I wonder if there’s a gene for thinking there’s a gene for everything

It’s so predictable. Every time a book on “scientific racism” appears, you can trace its roots right back to the same small number of familiar racists. The SPLC reviews Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance.

Wade bases his belief in genetically-enhanced Jewish intelligence on a single paper, which he describes as “[t]he only serious recent attempt by researchers to delve into the links between Jewish genetics and intelligence.” This paper, from University of Utah researchers Henry Harpending, Gregory Cochran, and Jason Hardy, “elaborates the hypothesis that the unique demography and sociology of Ashkenazim in medieval Europe selected for intelligence.”

That hypothesis is the brainchild of Kevin MacDonald, an evolutionary psychologist and director of the racist American Freedom Party (formerly “American Third Position”), which he founded with lawyer William D. Johnson, who has proposed repealing the 14th and 15th Amendments, replacing them with a Constitutional amendment which reads:

No person shall be a citizen of the United States unless he is a non-Hispanic white of the European race, in whom there is no ascertainable trace of Negro blood, nor more than one-eighth Mongolian, Asian, Asia Minor, Middle Eastern, Semitic, Near Eastern, American Indian, Malay or other non-European or non-white blood, provided that Hispanic whites, defined as anyone with an Hispanic ancestor, may be citizens if, in addition to meeting the aforesaid ascertainable trace and percentage tests, they are in appearance indistinguishable from Americans whose ancestral home is in the British Isles or Northwestern Europe. Only citizens shall have the right and privilege to reside permanently in the United States.

MacDonald has published several books arguing that the Ashkenazim eugenically self-selected for high intelligence over several centuries, thus explaining the modern Jewish community’s “general disproportionate representation in markers of economic success and political influence,” and ability “to command a high level of financial, political, and intellectual resources in pursuing their political aims.”

It’s all fruit of a rotten tree, carrying the taint of human xenophobia, and now all tied up in a twisted view of the all-powerful gene. Language Log also has a round up of reviews, but I found most valuable this older documentation of Wade’s gene-centric obsessions. It begins like so:

Nicholas Wade is an inveterate gene-for-X enthusiast — he’s got 68 stories in the NYT index with “gene” in the headline — and he’s had two opportunities to celebrate this idea in the past few days: “Speech Gene Shows Its Bossy Nature”, 11/12/2009, and “The Evolution of the God Gene”, 11/14/2009. The first of these articles is merely a bit misleading, in the usual way. The second verges on the bizarre.

That gene-for-X nonsense is everywhere, and it drives me nuts, too. Although I’ve got to say that Liberman’s hypothetical hat gene does mesh well with my fictional experiences.

I always like to know who’s been bought

A correspondent asked me an interesting and difficult question about the sponsorship of science. I’ve been talking a bit lately about the allosaur affair at the Creation “Museum”, which can be summarized this way:

Michael Peroutka, an odious neo-Confederate nut, donates a valuable allosaur fossil to the Creation “Museum”.

Now the tricky part. What’s the difference in principle between that statement and this next one?

David Koch, an odious destroyer of the environment and climate change denialist, donates $35 million for a Smithsonian dinosaur hall redesign.

That’s a good question, and it brought me up short. The problem with these sorts of questions is that it’s really easy to slip into post hoc rationalizations — I like the Smithsonian, I don’t like the Creation “Museum”, so it’s a trap to start justifying why I like one and not the other, rather than thinking about the actual principle of the question. Would I just be arguing that the good institution is justified in doing whatever it can to get funding for its worthy goals, while the bad institution must be condemned for doing whatever it can to get funding for its unworthy goals?

I’m off the hook in one regard: I’m on record complaining about Koch’s contribution to an earlier exhibit, the Hall of Human Origins. His donation was used to describe the role of climate change in human evolution, making the case that it is a good thing, because we wouldn’t be here without the pressures of shifting climate. It was a subtle emphasis, but it’s still an example of the pressure of millions of dollars being used to gently bend the science in a particular direction.

But it’s only a gentle distortion. Otherwise, Koch seems to have had virtually no influence on the scientific opinions of the Smithsonian. Check them out; the Smithsonian explains the history of climate change, it sponsors Bill Nye explaining climate change, Smithsonian scientists are studying climate change, they have articles explaining how climate change is already affecting people’s lives, and they provide lesson plans for educating about climate change. It’s safe to say that we know on what side of this issue the Smithsonian stands, and it’s on the opposite side of Koch.

