A creationist? Hard to say, but Tony Snow, the ex-Fox commentator and new White House Press Secretary is no friend of evolution (read: scientific truth). The Panda’s Thumb has the scoop on him, but his own words make it clear that reality escapes him:
This brings us back to the two threshold questions. Most people believe science unravels deep, eternal truths — that it is “perfect.” But the history of science teaches that today’s cocksure theory is tomorrow’s crackpot superstition.
I wouldn’t describe evolutionary biologists as "cocksure". That fits most of the vocal ID proponents better in my opinion. But I find his point to be purely misdirection: science doesn’t care what people think of it. Science isn’t perfect, and no true scientist would say it is. A real scientist understands that science is our best tool to uncovering the ways the Universe works. Saying that people think it’s "perfect" is a strawman argument, a simple distortion that’s easy to tear down.
Today, evolutionary theorists find themselves at wits’ end because the fossil record provides no evidence of any species ever turning into another. We know species adjust to environmental conditions — ever notice how tall kids are these days? — and that natural selection does occur. But there’s nothing to vindicate the notion of an evolutionary leap.
I almost find it funny when pundits with no background in science at all make sweeping statements about it that are so grossly and terribly wrong. A quick web search (what? actually researching something?) netted me a FAQ listing transitions including primitive fish to bony fish, amphibians to reptiles, reptiles to birds… as I like to say, when a paleontologist finds a transition fossil, the creationist claims "Now there are two gaps!".
But then Snow goes for the absurd:
These little insights give us the basis for admitting both views into the educational system. Evolutionary theory, like ID, isn’t verifiable or testable. It’s pure hypothesis — like ID — although very popular in the scientific community. Its limits help illuminate the fact that hypotheses are only as durable as the evidence that supports them.
Evolution, a hypothesis? Our new Press Secretary has no clue what he’s talking about here. Evolution is both a theory and a fact. And I mean a scientific theory, in that it is far and away the best model we have for how something works. ID is neither a fact nor a theory, and is not science as such. It is not even really religion, though it’s really just warmed-over creationism (which is provably wrong). All it is is anti-evolution. And so many ID proponents are willing to distort truth, make bad arguments, use fallacious arguments, and flat out lie about it that I think ID would be deader than phlogiston if most Americans really knew what people like Dembksi were really saying about it.
Instead, they hear incredibly wrong "talking points" spoken as if they are simple truths, and thus see science — and the Universe — through incredibly distorted glasses.
I will be keeping a close eye on Snow when he talks science from the White House podium. Their record is already pretty poor, and appointing Snow to this position doesn’t make me very hopeful for improvement.
May 11th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
Sent this to Randi a few weeks back:
From Tony Snow’s column (TS is a Fox news pundit)
“The key to Easter is this: It is too preposterous, too outrageous, too incredible not to be true, and not to be the key to a much larger truth.”
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/tonysnow/2006/04/14/193706.html
You really can’t argue with that logic. Literally. Would would be the point?
May 11th, 2006 at 9:47 pm
You DO know that the NSA is monitoring this blog for anti-Christian content, don’t you?
Jess Tauber
May 11th, 2006 at 9:59 pm
Par for the course, sadly.
May 11th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
(Afterthought… in reference to Phil’s entry, not the above comment…)
May 11th, 2006 at 10:27 pm
I’m just waiting for the day when the US becomes a religious dictatorship. Heinlein predicted it, and it’s not seeming all that far off nowadays……
May 12th, 2006 at 1:16 am
Well, in my opinion, George Bush is the worse president in US history and Mr. Snow is nothing more than another phony Press Secretary, i.e. a go-between for false and boneheaded justifications of the White House’s distorted view of the world.
May 12th, 2006 at 1:46 am
Here we go again
May 12th, 2006 at 2:25 am
Great, All we need is another anti-science moron misdirecting Americans ignorant in the sciences. It never ceases to astonish me just how willing these crackpots are to defend their illogical line of reasoning, when you can destroy their fallacies both through philosophical thought experiments, and actual science.
