Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Discovery Institute, Free Republic Pimp Intelligent Design, Attack Their Own Strawmen

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Free Republic and Discovery Institute are using the same words to attack their own strawman --a so-called "Wedge Document" exposing the tactics of Intelligent Design partisans. "A giant urban legend", they call it. They flatter themselves. I only heard about it on their websites in which the same article is run word for word. No one on the "left"would have written it and even the Freep says the Discovery Institute is the culprit.

A better word than giant is "conservative circle jerk"! What's typical of this camp fire coziness is the mutual satisfaction both conservative entities hope to get by blaming others for their idiocy.

All is done in the name of their search for absolute knowledge, a fool's errand if there ever was one. Warning: don't be fooled by the link on Freep that says "Evolution News". It goes straight to a Discovery Institute shill site, a "front" that has nothing to do with real or scientific theories about evolution. It's a typical right wing bait and switch.

Some background on this farce. Not too long ago a so-called "Wedge Document" outlined a plan by Intelligent Design (ID) proponents to subvert American education, science and the humanities. The document was roundly disowned by the right wing even though the document outlined a campaign that ID proponents had, in fact, embarked upon. Free Republic themselves attribute the document to the Discovery Institute which had apparently eschewed it only to recant later when pinned down. Now --both sites blame the left! But for what? No one on the left wrote it and Freep still attributes the document to Discovery. But the left is supposed to have fallen for it!! Stop me, my sides are hurting!

It is fair to characterize Intelligent Design [ID] itself as nothing more than a public relations campaign.
In 1999 someone posted on the internet an early fundraising proposal for discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture. Dubbed the “Wedge Document,” this proposal soon took on a life of its own, popping up in all sorts of places and eventually spawning what can only be called a giant urban legend. Among true-believers on the Darwinist fringe the document came to be viewed as evidence for a secret conspiracy to fuse religion with science and impose a theocracy. These claims were so outlandish that for a long time we simply ignored them. But because some credulous Darwinists seem willing to believe almost anything, we decided we should set the record straight.

--Free Republic: Discovery Institute's “Wedge Document”: How Darwinist Paranoia Fueled an Urban Legend

I have news for "Free Republic". Telling me what I already know does not refute me. Repeating what so-called "Darwinists" know about the ID movement hardly amounts to a broadside. The freeper site, in fact, borrows its post verbatim from the discovery Institute (or is the other way 'round?). I can hardly call the freepers unbiased. At last, the only refutation of what were, in fact, ID tactics amounts to mere labeling, name-calling, typical of the ilk. If the "Wedge Document" is an "Urban Legend" it is only so among the stooges of the right wing, the circle jerk, the closed loop of equally closed minds. Until I stumbled upon the pair of them, I had never heard of the damn thing!

The discovery of "Wedge Document" itself means that someone created it even as the ID movement discredited itself. The ID movement has always been a mere PR campaign, perhaps the very campaign described and revealed by the "Wedge Document". That it might have been created to discredit one side or the other simply doesn't matter. Even before it was discovered, there was every reason to suppose that a subversive, anti-science sub-culture was overtly out to subvert the pursuit of truth itself anyway. The "Wedge Document" simply makes no difference one way or the other. ID is still creationism in fancy dress using big words.

That is the crux of it. ID proponents are all about content and ideology. The pursuit of truth, by contrast, is all about method and reason.
The Wedge Document is an internal memorandum from the discovery Institute (the leading proponent of Intelligent Designer "Theory") that was leaked to the Internet in 1999. The discovery Institute later admitted to its authenticity. Since then, discovery Institute hasn't talked very much about the document, or the strategy it outlines. The reason is crushingly obvious, since the Wedge Document makes it readily apparent that the discovery Institute is flat-out lying to us when it claims that its Intelligent Designer campaign is concerned only with science and does not have any religious aims, purpose or effect.

