PZ Myers. 2005 Aug 07. D. James Kennedy and the foulness of the Religious Right. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/d_james_kennedy_and_the_foulness_of_the_religious_right/>. Accessed 2008 Nov 20.
Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Sunday, August 07, 2005
D. James Kennedy and the foulness of the Religious Right
Last night, I was flipping through the channels when I saw this dead-eyed, purse-lipped, mackerel-faced man droning away in a pulpit. I would have clicked right past him, but he was talking about Stephen Jay Gould. I paused to listen, briefly, and later found out it was D. James Kennedy, and that his sermon is on the web (pdf). It was a very Christian sermon, full of lies and sanctimony, and it was entirely an ignorant tirade against evolution. The pdf goes on for about 60 pages; I only listened to a few minutes before I gave up in disgust.
Stephen J. Gould was the most influential evolutionist in America, a professor at Harvard University for twenty years—and then he had a great awakening: He died recently, and he met the Creator face-to-face. That must have been a horribly shocking event, to say the least. Overnight he became a creationist.
To turn a common creationist argument against him, how does he know? Was he there? Maybe he met Allah and Mohammed, and became a Muslim.
It does seem a slimy tactic to take all your dead critics and declare that they've had a post-mortem change of mind, and now agree with you. It comes a little too close to reveling in the death of your opponents; it's particularly ironic when Kennedy can quote Proverbs—"All who hate me love death"—and simultaneously take such satisfaction in the death of those who disagree with him.
The sermon is a long, vile paean to ignorance that relies entirely on misrepresentation and Kennedy's own sour misconceptions. I'll spare you and address just one paragraph; it's enough.
However, in one article by him he said: "Man—or even woman—as the crowning achievement of some grand cosmic plan? What mortal conceit." To Gould the idea of the creation of man was merely a mortal conceit. "We are but an afterthought," said Gould. "We are a little accidental twig"—the kind you would pick up off the lawn of your backyard and throw into the garbage. That is what our students are learning in our colleges: They are nothing but dried-up, little accidental twigs of no significance and no purpose.
The quotes by Gould may be accurate, but Kennedy's interpretations are so absurdly far off that it's hard to avoid the conclusion that they are entirely malicious distortions. It's as if someone were to condemn the Golden Rule as a rationalization for cowardice, or claim that the parable of the Good Samaritan was all about the good opportunities highway robbery provides.
It is a mortal conceit to claim that we are the pinnacle of creation. We are one species that has been evolving side by side with millions of others; we are the product of the same processes that produced butterflies and whales. Even if you believe in creation by a deity, you concede that everything was created by a divine hand—does admitting that a god created ants mean it is therefore acceptable to poison human beings who step into your kitchen?
Everything that follows Gould's comment about an "accidental twig" is a hateful and contemptible gloss on his actual words, conjured up entirely out of Kennedy's own vile soul. Gould would never have considered that that was a statement of purposelessness, or that humans could be thrown into the garbage; quite the opposite. Here's what he said in Dinosaur in a Haystack(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll):
I like to summarize what I regard as the pedestal-smashing messages of Darwin's revolution in the following statement, which might be chanted several times a day, like a Hare Krishna mantra, to encourage penetration into the soul: Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which, if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again, or perhaps any twig with any property that we would care to call consciousness.
The improbability and fragility of our existence is reason to treasure it, not to trash it. Or again, in Bully for Brontosaurus(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll):
I am not insensible to natural beauty, but my emotional joys center on the improbable yet sometimes wondrous works of that tiny and accidental evolutionary twig called Homo sapiens. And I find, among these works, nothing more noble than the history of our struggle to understand nature—a majestic entity of such vast spatial and temporal scope that she cannot care much for a little mammalian afterthought with a curious evolutionary invention, even if that invention has, for the first time in some four billion years of life on earth, produced recursion as a creature reflects back upon its own production and evolution. Thus, I love nature primarily for the puzzles and intellectual delights that she offers to the first organ capable of such curious contemplation.
We are one small piece of a vast and complicated universe. Only a small-minded and petty man would think that is reason to belittle ourselves, instead of cause to love the grandeur of everything that surrounds us, and of which we are a part. That is Gould's message—we may be a twig, but oh, look at the glorious bush we are on!
