Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

This morning, as I was sending off the latest set of anti-Bush buttons in the mail to people who had ordered them, I lingered for a moment over the address of one recipient: Mankato, Minnesota. The name “Mankato” brought me right back to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books, which I read over and over as a kid, and the Little House TV series, complete with Melissa Gilbert flying down a hill with her little arms stuck out wide at the end of each show.

Another town I think of is Skokie, Illinois. When I hear “Skokie,” I think of Nazis, and so for me the name Skokie is associated with white racism. That’s unfair, because Skokie is a fairly liberal-friendly place, picked on by Nazis outsiders back in the 1970s because it has a lot of Jewish people living there.

What place names can’t you hear without some association, fair or unfair, to the past?

Do we reap what we sow? If we live by the sword do we die by the sword? If we use the issue of gay marriage as a political tool of hatred and intolerance to manipulate people into voting without thinking, do we lose our souls in the process?

This week yet another member of the religious right, Pastor Ted Haggard, is at the receiving end of the world of intolerance he helped create. While the living was easy, he basked in the limelight of power, raked in the money, and lived the kind of life in private he condemned in public.

The Republicans created the anti-gay marriage issue as a wedge of hate to leverage votes and money, but God will not be mocked. The wedge has turned around to split the Republican party and the lives of those like Foley and Haggard who forged the sword of public opinion.

What exactly is Pastor Ted Haggard’s theology of sexuality? One parishioner describes the evangelical view of homosexuality:

The life of the gay man, in the evangelical imagination, seems to be an endless succession of orgasms, interrupted only by jocular episodes of male bonhomie. The gay man promises Christian men a guilt-free existence, the garden before Eve. As such, he is not just tempting but temptation embodied; “the Enemy”…

Haggard’s evangelical view of marriage, described at his son’s wedding servcie, is equally bleak:

Earlier in the week, at a staff meeting, he had announced that he would use the wedding as an illustration, and to that end he delivered a lengthy prenuptial presentation with slides, in which he laid out a fractal-like repeating pattern of relations, shrinking and expanding: that of God to man, reflected in that of man to wife, which is in turn a model for a godly society. Just as we conform ourselves to God’s will, so, said Ted, must “the Woman.” The Woman must take on her man’s calling, her man’s desire…

In return, Pastor Ted continued, the Woman gets the Man’s love; authority just wants to serve. “Total surrender!” he called. “True or false?”

“TRUE!” answered the 8,000 assembled.

The Man is the Christ; the Woman is the Body. He is coming; she is the church; she must open her doors. United, they are the Kingdom, ready for battle. “The Christian home,” preached Pastor Ted, “is to be in a constant state of war.”

There’s a lot of really weird stuff going on here. But what?

A confession about socks and size: I admit that, although I have merely size 12 feet, I like to wear socks that are size 13-15. My feet enjoy the feeling of being in something that is just a little bit too large for them.

You know something? They stay up on my ankles just fine. Do I have big ankles?

I say this because it is Superficial Sunday. There is no deeper meaning. I just like big socks.

Like my essay on the LDS conception of God, this is only a first draft. It is written with the intention of posting it on a discussion board for my students, but I thought I’d give it a test run here. You will find plenty of places where I ought to offer citations. I will before I offer it to my students.
- Scott

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended for us to forego their use.
- Galileo

Evolution Creation Debate
It is common for students starting college or university to believe in creationism. It is considerably less likely that those same students will believe in creationism upon graduation. Invariably, every semester brings in a new batch of students who reject evolution, sometimes quite vociferously. The purpose of this short essay is to point out some of the reasons that it is more reasonable to believe in evolution than creationism.
First, some clarifications.
What does the term “creationism” mean? There are certainly variations depending upon which brand of religion is telling you what to believe, but some of the more common themes include:
- the world, and all living things, were created at the same time
- about 6000 years ago
- by an intelligent force;
- geography and biogeography can be explained by recourse to a worldwide flood
- about 5000 years ago.
What does the term “evolution” mean? This one is actually quite simple:
- species can and do change over time.
What about Darwinism? What does that mean?
- there can be variations in characteristics from generation from generation
- (this is now understood in terms of genetics, but genetics is not part of Darwinism, per se)
- there can be variations in environments.
- some variations in characteristics are better suited to some environments
- organisms with characteristics that are better suited to their environments are more successful at reproduction
- so are more likely to pass on their characteristics than those less well suited.
One more term—what is a theory?
- an attempt to explain a phenomena based on
- observable facts
- accepted principles, and
- assumptions that don’t contradict the observable facts and accepted principles;
- it is also falsifiable. This is ESSENTIAL to understanding what a scientific theory is. When a scientist posits a theory, it becomes publicly testable. It could, of necessity and by definition, potentially be wrong.
- Falsifiability allows science to be self correcting. A theory makes predictions. If those predictions turn out to be incorrect, scientists use that information to revise the theory.
- Hence, scientists use the word “truth” selectively. One of my professors said to me that “as a scientists, you don’t hope to be right; you hope to be wrong for interesting reasons.”
- So science is an attempt to access the truth, all the while recognizing that you are only approximating the truth.
There is another sense in which we commonly use the word “theory.” We sometimes use it to mean something that is not substantiated, something not supported, like an opinion, a myth, or even a guess (as in “Well, that’s just your theory.”).

