focused wiccan, or an atheist, or a believer in tarot, and still have something to say about what the government should or shouldn’t be doing. Good on ya. Run for office, and if you win you’re representing somebody.
But you don’t belong on the Science Committee, and anybody who puts you there is worthy of withering scorn.
Just like I would not be cool with a tarot reader on the Homeland Security committee and casting their votes based upon whether or not Death came up in a reading.
To Pat & Tod, et al: I’m unsatisfied with the lack of specifics in this discussion. I’ve done my share of reading of the serious creationists, and although I find it bunk, I do not find them denying the Red Shift or that nuclear reactors work, etc., etc., etc. At this point, I detect an unwillingness to part with the caricature of creationists that is so easily kicked to the curb as a cargo cult.
As far as tests go, I will disagree with Tom that rejecting Creationism, or ID, or theism or whatever you want to call it is essentially unAmerican.
Mm, more nuanced than that. Freedom of individual conscience has always been an American tradition, so athesim is clear. However, the idea that the Constitution demands we tear away the core theologico-philosophical assertions of “endowed by their creator,” or Justice Douglas’ assertion that “our institutions presuppose the existence of a Supreme Being” is potentially self-destructive.
Perhaps someday we will [or have] dispensed with all that God woo, but the First and Fourteenth did NOT abolish God, or at least were never intended to.
Technically, it’s “The Tower” that you wouldn’t want coming up in a reading.
Oh, I’m not for advocating a test or anything, Tom.
If the people want to vote for party Alpha, and Alpha gives Woo guy a spot on the Science Committee, that’s procedurally okay with me; I certainly wouldn’t want to put a requirement in to sit on the Science Committee, any more than I want a requirement to sit on the Homeland Security Committee.
But I still think that’s a terrible idea, and I ain’t gonna let that go by as anything other than, “This is a terrible idea”.
I’m totally fine with a Creationist designing my bridge if he’s following the rules for mechanical engineering. I’m totally fine with an Evolution-denier giving me a prescription for an antibiotic if that prescription is still the standard of care; I don’t even care if they disagree with the best practices as long as they follow them.
But I wouldn’t want either of those guys sitting on the boards that certify best practices for building bridges or setting standards of care. I distrust their ability to deal with their presumptive beliefs on the layer of abstraction that deals with setting policies and procedures. Executing, sure. I know a pretty damn good bioinorganic chemist who *believes* in feng shui. It doesn’t affect his ability to run a lab, it just affects what sorts of a house he’ll buy.
Do you grok the distinction?
The latter is the position that people keep insisting the government take.
I would not be just a nuffin’
My head all full of stuffin’
My heart all full of pain
I would dance and be merry
Life would be a ding-a-derry
If I only had a brain
How could I not grok the distinction, Pat? I’m the one who made it in the first place, or as you yrself put it
I’m totally fine with a Creationist designing my bridge if he’s following the rules for mechanical engineering. I’m totally fine with an Evolution-denier giving me a prescription for an antibiotic if that prescription is still the standard of care
However, when you get to
But I wouldn’t want either of those guys sitting on the boards that certify best practices for building bridges or setting standards of care. I distrust their ability to deal with their presumptive beliefs on the layer of abstraction that deals with setting policies and procedures.
I’m saying you don’t have specifics to defend your prejudice beyond ‘they don’t have a scientific approach.”
Yet you agreeably fess up that
I know a pretty damn good bioinorganic chemist who *believes* in feng shui.
Which is my own argument about the prejudice against creationists being unfounded in a nutshell. [Can prejudices be “well-founded?” Interesting thought, that…]
I want to see specifics why creationists can’t be engineers or discover penicillin or find the Higgs boson. What I took away from my reading of the serious creationists is that they have no dispute with evolutionists about how the world works, only about how it got this way. Leave out the academic disagreement about the history lesson, and their work in science is indistinguishable from anyone else’s.
[Or at least that’s their story.]
I’m saying you don’t have specifics to defend your prejudice beyond ‘they don’t have a scientific approach.”
That’s a prejudice?
If we’re talking about someone designing processes or best practices or making recommendations or affecting policy regarding science, “having a scientific approach” seems like a pretty reasonable preferable characteristic.
That’s what the Science Committee is supposed to do, right?
I’m not saying that it’s impossible for someone who doesn’t take a scientific approach to contribute to such a function. But it’s far, far less likely than someone who *does*.
In the specific case of Broun, however, that’s not what this quote is about.
This is what this quote is about: ““All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell,” Broun said. “And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”
That’s straight up bonkers conspiracy theory, Tom. He’s not saying that evolution is just incorrect. He’s not just saying that the Big Bang Theory is just incorrect. That’s not why he’s unfit to serve on the Science Committee.
He’s saying that they were specifically designed, by agents of Satan, for the purpose of de-legitimizing faith.
That’s fucking crazy, Tom. There’s no other way to slice that block of cheese.
Anybody who thinks that is going to have the sort of crazy-ass prejudice against science that leans to massive confirmation bias when sitting on a committee that’s supposed to be about science.
I’m the first to admit that science is not perfect, Tom. Healthy skepticism of science findings – particularly as they impact policy – is fine and dandy in a public official.