This is another piece of the treason of the Religious Right. When did we stop looking at the stars and the seas and the mountains and the plains to narrow our gaze to sectarian dogma? We Americans are people who have been gifted with the beautiful Tetons, the open prairies, spectacular Southwestern deserts, the deep forests of the Northwest, and a thousand other natural wonders, all populated with amazing life…and so many trade their appreciation of that for the bitter sanctimony of a pinched and twisted preacher's words. A single tree is a greater marvel than the thousand bibles that could be printed from its pulped-up trunk; if we mulched every Bible published to foster the growth of a single blade of grass, we'd be the richer for it.
(Crossposted to The American Street)
Posted by PZ Myers on 08/07 at 08:28 AM
Creationism • Godlessness • 2 Trackbacks • Other weblogs • Permalink
Creationism • Godlessness • 2 Trackbacks • Other weblogs • Permalink
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So let me get this straight. You're saying you didn't like the sermon?
#: Posted by on 08/07 at 08:55 AM
- You might say that.
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Ministers may not know much science, but here's something they do seem to know about:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1544276,00.html -
On one of the Sunday talking head shows this morning, they ran a clip of Pat Robertson praying for more vacancies on the Supreme Court.
Nice. Do these people really have no shame at all? -
D. James Kennedy, who likes to litter the space after his name with a long string of academic degrees, real or imagined, is one of the subtlest serpents in the menagerie of extremist Christians. He's a smooth speaker who oozes sweet reason as he seamlessly spins out a tissue of lies, miscontructions, misrepresentations, and libels. What's more, I believe he's quite sincere as he does this, perhaps excusing some of his more blatant smears as being for the greater glory of God. I saw the sermon to which P.Z. referred and the most charming segment, to my mind, was that in which he attacked the "lie" that all scientists believe in evolution. Did he cite the handful of rare examples of contemporary people with genuine academic degrees who nevertheless espouse creationism? Goodness, no! Kennedy rambled through a long list including Bacon, Newton, Kepler, Linnaeus, Boyle, and Cuvier, saying that all of these men were Christians and believers in creation! He neglected to mention that his best examples were long dead by the time Darwin published his Origin of Species and thus were non-Darwinists by default. Aggasiz was one of the few real scientists mentioned by Kennedy who knew Darwin's theory and opposed it.
Kennedy is a charlatan and an intellectual poseur. He likes to repeat an apocryphal quote from Sir Julian Huxley that scientists embraced evolution because it freed them from the culture's sexual mores. Kennedy cannot identify where this quote came from, although he claims to have personally seen and heard Sir Julian say it during a PBS interview. Since he's repeated the story several times, he may actually believe it by now. D. James Kennedy believes many things.#: Posted by on 08/07 at 10:10 AM -
Kennedy is a Reconstructionist, if not admittedly at least at heart. He regularly rails against "the myth of separation of church and state." He is a black-hole of self-conceit, pulling all that is repugnant about religion into one despicable whole. If I knew I would turn out like him, I would immediately commit suicide.
More info on It#: Posted by on 08/07 at 10:24 AM -
Now that I've gotten out my righteous bile, there are a few other things you might find interesting about the prick. He believes in a version of astrology called "The Gospel in the Stars." He was a Y2K alarmist. He is closely associated with Reconstructionists, which are a group of Christians who want to bring back stoning and tule the US under biblical law. Reasonable Christians consider him a discredited kook, but he has a significant following among fundamentalists and evangelicals.
#: Posted by on 08/07 at 10:36 AM
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The Mormons baptize dead people.
http://atheism.about.com/b/a/051607.htm
After the Gujarat earthquake in 2001, evangelists went around trying to get death-bed conversions from victims of the quake.
Respecting other people's beliefs is not in these people's repertoire. -
It is a mortal conceit to claim that we are the pinnacle of creation. We are one species that has been evolving side by side with millions of others; we are the product of the same processes that produced butterflies and whales. Even if you believe in creation by a deity, you concede that everything was created by a divine hand—does admitting that a god created ants mean it is therefore acceptable to poison human beings who step into your kitchen?
Given the premise, it is equally logical to revere all life-forms and to try not to unnecessary destroy them. Dunno if you really want to read this:
http://www.jainworld.com/phil/ahimsa/voahimsa.htm, but here is a quote
Thus, in Ahimsa Anuvrata, a layman does not intentionally injure any form of life above the class of one-sensed beings (vegetables and the like), by an act of the mind, speech or body by krita, i.e., by himself, by karita, i.e. by inciting others to commit such an act, nor by mananat or anumodana i.e., by approving of it subsequent to its commission by others.
