Leyden and Teixeira: Political “Civil War” Coming Because of Global Warming

The Politicization of Science

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey recently tweeted that Peter Leyden’s and Ruy Teixeira’s article, “The Great Lesson of California in America’s New Civil War,” is a “Great read.” The article both urges and forecasts a blue-state takeover of America where our current political divide gives way to a Democrat dominion. This new “Civil War” is to begin this year and, like the last one will have an economic cause. Unfortunately, the thinking of Leyden and Teixeira is steeped in scientific ignorance which drives their thesis.

According to Leyden and Teixeira both the last, and now upcoming, Civil Wars are about fundamentally different economic systems that cannot coexist. In the mid nineteenth century it was an agrarian economy dependent on slaves versus a capitalist manufacturing economy dependent on free labor. Today, the conflict is between (i) the red states which are dependent on carbon-based energy systems like coal and oil, and (ii) the blue states that are shifting to clean energy and weaning themselves off of carbon. Granting this dubious thesis, why are these two economies so irreconcilable? Because of global warming and the terrible natural disasters it brings:

In the era of climate change, with the mounting pressure of increased natural disasters, something must give.

You read that right. Leyden’s and Teixeira’s thesis is driven by anthropogenic global warming, or AGW, which they sprinkle throughout the article. Red states are bad because they deny it, blue states are good because they face the truth and reckon with it with progressive policies. After all, it is “the scientific consensus that climate change is happening, that human activity is the main cause, and that it is a serious threat.”

It must be nice to go through life with such certainty. Ignorance, as they say, is bliss.

We can begin with the most obvious mistake. While it certainly revs people up to hear that global warming is “a serious threat,” we have little evidence for this. Even those “consensus” scientists agree that we are not justified in claiming the sky is falling. And, no, in spite of what you may have heard, the recent hurricanes were probably not products of global warming.

But what about that scientific consensus that Leyden and Teixeira speak of? Doesn’t that make their case?

Unfortunately, Leyden and Teixeira are the latest example of how historians have utterly failed. In spite of their best efforts, historians, and especially historians of science, have not been able to disabuse people of the myths of science.

In science, as in politics, majorities are majorities until they aren’t. A scientific consensus can occur both for theories that end up enshrined in museums and for theories that end up dumped in the trash bin.

Once upon a time the scientific consensus held the Earth was the center of the universe. Only later did the scientific consensus shift to the Sun as the center of the universe.

Both were wrong.

What Mr. Nelson taught you in seventh grade history class was right after all: If you don’t understand history you will repeat its mistakes. And Leyden and Teixeira are today’s poster children of such naiveté.

A scientific consensus for a theory means just one thing: That the majority of scientists accept the theory. Nothing more, nothing less. The problem with science, as Del Ratzsch once explained, is that it is done by people.

What we do know about AGW is that the data have been massaged, predictions have failed, publications have been manipulated, enormous pressure to conform has been applied, and ever since Lynn White’s 1966 AAAS talk the science has been thoroughly politicized.

None of this means that AGW is false, but the theories that end up in textbooks and museums don’t usually need enormous social and career pressures for sustenance.

As it stands scientists have been walking back the hype (it’s climate change, not global warming anymore), and trying to explain the lack of a hockey stick temperature rise (the ocean is temporarily absorbing the heat); insiders are backing out (see here and here), and new papers are showing current temperatures have not been so out of the ordinary (e.g., here).

AGW is certainly an important theory to study. And perhaps it is true. But its track record of prediction is far more important than the number of people voting for it.

The idea that AGW is the driver behind a new Civil War in America to start, err, later this year is simply absurd. I’m less concerned about Leyden’s and Teixeira’s political desires as I am about the mythologies they are built on.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Larry Klayman: Federal Judges Are Human

Kangaroo Court

Our federal legal system has become the focus of the latest political battle and Larry Klayman has now weighed in, explaining that the federal judiciary is “politicized, frequently intellectually dishonest and in some quarters even totally corrupt.” Klayman adds that federal judges “frequently take the bench after confirmation without any training in how to be a judge.” What Klayman could have added is that such problems are not confined to the backwaters of the judiciary.

Consider Judge John Jones—exalted as one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of the Year—who unbelievably revealed that he wanted to see the movie Inherit the Wind a second time in preparation for the famous 2005 Dover case, over which he presided, because, after all, the film puts the origins debate into its proper “historical context.”

That is shocking.

Jones had been so indoctrinated by the Warfare Thesis that he actually believed the evolutionary propaganda to be historically accurate. What an incredible misconception.

Jones later reminisced about the trial, explaining that “I understood the general theme. I’d seen Inherit the Wind.”

If ever there was an example of judicial bias and a predetermined verdict, this is it.

Planned Parenthood Launches Counter Attack With Ersatz Apology

Fork Tongue

In this video Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, “personally apologizes for the tone and statements” of “one of our staff members.” That “staff member” happens to be Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services and those “statements” happen to be about the on-going practice of killing babies before they have a chance to see the light of day, turning the mother’s womb into the most dangerous place in America. But Richards is not apologizing for the mass murder she presides over. After all, she promotes it. In fact, the video is not really an apology at all. It is an attack that is full of lies. Richards states that Planned Parenthood “follows all laws and ethical guidelines,” has as a top priority “the compassionate care that we provide,” and is committed  “to life-saving research.”