Evolution is Only a Theory
So with that in mind, here is an important conceptual clarification. Sometimes people will say “Evolution is just a theory.” Is this an accurate statement? In a sense it is probably factually correct, but it is at the same time misleading. True, some scientists think of evolution as a theory, but they think of it in the first sense mentioned above, in the self correcting approximation to the truth sense, not in the my guess is as valid as anybody else’s guess sense. However, when somebody makes the statement “evolution is just a theory,” you can bet your last dollar that they are implying the second sense of the word, banking on the fact the common public understanding of the word is the second, not the first.
When you hear the phrase “evolution is just a theory,” which connotation of “theory” do you hear? The phrase is intended to lead people into thinking that evolution is just a guess—that there are multiple frameworks that could explain the observed phenomena equally well, and that asserting evolution over the others is essentially random. It is a sneaky but effective rhetorical tactic—make the statement knowing that most folks will interpret in one sense, but if anybody challenges you, you have option to turn around and say that the statement is factually correct.
Contained in the statement “evolution is just a theory” is another ambiguity. If a scientist assents to the statement, he/she most likely does not mean to agree with the statement that evolution, per se, is hypothetical. Virtually every scientist working in a field related to evolution accepts the occurrence of evolution as an established fact. If a scientist does agree that “evolution is just a theory” he or she is most agreeing that Darwinism is a theory. Darwinian evolution is the theory postulated to explain evolution. Evolution is considered an established fact that stands in need of explanation, Darwinism is the theoretical explanation of the mechanism behind the established fact. And though Darwinism is a theory, it is a theory in the scientific sense described above, not the opinion/guess sense. By analogy, Evolution is a theory in the same sense that gravity is a theory. Nobody seriously doubts that gravity exists, but exactly how best to explain it is where theory enters the equation.
Don’t be swayed by the claim that evolution is “just” a theory.

“I don’t know the answer to the question” ≠ unanswered question ≠ unanswerable question.
A common mistake in student thinking is to argue against evolution by asking what they think is a question that has not been answered by evolutionary science, thereby exposing what think to be a fatal flaw in science.
Typically, the student mistake is to confuse a question that he/she does not know the answer to with a question that has not been answered. Included in this note is a discussion of a couple of these questions. Questions like “how do you account for the missing link” and “if we evolved from monkeys, how come there are still monkeys?” are questions that have an answer that fits in the big picture provided by evolutionary theory and are consistent with the evidence… i.e. they have been answered.
A second mistake in this approach is to suppose that an unanswered question poses an insurmountable obstacle to the scientific method. This is an example of a common error in thinking that applies either/or thinking to situations when there is room for a middle ground.
In this case the either/or is that either there is an answer to this question, or Darwinism is false/creationism is true. The problem is that there are number of potential other alternatives. It is possible, for example, that both Darwinism and creationism could be wrong. Biodiversity could be explained by a further, yet unarticulated theory.
This is probably not necessary as Darwinism does not claim to have all the answers. Our understanding of evolution has been contributed to by, for example, Mendel’s studies of heritability, genetics, linguistics, geology, archeology, and anthropology. The answer to the “insurmountable” question could come from any source and need not invalidate Darwinism.
Furthermore, this approach to critiquing evolution fails to recognize one of the essential elements of the scientific method. Science is not threatened by unanswered questions, rather, it thrives on them. Being an unending quest for the truth, science has to have means of discovering error, it has to be self correcting. Asking questions, making predictions, and testing those predictions are all essential to the progress of knowledge. If we stopped asking questions, knowledge would cease to expand.

What About The Missing Link
There is an implied metaphor in the question “what about the missing link?” The metaphor is that of a chain, and the implications are that (i) evolution is a linear process, and that (ii) there are clear definable links in the chain. Furthermore, just as a chain with gaps would hardly function as a chain, the implication is that the missing link in evolution makes the theory untenable.
The problem is that the metaphor is misleading. Better metaphors would avoid the clear definable links of the chain and focus on shades of grey, and instead of focusing on the linearity of the chain would focus on the fact there are multiple lines of development—a branching rather than a single line from point A to point B.
Here’s statement that sounds like support for creationists as opposed to scientists. The problem is not that there is a missing link, but that there are innumerable missing links. But surprisingly, this is exactly what evolutionary theory would predict.
Gould (1977, 2002) proposes the theory of Punctuated Equilibrium. Equilibrium means stability, and punctuated means interrupted or disrupted. In Gould’s theory, there are periods of rapid speciation during which there is rapid change and branching. These periods, however, are only the punctuation. For the most part, Gould argues, there are periods of tremendous stability during which there are few forces acting upon species that would force a change. Consequently, evolutionary theory predicts that even if we find lots of fossils, we should expect only a small ratio of these to be transitional fossils because the periods of punctuation are relatively small.
Missing links, being exactly what one would expect based on evolutionary theory, are hardly the smoking gun thought by lay persons.