The Jains have no deity and no creation of the universe in their cosmology.
A comparative study of religions, which is common in American universities, (e.g, see http://www.aarweb.org/ ) would be enough, if common decency and common sense did not suffice, to bury the logic that says that if we don't buy into the Christian God, we must necessarily see humans as exterminable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism#Jain_cosmology -
Humans an after thought or created in one day...all life is cheapened since it since it took so little time to create and if we are just an afterthought then human life is something just to throw away.
Preachers claim that god's creations are wonderous and then so-called Christians pollute said creations and send members of god's pinnacle to fight, kill, and die for lies.
IMHO the evolutionary process is so much grander than any creation story. Billions upon billions of years for species to evolve, including humans, makes life much more valuable in reality than childlike notion of life created in a 24 hour day.#: Posted by SweettP2063 on 08/07 at 11:55 AM -
I was in the amen corner with you all the way up to your last clause. Then for some reason you threw the baby out with the bath water.
The Bible is a book and mulching or burning you do the cause of reason great harm to see merit in its destruction, IMHO.#: Posted by Tom Chadwell on 08/07 at 12:02 PM -
I have watched Kennedy's sermons on TV several times over the past 14 years. Call me a masochist, OK? It appears to me that it is prett much the same sermon over and over again. He is one of the most popular televangelists. Pam, who keeps track of these guys does not have too much on him, perhaps because he mostly preaches and does not push himself too much into the political spotlight.
Here is one post about him: Dr. D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries in Florida
And a more recent one has him as a part of a chorus of Religious Right voices. -
Media Transparancy has a little more on him:
James Kennedy's Christian Crusade
TV Evangelist's ministerial and media empire claim US a 'Christian nation', don't believe in the separation of church and state, and aims to extend political reach
He is connected to the Coral Ridge Ministries.#: Posted by on 08/07 at 01:12 PM -
That is Gould's message—we may be a twig, but oh, look at the glorious bush we are on!
I want to know how many Freepers Google is going to send your way because you have the phrase "Glorious Bush" on this page. - It was a calculated phrase to draw in traffic from Bush fans and porn hounds.
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One twig in the bush of Christian belief is that God created humans to be in charge of the Earth. They have divine permission to kill creatures as they please, to ravage the environment, to befoul the nest they leave for the next generation. You gotta problem with that? You some kinda ecology kook?
#: Posted by on 08/07 at 02:07 PM
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It does seem a slimy tactic to take all your dead critics and declare that they've had a post-mortem change of mind, and now agree with you.
This is exactly the thought I had just two hours ago, driving behind a car with the bumper sticker: "Right Now, Even Darwin Is Convinced," with a picture of a tombstone.
So, the only way to know for sure if an afterlife exists is to die. Further, the mere existence of an afterlife validates special creation of each species.
Except... Darwin didn't doubt the existence of an afterlife, did he??
P.S. After following this vehicle, I went to a park where a church was holding a picnic, complete with musical performance. One of the songs had the humble refrain, "If the Rapture was yesterday / We wouldn't be here today." Charming.#: Posted by on 08/07 at 02:33 PM -
pz--it can't be good for your blood pressure to watch this stuff. you need the new "c" (christian) chip for your tv. we put ours next to the "m" (medical) chip, but i suppose you wouldn't want the "m" after all.
#: Posted by dread pirate roberts on 08/07 at 03:51 PM
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Kennedy is a truly foul bit of benthic slime from Florida. He and the 10 commandments judge, Roy Moore staged the installation of the 2 ton monument for the purpose of raising money for Kennedy's ministry.
Glad you went after him. I've seen him on channel 5 (ABC affiliate) in the twin cities on Sunday - and he does rant about evolution often. I'm not sure whether he's paying for the time or not. I hope he's paying the station for the time - I'd hate to think of them providing this asshole a forum for free.
What else does he rant about? Well gays...... -
However hateful, D. James' D. Theol is apparenly real for a look see I did long ago.
I could have been duped. He may be a slimy ass but ignorant he is certainly not.
These folk all claim direct connection with god, usually spoken in about six syllables. I want them to demonstrate that witht eh biblical god test to get a tax exemption from property tax bills.#: Posted by John M. Price on 08/07 at 06:59 PM -
Kennedy is a big player in the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, which was in the news last week over its bogus course content. He is also the chancellor of Knox Theological Seminary, which boasts of "doctrinal soundness" as its be-all and end-all of intellectual enquiry. Judging from its faculty photos it seems to have a thing against women teaching, as well.