Ethical guidelines? Compassionate care? Life-saving research? In fact, Planned Parenthood has failed in its ethics and care. Its work is to end, not save, lives.

The Day the Music Died

We Are Now Without Excuse

In the age of on-line entertainment and instant information it was, perhaps, possible to live without knowing about the carnage going on around us, but the video of evolutionist Deborah Nucatola casually and callously explaining the crushing of innocent babies and harvesting their young bodies leaves us forever without excuse. Between gulps of red wine and bites of salad we learn that “a lot of people want liver” and that “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver …” We are also told how to play games with the law so the harvesting of human body parts can proceed efficiently:

The Federal Abortion Ban is a law, and laws are up to interpretation. So if I say on day One, I do not intend to do this, what ultimately happens doesn’t matter. … If you maintain enough of a dialogue with the person who’s actually doing the procedures, so they understand what the end-game is, there are little things, changes they can make in their technique to increase your success. … For example, so I had eight cases yesterday. And I knew exactly what we needed, and I kind of looked at the list and I said alright, this 17-weeker has eight lams, and this one—so I knew which were the cases that were probably more likely to yield what we needed, and I made my decisions according to that too, so it’s worth having a huddle at the beginning of the day, and that’s what I do.

That 17-weeker never had a chance—she never even saw the light of day. We now know the unthinkable and our response is telling.

Did we look at each other in horror? Did we stop everything? Were we angry? Were we sad? Did we cry?

No, we shot the messenger.

Surely this is all a false manipulation of the facts by those with nefarious and ulterior motives. After all, as the nightly news points out, the good doctor made it clear that this was not about the profit.

So it’s all good, right?

To avoid the obvious we strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. We celebrate that thirty pieces of silver was not excessive while innocent babies are murdered in cold blood.

We can try to look the other way but we are a deeply sick society. And now we know it.

Lunch with Dr. Nucatola Fallout—Here Come the Attacks

How Do You Justify Murder?

As predicted, evolutionists are desperately attempting to dismiss and delegitimize a several-hour long video of an evolutionist discussing the routine practice of crushing live babies to murder them in cold blood. Business Insider, for example, leads with an absurd headline labelling the video as “false.” No the video is not false. What is false is the evolutionist’s claims that humanity, and everything else for that matter, arose from a series of random chance events—what their Epicurean forefathers referred to as swerving atoms. And, as William Jennings Bryan foresaw, if the world is nothing but a happenstance accident, then what does it matter if we kill? And kill they do. In our country alone evolutionists have murdered more than 50 million babies. It is Bryan’s worst nightmare come true. Evolutionists have brought us this nightmare, and they will insist that it continues. What we are now seeing is how evolutionists conduct business—lies, more lies, and blackballing and delegitimization of anyone who points it out.

Lunch with Dr. Nucatola

The Killing Fields

Evolutionary thought’s insistence that the world arose spontaneously is our modern-day version of Epicureanism. The idea was then, and continues to be today, motivated by metaphysics, not science. From a scientific perspective the idea is clearly false. That was understood by philosophers of antiquity, but it is understood all the more clearly today. Simply put, modern science has demolished Epicureanism. But ideas die hard, especially ideas that are driven by metaphysical ideas we believe must be true. Overturning Epicureanism and modern day evolutionary thought requires overturning the foundational metaphysics—and that is much more difficult than solving a scientific problem. And so in spite of the science, evolution continues to be a very popular and influential idea. In fact evolution has been tremendously influential in a broad range of political, public policy and social issues. These include wars, holocausts, and abortion. The above video is a good example. It shows evolutionist Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical research, explaining how they murder unborn babies and harvest the tissue. Nucatola describes crushing techniques they use to preserve valuable body parts while murdering the baby in cold blood:

We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.

The level of cruelty is astonishing, yet most likely will go ignored or dismissed by evolutionists. Already the Washington Post has made the absurd suggestion that the almost three hour video may have been doctored in some way. The article concludes:

It’s hard to assess exactly what happened at the lunch with Nucatola.

Hard to assess? Do they also question the holocaust? Do journalists have difficulty determining just exactly what happened in Nazi Germany?

It would be difficult to imagine a more misleading conclusion. An abortionist discussed techniques for murdering babies. How can that possibly be “Hard to assess”?

But this is how evolutionists will frame this event.

It Begins: Polygamy Makes First Move

The Floodgates are Open

This week a man filed for a license to marry two women.

Vaccine Study Finds No Harmful Association, But Wait …

A Foregone Conclusion

A recent large vaccine study found no evidence of harmful association between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism spectrum disorders (ASD). That good news was celebrated everywhere from the health care trade journals to the mainstream media. “The vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella,” reported CNN, “doesn't bring an increased risk of autism, according to a new study of more than 95,000 children.” In a related interview on the same webpage, CNN medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta argued that while “We don’t know what causes autism, but we know that vaccines do not.” Gupta went on even to suggest that “vaccines have been protective against autism.” That was, amazingly, precisely the most statistically-significant finding in the new study. That’s right, for one of the groups studied, receipt of the MMR vaccine was strongly associated with reduced autism risk. There is only one problem: it was yet another example of bogus Warfare Thesis science.

Historians have tried for years to disabuse us of the Warfare Thesis mythology. But their efforts have largely been in vain. The Warfare Thesis myth has always served as a powerful context for evolutionary theory and, false or not, evolutionists show no signs of forfeiting this powerful narrative.

