Behe v Sean Carroll

Here is what Dr. Behe has published since 1996 (to 9/30/2005)

This should be a warning to the younger folks interested in creationism and its many variants. This is what will happen to your career if you pursue it. No evolutionary biologist or science supporter will hunt you down and get you fired in some fantastic scandal - your scientific work will whither away to nothing of your own accord.

What could Behe have discovered if he continued to do science for the last 11 years? What patents could his name be on, what "molecular machine"'s evolutionary history could his work have helped to unravel? (The same goes for two other scientists, Hugh Ross and Fazale Rana) Instead, we see a long list of authorship, but not in the scientific literature. No laboratory research conducted, no results to report, and no one is citing or using your work to make future discoveries. Grants pass you by, the only honors are the honorariums paid to you by church groups for flying out to reassure them that your super-secret research in your lab website proves their predispositions correct. "Buy my book" becomes your mortgage-paying mantra, and "piddling" becomes what you say of accomplished scientists around you, when "piddling" is exactly what you're doing.

Creationists have careers only a few times as long as a pornstar - 20 years later and the arguments you made will be swiped by a younger model and you'll be forgotten by your followers. Where are the creationists of the 1980s today? Where will you be in 20 years, grabbing for attention from some forgotten assistant teaching position while classmates of yours from long ago are running whole labs and research centers and solving difficult problems that you can only caricature in an endlessly revisited lecture that you wrote long ago on a few unfounded ideas and can't seem to get over a squabble with Dr. Doolittle and others?

All on your own. No, actually, with droves of fickle, yet adoring fans supporting your every word, you won't be able to produce anything with all that support. Millions of dollars at a think tank can't even fill a single test tube of yours with a single meaningful experiment. You might even stop fooling yourself, but you'll be stuck in an ever-downward spiral, where deviation will alienate the only base left to you, who would drop you like a hotcake if you broke from the ranks.

Just Say No to Pseudoscience. DARE to keep kids off of Creationism.

This is your Science on Creationism. (egg frying)

Hey, this article could really use a graph to illustrate how sharply the scientific output and citations drop off once you get into this stuff. I've corresponded with one person who seems very interested in it all, yet at a critical point where they could turn around and do actual science.

Evolution is fact------------because I said it is and we all voted on it and majority wins! So there you dumb creationists.
BIG BROTHER! BIG BROTHER1

Les, do you have any opinion on what David Lampe's analysis says about Behe's scientific output? Do you agree that his few research publications and their low number of citations identifies Behe as a mediocre scientist at best?

Help! Help! I'm being repressed!

we all voted on it and majority wins

Thanks, PvM, for linking to Dr Lampe's interesting article. I was actually most impressed by Dr Carroll's publication record. 9 Nature papers in 10 years is superb. I'm not sure that I would rank PNAS up there with Nature and Science, though, but it is still a widely-recognised science journal.

It is most curious that Behe lists letters to magazines and newspapers in his publication record. It is certainly unusual for a scientist to do this.

Oh, hey, hang on a second: I've twice had letters published in New Scientist, and my publications list could do with fattening up. . .

Where are the creationists of the 1980s today?

in jail, last i looked.

at least Hovind is, anyway.

Les:

Click here and take the challenge. Let's see what you can actually come up with.

As an aside, regarding the question of what rank Behe is: he's a Rank Bajin...

for explanation, turn to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bud_Neill

Maybe I should get onto a campus again and analyze my undergraduate papers from that same time period. I think I might have a chance at beating Behe. And I never earned my PhD.

Its not ID/creationism that blights a career - its being a bad scientist. If Behe et al. actually did some ID research everyone would be a lot more tolerant.

When reading a paper it's nice to see a citation even if the authors disagree with you. At least it means your work is being read and considered as important in the field.

Citations are probably a better guide than publications since some authors publish the same (or virtually the same) work in several different journals. Its quite amusing when you get both papers to referee. Its makes it much easier to reject one of them (which is normally the option of last resort unless the work is truly dire).

Actually, millipj, yes, ID/Creationism is guaranteed to blight a scientific career, as ID/Creationism forcibly encourages the person to become a lousy scientist, if at all. As a ID proponent/Creationist, you're not allowed to contradict the party dogma under pain of hellfire (yes, hellfire), which helps to nurture a complete and total lack of motivation to do any sort of science beyond the cultivation of really stupid and illogical talking points that allegedly poke holes in "rival" sciences. Plus, that ID/Creationism forces one to wed illogic and self-imposed ignorance foments extraordinarily hostile relationships between the ID proponent/Creationist and other actual scientists.

That ID proponents/Creationists suffer a total inability to comprehend the Scientific Method simply adds salt to everybody's wounds, too.

millipj wrote, "Its not ID/creationism that blights a career - its being a bad scientist."

