Non Plus Ultra

Happy Holidays

2005-12-31T12:21:00.000-05:00

Happy Holidays to all! We've just returned from our first trip to China. It was fairly amazing. You can see some pictures from the trip on Flickr, here.

Re-entering the blogosphere

2005-12-31T12:00:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been awhile, hasn't it? Lots has happened since my last post. I'm re-opening this blog, with no attempt to catch up with what I've missed. Just random thoughts, on random subjects...

Ah, the shoe finally drops

2005-09-03T10:51:00.000-05:00

Via DUB, I see that the Religious Wrong has already put the proper theological interpretation to the Hurricane Katrina debacle. Way to go, guys, what took you so long?

UPDATE (10:26 PM) The Christian Coalition of America's website has no links to the American Red Cross, or any other relief organization for that matter. However, under "Today's News", you can link to an Agape Press story in which one Rev. Bill Shanks discerns God's mercy in action over the past week:

“New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion -- it's free of all of those things now," Shanks says. "God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there -- and now we're going to start over again."

Surely Rev. Shanks speaks from the eye of the storm, so to speak, from downtown N.O. where he's busy spreading God's love as we speak by helping the victims of the storm and its aftermath. Right? Um, well, actually...according to the article, "Shanks heeded warnings to evacuate New Orleans, and is currently staying with friends in the Jackson, Mississippi, area".

A good round-up of the predictable hate-fueled nuttiness, including comparisons of satellite images of Katrina to a fetus, appears on the (non-hateful, non-nutty) Christian Alliance For Progress' blog.

Brooks Gets It Right

2005-09-02T21:59:00.000-05:00

This is why I can't help but respect David Brooks, with whom I disagree most of the time: from tonight's News Hour on PBS:

I think it is a huge reaction we are about to see. I mean, first of all, they violated the social fabric, which is in the moments of crisis you take care of the poor first. That didn't happen; it's like leaving wounded on the battlefield.

[...]

This is -- first of all it is a national humiliation to see bodies floating in a river for five days in a major American city. But second, you have to remember, this was really a de-legitimization of institutions.
Our institutions completely failed us and it is not as if it is the first in the past three years -- this follows Abu Ghraib, the failure of planning in Iraq, the intelligence failures, the corporate scandals, the media scandals.

We have had over the past four or five years a whole series of scandals that soured the public mood. You've seen a rise in feeling the country is headed in the wrong direction.

And I think this is the biggest one and the bursting one, and I must say personally it is the one that really says hey, it feels like the 70s now where you really have a loss of faith in institutions. Let's get out of this mess. And I really think this is so important as a cultural moment, like the blackouts of 1977, just people are sick of it.

[...]

...when 9/11 happened Giuliani was right there and just as a public presence, forceful -- no public presence like that now. So you have had a surge of strength, people felt good about the country even though we had been hit on 9/11.

Now we've been hit again in a different way; people feel lousy; people feel ashamed and part of that is because of the public presentation. In part that is because of the failure of Bush to understand immediately the shame people felt.

Sitting up there on the airplane and looking out the window was terrible. And the three days of doing nothing, really, on Bush was terrible. And even today, I found myself, as you know, I support his politics quite often.

Shame, anger, sadness, fear - I never knew what it felt like to experience all these emotions at once - until now.

A National Disgrace

2005-09-02T00:24:00.000-05:00

It seems clear now that the natural disaster that struck New Orleans Monday is being compounded and magnified by the criminal incompentence of the federal government's response. The anarchy now gripping the city is largely a result of the government's failure to respond to the disaster. What started out as perhaps the worst natural calamity in our history is quickly becoming a man-made disaster of even greater proportions. And I'm not talking about the looters, many of whom are actually starving, desperate survivors who have seen no evidence that any help is on the way. While N.O. mayor Ray Nagin issues a "desperate SOS" for help, FEMA director Michael Brown blames the "people who did not heed the advance warnings". Never mind that most of these people are the poorest of the poor, unable to leave because they don't have cars, and no public means of evacuation were available to them. Yet when it comes to his own agency's performance, he offers this rosy assessment: "Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans -- virtually a city that has been destroyed -- that things are going relatively well". Give that man a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Meanwhile, President Bush remarked Thursday that "I don't think anybody anticipated the the breach of the levees", when in fact the whole disaster scenario now unfolding was predicted with uncanny accuracy by Scientific American in 2001, the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 2002, and by many others (sorry I don't have links for all of these facts, but they are well documented). This from the same guy who said it was impossible to anticipate the 9/11 attacks, while a memo entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack in U.S" sat on his desk. Efforts to reinforce and maintain N.O.'s system of levees were severely scaled back over the last couple of years so that resources could be diverted to Bush's ill-conceived and incompetently managed war in Iraq. Part of the reason the response has been so slow is that the National Guard units that would normally be the first on the scene are halfway around the world.