Similarly, statisticians have tried for years to bring discipline to their field which too often uses statistics to “discover” a desired conclusion. One journal, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, recently even went so far as to ban altogether null hypothesis significance testing. But biostatisticians at Johns Hopkins rightly point out that ridding science of shoddy statistics will require scrutiny of every step, not merely the last one.

I point out the Warfare Thesis and statistical inference not as disparate examples of scholarship gone wrong, but rather as two very related problems. You might say statistical inference is one of the Warfare Thesis’ preferred tools, and this new vaccine study is a good example.

The study’s most significant finding was that the MMR vaccine is associated with reduced autism risk. The authors were right to seek some sort of confounding variables to explain this unlikely result. But this result, even if explained away, hints at the underlying challenges and problems in such a research study.

One problem is that the we are dealing with people. Different parents have different levels of concern. And diagnoses may be influenced by various factors. Second, autism spectrum disorders include a variety of symptoms and conditions. Statistical comparisons may be complicated by such factors.

Nonetheless, the authors concluded that “receipt of the MMR vaccine was not associated with increased risk of ASD.” While that is technically true, the opposite is also true. That is, receipt of the MMR vaccine was not associated with an absence of increased risk either. In other words, the uncertainty of their results is such that they are consistent with both no increased risk, or some increased risk. Either could be true, within reasonable levels of statistical confidence.

What the results do show is that the MMR vaccine is not associated with a dramatic increased risk of ASD. Receipt of the vaccine was not likely associated with a doubling of the risk, for example. But again, those results are subject to the caveats discussed above (which may be overriding factors).

The bottom line is that the study’s conclusions are false and irresponsible. And they led to yet more false and irresponsible proclamations in the media, with commentators such as Sanjay Gupta making demeaning comments about parents struggling with this difficult decision.

One might ask how papers such as this survive peer review? The answer is that the paper said exactly what the peer reviewers were looking for. You see, like all literature, the scientific literature comes in a genre, and today that genre is the Warfare Thesis. This is made clear at the very beginning of the paper, long before the data are considered:

Two doses of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine are currently recommended for children in the United States: the first at age 12 to 15 months and the second at age 4 to 6 years. Although a substantial body of research over the last 15 years has found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism spectrum disorders (ASD), parents and others continue to associate the vaccine with ASD. Parents cite vaccinations, especially MMR, as a cause of ASD and have deferred or refused vaccinations for their children as a result. Lower vaccination levels threaten public health by reducing both individual and herd immunity and have been associated with several recent outbreaks of measles, with most cases occurring among unvaccinated individuals.

There you have it. Science has revealed the truth yet resistance to the undeniable facts continues, posing threats to us all. There was no question where the paper was headed—the results were a foregone conclusion. There is no way the researchers were going to discover anything wrong with vaccines. Those were the ground rules that readers must understand.

And once the beachhead is established the media’s heavy artillery can be brought to bear, proclaiming how the science had once again debunked the recurrent myths of the ignorant, as commentators such as CNN’s Jake Tapper shake their head in disgust.

These new truths then, in turn, lead to laws such as the California law mandating vaccines for all public school students which Governor Jerry Brown signed into law today. The law forces parents to violate their conscience or lose their tax monies to a public school system they are not allowed to use. Brown is a good leader but this new law is unfair and a mistake.

Does any of this mean that vaccines are not a great public health success, or that they should be avoided at all costs? No, of course not. Vaccines hold great promise and have conferred great health benefits. But the choice of whether or not to vaccinate is not simply a scientific question.

The problem is not that this is a difficult decision for some. That’s life. The problem is that evolution’s Warfare Thesis has resulted in both faulty science and an environment of discrimination against and vilification of parents struggling with legitimate decisions.

h/t; Little John

Antinomian Fervor: The Ten Commandments Must Go

“Do not think that I came to destroy the Law”

In yet another in-your-face ruling, another high court, the Oklahoma Supreme Court in this case, has ruled that a Ten Commandments statue must be removed from outside of the state capitol because, after all, it is religious. Rulings such as this have much broader implications. The sixth commandment is, for example, “You shall not murder,” and is a good example of how our entire judicial system is, in fact, “religious.” Of course we are not going to do away with the entire canon, but nine tenths of the law is not so much the laws that are in place but how those laws are interpreted and respected. Unfortunately, ours is a world where laws are treated like items on a cafeteria menu. We select what we like and ignore the rest. That’s antinomianism.

Jeff Sachs Goes There: Anti-Vaxxers Go To Jail

Don’t Pass Go, And Don’t Collect $200

Given the dominance and confluence of the Warfare Thesis, its resulting scientism, and evolution’s apparently unceasing thirst for control over people, I kick myself for not predicting Jeff Sachs’ latest we-would-laugh-except-this-is-real threat that parents who do not vaccinate their children are committing a crime [1:50]. It is not enough that this past week the California legislature passed a new law that prohibits parents, who avoid the risk of vaccination, from sending their children to the public schools while nonetheless taxing those same parents to pay for the public school system which they are not allowed to use. These parents are a small minority and so are an easy target. But if Sachs has his way, unfair taxation will be the least of these parents’ concerns as they will be convicted as criminals for their choice to protect their children. Undoubtedly the state would also take their children from them.