But PZ - you overdid it with mulching the Bible. Some of your readers actually have humanities backgrounds, don't you know?#: Posted by Bartholomew on 08/07 at 09:03 PM - OK, I'll let some reference copies be preserved in libraries, as historical documents.
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I wonder if this Kennedy joker realises his "Gould now believes in Creationism" comments sound very much like good ole Reverend Moon and his claims about sundry famous dead people, such as Hitler and Stalin, now believing he's the Big Cheese.
#: Posted by tim gueguen on 08/08 at 12:14 AM
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I have virtually nothing new to add, but if you could refrain from saying things like 'very Christian'. Christian and fundamentalist (or literalist) don't mean the same thing.
My boyfriend is Christian, but he doesn't consider fundamentalists and such to be very Christian, as they are highly hypocritical (and constantly contradict the Bible (by saying things like "Yer goin' to hayll if...!').
Then again, they make up stuff and discard certain things to make that work. My boyfriend, a liberal, does the very same thing in a different way. Are either of them 'very' Christian?#: Posted by S E E Quine on 08/08 at 03:29 AM -
By turning the sermon off so soon, you missed the part where Kennedy blames mass murders on evolution:
"Communism is based upon evolution, as are Nazism and Fascism. The Communists have killed more people in peacetime than all those killed in all religious wars combined. According to The Black Book of Communism, “rough approximation, based on unofficial estimates” finds that the “total [killed by the Communists] approaches 100 million people killed.”9 The Communists killed, according to the Senate Committee of the United States of America, 135 million people in peacetime. They are the greatest mass murderers of all time—Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot and all the rest—and all of that compliments of evolution."
A few paragraphs up he had spent some time on Hitler using evolution to justify the Holocaust. Ugh.#: Posted by on 08/08 at 06:22 AM -
My use of the word Christian is intentional and ironic. Have you ever noticed that that word is always used as a compliment to the virtues of a person or an act, rather than as a simple descriptor of a person's particular religious belief.
Turnabout is fair play. If Christians get to use their word to imply virtue, I get to use it to highlight the other common personal characteristics of believers: sanctimony, persecution complex, insensitivity, unthinking self-absorption. -
Wow. This is the post that turned me from a long time lurker to a poster. As a Christian attending a pentacostal Church in Australia all I can say is: don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are plenty of Christians, and evangelicals at that, who do not share the excesses you bring to light. My experience has long been that in the creationism/evolution debate the tendency to preach to your converted is strong but less useful than building bridges to those who provide the succour, funding and approval for creationists and their 'ministries'. Thus, Churches and intelligent Christians that can be persuaded that creationism represents the worst our faith has to offer are then inclined to remove the means of support these people exploit. Without a credulous audience, mobs like Answers in Genesis would not be able to spread their message. My dream is to have speakers from these organisations seek to address Churches and be treated like flat-Earthers and with the scorn they deserve.
Love the blog. Read it daily.#: Posted by Nathan Zamprogno on 08/08 at 08:08 AM -
Nathan Zamprogno writes:
My experience has long been that in the creationism/evolution debate the tendency to preach to your converted is strong but less useful than building bridges to those who provide the succour, funding and approval for creationists and their 'ministries'. Thus, Churches and intelligent Christians that can be persuaded that creationism represents the worst our faith has to offer are then inclined to remove the means of support these people exploit.
From the godless infidel side of the fence, it's all too easy to equate Christianity with ignorant fundamentalism, since the ignorant fundies are doing all of the shouting. I often have to make an effort to remember my sane and intelligent Christian friends, and remind myself that there really is a baby in that bath water.
One thing that I don't see much of is mainstream, non-loony Christians giving the ignorant fundies a well-deserved smackdown. It comes up in t.o fairly frequently; there's Kenneth Miller and his book Finding Darwin's God; and the letter signed by 5000 clergy saying that evolution and religion are compatble. But I think that's about it.
I don't see anything in the mainstream media about non-woo-woo Christians telling the creationists to get with the 20th century and stop worshiping a petty, lying god. -
Perhaps Kennedy's greatest lie (or misconception) was this:
"Stephen J. Gould was the most influential evolutionist in America..."
