Why The Fight Against IDiocy Matters
by tristero
It always amazes me when a practicing scientist and nobody’s fool thinks “intelligent design” creationism is not his or her problem:
Our energy is misdirected if we fight harmless beliefs in angels or intelligent design. There are antiscientific illusions with far more serious repercussions for society. Among these are the continuing belief in ballistic missile defense; or an irrational fear of terrorism when alcohol, automobiles or suicide pose much greater risks. On these fronts, you will find practicing scientists engaged.
The front against creationism is fought mostly by science philosophers, because intelligent design is fodder for their discipline, and by science educators, because creationism infringes on their professional activity.
He makes some good points, but he is utterly wrong.
The reason is this: although I can see how someone might develop an argument that, say, fear of terrorism is irrational, I disagree. At the very least, it’s quite arguable whether a substantial level of fear of terrorism once your town has lost some 3000 citizens in a single day is rational or not. The comparison of terrorism stats with alcohol deaths, et al is specious – for many reasons, this seems apples to oranges to me.
Reasonable people cannot disagree about “intelligent design” creationism. It’s garbage, the same way Star Wars is garbage. But it is not a harmless folk belief. Far from it.
ID is a carefully crafted strategy, extravagantly funded by the most extreme elements of the religious far right, to undermine science. Destroying science is but one front in an openly declared struggle to replace the American republic with a theocracy.*
And indeed, to drive the point home as to how important it is for scientists to combat fake science of the IDiotic variety Atrios points to an article with excerpts from a memo that actually circulated within NASA. There is much that is distressing in this article, but it is this part I want to focus on here:
The Big Bang memo came from Mr. Deutsch, a 24-year-old presidential appointee in the press office at NASA headquarters whose résumé says he was an intern in the “war room” of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. A 2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M, he was also the public-affairs officer who sought more control over Dr. Hansen’s public statements.
In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word “theory” needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.
The Big Bang is “not proven fact; it is opinion,” Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, “It is not NASA’s place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator.”
It continued: “This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA.
Get it? This fight is not about what kids learn in high school. This is a knockdown drag out fight – no, this is a culture war – in which the extreme right is trying to re-define science as just one more set of religious doctrines. This crap about the Big Bang, discussed in all seriousness in a government document!, comes from the the wackiest fringes of religious fundamentalism, people who think all of particle physics is a lie and what constitutes the universe are not quarks, electrons, protons, neutrons, and so on, but Jesus. I kid you not. This bizarre comic strip is not a parody.
Ominously, the notion that somehow science is just one more set of equally believable opinions about the world, no different than say, astrology, has just been made legitimate in the Times Book Review:
neo-Darwinists [sic] emphasize natural selection, a god-like mechanism
This is so utterly wrong I’m at a loss for words. The reviewer not only doesn’t know a damn thing about modern evolutionary science. He doesn’t even know basic theology.
Thomas Aquinas hedged his bets, saying that astrology might have a deterministic interpretation when applied to people in large populations, but that individuals, in communion with God, are freed from the bondage of the group. This aptly parallels the relationship between Newtonian mechanics
It does not.
quantum physics, in which individual particles are allowed the luxury of free will.
This is bullshit, even in an informal sense, even in an attempt at wit.
Popular astrology, with its simplistic emphasis on sun signs and their psychological traits (e.g., Geminis are fickle; Virgos are meticulous), is a wan replica of traditional astrology.
Bullshit. “Traditional astrology” in terms of accuracy and validity is just as bogus and arbitrary as “popular astrology.” There are just more levels of bogosity.
But astrology can also be seen as early science, an attempt to understand nature.
Bullshit. That would mean that any and all creation myths or crystal ball gazing are just crude, early forms of science. This entirely misrepresents what science actually is, and how it differs from creation myths and crystal ball gazing.
Modern man can choose from a veritable smorgasbord of Type 1 errors: string theory, neo-Darwinism, cosmology, economics, God. Astrology is as good as any…
Bullshit. This reviewer doesn’t know the first thing about any of the topics in his list.
There has been a great deal written about the faked memoirs of James Frey. The Times itself has printed editorials deploring the author. But somehow, a genuine peabrain who hasn’t met a fact or an idea that he can’t scramble beyond any recognition – is he, perhaps, this guy using a pseudonym? – was permitted to review in the Book Review, and the paper published it without bothering to run it past a single scientifically literate person who would immediately spot the omnipresent fraudulence.
*I have documented every single assertion, and every single adjective within these assertions far too often to repeat them. Anyone seriously interested in the details is welcome to pick up Forrest and Cross’s “Creationism’s Trojan Horse” which goes into enough detail for most laypeople. Any comments attempting to excuse or advocate for the “worth” of “intelligent design” creationism will be ignored by me in the comments. Even before Dover, that was not an argument intellectually honest people could make with a straight face. After Dover, there are no excuses to give it the time of day.
[UPDATE: Mark in SanFran over at Kos] fills in some details of the science, and some background information on the reviewer of the astrology book.]