Yet, it’s not as though Bush was going to appoint Richard Dawkins as the new Press Secretary. One can only hope the damage incurred in this administration can be fixed during the next few decades.
May 12th, 2006 at 2:33 am
Spin, Spin, Spin – Bad Science Meets Bad Politics…
Bad Astronomy has a rant up on Tony Snow (the new White House Press Secretary) and his creationist tendencies. I won’t linger on the political implications of having an anti-science advocates in our government, but one quote from Snow is……
May 12th, 2006 at 3:02 am
Let’s face it. Snow – any press secretary – is the interface between the White House and the press. To expect him to (a) be original and/or (b) have a thought different from the President’s (or maybe just express such a thought) is silly. As long as Bush is President, Snow is precisely the kind of guy who’ll get the job. Focusing on Snow is counterproductive, ’cause if he goes a clone will take over… Yes, I am appalled at those ideas but Bush shares them. That’s why Snow is there.
May 12th, 2006 at 4:26 am
We have to rid of this administration. It’s getting closer to the Taliban than we can afford.
May 12th, 2006 at 4:31 am
Well, for those of us US Citizens, absolutely vote this November 2006 and Nov 2008 for pro-science, pro-intellectualical social progressives. Please don’t vote “party”, vote for the best person!
This administration wants to bankrupt the USA so that as Miral stated on May 11, 2006 @ 10:27 pm:
“I’m just waiting for the day when the US becomes a religious (Christian) dictatorship. Heinlein predicted it, and it’s not seeming all that far off nowadays……”.
May 12th, 2006 at 4:34 am
“pro-intellectualical”, oops, should be “intellectual”.
May 12th, 2006 at 4:51 am
It never used to scare me that the US had nuclear weapons. It wasn’t scary because I had, strangely enough, faith… faith that the President and his cronies wouldn’t wake up and tell the world that “God told us to destroy the infidel (insert target here)!”
Then Bush was elected… Now I can’t be sure that he isn’t going to receive “Kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out” instructions from his personal IPU. It’s scary in a big way.
Attacks on science are the symptom, not the problem.
May 12th, 2006 at 5:20 am
Truly Sad. Bad Astronomy meets Bad Science meets Bad Politics meets Bad Religion…
The alternatives out there in this Science vs. Religion “debate”, if that’s what you weant to call it, are not limited to ID vs. Evolution. I think a lot of folks are missing the point here. I know plenty of so-called “progressives” out there who are just as bad as Pres. Bush in this area and others. Every political ideaology has its fringes and idiots, and some of them get elected more often than we care to admit. There’s no doubt Bush’s staff’s opinions here are misguided, but we don’t have to replace them with another just as misguded set going to the other extreme. Bad science and bad religion have found a place in every political party in the US.
As a minister and an “sandlot” scientist, I find there’s plenty of room for scientific theory / fact and faith. One does not preclude the other. In fact, they work quite well together in their appropriate perspectives. Oh, and Bush doesn’t set religious policy for this country. He never will either, no matter what Robert Heinlein thought or wrote. If he did, Phil couldn’t write about stuff like this in his Blog and I couldn’t reply.
Einstein, was both religious and a scientist. My favorite quote from him is, “When the solution is simple, God is answering”. He also said “Two things are infinite; the universe and human stupidity. …And I’m not sure about the former.” Both comments seem to apply well to this thread.
…Sigh…
Can we all just acknowledge that Tony Snow is an idiot when it comes to both science and religion and go back to talking about real astronomy? Please?
May 12th, 2006 at 5:29 am
I’ll believe you, Chris, when the US elects an atheist president.
That’s a president who is publicly atheist… not one who just doesn’t go to church or is a bit of a philanderer. One who is not afraid to stand up and say he doesn’t buy into this supernatural stuff.
Until that happens, Americans have to live with the realization that religion forms a large part of their government. And not just any religion either, one has to be the correct denomination – it’s unlikely the US will elect a Muslim any time soon, for example.
Of course, when it happens, a web site called “Bad Theology” will start up, and there will be a blog that details the president’s attacks on blind faith, superstition and fanciful imagination.