Why are not other species of primates evolving into humans?
Another question raised by those opposed to evolution regards the claim by science that humans are a species of great apes. If humans evolved from primates, they reason, then why are other species changing into humans?
This stems from a number of misunderstandings regarding how evolution works.
The first is that evolution is not teleological. Teleology means moving toward a predetermined aim or goal. An acorn growing into an oak tree could be described teleologically because it’s final form—the oak tree—is already coded into the acorn; there is no waiting and wondering whether forces of nature will make the acorn grow into an antelope or a bacteria, it is already determined.
Those who are steeped in creationist thought tend to think teleologically. Just as the acorn is developing according a plan (“design”), so the world, as is, is the result of design. And because it is so, it is inevitable that things would turn out as they did.
Those who watch Star Trek are familiar with the question of why all intelligent alien species are so similar to humans. Almost all aliens typically are just shy of 6 feet tall, have two arms, two legs, one head, two eyes in the front of their heads, communicate through forcing air through some sort of vocal cord in the neck and through a mouth in the front of their heads. Well, this raises the question—why? Why do so many alien races look almost exactly like humans.
There was an episode of Star Trek (The Next Generation) where this question was addressed. My memory on this is fuzzy, but the explanation was something like this: when life began on Earth, it did so because the planet was “seeded” by a race of super aliens. Contained in the “seed” was a tendency toward characteristics that we would describe as human. Well, these same Super-Johnny-Appleseeds did the same thing all over the universe. Therefore, whenever intelligent life is discovered, the life-forms share relevant characteristics with humanity.
The Star Trek TNG example is a wonderful illustration of what we mean when we refer to teleology. Just like the seed and sapling have in them a disposition to grow into an oak tree, a teleological thinker would look at our ancestors and presume that they had, inherent in them, a predisposition to move toward humanness.
Prior to Copernicus, humans believed the world to be the center of the universe, and that the world was created for the benefit of humanity. We assumed that the human form was designed by God, the human form was the top of the biological hierarchy.
An analogous idea is found in the views of one of the founders of Sociology, Auguste Compte. Compte, like Europeans in general, thought that there was a natural hierarchy of sorts of societies, with cultures inevitably going through stages—an evolution leading toward a society like that of Western Europe.
It is not difficult to see why a creationist—someone who believes that humans are the result of a grand design by God, when confronted by the idea of evolution would read teleology into it. Evolution, if it happened, was the process that leads (inevitably) to humans. We are the natural result of the process.
But in the absence of the idea that there was an inevitable tendency towards humanity as the ultimate goal, the question of why there are other species of great apes becomes moot. If there is no predetermined process that turns non-human primates into humans, then there is no surprise that other primates are not gradually changing into humans.
Evolutionary theory does not include such an element of teleology. Any teleology in evolution is a misunderstanding on the part of the critic. Humans are considered to be the result of random changes that could have quite easily turned out different. Changes happen, not according to a predetermined pattern, but randomly, and those that fit a niche are more likely to pass on their genes than those less adapted.

Non-falsifiability in Creationism
Phillip Kitcher (1982) argues that Creationism claims an interesting fallback positions that make it non-falsifiable.
He quotes Whitcomb and Harris (1961) as saying that “[i]t is because the Bible itself teaches us these things that we are fully justified in appealing to the power of God, whether or not He used means amenable to our scientific understanding…”
If one takes such an assertion seriously, it implies that because claims are based on the Bible, we can accept them as being true regardless of what evidence actually says. This attitude is what puts the creationist in his interesting position. Whenever there is evidence that could fit into a creationist structure, it should be embraced as confirming evidence; whenever there is contradictory evidence, it doesn’t matter because our conclusions are true regardless. Disconfirming evidence, then, can be dismissed as if it were the exception.
Compare this to science. Science values disconfirming evidence. As described above, the possibility that you might be wrong is essential to the pursuit of knowledge. It allows science to be self correcting and always improving.
Without admitting the possibility that you might be wrong, there is no way to discover whether you are in fact wrong. If you can’t show that you are not wrong, could you ever hope to show that you are right?

