Quotation of the Day

The critic has the same interest in the works of Miss Delia Bacon, Mr. W. H. Smith, and Judge Holmes, as the physician has in morbid anatomy. He reads them, not so much for the light which they throw on the question of authorship, as for their interest as examples of wrong-headedness. It is not at all a matter of moment whether Bacon, Raleigh, or another be the favorite on whom the works are fathered, but it is instructive to discover by what plausible process the positive evidences of Shakespeare's authorship (scanty as they are) are put out of court.

Clement Mansfield Ingleby

Can a Creationist Teach History?

James Hanley at Uncommon Liberty writes:

And it's not that I would ban creationists from the public universities--I don't care if someone who believes in special creation teaches political philosophy, French literature, theater, art, exercise science, history, economics, etc. But not biology, because creationism isn't scientific.

Okay, maybe theater or economics--but history? Me, I wouldn't go there, since the philosophy of special creation is inherently anti-history in its formulation. History is based on hard evidence, not speculation made up out of whole cloth. Creationism, on the other hand, dismisses evidence that doesn't fit its bizarre world-view. Creationists, for example, don't buy into the (to their minds absurd) notion that human beings invented or discovered agriculture. Mankind was specially created to garden, and had agriculture forced upon him as a result of the Fall of Man. (I've had this argument before. More than once.) Hunting and gathering peoples aren't cultures that haven't taken up agriculture yet--they are cultures that have fallen from the natural state imposed by the creator. One of the historical consequences of this belief was the underestimate of the time it would take to transform hunters and gatherers to agriculturalists. Nineteenth century American policy dictated that native Americans convert instantly from a hunter-gatherer way of life--perceived as laziness--to one based on agriculture--perceived as godly industriousness. A utopian idealist named Meeker tried this notion out on the Utes in Colorado in the 1870s, and ended up dead as a result.

And this is one of the most basic facts of history. Creationists have strange notions about many other aspects of history--the development of language, the accomplishments of the Sumerians, the role of Babylon, the role of Egypt--in fact, they seem to have a distorted view of the entire history of the Near East. But what can you expect from a group that denies the validity of radio-carbon dating, of dendrochronology, and yet believes in a recent global flood? These guys aren't playing the game of History any more than they are playing the game of Science, and have no business getting into the ring, or even suiting up for it.

Given this, it's not surprising that Creationists tend to jump onto other popular historical bandwagons for which evidence is lacking--the Christian America myth for example, currently being enshrined in HR888, the Inflate Religious Pretensions Act. I've already mentioned Flood Geology, of course, but there are also Eurocentricism, the denigration of Islam, the conspiracy notions behind modern Asian history, and so on and so forth--none of which may be inherent in Creationism--but once you've agreed to voluntarily blind yourself in one area, it's easy to extend it to others. If your eye offends you, pluck it out and all that, I suppose. Of course you won't be able to see where you're going, and if you lead others you're both going to end up in a pit, but that's a small price to pay for being doctrinally correct.

Now I'm speaking here of YECs, of course--Young Earth Creationists, for those who aren't hip to the current lingo. It really ought to be YUCs--Young Universe Creationists--but for some reason that hasn't caught on. Old Universe Creationists are another matter. Some of them, anyway. I used to watch a cable-access show by an Old Universe Creationist--from his comments I believe he was an astronomer by trade--and on the whole I'd have confidence in his ability to teach astronomy at any rate. I don't know about French Literature or exercise science, but I'd have more confidence in his ability to teach them than in the average YUC's ability to teach anything whatsoever that depended upon his ability to evaluate evidence accurately. Sloppy thinking in one field carries over to another--or at least I'd have trouble believing that it doesn't. Intellectual laziness in evaluating the evidence of astronomy, biology, geology, and history--all of which are key to being a card-carrying YUC--do not suggest a likelihood for intellectual rigor in political philosophy or economics. And willful blindness in one field easily carries over to another.

As for the Gonzales issue, well, anybody who thinks that denial of tenure is persecution is living in a fantasy world. Sorry, but denial of tenure is a fact of life in academia. Most of the time the reasons boil down to cold hard cash. An institution has to think long and hard before making the long-term commitment that tenure implies. My sympathies tend to be with the instructors in these cases, not surprisingly since my mother and step-father were both professors in institutions of higher learning. In Gonzalez's case my sympathy is somewhat muted by the fact that he appears to have been spending too much time on outside interests instead of keeping his eye on the ball. The guy was working in a highly competitive field, and if he wasn't bringing in the bacon, so to speak, then I'm not surprised his employer chose to let him go. Them are the breaks. As Superchicken used to observe, "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred." If denial of tenure is persecution, then I've known a lot of victims, and many of them much more obviously qualified in their fields than Gonzalez appeared to be in his.

[By the way, James Hanley's original post on the Gonzalez nonsense seems to me to put things in the right perspective. Denial of tenure is never fun; it would be lovely if every instructor in the world could find a permanent teaching position. But the dishonest campaign being run on his behalf is beneath contempt.]

Earth-pigs

One of my favorite animals is the aardvark, the amazing African digging machine that eats termites and appears to be unrelated to any other mammal on the face of the earth. When I last looked, anyway, the aardvark stood alone--a single species occupying a single genus in the sole family of its order. Only when we reached its class (it is a mammal after all, and a placental at that) did it have the company of fellows. It is not at all related to other similar-looking animals with much the same lifestyle--the giant anteater, say, or the pangolin--but walks alone among mammals.

The Dutch named it aardvark--aarde being a cognate of our own earth, and varken (I suppose) somehow related to the Indo-European porko, whence comes Latin porcus and English pork. Or maybe it's some Dutch abomination unrelated to anything elsewhere. I could look it up, I guess, but that would mean getting out of my chair and wandering around the cold house looking for reference works probably buried in the basement.

