Intelligent Design, American Dolchstoss

[elfs]

For some reason I cannot recall, I ended up at a Harper's Magazine article from 2006 entitled "Stabbed in the back! The past and future of a right-wing myth," in which Kevin Baker makes the case that The Right has consistently re-written history, even turning victories in defeats, in order to portray anyone who is not on their side as willingly and actively stabbing America in the back.

The Tea Party convention is a good example of this: most economists, even ones on the far-right, while they may disagree on the particulars, agree in principle that the stimulus package more or less saved us from an even more desperate time. But presenters at the TP convention actively portray the stimulus as a betrayal of America, and even go so far as to portray the entire American financial system as the product of a 40-year conspiracy by the left to destroy capitalism. The FBI did the right thing with Abdulmutallub, and after the right ran out of talking points, every one proven wrong, Pete Hoekstra (R-MI.) turned around and said that telling the terrorists that law and order works is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. I can't be the only person utterly amazed at how, during the Bush era, questioning our military commanders was "treason!" Nowadays, of course, it's Admiral Mike Mullens and General Colin Powell who are threatening the moral fiber and unit cohesion of our troops by suggesting that Don't Ask, Don't Tell is outdated.

(Although my favorite moment at the TP convention was when Brietbart and Farah went for each other's throats over the issue of the Birther movement. For a brief moment, I didn't know who to root for.)

I think we ought to turn that around. We ought to confront every Intelligent Design proponent and demand they explain:

• No other country with a significant post-industrial economy is letting their kids study anything other than evolutionary theory in biology class. They don't see any value in it. They know that evolutionary biology is the best explanation, and no "alternatives" come up to the minimum standards of scientific validity and consensus.
• No corporation that depends upon the biological sciences for its business considers intelligent design as a valid research program. Biotech industries such as agriculture, food science, and pharmaceuticals hire specialists steeped in evolutionary biology, and it is those scientists who have time and again discovered significant

So, I want us to challenge every Intelligent Design proponent to

• Illustrate how Intelligent Design, without appealing to an arbitrary "It's that way because the designer wanted it," explains more comprehensively than evolutionary biology all of the biological phenomena visible in the world today
• Explain how Intelligent Design is (not "will be" but is) a useful research program in its own right that we are using right now to cure cancer, diabetes, obesity, or world hunger
• Demonstrate how Intelligent Design extends our knowledge and our grasp and will lead to future discoveries

If they can't do these three things, if they can't show that ID explains all previously existing phenomena better than evolution, succeeds is explaining previously unexplained phenomena, and suggests lines of research to uncover previously unknown phenemona, then we should ask why we should let them teach what so far has no known usefulness, eases no known sufferings.

The Intelligent Design movement is made up of people who either (a) want to destroy America, or (b) are willing to be duped into helping destroy America. No other Western nation has such a rabid fifth column of rhetorical heavyweights backed by independently wealthy religious fanatics, unfettered by law or decency, actively trying to wreck the economic well-being of future generations, leaving us weak and unable to compete.

Comments

[ionotter.livejournal.com]

Dude.

Please. Don't even try. No, seriously. Just don't.

There is NO POSSIBLE WAY you can successfully talk rationally with THIS:

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

Irrational people do not fight fair, even when it would be in their hypothetical own best interest to do so.

I recommend to you a re-read of Orwell's 1984 with a particular emphasis on the concept of "doublethink."

They can hire experts to pretend that the theory of evolution works, for the sake of growing crops, and turn right around and denounce it as evil poison for public consumption. So to speak.

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

I have been to a creationist talk by Nathaniel Jeanson, a newly minted PhD from Harvard Medical. A link off the YouTube info has full audio of the Q&A. He was asked quite a few questions; mine was what you want to ask, more or less.

His response was content-free. Glib ignorance is what you get from these guys, and the "glib" part suffices to convince the people who are politically aligned with them.

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

That banana bit is just such an incredible piece of self-ownage, considered in the light of how we actually came to have the sort of bananas everybody associates with the word.

[(Anonymous)]

Good luck getting any IDers to respond to your points. Not only don't they have the slightest idea what evolution is or how it works, they don't even have the slightest idea that they don't have the slightest idea. And they don't even care to know that.

Number 127

[elfs.livejournal.com]

But that shouldn't matter. They do know that "evolution" is what all scientists currently working use. Those are the scientists that are saving grandma's life and giving little Suzie enough food to live. Those are American scientists using the best research they know to make America better.

The idea here is to skip rationality. If the objective of the Bush era was to make everyone who questioned the president's authority to conduct the war as he saw fit "a traitor," and the objective of the current era is to make everyone who doesn't "understand" that Barack Obama is a socialist commie out to destroy America, then the counter-objective ought to be to turn that around.

These people (claim to) love business. They claim to love American greatness. Make it clear that, of all the companies out there that make food or medicine (or, bizarrely enough, cell phone antennas), they want to make as much money as possible. They don't use Intelligent design. They use evolutionary biology. If you demand that schools teach anything but evolutionary biology, you're telling those companies that the next generation of research labs won't be staffed by Americans. Germans, Chinese, Indian, and Korean people will staff those labs.

By depriving the American people of the power to heal the sick, they surrender the right to call themselves Christians. By depriving businesses of the resources they need, they're not free marketers. By attacking America's health care and agriculture foundations, they show they're not patriots.

What are they, then?

[(Anonymous)]

These people are experts at dealing with cognitive dissonance, though -- how could they not be? They'll invent wild conspiracy theories and fantasies of Christian persecution at all levels of government, industry, and society to explain away any rational point you might try to make.

From their point of view, there's no need at all to consider any points you make. They know the answer. When you assume the correctness of your argument axiomatically, no amount of logic can convince you otherwise. The most you can do is demonstrate a contradiction and, well, they have God on their side, and you're just a faithless wretch who will burn for eternity, so who do you think they're going to believe?

Number 127

[edichka2.livejournal.com]

"No other country with a significant post-industrial economy is letting their kids study anything other than evolutionary theory in biology class."

What more proof do you need that America is Great, but only because Obama hasn't succeeded in destroying it and making it just like Europe yet?

[(Anonymous)]

No other country with significant post-industrial development teaches children about the tooth fairy at high school level. Perhaps they should start including that in biology?

Also how will it affect people's chances of getting serious work when they start spouting off about the tooth fairy at a job interview? Plausible if they plan to become a dentist and they're quizzed on their knowledge.

How on earth is intelligent design any different? It is a comforting myth for those who are too wrapped up in the idea of a world where god is the start, end and middle of every damned thing.