--Lenny Frank re: The "Wedge Document" [document reprinted on Frank's site]

Frank is entitled to his opinion. It is at least as good as the various opinions of the Discovery Institute and that's not saying much. Frank states that Discovery owned up to the document. But who cares? A movement is what a movement does and the tactics and methods of ID are the real issue. Those methods are precisely what makes ID not science.
...we are convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source. That source is scientific materialism. This is precisely our strategy. If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree, our strategy is intended to function as a "wedge" that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points. The very beginning of this strategy, the "thin edge of the wedge," was Phillip Johnson's critique of Darwinism begun in 1991 in Darwinism on Trial, and continued in Reason in the Balance and Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds. Michael Behe's highly successful Darwin's Black Box followed Johnson's work. We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.

--The Wedge Document

The "Wedge Document" reads like a right wing strategy paper.
FIVE YEAR OBJECTIVES
  1. A major public debate between design theorists and Darwinists (by 2003)
  2. Thirty published books on design and its cultural implications (sex, gender issues, medicine, law, and religion)
  3. One hundred scientific, academic and technical articles by our fellows

  4. Significant coverage in national media:
    • Cover story on major news magazine such as Time or Newsweek

    • PBS show such as Nova treating design theory fairly
    • Regular press coverage on developments in design theory
    • Favorable op-ed pieces and columns on the design movement by 3rd party media
  5. Spiritual & cultural renewal:
    • Mainline renewal movements begin to appropriate insights from design theory, and to repudiate theologies influenced by materialism
    • Major Christian denomination(s) defend(s) traditional doctrine of creation & repudiate(s)
    • Darwinism Seminaries increasingly recognize & repudiate naturalistic presuppositions
    • Positive uptake in public opinion polls on issues such as sexuality, abortion and belief in God
    • Ten states begin to rectify ideological imbalance in their science curricula & include design theory
  6. Scientific achievements:
    • An active design movement in Israel, the UK and other influential countries outside the US
    • Ten CRSC Fellows teaching at major universities
    • Two universities where design theory has become the dominant view
    • Design becomes a key concept in the social sciences Legal reform movements base legislative proposals on design theory
ACTVITIESResearch Fellowship Program (for writing and publishing) (2) Front line research funding at the "pressure points" (e.g., Daul Chien's Chengjiang Cambrian Fossil Find in paleontology, and Doug Axe's research laboratory in molecular biology)(3) Teacher training (4) Academic Conferences (5) Opinion-maker Events & Conferences (6) Alliance-building, recruitment of future scientists and leaders, and strategic partnerships with think tanks, social advocacy groups, educational organizations and institutions, churches, religious groups, foundations and media outlets (7) Apologetics seminars and public speaking (8) Op-ed and popular writing (9) Documentaries and other media productions (10) Academic debates (11) Fund Raising and Development (12) General Administrative support
This is not the way science is conducted. Science does not hire PR firms, recently called "think tanks" for PR reasons. Science does not try to sell you on relativity, evolution, quantum physics or string theory. Science is ever self-correcting. Science is not an ideology, it is a method and a process. Science is not a set of shibboleths to which you must pay obeisance or pledge allegiance. Science cannot, by definition, ever become a cult, a religion or an entrenched ideology. What might be a working hypothesis today may be disproved tomorrow. Intelligent Design is "creationism" written with jargon. It is hardly intelligent, considerably ideological, and most certainly disingenuous. It is defined by its "content", a dogma sold politically. It is not and cannot be science. The "Wedge Document" proves, forever, the un-scientific nature of "Intelligent Design".

The Wedge Document is at odds with ethics based upon the pursuit of truth. In the empiricist tradition, at the very core of America's founding, we inherit a methodology, an ongoing activity by which verifiable truths may be discovered and weighed according to the evidence. Those who carry this banner include John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison. Among the more recent, less popularly known philosophers are A.J. Ayer and a panoply of logical positivists who value the quest itself as opposed to a pre-conceived end result.