Given the strong language from global warming (AGW) advocates about how those who don’t agree with them should be incarcerated, Sachs’ move is not too surprising. Please see this post , where I concluded that this vigilante justice could jump to other issues:

What we are seeing are classic defamation tactics. Evolution’s Warfare Thesis has lit all kinds of fires and emotions are running high. With evolution there is no law, just narrative. Today it focuses on climate, but it could jump to any number of issues.

According to Sachs, vaccination should be one of those issues. That fits nicely into the nineteenth century, mythical Warfare Thesis which was erected by evolutionists to protect their theory. One of the many targets of the Warfare Thesis were those anti-vaccination rascals. To this day evolutionists rally around vaccinations as another support for their scientism.

The fact is that vaccinations have done a world of good and there are plenty of reasons to vaccinate, but they also carry low-probability risk. Those are generalizations and the details are different for each vaccine and each patient.

The bottom line is that vaccinations often present a classic risk-reward tradeoff. They provide helpful protections, but they can present a very low risk of both short-term and long-term illness and death. Recently more than two dozen children in Mexico were hospitalized and two died after receiving vaccines. Authorities halted vaccinations temporarily. Tragedy has also struck in this country, such as in the case of Lorrin Kain, popularized in a recent book, who eventually died from her vaccination injuries. Even the official vaccine court acknowledged the vaccine injury, though the reparations were not nearly adequate.

For most people the risks are tolerably low, and the tradeoff favors the vaccination. But this isn’t a scientific analysis. Not only are the exact probabilities unknown (mostly because the Warfare Thesis has served to cloud and corrupt the science of properly evaluating the vaccine risk), but even if they were known, the risk-reward tradeoff cannot be set to a formula. It is a choice each parent must make for each vaccine, in consultation with their doctor.

None of this is controversial, yet evolutionary thinking demands a very different approach. It demands that while parents must have the choice to kill their unborn child, they ought not have the choice to make the vaccine risk-reward decision. What about the risk? Evolutionists deny the risk because, after all, correlation does not imply causation.

When I explained this evolutionists attacked me with their usual demagoguery. One evolutionist explained the problem is that I don’t accept the basic principles of science because, after all, unlike him I am skeptical that the species arose naturalistically:

The fact that the author of this post is a dedicated anti-evolutionist for whom no amount of evidence is enough to make him even question his convictions, and who has now apparently become an anti-vaxer is not surprising: if you don't accept the basic principles of science, then any application of science to human welfare is, by foregone conclusion, definitely negative

Note the dismissive language. Doubting that the species arose naturalistically makes me a “dedicated anti-evolutionist for whom no amount of evidence is enough” who does not “accept the basic principles of science.” And pointing out that the benefits of vaccines are accompanied by risks makes me “an anti-vaxer.” It’s all Warfare Thesis.

Another evolutionist attacked my post, making the absurd suggestion that the Lorrin Kain’s injuries may have been a mere coincidence, and threatening that he had “Saved and tweeted [the post] for posterity.”

It is disappointing that rational discussion is not possible, but this is the environment that the Warfare Thesis has created. The above Jeff Sachs video in which he calls for the criminalization of parents choosing not to vaccinate, for example, appears at Business Insider under the heading: “Watch Jeff Sachs destroy the anti-vaccine movement in under two minutes.” It is all about attacking the “deniers.” Meanwhile unlikely hypotheses are insisted to be fact, and anyone who doesn’t go along will incur their wrath, and maybe their indictments.

What Does Jeb Bush Have in Common With Stephen Jay Gould?

Antinomianism

Evolution, a headline from earlier this month explained, “is unpredictable and irreversible, biologists show.” This was hardly a new thought for evolutionists. Stephen Jay Gould popularized the notion that if one could “replay the tape” of history the world would, as Eckels unfortunately discovered, turn out differently. It is contingency rather than law that governs history. Evolutionary events are “unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible” in the words of the famous evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky. Or as Harvard’s Ernst Mayr wrote, “Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques” for explaining evolutionary events and processes. The world turns not according to Newton’s firm and unchanging laws but by particular, unique events which are for us to explore and explain. And as Phillip Johnson described, exploring and explaining, rather than following nature’s laws, gives us control. Given a lever and the law Archimedes could move the world, but given extension and motion Descartes’ could construct the world.

Antinomianism isn’t limited to theological debates. Whether in religion, science or politics, the law stands in our way. It blocks our control and so we reject it. By contrast the psalmist delights in the law. The book begins with the man who is blessed, for “his delight is in the law of the Lord.” Likewise Jesus explained that “till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.”

This ancient law is now the basis of our current legal system and it is every bit as important to us. Yet it is routinely rejected. Descartes and the evolutionists reject natural law in favor of absurd notions of the world spontaneously arising by creating itself. And in politics, equally silly notions are not hard to find. Leading presidential candidate Jeb Bush, for example, advocates warrantless surveillance. That’s fine if he can make it legal, but Bush rejects any such requirement. He states that there is not a shred of evidence that such surveillance has violated the rights of any American. Does he also believe there is not a shred of evidence that bank robberies have resulted in theft? Of course bank robberies have resulted in theft, otherwise they wouldn’t be bank robberies. Warrantless surveillance, by definition, is a violation of rights—it is illegal.

