Do you think the self-imagined Republican “base” would mobilize against a candidate who talked that way? (via Althouse). (And, yes, I wish the reporter had pinned him down with “inerrantly” rather than “literally”. But still.)
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This looks as if it should be a companion post to Bradlaugh’s immediately preceding “Presidential Metaphysics”, but the timing is just a coincidence.
I love, “I’m just a simple president.”
Way to answer a question. His halting, herky-jerky manner of speaking is bad enough but some of his comments are just amazing. Seriously, has the US ever had a president that came across so poorly when asked relatively straightforward questions. Might as well have Jim Varney as your commander-in-chief. Hey Vern…
This kind of interview question is a perfect example of why Kathleen Parker’s “oogedey-boogedy” column is important. It highlights a major structural weakness of a party that is so heavily invested in a fundamentalist religious viewpoint.
When the Republican candidates were asked to raise their hands if they believed in evolution, they were placed on the horns of a trilemma as far as the base vs. the general electorate were concerned. Either they were fools, hypocrites or unelectable.
When the Republican candidates were asked to raise their hands if they believed in evolution, they were placed on the horns of a trilemma as far as the base vs. the general electorate were concerned. Either they were fools, hypocrites or unelectable.
Only the elites strongly accept evolution, remember. Around half of Americans reject it.
From Jeff Jacoby (2004):
I bet if you asked those same people if they “accepted that mutation occurs,” they’d say they did. That’s in monster movies, so they know what that means. Unless someone asks “micro or macro?” they have no clue what evolution even means, let alone “believes in it.”
I bet if you asked those same people if they “accepted that mutation occurs,” they’d say they did. That’s in monster movies, so they know what that means. Unless someone asks “micro or macro?” they have no clue what evolution even means, let alone “believes in it.”
Well yes, obviously. Do you understand Quantum Electrodynamics? I assume not. But you’d be pretty stupid to go around talking about how “Quantum Electrodynamics has been proven wrong by modern science,” as many dumb Creationists do (I know whereof I speak since they do this to me).
I specifically used the word *accept*, not “believe.” You just put that word into my mouth because you went into auto-response mode (and I’m very ready for your auto-response, I used the term *accept* for that very reason). Tiresome. Yes, most people who accept evolution don’t understand it. So what? Sometimes it shows some wisdom in deferring to the consensus of specialist wisdom instead of pretending your own retarded views are correct.
11 percent couldn’t identify the author of the Declaration of Independence
What do you think the proportion is in the general population anyhow for this? Intelligence isn’t absolute, it’s relative. The stupid people you meet with elite educations (many) are still far brighter than the stupid people without (more).
My word usage/intent, not intended to misstate your position. Sorry for the confusion.
If I was constantly told that Quantam Electrodynamics (that I don’t understand or have sufficient knowledge in to make a determination on my own) had been proven to be wrong by scientists, I’d be foolish not to be a bit more skeptical than I would otherwise.
Now who is making assumptions?
Oh, well. I held out hope that you and this group were interested in altering the stereotype that there was an intellectual right that wasn’t exclusively the bastion of pompous asses, interested in discussion with us plebes on how to solve the matter. But you seem to have it all figured out, so I’ll take my leave.
Good luck!
Now who is making assumptions?
You telling me you pulled up the Jeff Jacoby quote from memory? 🙂 In any case, yes, I happen to think that the faith in popular wisdom in vogue on the modern American Right is highly problematic.
David: “Only the elites strongly accept evolution, remember. Around half of Americans reject it.“Yes, that is true, and rather depressing. The Republican party clearly needs to do two things simultaneously:
convince the religious right that the Republicans will remain friendlier to their viewpoint than the Democratic party is
convince the rest of the electorate that the core beliefs of the Republican party are not identical to those of the religious right
I don’t actually think this is such a difficult task. I think this is the way it used to be a few decades ago. I think it just requires Republicans to display a sensitivity to the concerns of the religious right while honestly stating that they are not themselves a part of it. The key argument should be easy to make that conservative Republican ideas of a free-market, freedom of expression, freedom of religion and individualism etc., while themselves entirely secular, are in practice more accommodating to religious belief than the rival ideas offered by liberal Democrats.