Gas prices are at $6/gallon in some parts of the country. Here in south-central Virginia, they are reaching $3/gallon. And I fear that we're only beginning to see the long-term effects. It's now four days after Katrina struck, and the government has yet to deliver more than a fraction of the aid required, or indeed, even to establish basic law and order. People may soon begin to wonder about the much-vaunted might of the U.S., when it can't even be brought to bear on the desperate situation in N.O. Will this shock, coming on the heels of renewed doubts about the war and Bush's leadership in general, precipitate a more general crisis in confidence? Will the stock market go into a serious nosedive? We all hope not of course. But now, no one can say that the questions are merely academic.

You can donate to the relief effort here, among other places.

Snark O' The Day

2005-09-01T13:29:00.000-05:00

"As democracy is perfected, the office of President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."---H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

Katrina Blogs

2005-09-01T07:00:00.000-05:00

Some blogs on the Katrina disaster:

DeadlyKatrina.com
Hurricaid
Kaye's Hurricane Katrina Blog
WDSU's Katrina Blog
Tom Planchet (from WWL)
The Truth Laid Bear has aggregated blogs on Katrina.

Most of the major blogs are also covering Katrina developments heavily, e.g. dKos, TPM Cafe, Instapundit, Michelle Malkin. Instapundit's list of charities and bloggers is here. Donate to the American Red Cross here.

Well I Heard The News...

2005-08-30T17:18:00.000-05:00

...there's good bloggin' tonight. For your consideration, some of my recent favorites from the grassroots:

Out of Respect - as in "none left", and none left standing...
Political Parrhesia - boldly saying what needs to be said. High quality site.
Collective Sigh - southern culture may be on the skids, but where there's a sigh, there's hope...
Argus - from Gilgamesh. Like me, he started blogging in August of this year. Does that mean our Astroblogical signs are the same?
DataJunkie - just what is says, but weird.

Katrina sure blew. Donate to the American Red Cross here.

Blue Skies...

2005-08-29T07:58:00.000-05:00

Blue Skies...
"Mission Accomplished" - George W. Bush on the Iraq war, May 2, 2003

...Smilin' at Me...
"The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." - Vice President Dick Cheney on the Iraq insurgency, June 20, 2005

...Nothin' but Blue Skies...
"I don’t use the phrase guerrilla war is because there isn’t one, and it would be a misunderstanding and a miscommunication to you and to the people of the country and the world." - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on the Iraq insurgency, June 30, 2003

...Do I see...
"What you have...is a new consensus between the universal principles of democracy and human rights and Iraqi traditions in Islam. And in that, it is an agreement, a compact between the various communities and it sets a new paradigm for this part of the world, a reconciliation, a consensus between the various forces and tendencies that are at work here in Iraq." - U.S. Ambassodor To Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad on the Iraq Constitution, Meet the Press, August 29, 2005

A World of Illusion

2005-08-27T11:46:00.000-05:00

Here it comes, another screed deconstructing the lies, damned lies, and damndest lies from the Radical Wrong on the Iraq war, global warming, Social Security privatization, evolution, and (as my wife often says) everything else...

...on second thought, just check out this page (via BoingBoing), the coolest collection of visual illusions I've seen on the internets.

Real screeds on the way, though...

I.D. In a (Cracked) Nutshell

2005-08-25T14:40:00.000-05:00

The fundamental argument for Intelligent Design (I.D.) goes like this:

Some natural phenomena, such as the origin and development of life on Earth, cannot be explained by natural causes alone, even in principle.
We should therefore admit "intelligent design" as a valid scientific explanation, even in cases in which the only evidence for the designer is the unexplained phenomena in question, and where the designer must be a supernatural entity in order to provide the required explanation.

