February 29, 2012
Category: Creationism • Culture Wars • Policy and Politics
David Klinghoffer is surprised that his Disco. 'tute colleagues managed to get an article published at the Huffington Post. Klinghoffer's colleague must've known this was coming, and HuffPo isn't notorious for refusing essays, so I can't fathom why it was any sort of surprise. Nor is "pleasant" the word that came to mind on reading the essay, or anything coming from Disco. Anyway, Klinghoffer asks us to "Try to Imagine Our Country's Founding if the Founders Had Not Been Advocates of Intelligent Design:
The Huffington Post pleasantly surprised us today with an excellent piece on the necessary role of faith in public life, by James Robison and Discovery Institute's Jay Richards…
The authors prompt me to wonder how Darwinists think the American Revolution might have gone -- whether it would have been possible at all -- if the Founders had not been intelligent-design advocates.
For the rest of Klinghoffer's piece he studiously avoids asking any "Darwinist" anything of the sort, or citing their views on the matter. Of course.
The thing is, it's not a hard question to answer, since – contrary to Klinghoffer's framing of the question – it doesn't even involve a counterfactual. The Founders were not, as a group, advocates of intelligent design in any sense that means anything today.
First, because their religious views were notably heterogeneous, with mainstream Christians of various denominations to deists like Thomas Paine (whose deistic attacks on organized religion verged on atheism), George Washington, Thomas Jefferson (a self-described follower of "materialism," who loved the ethical teachings of Jesus but who edited all miracles out of the New Testament), and Benjamin Franklin (who was regarded by his contemporaries as "an apostate or an Atheist"). It seems rather hard to extract support for intelligent design from men who saw the New Testament as a "dunghil" of supernatural tales from which a diamond of ethical teachings had to be extracted, or who wrote, "I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church."
Of course, the religious views of the Founders are almost irrelevant here. The important thing is that "intelligent design" as advocated by Klinghoffer and the Discovery Institute is a modern phenomenon, an offshoot of the 20th century creationist movement that came into its own in the 1980s and '90s. Creationism in this sense, and intelligent design in particular, are reactions against evolutionary biology, an idea that did not exist during the life of any of the Founders (Madison was the last to die, in 1836, before Darwin had drawn his first evolutionary tree).
Indeed, Klinghoffer and other Disco. staff have argued that ID is defined by its anti-evolutionism – any even loosely anti-evolution argument is treated as pro-ID, even if it doesn't argue in favor of ID. But how could someone who died before Darwin published On the Origin of Species be expected to take a position on the merits of Darwin's argument, let alone on modern evolutionary biology?
To say they were "intelligent design advocates" wrongly treats them as if they were of a single mind on this (or nearly any topic), misrepresents their religious views, and mangles the history of science and philosophy beyond repair. "Intelligent design" didn't exist in 1776, and to claim anyone alive at the time as an advocate for it is radically anachronistic, not to mention insulting to the reader's intelligence and to the founders of this great nation.
Which is to say, the United States of America wasn't founded by ID advocates, so a USA founded by people who weren't ID advocates would look exactly like the one we actually have.
Setting aside the bizarre anachronism of trying to force late-18th century thinkers into late-20th century arguments, it's far from clear that the Founders would have been ID advocates even if the concept meant anything to them. Franklin and Jefferson, in particular, were active natural philosophers, and would presumably have taken some stance on evolution if they had lived a century later. What would they have said about ID creationism?
Franklin's essay "Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc." has been suggested as an inspiration for Malthus' essay on population growth, an essay which Darwin credited as a major inspiration for his thinking on natural selection. Not only that, but Franklin socialized with Darwin's grandfather Erasmus (who was also an advocate for transmutation of species), and Charles's father visited Franklin in Paris and regaled his children with tales of the American Founding Father. It's hard to imagine him abandoning this idea he may well have helped inspire.