This isn’t healthy skepticism. This is insanity.
“Effing crazy.” “Insane.” Terms of art. Where are the concrete specifics of how it affects his work?
In fact, if you review the bit on William Jennings Bryan elsewhere in this thread, I’m getting more attracted to the idea of a counterweight to the amorality of “scientism.” I’m not prepared to cede the philosophy of science to the scientists—frankly, I’ll take my chances with Broun over Peter Singer.
[Pardon my Wiki:
“The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods, and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth. In addition to these central problems of science as a whole, many philosophers of science also consider problems that apply to particular sciences (e.g. philosophy of biology or philosophy of physics). Some philosophers of science also use contemporary results in science to reach conclusions about philosophy.
Philosophy of science has historically been met with mixed response from the scientific community. Though scientists often contribute to the field, many prominent scientists have felt that the practical effect on their work is limited; a popular quote attributed to physicist Richard Feynman goes, “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.” In response, some philosophers (e.g. Craig Callender) have suggested that ornithological knowledge would be of great benefit to birds, were it possible for them to possess it.”]
Terms of art. Where are the concrete specifics of how it affects his work?
Let me put it to you this way, I find it the statement itself sufficiently out of bounds that I find it unremarkable to presuppose that this is going to affect his work. Maybe it doesn’t, I’ll grant that. Maybe I need to investigate this further to state that categorically. Fair enough. I don’t know that “state that categorically” is a necessary burden for me to call this spade “likely enough a spade that it ain’t worth my time to verify it.” Maybe he’s just a shovel, sure.
But if someone tells me that they think that Catholics are all agents of Satan, I’m not going to think it’s really on me to defend a decision that I don’t want that guy on an ecumenical council, Tom. I think that it’s reasonable to claim that given that particular term of art, it’s now on that guy (and/or his supporters) to defend his ability to perform that function equitably. The statement itself is far enough out of bounds that he’s shifted from “deserves the benefit of my doubt” to “needs to show that he possess the ability to overcome that bias”. You wanna convince me Broun belongs on the Science Committee, go for it. You know me well enough I’ll give you a fair hearing, right?
But in the grand calculus of things, “finding out Broun is actually okay” is sufficiently improbable to me that it doesn’t warrant me doing the work. Unless, of course, you’re offering me the opportunity to convince you that Broun doesn’t belong on the science committee. In which case, okay. Maybe that is worth my time.
But before I go looking for how it affects his work, in specific, you’re going to have to tell me how to convince you 🙂
Pat, I’m comfortable I’ve assumed my share of burden of proof whereas the prosecution hasn’t gone much past much rant. I do think there’s a caricature of these guys that’s unfair and frankly ignorant of what they actually believe. I think the empirical shoe is on the other foot: again, I maintain the physical world works for them the same as it does for the rest of us.
Further, per my last, I’m beginning to feel safer with a believer in the Devil is around to thwart the Peter Singers. A balance of terror, if you will. What I have noticed is the “empiricists” driving everyone else out of the discussion by seizing the premises, indeed by seizing or abolishing altogether “the philosophy of science.”
So I reckon what I’m doing here in a larger sense is seizing it back. For liberalism, if you will. 😉
“As a young man, [William Jennings] Bryan had been open-minded about the origins of man. But over the years he became convinced that Darwin’s theory was responsible for much that was wrong with the modern world. “The Darwinian theory represents man as reaching his present perfection by the operation of the law of hate,” Bryan said, “Evolution is the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak.” He believed that the Bible countered this merciless law with “the law of love.”
Bryan was progressive in politics and a conservative in religion. According to biographer Lawrence Levine, “Bryan always mixed religion and politics. He couldn’t conceive of one without the other because religion to him was the basis of politics. Without religion there could be no desire to change in a positive way. Why should anyone want to do that?”
Tom, I don’t think it’s a rant to say that this is clearly oddjob thinking.
A rant would be saying this guy is a nut when all he says is, “I have strong faith in the reborn Christ”. I mean, you’re saying that the Broun detractors are out of bounds for taking the guy at face value.
Granted, he’s a politician and maybe he doesn’t even believe this. But a reasonable assessment of where the burden of proof lies is going to be a nonstarter if we can’t even agree on that.
I’m not saying that this statement alone is enough to condemn the guy, or ask for his constituents to vote him out of office, or determine that he’s generally an idiot or any one of a number of charges that might also be leveled at the guy. Maybe this is the extent of his crazy, I don’t know. And I agree, generally, with your complaint that far too often people are going to take this and jump farther down the rabbit hole than they rightly ought to do so.
But I think it’s perfectly reasonable to conclude that he now needs to defend his record in light of this revealed prejudice, and that the burden of proof is on him.
If I see a guy falling down at the bar and slurring his speech while he’s got 5 empty glasses in front of him, I don’t know for sure he’s drunk. Maybe he’s having a stroke and he’s sitting in front of the spot where the waitress just put down some empties. But 99 times out of a hundred, going with “he’s drunk” is probably the right call.
You’re saying, well, maybe this is that 1 out of a hundred. Maybe it is. But Burkean caution would suggest we take the conservative approach, and assume that a 1 out of a hundred chance needs to prove itself, not that we need to approach that with the same open-mindedness we would approach the question if it was the other way around, right?