No, it's ID/creationism that creates bad scientists and blighted careers. Once you decide what the results of an experiment MUST be, rather than accepting what they are, you're dead as a scientist.

No wonder the IDers, in what little research they do, prefer to play with models on computers, where they can change the assumptions until the results come out the way they want them to. Living creatures, even bacteria, aren't that malleable.

Hey, I've published 3 peer-reviewed papers in the past five years, and I work at a liberal arts college, not a research institution. I guess that makes me three times the scientist that Behe is, not that he's set a very high standard.

One thing about the Lampe article, though. Sean Carroll works at the University of Wisconsin, which is a leading research institution. (Full disclosure: I did a post-doc in chemistry at Wisconsin) Lehigh isn't. Behe doesn't measure up to Carroll, but then even real scientists at Lehigh don't. In fact, if someone at a place like Lehigh were to show the ability of a Sean Carroll, a place like Wisconsin would quickly woo them away.

I'm with millipj here. Steve Austin, for example, is a creationist geologist who continues to produce valid science. He's not considered first rank, but his output hasn't dried up either. And others have also successfully adopted this career model, of doing real science while spouting creationism. We should not underestimate the ability of the human mind to compartmentalize.

My reading is, the compartmentalized model that works resembles theistic science - that we won't understand exactly how to misrepresent reality if we don't know exactly that that reality is.

Conversely, structuring research and experimental design, deliberately or otherwise, to support foregone conclusions has a very long history in traditional science. I think all of us enter any sort of investigation with some expectation of what we'll find, and that this colors our interpretations every step of the way. Some of us are better at neutralizing this than others, and some creationists can neutralize it as well.

Creationism doesn't necessarily force someone to do bad research. But it probably does force them to misinterpret their results.

Equally relevant is the case of Guillermo Gonzalez, formerly of ISU. Like Behe, Gonzalez was a promising young scientist when he arrived at ISU. However, the quality and quantity of his output deteriorated markedly during his tenure there. Unfortunately for him and fortunately for ISU, unlike Behe, Gonzalez turned into an ID whackjob before he got tenure.

Flint, is that the same Steve Austin who tried to prove that the world was less than 10,000 years old, and invalidate radiometric dating by deliberately dating the wrong kinds of rock with the wrong kinds of dating methods?
I honestly doubt that religiously inspired fraud can be considered "valid science."

http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Isochron_date_of_young_Grand_Canyon_lava_is_excessively_old

http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2007/09/more_bob_jones_biology_for_chr.php The bold comments are mine, added parenthetically. On page 162 we find this: "Some babies die very soon after birth as a result of genetic disorders. It appears that God designed into the genetic mechanism of humans (and most organisms) a genetic screen that eliminates many greatly deformed individuals, preventing major genetic disorders from continuing." This genetic screen doesn't exist. Babies with genetic defects die because the defect doesn't work well enough to sustain life. It is simple ad hoc biology. The authors do not explain why God sometimes does this near birth, and at other times (as in cystic fibrosis) over a period of many painful years. On page 201, "Thought Question" 3 reads: Compile a list of modern beliefs, practices, or activities that reflect the philosophy of evolution rather than a biblical philosophy. The answer is found in the Teacher's Edition: "(1) Communism denies the existence of God. (2) Advances in technology will solve all of man's physical and social problems. (3) The ecumenical movement endorses humanism as the world religion. (4) Environmental control is overemphasized, and man's God-given command to exercise dominion is deemphasized." All False. Lies. Evolution is a scientific theory about life changing through time. Soviet communism was hostile to Darwinian Evolution to the point that it could and did get scientists killed. It has nothing to do with points 2-4.

Sean Carroll is quite prolific, and he's got a tremendous breadth of knowledge. He publishes both on evo-devo and cosmology.

It was nice to read this post today, since I just posted something on my own blog about the notion (which young earth creationists and proponents of ID have to maintain) that there is a conspiracy against ideas that seem consonant with religion. Fred Hoyle and the Big Bang theory shows that there is no atheist conspiracy - just your average, run of the mill scientific concern that one be able to provide evidence for one's claims.

http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2007/10/evolutionist-conspiracy.html

I've got more SCI cites than Behe, and I'm a nobody!

I hope the lawyers don't use this against Beheeee in an attempt to discredit him as an 'expert' witness. What reputation does he have any more? It's got to be worth 20K for another performance on the stand just like we got in Dover.

Note that there are two Sean Carrolls: Sean M. Carroll the physicist is at CalTech. Sean B. Carroll the evolutionary developmental biologist is at Univ. Wisconsin.