Although he may have been influential to laymen, this was unfortunate, because Gould was outside the mainstream of evolutionary thinking. He certainly wasn't too influential within the scientific community. I refer you to John Tooby and Leda Cosmides for their expert analysis of Gould:
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Debate/CEP_Gould.html#: Posted by Martin Striz on 08/09 at 06:58 PM - Tooby and Cosmides have their own ax to grind (as do I; I think they're wrong). While it's true that Gould was not the most influential American evolutionist, he was darned important. I think he paved the way for evo-devo.
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Evo-devo perhaps, but his and Lewontin's criticism of evolutionary psychology seems to have failed, since Darwinism is creeping into the social sciences, and his main attempt at adding an interesting new idea to evolutionary theory -- punctuated equilibria -- can easily be subsumed by the established Neo-Darwinian model.
#: Posted by Martin Striz on 08/09 at 09:35 PM
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So much venom and name calling towards a man who is so widely respected as an intellectual man of faith. Oh no, we can't have a right wing religious fanatic with a brain now can we? I guess those idiots like Francis Bacon, Thomas Aquinus, Sir Isacc Newton were just a bunch of God believing fools. Michelangelo was just humoring us all with that Sistine Chapel thing too.
#: Posted by on 08/13 at 04:05 PM
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Well PZ...
You know, I think you really need to take a step back here for just a minute. Whoa boy! Put the cork back in! Take a pepcid or something...
If Gould can say that creationists are a bunch of "Yahoos" (which he did) then why can't you let the reverend Dr. Kennedy have his say? Was Gould full of hate for saying what he said? Your failure to castigate Gould for his vitriol, while taking Dr. Kennedy to task with your effusive and caustic rant seems a bit uneven if not outright ridiculous. But in so doing you let us see where there can be no doubt about one thing: Who is the one spewing hate here?
Simmer down, will ya? In the end, everyone is entitled to freely speak their mind (and esp. their perspective). That includes freedom from your type of unwarranted verbal assault. Seriously. You are on the same path the Nazi's took in their campaign against the Jews. It starts with scapegoating and ridicule, and then escalates toward the final solution. I don't hear Dr. Kennedy advocating that kind of action. But I sure hear it loud and clear from your corner.
Yes, it's interesting that evolutionists can speculate all the livelong day about how evolution took place in the past (and we call that form of speculation 'science'), but - ohmigosh - we can't allow a preacher to speculate on the possibility that Stephen J. Gould is eating some crow in front of God (you of course prefer to characterize that form of speculation as 'hateful' or 'treason'). The reality is, BOTH views in the CREVO debate contain a great deal of speculation.
How do you happen to know that Dr. Kennedy's comments were a "hateful and contemptible gloss on his [Gould's] actual words"(and that's Gould's were not)? Characterizing Dr. Kennedy's remarks as "hateful" is a bit of a stretch here, since this requires you to judge his thoughts - and so your patronage of this characterization should be alarming to everyone who reads your stuff. Whatever happened to freedom of speech, buddy!??
Oh, excuse me, I forgot - creationists are not allowed that luxury in academia. You fail to give them an earned degree if they don't espouse evolution, and you send your tenured professors to the worst cubicle on campus, or fire them outright if they are not yet tenured.
Again I ask - where is the real hate coming from here?
Dr. Kennedy is fully within his rights to take evolution to task, if for no other reason that in the name of evolution, many thousands of students and professors in academia have suffered the loss of earned degrees, awards, sabbaticals, and etc. all for the crime of failing to sign on as an evolutionist. Kennedy may indeed be ignorant of many things - as are we all - but he IS aware of the foul stench of wholesale discrimination against creationists in academia and within the scientific community. You can tolerate science professors who believe in the healing power of crystals, but oh no - not a creationist! ANYthing but a creationist, right? Tell me there is no hypocrisy or double standard here. I double dare you.
This form of Dini-esque discrimination would have prevented the likes of Dr. C. Everett Koop - one of the foremost surgeons of our time - from entering a science career merely because he is a creationist. His acheivements ought to give you and many of those who have commented here some pause.
You THINK you know who Dr. Kennedy is - but you really don't. You spout off with your diatribes, and pontifications - AS IF you know what the REAL score is and Kennedy has no clue.
And you never stop to consider this: what if he IS correct? THEN what?
"A single tree is a greater marvel than the thousand bibles that could be printed from its pulped-up trunk; if we mulched every Bible published to foster the growth of a single blade of grass, we'd be the richer for it."
It's a cute comment, I admit - but, it sounds so...Saganistic.