Pat, I’m not going to win acquittal in this court, so I’m inclined to just let the defense rest. I don’t think the prosecution has assumed an ounce of the burden of proof beyond the assertion that creationism is batshit crazy.
As a pluralist, I don’t accept that in the American system, nor has it been proved how it affects his work on the science committee. Further, the discussion has opened the other door to “the philsophy of science,” which i believe is the job of the politician far more than the science itself. So when you ask
You wanna convince me Broun belongs on the Science Committee, go for it. You know me well enough I’ll give you a fair hearing, right?
I know you will, and I’m quite comfortable with my reply in the larger rather than narrow sense, that such folks are a necessary counterbalance to “scientism” and the Peter Singer-type “philosophy of science.”
For it will be Broun who is on the side of the angels, on the side of “sanity,” on Harriet McBryde Johnson’s side, against ‘science,” empiricism, and utilitarianism, where the “reasonable people” tend to fall silent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/magazine/unspeakable-conversations.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
I’m quite comfortable with my reply in the larger rather than narrow sense, that such folks are a necessary counterbalance to “scientism” and the Peter Singer-type “philosophy of science.”
That would be a grand equivalence if Peter Singer was on the House Committee.
Prophylaxis, PatC. The disease undeniably exists–and is epidemic in some quarters.
I don’t think the problem – such as it is – is worthy of a nuclear response. Just for the record.
The defense cannot put it any better.
“Prophylaxis”
The problem with that approach, Mr. van Dyke, is it becomes like an overused anitbiotic which then loses all effectiveness. Nobody’s going to be paying attention if and when a serious moral threat in the name of utilitarianism actually comes through. Or even the flip side, when the utilitarian argument is actually sufficient to reject the moral premise (i.e. what to do about global warming), but is ignored because the well is so poisoned. (or for example, the obverse side of the coin – when the DFH’s were all up in arms about the Afghanistan war when it premiered, and the worst didn’t happen, that made it so much easier to go into Iraq. Now, of course, the DFH’s were right about both – eventually – but a fat lot a good that did)
Mr. K, the aptness of an analogy isn’t a very empirical nail to hang your argument on, in this case, antibiotic-resistant bacteria. For one thing, creationists don’t deny such “micro” evolution, and second, empiricists don’t do poetry very well. ;-P
I’ve never thought of Singer as a philosopher of science (maybe because I’ve known a lot of philosophers of science, and their work looks nothing like Singer’s), or a science-born philosopher (if that’s what you mean by the phrase “philosophy of science”). He’s the sort of philosopher who takes positions to their logical extremes, and to my mind, often proves their incorrectness in through a sort of reductio ad absurdum. He’s the philosophy of ethics version of Jerry Fodor in this way.
One of the areas in which I suspect you and I agree, Tom, is on scientism, and in particular the sort of vulgar scientism that one finds among many new atheists and many unphilosophical scientists. It’s a scientism that is, with apologies to Thomas Nagel, A.J. Ayer meets Scientific American. There’s a rarely-read paper from the 1930s by W.H. Werkmeister which, while it gets some of the wording wrong, should be read by everyone who thinks Dawkins and PZ Myers are the bees knees.
Can someone be a creationist (i.e.: “someone who believes God created the world”) and a good scientist? Absolutely. I and many of the people who go to my church are scientists, one’s a biology prof, none of them have difficulty reconciling science’s ability to tell us about the what and when of events in Earth’s history with Christianity’s answers as to the why. I’m not willing to leave the term “creationism” to the people who believe the earth is a few thousand years old. It should mean what it says – people who believe the world was created, however it happened.
Can someone disbelieve macroevolution and still be a valuable scientist in branches (physics, chemistry, some parts of biology) of science that don’t inherently depend on evolutionary theory? Yes.
Can someone be a Young-Earth Creationist and a scientist? No. Young-Earth Creationism requires the belief that much of physics, much of paleontology, much of biology, some of chemistry (anything related to carbon-dating and the concept of radioactive decay) and virtually ALL of geology is a deliberate fraud. It thus requires a fundamental conspiracy-theory attitude towards science. It’s like asking whether someone who believes the 9/11 conspiracy theory could still be, independent of that, a productive employee of the Department of Homeland Security.
Should someone who believes in Young-Earth Creationism be on a Congressional committee about science? HECK NO. That’s madness.
When I hear the things some people in Congress say, I can’t help but think the US might be governed just as well, and possibly better, by a random sample of the adult population. This guy, Akin, Bachmann…there’s something messed up when it’s so easy for complete loons to get elected.
Thank you for a better, clearer answer than mine.
Can one believe that God is the ineffable First Mover behind reality’s veil and still be a good scientist? Indubitably.
Can one believe that much of what has been established through the accumulated efforts of innumerable scientists in various fields is the deliberate fraud of Satan’s minions, to be decried and debunked, and still be a good scientist? Most certainly not. (And one has no business being on the House Science Committee, either.)
It depends a great deal on what is meant by “creationist,” and how said creationist relates to science as a practice and to scientific evidence as verified by the method.