It’s a tricky thing, this business of funding science. Ideally, it would be done on merit only, by an independent source, like the NSF or NIH (or, as independent as they possibly can be), with no restrictions on how the money is used — a pot of money is made available, disbursed by knowledgable committees of scientists, and there are no hidden catches to restrict how it’s spent. We know that’s an ideal — government funding agencies are subject to fads, too, and politicians are constantly trying to tinker, with earmarks and prohibitions — but it’s as good as we’ve got. If private donors are involved, the same rules apply: they should give because they value the science, which is a search for the truth, and not because they intend to meddle to get the answers they want. In that sense, the Smithsonian did OK…although there are troubling signs that maybe they accepted some recommendations for Koch.

By the same argument, though, there’s nothing wrong with Peroutka handing over a precious fossil to the Creation “Museum”. It’s stupid and a waste of a good specimen, `but otherwise, philanthropists do get to decide what to do with their own money, and Answers in Genesis can accept it in good conscience.

However, there is another issue. The Smithsonian is committed to doing good science, so they continue to loudly and strongly argue for the scientific consensus, that global climate change is a serious problem, and they do so despite the fact that an extremely wealthy donor disagrees completely with them. I imagine that if a donor tried to insist that his money comes with strings attached and must be used to propagandize for counterfactual claims, the institution would have enough integrity to flatly refuse.

I’d expect the same from the Creation “Museum”. They’ve got a neo-Confederate racist sugar daddy: do they have enough integrity to repudiate his views, even at the expense of antagonizing him? The evidence so far says no. There is a difference between accepting a free donation, and being bought. I’d like to see Ken Ham come clean on his views on the Confederacy, the continued legacy of discrimination and racism, and how much of Peroutka’s paid shill he is. If they are in agreement, that’s fine — just own it, and let us know what kind of people run Answers in Genesis.

Not that we don’t already know they are a gang of loons, but there are quite a few other issues where we could possibly agree…or more likely, disagree.

Eyes closed tight

You might have wondered, like I did, how Ken Ham was going to deal with the revelation that his prize Allosaurus specimen was the gift of a freaky neo-Confederate crank. We now know: he’s going to ignore it indignantly.

Rachel Maddow had a segment on the allosaur, the creationists, and the neo-Confederate. She makes some good points: why is this kook being given tax incentives to build another pile of bullshit in the state of Kentucky? How can they claim that this ancient fossil supports their claim of a young earth? And what about Michael Peroutka? Watch it yourself and see.

Ken Ham calls that “Rachel’s Rant”, and claims that she was obviously upset and angry, but, in reality, she is angry at God. I don’t know about you, but what I saw was Maddow laughing at the folly of Answers in Genesis. He only tries, feebly, to reply to two of her points.

He declares that no Kentucky taxpayer money is being used to construct the Ark Encounter, but that is a claim no one made. Maddow says quite clearly several times that the Ark Park has been given $43 million in tax incentives — that is, Answers in Genesis has been exempted from a requirement to pay taxes on their for-profit enterprise, and will also receive rebates on sales taxes. So all Ham has done is rebut a claim that Rachel Maddow did not make.

Maddow mentioned how dinosaur fossils ought to be awkward for creationists — they’re millions of years old, and these loons claim the earth is only about 6,000 years old. Ham’s answer: Nuh-uh, nope. That’s it. He has declared by fiat that the fossil allosaur is only 4500 years old, ignoring all the evidence, so therefore it’s no problem for creationists. It’s remarkable how many problems they solve by closing their eyes very, very tightly.

What about Peroutka, and the association of their “museum” with a treacherous racist neo-Confederate and political weirdo? That gets one sentence. One dismissive sentence.

In one part of her rant, she uses a sleazy tabloid approach in her attempts to bring disrepute to creationists.

He will not dignify the facts with a response, apparently, and my, but isn’t it rude of this woman to reveal the actual facts behind the donation?

Deny, deny, deny…pretend the facts aren’t out there. It’s the standard creationist play.

How can an Allosaurus be racist?

It can’t, but its owner can be. Ken Ham has been mugging for the media quite a bit lately: he’s got a little coup, in that he’s acquired a fossil allosaur — a real, and valuable, scientific specimen — for his crappy little Creation “Museum”. He claims it’s evidence for a young earth, because it is supposedly only 4500 years old, if you ignore the actual evidence for its age.