Not content to write for academia and other philosophers, Bertrand Russell would reach a wider public with The Problems of Philosophy (1912) and, his nobel prize winning, A History of Western Philosophy (1945), in which Russell explores the idea that western civilization is essentially Greek civilization. Russell did not arbitrarily separate education from the pressing issues of the day; rather, he linked progress in education with social progress in general. He is famous for debunking fallacy, propaganda, and, most memorably, superstition and religion. He thought widespread superstition to have unwelcome social consequences. It is tragic that American society did not take to heart Russell`s simple admonition:
I wish to propose for the reader's favorable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.
That simple doctrine might have replaced political ideologies of all sorts in America. Language, Truth and Logic by A.J. Ayer should be required reading in American high schools. It is the defining explanation of the "verifiability criterion of meaning" --the cornerstone of logical positivism.

Ayer identifies the characteristics of "significant propositions" -- propositions which purport to contain real and meaningful information about the world i.e, verifiable information. It is the ability to state, at least in theory, the conditions under which a proposition may be shown to be either true or false. In a world in which no one has a monopoly on truth but many are willing to pervert it, it is essential that we think clearly about what can be proven and what is just meaningless bunkum.

Ayer's "Logical Positivism" is seen by many to be lacking the "human touch", thought by some to be untenable from a practical standpoint, "Godless" by various ideologies. It is, in fact, the logical basis of empiricism, the antidote to ideology.

In the work of Jacob Bronowski we find a critique of "logical positivism", a critique that saves it from itself. In his Science and Human Values, Bronowski points out a social injunction implied in Ayer's analytical methods, It takes the following form:
"We ought to act in such a way that what is true can be verified to be so."
In the activity of pure science, there is, then, an ethic. Bronowski writes even more convincingly about verification, culture and civilization than about symbols and formal systems.
This is the act of creation, in which an original thought is born, and it is the same act in original science and original art. But it is not therefore the monopoly of the man who wrote the poem or who made the discovery. On the contrary, I believe this view of the creative act to be right because it alone gives a meaning to the act of appreciation.

...

'The society of scientists is simple because it has a directing purpose: to explore the truth. Nevertheless, it has to solve the problem of every society, which is to find a compromise between man and men. It must encourage the single scientist to be independent, and the body of scientists to be tolerant. From these basic conditions, which form the prime values, there follows step by step a range of values: dissent, freedom of thought and speech, justice, honour, human dignity and self-respect.'

--J. Brownowski, Science and Human Values, New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1965, p. 11.

Bronowski's critique derives an ethic from the practice of science, an ethic based upon what science does, not what scientists themselves believe. Bronowski places the foundations of Western Civilization upon an existentialist affirmation --a single value, the pursuit of truth itself. This value is not itself subject to proof. It is chosen. It is an existential choice, one that Jean-Paul Sartre himself might have made. It was Sartre, after all, who summed it up: "A man is nothing else but what he makes of himself". Eariler, Voltaire: "I have no name but the name that I have made for myself". And with that, we come full circle to Bertrand Russell's belief that the discipline he found in Ancient Greece --the pure pursuit of truth --is at the very foundations of our culture.

I found another take on Bronowski and Clark. It is from the nationally syndicated Engines of Our Ingenuity hosted by my good friened, Dr. John Lienhard of The University of Houston's College of Engineering.
Clark and Bronowski converge on hope, they converge on belief, they converge on the pervasive unity of the human species. Of course both are wary. In the end, Bronowski says,
We are all afraid ... That is the nature of the human imagination. Yet [we have] gone forward. ...
And a worried Kenneth Clark, facing the social upheaval of the late '60s, says (as much to himself as to us),
... civilization has been a series of rebirths. Surely this should give us confidence in ourselves.
They both clearly assert our capacity for saving ourselves. They realize that technology, science, and the other arts have always converged upon our problems. And they surely remain our only real hope in troubled times.

-Dr. John Lienhard, Engines of Our Ingenuity, No. 1880: Clark and Bronowski

Bronowski, who understood science as well as art, wrote a perfect synthesis of both sides of the human brain, this perfect description of the cultural role that is often played by science. He embraces its contradiction and transcends it in another paradigm. At a time when modern philosophy had consigned human values to the realm of meaninglessness, Bronowski, conjoined them in a supreme act of creativity.