May 12th, 2006 at 5:46 am
“Einstein, was both religious and a scientist.”
This is not strictly true – Einstein used the word God particularly ambiguously. As does Stephen Hawkingly interestingly enough.
Do some more reading on Einstein and you’ll find out that he was referring to God as an abstract concept, not a deity. Google “Einstein” “Religion” and you’ll get various interesting sites covering this.
I often wish he’d used another word.
May 12th, 2006 at 5:47 am
D’oh – sorry for the repost. Damn blog comment spam filter!!
May 12th, 2006 at 6:31 am
Evolving Squid:
I don’t think you’ll find a non-pandering individual running for national office… at least, not one that will win. Unfortunately, it seems that people tend to vote with what makes them feel good (or less worse), and if somebody’s confirming your beliefs, you’ll “win” them (though it’s a hollow victory, to be certain).
Charisma is far more important than intelligence when it comes to political office, it seems. It doesn’t necessarily follow that an individual cannot exhibit both qualities, but there are far more unintelligent charismatic people out there than ideal candidates.
I am just talking about the US here. I don’t know what kinds of candidates other countries have elected, nor what specifically those cultures permitted in terms of religious belief. The US has God written into its formative documents and official procedures, however abstractly. That’s the sort of thing that might be difficult for an atheist to overcome politically. (I’m thinking specifically about the formalized oaths that tag “so help me God” on the end.)
That being said, if we get somebody in office who strives to push the boundaries of science and actually leads our country in a direction worthy of its beginnings, I don’t care if he or she believes in Bob, the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
(May his noodly appendage be upon your soul.)
((Ramen.))
May 12th, 2006 at 8:25 am
I am sick and tired of people regurgitating that stupid argument about the fallibility of scientific theories. Why can’t they study a little on the history of science before talking about the history of science? Surely everybody knows that the theories that were once considered “right” looked like they were right (like the flat earth to ancient Sumerians, or the phlogiston theory, or Newtonian mechanics) and were only supplanted by theories that looked even “righter”.
No matter what advances are made in evolutionary theory, nor what shifts of paradigm are called for, the evidence that life evolved through mutation and natural selection will never disappear.
Even if “design” is found to exist in some way (which it surely won’t) the history of science shows us that the subsequent theory of design will be such that Evolution can be derived from it as an approximation, and not anti-evolutionary gibberish, the way ID is now.
May 12th, 2006 at 8:41 am
Snow is wrong as to when science began to ‘change’ 100 years ago. It really started with Planck’s derivation of the ‘black-body radiation law’. This work required Planck to consider statistical mechanics as part of the derivation. This very much bothered Planck since he apparently was very conservative. However, the work ‘demanded’ the need for statistical mechanics which led him to the idea of the ‘quanta’.
May 12th, 2006 at 8:57 am
I’m just waiting for the day when the US becomes a religious dictatorship. Heinlein predicted it, and it’s not seeming all that far off nowadays…
It’s scary (and sad) how often R.A.H. was right in his prognostications, especially his more pessimistic ones. He also “predicted” that, given the chance, a country would vote themselves “Bread and Circuses” until it bankrupted them!
May 12th, 2006 at 8:59 am
James Pyrich said:
“The US has God written into its formative documents and official procedures, however abstractly.”
Not true. The only “formative document” that had God written into it was the Declaration of Independence, which was written by one man. Neither the Articles of Confederation nor the US Constitution mention God anywhere. In fact, the only mention of religion whatsoever in the US Constitution are safeguards to prevent the formation of a theocracy, and the only mention in the Articles of Confederation is an agreement on mutual defense if someone invades one of the states for religious reasons. There was an attempt to get a religious statement inserted into the US constitution but it was overwhelming rejecting by the delegates.
May 12th, 2006 at 9:26 am
I think that on every final science exam, in Western colleges, there should be a question: Do humans and chimps share a common ancestor? If the answer is “no” or “I don’t know,” that student should fail. In fact, make it every high school biology class as well.