You’d have to show where creationism rejects physics. I think it’s more nuanced than that. My reading indicates that in the practical application of science, creationists like http://www.icr.org maintain that the physical world works the same regardless of how you believe it came to be.
Like any of the hard sciences, creationists are ok with stuff that adheres to scripture.
If you’re looking for a rejection of physics, google eithe Einsteinsim or creationist criticism it atomic decay.
With physics, I was mostly thinking of the big bang theory and basically most of the rest of astronomy, because things like the development of the Milky Way, changes in stars, etc. require far longer than 6000 years to occur.
If someone’s just going with “the entire universe, all the galaxies, solar systems, stars, planets, quasars, pulsars, etc. were created by God 6000 years ago in more or less their exact positions and states,” that’s inconsistent with a large part of physics. There’s simply not enough time for any substantive changes to have occurred in those things over 6000 years. (There’s other things that likely come up if you think about it a bit – what about detectable stars that are over 6000 light-years from Earth? – but I suspect most YECs don’t think about those things a lot, so I’m sticking to the basics.) Heck, there’s not even enough time in 6000 years for major geological changes, much less astronomical ones.
If you believe that everything in the universe is basically just where God initially put it, your attitude towards the study of astronomy is going to be way different from that of your typical research astronomer, who would be interested in how things have changed over time and may change through the distant future, and the laws that control those things.
It’s actually entirely consistent and unfalsifable to say “God created the universe 6000 years ago, including all the evidence that points to it being much older.” Dinosaur bones? Massive red shift? Population 1 vs. population 2 stars? All created that way, back in 4004 AD.
If that’s addressed to me, Katherine, y’d have to read the entire thread, esp the exchange betw Cahalan & me. Your objections are stipulated but fall short of proving harm beyond the creation question itself. I’ll repeat it one more time as a courtesy to you:
The physical world of 2012 works the same for the creationist as it does the evolutionist.
The physical world works the same regardless of how you believe it came to be.
I came to realize—by listening to them!—that they don’t dispute anything in practical modern science. The universe and the laws of physics and chemistry and whathaveyou work the same for them as they do for you. Us!, me included.
Mercy. Think of it this way: it appears acupuncture works.
http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-acupuncture-works-above-placebo-effect-for-chronic-pain-study-shows-20120913,0,3155965.story
You just have to put the needles in the right spot to be an effective acupuncturist–you don’t have to believe all that “medians” crap and the woo explanations.
This whole impeachment of the creationists has been quite ignorant of what they believe and the limits of how what they believe affects their interaction with the physical world. I will state again for the nth time that I’m not one of them. I think I see that their more honest critics in this thread have learned something about the limits of their funky beliefs: not a single concrete example has been given yet as to Broun’s unfitness for the committee.
Tom, accepting science goes beyond acknowledging basic physical laws like the laws of motion or thermodynamics.
The entirety of geology is involved with understanding how things got the way they are now. If your comprehension of geology is based on “everything geological was created by God exactly the way it is now”, that’s not compatible with studying it as a science. For a Young Earth Creationist, there can be no Pangaea, no significant continental drift. The Earth with its seven continents must have looked basically like it does now for all of its history, because there’s no time for anything to have occurred. Ditto with astronomy. Ditto for palaeontology. What we know about how these things work, about how systems may change in the future, is based on what we can surmise about the past from physical evidence.. If geology and astronomy are “a few thousand years ago, God made it just the way it is now” then there’s nothing to base any scientific knowledge about those things on. If dinosaur bones are in the ground because God stuck them there to mess with our heads, then physical evidence is useless.
Katherine, not to speak for Tom, but my take on what you wrote is 100% agreement… but I’d go on to ask how many people are capable of saying whether slate is a igneous, sedimentary, or metamorphic kind of rock. (Let alone be able to explain Pangaea!)
Ditto for similar questions about astronomy or palaeontology.
When it comes to government policies and the art/science of creating more government policies, I sincerely doubt whether more than half of the people on the science committee could pass a representative high-school senior’s science test on Geology, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics.
Well, we shrug. Categorizing slate correctly has little to do with setting policy, let alone being able to say whether the sharp, principle, diffuse, or fundamental shell is the one that looks like a sphere. Heck, that stuff is just so much trivia. We know that they know someone who knows someone who still remembers how to figure out how much energy is released when the electron jumps from this shell down to that one.
But the optics of that is that if the politicians make the right professions of faith in public, it doesn’t matter if they can actually do any of the science that we say is important if they don’t make the right professions of faith in public.
Think of it this way: do you put the amish on your Energy committee? If so, you’re a darned fool.
If more than half the country is Amish, I’d certainly feel like I needed to do more to keep the Amish off of the Energy committee than point out how they still have viewpoints that were common 200 years ago.
Jaybird,
Most of the country doesn’t believe we shouldn’t stop syphilis research because it “encourages premarital sex.”
Is that what we’re arguing about now?
Jay,
Yes, it’s a serious case brought up by the kind gentlemen they call Republicans. In violating the historic ability of researchers to decide for other researchers whom to grant funding to, via a complicated grant process.