What valid science does Austin produce? Not that much. A quick search reveals a meeting abstract on uniformitarianism (probably shortly after his PhD and then his PhD and then his 2000 effort in International Geology Review (on a historic earthquake that he links with various theological issues*). Not much else.

Anyway, that aside, I remember thinking that Behe's response to Carrol was quite interesting. I didn't have time to go into great depth at this time, but I recall wondering if maybe Behe had a point when he said:

In his enthusiasm Carroll seems not to have noticed that, as I discuss at great length in my book, no protein binding sites — neither short linear peptide motifs nor any other — developed in a hundred billion billion (1020) malarial cells. Or in HIV. Or E. coli. Or in human defenses against malaria, save that of sickle hemoglobin. Like Coyne, Carroll simply overlooks observational evidence that goes against Darwinian views. In fact, Carroll seems unable to separate Darwinian theory from data. He writes that “what [Behe] alleges to be beyond the limits of Darwinian evolution falls well within its demonstrated [my emphasis] powers”, and “Indeed, it has been demonstrated [my emphasis] that new protein interactions (10) and protein networks (11) can evolve fairly rapidly and are thus well within the limits of evolution.”

Yet if one looks up the papers he cites, one finds no “demonstration” at all. Those papers show, respectively, that: A) different species have different protein binding sites (but, although the authors assume Darwinian processes, they demonstrate nothing about how the sites arose); or B) different species have different protein networks (but, again, the authors demonstrate nothing about how the networks arose). Like Jerry Coyne, Sean Carroll simply begs the question. Like Coyne, Carroll assumes whatever exists in biology arose by Darwinian processes. Apparently Darwinism has eroded Coyne’s and Carroll’s ability to separate data from theory.

I'm not particularly expert in these matters and I only looked up references 10 and 11 briefly, but I do remember thinking that maybe Behe had a point. I'd certainly be interested in seeing Carroll's response. The relevant papers are here if anyone is interested (at least one will be free access):

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/102/39/13933

http://compbiol.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.0030025

* from the paper:

This severe geologic disaster has been linked historically to a speech delivered at the city of Bethel by a shepherd-farmer named Amos of Tekoa. Amos's earthquake was synchronous with the introduction of "seismic theophany" imagery into Hebrew literature, with the appearance of the "Day of the Lord" eschatological motif, and with the explosive emergence of "writing prophets" in Israel.

What deserves to be well known, but has in fact been virtually forgotten, is this: that if Darwinism once furnished a justification, retrospective or prospective, for the crimes of capitalists or National Socialists, it performed the same office to an even greater extent, between about 1880 and 1920, for the crimes, already committed or still to be committed, of Marxists. It is in fact scarcely possible to exaggerate the extent to which Marxist thought in the period incorporated Darwinism as an essential component. Marxists do not believe, of course, that there will be any struggle for life among human beings in the future classless society. But it was that Darwinian conception which Marxists at this time adopted as their description of human life under capitalism. The reader can easily verify this statement, by opening any Marxist book, pamphlet, or newspaper of that period... (Darwinian Fairytales by David Stove: 106-107)

It will perhaps be said, in defense of Darwinism, that many and enormous crimes have been committed in the name of every large and influential body of ideas bearing on human life. Whether that is true or not, I do not know. But even if it is, there are great and obvious differences, among such bodies of ideas, in how easily and naturally they amount to incitement to the commission of crimes. Confucianism, for example, or Buddhism does not appear to incite their adherents to crime easily or often. National Socialism, by contrast, and likewise Marxism, do easily and naturally hold out such incitements to their adherents... It is impossible to deny that, in this respect, Darwinism has a closer affinity to National Socialism or Marxism than with Confucianism or Buddhism. Darwin told the world that a "struggle for life," a "struggle for existence," a "battle for life" is always going on among the members of every species. Although this proposition was at the time novel and surprising, an immense number of people accepted it. Now, will any rational person believe that accepting this proposition would have no effect, or only randomly varying effects, on people's attitudes towards their own conspecifics? No. Will any rational person believe that accepting this novel proposition would tend to improve people's attitudes towards their conspecifics--for example, would tend to make them less selfish, or less inclined to domineering behavior, than they had been before they accepted it? No. (Darwinian Fairytales by David Stove :108-109)

Help! Help! I’m being repressed!

— peoplesfrontofjudea

Cool, as I already have more peer-reviewer articles as Behe, and he is a associate (?) professor, I should be able to get an assistant professorship soon!

bjm: I hope the lawyers don't use this against Beheeee in an attempt to discredit him as an 'expert' witness. What reputation does he have any more? It's got to be worth 20K for another performance on the stand just like we got in Dover.

Scott

If Beheeee wants to be taken seriously he knows what he needs to do but for 20K he seems to have taken a page out of Dumbski's book and sold his soul (and his credibility). I wish him well.