But Franklin's writings and research tended more to the practical, mechanical, or physical than to the biological, and it's hard to know what he might have thought of evolution. Thomas Jefferson, was a polymath, a political philosopher, an agronomist, and a naturalist. And his writings reveal some attempts at grappling with the questions Darwin would later answer so cleverly. And alas, Jefferson let his deism lead him astray on some scientific issues. "The movements of nature are in a never ending circle," he wrote in "A Memoir on the Discovery of certain Bones of a Quadruped of the Clawed Kind in the Western parts of Virginia," published in 1799 in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. In that essay, he argues not only for the fixity of species, but denies possibility of extinction: "The animal species which has once been put into a train of motion, is still probably moving in that train. For if one link in nature’s chain might be lost, another and another might be lost, till this whole system of things should evanish by piece-meal; a conclusion not warranted by the local disappearance of one or two species of animals, and opposed by the thousands and thousands of instances of the renovating power constantly exercised by nature for the reproduction of all her subjects, animal, vegetable, and mineral." He rejected the possibility of extinction because he saw no route to the origin of new species; if only extinction was possible, the earth would become depauperate in time.
Indeed, part of Jefferson's agenda in sending Lewis and Clark to survey the Louisiana Purchase was to locate living specimens to match fossils found on the East Coast, specimens which would rival the size and ferocity of anything in Old World bestiaries and establish that extinction was impossible. He was wrong, of course.
While creationists might pounce on his apparent rejection of species transmutation and extinction as anti-evolution, this would be historically illiterate. Evolution didn't exist yet, and in its absence, it was not unreasonable for people to look for other explanations for the diversity of life. So we have to look deeper, and ask how Jefferson approached questions of divine intervention in the world. The fact that he edited miracles out of the Bible is pretty significant in that regard: intelligent design calls for countless miraculous interventions throughout life's history, after all. If he didn't think Jesus could turn water to wine, why expect Jefferson to look for Jesus to slap a flagellum on bacteria?
Indeed, some of what Jefferson said about science would fit him in nicely with the New Atheists. He told the natural philosopher Correa de Serra, in 1820: "Priests…dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live." And he declared, in an 1819 letter to William Short (a close friend and secretary during Jefferson's ambassadorship in France): "As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us."
That last is not noteworthy in itself, except that Klinghoffer's (whiggish, anachronistic) account of the eternal struggle between intelligent design and evolution places Epicurus at the font of evolutionary thinking, and thereby at the root of all moral evil. Here's Klinghoffer in 2009:
The most profound interpreters of the Hebrew Bible … have always understood that “Biblical religion” sets itself against a masterless, materialist picture of nature. Classically, that picture is crystalized in Epicurean philosophy, a vein of thinking that led to Darwinism. …The horror in which Biblical tradition holds Epicureanism is reflected in a rabbinic term designating a particular kind of heretic: apikorus, literally an Epicurean. The Mishnah urges us to “Know how to answer an Epicurean.”
Klinghoffer added a few days later:
The apikoros is listed alongside other heretics, those who say the resurrection of the dead has no support in the Torah and those who deny the Torah’s divine origins. These are intellectual matters, not merely ones of temperament or manners. In a Hebrew dictionary, it is defined as an “atheist, freethinker, heretic.”…
The full intellectual line of descent from Epicurus to Darwin is traced with brilliant clarity by Benjamin Wiker in Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists.
Any questions?
I suppose the only remaining questions are: how could Klinghoffer claim a self-described follower of Epicurus – an affirmed
apikoros and materialist – as a supporter of intelligent design? And how much of history is he prepared to tear up to do it?
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:06 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 21, 2012
Category: Climate change • Creationism • Culture Wars • Policy and Politics
Shorter David Klinghoffer: National Center for Science Education, Darwin/Climate Enforcers, Humiliated by Forged Document Scandal:
Ethical questions about someone with no formal ties to NCSE clearly demonstrates the scientific, pedagogical, and moral failings of NCSE.