What Tom’s saying is that it doesn’t matter if a person’s an YEC, because that doesn’t prevent them from distinguishing between igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rock. I’m saying that being able to distinguish between them isn’t the core of what science is. The core of science is learning about the natural world through physical investigation of it and developing theories based on those observations; if the sum total of your views is “everything’s just the way God put it a few thousand years ago”, it throws out the possibility that any investigation of natural history can yield any useful information.
And my initial argument was about whether a person who rejects a very large portion of modern-day science can be a good scientist, and whether someone who thinks most of science is a conspiracy of the devil should be on the science committee. My answer to that is “no”.
(And I’m pretty sure half of the country are not young-earth creationists.)
Maribou is home again and I’m less passionate about arguing on the ‘tubes when she’s around but, here, I’ll quote this from the Wikipedia.
In 2006, a poll taken over the telephone by Zogby International commissioned by the Discovery Institute found that more than three to one of voters surveyed chose the option that biology teachers should teach Darwin’s theory of evolution, but also “the scientific evidence against it”. Approximately seven in ten (69%) sided with this view. In contrast, one in five (21%) chose the other option given, that biology teachers should teach only Darwin’s theory of evolution and the scientific evidence that supports it. One in ten was not sure.[38] The poll’s results may be called into question however, because the wording of the poll question implies that significant scientific evidence against evolution exists to be taught.
Now, given that, how representative do we want our representatives on the Science Committee?
I see more bad stuff happening from us saying that we should have litmus tests to be on the committee than from allowing idiots to have access to the jurisdiction covered by the committee.
The Marquis of Queensbury Rules are far, far more important than the outcome of this particular fight.
Whats that? An opinion poll suggests that many people believe we should be teaching creationism alongside science?
I’ve heard it said that the true destructive power of creationism is that it gets faith and science on equal footing.
Creationism, evolution; heliocentrism, geocentrism; vaccination, anti-vaccination; these are all merely equal and opposing opinions, personal preferences really, like vanilla versus chocolate.
There is no way in which these things can be resolved; you have a PhD saying one thing, I have a PhD saying the opposite. Truth is merely a construct, formed by sociopolitical arguments.
This very thread is an example.
Not one person here is a biologist or scientist competent to critically examine the issue of evolution versus creationism. Yet here we are, forced to argue and defend the theory of evolution from its faith based opponents. Why?
Because creationists know full well that in a room of scientists they couldn’t win, ever. So they litigate their faith via popularity, appealing to the tribal allegiance of their fellow travelers.
Broun and the creationists are considered by the overwhelming majority of scientists to be crackpots; yet we are being told to doubt the authority of experts, and instead trust in our own conclusions.
I had these same sorts of arguments with 9-11 truthers; I would be reading opinions from IT technicians, insurance adjusters, accountants and salesmen who suddenly were issuing learned opinions on metallurgy, structural engineering, pyrotechnics and construction techniques as if they were on equal footing with licensed engineers with 30 years experience.
The goal of the creationists is to get science textbooks written by people who are ignorant of science, where there is no fact, only faith.
And that’s the problem with representative government, isn’t it?
Note that this only happens for stuff nobody really cares about, like science [1]. You’d never see a guy who takes “Thou shalt not kill” seriously on Armed Services, or someone who disapproves of lending money at interest on Finance.
1. I’m being entirely serious. People care about nuclear bombs and cancer treatments, but the scientific principles that led to their invention? That has fewer fans than the WNBA.
“All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell,” Broun said. “And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”
Really batshit, or only faking it? We spew, you decide.
If you are willing to be crazy and stupid you can hold any two scientific theories no matter how logically incompatible they might seem.
For instance, suppose I believe that the universe is no bigger than the solar system. The light from stars is just light emitted from tiny globes embedded in a giant curtain that surrounds the solar system. The objects that are called far away stars and galaxies are really just tinier lights. All of the data cited by astronomers that I am wrong is easily explained by accepting that the tiny stars embedded in the curtain surrounding the solar system emit light in strange ways that isn’t always how light is emitted by terrestrial sources of light here on earth.
My theory is logically compatible -ex hypothesi- with all of the data in astronomy. Certainly, even if you accept my theory, you could be a perfectly good technician of telescopes. (Just like an MD -many are body mechanics, not scientists- can be a good technician and a crappy scientist. But a doctor is less likely to be a good doctor if she is bad at evaluating scientific theories.)
But anyone who accepts my theory has shown themselves to be more likely to accept really bad theories than a non-idiot who doesn’t accept my idiot-theory. Of course, the person might be good at evaluating scientific arguments in general. Anything is possible. But the fact that they believed my theory is a sign of, is evidence of, of a mind that is bad at evaluating scientific arguments.
By analogy a young earth creationist might be good at evaluating some scientific arguments outside of the God-related fields, but we have evidence that they are quite ready to accept crappy scientific arguments.
But Republicans put the very people who are most likely to accept bad scientific argumenst (maybe the conspiracy people are worse) on the science committee.
And Tom is defending that with a bunch of obfuscation and nonsense.
Sad.
I feel very strongly about defending the religious liberty of others. From people like you.
Broun’s religious liberty isn’t under debate, Tom. He can believe whatever he wants to believe.
This.
Certain religious beliefs disqualify him from certain public positions, though.
“That’s as it should be!” comes at least one counter-argument. Sure.