Mr. Hume,
Where on the internet might I find a creationist argument against quantum electrodynamics? I just paid a visit to Wikipedia to get a brief synopsis of the topic, then journeyed to Conservapedia and Creationwiki. The later two sites, very often good sources of creationsit stupidity, had nothing on the subject.
And since I mentioned Conservapedia, did any readers catch the controversy over the summer caused by Andy Schlafly writing microbiologist Richard Lenski responding to a 20 year E. coli experiment?
From Wiki,
“On June 9, 2008, New Scientist published an article describing Richard Lenski’s 20-year E. coli experiment, which observed that bacteria evolve the ability to metabolize citrate – a rare and complex mutation.[63] Schlafly contacted Lenski to request the data. Lenski explained that the relevant data was in the paper and that Schlafly fundamentally misunderstood it. Schlafly wrote again and requested the raw data. Lenski replied again that the relevant data was already in the paper, that the “raw data” were living bacterial samples, which he would willingly share with qualified researchers at properly equipped biology labs, and that he felt insulted by letters and comments on Conservapedia, which he saw as brusque and offensive, including claims of outright deceit.[64] The exchange, recorded on a Conservapedia page called “Lenski dialog”,[65] was widely reported on news-aggregating sites and weblogs. Carl Zimmer wrote that it was readily apparent that “Schlafly had not bothered to read [Lenski’s paper] closely”,[66] and PZ Myers criticized Schlafly for demanding data despite not having a plan to use it nor the expertise to analyze it.[67]”
Where on the internet might I find a creationist argument against quantum electrodynamics?
To my knowledge they don’t object to it. I was using that example to show that Creationists oppose something which they don’t know anything about, while having no opinions on a wide range of abstruse topics.
Creationists don’t want to touch QED, or QCD, or anything having to deal with QFT as a general rule. The big problem is that it basically ruins all their arguments.
How can you make lots of silly noise about how “there must be an uncaused first cause!” when QFT implicitly shows us that causality isn’t what we think it is? Almost everything that happens in the universe happens without causation. Things having explicit causations are in the minority.
In this case, the problem is less stupidity than ignorance.
In the case of the religious opponents of evolution, it is militant ignorance in the face of mountains of evidence.
Back in the day, when I still paid attention to creationism, I noticed that they had serious issues with cosmology. The age of the universe, the speed of light. I suppose it must be worse for quantum cosmology.
They really don’t like geology either. All those sedimentary rocks and the Flood.
I bet Tom Bethell (of the American Spectator) has had a go at it. He’s argued against Special Relativity, that I know. (General I’m not sure about.) The guy never saw an established scientific theory he liked.
In any case the Creationists are, as I have long been predicting, abandoning general phylogeny for the mind sciences, where the pickings are much better for them (i.e. the Gap requiring a God much, much wider).
When the Republican candidates were asked to raise their hands if they believed in evolution, they were placed on the horns of a trilemma…
That’s because the question was framed in such bad faith. There are shades of acceptance between straight, godless evolution (as put forward by Darwin) and Young Earth Creationism. The whole “hand-raising” bit denied the candidates the opportunity to point out that sort of nuance, which all of them eventually did, even Huckabee.
Needless to say, no such equivalent question was ever put to the Democrats. Can you see the press asking a panel of Democratic candidates to raise their hand on something far more urgent like amnesty or affirmative action?
I noticed that they had serious issues with cosmology. The age of the universe, the speed of light.
A good friend of mine in high school was explaining to me the ways you had to change some cosmological parameters (speed of light, etc.) to make Young Earth Creationism work. He believed that was what was true because that was the easiest way to resolve the various issues.
