Intelligent Design rhetoric - Part 1
Intelligent Design recycles and merges two old arguments that represent two very different types of theology. Neither argument is good science.

The first is called "argument from design." This argument proceeds from the type of theology that views the world with awe and wonder. The complexity and astounding beauty of the world are taken as arguments for the glory of God. The majesty of nature could only be the product of a perfect creator.

This optimistic theology was converted into an argument against evolution by Rev. William Paley a generation before Darwin.* Paley provided the famous example of the eye, saying the eye was too complex to have evolved in one shot and that a half-evolved eye would be silly and useless.

Intelligent Design has repackaged this argument as the scientific sounding concept "irreducible complexity." Since biologists can explain what good a half eye is, Michael Behe and other ID proponents have concentrated on the molecular machinery within cells. Behe claims, as Paley did, that his preferred example is too complex to have evolved by chance and that it had to have appeared fully developed; it would not have been useful in any partial form. Needless to say, most biologists have no problem

The second argument is called "God in the gaps." This argument proceeds from a rather defensive theology that accepts separate realms for religion and science, but contents itself with limiting God to those things science can't explain. No one actually claims this as their religious philosophy because it essentially a philosophy of despair. It anticipates the realm of God constantly shrinking as human knowledge expands.

ID proponents have reversed this pessimistic philosophy by aggressively stating that there are some things science simply cannot explain and that it never will explain them. Science is a means of gathering knowledge and explaining the world through naturalistic causes, that is through causes that we can observe and measure. ID insists that some things don't have natural causes.

Returning to Behe, this is the point of his term "irreducible complexity." He's not saying that it would be difficult or improbable for certain molecular machines to assemble themselves using naturalistic processes; he says it's impossible. Some designer had to intervene to put those molecules in place.

The main ID proponents try to avoid saying God. In this way they can claim that their philosophy is an alternative scientific explanation, not a religion. They point out places in the evolutionary narrative where naturalist explanations seem to fail and propose a non-naturalistic intervention. They are playing word games. What is a "non-naturalistic intervention." It's a supernatural event, also called a miracle. They want to avoid naming this maker of miracles, but really, how many makers of miracles can you name that do not qualify as religious figures?

Intelligent Design is more than a philosophy with religious origins. It is both non-scientific and anti-scientific to its core. I'll go into that next time.

* Yes, the theory of evolution existed before Darwin. He didn't "invent" evolution; he merely provided one of the first convincing explanations for how it works and it was only a partial explanation at that. This is why using "Darwinism" as a synonym for evolutionary theory is such a misnomer.

Teach aether theory

WASHINGTON -- President Bush said Monday he believes schools should discuss "intelligent design" alongside evolution when teaching students about the creation of life.

During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to go into detail on his personal views of the origin of life. But he said students should learn about both theories, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported.

"I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," Bush said. "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes."

We should have enough faith in our kids to trust them to make up their own minds when presented with two theories. After all, this a democracy; shouldn't the majority rule? Teach the gravity controversy.

Gravityism makes no sense. The dogmatic Newtonists would have us believe that things fall because of an invisible force, that we are unable to copy or reproduce in the laboratory, that pulls things together, with little things falling inevitably toward bigger things. If hold my coffee cup out at an arm's length and let go, the cup falls down and not towards my chest. Yet my chest is bigger than the cup and closer than the ground. If there was anything to this "gravity" stuff, the cup should fall towards me. The Gravityists will try to say that the cup falls towards the Earth because the Earth is much bigger than me. But why doesn't the cup fall towards the Sun which is much larger than the Earth. Gravityism defies common sense.

Gravityism is just a theory. And it is a theory that is in crisis as an increasing number of scientists have begun to question it. A single invisible force is not enough to explain how things really work. In their desperation to save their theory, the Newtonists have had to make up additional invisible forces like "dark matter" and the "cosmological constant." Why is this magical "gravity" a better explanation than the pressure of aetheric monads pushing down from above? Both theories should be taught.

Whenever the "scientists" need to explain something, the make up some magic invisible force. Why are "germs" a more reasonable answer for explaining disease than the wrath of God? Both theories should be taught. Why are diet, hygiene, and "medicine" more reasonable cures than prayer? Both theories should be taught.

What are the Newtonists afraid of?