Cost/Benefit Analysis
In deciding whether to accept evolution, it would be helpful to consider a cost benefit analysis.
1. If evolution did not occur…
One thing that new students often do not realize is that evolution is extremely well established. Essentially all of the sciences converge on the same conclusion. One could look at archeology, anthropology, geology, biogeography, psychology, physics, psychology, linguistics, paleontology, biochemistry, genetics, astronomy, etc, and they all arrive at the same conclusion—that evolution happened.
So one cost of rejecting evolution is that we have to throw out all of the sciences. If we reject evolution, we also have to reject the scientific method with it.
If we have to reject evolution, we have to reject the notion that we can use evidence and rationality to arrive at true conclusions.
Furthermore, while rejecting evolution, we are claiming
(i) all of the sciences are mistaken,
(ii) they converge on the same (mistaken) conclusion, and
(iii) they all use different methodologies.
We have to ask ourselves how it is even conceivable that researchers using different and flawed investigative methods could independently arrive at the same profoundly incorrect conclusion. Some possibilities…
(i) God created the world in such a way that it is obvious (though wrong) that evolution has occurred.
If you believe in God you believe that rationality is a gift from God. If you accept possibility (i), you accept that God planted all the evidence such that, when we use our God given gift of rationality, we arrive at a false belief.
(ii) The devil placed the fossil record there.
God, though omnipotent (there is nothing God cannot do), omniscient (there is nothing that God does not know) and benevolent (God has our best interests in mind) allowed the devil to plant evidence such that, when we use our God given gift of rationality, we arrive at a false belief.
(iii) Or perhaps there is a vast conspiracy of all scientists and social scientists
While (iii) is a theoretical possibility, it is quite untenable. How does a scientist make a name for himself or herself? By providing new theories and new explanations, by showing where science has been wrong in the past. Being a scientist and being religious are not mutually exclusive, many scientists are religious. If perhaps one or two of those religious scientists were to break the silence regarding the big conspiracy, they would be the most famous scientists in the world. If we accept option (iii) we have to believe that all those who enter into the pursuit of truth that is science become part of this conspiracy of silence to the extent that they are capable of resisting the temptation of becoming the most famous scientist in the world by doing the very thing that motivated them into the sciences in the first place—exposing the truth!
2. If evolution did occur
The biggest cost here is that creationists will have to give up a literal reading of Genesis (or the Qur’an, or PofGP).
Please note that I did not contend that religious persons would need to give up his or her belief in God or in the Bible. It is quite conceivable that one could retain religious conviction whilst not accepting a literal reading of Genesis. This must be the case when you consider the numbers of scientists who maintain religious belief.
One reason that people are motivated to maintain belief in the literal reading of Genesis is that one of the major events of Genesis is the Fall of Adam and Eve and the subsequent separation of Man from God. When Christians talk about being saved, to what are they referring? It is commonly understood that being saved refers to being saved from the effects of Fall as described in Genesis.
Clearly there must be alternative interpretations of the opening chapters of the Bible, else how could so many scientists be Bible believers, how could the Pope accept evolution, or how could they teach evolution at BYU (yes they do).
There are a number of alternative readings of Genesis.
If you believe that God inspired the Bible, then in Genesis God is trying to tell you something. What that something might be I don’t want to venture too far as religion is such a personal thing, but it is probably reasonable to read the opening chapters of Genesis as a message concerning the human condition. If it is a revelation from God, consider the context in which it was revealed. Had God inspired the writers of Genesis to write in terms of molecular biology, heritability, and evolutionary psychology, the message would not have been understood. If Genesis is an inspired book, God would have had the authors write in terms of the metaphysics of the day so that it could be understood by the people of the day.
There is no indication in the text of Genesis that the metaphysics is the message.
So the cost-benefit analysis.
Option 1: reject evolution
cost:
- with it goes science, the scientific method, knowledge derived from science
- and our belief that we can gain knowledge through evidence and application of our God given faculty of reason (so why are you even in school?)
benefit:
- maintain a literal understanding of Genesis, even though a literal reading is not necessary for belief in religion in general nor Genesis specifically.
Option 2: reject creationism
cost
- with it goes a literal reading of Genesis
- there is no cost to belief in God, nor in belief in the Bible.
benefit”
- we have not rejected the possibility of obtaining knowledge through evidence and reason.
Finally, it is instructive to consider who are the people who are making the claims for evolution and creationism, and consider who would be the most likely to make an error due to preconceived notions or biases. In what follows in the next few paragraphs, I am admittedly speaking in sweeping generalities.
Speaking for evolution and Darwinism are the scientists. An important element of scientific validity is the quest to eliminate biases. One of the main purposes of peer review of academic papers is to ensure that the research methods employed are adequate to eliminate (or at least reduce) the impact that the expectations, preferences, or motivations of the researchers might have on the outcome of the research. You’ve heard folks say that “you can prove anything/!” Well, no, not really. That’s only accurate in poorly designed research. What you want to turn out o be true should have no bearing on the results you obtain from your research. In fact, to allow one’s expectations or biases too much sway is to put roadblocks in the way of the acquisition of objective truth.
Creationists, on the other hand, are motivated to believe in creationism, not because of the evidence, but because of religious considerations. Believing in creationism is a matter of faith.
Faith is believing a proposition to be true in the absence of an adequate justification (reason, evidence) for believing that proposition. Faith requires an act of will, i.e. “I choose to believe X (that God exists, that there is life after death), even though X cannot be justified by reason and/or evidence.”
Furthermore, faith is widely held to be a virtue. i.e. it is virtuous to believe certain proposition in the absence of or contrary to evidence or reason. This leads to an interesting condition in some true believers. The lack of scientific support for creationism is not seen to be problematic. If “taking a leap” of faith is virtuous, then surely, the greater the leap, the more virtuous. The greater the act of will required to believe a proposition, the more unshakeable the belief.
Consequently, the creationist openly admits bias, openly admits that he will believe creationism regardless of what any evidence says
So if we compare the two proponents. Scientists are always looking for their errors, trying to self correct. Creationists believing there is no possibility of error so not asking the questions that an lead to self correction…
Who is most likely to be biased?
(i) somebody who examines the evidence then draws conclusions?
(ii) somebody who draws conclusions, then examines the evidence? Then ignores evidence contrary to their biases?
Or phrased another way–In Empirical matters (like evolution) which is going to be the better research method for discovering truth. Examining the facts and reasoning from the evidence, or believing whatever you would prefer to be true…
Finally I want to very briefly ask, why would a non-creationist ever even listen to an “argument” for creationism? If I wish to convince you that a proposition is true, I could look at the evidence for the truthfulness of that proposition, and/or I could use reason and logic. But what happens when the only way to believe that proposition is to ignore evidence and reason? What is left to use as the premisses in your attempt to convince. In order to defend creationism, one must ignore the evidence, the logic of the scientific method, and reason. What is left to use in an argument for creationism?

