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elfsI swear, FSM (That's "Family Security Matters," not "Flying Spaghetti Monster") just keeps getting sillier and sillier. The silliness reached for a new low yesterday with Tom Ordeman Jr.'s article "Only You Can Improve the National Discourse", complete with the by now utterly queerified icon of Rosy the Riveter saying "We Can Do It."
Ordeman goes on to claim that things were better in the past and that today "The national debate has still degenerated from the days when distinguished statesmen answered their detractors with carefully crafted oratory, or by presenting documents such as The Federalist Papers." His principle example? The press's skeptical response to Intelligent Design.
He gives no examples, but instead just says that it's gotten so bad the "venerable" Ben Stein (former Nixon speechwriter, former eyedrop shill, former game show host, and probably most famous for being a source of Ferris Beuhler's pain) has roused himself from whatever it was he was doing to make a movie, Expelled, the bulk of which consists of complaining that "science won't discuss the possibility that our universe was anything more than a random accident."
Ordeman then goes on to ask, with jaw-dropping sincerity,
But more than that, I have to ask: since when has American Conservatism embraced the post-modernist belief that people are entitled to their own sets of facts? That our fundamental perceptions are predicated not on our shared reality, but on a worldview that informs our perceptions first?
Ordeman (politely) demands that the opponents of Intelligent Design "shut up" long enough for ID to have its say. But ID has had its say. It has been tested in the laboratory and found wanting: it contributes nothing to our understanding. All that's left now is for America to either come to understand that, or drown in its own ignorance.
Ordeman goes on to claim that things were better in the past and that today "The national debate has still degenerated from the days when distinguished statesmen answered their detractors with carefully crafted oratory, or by presenting documents such as The Federalist Papers." His principle example? The press's skeptical response to Intelligent Design.
He gives no examples, but instead just says that it's gotten so bad the "venerable" Ben Stein (former Nixon speechwriter, former eyedrop shill, former game show host, and probably most famous for being a source of Ferris Beuhler's pain) has roused himself from whatever it was he was doing to make a movie, Expelled, the bulk of which consists of complaining that "science won't discuss the possibility that our universe was anything more than a random accident."
Ordeman then goes on to ask, with jaw-dropping sincerity,
Should all Americans demand acceptance of the concept of intelligent design? Of course not; but all Americans should demand that science respect and explore viable courses of inquiry, particularly when American scientific activities are often funded by the tax dollars of citizens who overwhelmingly believe in the influence of a higher power in the creation of the universe.Ordeman fails to really address the central issue, though: he fails to say, anywhere, how acceptance of intelligent design will help in the sciences or has ever contributed to our control over the natural world. It's that simple: If any of the dozens of ideas floated by the Intelligent Design movement as indicative of their project contributed to our understanding of biology, commercial agricultural, biomedical, and industrial laboratories around the world would embrace them instantly: they'd contribute to economic growth. They don't, and the Intelligent Design people know they don't. There's nothing quite so shocking as listening to someone say how important America's economic well-being is to them, and then hear them claim that Intelligent Design must be embraced. Those two statements are cognitively dissonant to any educated man.
But more than that, I have to ask: since when has American Conservatism embraced the post-modernist belief that people are entitled to their own sets of facts? That our fundamental perceptions are predicated not on our shared reality, but on a worldview that informs our perceptions first?
Ordeman (politely) demands that the opponents of Intelligent Design "shut up" long enough for ID to have its say. But ID has had its say. It has been tested in the laboratory and found wanting: it contributes nothing to our understanding. All that's left now is for America to either come to understand that, or drown in its own ignorance.