So Peter Gleick outed himself as the source of
the Heartland board documents released last week, and now lots of people are chasing the shiny toy of how and why Gleick did it, rather than the important story of what the documents say.
But how and why Gleick did it, and even that Gleick did it, is irrelevant to most people, while the contents of those documents matters a lot to everyone. Gleick's account, which matches the Heartland Institute's account and the accounts of the folks who received the documents from an anonymous (at the time) source, is that he was mailed a document, and – in trying to confirm its contents – went down a path that was surely unethical and possibly opened him to criminal or civil penalties. He impersonated someone else to have the other documents emailed to him, and then he sent those files (and a scanned copy of the document originally mailed to him) to a range of journalists, and then deleted the email account (presumably to cover his tracks, which suggests that he knew what he was doing was wrong at the time). There will undoubtedly be exciting clashes between his lawyers and Heartland's lawyers. The soap opera will run on and on.
He's a great scientist and a great advocate, and his improper actions in this case will take him out of the mix for a long time. That's unfortunate for us all, and especially for a society that needs more great science communicators and climate science communicators in particular. Consider how he convinced this doubtful audience member to accept the science of climate change:
A skeptic isn’t someone who merely holds doubts. A skeptic, as my daughter points out, is the one with the truly open mind. A skeptic will believe anything as long as it is supported by data, sound science and a logically consistent argument.
When I heard Dr. Gleick speak at the recent SkeptiCal, I was all braced for the typical alarmist assault. I was about to be called a “denier”, and told why Kyoto must be signed.
Except that’s not what happened.
Dr. Gleick started by pointing out that good policy without good science is unlikely. I had to agree. He then carefully teased out the science from the politics and talked about the fallacies that commonly appear around the science of global warming. Especially illuminating was the part about cherry-picking data. It was refreshing.
Since his talk I have spent a lot of time on a site he recommended, skepticalscience.com. …
So, yes, I am now persuaded that anthropogenic global warming is real. That’s because I’m a skeptic.
Public policy and science will be worse without him. Even NCSE is affected: Gleick's lifetime of scientific accomplishments and experience running a successful environmental nonprofit (and his performance at SkeptiCal) led to his being considered as an addition to NCSE's board, and he withdrew from consideration immediately after he posted his confession on Huffington Post. Even though there was never any formal tie between Gleick and NCSE, hacks like Klinghoffer will surely try to make hay out of this for a long time.
I don't speak for NCSE on this blog, and I don't know how this is sitting with anyone else at NCSE, but I'm personally still shocked by it. Heartland had been spreading rumors trying to implicate Gleick last week, using the flimsiest evidence possible: the leaker seemed to live in Pacific Time, the leaker seemed to bear animus to Heartland, the leaker seemed to like Gleick. There are actually quite a few people who live in Pacific Time and like Gleick and don't like Heartland (indeed, people who like Gleick almost all dislike Heartland), and I publicly defended Gleick against what I considered scurrilous and baseless charges. I specifically told people that I did not consider him to be capable of the sort of unethical acts which he actually did undertake. All I can do is apologize for feelings I hurt and insult I caused. My motives were good, but my information was clearly incomplete.
Gleick and his lawyers will battle Heartland and their lawyers over what he did or didn't do wrong, and there's nothing the rest of us can do to shape that result. Gleick may find shelter from lawsuits or criminal charges, but there's no ethical defense and he hasn't tried to offer one, simply apologizing forthrightly.
While the legal details are hashed out, the rest of us must contend with the information he exposed for public scrutiny, likely sacrificing his credibility and his life's work in the process. Heartland seems uncowed regarding their plans to promote a denier's curriculum, and teachers and students will suffer as the falsehoods of climate change denial and antiscience lessons are forced further into classrooms. Heartland's efforts to craft a denialist echo chamber will continue apace, misleading and miseducating the public, the press, and policymakers about one of the greatest challenges of our day, and increasing the risks to society at large and to the most vulnerable among us in particular. How we learned about these and other plans doesn't change them, or their tremendous risks, nor will Heartland ever offer an apology for the harm they cause. For decades, deniers and public confusion they help spawn have kept this country from having a serious discussion about the consequences of climate change and the options available to us, including a forthright explanation of the dangerous consequences of inaction.