David,
“A good friend of mine in high school was explaining to me the ways you had to change some cosmological parameters (speed of light, etc.) to make Young Earth Creationism work.”
The trouble is it doesn’t work David. They always just take the normal equations of relativity and make c into a variable. They never seem to get that if you make c variable it has lots of other effects too. The equations become more complicated. You can’t just use conventional relativity.
Serious physics theorists have explored lots of possible models with variable speed of light. Current experimental limits are pretty tight.
I used to amuse myself by arguing that it is easy to justify YEC. All you assume is that God was whizzing past in his fiery chariot at 99.9999…% of the speed of light and 4.5 Billion years looked like 6000 years in his rest frame. 😉
Is the Bible literal is an age-old not-very-informed question. To Christians the Bible is both literal and figurative. When the Bible says Jesus is a rock, Christians don’t then think Jesus is an actual rock. On the other hand there is literal truth in figurative language. It’s a bit more subtle – though easy enough with a little common-sense and good will and faith towards the text – than “Is the Bible literal?”
And, on the other subject, if I’m a conservative politician who is a Christian who believes in supernaturalism and catastrophism in creation (namely if I believe God is sovereign in creation as well as providence and grace) and I get asked the question if I believe in evolution I answer this way: “What scientists mean by micro-evolution? Yes. Do I believe fish turned into race horses? No. Next question.”
Sorry to see you depart mrsdutoit. I’ve enjoyed your perspective.
No, but I have argued with a great many literalists who swear that Lott’s wife Sarah was turned into a column of sodium chloride, for looking back at the burning city. That the direct translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, without all the translations and interpretations that the modern bible has undergone in between, revealed that “pillar of salt” was an idiom for paralysis, is oddly unpersuasive to them.
Your second paragraph is masterful. Well done. ◄Dave►
Panopaea: Microevolution is just divergence of populations. Since you seem to believe that this divergence can only go so far, no further, what is the force that prevents it going further? If there is no such force, why should not two populations of a species eventually diverge into different species, and then into very different species. If there is such a preventative force, is it divine or natural?
Well, I don’t know why my response to you, Bradlaugh, was deleted (Walter Olson? explanation? Bradlaugh made a direct question to me…) I suspect Mr. Olson saw ignorance (guilty when it comes to discussing fine points and fallacious or not distinctions between micro and macro evolution, as evolutionists see it.)
Panopaea, it was I who deleted your comment, not Mr. Olson. You inferred correctly as to the reason. As my friend Bradlaugh is alloted but a fixed & finite number of years I thought to free up some of his surplus time. Perhaps I overstepped and he wishes to enter into this dance, though I am a skeptic as to the possibility of any profit.
David Hume:
You’re insulting people who take the time to comment here left and right, and then deleting posts for content, not offense, in the middle of threads under other authors’ columns? And then add further insult in your explanation? Unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
? I am prejudiced. I know that it is a horrible and totally unconscionable thing to say in America in our time that many people are not intelligent, and that many of the intelligent do not profit from their endowments.* But I am not a politician, and I am also one who does not believe that my consciousness will persist unto eternity, and so am afflicted by a particular impatience with what I perceive to be nonsense which expends the limited resource of time which I possess.
* I am regularly told by people who I suspect are intelligent that intelligence does not exist! What an age.
“…the limited resource of time which I possess.”
Because it’s all about you, isn’t it?
Because it’s all about you, isn’t it?
Yes. And for you it’s about you. You might be interested to know that I’ve simply deleted dozens of Creationist comments since this website started.
Frankly, I’d take away your car keys, but since you’re the one who gets to set the tone, I’ll join mrsdutoit and leave you to design this compound to your liking. An intelligent circle jerk is still a circle jerk.
Thank you. ◄Dave►
OK, then, maybe I should try again with the response to Bradlaugh?