Update: Pharyngula is keeping track of everyone who is speaking out on this. It makes for some good reading.

Bolton
Is anyone surprised? I didn't think so.

Bush never misses a chance to use the nomination process to express his contempt for other people. Bolton is fairly typical. Some commentors are saying that the recess appointment with so many questions unanswered will cause Bolton to lack legitimacy. I don't see it that way. Bolton, just by being Bolton and by being Bush's appointment already lacks legitimacy. The UN is aware that he is being sent as a gesture of Bush's contempt for the institution and in order to sabotage the whole idea of multilateral cooperation between equals. Bolton's job is to gut the UN in the name of "reform." Everyone knows that. How could he be less legitimate?

Does the estate of Captain Kangaroo know what happened to his moustache?

Just plain stupid
I call this shooting off your mouth without checking first to see if it's loaded. This is Sen. Brownback on Face the Nation talking about the possibility of the government allowing funding for some embryonic stem cell research.

This is a big step. This will be one of, I believe, the first time we've ever used taxpayer money to pay for the intentional destruction of human life and that's what this does.

Because every war we've ever waged, every law enforcement agency, and the death penalty have been provided free of cost by the private sector. In the entire history of the republic, no taxpayer money has ever been used to intentionally take a human life.

This has nothing to do with how you feel about embryonic stem cell research or the justifiability of any death ever caused by the three applications I just mentioned. The simple fact is that taxes have been used to pay for lots of human deaths over the years. Any debator beyond about the eighth grade should know better than to make a undefendable, blanket statement this stupid.

Florida must be happy that Kansas' politicians are giving them a run for most embarassing in the nation.

Sliming the victim
Atrios points us to Crooks and Liars who points us to Fox News Live for this thoroughly disgusting analysis of the tragic shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes by the London Metropolitan Police last week.

It wouldn't be out of the question for [al Qaida] to pick on someone who may not be Middle Eastern but who may look Middle Eastern. Say, someone who is from South America, someone who is from Central America, and, say, you know, we know they're racial profiling us, so we're going to try to get some public opinion on our side. Let's dress this guy up, tell him to act suspicious, and if the police approach him, tell him to run away, and when the police catch him, then he appears to be innocent, so, you know, in essence, they start sending out decoys. They can do all kind of things when they know that your net -- that you have cast a net that's that narrow.

C&L asks "Is this the sickest analysis you ever heard?" Unfortunately, it's not. At least, I've heard this analysis lots of times in the past. Back before he was Saint Rudy, America's mayor, sliming the victim was Giuliani's standard response to any questionable police shooting. It didn't matter what the facts were, or if Giuliani even knew the facts, in no time at all he would have his face in front of the cameras telling us that the victim acted suspiciously and was probably up to something.

The Michelle Malkin crowd started chanting the "he acted suspiciously" line within moments of the shooting. John Gibson trotted out his execrable celebration of the "tackle and kill teams" soon after that. The "it is better to kill a thousand innocents than to let on guilty person go free" message and the "he acted suspiciously" message naturally combine to produce the "besides, he was probably guilty of something" message of the Fox News caller.

The Fox News caller's statement is reprehensible in that the caller blames Mendes for his own tragic death. He wasn't merely acting suspiciously; he was on their side. He was part of an insidious plan to embarrass us and hamstring our efforts to make the world safer.

The Fox News caller's statement is actually an almost textbook example of the similarity between demonizing the enemy and conspiratorial thought. As any struggle escalates toward life and death terms, all nuance in rhetoric disappears. This is the obvious part; they are all bad and we are, therefore, all good. To deny our goodness is to take the side of their badness. We've all lived through this for the last four years.

Then some strange transformations take place. As shades of grey disappear from language, they also disappear from thought. The rhetoreticians begin to believe their message and so do the consumers of the message. How many of us have seen that creepy transformation of previously rational friends and relatives who, on this one topic, have become completely unhinged over the last four years.

How much experience do we have with pure evil in our lives (outside of junior high gym classes, that is)? Real people are a mixture of good and evil. Pure evil is an abstract. It's a cartoon. When we choose to allow ourselves to believe that the enemy is pure evil, we transform the enemy from mere people into something both inhuman and superhuman.

