What Is It With These (Which) People?

I’d like to do another riff on the science and religion thing, so bear with me.  I largely don’t bother going on about this issue anymore, except in those instances where there may be an audience of undecideds. 

One of the things about Americans in small groups is that by and large we will listen and we will weigh what we hear before making up our minds.  It comes down to the slickness of the rhetoric or the overwhelming honesty of an argument.  That’s on us, we who bother to make such arguments.  It helps to remember that we do this for those who haven’t made up their minds yet. 

Evolution vs Creation Science.  The arguments are settled, the science is in, there’s no real dispute except on the Culture War Front.  Evangelicals simply don’t like the program.  When the truth destroys a cherished myth, print the myth.  An old newspaper adage from the 19th Century. 

We’ve been having this crap now for a couple of decades at least, in Kansas back in the 90s, and the issue is well-enough known and the stakes thoroughly understood by enough folks on both sides that anyone moving to circumvent the Supreme Court decision (Edwards vs Aguillard, 1987) is doing so with the knowledge that they are being duplicitous.  They have decided that, as they cannot win their case on the basis of fact and reason, and since they believe they are right and everyone who disagrees with them is wrong, any tactic …

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Afghanistan democracy is drowning in illegal drugs

President Bush and Republican leaders in Washington have failed America by not stopping importation of heroin from Afghanistan which has become a “narco-state” in the aftermath of the toppling of the Taliban regime which had supported Osama bin Laden and global terror through sales of drugs. A resurgent Taliban uses drug sales as an instrument of terror and finances international terrorism. The warlords which grow and process the drugs are supported by the US in our continuing efforts to prop up the post-Taliban government of Hamid Karzi. The flow of more potent Afghan drugs into the US has caused carnage among users, some as young as 11.

In 2001, the Taliban had banned opium production in Afghanistan to increase the price of its stocks which it apparently used to supply funds to Osama bin Laden and other terrorists for their attacks upon the United States and others. Opium production in Afghanistan fell to just 74 metric tons. After the overthrow of the Taliban, opium production capacity skyrocketed to 1,278 metric tons in 2002, according to DEA statistics. Production more than doubled in 2003, and then nearly doubled again in the next year according to James Risen, in his book “State of War.” Risen also writes that “by 2004, Afghanistan was producing 87 percent of the world’s opium supply. In late 2004, the CIA estimated that 206,000 hectares were under poppy cultivation and that the new crop would generate $7 billion worth of heroin.”

Congress and the Bush administration were aware …

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Why Religion & Science Don’t Mix

This link is to the district court ruling in the Dover, PA trial about so-called Intelligent Design. It is worth reading in full, especially in light of the recent survey publish in Science about our understanding–lack of, actually–of biology.  Basically, the judge threw out the claim by the defendants, that evolution is “merely a theory” and that Intelligent Design is somehow legitimate science.

This, of course, settles nothing in the long run. The true believers who pulled this stunt to begin with will not be persuaded, nor will they long shut up. That’s fine, that’s their prerogative, and it’s as should be in this country. My hope is that this will not be the last shot fired in defense of science and reason, against irrationalism and spiritual chicanery.

The critics of Judge Jones’ decision have come out screaming that he has overstepped his authority. He has written a pretty scathing and detailed decision. I can certainly see that he has hopes it will be used in other districts, as a means to settle this–at least legally–where and when it crops up. I personally see his response as fairly restrained, considering the clear frustration behind it. He has invoked the ground state complaint of the conservative–it has been a waste of tax payer money.

The profoundest irony, politically, is that Jones is a George W. Bush appointee. The right-wing Jesus faction of the Republican Party must be seized with apoplexy at this. One of their own–one anointed by their own prophet-in-power–has …

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Overwhelmed by fear: beware the “low road” of emotion

It is because we tout ourselves as the smartest animal on the planet we are oh-so-vulnerable.  As one can read in Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”

Human cognition is an unwieldy and fallible bag of mental tricks. Anyone who has seriously studied human cognition knows this. As Leda Cosmides and John Toby wrote: 

“The mind consists of a set of adaptations, designed to solve the long standing adaptive problems humans encountered as hunter-gatherers.”

Many people think, however, that they know how they think; they have faith that conscious common sense is always accurate and on target.  Common sense fails consider Freud’s rock solid finding: conscious awareness is only the tip of the cognitive iceberg. 

Common sense seduces us with powerful illusions, illusions that look like “uncontestable facts” to those of us who believe we can merely sit around and think in order to figure out how we think. Although common sense has led us well us for eons, it often leads to errors.  The Sun does not circle the Earth.  Our ears do not operate like microphones and our eyes do not work like cameras. “I” am not really a little person who seems to dwell in my head.  Science has shown that what the “thing” that constitutes me is a complicated and often self-contradictory bag of skills and strategies.  For many good examples of how we are often misled by the same heuristics on which we usually depend, see the …

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An atheist living in an evangelical world? How novel.

Morgan Spurlock, filmmaker and creator of the successful fast food critical documentary Super Size Me, has a groundbreaking program running on the cable network FX called 30 Days. The premise of the show goes like this: every episode details the journey of one person, either Spurlock or another willing participant,…

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