In one sense, I agree with you that a blade of grass is very underappreciated for it's value. It IS a marvel - but not in the sense you think of it. It is instead a grand instance of God's creation (and just how DO you folks explain the origin of grass?).
In closing, I would say that the value of a revelatory message from a Creator who loves us, and was willing to send his son to die for us so that we could be with him, is a far richer treasure. In that context, throwing the biblical mulch out to grow a blade of grass is akin to only appreciating the quality of paint on a Picasso.
You miss the point. It's all about what the painter did with the paint, not the paint itself.#: Posted by Kevin Wirth on 09/13 at 02:11 AM -
In the end, everyone is entitled to freely speak their mind (and esp. their perspective). That includes freedom from your type of unwarranted verbal assault.
So Kennedy is entitled to spew his nonsense, but PZ is not entitled to call him upon it? Can you actuall write this with a straight face? Or does the irony of your position escape you?
Seriously. You are on the same path the Nazi's took in their campaign against the Jews. It starts with scapegoating and ridicule, and then escalates toward the final solution. I don't hear Dr. Kennedy advocating that kind of action. But I sure hear it loud and clear from your corner.
Orac, we got another case of the Hitler zombie.
Kevin, I think you need to study history a bit. Hitler and the other Nazis called for the expulsion and slaughter of Jews from the very start. PZ has never called for either explusion or slaughter of Creationists.
Yes, it's interesting that evolutionists can speculate all the livelong day about how evolution took place in the past (and we call that form of speculation 'science'), but - ohmigosh - we can't allow a preacher to speculate on the possibility that Stephen J. Gould is eating some crow in front of God (you of course prefer to characterize that form of speculation as 'hateful' or 'treason'). The reality is, BOTH views in the CREVO debate contain a great deal of speculation.
Yes, but one of the views is firmly founded in observable facts (that would be the science), while the other is based on belief/faith (that would be the theology). For you to equalize those two views shows a profound lack of knowledge and understanding of what science is.
Whatever happened to freedom of speech, buddy!??
Freedom of speech is something granted by the state. The fact that PZ calls Kennedy on his bullshit doesn't in any way keep Kennedy from exposing the rest of the world to his complete and utter stupidity.
Oh, excuse me, I forgot - creationists are not allowed that luxury in academia. You fail to give them an earned degree if they don't espouse evolution, and you send your tenured professors to the worst cubicle on campus, or fire them outright if they are not yet tenured.
If you study a biological field and fail to believe in the fundamental theory that the entire field is based upon, then you won't earn a degree. Not because of censure, but because you are unable to understand the principles science operate under. It would be like someone studying Latin without being able to read - this would seriously hinder his graduation and tenure track.
And you never stop to consider this: what if he IS correct? THEN what?
The everything we know about science is wrong, and we have based entire fields of knowledge on this wrongful science. Medicine would have to be discarded, forensics as well, and many other fields based on our scientific knowledge and methods.#: Posted by on 09/13 at 02:39 AM -
My Response to Kristjen:
"So Kennedy is entitled to spew his nonsense, but PZ is not entitled to call him upon it? Can you actually write this with a straight face? Or does the irony of your position escape you?"
Sure he is (entitled). I never said he wasn't. In fact, what I CLEARLY said was (can you read?)...
[PZ's] "rant seems a bit uneven if not outright ridiculous" and "everyone is entitled to freely speak their mind (and esp. their perspective)". So, stop putting words in my mouth that are CLEARLY contrary to what I CLEARLY stated.
So, therefore, there IS no irony that escapes me here...
What I AM saying is that PZ exhibits the type of acerbic commentary that I am all too familiar with in academia. He can spit out vitriolic allegations about the alleged 'hatred' of Dr. Kennedy, presupposing to understand his intent (hatred), and yet, spew forth rantings of verbal bile that demonstrates… a fair amount of hatred. If ever there was a case of a pot calling the kettle black, then here it is.
"Hitler and the other Nazis called for the expulsion and slaughter of Jews from the very start. PZ has never called for either explusion or slaughter of Creationists."
True enough. I won't dispute that. But the Nazi's DIDN'T start with slaughter - they worked their way up to it with an escalating process of hate that began with name calling, ad hominem attacks, etc. What I SAID was that PZ's comments are on the same PATH as the Nazi approach. My comment was intended to caution him - not accuse him of being a Nazi. The point is, hate and intolerance is the common ground I’m seeing here.