For Christians the law is precious and antinomianism, in any form, is to be avoided.

Federal Court Rejects Law Limiting Abortion

We only whisper it

On Friday judges in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down an Idaho law banning abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The judges argued that the law is unconstitutional because it “categorically bans some abortions before viability.”

Unfortunately abortion is one of the many horrifying fruits of evolutionary thought and this ruling demonstrates how such thought continues to influence American jurisprudence. How, for example, can a law that bans murder be unconstitutional?

The evolutionary justification—that murder is constitutional when the victim is not “viable”—is not true nor is it ethical. With evolution the engine of progress is death, and evolutionary thinking has spawned such horrors as eugenics and abortion. It became fashionable to see the weak, the sick, and the non viable as not worthy of the same rights everyone else enjoys, even the very right to life. In short, it is OK to kill them (see here, here, here, here, here, and here).

As Nietzsche put it, it is the weak “who most undermine life among human beings.” Today we celebrate the murder of the most weak of all—the unborn, for they are a threat to our well-being. As Roe v. Wade lawyer Ron Weddington explained to the newly elected President Bill Clinton, “You can start immediately to eliminate [with inexpensive abortifacients] the barely educated, unhealthy, and poor segment of our country.” For Weddington it makes sense to murder such babies but, he explained, “we only whisper it.”

This is evolutionary logic at work. The problem here is the Constitution nowhere tells us that one’s rights are contingent on one’s viability. The right to life does not fade with strength, health, wealth or any other status. It would be difficult to imagine a greater perversion of ethics. It is precisely the weak, the powerless and, yes, the non "viable" who need special protections.

The problem is not with our judges. They work hard and do their best to make our system work. The problem is with evolutionary thought.

Evolutionary Thought in Action: There is No Law

The Storyteller is in Control

In evolutionary thought there is no law. Consider for example the string of cosmological theories that emerged in the eighteenth century. Bernoulli, Buffon, Kant and Laplace presented various, and mostly contradictory, ideas for the origins of the solar system. The common thread was that in all cases the idea was presented as true, and the idea relied on so many contingencies rather than on the necessary consequences of natural law. Newton’s laws of physics dictated the flight of a cannon ball, but these theories of cosmological evolution were driven by unique, happenstance events amongst the heavenly bodies. And after Laplace the march of uncooperative astronomical observations made for even more contingencies. It was not the application of natural law but of ingenious narratives that told the story. By the twentieth century the competing theories resembled something like cosmic pinball games, with all manner of just-so collisions and events leading to the eventual formation of our solar system. Similarly, the new theories of biological evolution, begun in earnest by Charles Darwin, were also driven by what evolutionists believed were reasonable and good explanations rather than what little the unforgiving laws of science could render. This dismissal of natural law in favor of common sense narrative is important because, given the immense influence of evolutionary thought, it has gone far beyond the mere scientific world.

Evolution has introduced into science the art of story-telling where the story tellers, rather than the rules of science, are in control. Evolution is a narrative, not an appeal to scientific principles and laws. Evolutionary events are “unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible” in the words of famous evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky. Or as Harvard’s Ernst Mayr wrote, “Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques” for explaining evolutionary events and processes.

Evolution’s rejection of law seems to have translated to, more generally, a loss of principle. Evolutionists, for example, think nothing of tarnishing the good name of all who disagree with them. After all, they are a threat to science and the truth. No matter how accomplished, skeptics can expect discrimination. Blackballing, secret lists and delegitimization are all used to deny academic and professional benefits enjoyed by evolutionists.

Given the immense influence of evolutionary thought, it may not be surprising that this rejection of law goes beyond scientific squabbles. After all, evolution is the most influential theory in areas outside of science, in the history of science. Evolutionary science, whether cosmological or biological, resists the constraints of law, and for centuries we have likewise resisted the laws and principles of the land when inconvenient.

This week presidential hopeful Rick Perry gave an excellent example of this pervasive mode of thought. Commenting favorably on the on-going unlawful surveillance associated with controversial legislation, Perry explained that the law needs to be compromised:

we’ve been a country that always balanced our civil liberties against protecting our citizens. And that’s what this debate is about. But I will always, I will always err on the side of defending our citizens’ safety, but again being very mindful that our civil liberties don’t need to be trampled on. And if there are agencies or people that are abusing that, they need to be held accountable, and use every bit of the power of this country to punish anyone who is using the Patriot Act in a way that is not appropriate. And when I talk about appropriate, we all, I think, understand what I’m talking about here.

Perry, who if elected presumably would take an oath to uphold the law, explains that lawfully protected freedoms must be “balanced” with protections and that he will always make the law subservient to his common sense concerns. For Perry citizens are not guaranteed legal protections and that is appropriate because, after all, we all understand “what I’m talking about here.” Well at least we know that unlawful surveillance isn’t what he is talking about. As with evolution, the narrative trumps the law.

The fact that a presidential candidate would promote this ends-justifies-the-means view illustrates how pervasive it is. For centuries lawfully protected rights and freedoms have been “balanced” for those whom such protections didn’t seem appropriate. With evolutionary thought there is no law.

Zack Kopplin: There is No Scientific Evidence Against Evolution

A Product of the Warfare Thesis 

Zack Kopplin is the face of rational thought. Kopplin is a bright, energetic young man opposing the forces of anti intellectualism and ignorance that deny science and the fact of evolution, and seek to inject religious beliefs into the public schools. There’s only one problem. While we are delighted to see young people get involved in public policy issues, Kopplin is feverishly promoting precisely what he claims to be opposing.