In any case the Dutch settlers named the beast an earth pig, aardvark in their defective tongue, and English borrowed it from the Dutch. Why they thought the thing was a pig I don't know. I remember some writer who described the four pigs of Africa, including the aardvark among more conventional suidae, but it never made any sense to me. Tell me, does that thing look like a pig? The earth part I've got no quarrel with, seeing that the creature out-burrows strong men with shovels, but it seems to me that you might as well call it an earth-cow, or an earth-goat, as an earth-pig.

Of course we've always had problems with pigs in English. When they're out in the pens, on the hoof as it were, they're plain old pigs, a good old Anglo-Saxon word of unknown derivation. Or swine, another good Anglo-Saxon word, this one going back through Old English to Proto-Indo-European *suino maybe, or something like that. After we've slaughtered them and delivered their roasted flesh to the table, they've turned into pork, from the Old French porc, and ultimately back to Latin porcus and Proto-Indo-European *porko. Or maybe they've turned into bacon, another Old French word I'm pretty sure, though I don't remember what it means. When we call them, however, for some reason we call them in Latin. Sui, sui, we say, and I guess they come.

Earth is a more straightforward proposition. Synonyms include dirt, ground, soil, mud, filth maybe. If we were looking for a decent English approximation of the uncouth aardvark we could do worse than start there. Dirtpig, soilhog, and maybe when we bring it to the table we could call it mudpork. Claybacon. I'm not even going to try to figure out how we'd call one. Terrasui? My Latin sucks.

I started this post a couple of weeks ago, but for some reason it seemed appropriate to publish it today. Happy Groundhog Day!

Obscure Biblical Figure Appears in the Archaeological Record--Or Not

The Jerusalem Post has an interesting story about a seal from the first temple period:

A stone seal bearing the name of one of the families who acted as servants in the First Temple and then returned to Jerusalem after being exiled to Babylonia has been uncovered in an archeological excavation in Jerusalem's City of David, a prominent Israeli archeologist said Wednesday.

The 2,500-year-old black stone seal, which has the name "Temech" engraved on it, was found earlier this week amid stratified debris in the excavation under way just outside the Old City walls near the Dung Gate, said archeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar, who is leading the dig.

According to the Book of Nehemiah, the Temech family were servants of the First Temple and were sent into exile to Babylon following its destruction by the Babylonians in 586 BCE.

The family was among those who later returned to Jerusalem, the Bible recounts.

For those whose Ancient Near Eastern history may be a bit rusty, let me say that the First Temple, according to the Bible (or rather according to the Deuteronomistic History contained among the biblical texts), was built around 1000 BCE under the legendary King Solomon and destroyed 586 BCE by the historical Chaldeans or Neo-Babylonians or whatever you want to call them. A new temple (the Second Temple) was later rebuilt under the Persians. The destruction of the temple at least rests on a solid historical footing (we have ancient records of the event); since it was destroyed somebody presumably had it built, and Solomon is the name that tradition supplies. Of course tradition tells us that Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War too, and the one tradition may well be no better than the other.

Stone seals were the rubber stamps of the ancient world; officials used them to impress their signature, so to speak, in clay, so authenticating something as emanating from their particular office. Like rubber stamps, they were engraved in reverse, so that the impression would read correctly. The Jerusalem Post article notes:

The seal of one of the members of the Temech family was discovered just dozens of meters away from the Opel area, where the servants of the Temple, or "Nethinim," lived in the time of Nehemiah, Mazar said.

"The seal of the Temech family gives us a direct connection between archeology and the biblical sources and serves as actual evidence of a family mentioned in the Bible," she said. "One cannot help being astonished by the credibility of the biblical source as seen by the archaeological find."

There is a small problem, however, with this identification. It only works if the text is read the wrong way around. The Baptist Press notes:

But as it turns out, Mazar was misreading the inscription. Because the seal is designed to make an impression, the letters are written in mirror-image form, similar to how the word "ambulance" is written on the front of such a vehicle.

Following critiques from scholars such as the ones associated with the Biblical Archeology Society, Mazar now acknowledges the letters should read Sh-l-m-t. (Hebrew had no vowels.) If that's the case, then scholars believe it could refer to Shelomith, a man mentioned in Ezra 8:10 who also returned from Babylon to Jerusalem, or to Shelomith, the daughter of Zerubbabel mentioned in 1 Chronicles 3:19.

So, apparently, whether read forward or backward this stone seal turns out to corroborate the Bible. Again as the Baptist Press observes (without irony as far as I can tell):

The archeological discovery is at least the second one in recent months to make a tie to an obscure Old Testament name and thus, conservative scholars say, affirm the Bible's reliability.

The other corroboration?

Last summer British Museum officials announced the discovery of a two-inch-wide cuneiform tablet that contains details of a financial transaction by a "Nabu-sharrussu-ukin," who is called in the tablet the "chief eunuch" of Babylon King Nebuchadnezzar. That's the same person mentioned in Jeremiah 39:3 -- although spelled differently in different translations -- as the chief officer of Nebuchadnezzar who was in Jerusalem when the Babylonians overtook the city around 587 B.C.

Go figure.

176

My mother left a message reminding me that today is Lewis Carroll's birthday. Rex Stout, John Lennon, Alexander Woollcott, James Thurber, and Martin Gardner are numbered among his admirers. Mark Twain once met him, describing him as the shyest adult male he had ever met except Joel Chandler Harris, the author of the Uncle Remus stories.