But here’s something I didn’t know. Daniel Phelps did a little digging, and excavated the history of the donor. He’s not a nice guy. He’s one of those racist traitors who worships the Confederacy.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 

May 22, 2014

CREATION MUSEUM TO UNVEIL DINOSAUR FOSSIL FROM ORGANIZATION WHOSE LEADER IS AFFILIATED WITH HATE GROUP

The Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky is about to unveil a dinosaur fossil donated by an organization whose leader is affiliated with a hate group.

In October 2013 the Creation Museum, operated by Answers in Genesis, announced the receipt of a partial Allosaurus skeleton and skull from the Elizabeth Streb Peroutka Foundation. The foundation’s leader Michael Peroutka until recently was also a board member of the League of the South, a white supremacist, Neo-Confederate and pro-secessionist organization that has been named a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. (See the web links at the end of this press release for documentation.)

The Creation Museum will be unveiling the specimen this upcoming Memorial Day weekend. The Creation Museum expresses thanks to Michael Peroutka and the Peroutka Foundation on their website (http://creationmuseum.org/whats-here/exhibits/allosaur/):

"One blessing in getting the allosaur was that the Creation Museum did not seek it out. Michael Peroutka, one of the board members of the Foundation, says that this fossil is a testimony to the creative power of God and also lends evidence to the truth of a worldwide catastrophic flooding of the earth about 4,500 years ago as described in the Bible. In order to ensure that the display of the fossil represented this teaching, the Peroutka Foundation donated the fossil to the Creation Museum."

Kentucky geologist and President of the Kentucky Paleontological Society Daniel Phelps is calling for Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum to disavow the hate group, and to donate the fossil to a real natural history museum so that scientific research can be performed on the specimen. 

Phelps said, "The Creation Museum could use this opportunity to take a stand against a racist, Neo-Confederate, hate group by refusing to take possession of the Allosaurus fossil or by donating it to a real natural history museum so the specimen could be placed in the public trust, especially in the light of AIG’s anti-racist position."

Possible museums that could properly curate and research the specimen, according to Phelps, include the Smithsonian (Washington, DC), the American Museum of Natural History (New York), the Field Museum (Chicago), Cincinnati Museum Center, and the Museum of Western Colorado.

Phelps also points out that the Creation Museum will be incapable of doing scientific research on the specimen.  All employees of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum are obligated to sign an oath of Biblical literalism before employment.  This oath (found here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/about/faith)

includes statements that make scientific research on the specimen impossible since all conclusions are known before any possible research is undertaken. The Creation Museum’s Statement of Faith even includes this dogmatic statement: 

"By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record."

Answers in Genesis has an in house publication that mimics a scientific journal named Answers Research Journal, but that publication requires author’s conclusions to match AIG’s statement of faith. The following quote from the publication’s instructions to authors illustrates this point:

"The editor-in-chief will not be afraid to reject a paper if it does not properly satisfy the above criteria or it conflicts with the best interests of AiG as judged by its biblical stand and goals outlined in its statement of faith."

(Page 9) http://legacy-cdn-assets.answersingenesis.org/assets/pdf/arj/instructions-to-authors.pdf

Phelps stated, "Oaths based on religious doctrine are not how modern science is accomplished. The Creation Museum has decided, without doing research, that the dinosaur fossil is evidence of Noah’s Flood which they believe occurred in approximately 2350 BC." 

Phelps continues, "Since the Creation Museum doesn’t do scientific research, all the Creation Museum really has done is obtain a nice display trophy. Real museums do research.  The Creation Museum has asserted the specimen to be evidence of Noah’s Flood without any actual research and will not consider other explanations for theological reasons."

Here is more information on Michael Peroutka and his connections to The League of the South:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/23/1286860/-RINO-Says-His-Dino-Proves-Noah-s-Flood-Wha-Wha-What

http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2013/06/michael-peroutka-appointed-to-the-league-of-the-south-board-of-directors/

YouTube video of Peroutka joining League of the South board:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vze4fPPkgxY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Michael Peroutka “proud to be a member” of The League of the South:

http://archive.theamericanview.com/index.php?id=80#__utma=149406063.1866893309.1398790110.1398790110.1398790110.1&__utmb=149406063.1.10.1398790110&__utmc=149406063&__utmx=-&__utmz=149406063.1398790110.1.1.utmcsr=google|utmccn=(organic)|utmcmd=organic|utmctr=%22michael%20peroutka%22&__utmv=-&__utmk=192255274

The Southern Poverty Law Center names The League of the South a Neo-Confederate hate group here:

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/groups/league-of-the-south

The Southern Poverty Law Center writes of connections between Peroutka and The League of the South here:
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2013/09/18/american-heritage-group-pushes-radical-theocratic-class-on-constitution/

People For the American Way articles on Peroutka’s activities:

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/people/michael-peroutka?page=1

Michael Peroutka decries Union victory in the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg:

http://archive.theamericanview.com/index.php?id=270

Michael Peroutka’s listing in the Encyclopedia of American Loons can be found here:
http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2014/05/1022-michael-peroutka.html

I think Dan is a bit optimistic if he thinks Ham will be swayed at all by the association with racist traitors. I suspect he’s sympathetic, actually, since they tend to be fanatical Christians, too.