Kopplin insists that there is no scientific evidence against evolution. While there is room for debate about particular biological evidences and exactly how they bear on the theory of evolution, there simply is no question that there is scientific evidence against evolution. Plenty of it. To deny that would be the height of anti science denialism. Yet this is precisely what evolutionists claim.

Kopplin explains that the church burned people alive for believing the Earth was round and that the Earth rotated the sun. A myth such as this is sure to move audiences, and is red meat for evolutionists, but it is, nonetheless, a myth. Historians call it the Warfare Thesis myth, but evolutionists won’t stop using it.

Not surprisingly Kopplin wants evolution to be taught in the public schools. But evolution is full of religious claims. Kopplin is pushing to have religious beliefs injected into the public schools—precisely what he claims to oppose.

This is the fruit of evolutionary thought.

The Warfare Thesis in Action: Why Jimmy Kimmel is Important

A Strengthening Tradition

On July 30 of last year Meredith Prohaska had the misfortunate of having a sore throat. At what would have been a routine visit to the doctor the 12-year-old’s mother was told that Meredith should have an HPV vaccine. By dinnertime Meredith was dead.

What exactly is the purpose of the HPV vaccine? Why are so many people so insistent that young girls be given a sequence of this vaccine? Because it offers protection against a virus that is sexually transmitted. And after all, aren’t all 12-year-old girls going to sleep around eventually?

Meredith Prohaska’s cause of death was not the HPV vaccine. At least that is what the official records say.* After all, as Hugh Hewitt assures us, correlation does not imply causation. And since the HPV vaccine did not cause Meredith’s death—or the many other devastating problems girls have experienced including terrible pain and uncontrolled seizures—it therefore is known to be safe.

That’s the message from Jimmy Kimmel, late-night comedian who turns serious when it comes to vaccines and those who aren’t sure about them. Kimmel castigates those “anti-vaxxers” with cutting sarcasm. Vaccines are perfectly safe and anyone who doubts that is fair game for public ridicule.

What is disturbing about Kimmel, and the many other voices of scorn, is not their pro-vaccine sentiment. Vaccines are a complex issue and certainly there are arguments in their favor. But vaccines are not perfectly safe. That is a simple fact that no responsible medical professional would deny. And of course the benefits and risks do not fit a simple formula. Each vaccine is different, and each person is different. Science can inform, but it cannot answer the difficult risk-reward tradeoff question.

The quandary is further complicated by the fact that the vaccine manufacturers have their own special federal law protecting them against the normal law suit process where adequate damages can be sought. Would you purchase an automobile from a company with no liability and immune from prosecution? Of course not.

What is disturbing about mockers such as Kimmel is that they represent a strengthening tradition of delegitimization and dismissal of a group of people. This is a powerful and dangerous division.

We’re not talking about spirited political disagreements. We’re talking about abhorrence and disgust.

This is a much stronger movement, and it is not limited to vaccinations. A host of other, equally complex issues also fuel this irrational odium, including global warming, evolution and abortion.

While these are complex issues, the common thread is that in all cases, the mockers hold to irrational positions. The passion is exceeded only by the ignorance.

The unmistakable underlying pattern, it seems to me, is the Warfare Thesis and its attendant scientism. The dressing up of thoughtful people as ignorant obstructionists at best, and as insidious characters at worst, is not a little concerning.

An excellent example of this is the play and movie, Inherit the Wind. It presents a ridiculous, insulting picture of people which, though contrived, is today taken as accurate and cogent. The irony is that the script was originally intended to combat McCarthyism. It has now become something far more dangerous.

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*Addendum: Further information from the Waukesha County medical via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Diphenhydramine intoxication — ingestion of a lethal level of an antihistamine — caused the death of Meredith Prohaska, though the manner of death is undetermined, Medical Examiner Lynda Biedrzycki said in a prepared statement. "There is no evidence that any vaccination caused or contributed to her death," Biedrzycki said.

Celebrating Pornography

Evolution’s Many Influences

It is unfortunate that the checkout lines at so many stores continue to display pornographic images which our evolution-informed culture continues to condone and celebrate. Entertainment journalist Aly Weisman, for instance, approvingly reports on the latest Sports Illustrated reminder to young girls that they are inadequate. Meanwhile the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award consistently rewards evolutionists, such as Patricia Princehouse, Zachary Kopplin and Eugenie Scott, for their junk science. It is not that evolution created pornography, but evolution did reinforce and fuel a world view that did. Religion drives science, and it matters.

Evolution: Garbage In, Garbage Out

Man’s Imagination

Evolutionary thinking did not begin with Darwin, but it did receive a substantial boost when the Sage of Kent published his theory in 1859. It is often said that evolution is the most influential scientific theory in areas outside of science. That certainly is true, though with the caveat that evolution is hardly a scientific theory. Demarcating just what is and isn’t science is notoriously difficult, but when advocates are dead certain their idea is an undeniable fact because their metaphysics requires it, in spite of overwhelming empirical contradictions, you can be sure we are nowhere close to that Baconian ideal of natural philosophy. Evolution isn’t merely about mutations and fossils. It is an overarching creation story with deep metaphysics that has spread throughout the world. As such it has enormous influence.