A photographer, inventor, mathematician, satirist, clergyman, and amateur philosopher, Lewis Carroll is best remembered as the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking-Glass. The Hunting of the Snark (An agony in eight fits) is a favorite of mine; the Bellman reminds me of a great many leaders in my experience. "He had bought a large map representing the sea, without the least vestige of land: and the crew were much pleased when they found it to be a map they could all understand. 'What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators, Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?' So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply 'They are merely conventional signs! Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes! But we've got our brave Captain to thank,' (so the crew would protest) 'that he's bought us the best--a perfect and absolute blank!' This was charming, no doubt; but they shortly found out that the Captain they trusted so well had only one notion for crossing the ocean, and that was to tingle his bell. He was thoughtful and grave--but the orders he gave were enough to bewilder a crew. When he cried 'Steer to starboard, but keep her head larboard!' what on earth was the helmsman to do?"

Lewis Carroll turned 176 today.

Quotation of the Day

H[uckabee] doesn’t believe in evolution, which is like not believing in electricity. You have a constitutional right not to believe in it, but grab a live wire and you will still be eliminated from the gene pool.

KAMuston

Does a Theory Somehow Become a Law?

In a recent post I expressed a certain befuddlement over a notion that there is some sort of progression from hypothesis to theory to law. Not being a scientist myself I could only fall back on what I learned back in my school days. While stumbling about the internets looking for something or other I fell upon a Scientific American piece by John Rennie that observed:

Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a law.

Somehow I missed that bit; I remember that stuff about forming hypotheses, testing them, and developing theories from hypotheses that panned out--whether that came up in elementary or junior high school I no longer recall--but nothing about theories being between hypotheses and laws. If it ever came up in school I must have spaced it out completely, because that whole idea was absolutely new to me when I read it in a critique of a biology textbook, complaining that the author should have written of Newton's "Law" of gravitation rather than "Theory" of gravitation. John Rennie goes on to confirm what I thought I understood:

Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about its truth.

The rest of the commentary on this point was also interesting:

In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as "an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as 'true.'" The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling.

All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence by watching for telltale tracks that the particles leave in cloud chambers. The absence of direct observation does not make physicists' conclusions less certain.

Nice to have a little common sense for a change. I've probably been reading too much of this creationist/ID stuff for too long.

Silence is Golden

One of the things that irritate me--and there are many--is the way certain people seem to think that they are privileged to do things to others that would annoy the hell out of them if the situation were the other way around. Like distributing bibles at school, for example. People who would be horrified if their little angel came home from school carrying her brand new Koran or The God Delusion under her arm claim to see no problem with sending other people's kids home with a Gideon Bible. "But it's THE BIBLE," they exclaim, with much arm-waving and gesticulation, as though that somehow made things better. Maybe so, but remember, it's somebody else's Necromonicon, and their horror is no different from your horror.

Not that I have a lot of sympathy with people who want to be protected from running into ideas they may find uncomfortable. There are lots of them out there, and one way or another we all have to develop thick hides to protect us from somebody else's notions of reality.

But there are many times when a little peace and quiet are appropriate, and as a bus rider myself, I feel strongly that people should be prepared to shut up rather than disturb other passengers. This especially applies to people who seem to think that it is appropriate to read from their chosen text, whether it be from the Bible or from a syndicated advice columnist, in a loud carrying tone, just in case there are people at the other end of the bus who can't hear it.

Which brings me to this story: A Fort Worth woman is claiming religious discrimination because she was asked not to read to her children from her Bible in a loud voice while riding the bus. When she refused to desist a supervisor came and escorted her off the bus, then drove her and her children to their church, allowing her to read on the trip as loudly as she liked. This woman is now demanding an apology. "She said in her mind, what happened this past weekend was religious persecution, and she refuses to go along for the ride." Her representative, a person from the Liberty Legal Institute, proclaims:

I'm extremely shocked that a bus driver would pull over and take time out of his busy schedule in order to kick off a lady and her two kids while they're trying to read the Bible on their way to church.... They should be ashamed of that.

Richard L. Ruddell, president of the bus company, however, sets the matter straight:

It was not what she was reading, it was the very loud and disruptive volume. She was asked to lower her voice, but refused. Other passengers on the bus were looking to the driver for proper enforcement of the rules.

This driver acted in a very courteous and professional manner to properly deal with the situation. The T, as a public transit authority, has no policy against reading any type of material on the bus. Only when behavior of a passenger reaches an extreme volume, such as in this case, is a supervisor called.

On this same excursion into Internetland I turned up this story:

BEIJING - A Chinese Christian businessman has been released from detention after police grabbed him from his home in the early morning hours over a month ago, says his wife. Zhang Jing said her husband, 37-year-old Shi Weihan, was set free on January 4 after being held in a cell for 37 days, the legal limit in China before formal charges have to be filed. He was arrested on November 28, while his two young daughters cowered in their bedroom, for "illegally" publishing Bibles and Christian literature for distribution in home churches. His family had been worried he would be sentenced to at least five years.

Now that sounds more like persecution to me.

Another Corrupt Politician Out

According to the New York Times, John T. Doolittle, who along with fellow-travelers Richard Pombo and Tom Delay did so much to gut environmental laws for the benefit of private corporations, is planning to step down.

WASHINGTON — Representative John T. Doolittle, a California Republican who has suggested he is almost certain to face criminal charges in a Congressional lobbying scandal, announced Thursday that he would retire from the House next year.

The announcement by Mr. Doolittle, 57, who is in his ninth term in Congress and was once seen as a rising star in the Republican Party, made no reference to the criminal investigation by the Justice Department, which has centered on his connections to the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Last April, Mr. Doolittle’s home in suburban Virginia was raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of that inquiry, and his wife, a campaign fund-raiser, was subpoenaed for her financial records.