My initial response was simply to suggest your first sentence – “Microevolution is just divergence of populations” – seemed to want to claim too much since it doesn’t have these nine words:
small scale changes . . . at or below the species level
As for the bristling evolutionists experience when critics distinguish microevolution from macroevolution, one might put it simply like this:
Microevolution – evidence exists
Macroevolution – no evidence exists
Because they are different things. Different claims. Macroevolution is the big fail for evolutionists; and it is what they had their God-killing hat hung on.
Secular cons, be sceptical. Be sceptical of easily routed theories and of yourselves. The world doesn’t cave in if you concede fish probably didn’t become race horses.
You’re insulting people who take the time to comment here left and right, and then deleting posts for content, not offense, in the middle of threads under other authors’ columns? And then add further insult in your explanation? Unbelievable.
I’m sure you wouldn’t object to David Hume deleting Holocaust Denial or 9/11 Trooferism spam? There cannot be any picking-and-choosing of tolerance of irrationality. In any shared community such as this, there has to be some basic standards for commenting, and acceptance of, well, reality is pretty much a good starting point. Creationism, and its promulgation of Bronze-age myths as somehow equivalent to, well lets be blunt here, fact, is intellectually and logically equivalent to both the aforementioned topics, and its adherents, are, frankly, similar as well, in many psychological and intellectual aspects.
Its a shame that this has come to the fore so early in SR’s existance, but its a pain that many other conservative websites and moderators have come up against, and David Hume is right to cut it off now.
I do think an addendum to the FAQ is needed though pointing out that SR isn’t a venue for promulgating myth. As I believe Bradlaugh once said, we should be looking at the world as how it is, with a cold, hard, eye, not as how we want it to be. That is the essence of Conservatism, is it not?
I think Panopaea’s latest offering is the textbook example of why common minimum standards are needed for SR commenters (I hate to ape the leftist “reality-based community” insult, but this situation it is indeed called for). Rather than clog up the comment boxes with a lengthy post explaining why he is wrong (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/macroevolution.html does that job nicely), I’d like to make the observation to Panopaea and JM Hanes and others that perhaps SR isn’t the website you are looking for.
>There cannot be any picking-and-choosing of tolerance of irrationality. In any shared community such as this, there has to be some basic standards for commenting, and acceptance of, well, reality is pretty much a good starting point.
The founders of Harvard College. The author of Wealth of Nations. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. They don’t meet your standards for commenting. Think about that. There are scale issues atheists have to confront when they make their claims. Reality issues, shall we say.
And the presence of someone like myself gives you the opportunity to make your case. You are saying you are more intellectually competent, more deserving of being taken seriously, than the people mentioned above. Seen in the light I have put it, do you really – *really* – believe this?
Dave M., regarding your link: evidence that Marxism meets what it claims is not the same as a course in the correct view of Marxism, circa 1938. In a Moscow classroom. In 832 lectures.
I didn’t see the comment that got moderated, and no doubt DH’s judgments as a moderator will differ in particular instances from mine. Let’s make it clear right now, though, that this is a moderated comments section. It may resemble a very broadminded letters-to-the-editor column; it is not going to resemble a public-access cable channel, graffiti wall, or Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner if I or DH can help it.
What’s more, it’s moderated for the benefit of this site’s intended audience, bearing in mind that some lines of discussion more quickly become tedious and irrelevant to that audience than others. Up to a point, I have no objection to efforts to save our immortal souls or turn us into leftier-than-thou Kossacks so long as they have decent entertainment value (short, witty, and nonrepetitive all help).
One group we’d be better off without are those who feel that commenting on this site is somehow a matter of right, no matter what the tedium factor, and radiate wounded entitlement when they learn that’s not how it’s going to work. They really would be happier elsewhere.
The founders of Harvard College. The author of Wealth of Nations. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. They don’t meet your standards for commenting.
I’m sure that if Adam Smith, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky ever start commenting here we’ll interface with them solely on their own merits.
Think about that. There are scale issues atheists have to confront when they make their claims. Reality issues, shall we say.