The British physicist William Bonner, for example, suggested that the Big Bang theory was part of a conspiracy aimed at shoring up Christianity: "The underlying motive is, of course, to bring in God as creator. It seems like the opportunity Christian theology has been waiting for ever since science began to depose religion from the minds of rational men in the seventeenth century." Fred Hoyle was equally scathing when it came to the Big Bang's association with religion, condemning it as a model built on Judeo-Christian foundations. His views were shared by his Steady State collaborator, Thomas Gold. When Gold heard that Pius XII had backed the Big Bang, his response was short and to the point: "Well, the Pope also endorsed the stationary Earth." ....as noted by the English Nobel Laureate George Thomson: "€˜Probably every physicist would believe in a creation if the Bible had not unfortunately said something about it many years ago and made it seem old-fashioned."(Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe by Simon Singh :361-62) (Emphasis added)

Sean B. Carroll is the biologist at Univ. Wisconsin. Sean M. Carroll is the cosomologist at CalTech.

As most of you are probably aware, Jeffrey Shallit did a similar analyisis of Dembski's work in a pre-trial statement for the Dover case.

http://www2.ncseweb.org/kvd/experts/shallit.pdf

History shows that a false paradigm can last for thousands of years so there is no reason to assume that one cannot last longer.

— mynym

Sean Carroll is quite prolific, and he’s got a tremendous breadth of knowledge. He publishes both on evo-devo and cosmology.

David Stove from wikipedia: Darwinism In his final years Stove began to examine and criticize Darwinism. This surprised and dismayed many of his supporters who were Darwinists and thought Stove was as well, judging from the way he sometimes spoke. However, Stove's attack on Darwinism was not as radical as it appeared - he accepted evolution was true of all living things, and said he had no objection to natural selection being true of more primitive organisms.

Adolph Hitler: "My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.

Mynym posting nonsense: It seems that progressives and socialists need a creation myth of progress which Darwinism fits. Further quoting Stove: "What deserves to be well known, but has in fact been virtually forgotten, is this: that if Darwinism once furnished a justification, retrospective or prospective, for the crimes of capitalists or National Socialists,

The publication pattern shows that Behe is no longer a scientist, but rather an apologist. I urge people to get in the habit of describing him accurately.

SteveF:

It seems HIV has developed a number of protein binding sites. ERV discusses this in a number of posts, starting here. IIRC, between her and her prof Ian Musgrave they discuss 4 or 5 of those, and that was a mere subset.

Also, Ian mentions that Behe also discounts such finds in humans, within a population history involving far less individuals.

IANAB, but the objection that the specific mechanisms haven't been shown is probably true. It must be very difficult in general. But that such mechanisms exist and that the genomic lineages verify that evolution happened in these cases is not in question AFAIU.

mynym once again proves his stupidity by quoting a source who is laughably, obviously, demonstrably, wrong.

David Stove (whose job is to turn out half-baked ideas?) wrote:

What deserves to be well known, but has in fact been virtually forgotten, is this: that if Darwinism once furnished a justification, retrospective or prospective, for the crimes of capitalists or National Socialists, it performed the same office to an even greater extent, between about 1880 and 1920, for the crimes, already committed or still to be committed, of Marxists.

And have the creationists forgotten how many crimes have been justified by Christian and other religious doctrines throughout human history?

It will perhaps be said, in defense of Darwinism, that many and enormous crimes have been committed in the name of every large and influential body of ideas bearing on human life. Whether that is true or not, I do not know.

Why don't you know, Mr. Stove? Too lazy to do the research? Too scared of finding out your prejudices are wrong?

But even if it is, there are great and obvious differences, among such bodies of ideas, in how easily and naturally they amount to incitement to the commission of crimes.

And it's rather easy to incite a group of Christians to kill people from different groups, especially when they're economically pressed, scared, and looking for someone to blame for their troubles; or when they're faced with a new crisis like a plague.

Confucianism, for example, or Buddhism does not appear to incite their adherents to crime easily or often. National Socialism, by contrast, and likewise Marxism, do easily and naturally hold out such incitements to their adherents...

Gee, Mr. Stove, there's two huge religions you didn't even mention, religions with adherents all over the globe. Any comment on how easily their adherents are incited to crime?

Darwin told the world that a “struggle for life,” a “struggle for existence,” a “battle for life” is always going on among the members of every species. Although this proposition was at the time novel and surprising, an immense number of people accepted it.

There's nothing "novel and surprising" about the idea that life involves struggle and competition -- poor people have known this for thousands of years before Darwin was born.

Now, will any rational person believe that accepting this proposition would have no effect, or only randomly varying effects, on people’s attitudes towards their own conspecifics? No.

