PZ Myers. 2005 Feb 22. James Lileks on Intelligent Design creationism and evolution. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/james_lileks_on_intelligent_design_creationism_and_evolution/>. Accessed 2008 Dec 01.
Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Tuesday, February 22, 2005
James Lileks on Intelligent Design creationism and evolution
That title is like some nightmare borne out of a drug haze, isn't it?
But I guess it settles the whole issue: that tatty, tawdry, overstrung master of mediocrity, James Lileks, has spoken out on the teaching of evolution. And he has The Answer!
Which brings us to Darwinism vs. intelligent design, a debate we will now answer to the satisfaction of all!
To the proponents of intelligent design, the facts suggest the hand of the Big Guy. Absent some footage from a security camera that rolled tape throughout the Cambrian Period, this too is difficult to prove. But must students be forbidden to consider the possibility?
Darn. And there I had my hopes up. There are a few flaws in his statement of the conflict already.
"[T]he facts suggest…" Umm, no. That's our problem. There are no facts that suggest anything of the kind. There's no evidence, no data, no experiments on the side of the Intelligent Design creationism crowd, which makes it very, very hard to teach as science.
That's what we keep saying: what would we teach? Science educators do have standards, you know, and we do have criteria for what makes for good, interesting, useful science. Intelligent design doesn't meet them.
"[M]ust students be forbidden to consider the possibility?" Oh, dear. This is the kind of thing us atheists are too familiar with; ever hear fundamentalists rant and rail about how students are forbidden to pray in school? It's about as true as the claim that we forbid students to think about intelligent design. My students are free to consider anything they want: ID. What I'm lecturing about. Beer. The cute girl in the row in front of them. And I imagine they do.
They could also ask about intelligent design if it fit into the content of the course. As long as I can think of a way to work in information about real science while doing it, it's OK. Where does Lileks get the idea this stuff is absolutely forbidden?
Forcing teachers to include an intelligent design lesson would be counterproductive. Your author had a junior high science teacher who thought evolution was hogwash and read the required textbook passages in a contemptuous motormouth monotone, as though he had been forced by law to read the works of de Sade to a room full of nuns.But perhaps we could avoid conflict if teachers felt free to lead the class in philosophical speculations, just as lit classes deconstruct the era that produced a book, or history classes talk about the hidden stories behind the events. It's permissible to spend a class period discussing whether Texas Masons had JFK shot on orders from the ghost of John Birch (speaking through Jack Ruby's dog), but often verboten to speculate that some metaphysical apparatus used evolution to turn amoebas into creatures smart enough to put cameras in orbit, behold the dazzling beauty, and say, "What a coincidence."
Oh, jebus. Lileks really is a space cadet, isn't he? We're talking about biology class. Biology, not study hall. Maybe he isn't familiar with this concept, but in many of our classes we try to have some discipline and focus and discuss real issues. There's content to cover! Vocabulary to master, data to memorize, formulae to comprehend, concepts to grasp! I get the definite impression that Mr Lileks thinks of classwork as "philosophical speculation," that is, rambling blithering about random brain farts and local trivia…kinda like one of his columns.
I know a few historians, too. I think they'd be just as up in arms about the idea that we can prepare kids to appreciate history by babbling about how "Texas Masons had JFK shot on orders from the ghost of John Birch" as we biologists are at the Lileks proposal that science courses are about daydreaming over some "metaphysical apparatus." It's very kind of Lileks to try and solve problems for us academics, but it sure would be nice if he actually understood what teachers are supposed to do. And maybe someone should explain to him that when the ignorant mischaracterize a discipline so grossly, it can sound rather offensive.
Wait, no…it is offensive. Lileks, you're a jerk.
- Heh, that was entertaining PZ.
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Hold the phone - Gary Bates of answersingenesis has finally figured out why unfortunates such as PZ believe in evolution. It's the aliens.
I heard him on the radio today hawking his new book, "Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the Evolution Connection". According to his interview he isn't a proponent of ID, I'm sure the ID'ers are glad.#: Posted by on 02/22 at 10:22 PM -
I see a satirical rebuttal complete with graphics done by some photoshop wizard, and entitled The Gallery Of Regrettable Intelligent Design.