I’m not an atheist, Panopaea. It is rather revealing however that you suggest that athiests have reality issues. Reality, to use the hackneyed wikipedia definition: “the state of things as they actually exist”. Not as you *believe* them to exist, or *want* them to exist.
And the presence of someone like myself gives you the opportunity to make your case.
I have no ‘case’ to make. Every time you step outside your front door, when you see an apple drop from a tree, when you switch on a lightbulb to produce some light, when you take some antibiotics to cure an infection, that is my ‘case’. That you’re able to sit here and use a computer to type these messages, that proves that my ‘case’ is the reality.
You are saying you are more intellectually competent, more deserving of being taken seriously, than the people mentioned above.
At the risk of turning into the resident Huxley, click on the link embedded in my name. I’m the author of that article. In the specific matter of Supernovae, Supernova Remnants and the way Creationists have misused them, then yes, I am damn sure that I am more intellectually competent, more deserving of being taken seriously than someone who wants their personal favourite fairy tales to be elevated on par with the, to paraphrase Alan Clark, the actualitie.
>I’m sure that if Adam Smith, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky ever start commenting here we’ll interface with them solely on their own merits.
I would like to think you might like to learn something from them without limiting them to within your imposed parameters of their worth. The tone of your answer doesn’t give me confidence that you’d be interested in that, let alone value the opportunity or see any potential benefit in it, they being irrational and incapable of accepting, and by implication, grasping reality, as you say.
>I have no ‘case’ to make. Every time you step outside your front door, when you see an apple drop from a tree, when you switch on a lightbulb to produce some light, when you take some antibiotics to cure an infection, that is my ‘case’. That you’re able to sit here and use a computer to type these messages, that proves that my ‘case’ is the reality.
Then your reality seems to also be missing the rather vast and deep contribution of Christians in the founding of institutions of higher learning and building hospitals, to name just a few activities Christians have been known for. And I also think your reality is missing the fact that Christians tend to have taken part in the activities of creating and building and discovering and inventing and fixing and adapting and what not. Christians have historically taken a great liking to the natural world and learning as much about it as possible, it being a great part of what Christians call general revelation. But this is, you know, stuff I’m sure you know. You just forgot to include it in your reality.
Panopaea, firstly, the problem with theist interventions on this website (and in general, and indeed, alas with yours), is that they are done from at least an implicit position of ‘bad faith’. In other words, it is not to debate the issues on their merits, but rather it always boils down to either attempting to, or having the chief intention of “saving our souls”.
And yes, I’m quite aware, thanks, of the facts that Newton for example, was a Christian. But so what? Wagner was a hideous anti-semite, but does that mean we should devalue his contribution to music? Their works (The Principa, for example) do not attempt to, for example, define Force as ‘Sin x Number of Seraphim Pushing’, do they? (though I suspect Bradlaugh could give a much longer massive on the various attempts at Creationist Mathematics than I ever could).
At the end of the day, Panopaea, if the entire basis of your arguments is “Goddidit!” or “Godsaysso!”, then to be frank, in as far as I am allowed to by the moderators, I will treat them with scorn and contempt, and (IMHO) rightly so.
The founders of Harvard and Adam Smith long predated Darwin, and did not have the chance to study his work. One would hope that they would be persuaded by evidence, although the founders of Harvard were religious sectarians whose intent was to train ministers for the colonies.
Dostoevsky was roughly contemporary to Darwin, and seemed to have no problem with his theory on the origin of species.
I don’t mind scorn and contempt because neutral observers can see for themselves what is going on. For instance in this last comment of yours – wait a minute, yes, other than parts of Tristan und Isolde I think we should devalue all of Wagner’s music – as I was saying… (and I forgot to mention I actually prefer and recommend the classic Bernstein recording over the Furtwangler), as I was saying… … Oh, yes, you’re right back to suggesting Christians have no interest in what they have pioneered and established and founded: science, technology, engineering. Do you think atheists were out and about doing all that? Just because institutions founded by Christians fall rather methodically into the control of liberals and atheists (it has to do with the unsleeping work of the goat-footed one) doesn’t mean the latter two groups magically take on the history of the Christians who founded the institutions.
