Nietzsche vs. Family Circus

"In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point."

How cool is this site? Via Pharyngula

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The Bill Muehlenberg Trophy (Honourable mention): Brian Rohrbough

The arc-welder has barely had time to cool, and already contenders for the next Muehlenberg are lining up. Honourable mention must go to Brian Rohrbough, whose son Daniel was killed in the 1999 Columbine school shootings, and who was given the opportunity to share his thoughts about the recent Amish school shootings on CBS Evening News:

This country is in a moral free-fall. For over two generations, the public school system has taught in a moral vacuum, expelling God from the school and from the government, replacing him with evolution, where the strong kill the weak, without moral consequences and life has no inherent value.

We teach there are no absolutes, no right or wrong. And I assure you the murder of innocent children is always wrong, including by abortion. Abortion has diminished the value of children.

Come on, AV, I hear you cry. The guy lost his son. Well, that's no excuse for idiocy, and Rohrbough's reflections afford no better description. Ed Brayton from Dispatches from the Culture Wars absolutely nails it:

If the teaching of evolution and not having God "in the schools" really leads to this terribly immoral society where people kill each other randomly because life has no inherent value, then how does Rohrbough explain the fact that every other Western democracy has far lower rates of murder, rape, teen pregnancy, and things like school shootings while teaching evolution far more comprehensively than we do in the US, and in far more secular societies than we have?

Not to mention more liberal abortion laws, in many cases. I like this comment from a contributor at Pharyngula:

I blame school violence on teaching subtraction to our students. It is a ruthless game where bigger numbers devour smaller numbers without moral consequences. How can we expect our children not to try to subtract each other?

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The Bill Muehlenberg Trophy

Following in the footsteps of (OK, make that blatantly copying from) Ed Brayton of Dispatches from the Culture Wars, it's time to inaugurate a new award in recognition of the recipient's services to stupidity in the fields of sophistry, polemic and rhetoric. And who better to be the namesake of this award than that figurehead of the Australian religious right, who as National Research Co-ordinator of Focus on the Family Australia in the late 1990s, so valiantly strove against the decline of this great Christian nation of ours into moral Armageddon at the hands (and other mentionable body parts) of Pamela Anderson and her Baywatch co-stars? Where--I ask you--where would we all be if Uncle Bill hadn't decided on behalf of all of us that we couldn't watch films like Ken Park and Baise Moi (and then lied about the alleged involvement in the porn industry of critics of mooted SA censorship laws)? How wayward would we wayward sheep have remained without Bill's guidance and leadership on issues such as contraception (they're all "abortifacients" and should be banned), corporal punishment (Bill recommends a "wooden dowel . . . it disassociates the punishment from the parent"), no-fault divorce (rescind it!) and the theory of evolution ("one of the great intellectual superstitions of modern times")?

And so, the inaugural Bill Muehlenberg Trophy is awarded to . . . Bill Muehlenberg. Our Bill, it seems, is a blogger. You see:

We live in an age where we see evidence of cultural decline, the erosion of values, the decline of civility, the denial of truth and the elevation of unreason. Many people are asking, “Where is our culture heading?”

Fortunately for us sinners:

This website is devoted to exploring the major cultural, social and political issues of the day. It offers reflection and commentary drawing upon the wealth of wisdom found in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It offers reflective and incisive commentary on a wide range of issues, helping to sort through the maze of competing opinions, worldviews, ideologies and value systems. It will discuss critically and soberly where our culture is heading.

Where our culture is heading? My money says: "hell in a handbasket." Anyway, while there's certainly no shortage of food for thought here for our Punditocracy Watchers (see, for example, this article in which he maintains, a quarter of a century on, that AIDS is a "gay disease" and that the name-change from "Gay Related Immunodeficiency Disease" very early on in its history remains an exercise in "political correctness") I get first dibs! And I would like to direct your attention to a post Bill published in 2005, in which he crows about "the Rise and Rise of Intelligent Design." Bill opens thus:

When an American President champions its cause, an Australian Education Minister says it should be looked into, and the cover of Time magazine treats it as a major story, all within the space of a week, then something must be up.

Yes, Bill, something must be up. In the case of the President, his buffoonery on this as on many other topics is a matter of public record. In the case of the (former) Australian Education Minister, we're hoping that he was merely paying lip-service to ID in order to shore up the Hillsong vote, and that he's not currently cramming his double-carport with non-perishables in anticipation of the Rapture. You'll notice, though, that none of these figures count as appropriate authorities on the scientific status of intelligent design.

Bill then goes boldly where countless garden-variety creationists have gone before him, and declares that "the whole edifice [of Darwinism] is now beginning to look a bit wobbly," before reciting a litany of creationist mantras that require but a few visits to Talk.Origins to eviscerate with embarrassing ease:

Mind you, there have always been major holes in the Darwinian structure: the sudden explosion of complex life forms at the beginning of the Cambrian period; the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record; the lack of nascent organs (new organs phasing in or being developed to meet changing, evolutionary conditions); the limits to change shown by breeding experiments, etc.