I’d say that there are more unpleasant unintended consequences from establishing certain beliefs as litmus tests than from publicly pretending that all beliefs are created equal. But I would.
“Certain religious beliefs disqualify him from certain public positions, though.”
I think that is phrased entirely incorrectly, and is a specious argument. It very purposefully muddies the waters. In the case of Broun, certain beliefs about *science* disqualify him from certain public positions.
It matters not if his belief that science is the work of the devil and should be outlawed comes from the Bible, a novel he once read or something he just decided while sitting on the john one morning. That he believes that about science makes it inexcusable that his party assigned him to the US House Committee on Science, Pace and Technology.
Young Earth creationism not being taught as science in public schools isn’t a religious argument; it’s a scientific one.
I would rather characterize it as not a question of religion or belief, but of practice.
Certain practices disqualify you from certain public positions, sure. You can’t be the General of the Armies if you’re a pacifist Quaker. You can’t be the head of the CDC if your practice of medicine is predicated on your belief that disease is caused by an imbalance in the body’s humors.
On the other hand, if you believe in pacifism in theory, but in practice you’re willing to lop other people’s heads off from a sense of duty then maybe, maybe you can handle the job of General of the Armies in a pinch.
But this leads me to the immediate question: why would you seek out a position that is anathema to your belief systems. I see two possibilities.
First one is that your sense of duty to your country is ordinal ranked higher than your personal belief system and nobody else is willing or able do the job. If the only one left who is capable of flying the plane is Striker, and Striker flies the plane, well that’s actually commendable. Good on him.
The second one is that you have an agenda other than executing the duty in support of the practice you find inimical to your belief system.
Maybe there’s a third, but I’ll be damned if I can figure what it is. Lacking that, I’m thinking that second one is what’s going on here.
I find that objectionable, on its face. I find it objectionable on multiple levels.
“Maybe there’s a third, but I’ll be damned if I can figure what it is.”
The one that comes to my mind is that you understand that what you’re saying is a total crock, but hey, reelection donations are reelection donations.
Oh, yeah, I mentioned that upthread but it certainly belongs down here.
Although that’s only marginally explicable.
I mean, Broun could just as easily turn down a seat on the House Committee on science and give that same speech as to why and keep those dollars going.
It’s the behind-the-scenes thing that gets me, now that I think about it. It’s not just that Broun took the job, it’s that some nebulous somebodies sat in a room and decided to offer it to him.
I can’t see any way around that other than that the GOP wants to appear anti-science, regardless of the other considerations. Sure, maybe this is just political theater.
It’s crap political theater, and it deserves my rotten tomato.
You need to prove harm. Otherwise, it’s certainly a First Amendment question, a religious test question, a naked public square question.
In the case of Broun, certain beliefs about *science* disqualify him from certain public positions.
And these beliefs about science are religious in nature, it seems to me.
Believe me, I understand the argument that these wackadoodle beliefs are stuck in 1850 and have no place in government and we should use science as the basis for whether someone on the science committee should be on it, rather than someone perfectly representative of the masses who don’t know any of this stuff.
I just see that as having a great deal of potential of turning around and biting.
You need to prove harm. Otherwise, it’s certainly a First Amendment question, a religious test question, a naked public square question.
Then you have to tell me how to prove it to you, Tom… which you declined to do, up-thread.
Otherwise this is an empty objection; worse, it’s a firm objection based upon a goalpost that is… nowhere.
How do I prove to you that this is a problem?
So I went to http://science.house.gov/jurisdiction
Here’s what I read:
The Committee on Science, Space, and Technology has jurisdiction over all energy research, development, and demonstration, and projects therefor, and all federally owned or operated non-military energy laboratories; astronautical research and development, including resources, personnel, equipment, and facilities; civil aviation research and development; environmental research and development; marine research; commercial application of energy technology; National Institute of Standards and Technology, standardization of weights and measures and the metric system; National Aeronautics and Space Administration; National Science Foundation; National Weather Service; outer space, including exploration and control thereof; science scholarships; scientific research, development, and demonstration, and projects therefor. The Committee on Science, Space, and Technology shall review and study on a continuing basis laws, programs, and Government activities relating to non-military research and development.
I could more easily see how a Global Climate Change denier would be a harmful choice for this committee than a Young Earth Creationist.
No one is proposing a law banning this guy and people in some group from being on this committee or any other.
I wouldn’t want morons on the committee either, and would vote against people who wanted to put morons on the committee, but am not proposing a law banning all morons from public service.
The’s a difference between saying you shouldn’t vote for anyone who favors X and passing a law banning X.
This is so obvious that it makes me sick. Everyone here, including Tom, understands this, but because he is trying hard to obfuscate and bring up anything to defend R’s , we’re all discussing his stupid remarks.
Jaybird,
“religious beliefs disqualify him from certain public positions”
The word “disqualify” is very vague. He should be disqualified in the sense that we agree that “he shouldn’t be on the science committee” and “people should vote so ast to keep him off the science committee.” However, he shouldn’t be disqualified in the sense that “we should pass a law banning all people who profess -like this dude- that they believe such and such doctrines.”
Being a moron should disqualify you from being president, at least in the sense that we should vote to not make that moron president. But that doesn’t mean that we should pass a law banning morons or instituting an IQ test for the presidency.