I said: "It starts with scapegoating and ridicule, and then escalates toward the final solution. I don't hear Dr. Kennedy advocating that kind of action. But I sure hear it loud and clear from your corner."
PZ appears to be on the same path the Nazi’s started out on: cultivating hate and intolerance. I stand by my comment.
If it were not for the freedoms that we have in this country, based on the many comments I have read from professors and others in academia, if it were up to them - there is no question but that all creationist professors and science practitioners would be in jail (or worse) from Brooklyn to El Cajon.
As for my comment that both views contain much speculation, you responded that…
"Yes, but one of the views is firmly founded in observable facts (that would be the science), while the other is based on belief/faith (that would be the theology). For you to equalize those two views shows a profound lack of knowledge and understanding of what science is."
Well OF COURSE that's what you think! It never occurs to you to read what your own experts have to say about this, nor, evidently, how science really works. Science is not “firmly founded in observable facts” and never has been. This is one of the biggest myths ever promoted in the name of science – and it’s usually touted to argue for the superiority of science over ‘creation’ (exactly as you have done). But it is so obviously a distorted canard. Science relies on, in fact it REQUIRES speculation to get along. I’m fine with that, but you conveniently overlook this rather huge detail.
Many (though thankfully not all) evolutionists confuse evidence with conjecture, in a disingenious effort to take hold of the high ground in this debate – as you have Kristjen. It’s totally ridiculous for the evolutionist to say that “the evidence points to evolution.” No it doesn’t. The fossil evidence points to the fact that critters once lived – it tells us NOTHING about how they evolved. What many fail to stop and think about is that both evolution and Intelligent Design draw their conclusions from the exact same evidence, the exact SAME “observable facts”.
What differs between the two rival concepts are the conclusions that are derived from that SAME evidence. Let me say this once again, for emphasis: Creationists rely on the SAME “observable facts” the evolutionist uses. And, BOTH ideologies rely on the use of TONS of speculation – which is a good thing in science. But what is NOT good, is when we begin to regard speculation as “observable facts”. At least most creationists have the honesty to not call their interpretations of the evidence “scientific facts”.
Evolution (in the broad sense of molecule to man) is an ideology, not an “observable fact” that can be demonstrated by empirical science.
Science is ALL about the integration of facts with speculation, imagination, guesswork, extrapolation, conjecture, etc. etc. I’m so sorry to hear that you are simply uninformed about all this (imagine that, in this age of enlightenment!). What I have to say next may be so shocking for you that I may have to issue a …
“WARNING: the following material contains information of a graphic nature which may be offensive to some readers. Extreme caution is advised, as this information should be read in small doses by individuals who suffer from elevated blood pressure.”
So let me introduce you to what a few folks you might know what actually said about this (heck, I'll even start with Stephen J. Gould…)
"I regard the failure to find a clear 'vector of progress' in life's history as the most puzzling fact of the fossil record... We have sought to impose a pattern that we hoped to find on a world that does not really display it." ("The Ediacaran Experiment", Natural History, Feb 1984)
Then there is that very interesting book by Barbara Stahl called Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution (Dover, 1985). In it, Stahl honestly assesses the state of our knowledge about vertebrate evolution. As I read through this book, I was struck by the fact that for nearly every single type of vertebrate group there is far more that is NOT understood about their evolution than is.
I won’t reiterate her comments here, but instead refer you to the blog I posted today (Evolution Without Evidence) which is linked to my name above.
Others have commented as follows:
- H. Lipson, physicist: "In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to 'bend' their observations to fit in with it.... To my mind, the theory does not stand up at all... I know that [considering creation theory] is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it." ("A Physicist Looks at Evolution", Physics Bulletin, 1980, p.138)
- T. Rosazak: "The irony is devastating. The main purpose of Darwinism was to drive every last trace of an incredible God from biology. But the theory replaces God with an even more incredible deity: omnipotent chance." (Unfinished Animal, p.101)
- Charles Darwin: "I am quite conscious that my speculations run quite beyond the bounds of true science." (from a letter to Asa Gray, Harvard biology professor, cited in Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation, N.C. Gillespie, p.2)
- Pierre-Paul Grasse, past President of the French Academie des Sciences, Editor of the 35-volume _Traite de Zoologie_: "Today [1977] our duty is to destroy the myth of evolution, considered as a simple, understood and explained phenomenon which keeps rapidly unfolding before us. Biologists must be encouraged to think about the weaknesses and extrapolations that theoreticians put forward or lay down as established truths. The deceit is sometimes unconscious, but not always, since some people, owing to their sectarianism, purposely overlook reality and refuse to acknowledge the inadequacies and falsity of their beliefs."