Enter Intelligent Design. "The new assault on Darwinism," Muehlenberg argues, "is really an old one." To wit: if it looks designed, it is designed. Brilliant!

The new revolution, known as the Intelligent Design movement (ID), is made up of scholars, scientists and writers who argue that the more we learn about the world, especially at the genetic and molecular levels, the more evidence for intelligent design is found. [. . .] These men, and others, have led the charge in undermining Darwinism by showing that much of the physical universe seems to exhibit unmistakable characteristics of design.

Except . . . they haven't done anything of the sort. They haven't shown how the physical universe exhibits evidence of design: all they have done, and all they ever do, is assert that it looks designed.

And the scientific evidence for ID is certainly compelling.

Boy, is it ever! Exhibit A:

Even the famous atheist Anthony Flew has recently renounced his atheism because of ID argumentation.

Did you hear that, atheists? Little Johnny used to be an atheist like you; then he went and got himself saved. Why can't you be more like little Johnny? Exhibit B:

The amount of information in a single cell of the human body is equivalent to three or four sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica – all thirty volumes. Where did all this information come from? Did it just arise by natural forces alone, or must we posit an intelligent agent, much as someone stumbling across Paley’s watch on a beach must posit a master craftsman, not some combination of wind and waves?

Cue thinking music . . .

What we are learning about DNA is that it contains information in a very complex and specified fashion. All of which leads to the conclusion that a ‘who’ and not a ‘what’ created this genetic language. Natural forces alone cannot seem to account for the high information content of DNA. Chance cannot account for it. Some intelligent mind must have made this information.

Once again: Muehlenberg can't imagine how natural forces could account for the high information content of DNA. And he's a smart man. Ergo, design. Um, Bill? Google "argument from incredulity." Exhibit C:

We are now learning that even the most simple structures of life demand a number of inter-locking components which needed to be present from day one in order to function. Indeed, the more we learn in biochemistry, the more we discover that even the simplest organisms capable of independent life are masterpieces of miniaturized complexity. In Darwin’s Black Box Michael Behe speaks of the irreducible complexity of even the most basic and simple of life forms: molecules. [. . .] Take a mousetrap. All the parts are needed for it to function. No mouse are caught if one bit is missing. But our most simple organisms are like that. How could they have evolved to that state? They wouldn’t have worked without all the components, just like mice would have escaped the incomplete mousetrap. “You can’t start with a platform, catch a few mice, add a spring, catch a few more mice, add a hammer, catch a few more mice, and so on. The whole system has to be put together at once or the mice get away.” (pp. 110, 111) All of which points to evidence of design.

In other words, "irreducible complexity" turns out to be just another way of saying: "I can't explain it in natural terms; ergo, it must be designed." Or, as Bill puts it:

Biology, then, at it most basic levels, displays an information-rich complexity which natural causes just do not seem to be able to explain. A better option is that an intelligent mind must be the cause.

And it's at this point that Bill really begins to engage the stupidity-drive:

It is not hard evidence that is keeping Darwinists away from God – it is their pre-commitment to naturalism, materialism, anti-supernaturalism.

No, Bill: it's the evidence. Yes, there is something of a methodological commitment to naturalism in evolutionary biology, as in all of the natural sciences. But all that means is that evolutionary biologists adopt the scientific method and observe the same rule of thumb that most science practicioners observe: namely, that natural phenomena have natural explanations--unless the latter can be absolutely ruled out-not just for today, but forever. Has anyone in the ID or in the wider creationist movement achieved this, Bill? Do let us know when they do. But all the same, it's the evidence that keeps people "committed" to evolution as an explanation, Bill, and all the weeping and gnashing of teeth of those in the ID movement who would have us believe that evolution was invented to help the Big Bad Atheists bolster their atheism isn't going to change that.

Nor does the fact that ID is widely criticised (and liberally lampooned) by the mainstream scientific community suggest that the ID movement "must be doing something right." I suppose, by the same token, Holocaust deniers "must be doing something right" as well?

The Intelligent Design movement has undermined many of the faulty towers of Darwinism. Of course given the fierce dogmatism and rugged faith placed in Darwinism, it may take more than a few well-aimed hits before the whole edifice collapses.

LOLOLOL! First tower to fall: Dover!! Good shot, old boy!

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The Radical Heterosexual Agenda

Heterosexuality is becoming increasingly more difficult to ignore. It is being forced upon us through legislation, taught to our children in school and promoted in the powerful arts/entertainment complex. If it is true that heterosexuality has the destructive effects on the individual and society that many believe, then it behooves us to know our enemy and forestall any further advance of heterosexuality by understanding what it is, what the heterosexual community is up to, and how to answer their arguments in the open marketplace of ideas.