The aptly-named Doolittle spent his time in Congress attempting to destroy the endangered species act and to make sure that nothing was accomplished on virtually any environmental front. Given this record it is no surprise that the California Republican had ties to corrupt lobbyists. The Times added:

Justice Department officials would not comment Thursday on the status of the criminal investigation against Mr. Doolittle, who is among nearly 20 House Republicans to announce that they will voluntarily leave Congress over the next year. Prosecutors appear to be focused on business connections between Mr. Doolittle’s wife and lobbyists, including Mr. Abramoff, who might have sought to influence his vote.

...Until this week, Mr. Doolittle publicly rebuffed calls for his resignation and said he was eager to seek another term. Branding his critics within the Republican Party as “weasels,” he continued until several days ago to seek donations for a re-election campaign this November.

I wonder what happened to change his mind.

On the Energy Front

First the bad news: oil hit $100 a barrel today.

The good news: demand is expected to drop as many consumers are priced out of the market.

Another Election Season Begins

The first shot of the 2008 election has been fired, and (as of this moment at least) it seems that Obama is the winner on the Democratic side, and Huckabee on the Republican. If past experience is anything to go by, we're probably looking at something like a Clinton / Thompson match-up when the dust settles, but past experience may well be meaningless. The field is depressing at best; an anti-science preacher, a right-wing actor, a guy bankrolled by racists, another fellow whose main asset is his famous name, and an ex-mayor of New York, whose chief claim to consideration is that he didn't entirely lose his head when his city was attacked by terrorists.

I can't cope with this.

Quotation of the Day

Anyone who supports torture is a traitor to the democratic form of government, and should be voted out of office, if not impeached.

P. Z. Myers

I'm Mad as Hell and I've Lost My Paxil

I spent a bit of this morning reading about a fellow in Lima--this is Lima, Ohio, by the way, here in the good old USA--whose life savings was stolen. Four hundred grand and change. And what are the authorities doing about it? Well, nothing. No, actually it's worse than nothing. The authorities--specifically the FBI--are the ones that stole the money.

Now I want to stress that this guy--Luther Hicks--has not been convicted of any crime. He has not even been charged with any crime. It is the mere fact of his possession of a large sum of money that appears to have excited the interest--might I say the greed?--of the FBI. They have presumed, without any evidence that I know of, and certainly without actually going to the bother of presenting any evidence to a court, that Hicks must have obtained it illegally, and are demanding that he present some sort of evidence to prove that he didn't. That is, they're demanding that he prove a negative, a difficult task at best, to get his money back. This is more anecdotal evidence, anyway, for a sort of crime that has become all-too-common under the bizarre forfeiture laws here in this once-great nation--laws that appear to be unconstitutional on the face of it several times over--violations of due process, excessive fines, unreasonable seizures at the very least.

Now there may well be more to the story; I haven't been able to find out and to be honest I'm not interested. Not unless it involves the presentation of hard evidence to a judge or at least some sort of legal cover. If Luther Hicks has not been convicted of a crime, then agents of the government have no business seizing his assets. Unless he owes back taxes or something of that sort, in which case the IRS should be doing the job. Not that I have any vast sympathy for the IRS approach to ripping people off first, and then asking questions about whether they owed the money, but at least owing money is some kind of excuse. A government lives on taxes; it's not surprising that it reacts to nonpayment like a dog deprived of a bone.

And as if that wasn't bad enough reading the inane comments here pissed me off even more. A certain Thomas writes, apparently seriously, "You are not supposed to have more than $10,000 in cash. Any amount over that and the government has the right to take it unless you fill out the proper currency transfer requests. You break the rules, you lose the money, period, end of discussion." Uh, no, Thomas; it is not illegal to have large amounts of cash on hand in this country. How do you think banks function? Stores? Other businesses? If it represents unreported income or something of that sort--or a payoff for a kidnapping, or the result of extortion, or whatever--then yeah, it can be illegal, though it would be just as illegal if it were in a bank or invested in stocks. An even more idiotic comment comes from a certain Cesar McKinley. In response to somebody who suggested that the NAACP should get involved (Luther Hicks is black), he wrote "They're too busy trying to get a pardon for six thugs who happened to be at a school where a noose was hung before they beat up a random kid." Apparently facts are of no concern to Cesar. What actually happened in the case he's referring to was that a racist kid picked a fight with a black jock and ended up with a black eye and other superficial bruises. (Had this kid actually been set upon by six jocks intent on doing him serious damage--attempted murder as the prosecutor claimed--he would have received some actual injuries, which didn't happen.) This minor schoolyard scuffle got blown up out of proportion by an overzealous prosecutor who appears to have been intent on making political capital from the case, though I don't pretend to know his actual motives. Maybe he was just the racist jerk he appeared to be. Who knows? But if Cesar and Thomas want to sound off, they might do at least a little research on the topics in question before waxing indignant.

And still another fellow pissed me off with this comment: "The '90s called...they want their paradigm back." Whenever I read an alleged joke in this form I hear David Spade's voice. Were these things ever funny? For me these are right up there with "I've heard of [fill in blank] before, but this is ridiculous." For some reason I hear those in Alan Alda's Groucho Marx voice. That's neither here nor there, I suppose, but the formula is tiresome. I'm reminded of an old movie parody, maybe from Humbug, in which a character asks "What language do you speak on this island?" "Here we speak fluent cliché," the native girl replies. If formula follows dysfunction, can misinformation be far behind?