“I just see that as having a great deal of potential of turning around and biting.”
Do you think the same thing about the fact that morons are disqualified from being president.
PatC, Brother Jaybird is in the zone, and I’ll add my other argument that a Broun-type is more likely to safeguard the rights of a Harriet McBryde Johnson than many more “reasonable” people. “Reasonable people” scare the shit out of me, frankly, from the French Revolution to modern China.
“You need to prove harm. Otherwise, it’s certainly a First Amendment question, a religious test question, a naked public square question.”
That’s absurd. It’s not a First Amendment issue.
Look, for just a moment take government out of the picture. You own a science research firm. Is it inappropriate to fail to hire a guy as general manager that says in the interview process that he thinks science itself is a lie, and the work of Satan? You own a telecommunications tech R&D company. Is it inappropriate to fail to hire a guy for your engineering dept that says in the interview process that he thinks technology is evil, if hired he will only submit designs for pre-Amish technology? You own a steak house. Is it inappropriate to fail to hire a guy to take over as manager that says in the interview process that if hired, he will eliminate meat from the menu and only serve soy protein products?
Like I said up above, where Broun gets his opinion of science is immaterial. That he has that opinion makes him a terrible – and inexcusable – choice for the Science Committee. My (or Pat’s) making that judgement does not violate his civil rights. Further, making a negative judgement about those that decided to put him there is not a violation of Broun’s first amendment rights.
Look, for just a moment take government out of the picture.
An elegant solution. Let’s do that.
“Science” is way too generic here, Tod. Look at the list JB posted, get specific about where the gentleman is DQed from serving effectively. There isn’t even any biology on that list. I’d hoped some headway might have been made by the attempt to show that a creationist measures the red shift the same as does the evolutionist, it’s only the explanation that differs—and the explanation doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.
If you can’t see my point, and if you can’t see the First Amendment implications, I comfort myself that at least Jaybird can. I’ve really given this my best, and this ringing of the “science” bell is poetry not empirical fact.
Think of it this way: it appears acupuncture works.
http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-acupuncture-works-above-placebo-effect-for-chronic-pain-study-shows-20120913,0,3155965.story
You just have to put the needles in the right spot to be an effective acupuncturist–you don’t have to believe all that “medians” crap and the woo explanations.
This whole impeachment of the creationists has been quite ignorant of what they believe and the limits of how what they believe affects their interaction with the physical world. I will state again for the nth time that I’m not one of them. I think I see that their more honest critics in this thread have learned something about the limits of their funky beliefs: not a single concrete example has been given yet as to Broun’s unfitness for the committee.
He should be disqualified in the sense that we agree that “he shouldn’t be on the science committee” and “people should vote so ast to keep him off the science committee.” However, he shouldn’t be disqualified in the sense that “we should pass a law banning all people who profess -like this dude- that they believe such and such doctrines.”
Yeah, I pretty much agree with this.
I’ll add my other argument that a Broun-type is more likely to safeguard the rights of a Harriet McBryde Johnson than many more “reasonable” people.
Given that Harriet McBryde Johnson, as an atheist Democrat, would likely disagree with you on that score, I don’t find that terribly compelling. See, those atheist science-loving Democrats aren’t uniform in their support of Singer. Because he’s a nut.
Tom, the problem with your two main assertions on this thread is that you’re asking for far, far more charity than you’re granting.
You’re saying we should give Broun charity (against his stated biases), because we need to prove that he would be bad before we have a reason to reject him for his own stated biases. Which, on the face of it, is a pretty strong stretching of charity, especially given that you won’t tell me how to prove this thing.
Against this, you’ve offered Peter Singer as a case study for scientism (whatever that’s supposed to mean), and stated that this is a big enough problem that you’re okay with Broun even if he doesn’t deserve that charity we grant him, which completely ignores the fact that Singer isn’t an exemplar of science in general, or even godless, atheist scientists in general.
I see a whole lot of special pleading there, brother.
However, would like to point out that, if he *DOES* get elected, whether he ends up on this or that committee should be picked by seniority and other Congressional arcana rather than litmus tests. The best way to keep him off of the Science Committee is to elect his opponent.
Pat, I think the concept of “pluralism” has been lost. As for Johnson being a Democrat atheist, I think that the God Squad would be her protector is a fabulous irony, and perhaps an argument for pluralism all on its own.
As it turns out, Broun’s committee doesn’t even deal with that stuff, so that argument is inoperative. That still leaves you with proving “harm” and we have not seen a single example of how creationism affects the red shift or the other observable phenomena. The counterarguments run to analogies and other assorted poetry, or a reification of some entity called “science.” An interesting role reversal, Mr. Empirical.
Tom, I’ll say now for the last time: you plant some goalposts in the ground, and I’ll attempt to convince you that there’s some harm.
Otherwise, you don’t get to call a role-reversal on Mr. Empirical. I have no calibration for my instruments. I can’t measure what you won’t define.
Tom, in this one comment, after everything that’s been said up to this point, you’ve shown yourself to be either a ) congenitally incapable of understanding another person’s argument/pov, or b) willfully incapable of doing so.
I’d go with a) myself. I just don’t think anyone could so consistently misrepresent other folks views without it being … structural.