Evolutionary thinking goes back centuries and it deals with the fundamental question of origins. Tell me where you think you came from, it is said, and I’ll tell you everything else you believe—at least everything that is important. The answer for evolutionists is that we are the product of happenstance. The world arose by itself, the result of chance and necessity—random events driven by blind natural laws while the Creator, like Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, meditates on a distant Mount Olympus.

That idea, in the history of thought, is highly unfortunate. Yes it is scientifically unlikely (I’m being kind), but that is only the beginning. Ideas have consequences and in a chilling anticipation of what was to come, the early critic Adam Sedgwick lamented to Darwin that with evolution humanity would suffer damage that “might brutalize it” and sink the human race “into a lower grade of degradation than any into which it has fallen”:

Were it possible (which thank God it is not) to break it, humanity in my mind, would suffer a damage that might brutalize it—& sink the human race into a lower grade of degradation than any into which it has fallen since its written records tell us of its history.

If only Sedgwick could have read Nietzsche’s warning that it was the sick, the oppressed, the broken and the weak, rather than evil men, who were the greatest threat to humanity. If only Sedgwick could have seen the onset of eugenics, the Holocaust, abortion, and other forms of genocide. Sedgwick correctly foresaw the terrible consequences of the modern day resurrection of the Epicurean idea that something, and in fact everything, came from nothing.

Unfortunately these are hardly the only influences of evolutionary thought. We are, for example, awash in pornography which is incredibly demeaning of women. No, pornography is not a healthy, artful expression as many evolutionists argue.

The evolutionist’s support of such ills as eugenics, abortion and pornography is telling. It reveals once again that ideas have consequences. Not only did evolutionary thought lead historically to a host of downfalls, today’s evolutionists readily confirm the link.

Sedgwick warned that Darwin had made claims well beyond the limits of science. Darwin had issued truths that were not likely ever to be found anywhere “but in the fertile womb of man’s imagination.” Unfortunately that is precisely where it counts.

Workshop on Scientific Imperialism

An Abundance of Material

Don’t miss the Workshop on Scientific Imperialism in Helsinki next April where attendees will consider whether “conventions and procedures of one discipline or field are imposed on other fields, or more weakly when a scientific discipline seeks to explain phenomena that are traditionally considered proper of another discipline’s domain.” Keynote Speaker Stephen Downes will ask  “Is the Appeal to Evolution in Explanations of Human Behavior a Case of Scientific Imperialism?”

The answer is “yes,” but human behavior is only the beginning of a long list. Evolution is by far the most influential theory in the history of science and its influence spreads not only to other areas of science, but well outside of science as well.

One of evolution’s early moves outside of science was in historiography where Darwin’s friend and champion Thomas Huxley began the construction of the history of thought from an evolutionary perspective. Evolutionary theory was motivated and mandated by religious premises, but Huxley reversed the roles and cast evolution as objective, truth-seeking science and the opposition as misguided religious believers. Thus, in this Warfare Thesis, science was opposed by religion, rather than informed and constrained by religion.

An important tool that was instrumental in spreading the Warfare Thesis far beyond evolutionary studies and into the broader culture was the play and movie Inherit the Wind. The Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee script was all that Huxley could have dreamt of, casting the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial as a conflict between the rational evolutionists and the irrational faithful.

Inherit the Wind is fictional propaganda that evolutionists continue to use to this day and remains widely influential. As Judge John Jones astonishingly explained, he wanted to see Inherit the Wind a second time in preparation for the 2005 Dover case, over which he presided, because the film puts the origins debate into its proper “historical context.” Jones later reminisced about the trial, explaining that “I understood the general theme. I’d seen Inherit the Wind.” The federal judge’s over-the-top naiveté was a manifestation of evolution’s anti-intellectualism.

Another important early evolutionary spinoff was eugenics “science” and abortion. Nietzsche proclaimed that it was the sick, the oppressed, the broken and the weak, rather than evil men, who were the greatest threat to humanity. And Margaret Sanger promoted her racism and sexual immorality in what would become the abortion movement. The American eugenics movement and both World War I and later the horrors of the German Nazis were all influenced by evolution’s pseudo science.

More recently the abortion movement has grown and eugenics continues to be advocated. Lawlessness and immorality escalated with the legalization of abortion in the Roe v. Wade decision and its inherent racism. As Roe v. Wade lawyer Ron Weddington explained to the newly elected President Bill Clinton, “You can start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy, and poor segment of our country,” with inexpensive abortifacients. Weddington explained that he was not advocating mass extinction of these unfortunate people because “Crime, drugs and disease are already doing that. The problem is that their numbers are not only replaced but increased by the birth of millions of babies to people who can’t afford to have babies. There, I’ve said it. It’s what we all know is true, but we only whisper it, because as liberals who believe in individual rights, we view any program which might treat the disadvantaged differently as discriminatory, mean-spirited and … well … so Republican.”

Likewise Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg described Roe v. Wade as intended to control population growth, “particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” And you know what that means. And restrictions on abortion simply exacerbate the problem because “the impact of all these restrictions is on poor women,” and “It makes no sense as a national policy to promote birth only among poor people.”

It is little wonder that University of Texas evolutionist Eric Pianka receives standing ovations and awards for his advocacy of the elimination of 90% of the human population.