Actually, yes: a rational person will, with or without Darwinism, seek to encourage cooperation and civil society in order both to mitigate the harsh effects of such competition, and to provide his own tribe a competitive edge over other tribes.

Will any rational person believe that accepting this novel proposition would tend to improve people’s attitudes towards their conspecifics–for example, would tend to make them less selfish, or less inclined to domineering behavior, than they had been before they accepted it? No.

Again, yes: just because we're born brutes, doesn't mean we can't become better, nor does it mean we can't benefit from any conscious self-improvement.

This Stove guy doesn't seem to have any clue what life is like in the real world, or how humans have managed to cope with it. What makes him an "authority" worth quoting on any issue?

a blog named after a theological argument.

If evolution explains the complexity of higher life forms then it is generally a theory about progression.

mynym's description of evolution as a progression is false and based on an anthropocentric attitude commonly seen in creationist arguments.

Humans are not the final pinnacle of the evolutionary process and nothing acted to assure that we would be the result of the biological responses to erratic environmental challenges.

No wonder the Greek mythologies so often dealt with the concepts of hubris and nemesis. Too bad the early Christians decided to go with the conceit that we are the images of a god. The chosen tribe of the most important species on a planet at the centre of the universe, yeah right.

Wrong. If evolution explains the complexity of higher life forms then it is generally a theory about progression.

It seems that progressives and socialists need a creation myth of progress which Darwinism fits.

one shouldn’t be surprised that Marxists would include Darwinism in their economic theories given that that the notion of a Darwinian struggle seems to have more to do with Victorian era economics than the empirical facts of biology.

Therefore if their creation myth is attacked then progress will come to a halt and so on and one finds arguments of this structure: “You criticize the stories of progress that I imagine about the past but you like modern medicine!”

Torbjorn,

Yeah, I saw the ERV discussion and find it pretty convincing. However, I was concerned with the specific argument put forward by Carroll. It seemed to me that Behe caught him out with these references, but I'd need to read them again. I was wondering what other readers thought. As I said, I'd certainly like to see a response from Carroll. Maybe Pandasthumb could get in touch!

harold tells mynym, "I’m going to try to be polite in my reply," and concludes with, "you add grotesque hypocrisy to extreme ignorance...."

I just want you to know, harold, that is FAR more polite than what I would have written mynym.

SteveF: Yet if one looks up the papers he cites, one finds no “demonstration” at all. Those papers show, respectively, that: A) different species have different protein binding sites (but, although the authors assume Darwinian processes, they demonstrate nothing about how the sites arose); or B) different species have different protein networks (but, again, the authors demonstrate nothing about how the networks arose). Like Jerry Coyne, Sean Carroll simply begs the question. Like Coyne, Carroll assumes whatever exists in biology arose by Darwinian processes. Apparently Darwinism has eroded Coyne’s and Carroll’s ability to separate data from theory. ... I'm not particularly expert in these matters and I only looked up references 10 and 11 briefly, but I do remember thinking that maybe Behe had a point.

mynmy wrote:

"If evolution explains the complexity of higher life forms then it is generally a theory about progression."

Not really. After all, if a baseball field is about 400 feet from home plate to the stands behind the wall in the outfield, is baseball generally a sport about home runs? A home run is just one of the things that can possibly happen in a baseball game. It might be the most exciting play, it might significantly affect the outcome of the game, it might even be the reason people sit in the bleachers. But baseball is about a lot more than home runs. That's why so many more people sit near home plate. In fact, a home run is one of the least common outcomes in baseball. There are a lot more strike outs, singles, ground outs, fly outs, maybe even doubles and double plays than home runs. However, baseball allows for home runs and evolution can explain increasing complexity.

As for "progression", I guess that depends on what you think the goal of evolution is and what species are better than other species. It is important to remember that adaptation is always relative to the environment and that the environment can always change. It is also important to note that there are limits to natural selection.

Certainly it is to the Lutheran pastors that credit goes for being at a crucial stage the only Germans to stand up against the steam-rolling tactics of the Nazi regime. ...the Nazi attempt to take Christianity out of the church found that the German church has defenders of a nerve and determination which marked none of the political leaders whose parties passed almost without effectual protest under the crushing advance of the National Socialists. [...] The whole world will watch the fight of the 4,000 pastors who do not wich Dr. Goebbels to rewrite the Bible, revise the Ten Commandments or edit the Lord's prayer. There are left disciples of Martin Luther who will not yet admit that, in the words of Dr. Rosenburg, Christianity is the "product of a moribund civilization of weary Mediterraneans." (Hitler Given First Jolt by Protestant Pastors: Refusal of 4,000 Lutheran Clergymen to be Nationalized Brings Nazi Regime Significant Check By Edwin L. James The New York Times; Dec. 3, 1933 pg. E1)