But I digress. That's generous, maybe, in presupposing that I ever had a line of thought to digress from. Another thing--what is this fixation that readers of reason.com seem to have with Ron Paul? I was going to say that I don't get it, but on second thought, maybe I do. With all the unprincipled thugs wandering about, it could be refreshing to see a principled thug. Of course I mistakenly thought Robert Bork had principles, based on inaccurate media accounts, until I took a look at the guy's own words. And actions. If he has principles, they must be made of rubber. At least you know where you stand with Ron Paul. He's done right things for the wrong reasons, and wrong things for the right reasons, but at least most of the time you know where you are with him. Which is a lot more than I can say for some politicians I'm more likely to vote for.

But let me get back to the craziest of the comments at reason.com. A certain Joe at Joe.com (right...) claims to "work for an agency that seizes property under these exact circumstances." (I have my doubts.) "[N]o the us attorney's office," he writes, "nor my agency [whatever that is], would support a ridiculously unjust seizure like that. i don't know all of the facts of this particular case, but there is ALWAYS more than what is published in a simple news blurb." Now I'm not sure what "Joe" means by a "simple news blurb"--there's no such thing--but I'm sure there's more to the case than we've heard. However, as I said above, unless it involves due process or something strongly resembling it I'm just flat not interested. "[F]or all you conspiracy theorists and government haters," he goes on, irrelevantly as far as I can tell, "there has to be a substantial reason to seize that money; the punishment has to fit the crime. it's not as simple as this article makes it seem." But that's the problem with these seizure laws--the punishment does not have to fit the crime, nor does there have to be a substantial reason--or indeed any reason--to seize money. As I've seen in cases that have come to my attention the mere fact of possession of cash is often deemed proof of criminal activity, and it's up the the accused to prove that he is not up to something. If "Joe" has any evidence to support his claims, he ought to have presented it. As it stands his unsupported assertion backed by all the clout of an anonymous "agency" is singularly unconvincing. I'd love to know what his "agency" thinks would justify seizing substantial assets without criminal charges being filed. Still, "Joe" assures us "there is no possible way this seizure would be supported in the manner it is presented in this article." I don't believe it; I've seen too many instances in the real world of houses being seized from elderly grandmothers because a grandchild was growing a pot plant in the basement, and stolen cars seized because the thief used it to pick up a police officer posing as a prostitute to have any conviction that justice, or anything remotely resembling justice, is being served. Oh yeah, there's always supposed recourse--the grandmother can sue her grandchild for the value of the house seized by greedy government officials, or the car-owner can sue the thief for the value of his vehicle. That's justice for you, in some bizarre Humpty-Dumpty sense of the word. Ha. Put up or shut up Mr. "Joe" of the secret police.

Oh yeah, and another one--"Hit & Run-euphemism for moron infestation" writes in response to "Big Nanny"'s comment "If the founding fathers came back to life today...they would get sent straight to Gitmo", "Indeed, because as we all know, the Founding Fathers were notorious for slaughtering innocent civilians and harboring those that did the same." No shit. Has "moron infestation" ever looked into what the Founding Fathers did to win their revolution? Slaughtering civilians and harboring terrorists was indeed part of it. Not pretty, maybe, but history often isn't. I do agree with "moron infestation"'s shot, "The more I read this site, the more I realize it is chock-full of assholes so stupid, they can't tell their ass from a hole in the ground." As asshole-in-chief, he should know.

That Holiday Spirit Revisited

Hey there, bunky.

You say that you tuned in to your favorite morning radio show and found that it had just been replaced by Don Imus?

And when you went to watch the Dr. Who Christmas special, it was being picketed by a rabid Christian who had apparently confused the Doctor with Jesus?

And then you held open a door for a lady and wished her "Happy Holidays", and she jabbed you in the chest and snapped "This is Christmas and people like you just don't know what that's supposed to mean anymore!"

And you say you got all dressed up as Santa and went to deliver some presents to a children's party and some drug-dealers took a shot at you?

Is that what's on your mind, bunky?

Well put your head down low and take a run at a brick wall, with that dignity and fortitude that says you'll never give up, never give up, never give up that old holiday spirit, no matter who just stole your routine. So this is the old Rational Ranter saying Merry Christmas, and God bless you Eddie Lawrence, wherever you are.

What Propheteth a Man

Alan Jacobs is a professor of English at Wheaton College, and the author of a book on C. S. Lewis (not surprisingly I guess, considering the Wheaton College connection) that I haven't read. He is also the author of a translation of some of the Gnostic gospels that I have at least tasted. Speaking as one who has made his way through many of them in the "original" Coptic, sometimes at excruciating length while sitting in on the Nag Hammadi seminar Tuesday nights at the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity (how well I remember those golden evenings so long ago), Jacobs' poetic translations are a considerable improvement not only on the more scholarly translations available, but on the Coptic versions themselves. Of course for the most part we can only guess what the Greek looked like, and maybe they did resemble what Alan Jacobs has made of them in English.

It seems, however, that Jacobs is also no mean parodist. His review of Khalil Gibran's Collected Works in last month's First Things takes the form of a Gibran parody, and is really quite good. An excerpt:

And it is the voice of Sir Laurence
Reading the King James Bible
That I hear within me as I write these words,
Which echo resonates within and bequeaths to me
The Prophetic Strain,
At least as far as you know.
Once that voice enters the mind,
As it does when one has read hundreds and hundreds of pages of Kahlil Gibran,
Its abode is fixed within,
It refuses all notices of eviction,
It continues to loop within the sphere of one’s skull,
An earworm, dread and implacable.

This is sharp, accurate, and funny, and I hope some future Dwight MacDonald will include it in the next definitive parody anthology. The complete review appears here, and is well worth reading. And revisiting, for that matter. I conclude with one further excerpt:

The words I give you now are words of Life, and not Death,
Though I suppose the Prophet would proclaim that Death and Life are the same,
And that only the foolish would divide the two,
The Two which are One.
But He’d be wrong about that, I’m pretty sure.