Gould, S. J. (1977) “Evolution’s erratic pace.” Natural History 86 (May): 12-16.
Gould, S. J. (2002). The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Belknap Press.
Kitcher, P. (1982). Against Creationism. Abusing Science, pp.124-164. Cambridge; MIT Press.

It is absolute, undeniable science that bottlenose dolphins are beginning to look more human. After trying to keep it hushed up, Japanese scientists have finally admitted that they have captured a bottlenose dolphin that has legs - just like a human being!

Bottlenose dolphins appear to be part of some kind of genetic experiment in which mutations arise, and then cause species to change form, until they are able to exploit environments that they could not even access before. Put emphasis on the word exploit!

It seems that bottlenose dolphins, which some scientists believe could be even more intelligent than human beings, are growing legs so that they can learn to walk on land. And what do you think will happen then? They’re clearly intent upon becoming the master race, using their big brains to become our superiors, and take over our civilization, becoming the new dolphin elites! They’ll have us catching their fish for them soon enough.

And you think you can get away and hide? Oh, no. Bottlenose dolphins use echolocation to find things that are hidden, so they can “see” you when you’re sleeping! Remember, sound goes through solid walls. There’s nothing they won’t be able to spy on.

It won’t be too long before they start using their new strong legs to go hunting on land, and then we’re all going to die!

Look for signs of the invasion first at your local sushi bar.

From the discussion of Ted Haggard and wedge issues, here’s a more or less complete transcript of the video Scott gave a link to. There’s a lot of non-verbal content in the film–the images of the church, the multiple screens, the worshipers, the musical performers, as well as the pissing contest between the two indivuduals–So here are just the words without all the other messages attached. The film goes back and forth between Haggard’s statements about what he does and visual evidence of what he really does from his sermon.

Richard Dawkins (narrating): This is the New Life Church in Colorado Springs where conservative Christians have built a $18 million worship center as their new Jerusalem in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Evangelical churches like this have become a powerful lobby, exerting enormous influence on everything in America from the teaching of science in schools to foreign policy. this place strains belief. It isn’t just a church but a ready made social network. the 12,000 strong congregation can also attend 1300 organized programs whee they can meet to exchange Christian tips on everything form marriage to dog walking. it’s all terribly exuberant and intense, much less tradtion here than (unintelligible), but planty fo swaggering authority. (Pan to image of woman in pink standing in the aisle raising arm in straight up salute as Haggard enters arena, others in aisle raise two arms straight above head.)The pastor is Ted Haggard, a powerful man and chairman of the national association of evangelicals and the New Life is Ted’s evangelical vetting.

Haggard (sermon flashback): Welcome to all of our friends. Take a moment to say hello to the people in front of you, the people behind you, to your right and to your left. If you’re here for the very first time we have a packet of information we want to give to you so all of you visitors if you would please…

RD:Sadly the welcome would prove to be short lived. when I started talking to pastor Haggard about the Bible and scientific fact…

Haggard: You’ll find yourself wrong on some things, right on some other things but please in the process of it don’t be arrogant.

Haggard (sermon flashback): All right let’s all pray together the father we love you and we praise you we exalt you god. Everything that’s within us wants to give you praise and glory and honor becasue we are so grateful.