The professor, teacher and or course material obviously didn’t teach the student enough to pass that student.
Any biologist who doubts evolution should have their name listed, as well as the college who passed him.
May 12th, 2006 at 10:22 am
Great. I bet that article is a great victory for ID people.
Everything, ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING has flaws. If you look hard enough, you’ll find some. Of course, with ID “theory” you won’t have to look hard at all..
May 12th, 2006 at 10:31 am
James Pyrich said:
“I don’t know what kinds of candidates other countries have elected, nor what specifically those cultures permitted in terms of religious belief.”
Well, here in the UK, we elected Tony Blair, who has failed so far to fulfil any of his election promises in about 8 or 9 years in office. All his policies seem to have done is introduce fallacious ways of measuring performance to hide the fact that he has not delivered any concrete progress.
We have an institutionalised state religion (the Church of England), but our society at large is seemingly more religiously tolerant than any other of which I am aware. We have Catholics, Protestants (including many and varied sub-denominations), Muslims, atheists, Buddhists, and more others than I can be bothered to find out about.
May 12th, 2006 at 10:59 am
Why do you people even try to argue against ideologues? There’s no point.
But to be honest, you can’t attack the White House on logic and facts, and then say we’re one small step from being a religious dictatorship or the Taliban. That’s equally as dumb and unscientific as creationism. It’s a signpost that I can safely ignore anything else you have to say. Same with someone who uses “Dubya” or things like that. I have no use for Bush, but “Dubya” is a sure sign of a zero level of intellect in operation.
Insult and hyperbole never work. It just drives away those you are trying to educate and makes them circle the wagons. That’s why I say Penn & Teller’s show was one of the *worst* things to happen to skepticism in years.
May 12th, 2006 at 11:02 am
“Any biologist who doubts evolution should have their name listed, as well as the college who passed him.”
Oh, that’s a great attitude. Why don’t we just brand a scarlet “ID” in their forehead. Should we put them on a government watch list, too?
And this is coming from a total ID skeptic.
May 12th, 2006 at 11:38 am
Charisma is far more important than intelligence when it comes to political office, it seems.
Sadly, that is at the root of the problem much more than any flavour of religion, nor non-religion, is.
May 12th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
There’s no likelyhood snow will last long in the hot and turbulent Overlap of science and religion.
He was close for moment though…
“That said, ID does not qualify as science because it gives us nothing to test or measure.”
He melted after that, however.
“Let science teachers tell kids that science is a matter of inspired guesswork, not of invincible decree.”
Instead, let’s teach them how to obtain and apply evidence to any theory without bias; keep the guessing to that which is unmeasurable.
It’s hard to say if he will continue to make such statements. Probably not, but I’m just guessing.
May 12th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
Once again, a journalist offering a “balanced” opinion, regardless of whether balance is really fair.
He does have a valid point about name-calling from both sides. It doesn’t help anyone.
May 12th, 2006 at 2:54 pm
Once again, a journalist…
Bad coding.
May 12th, 2006 at 4:13 pm
I fixed it.
May 12th, 2006 at 5:53 pm
HAL9000 sez: “…you can’t attack the White House on logic and facts, and then say we’re one small step from being a religious dictatorship or the Taliban. That’s equally as dumb and unscientific as creationism. It’s a signpost that I can safely ignore anything else you have to say. Same with someone who uses ‘Dubya’ or things like that. I have no use for Bush, but ‘Dubya’ is a sure sign of a zero level of intellect in operation.”
Thank you! You said it much more succinctly than I could.
I call the Bush-bashing here, and on other groups, the “All my friends” syndrome; i.e. I hate Bush. All my friends hate Bush. When we get together we all talk about how much we hate Bush. In fact, everyone all of us know hate Bush. How can this country go on when every single person in it (in our experience) hates Bush?
Of course, go a few hundred miles in from the coasts, and you’ll find large numbers of people who like Bush. They’re the ones who elected him because he was the anti-Clinton.