The paranoid, conspiratorial aspect of this should be clear. The enemy penetrates everywhere. The enemy is impossibly efficient. The enemy has astounding sources of intelligence. No one can be trusted, because the enemy has the power to co-opt anyone. The enemy is everywhere, always one step ahead of us, and responsible for every setback and every inconvenience in our lives.

And still it gets worse. The enemy's evil knows no bounds. The enemy does not love it's children. The enemy would gladly massacre it's own children, parents and neighbors just to put the blame on us and make us look bad.

Because that enemy is so unscrupulous and dangerous, any action to defeat the enemy is justified. Any evil we commit pales before their evil. Because they are such an unimaginable threat, any crime we commit is justified as self-defense. Unprovoked military aggression is preemption. Torture is necessary to stop the ticking bomb. Collective retribution is necessary to show them that we are serious. Genocide can be made to seem rational and necessary.

In Bosnia, people who had lived together for decades, played as children, gone to school, worked and loved together, one day went out and killed each other. The editorial stance in the West was a clucking "well, that's just what those people do. The Balkans are crazy, you know." Orthodox, Catholic, and Muslim Bosnians were told by their leaders that the neighbors were planning to kill them. Killing them first was no more than self-defense. Surely the world would see that and understand.

Any people can be primed for genocide with the right words. Germans, Turks, Ukrainians, Poles, Azerbaijanis, Rwandans, Cambodians, and Irish have all had their moment of destroying the enemy within during the last century. The internment of the West Coast Japanese during WWII was an, only slightly less murderous, manifestation of the same fear.

When C&L asks "Is this the sickest analysis you ever heard?" I have to say, sadly, it's not. Unfortunately, I've heard this line and worse far too many times.

Important questions
By now, you all know that the global war on terror (GWOT) has been rebranded as the global struggle against violent extremism (GSAVE). This raises a number of important questions:

• Is GWOT over? Who won?
  
• What about campaign ribbons for the troops? I believe the Penatgon issued two ribbons for GWOT (Afghan front and Iraqi front). Do the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq get a second ribbon for participating in GSAVE too?
  
• Now that it's not a war, does that mean law enforcement is no longer a dirty word? Will the administration be apologising to police and other law enforcement professionals for sneering at their profession these last four years?
  
• Does this mean the administration will really oppose all violent extremists and their sponsors? Can we look forward to the Florida Air National Guard bombing Randall Terry into the stone age the next time a Planned Parenthood clinic is attacked?
  
• What about parades? Do we get to hold GWOT victory parades? If Vietnam taught us anything, it's that parades are important.

Open source beer
A group of students taking a workshop on intellectual property and copyright at the Information Technology University in Copenhagen decided to apply their new knowledge to improving the lot of mankind. They have developed the world's first open source beer.

Mr Nielsen asked his students to think about applying open source ideas to the non-digital world.

"Why not take those ideas back to the old world, and try to apply them to other things as well?" asks Nielsen.

Why beer? As the Vores Oel website says, why not?

"It's a universal commodity that we like to think of as free, but unfortunately it isn't," says Mr Nielsen. "So, I thought it was an appropriate medium to confront these issues."

The university opened its cafeteria facilities to the students to brew 100 litres of a home brew containing guarana for pep. Try to imagine an American university doing this. The result was a darker, heavier brew than a typical Danish lager like Carlsberg. The students decided to call it Vores Øl (Our Beer), version 1.0.

The English language FAQs at their website explain how this relates to intellectual property law:

The recipe and the whole brand of Our Beer is published under a Creative Commons license, which basically means that anyone can use our recipe to brew the beer or to create a derivative of our recipe. You are free to earn money from Our Beer, but you have to publish the recipe under the same license (e.g. on your website or on our forum) and credit our work. You can use all our design and branding elements, and are free to change them at will provided you publish your changes under the same license ("Attribution & Share Alike").

The idea has garnered some attention, "We got loads of questions from small beer brewers in Mexico, Brazil, and even Afghanistan... Afghanistan, that was weird."

Here is the recipe, presented in the interest of science and with full recognition of the terms of the creative commons license.

Our recipe

Recipe for approx. 85 ltr. Vores Øl (Our Beer) (approx. 6% alcohol by volume).