The knee. We love it for that wacky chondromalacia, and nothing says 'devotion' more than putting patella onto a hardwood rail at ankle height and forcing it to bear nearly our entire weight until the sermon is over. But we gotta ask: what were they thinking when they put the articular cartilage where it was vulnerable to patellar mistracking? Ah, the 1970s.
OK. Maybe it wouldn't be very funny. Never mind.#: Posted by Chris Clarke on 02/23 at 12:09 AM -
Which brings us to Darwinism vs. intelligent design, a debate we will now answer to the satisfaction of all!
Where? I don't see any answers. I don't even see any opinions; just vague, grandiloquent hand-waving and fence-sitting. I've never heard of this guy before in my life, is he supposed to be incisive or something? -
I’ve never heard of this guy before in my life, is he supposed to be incisive or something?
Oh, hardly. He has done one really, really good thing in his life, and it's all been very rapidly downhill from there. He is in fact a twat of the very first water. Indeed, though the piece PZ takes apart is pretty bad, considering the source it is not nearly as dire as it might have been.#: Posted by Mrs Tilton on 02/23 at 04:06 AM -
Mrs. Tilton is mostly right.
Lileks used to be a decent blogger/newspaper columnist, and some parts of his site were among the funniest things I've ever seen on the net: Interior Desecrators, Gallery of Inedible Foods and so on.
Then, the WTC attack happened, and Lileks' brain went into a fear-induced freeze. The guy's deathly afraid for his daughter and his wife and for himself, and for the sub-urban conservative America he represents. Lileks latched onto BushCo in the hopes that they would make his fears go away, and now he's mired in the mud of fear, paranoia, and "patriotic" fervor.
I think he's an object lesson of what happened to plenty of rational Americans, turning them into Bush supporters no matter what. Kind of sad, actually.#: Posted by on 02/23 at 06:04 AM - Ahh, I see. So he's like Dennis Miller?
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That's one stinker of a column, but you might wish to edit your comments about the ". . . the facts suggest . . . " passage. As is, they take Lileks' words out of context, leaving out the preceding "To the proponents of intelligent design . . ."
#: Posted by on 02/23 at 07:09 AM
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But perhaps we could avoid conflict if teachers felt free to lead the class in philosophical speculations, just as lit classes deconstruct the era that produced a book, or history classes talk about the hidden stories behind the events.
As lit classes does cover the life and times of of those who produce literature and history classes delve into the details of past events, I could see a biology professor discussing briefly how the apparent design seen in organisms was a phenomenon that Darwin had to account for. Unfortunately, that's not the sort of "philosophical speculation" Lileks has in mind. Idle speculation about space aliens in a biology class is just a waste of valuable classroom time, however entertaining such a diversion might be, and it's certainly not philosophical!#: Posted by on 02/23 at 08:06 AM -
It’s permissible to spend a class period discussing whether Texas Masons had JFK shot on orders from the ghost of John Birch (speaking through Jack Ruby’s dog),
Is it? I think my brother would be highly annoyed if someone brought up crap like that while he was attempting to teach class.#: Posted by on 02/23 at 08:20 AM -
David:
That’s one stinker of a column, but you might wish to edit your comments about the “… the facts suggest … ” passage. As is, they take Lileks’ words out of context, leaving out the preceding “To the proponents of intelligent design …”
But the point is that the facts do not suggest as much and the proponents of intelligent design are doing nothing more than making appeals to authority. If they really were examining the facts, they wouldn't hold these opinions. It's implicit in PZ's response, and perhaps it's only because I'm as well aquainted with creationists that I know it, but it's very much the pattern they always follow. -
mattH:
Your point is entirely valid regarding a critique of creationism.
My point, however, was regarding our host's critique of Lileks' description of the controversy. Though he subsequently goes off the deep end, I find little to criticize in Lilek's opening statement that "To the proponents of intelligent design, the facts suggest the hand of the Big Guy."