I’ve been around long enough to notice that any president that makes it into a second term will be called the “worst president in US history” before the end of it. It happened to Nixon, It happened to Regan and, of course, Clinton. Most of the whining comes from the 49.5% of the voters who didn’t elect him and can’t understand how the other 50.4% could be so stupid.
While I have no use for Bush either, I consider the job he’s been given to do. How else would you handle a national enemy that is not a sovereign state, and has completely infiltrated our country while all the time using our personal freedoms to complain about “harassment”. What are the alternatives? Would we have been better off with Al Gore in the big chair on 9/11? Would Kerry have cut-and-run from Iraq, leaving it to collapse into chaos and civil war, dooming our oil supply for a really long period?
If you can’t tell, I’m a member of the 0.1% not accounted for in my voter total above. I don’t belong to either major party and consider all candidates of them to be completely compromised by the time they reach any national office.
I’m going to stop now, but want to reiterate what “HAL” said above. The anti-Bush rants here are just as distasteful to a true critical thinker as any religious ideologues.
- Jack
May 12th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
Please stop using atheist = science, religion = anti-science. Why, because it drives those people with doubts about evolution, the people we need to educate, right into the ID camp and away from understanding evolution properly.
It may come as a surprise to a lot of the commentators here but there are still a lot of people who do not actually “get” evolution. People who have only ever been taught evolution, effectively as a dogma, by an over-worked teacher trying to get all their pupils through school meeting various “official targets”.
The more those on the fence about evolution are ridiculed about their knowledge, the easier it is for them to be convinced by the ID camp that maybe evolution is all just an atheist conspiracy.
These people have doubts with the whole evolution process and what is required is careful thoughtful relevant answers to those doubts not name calling.
So just as I send people to this site to help explain why the Moon Landings did happen and help explain the holes in the “it was a hoax” theories. I send those with problems with evolution to http://evolution.berkeley.edu/ and use this as my starting point to explain it to them. It’s not so easy for me, I’m an engineer not a biologist, so any other good site would really be helpful to me and my efforts to educate those I know.
So Phil, any chance of comprehensive set of links to help those of us who want to do our small bit to help educate without insulting those around us. (Unless you already have and I missed it)
/rant off
May 12th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
In this blog, where the rules are slightly looser (at the discretion of the BA,) I’m going to make a few statements and then refrain from the politics. There are two sides to an issue, and in my opinion, the so-called “anti-Bush rants” in this thread, are Patriotic. We don’t know what Kerry would have done in Iraq, but today, under the Bush regime, Iraq already is in chaos and civil war. We don’t know how Gore would have reacted to 9/11, but his people do not appear to have made preconceived plans for an Iraq invasion and then use 9/11 as an excuse to pursue that invasion. After attacking the terrorist’s camps in Afghanistan with Afghan and world support, something any U.S. President and Congress would have pursued, the Bush regime again used 9/11 as selfish political leverage to drum up support for an attack, and against those who questioned the Iraq invasion. This goes far beyond the simple notion that second term presidents, as lame ducks, are always low in popularity. Bush’s popularity is sinking for a multitude of reasons that go beyond this brief commentary. He has done enormous damage to this country. So I too have “no use for Bush”. The “job he has been given to do” is not a determined and steadfast reaction to the terror of 9/11, (though many Americans wished it were,) it is to use and subvert the memory of 9/11 to support political agendas aimed at turning our nation into a state for the benefit of an elite few.
May 12th, 2006 at 7:15 pm
“Oh, that’s a great attitude. Why don’t we just brand a scarlet “ID†in their forehead. Should we put them on a government watch list, too?”
I’m of the firm belief that anyone who takes a college level biology class and doubts evolution as fact either didn’t learn properly or wasn’t taught properly. Either way, he/she should have failed the course. Taking biology and questioning evolution as fact is like becoming a medical doctor and thinking the heart is located in the ankle.
May 12th, 2006 at 7:40 pm
Jack,
Ever wonder why people bash Bush?
For starters, he stole the 2000 election.
Please explain to me why Mr. Bush chose not to follow the United States Constitution which cleary states that in a presidential election, in the case of a tie, the election is thrown to The House of Representatives and they vote along party lines.