Having always been an ardent partisan of freedom, I turned to the Universities, as soon as the revolution broke out in Germany, to find the Universities took refuge in silence. I then turned to the editors of powerful newspapers, who, but lately in flowing articles, had claimed to be champions of liberty. These men, as well as the Universities, were reduced to silence in a few weeks. I then addressed myself to the authors individually, to those who passed themselves off as the intellectual guides of Germany, and among whom many had frequently discussed the question of freedom and its place in modern life. They are in their turn very dumb. Only the Church opposed the fight which Hitler was waging against liberty. Till then I had no interest in the Church, but now I feel great admiration and am truly attracted to the Church which had the persistent courage to fight for spiritual truth and moral freedom. I feel obliged to confess that I now admire what I used to consider of little value. --Albert Einstein cf. (The German Churches Under Hitler: Backround, Struggle, and Epilogue By Ernst Helmreich (Detriot: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1979) :345)

....intended eventually to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists. As Bormann, one of the men closest to Hitler, said publicly in 1941, '€œNational Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable.'€ What the Hitler government envisioned for Germany was clearly set out in a thirty-point program for the 'National Reich Church'€ drawn up during the war by Rosenberg, an outspoken pagan, who among his other offices held that of “the Fuehrer'€™s Delegate for the Entire Intellectual and Philosophical Education and Instruction for the National Socialist Party. (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany William L. Shirer (Simon and Schuster) 1990 :238-40)

Our whole cultural life for decades has been more or less under the influence of biological thinking, as it was begun particularly around the middle of the last century, by the teachings of Darwin, Mendel, and Galton and afterwards has been advanced by the studies of Ploetz, Schallmeyer, Correns, de Vries, Tschermak, Baur, Riidin, Fischer,Lenz, and others. Though it took decades before the courage was found, on the basis of the initial findings ofthe natural sciences, to carry on a systematic study of heredity, the progress of the teaching and its application to man could not be delayed any more. (Hitler’s Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany’s Crimes Against the Jewish People By Max Weinreich (New York:The Yiddish Scientific Institute, 1946) :33)

I would be interested in seeing the website be updated. Anyone up for the task of building on Lampe's work? We could also extend it to other prominent IDists.

Re "It’s silly to focus on Hitler, "

Then why do some anti-evolutionists do so? What Hitler did or didn't do has nothing to do with either the accuracy or inaccuracy of any scientific theory.

Henry

"No, you are the “wrong” one. The theory of evolution is a theory which explains the diversity of life."

Wrong. Darwinian theory is rooted in a metaphoric Tree of Life that generally progresses from simple to complex, that is its interpretive scheme. Your ignorance isn't necessarily my responsibility. Next you'll be telling me that the Big Bang isn't generally rooted in a theory of expansion.

"It would be almost impossible for you to learn to understand the theory of evolution sufficiently to comment meaningfully on it."

That's apparently exactly your problem. So in your view the roots of the metaphoric tree are generally complex and natural selection doesn't really build higher life forms and doesn't really have to "climb mount improbable" in general?

"I know from experience that someone laden with your defenses and denial never will."

I know from experience that someone silly enough to believe that Mother Nature naturally selects the selections of all organisms will not be easy to pry from her teat.

"I personally recommend that you not comment on the theory of evolution."

It seems to me that given Darwinian reasoning I cannot infer the intelligence of a mind or a person from your text as a rule, therefore your personal recommendation has more to do with natural selection operating on the mating habits of ancient worms than the illusion of your own selection. So if I really want to get at the root causes of your recommendation I should look to worms instead of your words.

At any rate, given your ridiculous denial of evolution as a theory of a general sequence of progression it's clear that you're just running with the Herd.

"And yes, you add grotesque hypocrisy to extreme ignorance when you deny mainstream science, yet enjoy the results of science."

You act as if all progress is the result of science, yet ironically "mainstream science" has often stymied the progress of engineers, inventors, etc. Examples which could be cited: the Wright Brothers, Edison and more.
See: (Alternative Science: Challenging
the Myths of the Scientific Establishment
By Richard Milton)

The way some around here murmur the term "science" it probably means all human creativity, invention, intelligent design (ironically), technology and pretty much all progress and everything good.

So there you dumb creationists.

mynym is a prolific and energetic troll -- it's best not to encourage him.

"Then why do some anti-evolutionists do so? What Hitler did or didn’t do has nothing to do with either the accuracy or inaccuracy of any scientific theory."

