Scopes II

Kenneth Woodward touches on some interesting points in today's NY Times about the Harrisburg, Pa. court case that the press is calling Scopes II. Some parents have sued the Dover School Board for among other things, requiring teachers to read a brief statement about intelligent design to students before classes on evolution. The statement says Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is "not a fact" and has explicable "gaps." It also refers students to an intelligent-design textbook for additional information.

Woodward rightly points out that science and religion need not be in conflict, and that the late Pope John Paul II publicly recognized the primacy of Darwin's scientific theory. Then he says:
The danger in intelligent design is not just that it is bad science, but that it seeks to enlist evidence from science in the service of religious truth while denying evolutionary processes like mutation and natural selection. But the designer God of intelligent design is no more necessary to Christianity (or other monotheisms) than was the deistic God of Newtonian physics. In both cases, God ends up being made in the image of an intellectual system, much like Aristotle's unmoved mover. That is not the God of revelation.
In this view, the problem with intelligent design is the temptation to "model bash", or trying to fit two seemingly unrelated paradigms in the same box. Model bashing has a chance of success when both paradigms are backed up by quantitative evidence - say, the Two-Step Theory of Communication with the Diffusion of Innovations. Creationists commit the double folly of first selling their paradigm as science, then cramming their pseudoscience into a box with fundamentalist Christian dogma.

But using the science of life's origins to reveal larger truths about the human condition is what creationists accuse evolution proponents of. Without God as part of the lesson plan, say creationists, evolution holds that humans are nothing more than an assemblage of material parts, or "gene survival machines" as Oxford's Richard Dawkin's puts it.

Woodward's solution to this conundrum seems a little farfetched to me, when you consider that we are talking about high school students:
One way out of the classroom conflict over teaching evolution would be to devise courses that examine the cultural uses to which evolution is put. But such courses would inevitably involve dialogue with religious concepts and perspectives - and thus raise further objections from those who see no place at all for religious ideas in public education.
Seems a little high level for a bunch of 17-year olds to discuss the God of Newtonian physics, or Aristotle's unmoved mover.
1.10.05 18:29


The harder right


Andrew Sullivan has been soliciting emails of support for Captain Ian Fishback, the West Point grad who exposed systematic and illegal prisoner abuse in Iraq. Go check them out. And then send your own message of support to Lt. Fishback at > SupportFishback@aol.com.

Here's a sample:
Thank you very much for having the moral courage to come forward. As a West Point grad and patriotic American, I was very reluctant to believe the abuse allegations that came out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Like many, I tended to believe Abu Grahib was a more or less isolated incident--surely, I thought, the powers-that-be wouldn't allow such things to happen on a wider scale. Furthermore, given all the classes we had on military ethics and leadership, I was sure my classmates and co-alums would not permit troops to engage in torture or coercion.
One thing I notice when reading these letters is how much more thoughtful and intelligent sounding the anti-torture voices are compared to the barking loons who think torture is really cool. The pro-torture argument can be summed up as "You don't bring a knife to a gunfight. The terrorists deserve everything they have coming to them, and they're not going to start liking us if we start putting a mint under their pillow every night." This is terribly short-sighted. True, the hard-core jihadists are, for the most part, lost causes, "dead enders" as Rumsfeld famously calls them. But there are millions more Muslims around the world who aren't ready to commit to jihad, but still need to be persuaded that America really has Islam's best interest at heart. We're not going to win over those folks with naked pyramids and glow-stick enemas.

In some ways, the pro-torture crowd is still fighting the last war, which is the surest way to lose the current one. Historically, wars have been slugfest battles of attrition between opposing armies. Not this time. The radical Islamists who are keeping Bush up nights don't need an army, an air force, or even a flag to carry into battle. They just need to make us look worse than them in the eyes of the people who matter the most: other Muslims. Why? Because that's where the recruits come from for another wave of jihad. If potential recruits start believing in American ideals as fervantly as Captain Fishback, the pool of recruits dries up.

It's so typically American to find our heroes among average people doing extraordinary things. In Captain Fishback, the anti-war movement has a chance to find common cause with the war's supporters. And the war's most unrealistic supporters, who prefer the easier wrong over the harder right, can find reason for shame.
2.10.05 01:45


Freedom marching update


Remember how we invaded Aghanistan to deny terrorists a training ground for worldwide jihad? That strategy appears to be working.

Remember how we invaded Iraq to deny terrorists a training ground for worldwide jihad? That strategy, uh, oh well just read this:
Foreign fighters leaving Iraq to export terror, warns minister

Foreign fighters who have used Iraq as a combat training ground are returning home with plans to mount similar attacks throughout the Muslim world, Iraq's interior minister said yesterday.
Bayan Jabr said papers found on the body of Abdullah Azzam, a senior al-Qaida figure killed in an American raid in Baghdad last week, suggested that the organisation aimed to extend its campaign of suicide bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings beyond Iraq.