Mercy. The other arg is that as a creationist and a believer in woo, Broun can’t be empirical and make proper judgments in his role on the committee.
Now please somebody state mine fairly.
Mercy. The other arg is that as a creationist and a believer in woo, Broun can’t be empirical and make proper judgments in his role on the committee.
No, the other argument is that given his stated bias, it’s unlikely. I don’t think that, in and of itself, is worthy of this much digital ink to be refuted. You can disagree with the (is or is not), rather than (the likelihood or otherwise), and say he is or is not capable of making judgments, but is the underlying premise really that out of bounds?
Would you hire someone to run your company if they stated that they thought corporations were the tool of the devil? Is it really that odd to consider this a “good enough” basic guideline for competency?
Now please somebody state mine fairly.
You have two.
One is that rejection of this person on this premise is rejection on insufficient evidence, but you’re not clear on what is sufficient evidence.
I’m not sure I buy this argument, but I’m not going to go a haring off after disassembling it without a clear idea of where you would want me to go with it.
The second is that there’s some factor, not related to the science itself but the social organism that is the science community, that is itself dehumanizing and pervasive enough that even if Broun was everything his detractors fear him to be, his presence on the Committee would be justified as a counter to those non-science related questions that would show up in the business of the Committee as a bad agenda.
I think this is based upon a misjudged perception of the science community, but it’s not entirely an unreasonable underlying premise… although it does seem to weigh that risk far out of bounds of your proposed corrective mechanism.
Close enough, Pat, and thank you, the reason why I prefer to expend my time with you as my interlocutor.
To the first point, the goalpost is an example of where his vote would be affected by his creationism.
To the second argument, I add that the job of the science committee is political—far more philosophy than science, of values more than facts. We value X over Y and vote it more money. For example, at some point the nation [Walter Mondale?] decided that lunar landing after lunar landing just to collect more rocks was a waste of money that could better have been spent on earth.
Try to keep in mind that most of my argument is formal and no special pleading for fundies or Christianity–when I write on religious liberty, I usually think “Muslim” as the control in the experiment.
My argument for pluralism isn’t even religious–I rather buy that Rachel Carson was an extremist if not a nut, and that perhaps her ideology in killing DDT also led to the deaths of millions from malaria. But no doubt her activism did much good as well, and it wasn’t her alone that banned DDT. So too, I think the Frankenfoodies are irrational, but having them as watchdogs on genetic modification is a good thing. “Progress” is overrated.
“I feel very strongly about defending the religious liberty of others.”
Good for you. I feel strongly about that too. What does it have to do with anything I said.
“From people like you.”
Robots?
Look Tom, the robots in the Shazbot series have encountered a lot of anti-Robotism on blogs. We’d appreciate it if you apologize.
Oh, wait, you mean liberals or atheists or something. Yeah, we’re a real threat to religious liberty.
People like you shouldn’t be onthe masthead serious blogs. And by people like you, I mean you.
You’re exactly why I should be, and am. Now you’re simply being disruptive, so goodbye.
I complete you?
Is this a moment like the one between Batman and the Joker at the end of the Dark Knight?
Or is it more of a Broke Back mountain thing.
Maybe it’s a Conan the Barbarian -James Earle Jones thing:
“Thulsa Doom: I wish to speak to you now. Where is the Eye of the Serpent? Rexor says that you gave to a girl, probably for a mere night’s pleasure, hmm? What a loss. People have no grasp of what they do. You broke into my house, stole my property, murdered my servants, and my PETS! And that is what grieves me the most! You killed my snake. Thorgrim is beside himself with grief! He raised that snake from the time it was born.
Conan: You killed my mother! You killed my father, you killed my people! You took my father’s sword… ah
[Rexor twists his arm]
Thulsa Doom: Ah. It must have been when I was younger. There was a time, boy, when I searched for steel, when steel meant more to me than gold or jewels.
Conan: The riddle… of steel.
Thulsa Doom: Yes! You know what it is, don’t you boy? Shall I tell you? It’s the least I can do. Steel isn’t strong, boy, flesh is stronger! Look around you. There, on the rocks; a beautiful girl. Come to me, my child…
Thulsa Doom: [coaxes the girl to jump to her death]
Thulsa Doom: That is strength, boy! That is power! What is steel compared to the hand that wields it? Look at the strength in your body, the desire in your heart, I gave you this! Such a waste. Contemplate this on the tree of woe. Crucify him!”
I’m cool with it either either way.
TVD,
I don’t think I could vote for you.
” Singer [is] a nut.”
Singer is rubber. You are glue.
Before driving the money changers into the temple , the pols first had to round some up from K-Street to pack the think tanks .
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http://takimag.com/article/climate_of_here/print#axzz29bqXlN2Y
Wonderful paintings! That is the kind of information that are supposed to be shared across the internet. Disgrace on the seek engines for no longer positioning this submit upper! Come on over and talk over with my web site . Thank you =)
[Ed: I have wiped the link on this piece of spam so as to render it ineffective, but I just found its whimsical charms too great to delete it outright. “Wonderful paintings!” “Disgrace on the seek engines!” The world would be a poorer place without this beautiful piece of nonsense. — RS]