Perhaps they do so because progressives tend to shield some scientific theories having to do with what they believe progress is. A notion of progress is woven into the structure of their arguments at times: "We don't question that because we've progressed past that now." "You can't question us or else progress will come to an end!" "You must be from the Dark Ages, we're enlightened now." Etc. Critics can point out that Darwinism or philosophical naturalism are not necessarily associated with "progress" as we think of it now given the eugenics movement, scientific racism, etc., none of which proves the theory wrong. All of it act to clear the ground so that logical or empirical based criticism can be given serious consideration instead of being thrown out in the name of Progress/science and so on. If one doesn't believe that a creation myth of progress is tied to all good progress and science as we know it then the freedom to challenge it tends to open up, so it shouldn't be surprising that anti-evolutionists try to clear the ground by pointing out that progress is not tied to mythological narratives of progression.

"mynym is a prolific and energetic troll – it’s best not to encourage him."

I suspect that you're too stupid to understand half of what I write obviously that's just your Mommy Nature at work selecting the excretions of your brain as your limited intellect struggles to think that it has to do with something more than your own excrement.

David Stove (whose job is to turn out half-baked ideas?) wrote:

And have the creationists forgotten how many crimes have been justified by Christian and other religious doctrines throughout human history?

So Stove turns out half-baked ideas but you can't reply to what he actually said about Marxism and instead want to talk about creationism.

And it's rather easy to incite a group of Christians...

So Stove is wrong in some way that would be probably be easy to say given his half-baked ideas, yet you want to talk about Christians instead of what he actually said.

Gee, Mr. Stove, there's two huge religions you didn'™t even mention....

Stove is so wrong, wrong in what he said! But you want to talk about what he didn't even mention.

There's nothing "novel and surprising" about the idea that life involves struggle and competition – poor people have known this for thousands of years before Darwin was born.

There was something novel and surprising about Darwin arguing that life was fit or unfit based on such a struggle, i.e. that life is formed and defined by struggle.

Again, yes: just because we'™re born brutes, doesn't mean we can't become better, nor does it mean we can't benefit from any conscious self-improvement.

Consciousness and self-improvement rely on notions of transcendence that Darwinism undermines in favor of immanence based reasoning about natural selection and so on, you're borrowing from the very things that are undermined by it to refute Stove's criticism of how it undermines them. Given Darwinism and the theological/philosophical naturalism that it has been based on how does an organism self-consciously "select" something better?

What makes him an "œauthority" worth quoting on any issue?

I don't cite him as an authority. I only cite the work of his mind, something that you seem to have trouble dealing with.

Mnynm the abusive nut rewriting Hitler's history: It’s silly to focus on Hitler, his ramblings or his limited intellect given that he wouldn’t have been able to do anything without support.

mynym: All False. Lies. Evolution is a scientific theory about life changing through time. Wrong. If evolution explains the complexity of higher life forms then it is generally a theory about progression. It seems that progressives and socialists need a creation myth of progress which Darwinism fits.

the notion of a Darwinian struggle seems to have more to do with Victorian era economics than the empirical facts of biology.

It is impossible to deny that, in this respect, Darwinism has a closer affinity to National Socialism or Marxism than with Confucianism or Buddhism. Darwin told the world that a "struggle for life," a "struggle for existence," a "battle for life" is always going on among the members of every species. Although this proposition was at the time novel and surprising, an immense number of people accepted it. Now, will any rational person believe that accepting this proposition would have no effect, or only randomly varying effects, on people's attitudes towards their own conspecifics? No. Will any rational person believe that accepting this novel proposition would tend to improve people's attitudes towards their conspecifics--for example, would tend to make them less selfish, or less inclined to domineering behavior, than they had been before they accepted it? No.

Mynym asserted: Darwinian theory is rooted in a metaphoric Tree of Life...

So, then, Mynym, can you please explain in detail how the Theory of Evolution was able to inspire both Communism and Nazism?
Can you please explain how studying extinct animals and trying to understand how these organisms interacted with their environments would inspire a person to go out, round up and kill as many non-Aryans as possible?

Mynym wrote:

"Darwinian theory is rooted in a metaphoric Tree of Life that generally progresses from simple to complex, that is its interpretive scheme."

At the risk of feeding the troll, (who seems to have nothing to say about the topic of this thread anyway), I must in all fairness point out that this is completely wrong. It also belies a very deep-rooted misconception regarding evolution.

The Scala Natura, as presented by Aristotle, depicts a progressive process. The tree of life does not. The tree of life has one axis that represents morphological divergence and a second that represents the passage of time. There is nothing in the tree metaphor anywhere that requires any kind of progress, period. For example, trees can be constructed showing the relationships between bacteria, or insects, or mammals, or the members of any other group. The individuals at the tips of the branches are not necessarily more complex, advanced or even better adapted than any of their extinct ancestors. They are simply extant. They can be justifiably described as more basal or more derived compared to other lineages, but they cannot be judged to be superior or more "advanced" by any objective criteria.