Would you learn the philosophy of science from a creationist?

Yesterday, I attended a discussion led by a philosophy professor after a matinee showing of God’s Not Dead. It was a strangely skewed group: about half the attendees were local pastors or wives of pastors. Also, not to my surprise, most of them didn’t care for the movie. It was too over the top, it paid short shrift to serious theology, some of the scenes (especially the death scene) made them uncomfortable and wasn’t true to how Christians actually respond to death. So that was good. Of course, I had to point out that the caricatures of atheists were also unrepresentative.

One guy wandered in with a bunch of tracts and books and announced that he wanted to talk about creation and how the earth was young and recited a bunch of creationist cliches — he got booed out of the room, and looked dismayed that ministers weren’t accepting his conclusions.

Now I’m wondering how Christians respond to this collection of nonsense from Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis.

Does science trump the Word of God? No way!
This fun, animated video demonstrates how science couldn’t even be possible without God and how we need to be careful how we “interpret” evidence.

Always be wary when they have to tell you their own video is “fun”. It wasn’t very. It’s another of those videos that is just words in varying fonts and locations flashing on the screen, while a narrator speaks a bunch of drivel.

Once again, it’s the Hamites reciting this magical distinction, that there are two kinds of science, historical and observational, and that the only one that really counts as true science is the observation of things in the here and now, and that the only historical science you can trust and that is important is stuff that has documents and eyewitness accounts to back it up (You can see where this is going.) As an example, they use the Eiffel Tower, pointing out that you can use observational science to measure its height and location, but in order to figure out when it was built and who constructed it, you’d need to look at old papers.

This is total bullshit, and a terrible example.

If every document describing the Eiffel Tower were destroyed, we’d still be able to make estimates of its age. We’d look at rates of oxidation of the iron in the structure; we’d compare construction techniques with other buildings around the world and identify its contemporaries; and I’m sure engineers and architects would have many other tools they could use to analyze it.

Furthermore, if the two hypothesis they were testing were that a) it was constructed of earthly materials by natural mechanical means vs. b) it was conjured instantaneously into existence last Thursday by a god, who cast a discarded toothpick down into Paris, we could evaluate those ideas and come very quickly to the conclusion that (b) was stark raving nonsense. And that’s analogous to what these bozos are trying to do with their bogus philosophy of science.

What they really try desperately to claim is that you can only examine the past through the first person accounts by people who were there, and presto, they have one for the creation of the world, the Bible, which is totally trustworthy in its every word, and therefore you are supposed to believe it in every detail, because you can’t do observational science of the past.

Bullshit, through and through. The Bible is not trustworthy; it’s a hodge podge of historical accidents assembled in a biased and political process 1500 years ago, it’s full of contradictions, and even if you accept the crappy distinction of science as AiG presents it, it is not a document that is at all contemporary with the creation of the world. (I wonder…maybe they are so delusional that they think the Bible is 6000 years old.)

You can’t simply accept an account of the past because it is a “document”. People lie all the time. More charitably, people make up stories for entertainment. With their kind of uncritical swallowing of myth because it is simply written down, we’d have to conclude that Ilúvatar was the creator, and Tolkien was his prophet. Hey, were you there? Then how do you know it was wrong? I have a book right here that explains how the Ainur sung the world into existence. A real book, with words even.

Then they go on to claim that Observational Science confirms that every word in the Bible is accurate. So why does nearly every scientist in the world disagree?

Finally, they trot out Plantinga-style baloney: we must have been created by an intelligent being, because if our brains are byproducts of chance…we couldn’t trust their conclusions to ever be accurate. To which I have to say…EXACTLY. We can’t trust our brains — the whole elaborate edifice of science is a collection of protocols we follow to avoid trusting our brains. They have to know this; by their own ideas, they think that the majority of the world’s scientists, who all use their brains rather than the Bible, have come up with a set of explanations for the world that the creationists consider wrong.

Evolution does not claim that our brains are solely the product of chance, either. These guys don’t understand science, they don’t understand history, and they don’t understand brains. They do know how to put together a slick, superficial stream of lies into a very low information density video, though.