Bronowski is best known for his monumental Ascent of Man, a series that he wrote and hosted for the BBC. In thirteen episodes, Bronowski traced the evolution of human society. Many characterize this monumental achievement as refuting Kenneth Clark's earlier Civilization series. That criticism misunderstand both Bronowski and Clark. I prefer to think of both efforts as book ends on a single shelf.

Despite fallacious assertions by the Wedge Document amid even more absurd behavior by the likes of Free Republic and the Discovery Institute, it has fallen to secular minds to advance the spirit of inquiry. It is during those times in which we lose confidence in our progress that humankind seems eager to seek out comforting or religious ideologies. Russell, who connected broad departures from ancient priesthoods originating in Greece with the emerging spirit of science taking shape over centuries of European history, also saw in an anti-democratic authoritarianism a persistent threat which would in his lifetime result in fascism and Nazism.
"There is over a large part of the earth's surface something not unlike a reversion to the ancient Egyptian system of divine kingship, controlled by a new priestly caste. Although this tendency has not gone so far in the West as it has in the east, it has, nevertheless, gone to lengths which would have astonished the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries both in England and in America. Individual initiative is hemmed in either by the state or by powerful corporations, and there is a great danger lest this should produce, as in ancient Rome, a kind of listlessness and fatalism that is disastrous to vigorous life.

I am constantly receiving letters saying: 'I see that the world is in a bad state, but what can one humble person do? Life and property are at the mercy of a few individuals who have the decision as to peace or war. Economic activities on any large scale are determined by those who govern either the state or the large corporations. Even where there is nominally democracy, the part which one citizen can obtain in controlling policy is usually infinitesimal. Is it not perhaps better in such circumstances to forget public affairs and get as much enjoyment by the way as the times permit?' I find such letters very difficult to answer, and I am sure that the state of mind which leads to their being written is very inimical to a healthy social life.

As a result of mere size, government becomes increasingly remote from the governed and tends, even in a democracy, to have an independent life of its own. I do not profess to know how to cure this evil completely, but I think it is very important to recognize its existence and to search for ways of diminishing its magnitude."

-Bertrand Russell, Authority and the Individual, p. 18-19:
The most moving moment in the Ascent of Man occurred in an episode entitled: 'Knowledge or Certainty'. In it, Bronowski visited Auschwitz where many members of his family had died.

We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.

Jacob Bronowski,"Ascent of Man"



10 comments:

SadButTrue said...

.
.
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From your Bertrand Russell quote,
"There is over a large part of the earth's surface something not unlike a reversion to the ancient Egyptian system of divine kingship, controlled by a new priestly caste."

What is really sad (but true nonetheless) is that a caste system that we naturally perceive as dystopic is thought of as utopic by members of the privileged overclass. In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World life was pure drudgery for the Deltas, but not so bad at all if you happened to be an Alpha.

Is this not why those who seem to think of themselves as the new nobility strive for a return to international feudalism?

Unknown said...

Of that, Sadbuttrue, I have no doubt. And your description of life in the "Brave New World" sounds a lot like Houston, TX or, for that matter, any number of American cities.

Christopher said...

As I think we all know, Intelligent Design is simply a respectable front for Creationism – a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

It seems incredible that in our 21st century scientific and technological age, 45% of the population in the world’s leading scientific and technological nation (the USA) are Young Earth Creationists, believing God created the earth less than 10,000 years ago.

And only 13% believe that life evolved unaided by God (it should be said, though, that 38% believe we evolved, but with help from God).

What explains the persistence of ID/Creationism?

Perhaps it’s because fundamentalist Christians think they’ll have to abandon their Christian beliefs if they accept Evolution. And they are not made any more amenable to Evolution when they hear Richard Dawkins say that atheism is necessary when accepting the Theory of Evolution.

Since so many Christians get genuine comfort from their Christian beliefs, we perhaps shouldn’t be surprised that unaided Evolution is rejected by the majority of Americans, who live in the most religious country in “Christendom”.