The Heartland memos give us a chance to have that conversation, while the soap opera of how they came to the public eye could obstruct it. Heartland and Disco' have made their preference clear. Let's make the wiser choice.
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:52 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 20, 2012
Category: Creationism • Culture Wars • Policy and Politics
A secret fundraising document from a shadowy anti-science institute was accidentally made public. The document candidly lays out the anti-science agenda of group, including efforts to undermine science education in public schools, but also plans to broadly redefine society.
The year was 1998, and the document was from the Discovery Institute. Nicknamed "The Wedge Document" by opponents of the Disco. 'tute's brand of creationism, it details plans to use attacks on evolution like the thin edge of a wedge, opening a crack which in time would break society free of "scientific materialism." Ultimately, the document explains, the Discovery Institute's plans would "replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God."
On Valentine's Day of this year, the story repeated, but instead of exposing the anti-science agenda of creationists, it reveals the equally anti-science agenda of climate change deniers.
The Heartland Institute is a major player in the climate change denial movement, and the release has produced masses of discussion. Their files – including public IRS forms, private details of a board meeting in January, and fundraising and budget documents distributed for that meeting – were accidentally emailed to an unknown third party, who shared them with journalists including Richard Littlemore of DeSmogBlog. The documents answer many questions about Heartland, demonstrating their ties to the ultra-conservative Koch family, continuing ties to the tobacco industry (Philip Morris funded their work in the '90s), funding to supposedly independent climate change deniers like Anthony Watts, and plans to develop a $100,000 climate change denial curriculum.
Where the Wedge Document reflects the enthusiasm of a new organization, the Heartland files reveal more mature planning. The fundraising document contains few of the grand claims for societal transformation that characterize the Disco. 'tute's inaugural fundraising pitch. Instead, Heartland lays out a long campaign against science, including plans for increased funding from climate change denial's sugardaddy Charles Koch, and a program to fund prominent climate change denier Anthony Watts as he tries to find new ways to pretend weather records don't tell us about climate change.
Most intriguing to science education advocates is their plan to invest at least $100,000 over this year alone to produce and distribute a curriculum laying out their climate change denial message. The thumbnail at the right links to a full-sized version of the relevant page, which explains:
Many people lament the absence of educational material suitable for K-12 students on global warming that isn’t alarmist or overtly political. Heartland has tried to make material available to teachers, but has had only limited success. …
Dr. David Wojick has presented Heartland a proposal to produce a global warming curriculum for K-12 schools that appears to have great potential for success. …
Dr. Wojick proposes to begin work on “modules” for grades 10-12 on climate change (“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy”), climate models (“models are used to explore various hypotheses about how climate works. Their reliability is controversial”), and air pollution (“whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial. It is the global food supply and natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions”).
Wojick would produce modules for Grades 7-9 on environmental impact (“environmental impact is often difficult to determine. For example there is a major controversy over whether or not humans are changing the weather”), for Grade 6 on water resources and weather systems, and so on.
We tentatively plan to pay Dr. Wojick $5,000 per module, about $25,000 a quarter, starting in the second quarter of 2012, for this work. The Anonymous Donor has pledged the first $100,000 for this project, and we will circulate a proposal to match and then expand upon that investment.
The file also claims "Dr. Wojick has conducted extensive research on environmental and science education for the Department of Energy," but
the Department clarified: "David Wojick has been a part-time support contractor for the Office of Scientific and Technical Information since 2003, working to help the office manage and organize its electronic databases. He has never advised or conducted research for the Department on climate change or any other scientific topic, and the office he works for is not a research organization." His background in philosophy and engineering hardly qualify him to devise an educational curriculum, either.