End of story, he would have been elected fairly.
Now, as to the problem of not recounting the entire state of Florida?
Why not..there was ample enough time?
2) 9/11 & Al Queda…
When George Bush took office on Jan. 20th, 2001,
13 Hijackers were taking their pilot courses. The
FBI & CIA both had hard evidence that something
was going on but would not talk to each other.
The Hart-Rudman Commission had reported 3 times
that The United States would see a Terroristic act
take place on American soil and that thousands of
lives were at stake.
Just a few days before 9/11 Gary Hart visited Condi
Rice, whom he knew from the 1984 campaign. Hart
pleaded with her to warn the president. She told
him to “See the Vice President”.
Again, Bush and his government dropped the ball.
Now, I don’t remember where all of you live, but I
live in a suburb of Philadelphia and quite a large
number of folks commute ( as I did once ) to New
York City and back every day.
Here in the Yardley/Lower Makefield Twp area, where
I live, 17 people lost their lives that day….
One was the pilot of one of those jets. Another was
the son of one of our Twp. Supervisors.
Thankfully, I did not lose any family but I could
have for much of my family still resides in the
Boston area where most of the Jets departed from.
One hijacker never made it onto a jet…and my
cousin and his family where on a jet flying to
Walt Disney World that day.
A favorite Uncle works in NYC and both of us used
to work for American Express, whose HQ was heavily
damaged. My Uncle used to work in that complex.
I don’t understand why anyone would bash folks who
are fed up with Bush, after all, he is destroying
almost everything good in this country.
I apologize for being OT Phil but this business
about not having to Think has to stop or we are
all going to be in trouble!
May 12th, 2006 at 7:45 pm
Actually, anyone taking a High School Biology course would get the same information that these creationists don’t like.
May 12th, 2006 at 7:50 pm
The New York times has an interesting op-ed on the commercial aspects of Evolution and how some companies are handling the controversy. You can check it out at this page. (no login required)
May 12th, 2006 at 7:54 pm
I’m not sure that link worked, try this one
May 12th, 2006 at 8:12 pm
It’s a sad state of things. I can only hope those ramblings by Snow don’t filter into the workings of the educational system. If they do, then I can only see doom and gloom for future science.
When is it that ID will be seen for what it is and that people will fully realize the truth behind it and it’s supporters?
And can people begin to really understand evolution and why its the best theory?
May 12th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
Just to make sure this is clear, I never said all religion is bad, nor that it is all anti-science. I make it very clear that I mean creationism (and its mutant offspring, ID) that is antiscience.
I also am being very clear here that I am very much against this Administration’s actions about science. I have refrained from giving any opinions about other topics, because for now I don’t feel the need here on this blog. I may still sometime in the future, if I so choose. We’ll see; there are things afoot that are making it very difficult for me not to say something.
May 13th, 2006 at 1:19 am
“So Phil, any chance of comprehensive set of links to help those of us who want to do our small bit to help educate without insulting those around us.”
I’m not Phil, but I can offer something. Posters here are limited in the number of links they can suggest, so I’ll give three, one post at a time.
First, something in the line of teaching strategies:
Nelson CE (2000) “Effective strategies for teaching evolution and other controversial topics”. In: Skehan JW, Nelson CE. in: _The creation controversy and the science classroom_. Arlington (Virginia): NSTA Press. pp 19–50.
Available here (jump to page 19)
http://fire.biol.wwu.edu/hooper/creationcontroversy.pdf
May 13th, 2006 at 1:23 am
And other useful teaching evolution material:
“Teaching about evolution and the nature of science”
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/5787.html
May 13th, 2006 at 1:25 am
and this last one: (trying the html formatting.. hope it works)
Evolution for Everyone: How to Increase Acceptance of, Interest in, and Knowledge about Evolution
May 13th, 2006 at 1:28 am
I guess that formatting didn’t work. Trying without.