That's I.D. in a nutshell. Now, despite the current "controversy" over I.D. in schools, and despite the copious flow of (dis)information coming from the Discovery Institute in Seattle (the main institutional purveyor of I.D.), I.D. is a bad idea, and easily dispensed with. Here are the main points:

No one has ever been able to convincingly demonstrate that any actually observed phenomenon is "in principle" immune to naturalistic scientific explanation. Not that there aren't unexplained phenomena in science - of course there are, and there always will be. But the phenomena that I.D.'ers hold up as being incapable of naturalistic explanation "in principle" - whether it be Michael Behe's "irreducibly complex" molecular machines, or William Dembski's "complex specified information" in biological organisms, or whatever - have all been examined by scientists using normal scientific methods, and if not fully explained, explained with enough success to warrant the expectation that further investigation by normal scientific means will result in completely satisfactory explanations. Thus, there is simply no need for introducing extraneous (and potentially supernatural) explanatory principles like "intelligent designers" into science.
I.D. is unfalsifiable, and thus unscientific. There will always be new, unsolved problems in science. I.D. proponents will always be able to argue that these new problems are (guess what) "unsolvable in principle" by naturalistic science. As these new problems are solved, I.D. proponents will always be able to retreat back to the next unsolved problem, and claim that this is where naturalistic science breaks down. It is similar in this regard to "god of the gaps" arguments in theology.

In other words, the fundamental argument against I.D. is this: There is simply no need for non-naturalistic explanatory concepts in science, and even if there were, I.D. principles would not be appropriate because they are unfalsifiable. And that, my friends, is the nutshell, cracked.

The I.D. "controversy" is fundamentally motivated by religious and political concerns. As such, we shouldn't be surprised to find side-issues, irrelevant, but useful to I.D. proponents in obfuscating the main (and easily resolved) issues. For instance, I.D. proponents often argue that mainstream science is prejudiced against their position, because of the non-theistic, materialistic philosophy that is dominant in science. But this is nonsense. There are many respected scientists who are theists. In addition, normal science routinely addresses phenomena with purported supernatural causes, such as extra-sensory perception, the efficacy of prayer in treating disease, the existence of prophetic codes in the Bible, and so on. None of these lines of investigation so far have produced an iota of evidence that supernatural causes are at work in the real world. If in the future such studies do produce real and convincing evidence of non-natural forces at work, science should, and will, accept them. My advice in the meantime: don't hold your breath.

Real science is motivated by a passion for the truth, and is characterized by a willingness to go wherever the search for truth leads. Intelligent Design, on the other hand, is motivated by a prior committment to a narrow, rigid conception of Christianity that I.D. proponents evidently believe is incompatible with a rational, scientific view of the world. Though I myself am a non-theist, I find this sad. When stripped of the fairy-tales, tribalism, and anthropomorphism that are the relics of their primitive origins, the world's great religions have profound insights to offer about the ultimate ends and means of human existence. They, like science, have contributed to human progress. To anchor one's faith to the vestigial elements of these religions, and to retard the progress of science in their name, is a giant step backwards.

Behold...

2005-08-25T01:20:00.000-05:00

...His Noodlyness...

The Right Reacts to Robertson

2005-08-24T17:15:00.000-05:00

Thankfully, the Right's condemnation of Pat Robertson's recent remarks on "taking out" Hugo Chavez, the duly elected President of Venezuela, has been near universal.

So what would be the point of me snooping around on conservative blogs, looking for the exceptions? Pure curiousity, that's all. ;-) And away we go...

First stop: MichelleMalkin.com. A search of her site for "Pat Robertson" comes up with exactly 2 relevant hits, both by Brian Maloney. The first, dateline Aug. 23, 2:54 PM, asks

Could Pat Roberston be right about Chavez?

The second, posted 12 hours later, laments the "hysterical frenzy" over Pat's remarks, and offers this comment on Bush's response to Robertson:

Why would the Bush Administration feel the need to condemn the remarks? Ignoring them would have been a lot smarter.

Just for the record: the Bush Administration didn't "condemn" Robertson's remarks, they called them "inappropriate". You know, like red wine with fish. Inappropriate.