Don't take me wrong -- I just want to see the strongest possible arguments thrown at the creationists and their apologists. Leading off with a mischaracterization isn't the way to do it.#: Posted by on 02/23 at 12:49 PM -
Lileks is a snide little pissant, but he is smart enough to know that you've got to dance with the one that brung ya. He'd never write anything to piss off his right-wing patrons, even if it means he's got to contort himself terribly to find a way to justify their stupidity. Hence this column - obviously, he knows that a science teacher who confined him or herself to facts would have a hard time justifying the "teaching" of ID. But, of course, he can't say that, because wingers wouldn't like it. So he comes up with a "reasonable" solution that allows teachers to talk about nonsense during class time.
But imagine what the reaction of the Lileks of the world would be if a public school teacher wanted to talk about, just to choose a random example, 9/11 conspiracy theories. For some reason, I think Lileks's relativistic, "anything goes" attitude would disappear quicker than the federal budget surplus under Bush.#: Posted by on 02/23 at 01:14 PM -
To the proponents of intelligent design, the facts suggest the hand of the Big Guy.
This can, and should be criticized.
The facts don't suggest anything to the IDists. They plainly ignore the facts - this is one of their main arguments (not that the "facts" are disputable, but that facts have no place in the argument).
The bible suggests the hand of the "Big Guy," while absolutely zero facts suggest as much.
Notice, that the facts don't necessarily deny the existence of the "Big Guy."
So, what are all the Creationists worried about? Except that, for now, the facts haven't suggested toscientistslogical persons that He [sic] exists.
Oh wait, facts don't matter.
Now I understand why they're worried...#: Posted by on 02/23 at 01:23 PM -
There was a site that PZ Meyers linked to quite a while back that listed flawed 'designs'. Off the top of my head there were mentions of (for humans) the appendix and the vargus nerve, i.e. the 'funny bone'. For species design that could be considered questionable there was gangrene, and the various parasite wasps.
I no longer have a link to this site, so I cannot point anyone to it.#: Posted by on 02/23 at 02:46 PM -
Linnen,
there are few 'species designs', I would put it to you, that are less 'questionable' than the parasitoid wasps. They'd actually be a good example for an IDist to hold up. (Why, they're even well-designed aesthetically, which is what ID proponent Phyllis Schlafly apparently thinks the 'design' bit of ID is referring to.) Mind you I don't think an IDist would want to go down that road - what these wasps are 'designed' to be is a remorseless killing machine that devours its host alive from the inside; the Alien in miniature. (In fact in many ways they're better than the Alien - can the Alien subvert its human hosts' immune systems with a symbiotic virus?)
Now if you want to talk about parasitoid Diptera, there, I'll grant you, you'll find some clunky, essentially East German designs. Still, they work well enough, just like our own poorly-designed frames.#: Posted by Mrs Tilton on 02/23 at 04:59 PM -
Mrs Tilton,
But it would be difficult to think of a 'kind and loving God' who would design such creatures.
I did find the link. The site is Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes.#: Posted by on 02/23 at 07:16 PM - http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/if_there_is_a_god_hes_an_evil_pervert/
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Linnen,
well, he'd be pretty kind and loving to the wasps, wouldn't he? But yes, that's why I thought holding up the wasps would be a tactical error for IDists. Exquisitely well-designed to be sure; but rather nasty, at least if you are their host.
IDists might think otherwise, of course. The religious right often strikes me as thinking that God's loving kindness is a grave character flaw.
As for me, the wasps' exquisite 'design' is not an argument for God; no more than their nastiness (or catastrophes like the recent tsunami) is an argument against.#: Posted by Mrs Tilton on 02/24 at 06:28 AM -
So to take the IDers' argument a step further, if all the creatures are indeed created intelligently by God, wouldn't that mean that you should be working really hard to respect them and not drive your pulluting SUVs etc all over the place, and boosting renewable energy etc? You'd think that these folks should be the greenest greenies around. Oh, hold on, that's a logical argument - I guess that's too much to ask.