“Evolution for Everyone: How to Increase Acceptance of, Interest in, and Knowledge about Evolution”
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10%2E1371%2Fjournal%2Epbio%2E0030364
May 13th, 2006 at 1:41 am
P. Edward: This is not the correct forum for a debate on this topic, but I’d like to make a few general observations.
The entire tone of your post only underscores what I said earlier. You seem to assume that because I won’t join you in your Bush-bashing, that I am a Bush supporter and require proselytizing. Nothing could be further from the truth. However, your long litany of “evidence” against the current administration is as full of holes as Tony Snow’s arguments quoted at the top. To wit:
1) Bush did not “steal” the 2000 election. The House only votes if there is a tie in the electoral college. The EC hadn’t voted yet because Florida was still undetermined. There was no general recount in Florida because no one asked for it. The Gore camp only asked for recounts in those districts where he had beaten Bush, hoping to pick up the handful of votes needed to prevail. The judge ruled that only the looser can demand a recount. Bush was the winner in every recount that was conducted, so he took the state, and thus the election.
And, yes, there wasn’t time to do any more recounts. The Florida state constitution has a deadline after which the state attorney general MUST call the election. That date was well past, but Gore was still demanding more specialized recounts. That’s when the US Supreme Court stepped in and said that the Florida law must be upheld and that no more recounts would be allowed. Somehow this has been interpreted as the Supreme Court “appointing” Bush president.
2) I’ve seen this “indictment” against the administration many times, and it only makes sense if you assume that government agencies work with perfect coordination, clarity and insight. So the 13 hijackers were taking flying lessons when Bush took office. So? Thousands of people were taking flying lessons at that time, and they weren’t hijackers yet. And what, exactly, did Gary Hart tell Condi Rice was going to happen? That 20 Islamic fundamentalists were going to hijack four airliners from New York on the morning of September 11, 2001 and fly them into the WTC towers, the Pentagon and White House? Or did he say that they had evidence that Al Queida was planning a major terrorist operation some time in the next two weeks that will put a large number of civilians at risk?
The first you can defend against. The second you can’t.
- Jack
May 13th, 2006 at 3:45 am
Sorry to continue the OT thread, but Jack, read Richard Clarke’s “Against all enemies”. He makes it very clear how Bush et al dropped the ball on the terror threat.
May 13th, 2006 at 5:17 am
A Snow job on evolution…
If you want to see how depressingly ignorant about science President Bush’s new Press Secretary Tony Snow is, you need go no further than this rant at Bad Astronomy about Snow’s assertions about evolution confidently made in obviously complete ignora…
May 13th, 2006 at 8:03 am
>Of course, go a few hundred miles in from the coasts, and you’ll find large >numbers of people who like Bush.
I live in Colorado, which is more than a few hundred miles from both coasts, and everyone I know hates Bush.
I know there are a few people around here who don’t hate him because they still have their W-2004 stickers on their car. Yesterday, however, I saw a new one that said “I Miss President Regan.”
May 13th, 2006 at 8:41 am
Amara, good links but you missed the key one:
Science and Creationism: A View From The National Academy of Sciences. A full list of their evolution-related resources are available Here. All these materials are free on their website, but print versions are also sold on Amazon.com and I would assume other online bookstores as well.
Talkorigins.org has answers to pretty much issue a creationist or IDer could possibly bring up.
The National Center for Science Education has a wealth of resources, including a bunch of critiques of creationist/ID literature and videos, lots of News, a great list of links, and a bunch of resources on how to deal with creationists/IDers. One section I particularly like is Voices for Evolution. It is a comprehensive (at that time) list of civil liberties, eductional, religious, and most importantly scientific organizations that have released official position statements rejecting ID and/or creationism and endorsing evolution. Unfortunately it has not been updated since 2004, and there have probably been several dozen more statements released since that time. They told me they are working on a new one that should be out very soon, it would probably be a good thing for Phil to mention when it comes out since the American Astronomical Society has released 3 different position statements on the issue that are featured there.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Evolution on the Front Line has some good resources, too, as well as another good, although smaller, list of links to other resources.