But is Dawkins right in saying that Evolution means atheism? Not if you are (or were) the late evolutionary biologist, Stephen Jay Gould, who came up with the notion of Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA), which said in so many words that religion was compatible with science (and therefore Evolution) since religion and science were two totally separate disciplines (magisteria) ie they didn’t overlap.

Although most Darwinists are atheists or agnostics, a significant minority, including the head of the Human Genome Project (the US government one) Francis S Collins, are Christian believers.

It seems, then, that Dawkins, while right on most things concerning evolution, and on the origin of the Universe (the Big Bang) is wrong about Evolution being incompatible with religious belief.

Even Pope John-Paul ll, confronted with the overwhelming evidence, had to admit that Darwinian evolution was true, and this obviously didn’t stop him from continuing with his Catholicism.

Dawkins is, incidentally, correct in pointing out that literalist Christians, who assert that Christ’s miracles were a fact, and so transgress the Laws of Nature, do impinge and overlap onto Science’s territory. But this is a minor matter.

Intransigent Creationism may simply be a reaction to the intransigent (and proselytising) atheism of Richard Dawkins and his ilk.

If Dawkins, who is enormously influential through his brilliant books, were to change course, and say that the God-question lies outside the boundaries of science (which I think it does), he might cause many fundamentalist Christians to accept Evolution, since this wouldn’t put their religious beliefs in peril.

The wind-filled sails of the Intelligent Designers and Creationists would accordingly become slacker.

The United States of America (or, as Gore Vidal is prone to say, The United States of Amnesia, or even of Alzheimer's) might, accordingly, become a more enlightened society, which could transform its currently unenlightened (if not antediluvian) political landscape.

Anonymous said...

Fuzzflash sez…

Rollicking good read as always, Len. It is quintessentially important to expose and ridicule proselytizing fundies because the bastards are not content to keep it to themselves. If they kept to themselves, then OK, fine. But preacher people can’t turn a buck from that sort of religion. Without customers in church or watching their piffle on TV, they can’t maintain their revenue stream. Might have to get a "real job" in K-Mart to keep body and soul together.

Still, one has to be impressed with fundy apparatchiks, those money-sucking animals who flummox their flocks with emotionally charged high-powered bullshit, to lead them, a la Rev. Jim Jones e.g., into the Valley of the Terminally Stupid.

Once primed, ungulates will believe anything, especially The Greatest Bullshit Story Ever Told. If one can be conned into outsourcing one’s reason to some sort of epistemological Ponzi scheme, one can be led to murder ones own children(cf again Rev Jim Jones). When god is on your side you can do no wrong. Comes with the territory. Ask any indigenous person on the planet. Well, maybe not WASPS.

Disturbing though these individual tragedies are, what’s even more so is the way BushCo have harvested the hearts, minds and wallets of essentially decent people in order to rule. The happy clappies and rattle snake handlers are BushCo’s Base, literally “Al-Kaeda”. Fundy religionists including The Universal Jihad Jockey, and Holy Mother Church’s Catholic Majesties (Cardinals) who stated that it was a sin to vote Kerry 04 because he was pro-choice, are part of The Establishment; The Ruling Elite. These motherfuckers and their ilk have been hand-in-glove since ancient times. Finessing rubes comes as easily to them as tossing trinkets into a tip jar, or tossing the bodies of young soldiers (and their civilian victims) into Moloch’s meat-grinding mouth.

They’ll pal around with whomsoever is in power so as to retain their tax-free easy money.
Manna from Mammon?

Yes Please!! Heaven can wait.

Bless the troops as they deploy to bestow god’s gift of Freedom and Democracy upon Mesopotamia?

Sure will!!

Withdraw support from, and actively stymy Food Aid programs to starving third world folk because the food parcels contain condoms?

No sweat!!.

Keep Teri Schiavo in a vegetative state so that she could:
(a) make the cui bono crowd, AND
(b) the Machine that she was hooked up to go;
(a) ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching on the one hand,and
(b) “Beep….Beep…..Beep”, on the other?

No fucken worries what-so-ever!!