“And yes, I’m quite aware, thanks, of the facts that Newton for example, was a Christian.”
Many conservative Christians — you know the ones who say Mormons aren’t Christian — might have trouble terming Newton a Christian once they find out he was a secret Arian. He flunks the test of Nicene orthodoxy.
Richard Saunders, sometime do a study on the standards the founders of Harvard College set up for entrance and graduation. There is a document that describes it (that I can’t recollect any searchable elements of at the moment). The point was not did they believe in evolution, you have imported that, but that they are considered to be irrational and incapable of grasping reality and hence not worthy to comment on this blog, according to Dave M.
The Dostoevsky quote is him saying to the evolutionists God breathed life into man. God created man. Did you miss that? His blithe reference to theistic evolution was merely sloppy, as it is with most all Christians who hear or think of it and think they have come across something worthwhile, before they ponder on the teaching of their faith for a moment and realize the fall of man and the entire history of redemption and the soteriology of every page of Scripture vitiates such a careless and lazy ‘insight.’ That Dostoevsky lived contemporaneous with Darwin when Darwinian evolution had not taken on the full, explicit (full frontal) God-killing religious tenor that it tsunamied into explains Dostoevsky’s guard being down.
“That’s because the question was framed in such bad faith. There are shades of acceptance between straight, godless evolution (as put forward by Darwin) and Young Earth Creationism. The whole ‘hand-raising’ bit denied the candidates the opportunity to point out that sort of nuance, which all of them eventually did, even Huckabee.”
Nonsense. The question of whether one accepts a scientific theory is a binary one. Either one accepts that evolution happened or one does not. Whether one chooses to supplement it with unnecessary religious trappings (such that “god is behind it”) is irrelevant to the primary issue of whether one believes the scientific fact and theory or rejects it.
“Needless to say, no such equivalent question was ever put to the Democrats. Can you see the press asking a panel of Democratic candidates to raise their hand on something far more urgent like amnesty or affirmative action?”
Of course, niether amnesty nor affirmative action are well-established scientific theories which many Republicans deny, even in the face of all of the evidence supporting it, in favor or religious dogma. So the comparison doesn’t work.
Papopaea,
Also interesting is how Harvard degenerated in heresy and heterodoxy in the 18th Century. The “orthodox” termed their library in the 18th Century “Satan’s bookshelf.”
I did a post on the brewing freethought at America’s colleges during the Founding era here:
http://www.positiveliberty.com/2007/09/conditions-of-orthodoxy-at-founding-era-colleges.html
Grant Canyon,
No, it isn’t. Take String Theory. There is a whole spectrum from “It predicts gravity” to “It’s not even wrong” and everything in between.
“Just because institutions founded by Christians fall rather methodically into the control of liberals and atheists… doesn’t mean the latter two groups magically take on the history of the Christians who founded the institutions.”
And just because something was done in the past by Christians does not mean that Christianity magically gets to glom onto the credit for the act. So when someone like Newton gets credit for his work in science, no credit goes to Christianity by virtue of the fact that he was one, because what he is being credited for is his scientific work and ideas, not his religious ones.
“Macroevolution is the big fail for evolutionists; and it is what they had their God-killing hat hung on…The world doesn’t cave in if you concede fish probably didn’t become race horses.”
The fact that you posit a fish becoming race horse canard, it is clear that you do not understand what scientists and science-minded folks mean by macro-evolution (to the extent such term is used at all in the context that evolution deniers mean it.)
Does your religious viewpoint prevent you from a good-faith examination of the subject matter or are you so certain that your religious books have to be “true” that you are not interested in such education or is there some other explaination?