Malt extract
For Vores Øl we use four types malted barley:

6 kg pilsner malt
4 kg münsner malt
1 kg caramel malt
1 kg lager malt
The malt is crushed and put in 55-60°C hot water for 1-2 hours.

The mixture is filtered and the liquid now contains about 10 kg malt extract.

Taste and sugar
Besides malt we use:

60 g Tetnang bitter hops
50 g Hallertaver aroma hops
300 g Guarana beans
4 kg sugar
(Guarana beans can typically be bought at health food stores).

The malt extract is brought to a boil in a large pot with the hops and approx. 70 ltr. of water.

After half an hour, the Guarana beans and sugar is added.

The mixture simmers for about an hour, and is then filtered and cooled in a sealed container.

Fermentation
Yeast is added and the beer is fermented at room temperature for approx. 2 weeks.

When the beer is fully fermented it is transferred to bottles. First 4 g sugar is added per liter and some yeast from the bottom of the fermentation tanks for priming.

Vores Øl is then left in the bottles at room temperature for 8-10 days for carbonation. Then the beer is ready to enjoy; cold and refreshing.

It's nice to know that in these days of Rove and Roberts, war in Iraq and bombs in London, that someone, somewhere is doing something to make the world a better place. Let's all raise a glass to the Danes.

Shortsightedness
Here's something that has bothered me for a while. Elected politicians are often shortsighted; their perspectives rarely extend beyond the next election. Activists should have their eyes firmly focused on their long-term goals and be immune to this problem. But many are not.

It's not uncommon for elected officials to promote policies that turn out to have mind-bogglingly bad consequences. Sometimes these are genuinely unforeseen consequences, but usually they are perfectly foreseeable consequences, ignored in the heat of pursuing a few extra moments in front of the camera. Undermining due process in the name of the War on Terror and eliminating the filibuster are good examples of this. No one who thought things through would ever pass laws or change rules in a way that could be used against them at a later date.*

Lately, many factions within the Republican coalition have completely lost their perspective. Look at how the religious extreme jumped on the bandwagon for eliminating the filibuster. One would expect a group that constantly whines about its imagined status as a persecuted minority to have an interest in minority protections. Okay, that would be philosophically consistent and I'm probably asking too much to expect that. However, one would expect them to want to be able to filibuster the next court nominee by a Democratic president.**

The most glaring example is the right's recent attack on "privacy." Last night on CNN's Newsnight, Rick Santorum--who's always good for an ill thought out quote--gave an example of this line of thought.

BROWN: Do you think there's a right to privacy in the Constitution?

SANTORUM: No -- well, not the right to privacy as created under Roe v. Wade and all...

BROWN: Do you think there's a right to privacy in the Constitution?

SANTORUM: I think there's a right to unreasonable -- to unreasonable search and seizure...***

BROWN: For example, if you'd been a Supreme Court judge in Griswold versus Connecticut, the famous birth control case came up, which centered around whether there was a right to privacy. Do you believe that was correctly decided?

SANTORUM: No, I don't. I write about it in the book. I don't.

BROWN: The state of Connecticut had the right to ban birth control for a married couple.

SANTORUM: I think they were wrong. It was a bad law.

BROWN: But they had the right.

SANTORUM: They had the right. They had the right...

BROWN: Why would a conservative argue that government should interfere with that most personal decision?

SANTORUM: I didn't. I said it was a bad law. And...

BROWN: But they had the right to make.

SANTORUM: They had the right to make it. Look, legislatures have the right to make mistakes and do really stupid things...

BROWN: OK.

SANTORUM: ... but we don't have to create constitutional rights because we have a stupid legislature. And that's the problem here, is the court feels like they have a responsibility to right every wrong. When they do that, unlike a Congress, that if we make a really stupid mistake and we do something wrong, we go back next year or next month and change it, and we've done that. Courts don't do that. They only get cases that come before them and they have to make broad, sweeping decisions that have huge impact down the road.

That's what happened in Griswold. It was a bad law. The court felt, we can't let this bad law stand in place. It's wrong. It was. But they made a -- they created out of whole cloth a right that now has gone far, far from Griswold versus Connecticut.

A few years ago, only very scary conservatives, like Robert Bork, took the position that we do not have a right to privacy. That an idiot like Santorum would mimic that talking point isn't surprising. But in the last few years, others on the right have started to take this position, even though a few minutes of thought should convince them that this is not a good idea.