Aside from the substantial donation Heartland has already received for the curriculum from an unnamed donor, and the significant additional funds they plan to solicit, there are some important revelations here. Heartland's efforts to influence educators are not news: they've bragged about mailing out climate change denying DVDs and handouts to teachers before. But because the educational system is so decentralized, it's hard to know how effective those mailings have been. This document suggests that those efforts have largely been a flop.
What's also noteworthy is the language Wojick is quoted using. It is consistently the language of doubt and controversy, and he has returned to that well in his public defense of the program, telling AP reporter Seth Borenstein: "My goal is to help them [teachers] teach one of the greatest scientific debates in history… This means teaching both sides of the science, more science, not less."
His goal is to sow confusion among teachers and students about what the science of climate change actually says. This is a strategy familiar to aficionados of creationist rhetoric (as is the idea of "both sides of the science"), but more importantly to those familiar with the history of tobacco industry obfuscation. As a famous memo to the tobacco industry argued in 1969: "Doubt is our product." Fewer people know that that line continues: "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the best means of establishing a controversy." (The link is more than rhetorical: Philip Morris gave significant funding to Heartland in the '90s, and the same document lists Philip Morris parent company Altria as a major donor today.)
Establishing a controversy and undermining public understanding of the body of fact on climate change are central to Heartland's account of their new climate change curriculum, and long-standing keys to Heartland's broader agenda.
For a sense of that agenda, and Heartland's history, it's worth turning to a profile in Nature last July. In that profile, Heartland honcho Joe Bast explains his agenda now that Congressional action on climate policy had been stalled:
"We've won the public opinion debate, and we've won the political debate as well," Bast says. "But the scientific debate is a source of enormous frustration." …
Bast's assault on climate research takes two forms: challenging the credibility of the science, and disputing the claim that there is a scientific consensus on climate change.…
Heartland plans to spend $1.8 million on its climate programme this year. Of that, $413,000 will go to supporting the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), a small group of sceptics who have set themselves up as a counterweight to the IPCC. … The NIPCC … ignores mountains of evidence about the adverse effects of global warming and instead strings together a confident story that makes rising carbon dioxide concentrations seem entirely beneficial. …
Bast, Heartland and the NIPCC all approach scientific data as attorneys, simply trying to sow doubt and justify political inaction.…
Bast happily acknowledges hand-picking data to support his position, but argues that scientists on the other side do the same thing when they are building a case for global warming. He also says it is only natural that a libertarian like him would decide to question the scientific foundation for climate change.
The climate change denying curriculum is a logical extension of the Heartland agenda, and parallels the rhetoric and strategies of creationists as well. Just as Wojick calls for teaching "both sides" and to cover "more science, not less,"
the Discovery Institute's official policy claims: "Discovery Institute seeks to increase the coverage of evolution in textbooks … a curriculum that aims to provide students with an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of neo-Darwinian and chemical evolutionary theories … there is nothing unconstitutional about voluntarily discussing the scientific theory of design in the classroom." (This wrongly assumes that there is such a scientific theory, that evolution has such weaknesses, etc.)
The Heartland memos also reveal an effort to create an echo chamber of science denial, much like the pseudoscientific infrastructure created by the creationists since the 1960s. Heartland spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund NIPCC, a group meant to undermine the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body which produces synthesis reports on the state of climate science for use by world governments. The extent of Heartland's funding, and the degree to which they controlled that project, has never been clear, and these memos show that Heartland is calling the shots. Heartland funding goes directly to publicize NIPCC's work, but also goes to individuals involved in NIPCC, including Fred Singer, the godfather of climate change denial. Singer has never acknowledged such funding before, and indeed has denied any such funding.