- Bounoure, past Director of Research at the National Center of Scientific Research, France: "Evolutionism is a fairy tale for grownups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless." (Le Monde Et La Vie, Oct 1963)
- Art Battson, University of CA: "We must bear in mind that just because neo-Darwinian evolution is the most plausible naturalistic explanation of origins, we should not assume that it is necessarily true.... In retrospect, it seems as though Darwinists have been less concerned with the scientific question of accurately explaining the empirical data of natural history, and more concerned with the religious or philosophical question of explaining the design found in nature without a designer. Darwin's general theory of evolution may, in the final analysis, be little more than an unwarranted extrapolation from microevolution based more upon philosophy than fact. The problem is that Darwinism continues to distort natural science." ("Facts, Fossils, and Philosophy", 17 May 1997)
- G.A. Kerkut, biochemistry professor at the University of Southampton: "The philosophy of evolution is based upon assumptions that cannot be scientifically verified... Whatever evidence can be assembled for evolution is both limited and circumstantial in nature." (cited in Biology, Keith Graham et al, p.363)
- Roger Lewin: "It is in fact a common fantasy, promulgated mostly by the scientific profession itself, that in the search for objective truth, data dictate conclusions. Data are just as often molded to fit preferred conclusions." (Bones of Contention, by Roger Lewin – p. 68)
- Francis Crick, Nobel Prize recipient for discovery of DNA structure: "Every time I write a paper on the origin of life, I determine I will never write another one, because there is too much speculation running after too few facts." (_Life Itself_, p.153)
- S. Lovtrup, professor of zoophysiology at Universityof Umea, Sweden: "I have already shown that the arguments advanced by the early champions [of Darwinian theory of natural selection] were not very compelling, and that there are now [1987] considerable numbers of empirical facts which do not
fit with the theory. Hence, to all intents and purposes the theory has been falsified, so why has it not been abandoned?" (Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth, p.352)
Philosopher Michael Ruse (who testified as an expert witness in the 1981 Arkansas trial), a key speaker at the annual Conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1993, was slated to refute the creationist book, Darwin on Trial, by Phillip Johnson (Berkeley law professor). Instead, Ruse shocked his colleagues by not just agreeing with, but endorsing one of PJ's main points, that Darwinian theory is based as much on "philosophical assumptions" as on scientific evidence: "I'm no less of an evolutionist now than I ever was... For many evolutionists, evolution has functioned as something with elements which are, let us say, akin to being a secular religion." He cited other leading Darwinists, including Julian Huxley, to back his "secular religion" comparison.
Clearly, there is good reason to carefully consider what are facts and what is conjecture. So, what is often promoted as evidence for evolution is clearly not all “observable facts” as you so naively claim.
And I’ll end my quotes with this sage piece of wisdom from Ruse:
‘…we who cherish science should be careful to distinguish when we are doing science and when we are extrapolating from it, particularly when we are teaching our students.’ - Is Evolution a Secular Religion? SCIENCE Vol 299, March 7, 2003, pg 1524.
Finally, you say this (and I fully expected it):
“If you study a biological field and fail to believe in the fundamental theory that the entire field is based upon, then you won't earn a degree. Not because of censure, but because you are unable to understand the principles science operate under. It would be like someone studying Latin without being able to read - this would seriously hinder his graduation and tenure track.”
Well, I guess C. Everett Koop was just a fluke, right? Or Sir Isaac Newton? Or the inventor of the MRI, Dr. Damadian?
You see, you make more erroneous assumptions here. Saying that creationists are incapable of understanding the principles of science is no different than saying Jews are incapable of functioning in German society, and therefore deserve to be excluded (and eventually, eliminated). Or that someone who is black is incapable of learning how to read and write.
Careful, your religious discrimination is showing.#: Posted by Kevin Wirth on 09/13 at 06:32 AM -
Correction...
In my last post I overlooked an edit, and I wish to correct it here...
"Science is not “firmly founded in observable facts” and never has been."
Of course, science IS founded in observable facts. I meant to say:
"Historical evolution is not “firmly founded in observable facts” and never has been."#: Posted by Kevin Wirth on 09/13 at 06:45 AM