Boy howdy: those heterosexuals are some sick fucks! Check it out.

Via Dispatches From the Culture Wars

(And don't forget to drop by Pharyngula and check out the Unauthorised Biography of George W. Bush)

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Psychomarketing . . . or psychobabble

If you glance at any of the Scienceblogs you're likely to come across a character by the name of SkookumPlanet peddling a thesis that is either brilliant in a paradigm-shifting kind of way, or a case study in the nuttiest flavour of conspiracy theory. SkookumPlanet holds that what he deems the far right's stranglehold over the political scene in the US boils down to its mastery of neuromarketing--or "psychomarketing," as he terms it.

This is how Americans are exposed to politics. Media content washes over people, wave after wave. Proximity soundbites like these get heard at breakfast, during commutes, in the background of family arriving for dinner, as someone moves through an airport. These two ideas are repeatedly associated in the media environment that America lives in. People come to believe the association. It's not something that gets reasoned out. The association becomes a fact of life that we accept as any other real-life association. I'm trained as a fiction writer, and proximity soundbites work just like fiction -- they become vicarious reality. Only there is no book to alert us that it's fiction.

During Democratic convention analysis on Charlie Rose, one guest said Kerry's acceptance speech was one of the best he'd ever heard. Charlie seemed surprised by the effusiveness.

His guest elaborated, "You need to understand the purpose of an acceptance speech these days. Most Americans will only hear Kerry as tiny soundbites in the media. Kerry's speech was superbly crafted so all his issues were there as compact, complete snippets that fully communicated after chopped into soundbites." This is the reality of public decision-making in America today. Our feelings about it are irrelevant. It's reality!

This type of technology is based on scientific understanding of how human beings process information. How we would like them to process information counts for little here. This is how Americans absorb media, media is how they learn about the world beyond their personal lives, and this is psychomarketing. It works. It usually overwhelms any other approach. It's past time we learned that.

The "we" to whom SkookumPlanet refers are liberals/leftists, who--clinging desperately to the outmoded belief that the old rules pertaining to the normal functioning of liberal democracies still hold--lose perennially because they fail to grasp the new political reality.

Consider this post a bleg of sorts (for info, not money). I've only just scratched the surface of this fascinating topic, but it appears that Skookum's ideas owe much to the work of Berkeley linguist George Lakoff, as well as to the rather less salubrious career of Republican pollster Frank Luntz (the Bush Administration's answer to Goebbels). (And perhaps whispers of Baudrillard thrown into the mix.) And it raises some interesting questions. If the "puppet-masters" have such a profound handle on how the brain processes information, can thinking voters outthink them--and if not, what does this mean for the agency of the individual? Might John Howard's success as a political strategist and manipulator of the truth owe something to the techniques of psychomarketing? Or does the very case of Howard's success suggest that psychomarketing is little more than re-heated Machiavellianism--something we've seen many times before?

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This is your brain on dispensationalism #1

The week in fundie . . .

* Art teacher fired after students see nude sculpture at an art museum. No, I'm not talking about that episode of the Simpsons where Marge campaigns against Itchy and Scratchy: this really happened. (Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

* Adele Horin rightly points out the Federal Government's hypocrisy in waxing lyrical about the need for (Muslim) immigrants to adhere to "Australian values" on the one hand, and then leaping to the defence of that misogynistic, democracy-hating cult known as the Exclusive Brethren on the other. Nabob of NABA Andrew Bolt predictably cries: "Look! Over there! Muslims!" (Via Blisters and Weeds)

* Judge Jones talks about how an email death threat caused him to seek US Marshal protection after he ruled in favour of science in the Kitzmiller vs Dover Area School District case. (Via Bruce's Rave and Rant)

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My Favourite Things

(For the purpose of keeping a promise to BeepBeepIt'sMe . . .)

Things I'd like to do before I die:
1. Write a book
2. Finish my PhD
3. Teach in Japan

Things I cannot do:
1. Kick a football
2. Play the guitar
3. Vote Liberal

Things I can do:
1. Cook
2. Use chopsticks (much easier than it looks)
3. Run 800m without collapsing (to my lasting surprise)

Things that would attract me to my significant other:
1. Friendship
2. Likemindedness
3. Gymnastic flexibility

Things I like to say:
1. "Gidday! Where's the cheese?"
2. "Hold the phone!"
3. "Boo-ya!"

Books I like best:
1. J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings
2. Franz Kafka, The Collected Short Stories
3. Bertrand Russell, The History of Western Philosophy

Movies I like to see:
1. Aliens
2. The Shining
3. A Clockwork Orange

I, in turn, tag

Sketchgirl

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