[Oh, and thanks to Edward Cook at Ralph the Sacred River for turning me on to this.]

Something Indefensible?

From Bill O'Reilly at Fox News comes a strange report about a teacher presenting his religious views in a public classroom. Preaching, as it were, rather than teaching. Usually O'Reilly seems to have no problem with teachers evangelizing their classes, but in this case he is opposed to it. What is the difference? In this case the teacher in question, James Corbett of Capistrano Valley High, instead of promoting some variety of fundamentalist Christianity in his classroom, is accused of promoting anti-Christianity.

A student in James Corbett's Advanced Placement European History class, Chad Farnan, complains that he "demonstrates a sense of hostility toward religion," which makes his Christian students "feel ostracized and treated as second-class citizens". [source] The student's parents are suing over the issue, demanding that the teacher be fired.

Background

The LATimes reports:

Capistrano Valley High School Principal Tom Ressler described Corbett as a "solid" teacher who has been with the Capistrano Unified School District for more than 15 years. Ressler said Corbett's class was popular among Advanced Placement students and has a high pass rate.

...Teresa Farnan said her suspicions were aroused on the first day of school when her son -- a sophomore honors student required to take Corbett's class for college admission -- asked her whether America was founded on Christian values, which he said his teacher had denied.

"He had learned in the eighth grade that our country was founded by persecuted Christians," said the mother, who describes her family as nondenominational Christian, "so I sent him to school with a tape recorder."

During the next two months, Chad Farnan said, he taped Corbett's lectures with the recorder in plain sight on his backpack.

...Eventually the Farnans contacted Advocates for Faith and Freedom, a nonprofit organization based in Murrieta dedicated to "protecting religious liberty," a spokeswoman said.

The group filed the lawsuit on the family's behalf, attorney Jennifer Monk said, because it believed Corbett's behavior violated the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution.

"The teacher is a representative of the state and the Constitution requires government neutrality toward religion," she said. "This teacher's conduct and words clearly show he is hostile toward religion and is indoctrinating these kids, who are a captive audience."

The lawsuit -- based entirely on Corbett's comments during one Oct. 19 class that the Farnans describe as typical -- asks that the teacher be removed from the classroom. "We will not seek damages if the teacher is removed," Monk said.

Chad Farnan is quoted as saying "He's against Christianity and bashes it all the time. He's been indoctrinating us and not teaching the class; we don't need to be hearing his political views during school time when we should be learning."

The Recording

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any posting of the actual recording. Bill O'Reilly transcribes a couple of excerpts:

How do you get the peasants to oppose something that is in their best interest? Religion. You have to have something that is irrational to counter that rational approach. When you put on your Jesus glasses, you can't see the truth.

Conservatives don't want women to avoid pregnancies. That's interfering with God's work. You've got to stay pregnant, barefoot and in the kitchen and have babies until your body collapses.

The news stories also say that he:

said that religion is not "connected with morality";

compared Christians to "Muslim fundamentalists"

suggested that churchgoers are more likely to commit rape and murder.

Analysis

At first glance this story seems to be the mirror image of the Coach Packy story (see here and here). The thing is, though, the available excerpts simply don't support the claims being made. Putting on my historian glasses for the moment, I would note that it is a commonplace that irrational factors (religion, patriotism, and the like) are used to move people to take actions against their own best interest. Now no doubt the teacher could have phrased this in less colorful and more politically correct words, and maybe the idea sounds shocking to a naive 16-year-old raised on the modern myth that "America was founded on Christian values", but there's nothing in it constituting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

As for the comment about conservatives not wanting women to avoid pregnancies, what of it? One news story suggests that this was part of the comparison of Christian to Muslim fundamentalists, in which case it is entirely accurate. (Conservatives in both groups have been opposed to the prevention of pregnancies; this is a matter of fact, not opinion.) It may well be an example of the teacher inserting comments on modern issues rather than sticking to European history, but it doesn't infringe on anybody's religious rights. (There is no right to ignorance, though many fundamentalists seem to think there is.) If the issue is the negative tone the teacher takes, it seems to me to be warranted--just as one might take a negative tone on the subject of slavery, female genital mutilation, and other practices sanctioned by one religion or another in the past. Christian and Muslim fundamentalists may be legitimately compared; the similarities and differences among the groups are instructive; lacking the context I really can't say whether there was something unjustified in the comparison.

As for the others, well, religion and morality are separate, though often confused, and I say bravo to the teacher for reminding his class of the fact. I don't understand why that should even be in there. Also that last comment about rape and murder needs a context--churchgoers are more likely to commit rape and murder than whom? Non-churchgoers? The population as a whole? Or what? As it stands, it appears to be a mere statistic. If the student and his parents can show that it was a bogus statistic that was part of an anti-Christian tirade not connected to the subject of European history, then they may have a point, but if so they should have presented the relevant parts of the tirade, rather than this irrelevant point.

As it stands, this looks to me like another example of a frivolous lawsuit emanating from conservative Christians attempting to impose their values on others. Of course I'm assuming that they put their strongest stuff out in front; if they have evidence to support their claims of anti-Christian discrimination, they really ought to present it first, rather than this irrelevant fluff. Perhaps James Corbett could use some sensitivity training in dealing with religiously confused and factually challenged students, or something like that, but there is nothing whatsoever in the material cited to "show he is hostile toward religion and is indoctrinating these kids, who are a captive audience", in something or other, as charged by Jennifer Monk, who speaks for the organization representing the family. If new material surfaces, that actually supports this claim, then I will revisit this issue, but for the moment I have to file this under frivolous lawsuits.