Btw, I’ve got the opening two minutes of George Carlin’s N.Y. rave on religion down pat, up to the bit, “HO-LY SHIT”, complete with choreography, bow and cheesy grin. I perform it at children’s birthday partys and local bar-b-cues. Parents often usher their precious ones aside and shield their eyes when I ramp up, but the little ones whose eyes sparkle afterwards reward me more than virtue itself.

Once kids are able to laugh at the essential absurdity of the scamming techniques of spritual pickpockets, those kids are afforded some degree of immunisation from the power of the insidious limbic virus which phoney religionists are so zealous on spreading.

When parents stop drafting their kids to Jesus Camp or Jihad Junior High Madrassas, I'll quit doing Carlin's routine in public.

Unknown said...

Christopher I said...

As I think we all know, Intelligent Design is simply a respectable front for Creationism – a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Yep! Wrapping creationism up in scientific jargon is like putting lipstick on a pig. But I would not want to kiss it.

It seems incredible that in our 21st century scientific and technological age, 45% of the population in the world’s leading scientific and technological nation (the USA) are Young Earth Creationists, believing God created the earth less than 10,000 years ago.

And some of these same folk will concede the existence of galaxies several billion light years distant. It apparently never occurs to them that the two positions are simply irreconcilable.

And only 13% believe that life evolved unaided by God (it should be said, though, that 38% believe we evolved, but with help from God).

Yet Texas rustic will tell you never kill a slow roach; you jest improve the breed!, as succinct a description of natural selection as I ever read in Julian Huxley [See: Evolution in Action. It's a classic]

...fundamentalist Christians think they’ll have to abandon their Christian beliefs if they accept Evolution. And they are not made any more amenable to Evolution when they hear Richard Dawkins say that atheism is necessary when accepting the Theory of Evolution.

If they firmly believe that there is a conflict, then there is one. There is something about what they believe evolution to be or about what they believe Christianity to be that is in conflict.

But is Dawkins right in saying that Evolution means atheism?

It all depends upon how one defines "God". I avoid defining "God" by not positing God when natural explanations are adequate. Religious folk err, I think, whenever they posit "God" when natural explanations are entirely sufficient.

Not if you are (or were) the late evolutionary biologist, Stephen Jay Gould, who came up with the notion of Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA), which said in so many words that religion was compatible with science (and therefore Evolution) since religion and science were two totally separate disciplines (magisteria) ie they didn’t overlap.

That's interesting, of course. But, as an existentialist as well as a logical positivist, I think it impossible to make meaningful statements about "God". That would include, as well, any statement to the effect that "God" is not incompatible with the science or vice versa. Indeed, science is a practice and, in fact, was indulged by many throughout history who also believed in God. Statements addressing the issue of whether or not God is "incompatible" with science are vague if not meaningless. Such statements confuse the issue of whether it is meant that "God" is incompatible with the "content" of science or with the practice of science. If the former, nothing meaningful can, in fact, be said. The logical proof of that is long but not unlike the proof of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.

Although most Darwinists are atheists or agnostics, a significant minority, including the head of the Human Genome Project (the US government one) Francis S Collins, are Christian believers.

Certainly, they are free to "choose" to believe in God. Most scientists, I think, recognize the difficulties involved in communicating meaningfully about an "entity" that is logically beyond definition. The problems always arise among zealots and proselytizers on whom the subtleties of both logic and science are utterly lost.

It seems, then, that Dawkins, while right on most things concerning evolution, and on the origin of the Universe (the Big Bang) is wrong about Evolution being incompatible with religious belief.

By position is that any sentence of the form 'evolution is compatible with a believe in God' is meaningless. Likewise, any sentence of the form 'evolution is not incompatible with a belief in God' is also meaningless.

Even Pope John-Paul ll, confronted with the overwhelming evidence, had to admit that Darwinian evolution was true, and this obviously didn’t stop him from continuing with his Catholicism.

Indeed! The fact of evolution is absolutely irrefutable. Great comments, Christopher. Thanks for the post.

Fuzzflash sez…

It is quintessentially important to expose and ridicule proselytizing fundies because the bastards are not content to keep it to themselves.