Secularism has a tunnel-vision problem

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There was a time, back when I was a paying subscriber to the Skeptical Inquirer, that I received this issue in the mail: the January/February 2000 issue, which proudly announced the Ten Outstanding Skeptics of the Twentieth Century. It stopped me cold, and I decided to not bother to renew my subscription.

Why? It starts this way:

We put that question to an elite group of scholars who should know—the Fellows and Scientific Consultants of CSICOP.

Sound familiar? A small group of really smart people appoint themselves to pick who the really smart people are. Unsurprisingly, a whole lot of the winners of this self-selected poll turned out to be…the Fellows and Scientific Consultants of CSICOP, leavened with a few big name additions, like Albert Einstein and Harry Houdini. It was so painfully incestuous, and it was terribly undefined: what does “outstanding” mean? Just the most famous? So it was some kind of popularity contest within CSICOP? And it was made the cover story?

And then, the list…the so oblivious and self-congratulatory list. It consists of ten white men. They also include a list of 14 runners-up who received multiple votes or at least one first-place vote: every one of them a white man. Where was Rachel Carson, Ellen Swallow Richards, Theo Colborn, or any of the women activists in the environmental movement? Not only were women invisible on this list, but you could tell that there was a bias against some significant areas of human endeavor. Where were the black civil rights leaders, like A. Philip Randolph, who questioned the social and political assumptions of the country, and was a humanist/atheist? Where was Emma Goldman? Where was the labor movement? There wasn’t even the slightest effort to reach out beyond the narrow bounds of their rarefied academic skepticism, no interest in expanding the scope of skepticism to stuff that mattered.

That still seems to be the problem. I really want to say to any organization that tries to represent atheists: get out more. Broaden your circle of friends. Circle jerks tend to be self-perpetuating and pointless.

Almost there!

Chris Johnson, who made that lovely coffee table book about atheists called A Better Life: Joy & Meaning in a World Without God, is now planning to turn it into a documentary. He’s running a kickstarter fundraiser forA Better Life: The Film.

I’ve read the book. It won’t have any atheists threatening to convert anyone, harassing people on their deathbeds, or demanding anything but their own personal autonomy. It should be good.

That’s not how you do it

Ophelia has been ripping on this bizarre self-appointed Global Secular Council. I’m just kind of flabbergasted. When they make these kinds of comparisons — “Republicans have The Heritage Foundation, New Democrats have the Progressive Policy Institute, Libertarians have The Cato Institute, and Secularists have the Global Secular Council” — I wonder if they really think that reflects well on them. Would you want to be part of an organization that says “we’re sort of similar to the Heritage Foundation?” And I look at their team, and I see a lot of smart people, but are any of them policy experts?

Will they be effective? I looked at their Issues page, and it’s rather high-mindedly vague. For instance, one issue is International Human Rights. I’m glad they’re for ’em, but after a scant 3 paragraphs that consist of platitudes, they present their summary:

POLICY RECOMMENDATION: The U.S. government should apply political pressure whenever possible to countries violating their international human rights obligations.

So, the Global Secular Council’s advice is that the US should do something about it? How? Do they have lobbyists on their staff? It looks like they have a lot of high-profile figureheads, but where’s the equivalent of Michael DeDora of CFI’s Office of Policy, or American Atheists’ Amanda Knief, or the whole dang team at Americans United for Separation of Church and State? They’re not going to accomplish much if they’re just going to announce a set of goals on a website and then pose wisely to convince other people to go do the actual work, somehow.

I’m always going to be suspicious of an ad hoc group that assembles itself, declares itself the leader, and then tells everyone to follow on the strength of the prestige of their team. That’s not how real, functional organizations work. “BE IN CHARGE” is not a mission statement.

As a counter-example, look at Freethought Blogs. It’s an organization. When Ed Brayton and I were discussing setting it up, we did not begin by saying we’re really, really smart, and we should take charge and lead the whole atheist movement — we had a more reasonable and limited and specific goal. We wanted to set up a platform where we could write freely, and where we could create a shared space for people who wanted to promote equality and diversity within the movement…and thereby amplify the voices of all those people with broader social concerns than simply not believing in gods. The mission came first, then we built the framework to do it, and then we brought in people who fit our ideals (and also threw out one who didn’t).

This new organization seems to have gotten it all backwards, assembling high profile “thought leaders” (yeesh, but I hate that term) first, and then deciding to fix everything in the world. Because they think they can, I guess.