On "Believeing" in Evolution

Who Doesn't Believe in Evolution? According to Crooks and Liars, three presidential candidates: Sen. Sam Brownback, Rep. Tom Tancredo, and Gov. Mike Huckabee..

But I'm not here to make fun of their willful ignorance and arrogant anti-intellectualism. I'm here to critique the way that Democrats, Progressives, Liberals, Scientists, and thinking people in general think and talk about evolution

First, I don't believe in evolution and you shouldn't either. At least not any more than you believe in gravity.

It is not a question of belief. I accept evolution as a scientific fact. For over one hundred years, the scientific community has modified and refined the idea that organisms evolve over time. Every piece of evidence, every experiment or observation has reinforced the basic idea that 'survival of the fittest' is the mechanism by which new species come into being.

Every time we say that we believe in evolution, we put a scientifically demonstrable phenomenon in the same category as religion. This is dangerous. The forces of deliberate ignorance are already trying to have the 'religion' of secular humanism removed from schools.

Fundamentally, while 'belief' may be dictated by authority, knowledge can only be discovered by inquiry. In the pre-rational era, religious institutions could dictate scientific fact through theology and dogma. Ask Galileo. Evolution is not a mystical, un-provable process (like transubstantiation) that must be taken on faith. We shouldn't treat it or talk about it as if it were.

Evolution Belief Framing

More Attempted Book Bannings (Yawn)

From WISC-TV:

FOND DU LAC, Wis. -- Maya Angelou autobiography is causing concern at Fond du Lac High School, where some parents want the book banned.

Sophomores in advanced English classes read "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." Some passages describe Angelou's rape and unwanted pregnancy.

School Superintendent Gregory Maass said one set of parents objected to the book, so the school assigned their student an alternative book.

Maass said they weren't satisfied and want the book removed from the curriculum entirely.

I'm really tired of writing these posts. It's like watching re-runs of 'Full House.' The same plot, over and over. By the 22nd minute, the 'everybody's learned their lesson' music comes on, somebody gets a hug, forgiveness is given, and the bliss that only TV sit-com families enjoy once again reigns supreme.

The Christianist version is, of course, parent objects to book, teacher supplies alternative, fundie parent rejects the alternative, demanding all the kids education be sacrificed to satisfy one parent's desire that their child not be exposed to 'dangerous' ideas.

"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" has been taught in the school in question for over a decade and was taught in my highschool without incident. When the Fond du Lac principal held a meeting some 80 people showed up, though no decision was made as to what to do about the situation.

Why? Because the only thing that needs to be done is that the over-protective parents meddling in the education of kids who aren't their own need to be told to stuff it and accept the fact that their kid has already been given an alternate text. More likely, the school board caves and a bunch of kids are denied another part of the education they deserve.

No wonder the United States ranks 19th out of 24 when it comes to education...

Fond du Lac Maya Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Ban

Have I really become this cynical? I'm yawning at book bannings? I thought I'd come back from my long Thanksgiving vacation refreshed. I guess not...

News Americans DO NOT Care About

Because it doesn't involve sex, creepy old guys trying to get sex, missing/dead blonde girls, TomKat, or the contents of Paris Hilton's cell phone.

Via the Washington Post:

STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Americans John C. Mather and George F. Smoot won the 2006 Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for work that helped cement the big-bang theory of the universe.

Mather, 60, works at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Smoot, 61, works at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.

Their work was based on measurements done with the help of the NASA-launched COBE satellite in 1989. They were able to observe the universe in its early stages about 380,000 years after it was born. Ripples in the light they detected also helped demonstrate how galaxies came together over time.

And in Yesterday's Washington Post:

Two American scientists -- one of whom graduated from Fairfax High School -- awakened early yesterday to learn they will share a Nobel Prize for their discovery of a gene-regulating mechanism inside cells, an advance that in just eight years has revolutionized genetics and led to several experimental treatments for diseases.

Craig C. Mello of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester -- whose father, a paleontologist, served for years as an associate director of the National Museum of Natural History -- and Andrew Z. Fire of Stanford University's School of Medicine will share the $1.36 million Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their serendipitous discovery of RNA interference, or "RNAi."

In a series of experiments on nearly microscopic soil-dwelling worms, conducted at the Carnegie Institution of Washington's laboratories in Baltimore, the team stumbled upon a naturally occurring mechanism that allows cells to shut down individual genes.

There are only five Nobel Prizes - Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, and Peace. To have two prizes go to Americans is a great honor and an indication that some of the most advanced research by the smartest people is going on in America.

I say that not to be self aggrandizing but to recognize the ability of American institutions to attract the best and brightest from around the world.

Yet how many Americans know that four Americans won two of the Nobel Prizes? How many Americans know that there are more Nobel Prizes than the Peace Prize? How many Americans think that the government funding of the winners of the Prize in Physics should probably be revoked because the research isn't important (at best) or (at worst) that it furthers the blasphemous idea of the 'big bang' instead of supporting what is obviously true - that the world was created by God over the course of a week 6,000 years ago.

Maybe I'm a Liberal Elitist but the amount of anti-intellectualism in this country is astounding. I do not claim to be an expert on all matters but I like to think that I understand the basics of most fields of science. I couldn't explain the physics that Mathers and Smoot are investigating nor understand the details of Mello and Fire's research into RNA but I understand what the big bang is and why RNA is important. I understand that both of those advances increase human understanding of the world around us (and within us) and is therefore both important and valuable.

I got that from a good public education, both at public schools and at a public university. How long will that be available to America's young people? I listen to those on the far Right rail about U.S. Department of Education should be abolished and I read what Freepers write about pulling children out of public schools in favor of home schooling. I wonder if the future holds as many American Nobel Laureate as the past does.