Heading over to RedState.org at about 4:52 PM EDT, I see no mention of Robertson in any of the front page stories, no mention of Robertson in the "RedHot" comments, and no mention of Robertson in the recommended diaries. But two member diaries advertised on the front page do address the issue. The first one is the best. "Is Pat Robertson Insane?poll" has a very nice collection of Robertson quotes, followed by 202 comments. Most state the obvious: Robertson is "insane", he's "not Christian", and so on. But a surprising number think ol' Pat may be onto something here. The sixth comment posted is

At any rate: He's right about Chavez...

Scrolling down the page, here's a (by no means exhaustive) sampling of the pro-Robertson/pro-assassination sentiments, cut-and-pasted directy from the comments:

The reason to off Chavez is only tangentially about the oil. It's what he can and is doing with the oil money.
Robertson gets a lot wrong, and some things right. Specifically, assassinating communist dictators is a Good Thing, when they threaten our interests, as Chavez manifestly does. It is a Bad Thing to talk about doing the necessary publically.
Killing Chavez would be somewhat costly in the short term, and profitable thereafter; leaving him in is cheap, but the long term costs are going to be dear.
This is one punk who needs to be taken down.
Enough! I am a Christian, as you well know, and I am calling for the assassination of this terror-abetting lunatic.
I can't find anything objecionable in any of the Robertson quotes.
what I don't understand is why pat robertson, a good and decent man and a mainstream conservative republican, is being maligned on a website called redstate.org.
robertson has said nothing with which any decent, red-blooded american would disagree.
Do we want to rule out decisively dealing with someone who sponsors a terrorist group and cozies up to our enemies?
thou shalt not kill is one of the commandments...but they were given to individuals, not nations. nations were actually encouraged to destroy evil peoples. you obviously have a thing for robertson and probably all christians, i just can't stand to see a good man attacked by the good guys. want to talk about a well-respected preacher losing his marbles? how about billy graham holding hands with bill and hillary and endorsing hillary for president.
There are times that I have a strong distaste for some of the things Robertson says. This isn't one of them.
Chavez needs some lead in his head along with Castro, Kim Jong and a few Iranian mullahs.
Pat needs to put together a full-blown plan together before I sign on.

If you're in a masochistic mood, I heartily recommend reading this diary and it's comments in its entirety - it's full of digressions into fascinating topics like the resurgence of world-wide Communism, the relationship between anti-Catholicism and illiteracy, whether Chavez is considering starting a WMD program, whether homosexuality is evil or just a sin, the power wielded by Satan in this world, whether John McCain is a traitor, and the German election of 1932.

The second diary, "Pat Robertson, an American Mullah", appears to have been shut down before a really good conversation could get going. Folks at RedState were pretty upset at the diarist's comparison of Pat to a fatwah-issuing cleric, among other things. But this comment did get through:

I'll be honest, I've thought things along the same lines as Pat Robertson when it comes to the Venezuelan dictator. Do I think he's sometimes been an embarrassment to the GOP? Yes. Is this the thing to run him out on a rail over? Given Hugo Chavezs track record, I'll say he got it right.

Ok, it's after 6 PM, and I've had all I can take for now. Again, I emphasize that most of the comments from the Right have been unambiguous in their condemnation of Roberston's latest reprehensible rhetoric. (And it should always be remembered that the stories, articles, and comments on blogs don't necessarily represent the opinions of the blog's owners and editors.) Nevertheless, this small sampling of some of the dissenting opinion on the Right is not without significance. But I don't think I want to think about what that significance is just now.

Einstein speaks

2005-08-23T10:58:00.000-05:00

Late last night, while obsessing over the culture wars as manifested in the current controversy over evolution vs. intelligent design, Einstein's famous quote came to mind: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind". I wondered what precisely Einstein meant by this, and so, good Netizen that I am, I sought out the wisdom of the quote servers. The results are recorded in my post for yesterday.

This morning I was still unsatisfied, however. So I pulled my copy of Ideas and Opinions from my bookshelves, and started reading. The relevant essay is entitled "Science and Religion", pages 41-49 in my edition. I will quote from Part II of the essay, in which Einstein gives his views on what science and religion are, and what their proper relationship is. What is science? That's an easy one, according to Einstein:

Science is the century-old endeavor to bring together by means of systematic thought the perceptible phenomena of this world into as thorough-going an association as possible.

What is religion? That's a bit tougher:

But when asking myself what religion is I cannot think of the answer so easily...