[Oh, yes, and before I forget, a special thanks to Archaeoporn, whose blog turned me on to this story.]

Quotation of the Day

Science, as an intellectual project is profoundly un-conservative. Science does not value tradition. Science requires authority to continually reprove itself. Science must follow the truth wherever it goes, regardless of the political and economic implications. Science is apolitical. However, while science may not be any friendlier to liberalism than it is to conservatism, liberalism, by virtue of that tolerance thing, is friendlier to science than conservatism is.

John J. McKay

Here Comes the Sun

Happy Solstice to all, and to all a good night.

In Justice to Huckabee

It has been widely reported that Mike Huckabee, the Baptist minister now running for president as a Republican, proclaimed a bold program for the US to become "free of energy consumption ... within a decade." This seems like a rather draconian back-to-the-stone-age sort of goal--interesting for a Republican. I seem to recall that not so long ago President Stay-the-Course was proclaiming massive energy consumption to be an integral part of being American. Turns out, however, that Huckabee has been misquoted. What he really said is that the US should become "oil free of energy consumption ... within a decade." Well, I'm glad that's cleared up. Of course it's still meaningless gibberish, as nutty as an Almond Joy, but at least it's different.

Unbelievable

This one comes from South Carolinians for Science Education, courtesy of Pharyngula. Apparently, for some unfathomable reason, the people responsible for approving textbooks for South Carolina got a pair of ignorant fools to review two reputable biology textbooks and actually held them up for approval based on their uninformed ramblings. The characterization of them as ignorant fools is mine, but is justified by their own words. Examples follow:

Authors incorrectly refer to the Theory of Gravity when it is the Law of Gravity. Just as there is a big jump from hypothesis to theory, there is another big jump from theory to law and proper citation should be noted. [p.3, RJL and S critique]

Now I'm not a scientist, nor do I play one on the internet. I'm perfectly willing to concede that things may have changed a great deal since I learned the basics. I was taught Newton's Theory of Gravitation along with Einstein's Theory of Relativity and so on. But I've never heard of this progression from hypothesis to theory to law. Theories contain laws, and put them into a larger context that presumably explains them, but I've never heard of a theory becoming a law. If Newton's theory of gravitation has become a law of some kind, I apparently missed it. And if I'm confused on this point, so are the authors of the Wikipedia articles on gravitation, since they still refer to Newton's theory. To me, this criticism sounds just plain ignorant. If in other respects these reviewers showed they knew what they were talking about, I'd be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. That, however, is far from the case.

Statement that earth was formed about 4.5 BYA is speculation. [p. 2 RJL and S critique]

It’s speculation in the same sense that the claim the Washington Monument is 555 feet high is speculation. The age of the earth is a matter of measurement, not speculation.

Reference to 3 billions years old is not on solid grounds since dating methods are unreliable. [p. 4, M&L critique]

For this, I'll let Kenneth Miller, one of the authors under attack, take it:

The reviewer claims that there are scientific data that do not support evolution. However, he does not say what that data might be. Instead, he claims (without any supporting data or reference) that information showing that living organisms appeared on the planet nearly 3 billion years ago is unreliable. Why is that information unreliable? Has the reviewer discovered patterns of radioactive decay that violate the laws of physics? He does not say, and therefore it is impossible to evaluate these critical comments.

I admire the author's politeness, considering the boorishness of the critique. But since I don't have any horse in this race, I'll say outright anybody this foolish, ignorant, or mendacious has no business reviewing a serious textbook. Period.

Eruption Mt. St. Helen in 1980 proved long ages are not needed for geological formations. Canyons in GA and WA states were formed in days or months, respectively, and not millions or billions of year. [p. 1, M&L critique]

Again, it's hard to say whether the reviewers are being deliberately obtuse, or are genuinely stupid. Volcanic eruptions don't form multiple layers of different kinds of rocks containing distinctive fossils, just to point out one of the most obvious flaws with this "argument". As Kenneth Miller pointed out with commendable restraint in his reply:

The fact that some geological features can be formed rapidly does not mean that all are formed that way. There is abundant evidence, taught as a required part of the earth science curriculum in South Carolina, that the well-defined geological ages of the earth extend over hundreds of millions of years. [p. 1, reply]

Again, I don't know where to begin with what appears to me to be rank idiocy, either real or assumed. Do these guys have a point, or think they do? Or is this just some kind of snow-job? Oh, and by the way, speaking as one of the many who shoveled ash from my yard in 1980, it's Mount St. Helens, not Mt. St. Helen. I'm just saying.

Now this next "point" is interesting, in that it occurs in critiques of both volumes:

Statements on vestigal organs are grossly misleading. In recent reports, it was shown that the appendix, often cited as a vestigal organ, provides beneficial bacteria to intestines. This whole section should be deleted or updated to accurately reflect the state of knowledge. [p. 3, RJL and S critique]

Statements on vestigal organs are grossly misleading. In recent reports, it was shown that the appendix, often cited as a vestigal organ, provides beneficial bacteria to intestines. This whole section should be deleted or updated to accurately reflect the state of knowledge. [p. 2-3, M&L critique]

This is extremely odd. It almost looks as though the authors pulled out a piece of boilerplate and stuffed it into their critiques without any regard for whether it had anything to do with the books they were supposedly reviewing. Of course a reputable reviewer would never do anything like that, and we can be certain that this comment was somehow relevant to both textbooks. Or can we? Miller wrote:

Curiously, the reviewer complains that the appendix has been mistakenly cited as a vestigial organ when it actually performs a useful, if non-essential function. This comment suggests that the review does not understand the meaning of the word “vestigial,” which does not imply that an organ is without function. Rather, it means that the organ is reduced in size and importance, a “vestige” of its appearance in other organisms, as our text correctly notes. The comment also suggests that the reviewer has not read our book carefully, since we do not cite the appendix as such an organ.