RD (narrates):The New Life church in Colorado Springs is a bastion of religious conservatism.

Haggard (sermon flashback): …for transforming our lives, thank you lord God…

RD narrates: I’ve come to try to understand what I see as irrational faith is thriving and why it’s attacking science.

Haggard (sermon flashback): ..and everybody say ‘amen’.

Everybody: AMEN.

RD narrates: Pastor Ted has a hotline to God to George Bush a staunch Republican he claims he has a weekly conference call with the president. has also rubbed shoulders with Tony Blair and Ariel Sharon.

RD: That was quite a show you gave to us today quite a bit of money seems to be spent here today

Haggard: Yes, I want people to worship and enjoy and be in a setting where the speaker is close to them–that’s why it’s in the round so they can be up close to me and so that I can look at them.

RD: Well, you’ve certainly very effective at what you do I mean you seem to have all the airs of, well, it almost reminded me, you must forgive me, of Nuremburg Rally.

Haggard: Ha Ha

RD: Dr Geobbels would have been proud.

(music)

Haggard: I don’t know anything about the Nuremburg Rallies but I know a lot of Americans think of it as a rock concert.

(pan to musicians, audience in neckties)

Haggard: When I prepare a presentation I don’t get a group af lunatics to come in and say, “Pastor, and you’re just so wonderful, I believe everything you say, oh yes, doctor Ted.” I would be opposed to that.

Haggard (sermon flashback): The Bible says who have been chosen according to the foreknowlege of God the father. He’s talking about us, we’ve been chosen. what’s that word? Obediant. Say it out loud.

Everyone: OBEDIANT.

Haggard (sermon flashback):Okay, we who have been chosen…

RD: Every person needs at the center, some sense of meaning about existance. It is life and death. It makes us who we are. Yet most of us, as we grow up and become responsible adults, accept that life is complex, that we live in a world of subtle shades, not sharp black and white. I worry that these born agains are being persuaded to return to childish certainties. The only truth they need is God: God as interpreted for them by their pastor.

Haggard (sermon flashback): Everybody knows that we believe in the Bible’s the word of God and today I talked about love your neighbor as yourself, now I didn’t have to produce evidence, sociological evidence or psychological evidence the book is true.

RD: How can you say that people are asked to think for themselves when they’re told everything in this book is true?

Haggard: Because they don’t have to believe that.

(talking at the same time)RD:this book says one thing , that says another, that says another..

Haggard: Well the evidence I can present is that we’ve got a book written over 1500 years by 43 different authors and it doesn’t contradict itself.

RD: It doesn’t?

Haggard:You can’t give me two–two experts in certain areas that are in the same generation that are in the same area of study that don’t contradict themselves.

RD: That’s the beauty of science. We have lots of evidence and the evidence al the time coming in, constantly changing our minds and you have one book that you say doesn’t change.

(talking at the same time) Haggard: Exactly. RD:not doing think for themselves

Haggard (sermon flashback): Everybody say “true”.

Everybody: TRUE.

Haggard (sermon flashback): All right then, that’s the…

Richard Dawkins (narrating): But my biggest concern is that evangelicals like Haggard are foisting falsehoods on their flock. Evangelicals are denying scientific evidence just to support Bronze Age myths.

Ted Haggard: We fully embrace the scientific method as American evangelicals, and we think as time goes along as we discover more and more facts that we’ll learn more an more about how god created the heaven and the earth.

RD: The scientific method clearly demonstrates the world is 4 ½ billion years old, do you accept that?

Haggard: You know what you’re doing is you are, you are accepting some of the views that are accepted in some portions of the scientific community as fact, where in fact your grandchildren might listen to the tape of you saying that and laugh at you, you want to bet? Sometimes it’s hard for a human being to study the ear or study the eye and think that that happened by accident.

RD: I beg your pardon, did you say by accident?

Haggard:Yeah.

RD: What did you mean, by accident?

Haggard: The eye just formed itself, somehow.

RD: Who says it did?

Haggard: Some evolutionists say it.

RD: Not a single one that I’ve ever met.

Haggard: (sarcasm) Really?

RD: (sarcasm) Really.

Haggard: Oh?

RD: You obviously know nothing about the subject.

Haggard: Or maybe you haven’t met the people I have.
Ha.Ha.
But you see, you do understand, you do understand that this issue right here of intellectual arrogance is the reason why people like you have a difficult problem with people of faith. I don’t communicate an air of superiority over the people because I know so much more, and if you only read the books I know and if you only know the scientists I knew, then you would be great like me.
Well.
Sir.
There could be many things that you know well, there are other things that you don’t know well. As you age you’ll find yourself wrong on some things right on some other things, but please in the process of it, don’t be arrogant.