Btw, PZ - please could you update your comments form to note which fields are required? I entered by comment but without email and lost it when I clicked Submit. Thanks -
But perhaps we could avoid conflict if teachers felt free to lead the class in philosophical speculations, just as lit classes deconstruct the era that produced a book,
Wait a minute. I thought "deconstructing" was something only America-hating, objectively pro-terrorist pointy-headed academics did! I'm confused.#: Posted by on 02/24 at 02:36 PM -
Well.
Having found this site quite by accident, I was impressed by the intelligent postings and the equally intelligent replies. But for a "science-oriented" blog, I couldn't help but note how many of Dr. Myers' posts (as well as the replies) were infused with harsh political invective. Fine. Everyone's entitled to their opinion.
But why would an associate university professor debase himself by calling people names when they have opinions that differ from his own? Children do this.
Lileks is not a jerk for believing differently than you do. You are not a jerk for believing differently than he does. So why the name-calling?
I personally reside somewhere right of the middle. I'm not one of your "wingers". I believe in evolution. I don't own a bible. I don't like Bush. I didn't like Kerry, either. I also don't believe anyone cares about my political beliefs, but I don't want anyone mistaking my honest commentary for the blind defense of ideology.
I find it interesting that the left chronically point to the intolerance of the "hypocritical" right. Yet when there is disagreement...when there is dissent, even among the ranks of the left itself, there is no debate. There is no understanding. Only the ad hominem.
Watch now the replies that this post may generate. Will I be dismissed as a winger, my statements to the contrary notwithstanding? Will my sentence structure be attacked? Will someone point out a typo, with the derisive "[sic]" attached?
Or is someone able to see that calling an unimportant columnist a jerk merely for thinking differently is a pathetic way for an educated man to behave?#: Posted by on 02/28 at 09:09 AM -
We are not talking about "beliefs". Lileks has rather pretentiously decreed that he has the solution to the endless evolution/creation wars, and it is an insipid compromise. You might look again at my criticisms: no where did I base them on his politics or mine, nothing on left vs. right. The reason I expressed disgust is because they are bad science and bad pedagogy.
And no, I will not be courteous to idiots who say stupid things. Part of our current problem is that we've suffered fools politely for far too long. -
And no, I will not be courteous to idiots who say stupid things.
That's one way of thinking. Or you could respectfully disagree or argue without the playground mentality. Of course the column is bad science. Perhaps more correctly, it is the absence of science. This makes him a jerk? Are you not above this?
You might look again at my criticisms: nowhere did I base them on his politics or mine, nothing on left vs. right.
That statement is technically correct, but you misunderstood my comments. I was referring specifically to this post in one aspect (the name-calling), and to several other posts when I mentioned the left/right politics (I spent a fair amount of time looking around the site before jumping to conclusions, and I mentioned postings in the plural in the first paragraph).
Also, my comments referred to replies submitted by readers. In the first paragraph I parenthetically mentioned that the replies were within the focus of my comment. I should have clarified this later. My apologies for the confusion.#: Posted by on 02/28 at 10:49 AM -
Or you could respectfully disagree or argue without the playground mentality.
Passerby, how's this?
Your mom is a fat, ugly, hairy, malodorous whore. And by the way, so is your God.
After a few years (centuries?) of this treatment, I'm sure you would be pissed off (and discourteous), as well - especially if you were trying to protect the sanctity of science and truth, as opposed to being an intolerant, ignorant, and hypocritical bigot**, simply to keep alive some human superstition about a giant spirit in the sky.
Most of us here have nothing in particular against the great spirit in the sky (for me, his existence (or lack there of) is more of a philosophical issue), but when idiots use him as an excuse to lie, descriminate, "protect" children from education, and shit on the constitution, they are fair game for a nice slap in the face.
**This description is not of you, but of those with whom we are annoyed.#: Posted by on 02/28 at 12:53 PM -
Some of us prefer PZ's labcoat to be stained with the blood of his enemies.
#: Posted by Chris Clarke on 02/28 at 01:27 PM