The propaganda position, as stated by the religious right, makes opposing the right to privacy part of the culture war. The talking point goes that when the Left or Democrats talk about rights, it is really code language that means sexual perversity, the destruction of Western Civilization, and making the baby Jesus cry.

This was the line of logic behind James Dobson's weird attack on SpongeBob SquarePants last winter. Dobson attacked a cartoon video promoting tolerance as an attempt to indoctrinate children into homosexuality. Dobson's Focus on the Family website explained his logic, "While words like 'diversity' and 'unity' sound harmless — even noble — enough, the reality is they are often used by gay activists as cover for teaching children that homosexuality is the moral and biological equivalent to heterosexuality." While his position might be arguable, his tactics--opposing the teaching of the concepts tolerance, diversity, and unity--are just plain destructive.

The right has attached that same culture war logic to the right of privacy. Because the courts have sited a right to privacy in decisions the right hates--Roe vs. Wade on abortion, Griswold vs. Connecticut on birth control, and Lawrence vs. Texas on consensual gay sex--they have decided that the very idea of a right to privacy must be opposed. Just as "tolerance" is seen as a liberal conspiracy to promote homosexuality, "privacy" is seen as a liberal conspiracy to promote fornication, baby killing, and sodomy.

To them, it's all about regulating sexual morality. But a propaganda point is not all that is at stake in this. "The right to privacy" means more than a code phrase used by insidious liberals to corrupt the youth of America. "The right to privacy" also means the right to privacy. Does the religious right really want to say that we (and they) have no right to privacy? Privacy involves a lot of things that have nothing to do with sex. The same government that regulates other people's sexual activities could one day take an interest in their child-rearing practices, their dietary practices, or their form of worship.

Only fools give up rights once acquired. Why are so many on the right being such fools?

* Unless they are confident that they will never again be out of power. But that's the subject of a whole bunch of other posts.

** Ibid.

*** Remember that the next time you get strip-searched for driving with a Kerry sticker; those police or fake Secret Service agents are just trying to protect your right to unreasonable search and seizure.

Euphemism watch
Apparently the term of preference for the Pentagon when referring to plagiarism or fabricating news is "administrative error."

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The U.S. military on Sunday said it was looking into how virtually identical quotations ended up in two of its news releases about different insurgent attacks.

Following a car bombing in Baghdad on Sunday, the U.S. military issued a statement with a quotation attributed to an unidentified Iraqi that was virtually identical to a quote reacting to an attack on July 13.

After questioning by news media, the military released the statement without the quotation.

Lt. Col. Clifford Kent, spokesman for the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division, said use of the quote was an "administrative error." He said the military was looking into the matter.

[...]

Following are the two quotes as provided by the U.S. military in news releases:

Sunday's news release said: "'The terrorists are attacking the infrastructure, the ISF and all of Iraq. They are enemies of humanity without religion or any sort of ethics. They have attacked my community today and I will now take the fight to the terrorists,' said one Iraqi man who preferred not to be identified."

The July 13 news release said: "'The terrorists are attacking the infrastructure, the children and all of Iraq,' said one Iraqi man who preferred not to be identified. 'They are enemies of humanity without religion or any sort of ethics. They have attacked my community today and I will now take the fight to the terrorists.'"

I advise all of my teacher friends to be on the lookout for administrative errors in their students' work.

Meanwhile, at the carnivals
I'm almost caught up on news and such, but it appears I have neglected my duty to the carnival scene.

I was pleased to have a post accepted for the thirteenth meeting of the Skeptics' Circle. The Sceptic's Circle is not only a home for defenders of science and clear thought, it has developed an in house tradition of clever story telling in the presentation of the carnival. Orac over at Respectful Insolence is the host this week and he maintains the high production standards that we have grown to expect from the Circle. Sadly, this was the last issue for the Circle's founder, St. Nate. Nate is retiring from the blogosphere. Orac is taking over and the Circle will remain unbroken.

Closer to home, I've been collecting submissions for the next Carnival of Bad History due the first of September. We will have plenty of content, but I'm still looking for a host. If you want to break into the big world of carnivals, this is your chance. Drop me a line.