In addition, the fundraising memo shows that Heartland is coordinating an effort to raise funds for a new website raising confusion about the causes of record temperatures. In order to push back against media coverage of the role climate change plays in record-breaking weather, they propose to pay prominent climate change denier Anthony Watts $88,000 to put up a website reformatting weather data from the National Weather Service. The money comes from the same unnamed donor funding the climate change curriculum and many other Heartland initiatives.
It isn't the first collaboration between Heartland and Watts. As the memo observes, Watts has promoted the claim that flaws in the US-government operated weather station network are so great as to invalidate the claim of global climate change. The memo says this was "work that The Heartland Institute supported and promoted." That Heartland promoted the project is not news – they publish a booklet Watts drafted on the topic – but how did they "support" it?
The report only mentions Heartland as the publisher, not as a supporter of the work (which I take to be financial support). Nor does the website Watts created for the project ever mention support from Heartland. He acknowledges volunteers and technical assistance from individuals, but the only mention of Heartland's role is a note in the printed report explaining: "Opinions expressed are solely those of the authors. Nothing in this report should be construed as reflecting the views of The Heartland Institute, or as an attempt to influence pending legislation." Either Heartland is inflating their role in Watts's earlier work, or Watts failed to disclose Heartland's support.
This tangled web of hidden funding and hidden influence is a tool for creating an echo chamber. Heartland quietly funds Watts, Watts produces reports for Heartland to publish. Watts retains a semblance of independence. Heartland can then point to his work and tout its independence, claiming that they are simply reporting what others discovered. Then NIPCC can cite his work, without acknowledging any coordination between their effort and Watts's. And Watts can cite NIPCC without having to say anything about his shared funding source. To outsiders, it seems like there are multiple independent sources all arriving at the same position, instead of a coordinated media campaign by Heartland.
We don't know who distributed the Heartland memos, or exactly how they were obtained. But by doing so, the leaker provided a profound public service, one that we can all be grateful for. These memos provide an inside look at the climate change denial machine, revealing how they talk about their work behind closed doors, and revealing their machinations to sow doubt about some of the most important scientific issues of the day.
We also don't know who the anonymous donor is who funded the denialist curriculum and the weather station project. All we know for certain is that he's a man who has taken great interest in Heartland's work since at least 2007. As table 5 of the fundraising memo shows, he gave over three and a quarter million dollars in 2007, another $4.6 million in 2008, and is expected to give $1.25 million to Heartland in 2012. Much of that donation is unrestricted, allowing Heartland to spend it as they choose, while he's given between $3.3 million and $630,000 in previous years specifically to support Heartland's climate change denial efforts. For context, public records show that the 2010 budget for the National Center for Science Education was $1.1 million, only slightly more than the $964,150 that Heartland's anonymous donor gave for climate change denial in the same year (only a fraction of their total climate change denial funding). It's also well less than the $2 million that the Discovery Institute spent on their creationist efforts in 2010.
If that imbalance concerns you (and it should), I'd suggest donating to NCSE (and I'm not saying that as an employee).
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 1:13 AM • 24 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 16, 2012
Category: Policy and Politics
As the SPLC and ThinkProgress report:
Yesterday, police arrested an unidentified man at the Kansas Capitol after discovering several homemade bombs in his truck close to the Kansas Capitol. The truck had stickers on its back window saying, “Welcome to America. Now speak English’’ and “Does my American flag offend you? Call 1-800-LEAVE THE USA.’’
This arrest came on the same day that Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), an anti-immigrant official who drafted Arizona’s and Alabama’s harmful immigration laws, urged Kansas lawmakers to pass stricter immigration policies.
It should be recalled that Timothy McVeigh began his bomb plot in Kansas, buying key components for his bomb and mixing them in Kansas before crossing into Oklahoma. McVeigh's co-conspirator Terry Nichols lived in Kansas and stayed home in Herrington, KS (where he bought and stole the fertilizer, diesel fuel, blasting caps, etc.) during the bombing.
Fortunately, alert police saw the empty gun holster and other warning signs in the truck today, and acted quickly to detain the truck's owner as he headed to the capitol after having illegally parked the bomb-laden truck near the building.