Eugenics, abortion and population control are, unfortunately, by no means the end of evolution’s deconstructionism. Evolution does away with law, common sense and morality. Scientific laws, as evolutionists explain, are not appropriate when explaining the creation of the world. For despite appearances and the hard scientific evidence, the world must have arisen spontaneously. It is a narrative of sheer absurdity. But we control it, and one consequence is moral relativism. Morality is seen as the result of evolutionary history. Right and wrong are determined by the haphazard configurations of molecules in our head.

Yes, there is plenty of material for Workshop on Scientific Imperialism in Helsinki next April.

Why the Narrative Trumps the Facts

What Evolution is All About

Greg Conterio, echoing Robert Bidinotto, makes the point that culture war differences often pit the facts versus the narrative. The facts can win every battle but the narrative wins the war. As Bidinotto puts it, “One of the most valuable insights I discovered in recent years is how Narratives trump everything else — including what most of us would call concern for ‘practical results.’” Conterio and Bidinotto are mainly concerned with political issues, but what lies behind their insight is our beliefs about origins.

A predetermined narrative is what influenced Darwin in concluding that the species must have arisen as a result of the blind actions of natural processes. As Darwin historian Janet Browne explained, Darwin, as well as evolution co-discoverer Alfred Wallace, came to believe in transmutation and so they then sought a suitable mechanism. The reason they came to believe in transmutation was the biological world was too gritty, too unseemly, and lacking in elegance. In a word, too evil.

Such rationalistic thinking (starting with preconceived ideas of what to expect, rather than exploring the data to see where it leads) about origins by no means began with Darwin and Wallace. They were handed these ideas from leading Christian thinkers from the previous centuries. Evolution was not a scientific finding, it was a religious conclusion.

From a scientific perspective, the spontaneous origin of the biological world makes little sense. Darwin and Wallace had no idea how such wonders actually could have sprung up all by themselves. Nor do evolutionists today. As Browne put it, they first believed—then they sought a scientific mechanism. That’s backwards, but this is precisely what they, and their followers today, are committed to.

The result is that evolution has introduced into science the art of story-telling. Evolution is a narrative, not an appeal to scientific principles and laws. Evolutionary events are “unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible” in the words of famous evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky. Or as Harvard’s Ernst Mayr wrote, “Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques” for explaining evolutionary events and processes.

Evolution is a narrative. And it is not just any narrative—it is the world’s creation story. The most important fundamental of a culture is its creation story. Tell me where you think you came from, and I’ll tell you everything else about you. At least everything that is important.

So what Conterio and Bidinotto are observing is the fruit of evolutionary thought. Evolution is not merely a scientific theory. It is the most influential theory in areas outside of science, in the history of science.

One now classic example of this is how evolutionary theory influenced historiography. In the nineteenth century evolutionists began constructing the history of ideas from their perspective. It became known as the Warfare Thesis, or Conflict Thesis, because it cast religious people as resisting, and in conflict with, science and its objective truths.

Even though historians agree that the Warfare Thesis is a strong dose of Whig history, it nonetheless often informs our culture’s views today. Anyone questioning evolution is cast as the fundamentalist, opposing the objective, truth-seeking scientists.

The poster child for this mythical retelling of history is Inherit the Wind, a play and movie that is a fictionalization of the famous 1925 Monkey Trial. Evolutionists today heavily promote this film as a cogent insight into our culture. It casts evolutionists as the white-hat good guys, and skeptics as ignorant, religious zealots.

Many evolutionists are unaware that Inherit the Wind is a fictionalization. And when told about this, they don’t really care. Because the narrative trumps the facts.

Judge John Jones explained, for example, he wanted to see Inherit the Wind a second time in preparation for the 2005 Dover case, over which he presided, because the film puts the origins debate into its proper “historical context.” Jones later reminisced about the trial, explaining that “I understood the general theme. I’d seen Inherit the Wind.”

But a federal judge’s profound ignorance and prejudice over a case in which he presided does not bother anyone—he was exalted as one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of the Year. So what if Inherit the Wind takes a few liberties with the truth, it is the narrative that counts.

Unfortunately evolution’s influence didn’t stop with a silly screenplay. With evolution life has no divine spark, we weren’t made in the image of any Creator, and things like facts and laws, both scientific and otherwise, don’t really matter. In politics, as well as evolution, it’s all about the narrative, not following the law.

Death as the Engine of Progress

Ideas Have Consequences

Watch this short video to see how ideas have consequences.

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.—Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

the war of annihilation … is a natural law, without which the organic world … could not continue to exist at all.—Gustav Jaeger, 1870

just as in nature the struggle for existence is the moving principle of evolution and perfection … so also in world history the destruction of the weaker nations through the stronger is a postulate of progress.—Friedrich Hellwald, 1875

according to Darwin’s theory wars have always been of the greatest importance for the general progress of the human species … the physically weaker, the less intelligent, the morally lower … must give place to the stronger.—Heinrich Ziegler, 1893

Those people who are, from the outset, failures, oppressed, broken— they are the ones, the weakest, who most undermine life among human beings, who in the most perilous way poison and question our trust in life, in humanity, in ourselves.—Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

The law of selection exists in the world, and the stronger and healthier has received from nature the right to live … Woe to anyone who is weak, who does not stand his ground! He may not expect any help from anyone.—Adolf Hitler