Revealing slip of the keyboard

Catch ’em quick before they get deleted. In a post on Dembski’s blog that is discussing their Kansas ad campaign to falsely portray the IDist’s efforts as solely about teaching good science, there are a couple of interesting comments. Keep in mind that the Discovery Institute has declared that they aren’t trying to sneak intelligent design into the classroom, they just want an “honest” discussion of the weaknesses in evolutionary theory.

Here’s the first revealing comment, which plainly states that the goal of the Kansas science standards is to teach ID:

My hope is that ID will be taught properly in Kansas. Having been born and raised there I would love to claim to be from the first state to teach ID. There is a lot of movement among science high school teachers to never teach ID, even if it becomes a law because “we don’t know how to teach philosophy.”

It would be nice to see them learn. I worked in a school and grew tired of hearing them speak of how it’s wrong to point out the weaknesses in Darwin’s theory because, “even if it is weak, it’s still the best theory out there.” (Shades of Dawkins anyone?)

Comment by Joel Borofsky — July 30, 2006 @ 10:08 am

Bleh. How dishonest can you get? What informed teacher of biology would say of Darwin’s theory, “even if it is weak…”? It isn’t weak at all.

After being asked about this comment, take a look at his response, which digs an even deeper hole.

It really is ID in disguise. The entire purpose behind all of this is to shift it into schools…at least that is the hope/fear among some science teachers in the area. The problem is, if you are not going to be dogmatic in Darwinism that means you inevitably have to point out a fault or at least an alternative to Darwinism. So far, the only plausible theory is ID.

If one is to challenge Darwin, then one must use ID. To challenge Darwin is to challenge natural selection/spontaneous first cause…which is what the Kansas board is attempting to do. When you do that, you have to invoke the idea of ID.

Comment by Joel Borofsky — July 30, 2006 @ 9:04 pm

You may be saying, “So what? Blogs aren’t accountable for the random ravings of their flibbertigibbet commenters.” (I certainly don’t feel that way about mine.) There’s one important additional piece of information you need, though.

Joel Borofsky is Dembski’s research assistant and co-moderator of the site.

(hat tip to Richard Hughes.)

I could use a sign like that…if we can change “dog” to “cat”

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Isn’t that a sweet little old lady? I guess the sign offended a few people, though, and they turned her in to the police.

Insisting that the sign was simply a lark, Mrs Grove said yesterday that she had never received any complaints about it. But police ordered her to take it down and her details were taken. Once the officers left she hung the sign back up.

I like that last bit—what a simple no-nonsense response to bureaucratic BS.

She said: “it’s been there for more than 30 years and all the people who live nearby are used to it. I couldn’t believe it. I’ve never had any complaints with any religion. The sign is just a lark that’s been there for a long time.

I don’t know. I’m looking at that obviously vicious little puppy and wondering how many Jehovah’s Witnesses he had eaten that day.

At least the British seem relatively civil about the whole thing. Symbols seem to inflame a whole ‘nother level of insanity in this country.

(hat tip: Richard Dawkins. Yeah, that Richard Dawkins.)

Francis Collins, doofus for the Lord

I just watched the Francis Collins/Charlie Rose interview (it starts at about 35 minutes on that clip), and although I struggled manfully to appreciate the fellow’s accomplishments and status in science, I failed. All I could see is that he was illogical, irrational, and downright goofy—all the symptoms of a severe affliction with a bad case of religion. That video ought to be a warning to scientists: even a prestigious scientist can suffer Christian mind-rot.

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Religious credulity and the recent spate of godly ‘science’

I usually like Cornelia Dean’s science reporting, but this recent collection of book reviews put me off from the opening paragraph. She begins with the tired old claim that “scientists have to be brave” to embrace religion. Malarkey. I’ve never heard a scientist bring up the subject of religion, pro or con, at a scientific conference or associated informal gathering. You can be as devout as you want to be with no risk to your professional career (you may even find yourself an icon for the compatibility of science and religion!), and as for your personal life, being religious in a country in which 90% of the residents self-identify as religious, and in which religiosity has become a defining character of our political leadership, is hard to characterize as boldly bucking a trend. The rest of the review is an exercise in credulity.

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More press for the godless

Ho hum, I’m quoted in Nature again this week (do I sound convincingly blasé?) It’s a short news article on Francis Collins’ new book, The Language of God, which I find dreadfully dreary and unconvincing, and I find his argument that “The moral law is a signpost to a God who cares about us as individuals. God used a mechanism of evolution to create human beings with whom he could have that kind of fellowship” to be ridiculously unscientific garbage.

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Creationist email to the fraternity

One more piece of creationist email for you: this one was addressed to me and all of my fraternity of Godless Atheists, which I think means you readers here. Never mind protesting that some of you are Christian—get used to it, to these guys you will never be truly Christian.