It isn't clear whether the bombs are connected to the anti-immigrant laws being debated today, or the testimony of Secretary of State Kobach. Kobach has a long history on this blog: I spent much of the blog's first few months cataloging his ties to hate groups, white nationalists, and Christian Dominionists as he ran for Congress.
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 12:42 PM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 14, 2012
Category: Culture Wars • Policy and Politics
Disco. 'tute ex-president Bruce Chapman doesn't know his history. He asserts:
The Spanish Inquisition was about testing the sincerity of people's Christianity.
This is true in the sense that the Crusades were about the joys of travel and cultural exchange.
I mean, how did torturing Jews until they accepted Jesus or fled their homeland test the sincerity of their Christianity? Was the seizure of property of those Jews who fled or died a test of anyone's Christianity?
In what sense did the iron maiden test the sincerity of anyone's Christianity?
It isn't clear whether Chapman regards the 5,000 people burned at the stake by the Inquisition as having been justly tested and found lacking in their Christianity, nor whether he thinks waterboarding, strappado, and the rack are appropriate means of testing one's faith.
I guess we're to believe that Dante's Christianity was found lacking (posthumously), since the Inquisition banned his books. Understandably, King Solomon failed the test, too (a translation of Song of Songs was banned).
Historians note that contemporaries of the Inquisition took a less sanguine view than Chapman. One concerned Toledano wrote to the King:
Your Majesty must provide, before all else, that the expenses of the Holy Office do not come from the properties of the condemned, because if that is the case, if they do not burn they do not eat.
Other subjects of the Inquisition claimed, "the Inquisition was devised simply to rob people." "They burn only the well-off," said another, and a resident of Cuenca observed, "They were burnt only for the money they had," while a victim of the Inquisition stated, "only the rich were burnt." Catalina de Zamora was targeted by the Inquisition for saying, "this Inquisition that the fathers are carrying out is as much for taking property from the
conversos as for defending the faith. It is the goods that are the heretics."
I wonder what Disco. 'tute Jewish figleaf David Klinghoffer thinks of his boss's casual attitude towards the torture, murder, expulsion, and robbery of Jews.
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 4:39 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 13, 2012
Category: Policy and Politics
Shorter Jerry Coyne: Chris Mooney, evolution, and politics:
We haven't got free will, except when it comes to politics.
Like Coyne, I've yet to read Chris Mooney's book, and like Coyne, I'm not up on the latest research on the determinants of political and ideological orientation. Unlike Coyne, I'm not going to make grand declarations about what the science does or doesn't say. But it's not immediately obvious that genetics wouldn't play a role in political orientation (especially via the risk-averse:conservative::novelty-seeking:liberal mechanism Mooney lays out), so it isn't clear why Coyne should feel obliged to savage Mooney's book without having read it.
This is doubly so since Coyne has devoted himself wholeheartedly to the proposition that free will doesn't exist. I'd think he'd feel validated by the discovery that political ideology is at least partly controlled by the deterministic forces of genetics. I guess the laws of the universe force Coyne to prioritize hating Chris Mooney over opposing free will.
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:09 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 12, 2012
Category: Chatter
Long ago (1656), Blaise Pascal wrote an apologetic note that editors have been quoting at prolix writers ever since:
The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.
Brevity is a key to effective writing, if nothing else because it's hard to hold a reader's attention, but also for stylistic reasons. Short sentences lend emphasis.
Alas, it's slow and painful.
Three hundred years after Pascal, Strunk and White's Elements of Style again emphasized the insistence on removing needless words wherever possible, one of several Strunk and White choices questioned by other style guides. Apparently, though, even White had to stand up for the occasional extra word. Maria Popova quotes this letter from White to a reader who missed the point:
Dear Mr. –
It comes down to the meaning of ‘needless.’ Often a word can be removed without destroying the structure of a sentence, but that does not necessarily mean that the word is needless or that the sentence has gained by its removal.