[...]

...instead of asking what religion is I should prefer to ask what characterizes the aspirations of a person who gives me the impression of being religious: a person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings, and aspirations to which he clings because of the superpersonal value. It seems to me that what is important is the force of this superpersonal content and the depth of the conviction concerning its overpowering meaningfulness, regardless of whether any attempt is made to unite this content with a divine Being...In this sense religion is the age-old endeavor of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of these values and goals and constantly to strengthen and extend their effect.

And what is the proper relationship between science and religion?

If one conceives of religion and science according to these definitions then a conflict between them appears impossible. For science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary. Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human thought and action: it cannot justifiably speak of facts and relationships between facts.

[...]

Now, even though the realms of science and religion in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist between the two strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies. Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up. But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

So that's the famous quote, in context. Einstein believes that science and religion, properly conceived, cannot be in conflict, and in fact are mutually reinforcing. But as a matter of fact, they are in conflict, and have been since at least the time of Galileo. What is the source of this conflict then?

Though I have asserted above that in truth a legitimate conflict between religion and science cannot exist, I must nevertheless qualify this assertion once again on an essential point, with reference to the actual content of historical religions. This qualification has to do with the concept of God. During the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man's own image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to influence, the phenomenal world...The idea of God in the religions taught at present is sublimation of that old concept of the gods. Its anthropomorphic character is shown, for instance, by the fact that men appeal to the Divine Being in prayers and plead for the fulfillment of their wishes.

[...]

The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God.

[...]

The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events.

I trust that my selective quotations from Einstein's essay have not distorted his meaning. But by all means see for yourself. I heartily recommend reading the entire thing. It's available on-line here, along with some related writings of his.

Thank you, Professor Einstein. I consider this bone to be thoroughly picked.

Professor Einstein, I've got a bone to pick with you

2005-08-22T22:36:00.000-05:00

Intelligent design, the latest incarnation of "creation science", makes for bad science, and - if you'll permit a non-theist to say so - bad religion as well. Bad science, because it doesn't seek to discover new truth, but rather to justify an article of faith. Bad religion, because it implies a faith so rigid that it can't co-exist with a realistic understanding of the world.

So, Professor Einstein, why did you say "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind"? More precisely, why did you utter the first clause of that catchy little one-liner?

Is the answer here? or maybe here?

My 15 Minutes...

2005-08-21T10:18:00.000-05:00

Yes, I'll admit it, I've always wanted to be famous. But things don't always work out the way we want them to, do they? Not even in our dreams, like the one I awoke from this morning...

The Players:

BILL O'REALLY: a smooth talking right-wing propagandist/hack

ME: as myself

The Scene

I am being interviewed by BILL O'REALLY, host of The O'Really Factor, Faux News' oasis of fair and balanced right-wing hate-speech. O'REALLY and I have been discussing my fascinating life story, from a youth of innocence, hope, and optimism, through a middle-age of sadness, despondency, and despair. Then O'REALLY opts for a change of topic:

O'REALLY: ...certainly a fascinating story. But let me ask you a question: why are you an America-hating liberal?

ME: Well, actually Bill, I wouldn't call myself...

O'REALLY: OK, I know you won't give me a straight answer on that one, so let's just move on. Tell me, as a member of the most radical and extreme left-wing element of the Democratic party, how do you justify your stance against the war in Iraq? I mean, with our troops over there as we speak, doesn't that make you a traitor?

ME: Now wait a minute here, just because I'm against the war doesn't mean that...

O'REALLY: yeah, yeah, I'll tell you what it means: it means you don't support our troops who are in harms way. But be that as it may, are you telling me that you think things would be better if Saddam were still in power? Is that what you're saying?

ME: I don't think that's the relevant ques...

O'REALLY: Could you please just answer the question for once. Please, just answer the question.

ME: Well, I certainly don't feel any saf...

O'REALLY: No, I guess you don't. Probably the only thing that would make you feel safer is if Michael Moore were president, isn't that right?

ME: O'Really, if I could just resp...

O'REALLY: (to offstage producer) You know what, cut his mike, just cut his mike! Regular viewers of this show know that it is a no-spin zone in which we have a fair and balanced discussion of the issues - no personal attacks, no hidden agendas. But I have to tell you, I'm not going to let any guest use my show to undermine morale, undermine the war effort, and undermine America. Sorry folks, but it's just not going to happen on my watch! But stay tuned, more Factor is on the way. Up next: I get naked in the shower with my producer! Ha, ha, just kidding!