Dawson (narrates) : We just had a rather disconcerting experience, we were just packing up our stuff ready to go and drove up in his pickup truck and said get off my land immediately I’ll have you thrown in jail, I’ll seize your flim and then he said a very curious thing. you called my children animals. (pan to group of people in parking lot including the woman in pink who gave the fascist salute) Afterwards we worked out that meant was that I talked about evolution He thought I was saying that his flock was animals I was since all humans are animals but…

The picture seems to be missing a caption….

At the end of a speech that he gave three days ago at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, Democratic presidential candidate Mike Gravel said the following:

“In closing, I paraphrase another prescient statement by President Eisenhower: Someday the American people will want peace so badly that they will push the government aside and just seize it.”

I’m trying to understand what Mike Gravel was talking about. How was President Eisenhower prescient? I mean, when have the American people pushed the government aside in order to seize peace?

Besides that, if the people push the government aside and seize peace, that isn’t very peaceful, is it? How exactly does peace by mob action work?

I can’t make sense of this statement enough either to agree or disagree with it. Its premises are so foggy that it just confuses me.

Jeralyn Merritt’s went on TV to talk on who should run in 2008: “We also talked about Hillary and Obama. Both La Shawn and I thought Obama needs more experience and didn’t know if Hillary would run. I said I’d like to see a woman in the White House, La Shawn thought she’s too polarizing to win. Neither of us were big on Tom Vilsack. As for who we would like to see run, I said Russ Feingold and John Edwards.”

Hello! Hello! John Edwards has no experience in office except ONE SENATE TERM, a good part of which he spent not showing up and not voting. Besides his ONE SENATE TERM, Barack Obama has experience as a state senator, a constitutional law professor and community organizer. Barack Obama has more experience in policy work than John Edwards. Why does John Edwards get a pass on the experience question, but Barack Obama doesn’t? Oh, I think we all know why.

The war in Iraq is a philosopher’s mirror, presenting all the quandries of classic philosophy in the media of blood and bombs.

Take, for example, the epistemological question presented by this morning’s news that 150 Iraqi educators and researchers have been kidnapped by what the Associated Press refers to as “gunmen dressed as police commandos”: What is the difference between a police commando and a gunman dressed as a police commando?

Police commandos have guns, right? Iraqi police have been observed taking people off the streets to hold in secret prisons, right?

So, how come the news media is referring to these people as “gunmen dressed as police commandos” and not just police commandos? How was that decision made?

Yesterday, I wrote here on the Irregular Times Diaries about how the Iraq War has raised epistemological questions, such as, How can we know the difference between a police commando and a gunman dressed as a police commando?

You see, there were reports yesterday morning that “gunmen dressed as police commandos” had kidnapped people from an Iraqi scientific research facility. That curious phrase caught my attention, because it implied a distinction between someone dressed as a police commando and an actual police commando. Given the chaos and corruption throughout Iraq, I didn’t think that distinction held merit.

Now, this morning, my suspicions are confirmed. Six policemen from the area around the research facility have been arrested for their involvement in the kidnapping - including the local police chief.

So, when the police chief sends in commandos with guns, dressed up like police commandos, to kidnap people, how are those involved not police commandos? Why were they called “gunmen dressed as police commandos” and “gunmen in Iraqi police uniforms”.

There’s an ontological question at the root of this, and a tragic one at that: When the police that we trained are now recruiting people who had been in government-supporting militias to take part in actions dressed as police, how are they not police? Who are the police, if they are running illegal operations? Who is standing up, and who is standing down? Who are we there in Iraq, who are our allies, who are our enemies? Is there really any difference now between these different identities?

If the Senate Republicans were to read tea leaves for the American voters, they’d probably come out with an interpretation such as, “You are sleepy alll the time, because you refuse to drink hot caffeinated beverages.”

It’s this kind of backwards thinking that leads the Republicans in the United States Senate to return Trent Lott to a high position of power as Minority Whip. The Republicans see that they’ve lost many seats to the Democrats in the Senate, so what conclusion do they make? Do they conclude that they’ve been too extreme in their ideology, and give a relative moderate, like Olympia Snowe, the Minority Whip position? No, no. They decide to put another Southern right winger, one who has mourned the loss of forced racial segregation, into that office.

I wonder what will happen if they lose another seat to the Democrats in 2008. Will they start a special Minority Senate Office for the Prevention of Miscegenation?

I heard on the radio that Fox News was going to put a comedy show on its lineup. And this is news exactly how? Fox News is a 24-hour comedy channel already. Oh, maybe they are going to try some literal comedy on us, not the satirical farce that they currently are engaged in. I say No! Don’t go out of character, Fox News; that will only destroy the integrity of your black-is-white, up-is-down, Kafkaesque romp.

For ten years, the Mars Global Surveyor has been mapping the surface of the planet Mars, watching for signs of life on the planet. Now, suddenly this month, the Mars Global Surveyor has disappeared!

The scientists who have been working with the satellite circling Mars say that they don’t know what happened to the Surveyor, and they can’t find a sign of it. Now, think, please, about what that means.