Gee, I wonder what we're supposed to make of that, then. An incompetent criticism that doesn't apply to the book supposedly being reviewed. Again, this appears to be rank idiocy--even I know that a vestigial organ may perform a function. This next example of blithering incompetence is beneath contempt:

Since Archaeopteryx was a bird, it should not be used to show “evolution of a dinosaur to bird”. [p.3, RJL and S critique]

A bird with reptilian teeth and a bony tail? Oh, come off it. This is just creationist-gibber, the same as I've been hearing since I was a kid. You know, people, it doesn't matter how many times or how loudly you proclaim the archaeopteryx was only a bird, it remains as much a transitional form as ever. Though of course in a sense, given a long-enough perspective, we're all transitional forms. Except for those of us who turned out to be dead ends. More silliness accompanies an illustration of a scorpion in amber:

Since scorpions are still scorpions after 25 millions of years (if date is accurate), what does this prove? [p. 4, M&L critique]

Miller replies:

This ancient scorpion, trapped in amber, is used to indicate that fossils provide reliable and detailed records of past life. The text makes no other claim about the scorpion shown within the amber, and therefore there is no reason for the reviewer to object to it.

Any questions?

Robins were and are still robins. No evidence is presented of one kind of animal changing to another kind of animal! Charles Darwin shifted his thinking on origins after he became anti-God. [p. 1, M&L critique]

Now it's getting creepy. What do the reviewers mean by "kind"? This sounds like more creationist-gibber to me--you know, how every animal is supposed to reproduce after its "kind" in Genesis. If they have some scientific definition in mind, they should use the appropriate word--say, "species" or "genus" or whatever. Otherwise it just seems like some sort of weasel word-trick--you know, if I show you one species of elephant changing to another in the fossil record, you come back with, yes, but they're still elephants! That's not what I meant by "kind"! (Yes, I've had this argument before.) If I show a larger series of fossils documenting a transition from say a shrew-like animal to an early primate, then you come back with, oh sure, but they're all still monkeys. That's not what I meant by "kind" at all! And if I ask you flat out what you do mean by "kind", it turns out that you don't have a definition at all. "It's up to you to define 'kind'," you reply virtuously. "All I'm doing is pointing out flaws in your argument." As a fellow named Burns once observed in our high-school English class, he would never believe in evolution until I could show him an example of a cow giving birth to a goat. My reply at the time was that I'd believe in creationism (or whatever they were calling it back in the Palaeolithic) when I saw a cow giving birth to a bicycle.

The comment about Darwin is inexplicable. Miller's observation that "The claim that Darwin “shifted” his views for theological reasons are not supported by any Darwin scholar I know of" doesn't go far enough. It is a matter of indifference how or when or on what occasion that Darwin came to his beliefs as far as the subject of biology is concerned. Further, this looks to me like creationist projection, an all-too-common failing among the biblical-literalist crowd. Creationists reach their conclusions for theological reasons; it makes them feel better to suppose that others do likewise. It puts them on the same footing, so to speak.

But these guys sink even lower than this in the next bit:

The Nebraska man used previously to show descent of man was fabricated from one tooth in 1922. And this tooth was proven to be an extinct pig’s tooth and in 1972 the extinct pig was found to demonstrate a fraud used to promote the evolutionary worldview point in textbooks for 50 years. [Pp.1-2 RJL and S critique]

This one is really unbelievable and shows a most profound ignorance of the simplest facts of the history of science. Only an uneducated boob would claim that the so-called Nebraska Man was “a fraud used to promote the evolutionary worldview point in textbooks for 50 years.” In the first place “Nebraska Man” was a mistaken identification, not a fraud, and in the second, the tooth (mis-)identified as a hominid tooth was correctly identified in 1927 as the tooth from a peccary. “Nebraska Man” had no influence whatsoever on evolutionary theory and as far as I can tell has never been used in textbooks of any kind, unless you count creationist “textbooks”. Finding a hominid specimen in North America would have been extremely surprising under any circumstances, which is one reason this identification was always under suspicion for the brief time that “Nebraska Man” was considered a possibility.

Can they go lower yet? Just how many sub-basements are there beneath contempt, anyway? Turns out the answer is, yes, they can. Although this next one looks like a parody, I am not making it up. They reviewers actually wrote:

Hitler, Stalin, Planned Parenthood, racists, and others have cited Charles Darwin in their genocide programs that have killed an estimated 300 million people. Social Darwinism is a dark side of Charles Darwin’s publications that is often overlooked or excused. High school students should be aware that thoughts and thought process and actions have serious consequences. [p. 2, M&L critique]

I particularly like the inclusion of Planned Parenthood among those with "genocide programs"; I guess they threw that one in just in case somebody started thinking they were actually sane people. That's a dead giveaway that the reviewers have a couple of chips missing in their motherboards. Social Darwinism, by the way, owes a great deal more to Calvin than to Darwin, and has no connection to biology at all. I would also note that the reviewers provide no evidence whatsoever linking Hitler or Stalin with Darwin, and I personally doubt that they can. Hitler came by his anti-Semitism strictly through Christian notions, leading back through Martin Luther to the Gospel of Matthew. Inane (and downright ignorant) remarks like this go far to discredit anything these reviewers have to say, if they hadn't already revealed themselves to be uneducated boobs with their remarks about archaeopteryx and Nebraska Man.

With advisers like these, it is no wonder that the US is falling behind in science education.