(cut to commercial)

NYT Article on the Discovery Institute

2005-08-20T17:31:00.000-05:00

Today's New York Times has a pretty good article profiling the Discovery Institute, the conservative Christian think-tank driving the Intelligent Design agenda.

Alas,

2005-08-20T11:22:00.000-05:00

he's baaaaack. All together, now: "Sigh". Oh well, take a look at this, it might cheer you up a bit. Recommended by Gilgamesh.

Too Good to Be True?

2005-08-19T14:57:00.000-05:00

Bill Dembski says he's had enough. Good night, sweet Prince?

Priceless...

2005-08-18T22:38:00.000-05:00

by Tony Auth

Ideas Are Meant To Be Shared

2005-08-17T15:54:00.000-05:00

Today I've been having a good conversation with best-selling author Michael Prescott over at his blog. (Recall that he was the subject of yesterday's post). We still don't agree on much, at least not so far, but blogging is all about the exchange of ideas, and we're definitely accomplishing that.

Also, my friend Jim Epperson recommends Deborah Lipstadt's new book History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving, about her successful defense in the libel suit brought by the eponymous holocaust denier. It therefore goes on my ever-growing reading list...

Rationalist Fanatics Unite!

2005-08-16T16:28:00.000-05:00

Today Telic Thoughts is trumpeting a recent post by Michael Prescott on "irrational rationalists", in which Mr. Prescott reacts to a recent interview with Richard Dawkins that appears in a book entitled Secrets of Angels & Demons: The Unauthorized Guide to Dan Brown's Bestselling Novel. Prescott tees off with the following (rather snide) swipe:

...[Dawkins] is (rather generously) described as "one of the most distinguished biologists in the world today." Perhaps I'm unaware of his contributions to the field, but I'm under the impression that Dawkins has made his mark as a writer of popular books on biology, rather than in biological research.

Perhaps Mr. Prescott is unaware of Google as well, because had he done a quick search for "dawkins bibliography" the very first hit would have been a page containing a partial list of Dawkin's publications. On that page, he would have seen references to Dawkins' many peer-reviewed scientific works in journals like Nature, Science, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Zeitschrift fur Tierpsychologie, Parasitology, and others. A couple more obvious searches, and Prescott would have discovered that Dawkins has held professorships at UC Berkeley and Oxford, is a fellow of the New College, is currently holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society, one of the highest honors that can be bestowed on a scientist. And of course Dawkins' meme concept - the idea that evolutionary principles apply to any population of self-replicating entities, biological or not, that are subject to random variation and differential selection - has been enormously influential in science generally.

Of course, credentials aren't everything, but had Michael Prescott been aware of this information, he might have said to himself, "Gee, with his solid credentials in research, his professorships at some of the most prestigious universities in the world, his affiliations with learned societies, and his success in communicating some of the most difficult topics in contemporary biology to the lay public, maybe Dawkins is one of the more distinguished biologists around. Maybe I should do a little more homework before posting my reactions to this interview. Otherwise, I might end up writing a facile hack-piece that just winds up embarrassing me."

But I guess you didn't say that to yourself, did you, Michael?

Forgive my high dudgeon, but the sheer ignorance of Prescott's post is just staggering. Much of the remainder of his essay is divided between quibbling over non-issues (yes, a redwood tree does qualify as a creature, see this definition), misconstruing what Dawkins says in the interview (e.g. the difference between fully understanding principles like natural selection, versus fully understanding the exact pathways those principles follow in producing a particular result), and working up his own high dudgeon over Dawkins' decidedly non-middle-of-the-road opinions on religion.

But the worst part comes at the end, in which non-theistic rationalists like Dawkins are characterized as "fanatics", extremists on the order of the 9/11 hijackers:

We know all about religious fanatics in our post-9-11 world. But we need to know more about the rationalist fanatics who are their counterparts on the other side of the philosophical spectrum. For those interested in learning about them, Richard Dawkins is a good place to start.