Anyway, it’s not a very entertaining letter. It was, as usual, amusingly formatted (Outlook Express is evil software), but I’ve stripped all that gunky Microsoft html out of it to simplify posting it. It’s your usual argument from poorly understood physics: the Big Bang is evidence of Jesus, really tiny numbers prove Jesus, mangled information theory proves Jesus. It does have one novel argument I haven’t seen before, that a kitchen spray bottle proves Jesus, but I don’t think it’s going to get much traction in the scientific community. I haven’t bothered to reply to it, but if anyone wants to shred the nonsense in the comments, maybe the authors will find it online.

Oh, and welcome to the Atheist Fraternity! Remember, we’re getting together with the Atheist Sorority on Friday night for a Toga Party!

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What should a scientist think about religion?

In a thread that will not die at the Panda’s Thumb, the argument has settled into a more reasonable back-and-forth on the issue of the entanglement of atheism and science. There are a number of people, including many of the contributors to the Panda’s Thumb, who are adamant that evolution must maintain a plausible deniability from atheism—that atheism is not a necessary consequence of accepting good science (a point with which I agree), and that atheism is basically a scary thing that will alienate many potential supporters (a point with which I strongly disagree). One comment, though, highlights the problem with the atheist-averse strategy.

Distinguish between whether you are speaking as a scientist or as an atheist. If the two labels are not necessarily linked, then it helps to minimize the confusion by clearly stating on a particular matter, whether you are pissed off as a scientist, or as an atheist.

If you must say, “Religion is irrational,” I think a theist would like to know if you are speaking as a scientist or an atheist. Scientist: Is irrationality a scientific concept? On what quantitative measure do we evaluate irrationality? Atheist: Why do I reject God premises? Why is materialism a superior philosophy?

As I was puzzling over how to answer such an odd question, I realized why I thought it was odd. The scientist and atheist positions are the same. It doesn’t matter which hat I’m wearing, the answers won’t change.

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‘Brights’

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Since it was brought up in the comments, I thought I’d bring back my statement on the “Brights.”

There’s a lot of noise on the net right now about The Brights, the idea that we can invent a pleasant new name for godless atheists and thereby improve our image. It’s being pushed by luminaries like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. Here’s a nice quote that summarizes my opinion:

Perhaps the best of the available euphemisms for atheist is nontheist. It lacks the connotation of positive conviction that there is definitely no god, and it could therefore easily be embraced by Teapot or Tooth Fairy Agnostics. It is less familiar than atheist and lacks its phobic connotations. Yet, unlike a completely new coining, its meaning is clear. If we want a euphemism at all, nontheist is probably the best.

The alternative which I favor is to renounce all euphemisms and grasp the nettle of the word atheism itself, precisely because it is a taboo word carrying frissons of hysterical phobia. Critical mass may be harder to achieve than with some non-confrontational euphemism, but if we did achieve it with the dread word atheist, the political impact would be all the greater.

Guess who said that?

Richard Dawkins himself, as cited here. I have no idea what has happened to his good sense since.

I have absolutely no problem with the words “atheist”, “secular humanist”, “infidel”, “damned hellbound godless heathen”, or whatever names people want to apply to us. It’s very peculiar for an atheist to object to the terms “atheist” or “godless”, as if there was something negative about it. It’s even more pathetic to pick out some name you like, but that has never been applied to you, and ask that you be addressed by it—it smacks of a six-year-old who decides his name isn’t quite good enough, so he announces to the schoolyard that he’d like to be called “Spike” from now on. It’s laughable.

The argument that this is analogous to the appropriation of terms like “queer” and “gay” by the homosexual community is false. Those were used as terms of opprobrium by outsiders, and were seized and inverted by homosexuals to remove their sting, and as a mark of pride. This isn’t the case with “Bright”. It’s artificial and phony.

I’m proud to be non-human

Here’s a dilemma: I think Ron Numbers, the philosopher and historian of science, is a smart fellow and a net asset to the opposition to creationism, and I agree with him that a diversity of approaches to the issue is a good thing. My opinion could change, though, because I am experiencing considerable exasperation with the apologists for religion on the evolution side, and this interview with Numbers isn’t helping things. Here’s an example of the kind of nonsense that drives me nuts.

QUESTION: Are scientists in general atheistic?

MR. NUMBERS: The public often gets the impression that most scientists are non-believers. But, that’s not true. Just within the past year the journal Nature published a study that revealed even today roughly the same proportion of scientists believe in God as did 75 years ago. [The figure is almost 40%]

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Fear of the godless

That’s what it all boils down to, isn’t it? People are afraid of reason, because they know it erodes faith—better to foster ignorance than risk encouraging people to think. Brian Flemming, of The God Who Wasn’t There, links to an interesting account of what happened when an ‘open-minded’ church offered to screen his movie: they only showed two clips and bracketed them with lots of apologetic padding. I think they know what would happen if they let that bomb go off in the minds of their faithful congregants.

This stuff is going to get out there, though. Dawkins’ series, The Root of All Evil? is available online right now: here are links to the two parts, The God Delusion and The Virus of Faith. Dangerous stuff, that. Expose a child to the Enlightenment today!