"We got hold of a letter from Abu Azzam [to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq] asking him to begin to move a number of Arab fighters to the countries they came from, to transfer their experience in car bombings in Iraq," Mr Jabr told Reuters. "So you will see insurgencies in other countries."
Awesome!
3.10.05 18:31


Res ipsa loquitur


From a comment posted at RedState.org, by a reader going apeshit over President Bush's choice of Harriet Miers for a vacant SCOTUS seat:
"(Bush) could have picked a real conservative. instead, he picks a 60-year-old woman who's never been married and has never had kids. are we really to believe that she'll vote to overturn roe? are we to believe that this woman hasn't had sex outside of marriage over the past several decades? and if she has, hasn't she been counting on the right to abortion just as other career-oriented women do? bush has betrayed us. i will never again contribute to the republican party.
Is this what modern-day conservatism under Bush has come down to? Concern over the sex-life of 60-year-old women? The thing speaks for itself.

Wouldn't it be seriously amusing to see Republican senators grilling Miss Miers about her love life over the last 40 years? Heraldblog predicts an SNL sketch.
3.10.05 19:31


Après la geurre


Another letter to Captain Ian Fishback, via Andrew:
My proudest moment as an American came in Munich in 1992, when an old man waved my car down on a deserted street on a rainy Sunday morning. He pointed at my license and asked if I was an American soldier, then proceeded to tell me that he had been in the Italian army in WWII. Captured during the war, he was went to a US-based EPW camp.
I'll never forget his praise: "The Americans treated us so well, and the food! I eat better in American than with Italian army. You treat us so well, we were your prisoner but we were safe in the camp. I always love America."
Fifty years after the war, we had won the enemy's heart. I fear that fifty years after this war, we'll still be fighting people who weren't originally our enemies because of what we did to their countrymen in Abu Ghraib and a dozen other places.
Thank you for standing up to right this wrong. You have validated my belief in our junior officers and your actions reflect the moral courage that we should all aspire to as members of the Long Gray Line.
If we are fighting this war to bring peace and freedom to the mideast, then consideration must be given to how we will be perceived after the guns have fallen silent. Memories of torture have no place in such a future.
5.10.05 14:06


Senate says no to torture by 90-9 vote


The pro-torture crowd can still count nine US senators in their number, but 90 other Senators affirmed the primacy of American values and ideas, especially in time of war. This vote would not have turned out so well without the testimony of Captain Ian Fishback, who wrote to Sen. John McCain of the systematic and unnecessary abuse of Iraqi detaineees at the hands of US soldiers.

The bill still faces the Republican-dominated House, but it's likely to pass. President Bush has threatened veto, but is unlikely to follow through.

The vote is a remarkable rebuke to Bush, Rumsfeld, and the rest of the incompetent bufoons who have turned the Iraq War into the quagmire it has become. Here's Andrew's take:
Dick Cheney and George W. Bush got a mere nine votes to continue their policy of condoning or ignoring abuse and torture - an extraordinary rebuke to their immoral, feckless and inhumane management of the war. Their threatened veto has been blown out of the water in the Senate. We still have the House vote, of course, and the committee process. This is by no means over yet, and we can expect Cheney and Rumsfeld to fight hard to keep their policies in place. But the margin of victory in the Senate is a huge success for John McCain, John Warner, Lindsey Graham, Carl Levin and all those who knew what was at stake here. Captain Fishback's courage and integrity have helped bring an end to the disgrace and confusion which has so tarred what was and is a noble cause in Iraq and Afghanistan. One man can make a difference.
Contact your local House member now to urge support for the Senate version of the bill.


GOP torture junkies

Here are the nine US Senators, all Republicans, who favor torture:

Wayne Allard - Colorado
Kit Bond - Missouri
Tom Coburn - Oklahoma
Thad Cochran - Mississippi
John Cornyn - Texas
James Inhofe - Oklahoma
Pat Roberts - Kansas
Jeff Sessions - Alabama
Ted Stevens - Alaska

Nine senators. If we add Rumsfeld, there's enough for a pyramid.

Update

My post was picked up by Slate.com. So now I'm "left leaning Ken". Whatever.
6.10.05 14:14


Bush in full spin mode over Iraq failure


Did you know that Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the other dozen or so Islamic dictatorships in the mid-east are "moderate" governments. Me neither. But that's how President Bush described the theocracies that suppress their own people, steal their national oil wealth, and torture political opposition.

Hey, if that's what it takes to justify the quagmire that is the Iraq War, so be it:
Bush said Islamic extremists hope to use "the vacuum created by an American retreat" to gain control of Iraq and use it as a base for launching attacks against other countries.

"The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century," he said. "Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision."

"The militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region, and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia," Bush asserted.
Bush's comments came during a speech today at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, D.C., but it could have been made anytime during the 2004 Presidential campaign. Because, you see, nothing's changed in Bush's world in the last 12 months.

He also talked about the 10 al Qaeda plots foiled since 9/11, but most of them are so secret we'll have to just trust him on that one. He said the terrorists are trying to set up an empire, with Iraq as the new Rome, but didn't distinguish between the Islamofascists who attacked New York City four years ago, and the native Iraqis who want their country back today.

What a difference four years makes. There was a time when the whole world seemed to know who Bush was. Not so these days. At one point, Bush seemed to be channeling Winston Churchill when he said "Against such an enemy, there's only one effective response: We never back down, never give in and never accept anything less than complete victory." At another, he was Texas Air National Guard Flight Lt. Bush who told us "There's always a temptation in the middle of a long struggle to seek the quiet life, to escape the duties and problems of the world..."

I can't believe we've got three more years of this wantwit. We really needed to win that last election.
6.10.05 22:42


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