A satellite watching Mars for signs of life disappears. Why? Did the Mars Global Surveyor find what it was looking for?

Ask yourself: Who didn’t want the Mars Global Surveyor to find life on Mars? Who was in the position to destroy the Mars Global Surveyor by “accidentally” missing a decimal point in a standard course correction, thus sending all evidence of an advanced alien civilization burning up upon descent into the Martian atmosphere?

I think it’s pretty clear we’re talking about the Trilateral Commission, here. Of course, I could be wrong. It could be the Bilderberg Group. What is certain is that someone wants to keep you in the dark about Mars. Why?

Today is Buy Nothing Day, a day which will be thoroughly ignored by everybody. Why should we have a day on which we buy nothing? Come to the light of reason, my dear misguided friends. If nobody buys anything, nobody will eat. Should you really not eat? Oh, you say, just don’t buy your cabbage today, buy it tomorrow! But that is the same thing. The only way to have an effect is never to buy a particular thing. So why not have a Don’t Buy One Thing, Ever Campaign? That’s kind of a downer, isn’t it? No, it’s just ever so much better to have a day where people can postpone their trip to the mall, and feel really good about themselves, and then buy the latest glossy issue of Adbusters. But not this Friday. You can buy the magazine and feel smug on Thursday or Saturday.

Over at the Associated Press, reporters Holly Ramer and Mike Glover have just produced an article which beautifully exhibits the unreflective worship of political insiders that dominates the mainstream news approach to covering presidential campaigns. They write about how very important it is for Democratic presidential candidates to court Democratic Party
insiders.

But who do they bring up as their prime example? Jim Demers, a Democratic insider in New Hampshire. The support of Mr. Demers is described as critical to the success of a Democratic presidential candidate in the New Hampshire primary. If a candidate doesn’t have the help of Demers, Ramer and Glover say, that candidate is in trouble. Insiders like Demers rule the political system, after all, and voters’ political preferences are secondary to their influence, right?

Well, maybe not. Consider who Jim Demers supported in the 2004 presidential primary in New Hampshire: Dick Gephardt. Think back now, and you’ll remember that Dick Gephardt ran so poorly in the New Hampshire primary that he was not a major contender even in Iowa, where Gephardt was supposed to be king… again, because of his contacts with political insiders. If political insider power was so important, how come Jim Demers couldn’t get a victory for the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives?

I suggest that Holly Ramer and Mike Glover look at the evidence again sitting in front of them again. Insider politics just doesn’t have the extraordinary power that reporters like Ramer and Glover say it does. It’s just easier for reporters to cover the relatively small number of self-important political insiders than to try to report on what voters themselves are up to, and what genuine grassroots organizers are doing independently.

Here’s a link for the Southern readers of Irregular Times: Atlanta Progressive News. I know, it sounds a bit like an oxymoron, but it isn’t. The truth is that Atlanta is a mix of Northerners and Southerners, plus people from elsewhere in the country, and so there is, finally, a real local struggle to establish a genuinely progressive presence.

Atlanta Progressive News doesn’t always go as far as progressives outside Georgia might expect it to go, but hey, at least it’s a step in the right direction. Georgia still isn’t Vermont, but some people are trying to move the culture ahead, at long last.

Does anyone else have some local progressive links to suggest?

I’ve been out working as a grassroots organizer for the Republican get out the vote effort, and so I haven’t come back to my regular email account to resume my political writing until after this ungodly election. Well, let me tell you what I found on my return: Anal sex spam!

Oh, it’s not just any kind of marketing campaign. No, no. I believe in the free market, but there has to be limits to free speech, and that limit comes when I am sent a message, without my permission, detailing the smutty thrills of “her first double anal”.

What is the message in this email, I wonder? How are we to interpret this?

Well, for one thing, I see that this is just her first double anal! The liberals who send out this spam to attack me and my political work clearly intend all people who come here to pick up the message that having two throbbing cocks shoved up the rectum isn’t something that a woman will do just once in her life. Oh, no! It’s something to do over and over again. Sodomy is thus normalized! Shame.

Don’t doubt for a second that it’s the hollywood liberal Barbra Streisand fans who are sending me all this nasty spam. How do I know? The number of sex spam in my email box this morning was 1776.

Oh, how these nasty liberals mock America!

Progressives have the tendency to revile the United States as the center of Homeland Security authoritarianism, and to look to Europe for a more liberal-minded alternative. They’re correct to fear the America’s growing security state, but quite wrong to imagine that Europe will offer a refuge of enlightened liberalism.

News came out today in a new European Union report indicating that the governments of Britain, Poland, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Cyprus all knew about the program of secret, illegal CIA prisons where people were held and tortured without legal authority and without criminal charge.

The Europeans knew about it, and went along with it.

Is there no refuge in the world where liberty is still valued?

No, probably not.