Decline and Fall

Mike the Mad Biologist has a post up about the fundamental dishonesty of the Creationist leaders. Money quote:

It took me a while to realize that the 'professional creationists' were not intellectually honest either. I am not referring to those who follow them, or those who are simply not very knowledgable about evolution. I receive emails asking me about evolution and creationism (particularly issues related to microbiology), and, believe it or not, I answer them politely (if not always quickly...).

Everyone can be misinformed, ignorant, or simply have not thought things through correctly. What I will not tolerate is willful ignorance. Creationist leaders and spokesmen are willfully ignorant. How many times do they have to be told what scientists mean by a theory? How many times will they misstate the basics of evolutionary theory, such as claiming that natural selection is a tautology? The list goes on and on. These creationists have heard the evidence-based rebuttals of their false arguments many times.

Quite true, as far as that goes. I cannot believe that the people at Answers in Genesis or the Discovery Institute have seriously considered the arguments against their position. There's just too much evidence to the contrary.

But what of the masses who follow them? Are they maliciously ignoring the evidence and fitting facts to their worldview? The answer is both yes and no. That they selectively cherry-pick evidence and arguments cannot be denied. But is it malicious? I don't think so.

Marx has often been quoted saying that "religion is the opium of the people." The corrollary to this is not often stated, however. As much as Marx believed that religion is the illusory happiness of the masses, his program merely substituted another belief in its place, rather than eliminating the need for opiates altogether. His insight was that no matter what, the people will always seek something to believe in. I define this something as ideology. (To be fair, he seems to have believed that Communism would eliminate this need, but that's the problem with ideology, and opiates: they're terrible at seeing themselves for what they actually are.)

Why do I bring up Marx in this context? To make a point about malice when arguing for logically indefensible points: as much as those of us who value intellectual honesty want to believe that our position is widely held, it isn't. We are as blinded by our belief in reason as a panacea as the fundamentalist Christian is by his belief in biblical inerrancy. It's not malicious to succumb to the temptation to see the world through your own narrow perspective, it's human.

Don't take this as one of those relativist "science-is-just-a-belief-system-like-all-the-others" arguments that one occasionally hears from post-modernists and fundamentalists (see the Sokal Affair for more on this). The scientific method has developed the clearest, most rigorous check on bias that has ever been known. Science is superior to ideology precisely because it acknowledges the bias problem and has put procedures (peer review, reproducibility, falsifiability) in place to counter it. But scientists and their fellow travelers (I'm one of the latter) do have a tendency to be blind to the extent to which the rest of the world doesn't think the way do, which is to say they proceed from different values and assumptions.

So what is to be done about the problems with ideology? Continue making the arguments, continue to show where professed Christians bear false witness in order to make their arguments, and persevere until the idea that the universe is only 6,000 years old is as antiquated as the idea that the earth is the center of the universe. But I don't think we should hold out too much hope for the ultimate tiumph of reason: as soon as one myth is shattered, a new one takes its place. My prediction is that people will be more inclined toward silly beliefs in aliens, horoscopes, crystals and biorhythms as their reliance on biblical inerrancy falls to the wayside. But it could be anything, really.

Labels: creationism, reason, religion, science

The history of Creationist thought, link via PZ:

Labels: creationism, humor, science

Best quote I've seen in a long time:

I can sum it all up in three words: Evolution is a lie.

Thanks for brightening my day, Stupidity Tracker.

Labels: creationism, reason, religion, science

Some things are simply beyond parody. Kos links (via Burnt Orange Report) to a report that the Chairman of the Texas State House Appropriations Committee, Warren Chisum (R-Pampa), doesn't merely believe that God created the Earth in six days, but that the earth is fixed, and the sun revolves around it.

But that isn't even the worst of it. Chisum distributed a memo detailing the strategy to take the teaching of evolution out of public schools by exposing the true root of the "religion" of "Copernicanism." What is this root, you ask? If you guessed the Jews, you're right:

Indisputable evidence--long hidden but now available to everyone--demonstrates conclusively that so-called "secular evolution science" is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternate "creation scenario" of the Pharisee Religion. This scenario is developed concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic "holy book" Kabbala dating back at least two millennia.

Now you might say this is all just the crazy rantings of one seriously unstable legislator. But it's not just him. He got the idea from a Representative in the Georgia House, Ben Bridges (R-Cleveland), who is a member of the Higher Education Committee. This guy has a say on matters relating to the University of Georgia system, including funding priorities.

I'll give the whackjobs at The Fair Education Foundation this: they actually take the Bible as literally as young-earth creationists only claim they do. They point to 67 places in the Bible where it strongly implies that the Sun revolves around the Earth. This cannot be denied--it's right there in the good book. Thus, it is only logical to conclude that the doctrine of biblical inerrancy is thoroughly incompatible with the universe as it is actually observed. Either the evidence of science is right, or the Bible is. Both cannot be true.

Labels: creationism, fundamentalism, religion

In honor of Darwin's Birthday I watched Flock of Dodos yesterday . It was an entertaining documentary that pointed out the main problem with the science side of the intelligent design/evolution debate: scientists really suck at public relations.

Take the ID slogan, "Teach the Controversy," for instance. As noted in the movie, there is no corollary on the other side of the debate. The feeble suggestion, "Teach the Science," clearly doesn't pack the same rhetorical punch, so the ones who actually have the facts on their side in this argument are seemingly doomed to lose the popular war; and only because no one in the scientific community seems to be able to string two sentences together in a way that makes the case for truth appealing.

As Aristotle noted in his Rhetoric, there are three elements of a good argument: logos, or the logical quality of the argument; ethos, or the credibility of the one making the argument; and pathos, or the way the argument is framed. I've debated the question of which of these is most important before, but now I realize that I have grossly underestimated the degree to which the silver-tongued presentation trumps the superior logic of a credible source. More than half of Americans now believe that human evolution is a hoax by a cabal of godless scientists. To put it simply: the scientific community is all logos and ethos, and no pathos, and as a result, the sophists are winning the war.

There was some discussion after the film, featuring several U of A professors, and this lack of pathos was the main topic. One professor pointed to the Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science as a step that has been taken toward "selling" the scientific angle. I haven't spent much time with their site, but at first glance this looks feeble. Nothing like the PR blitzes we've seen from the likes of the Discovery Institute and other bald-faced liars in the name of god (who I won't link to here for ethical reasons).

Won't somebody hire a decent PR firm for the National Academies of Science?

Labels: creationism, reason