The Austin Atheist posted this strange documentary about life in Austin, Texas. I’m pretty sure this can’t possibly be satire, but since I’ve never been to Austin, I could be wrong.
Maybe it’s a mistake, and this is actually a documentary about Orange County. Is there an Austin in California?
Greta Munger is now a full professor. I think that means she is required to wear the black robes and funny hat full time now.
OK, so should I just retire and hand over the keys to the blog to Skatje? She’s taking over my territory now. Whippersnapper.
“Experts are scum.” That’s the amusing interpretation of Lore Sjöberg, and even better, Kieran Healy finds an entertaining example. I use Wikipedia fairly often, but it is not for anything with much depth or controversy—even fake controversy, like issues in evolution. And one serious difficulty (which is going to be endemic to any human endeavor) is that some people are jerks.
Are you a voice talent? Want to participate in an online drama? Sign up for a part in a podcast recreation of parts of the Dover trial. It should be fun, if you’re into that kind of thing.
I’m not volunteering, I’m afraid. I can’t act, and I’m also afraid that the closest match to my voice would be Michael Behe, and I’d die of mortification.
Alan Sokal—who has a history of criticizing the irrational Left—and Chris Mooney—who has come down hard on the anti-science Right—have teamed up to write an op-ed that makes suggestions to keep both sides from falling into the same trap again.
I think the root cause of the problem is that we have a democracy in which education is an insufficiently high priority, and either party can succumb to the temptation of going for votes by appealing to the most uneducated segment of the electorate. The Republican party has thrived in the past by going the other way, and building its base in the wealthy elite (which, unfortunately, has no certainty of being coupled to reason and education); they’ve long since learned that religion is a handy bridge to get votes from the most irrational side of the population, and have ridden the crazy train to power.
Democrats have long been populists, but I suspect that the focus on labor has at least grounded the party in practical concerns. That focus is fading away fast, and I worry that in an attempt to rebuild a solid majority they are also going to cast a covetous eye on the religious masses (hence my reluctance to support Barack Obama) and get there in the wrong way.
Sokal and Mooney propose some top-down safeguards against the further encroachment of anti-science bias into government. These are good ideas.
To address this new crisis over the relationship between science and politics, we propose a combination of political activism and institutional reform. Congress needs to establish safeguards to protect the integrity of scientific information in Washington — strong whistle-blower protections for scientists who work in government agencies would be a good start.
We also need a strengthening of the government scientific advisory apparatus, starting with the revival of the Office of Technology Assessment. And we need congressional committees to continue with their investigations of cases of science abuse within the Bush administration, in order to learn what other reforms are necessary.
At the same time, journalists and citizens must renounce a lazy “on the one hand, on the other hand” approach and start analyzing critically the quality of the evidence. For, in the end, all of us — conservative or liberal, believer or atheist — must share the same real world. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria do not spare deniers of evolution, and global climate change will not spare any of us. As physicist Richard Feynman wrote in connection with the space shuttle Challenger disaster, “nature cannot be fooled.”
To avoid nature’s punishment, we must take steps now to restore reality-based government.
I’d just add that we also need more bottom-up preventive measures: more education. I want a reality-based government, and the best way to get there is to increase the pool of reality-based voters.
At last, a science blogger who lives somewhere even more remote and colder than Morris.
Nic McPhee is looking for a solution to an odd problem: a bat died and rotted on some fine furniture, leaving a nasty protein residue. Give him some suggestions on how to clean wing of bat off wooden furniture.
This might call for the expertise of a witch.
Scienceblogs are a hotbed of irreligiosity today. Besides my usual, expected, reflexive contumely (illegal in at least one state!), Aardvarchaeology is hosting the 59th Carnival of the Godless, and Revere rips into CNN’s anti-atheist bias. Sample stupid quote:
Listen, we are a Christian nation. I’m not a Christian. I’m Jewish, but I recognize we’re a Christian country and freedom of religion doesn’t mean freedom from religion.
Got that? We are not free to be atheists if we choose, according to Constitutional scholar and moderate voice of reason Debbie Schlussel.
Pat Boone has another article on evolution in WingNutDaily. It does not disappoint in its off-the-scale stupidity. Just one paragraph is enough to tell you it’s a waste of time.
But in a fascinating book, John Myers’ “Voices from the Edge of Eternity,” we find the detailed personal account of Lady Hope, of Northfield, England, who visited the aging scientist often at his bedside during his last days. It’s too long to recount well here, but she tells of the Bible he was reading constantly and of the worship services that took place regularly in the summerhouse in his garden. She says that when she brought up the controversy still raging between believers in the Genesis account of creation and the growing group of scientists and teachers dismissing that account in favor of his “The Origin of Species” and related theories, he seemed distressed. And “a look of agony came over his face as he said ‘I was a young man with unformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time about everything. To my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them.'”
Lady Hope was a good evangelical Christian—that is, she was a shameless liar, fraud, and fool. I can see where Pat Boone might feel some affinity for her dishonest propaganda. It also explains how he can close with a quote from another liar for Christ (Moonie version):
Now, Dr. Jonathan Wells states flatly, “I think in 50 years, Darwinian evolution will be gone from the science curriculum. People will look back on it and ask how anyone could, in their right mind, have believed this, because it’s so implausible when you look at the evidence.”
But 50 years could be enough to destroy the faith of two generations of our young, enough to replace it with a bankrupt false religion. Will we have the courage, the gumption, to make sure that doesn’t happen?
Wells is wrong, of course; the only way we can strip evolution from the science curriculum is by destroying science in this country altogether. If that’s the promise of these creationists, let’s hope we have the courage to destroy faith even more quickly.