Of course, Michael, why didn't I see it before: the religious nuts who are flying passenger jets into skyscrapers, murdering abortion doctors, bombing subways and releasing nerve gas in them, gloating over the torture and murder of gays, and killing rape victims in the name of "honor" - they're just the opposite side of the philosophical coin on which Richard Dawkin's head is engraved.

Oops, there I go again.

I don't really believe that Michael Prescott thinks there's some kind of (im)moral equivalence between violent religious zealots on the one hand and non-theistic rationalists on the other. At least I hope he doesn't. The hate, mayhem, violence, and war unleashed in the name of religious belief throughout history is undeniable, as is the material, societal, and, yes, spiritual progress that mankind has achieved over the last 400 years through rationalism and science. But you wouldn't know it from what he actually wrote, poisoned as it was by his poor research, sloppy thinking, and cheap rhetoric.

Intelligent Design In Schools?

2005-08-15T13:50:00.000-05:00

Last week President Bush turned his attention to Intelligent Design (ID), the pseudo-scientific doctrine being promoted by the well-heeled Discovery Institute that life on Earth is so complex, it couldn't possibly have arisen or evolved through natural causes alone. Referring to the non-existent scientific "controversy" over evolution and ID (but see here for background on the all-too-real political effort by the Discovery Institute to "teach the controversy"), Bush opined:

Both sides ought to be properly taught . . . so people can understand what the debate is about," he said, according to an official transcript of the session. Bush added: "Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. . . . You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes.

White House science adviser John Marburger was quick to provide the proper interpretation of the President's remarks, saying that "evolution is the cornerstone for modern biology", and that while "intelligent design is not a scientific concept", what Bush was saying was that ID should be taught as part of the "social context" in high-school science classes.

Wrong. Science should be taught in science classes. "Social context", if it belongs anywhere in the high-school curriculum, should be be taught in social studies classes. Eugenie Scott and Glen Branch got it exactly right in a USA Today editorial:

What ought to be taught in high school science class? The basic methods and results of the consensus view of the scientific community. Evolution is part, and a vital part, of this consensus; creation science and intelligent design are not.

But I'd go even further. Not only does ID have no place in the high-school science curriculum, it has no place in the curriculum whatsoever. As a sometime college math professor, I've seen too many freshmen who can't add fractions or write a decent English sentence to believe that there's any room for fluff like ID in the high schools, even as "social context".

Rather than trying to figure out ways to shoe-horn religiously motivated pseudo-science into the classroom, school boards in Kansas and elsewhere ought to be concentrating on giving our kids the real education they'll need in order to compete with the millions of highly competent, highly motivated kids coming out of India, China, Russia and elsewhere. Otherwise, we'll all pay.

Cindy Sheehan and the Right

2005-08-14T13:24:00.000-05:00

At Redstate.org, Erik Erickson called her a media whore, though he later changed his mind, and down-graded her to a "pawn". Now he regrets his backtracking. Over at the dude ranch, Lone Star Times' Owen Courreges calls the Left's defenses of Cindy "a festering load of horse dung". Write what you know, Owen. Since when does any American need a "defense" for questioning the government and its leaders?

Cindy Sheehan's question for George Bush is very simple: what precisely is the Noble Cause that our military is fighting for in Iraq? Cindy herself is not the issue - her question is. But the Right can't answer her question satisfactorily, so they resort to name-calling and (attempted) character assassination. Shock-ola.

Bush started the war in Iraq on March 20, 2003. We've been there over 2 years now. Whether or not he was justified then, what we should be debating now is:

Is the war accomplishing the goals we set out with? i.e. are we safer? is the Middle East a more democratic place? have we reduced the threat of terrorism? If the answer to these questions is "no", then the next question is:
How do we get out of Iraq, without shirking the responsibilities that are ours because we started the war?

That's what we should be debating now. Not Cindy Sheehan.

Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome, come on in.

2005-08-14T10:55:00.000-05:00

Make yourself comfortable...but not too comfortable. This blog is an experiment in creative uncomfortableness: received views are returned to sender, common sense is revealed as neither, and the truth is not always somewhere in the middle. We'll be talking politics and religion, science and myth, and anything else that comes to mind. We'll go where logic leads us. At least, that's the plan...

Why "Non Plus Ultra"? It's a Latin phrase, literally meaning "nothing beyond here", or "the ultimate". But I read it as "taking it to the limit" - looking beyond the surface, and getting to the essentials within. Hope you enjoy.