I hope I "ridiculed" up to you high standards, Fuzz.

If they kept to themselves, then OK, fine. But preacher people can’t turn a buck from that sort of religion.

That sums it up precisely. Christianity, at least since Pope Leo financed his orgies and his love of the works of Raphael and Michelangelo, by selling indulgences, has simply become a way for a tiny elite to make big bucks and euros by exploiting the frightened, the superstitious, the ignorant.

Still, one has to be impressed with fundy apparatchiks, those money-sucking animals who flummox their flocks with emotionally charged high-powered bullshit, to lead them, a la Rev. Jim Jones e.g., into the Valley of the Terminally Stupid.

I am reminded of John Lennon's "Imagine".

...ungulates will believe anything

That's what makes them ungulata, I suppose.

If one can be conned into outsourcing one’s reason to some sort of epistemological Ponzi scheme, one can be led to murder ones own children(cf again Rev Jim Jones). When god is on your side you can do no wrong.

That's the problem with "God" and those who would be God-like. Until he fucked up big time in Iraq, Bush was worshipped, idolatry.

Finessing rubes comes as easily to them as tossing trinkets into a tip jar, or tossing the bodies of young soldiers (and their civilian victims) into Moloch’s meat-grinding mouth.

I’ve got the opening two minutes of George Carlin’s N.Y. rave on religion down pat, up to the bit, “HO-LY SHIT”, complete with choreography, bow and cheesy grin. I perform it at children’s birthday partys and local bar-b-cues. Parents often usher their precious ones aside and shield their eyes when I ramp up, but the little ones whose eyes sparkle afterwards reward me more than virtue itself.

Sounds like something you must put on youtube and share with the world.

When parents stop drafting their kids to Jesus Camp or Jihad Junior High Madrassas, I'll quit doing Carlin's routine in public.

I end this response with a quote from Julian Huxley:

`No one would bet on anything so improbable happening; and yet it has happened. It has happened thanks to the workings of Natural Selection and the properties of living substance which make Natural Selection inevitable'. What more can be said, except possibly to suggest that there may be a slight difference between something that 'has happened' and one which 'may have happened'. --J. Huxley, Evolution in Action

Indeed, it happened. It is difficult to believe because the process cannot be perceived in our short lifetimes. The fact of evolution is confirmed, however, in ordinary sense experience. Wheat does not grow in the wild. It is the product of "artifical selection", a process practiced by every farmer who has bred for specific characteristics. Wheat is the product of ancient savvy farmers who experimented with wild grasses to get a bigger grain.

Anonymous said...

Excellent post, Len.

What really scares me, aside from the pseudo-science that these institutes foster, is the fact that they continue to raise massive amounts of money to continue this nonsense.

Unknown said...

Welcome to the "Cowboy", Morse. You are right to be "scared". The raising of money to finance the selling or peddling of lies is akin to Pope Leo's selling indulgences to finance his orgies and other excesses. In those days, his extravagances split the Christian religion. Today, the selling of ideology to finance the GOP will lead to the dissolution of Western Civilization. Unless they are stopped. The GOP is NOT a political party. It is a crime syndicate, a criminal conspiracy whose leadership should be prosecuted under RICO statutes.

Batocchio said...

One of the aspects that troubles me the most about conservatives is that they're rarely honest about their intentions. Almost everything is obfuscation - in large part because the ideas can't win on their merits.

Anonymous said...

Well, Len, I used to visit regularly when I ran Media Needle. But then it was spambotted to hell, and I dropped out for a while . It's good to be back, and I enjoy your work, as always.

Unknown said...

Great comments batocchio and morse...thanks for visiting and sounding off.

Batocchio said...

One of the aspects that troubles me the most about conservatives is that they're rarely honest about their intentions.

Indeed, the more inteligent among them know their crap to be crap. That's why they communicate with the party faithful via "code words" and "in" jargon. "Family Values" was GOP-speak for bigotry of several sorts. Someone should prepare a GOP dictionary in which the REAL meaning of a word is contrasted to that understood by the GOP cult.