If you were to put a narrow construction on the word ‘needless,’ you would have to remove tens of thousands of words from Shakespeare, who seldom said anything in six words that could be said in twenty. Writing is not an exercise in excision, it’s a journey into sound. How about ‘tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’*? One tomorrow would suffice, but it’s the other two that have made the thing immortal.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your letter.
Yrs,
E. B. White
(That asterisk seems to be Popova's who seems to fear that the reader may not catch the reference to Macbeth. What an age we live in!)
A helpful passage to bear in mind next time an editor takes too dull a blade to your writing.
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:41 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 10, 2012
Category: Policy and Politics
Last week's all-consuming outrage was spurred by a new rule issued by the Obama administration requiring that all employers' health insurance plans cover birth control without a copay. Religious employers – especially Catholic groups – had asked for an exemption, and thought there was a wink-and-nod agreement that they'd get the exemption, but then they didn't. They didn't want to have to pay for birth control, even though many of these groups employ people outside their denomination (and thus aren't bound by outdated papal bans on birth control) or people who are part of the denomination but don't care about outdated papal bans on birth control.
This morning, rumors swirled of a forthcoming "accommodation" from the administration, and some were prepared to declare it a loss, sight unseen.
But the actual policy announced seems satisfying to nearly everyone. ThinkProgress explains:
Under the new policy, “all women will still have access to free preventive care, including contraception,” no matter where they work.” However, if a nonprofit religiously affiliated organization like a Catholic college or hospital objects to offering birth control, the insurance company will be required to provide the coverage free of charge and the employer will not pay for it. Sister Carol Keehan, President of the US Catholic Health Association and Planned Parenthood head Cecile Richards support the compromise, the administration officials said.
…Insurance companies will be able to deliver birth control at no additional charge because the cost of contraception is far less than the costs associated with an unwanted pregnancy, the administration official explained. Therefore, “there is no extra premium” associated with the service.
The new rule will also eliminate the one year implementation delay that was included in the original regulation, meaning that contraception without cost sharing will be available starting Aug. 1.
Planned Parenthood and the nun who runs the Catholic hospitals' lobbying group probably don't agree on much, but they are both satisfied with this resolution. About the only people who aren't: wingnuts like Bryan Fischer, who
declared on twitter:
WH "compromise" totally bogus. Now just tramples on religious liberty of insurance companies instead. It's a travesty.
Now I know
corporations are people, my friend, but in what sense does a corporation have religion, let alone religious liberty? If he has to work that hard to find a problem with this policy, I think we can safely say that the President's skills at 11-dimensional chess are still sharp.
But I understand why there was so much angst on progressive blogs and Twitter feeds this morning. So often, the White House has a habit of opening negotiations by giving away the store, or accepting a compromise that's too weak, or that fails to advance a progressive vision, or lay the foundation for future progressive victories. In many cases, I can see why those compromises were probably the best deal to be had, but it still leaves a bitter taste in progressive voters.
In this case, they negotiated the politics cleverly by staking out a strong position to begin with, letting the conservative noise machine work itself into a tizzy, then announcing a compromise that takes nothing away from the people being insured, acknowledges the concerns of religious groups, and forces the conservatives to either make clear that they simply object to anyone having birth control at all, or to make arguments so absurd they can be ignored. I hope there's a broader political lesson here.
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 10:48 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 1, 2012
Category: Climate change • Creationism • Culture Wars • Policy and Politics
Shorter David Klinghoffer, Minister of Propaganda for the Disco. 'tute: "Then They Came for Me -- and There Was No One Left to Speak for Me.":
I'm Jewish so it's OK for me to claim NCSE's decision to oppose pseudoscience in earth science classrooms as well as biology classes is just like Nazis dragging people off to be murdered in the middle of the night.
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies, perfected by Elton Beard, and popularized by Sadly, No!. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 10:08 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at 