Nobel Prize Anti-intellectualism Education

Nine Professors At Columbia Are Deemed 'Dangerous'

Conservative ideologue David Horowitz list (in book form) the "101 Most Dangerous Academics in America." The book, in all ways identical to the red-baiting that went on 50 years ago, has a collection of short essays illustrating the evils of the modern university professor. Upon learning that a Wingnut had compiled such a list, I immediately began looking for the entire list so that I could find out if I had received a 'dangerous' education.

According to Interactivist Info Exchange TWO professors from my alma mater, Pennsylvania State University, have made it onto Horowitz's list. Congratulations to Michael Berube and Sam Richards.

Professor Berube is a Professor of English whose book Public Access: Literary Theory and American Cultural Politics is surely the offense that earned him his spot on the list. UPDATE: Professor Berube has a blog. Check it out.

Professor Richards is a sociologist focusing on race and ethnicity. Penn State's Race Relation Project is probably the 'offense' that got him labeled 'dangerous.'

Interestingly, PSU has two professors on the list, more than supposed 'liberal bastions' like Princeton University, Cornell University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology which only qualified Noam Chompsky. Penn State also beat out all the other Big Ten Schools.

Professor Cole, who's site, Informed Comment, I link to regularly also made the list. Congratulations, Professor.

This is all ignoring the chilling idea that the ideas you hold (politically, socially, etc.) make you 'dangerous.' I probably shouldn't trivialize the fact that lists of people in academia that don't agree with 'the movement' are being compiled and published.

Paging Mr. Orwell...

David Horowitz 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America Michael Berube Sam Richards

Anti-Intellectualism

December 27's Washington Post had this op-ed piece about how the No Child Left Behind legislation championed by C+ student George W. Bush has had a big impact on the education of the other student that ends up left behind. Or at least left waiting for everyone else to catch up. The gifted student.

I was identified as a gifted student in elementary school and went through the 'gifted' track (as much as it existed) all through school. Elementary school was fine. I had good teachers who could make things interesting for students at any level. I never really studied. Well, I studied for my spelling tests. I hated spelling. I still do. I still spell check every one of these posts before posting it. Invariably, I've misspelled at least five to ten words in each one.

Middle School was worse. Most of my classes were grouped by ability, so I stayed engaged even if I still didn't do the homework. The ones that weren't were terrible. I'd just sit there, waiting. My notebooks were full of doodles and sketches, never notes. I never took notes. I still don't.

High school was finally challenging. AP and honors courses were wonderful. I figured college would be better, but I found that the discussion in my gen-ed classes was no better (and sometimes worse) than the discussion in my High School AP classes. My major, however, was great.

Enough about me.

The point here is that there is a strong anti-intellectual streak in today's Republican 'base' voter. They decry liberals as 'elites' based on a what they see in Harvard and Southern Cal. They think they know more about science than scientists who have spent 10 years getting an education, then 20 to 30 more years doing research in their field. They see no benefit in art. They're proud to be 'good ol' boys.'

It's so bad that even the consistently conservative editors at the Wall Street Journal have noticed. And they're not too happy about it. In this article, Jeffrey Hart has left these choice quotes for me to cherry pick:

"The most recent change occurred in 1964, when its center of gravity shifted to the South and the Sunbelt, now the solid base of "Republicanism." The consequences of that profound shift are evident, especially with respect to prudence, education, intellect and high culture."

"The Conservative Mind is a work in progress. Its deviations and lunges to ideology and utopianism have been self-corrected by prudence, reserved judgment as an operative principle, a healthy practical skepticism and the requirement of historical knowledge as a guide to prudent policy. Without a deep knowledge of history, policy analysis is feckless."

"It is not enough for conservatives to repeat formulae or party-line positions. The mind must possess the process that leads to conservative decisions. As a guide, the books, and the results of experience, may be the more difficult way--much more difficult in a given moment than pre-cooked dogma, which is always irresistible to the uneducated. Learning guards against having to reinvent the wheel in political theory from one generation to the next."

Not a ringing endorsement of a liberal world view, but a stinging observations about how intellectually lazy the 'base' of the right has become none the less.

The leaders on the right, of course, know their base and feed them the 'red meat' issues in rationed amounts to keep the base voting for them. The problem is that like any other group working (voting) for a much smaller group that grabs bigger rewards, the Republican 'base' demands every increasing appeasement to keep them happy.

The corporate princes who actually run the GOP actually like science, education, world renowned universities, genetic engineering, and all the advancements that go along with them. They're money makers. Unless educated people are making advances (read 'new products/services') the money dries up. Example: The GOP base hates evolution. The idea that they are descended from monkeys is abhorrent to them. (Plus it disagrees with an allegory they mistook for literal truth.) The elite in the conservative movement, however, don't really want evolution removed from science classrooms. All modern biology including $35.9 BILLION dollar per year pharmacology is based evolution. Yeah, their base wants that removed from our education system.

The same rule applies to the increasing theocratic nature of the Republican Party. The more Jerry Falwell becomes a leader of the 'right' the more our corpratists get worried. Think about the nations in the world under theocracies. How many have robust economies? Exactly.

This diary has rambled a bit but I'll get to the point. The conservative movement is increasingly beholden to a 'base' that doesn't know much about the world. This, by itself, isn't bad. The problem is that the same base doesn't want to know. For them it's a badge of honor not to know. "REAL AMERICANS are plain folk that don't worry about that kinda stuff." The 'base' doesn't even like people who do know. "They're elitists. They think they're so smart, telling us what to do." This rising anti-intellectualism is very dangerous, especially as we enter the 'knowledge based economy' of the 21st century.