I wondered recently, during an idle conversation, whatever became of that monumental media presence Rush Limbaugh.  Now I know.  He’s been upstaged.  Check out the following quote:

“They’re almost always biologists—the “science” with the greatest preponderance of women. The distaff MIT “scientist” who fled the room in response to Larry Summers’s remarks was, of course, a biologist. While I’m sure there have been groundbreaking discoveries about the internal digestive system of the earthworm, biologists are barely even scientists anymore. They’re classifiers, list-makers, like librarians with their Dewey decimal system. Except librarians don’t claim the Dewey decimal system holds the Rosetta Stone to the universe. There were once great biologists, but the morally vacuous ones began to promote their own at the universities. It was sort of intelligently designed devolution. Like Marxists gradually dominating the comp lit department, biologists will only be given tenure today if they foreswear any doubts about the evolution pseudoscience. Consequently, “biologist” almost always means “evolutionary biologist,” which is something like an “ESP biologist.”

Can anyone, for five points, tell me who said this?

I’ll save you the trouble and credit you the points.  Ann Coulter, in her latest screed “Godless”.

Rush used to combine some factoids and put a spin to it in ways that occasionally were very hard to find fault with, because he, for all his bombast, has a brain.  Ms. Coulter just screams any damn thing she thinks will fuel the fires of controversy.  To answer that one paragraph of destructive drivel would require a book or two and a couple of intelligent people who are well informed considerable time to undo.

But what intrigued me most was her insertion of the fact that WOMEN flock into biology, and this somehow makes the field suspect.  As if women cannot do the real hard stuff.  But even further, it’s somehow “natural” because women are all about biology anyway.  It’s just that, well, they don’t know anymore where the proper use of that essence lies.  You know…sex?  Making babies?

All of which is part of the tradition handed to us by that diva of privileged bias, Phyllis Schlafly, who chides “professional” women for abandoning their natural roles to have–god help us–careers!

Every time I hear a woman under 35–often quite innocently–condemn feminism, usually by associating them with lesbians or sexless scientist types or the like, I cringe.  I can now point to Ann Coulter and tell them “There lies your destiny if you don’t get your head out of your stereotypes!  The blond demigogue will take away your options and you will be cheerleaders, waitresses, and mommies and nothing else!

Coulter almost makes me wish for Rush to return as champion of rightwing reactionary screeding.  At least I felt there was some grasp in his nonsense.

But notice, in one paragraph–this is textbook stuff–she links moral vacuity, evolution, feminism, and science in general to cultural collapse in our society.  Joseph Goebbels would have been proud to have her as a student.

It is important for people like Ann Coulter to be challenged, and challenged thoroughly and thoughtfully.  It’s just that her nonsequiturs are so out of bounds that it’s difficult to know where to start.  But one might begin by recognizing that she in fact speaks for no one.  She is fueling her own fame.  Her books sell well.  She makes a lot of money.  And she’ll say anything to make more.  The best way to shut her down would be to ignore her.  But we can’t.  That doesn’t really work in this society.  We have to have an answer.

And what I have noticed is the latest trend of demagogues attacking biology–especially evolutionary biology–picked up when gene therapy began to appear practical.  Coulter and her ilk attack it now that something concrete is about to arise from it, which means they really do not see it as the nonsense–the non-science–they claim.

Interesting.  Maybe they really believe that stuff in Genesis about the Tree of Life, and that eating thereof will makes us “as gods” and never die…

Nah.  I don’t really believe she’s that smart.  Clever, sure.  But all her cleverness is destructive.  All she does is try to make people feel bad about what they have.

Yesterday I wrote a post describing how I discovered Bertrand Russell while I was an intellectually frustrated and isolated teen-aged boy.  Back then, I was startled to see someone else who was publicly critical of religious institutions.  Thinking about those days yesterday provoked me to scour the Internet today for some of Russell’s well-known quotes.  There are many more Russell quotes out there than these; he was a prolific writer.

Russell, best known for being a mathematician and logician, dismayed many people while he was alive. After all, he didn’t believe in God. He spoke openly of sexual pleasure being a good thing; he protested against the Vietnam war.  Now, however, many of his writings seem only like common sense.

I admired Russell’s clean writing style, his sense of wit, his astute observations and his good heart. 

• It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
• “The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.”
• The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
• One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
• The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
• Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion.
• The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
• Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.
• No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.
• As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles.
• Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.
• Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves. (more…)

In my opinion, these are two topics that should always be discussed together.  I’ve collected these quotes over the years:

Heaven: “a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable, that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty of people have described a day at the seaside.” –George Bernard Shaw 

Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.  –Willard R. Espy

“We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.” — Thomas Alva Edison

“I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with the sense, reason, and intellect, had intended for us to forgo their use.” –Galileo Galilei

“I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.” –Frank Lloyd Wright

“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.” — Susan B. Anthony

“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” – Albert Einstein

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this. –Bertrand Russell (more…)

The Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN) supplies high school LGBT rights groups around the United States with a wealth of useful information, tools, and event and activity guides. For the last few years, I’ve appreciated the planning guides GLSEN provides as a source of brainstorming and public-relations hints. But looking through a GLSEN binder of open forum topics and public speaking tips recently, I came across an unusual and off-putting suggestion:

“Do NOT compare the LGBT Rights movement to the Civil Rights movement.”

Wait, what? The battle for LGBT rights mirrors the Civil Rights movement in a variety of ways. The reactionary backlash and lack of logic behind opponents’ arguments read exactly the same, complete with desperate biblical references. Take for example this judge’s ruling in Loving v. Virginia, a pre-Civil-Rights case on interracial marriage:

“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

Indeed, and Almighty God also created Adam and Eve, not, as the social conservatives say, Adam and Steve. The slow social acceptance and increase in violent hate crimes look much the same, too. So what differentiates Gay Rights from Civil Rights, again?

Well, nothing really. It just ruffles a lot of (black, evangelical) feathers to make the comparison. Apparently GLSEN doesn’t want to alienate anyone, even if it means sacrificing an excellent logical illustration.

(more…)

“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”

Blaise Pascal, (1623-1662) Lettres provinciales.

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.   

Henry David Thoreau

If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.

Marcus T. Cicero

You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length.

Karl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855)

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

Nietzsche

The more you say, the less people remember. The fewer the words, the greater the profit.

Felelon

No one who has read official documents needs to be told how easy it is to conceal the essential truth under the apparently candid and all-disclosing phrases of a voluminous and particularizing report….

Woodrow Wilson

“If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today.  If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.”

Mark Twain