Scientific America’s 15 Answers to Creationist Nonesense is a handy quick-reference if you don’t have enough time to read the other, more-detailed resources, althoug Talkorigins has a lot of quick-reference guides as well.
Hey, Phil, is there any way to get a “Preview Comment” button added to the blog so we can check to make sure our links and other code works before we formally post it?
May 13th, 2006 at 9:02 am
BlackCat: I should have emphasized that they were links that focused on successful strategies for teaching evolution. Your links provide the evolution content (which is probably more of what the original poster requested). So you gave a nice complement, thank you.
May 13th, 2006 at 9:58 am
Oops, sorry. And yes, as I said they were good links (very good in fact). Not many people seem to realize that the NAS has a wealth of very good, free, full-length books available, so the more it is mentioned the better. The others were ones I wasn’t previously aware but also look very good.
May 13th, 2006 at 11:49 am
Black Cat’s link to the article on “evolution’s bottom line” is quite interesting. It makes me wonder which way Bush would jump if it came to a showdown between his ID inclined supporters (who oppose the teaching of evolution and would weaken the teaching of science) and his Big Energy supporters (who have an economic stake in the teaching of science to find their FOSSIL fuels)? How much of modern geology does ID “accept”? I suspect more than Young Earth Creationism ever would.
If ID were considered a “liberal” ideology, the Right would be trumpeting about the weakening of American education and the loss of competitivenes with other nations because of the undermining of science.
May 13th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
jack,
Methinks you protesth tooo much.
It never HAD to go to the supreme court and there was enough time.
There were all kinds of permutations that could have, legally, allowed FOR a recount to determine who actually won ALL the votes.
May 13th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
Jack et al,
In actuality, it could have gone to the house anyway because the vote totals were so close in Florida that
electors did not know what to do.
May 14th, 2006 at 2:47 pm
I am convinced that Intelligent Design is purely a political stand. Evolution still causes such outrage that many politicians are going to claim to support ID just to avoid being black balled by the “moral” majority. Whether they understand the science (or psuedoscience) behind ID and evolution or not. A local minister here once grouped Evolution as a moral outrage side by side with abortion and gay marriages. Frankly I don’t see evolution as being the same as killing babies. Oh well, my opinion matters very little to people who have closed their minds.
May 14th, 2006 at 6:34 pm
I still can’t undersatnd in which way ID (a position I don’t subscribe) is NOT evolution. It might be wrong, like Lamarckism, but still, things kinda evolved.
And please, oh, please don’t mix religion (or lack therof) with evolution, it just makes the debate messy.
I’m quite sure Ken Miller (Darwinism), Michel Behe (Intelligent Design) and me (Indiferent) are NOT atheists. I’m not over the fence. It’s too bad both sides make an effort to make evolution look like a shady atheist conspiracy.
And I’ve met not one, but two atheists who claim that the Big Bang is a CREATIONIST conspiracy made by a belgian priest and say it’s pseudoscience. Spooky!
May 15th, 2006 at 9:08 am
Delance, ID is something of an intermediary position. They accept limited change of life forms, variation within “kinds”. They say that sure, bacteria become more resistant to antibiotics, but that is certain “flawed” bacteria who don’t have the particular biochemical pathway that the antibiotic strikes, so that isn’t “improvement” in the bacteria, and the bacteria is still a bacteria, it isn’t suddenly a turtle.
ID allows for some evolution, the stuff that is obvious. They can’t ignore animal breeds, plant variations, inheritance of different traits, etc. They just try to argue that the evolution that is acceptable is tinkering within kinds, but the ultimate source and ultimate origins act was independent acts of divine creation.
Because they refuse to accept the full scope of Evolution – descent from a common ancestor with modification – they are not Evolutionists. They accept a little change here and there, but reject Evolution on the whole.
Shady atheist conspiracy? That’s some loaded terminology. I do agree that some atheists use any mention of Evolution as a chance to defend atheism, and use any discussion of the existence of God as a chance to bring in Evolution as a reason why they don’t believe. I agree this is not the most helpful approach. I have been trying to split the topics whenever I can.