Progress implies gettomg closer to a goal, but evolution has no goal. How then can progress be measured? It is merely a subjective intrerpretation with no real biological meaning. Aristotle was wrong once again. Deal with it.

sitting on a false paradigm.

if scientists were given the anthropic principle and other lines of evidence

You act as if all progress is the result of science, yet ironically “mainstream science” has often stymied the progress of engineers, inventors, etc. Examples which could be cited: the Wright Brothers, Edison and more.

Ah, Richard Milton!
I remember listening to 20 of my brain cells die while reading his supremely moronic book.

I should probably add that I reject the reference for the purpose of this discussion as neutral sources should be readily available.

. . . Darwinian theory is rooted in a metaphoric Tree of Life that generally progresses from simple to complex, that is its interpretive scheme. Your ignorance isn’t necessarily my responsibility. . .

— mynym

mynym (short for "minimum mental effort?") blithered thusly:

I suspect that you’re too stupid to understand half of what I write obviously that’s just your Mommy Nature at work selecting the excretions of your brain as your limited intellect struggles to think that it has to do with something more than your own excrement.

I've read more sensible ramblings on Dr. Bronner's Pure Castille Soap (a.k.a. "God Soap") labels. (And the product actually serves a purpose!)

This paragraph, and his utterly incoherent "response" to my last post, prove beyond a shadow of doubt that he is simply unable to participate in any form of adult debate, and has no intellectual substance to bring to the grownups' table. His talking-points have been debunked long ago, and even many cdesign proponentsists have abandoned them. Arguing with such an immature (and possibly insane) Fafarmanesque troll is a wate of time. He's clearly not engaging with us, so why should we engage with him?

SteveF: Yet if one looks up the papers he cites, one finds no demonstrationà at all. Those papers show, respectively, that: A) different species have different protein binding sites (but, although the authors assume Darwinian processes, they demonstrate nothing about how the sites arose); or B) different species have different protein networks (but, again, the authors demonstrate nothing about how the networks arose). Like Jerry Coyne, Sean Carroll simply begs the question. Like Coyne, Carroll assumes whatever exists in biology arose by Darwinian processes. Apparently Darwinism has eroded Coyne's and Carroll's ability to separate data from theory. I'm not particularly expert in these matters and I only looked up references 10 and 11 briefly, but I do remember thinking that maybe Behe had a point. I'd certainly be interested in seeing Carroll's response. The relevant papers are here if anyone is interested (at least one will be free access):

SteveF, just how would one demonstrate that an event (e.g. well-known biological occurence such as point mutation, recombination, gene duplication, transposition, etc) happened through natural Darwinian processes rather than through demonic (or other supernatural) intervention? Even supposing the experiments were carried out in a laboratory, rather than by identifying subjects in field studies? Should one run a control experiment in a demon-proof cage? How would one construct such a thing? Is this a reasonable demand by Behe? Shouldn't it be enough to establish that such events could plausibly happen through well-known natural processes? Since, after all, Behe's claim is that such a natural pathway to the result is impossible?

The most ringing Catholic protest against “euthanasia” was the famous sermon of Clemens Count von Galen, then bishop of Munster. It was given on 3 August 1941,just four Sundays after the highly significant pastoral letter of German bishops had been read from every Catholic pulpit in the country; the letter reaffirmed “obligations of conscience” at opposing the taking of “innocent” life, “even if it were to cost us our lives.” The first part of Galen’s sermon explored the Biblical theme of how “Jesus, the Son of God, wept,” how even God wept “be cause of stupidity, injustice . . . and because of the disaster which came about as a result.” Then, after declaring, “It is a terrible, unjust and catastrophic thing when man opposes his will to the will of God,” Galen quoted the pastoral letter of 6 July and made clear that the “catastrophic thing” he had in mind was the killing of innocent mental patients and “a doctrine which authorizes the violent death of invalids and elderly people.” He further declared that he himself had “filed formal charges” with police and legal authorities in Munster over deportations from a nearby institution. He went on in words that every farmer and laborer could understand: "It is said of these patients: They are like an old machine which no longer runs, like an old horse which is hopelessly paralyzed, like a cow which no longer gives milk. What do we do with a machine of this kind? We put it in the junkyard. What do we do with a paralyzed horse? No, I do not wish to push the comparison to the end. . . . We are not talking here about a machine, a horse, nor a cow... . No, we are talking about men and women, our compatriots, our brothers and sisters. Poor unproductive people if you wish, but does this mean that they have lost their right to live?" And after a couple of poignant examples of specific people killed, the bishop concluded, as he had begun, with Biblical imagery, this time not of Jesus weeping but of “divine justice”—ultimate punishment—for those “making a blasphemy of our faith” by persecuting clergy and “sending innocent people to their death.” He asked that such people (who could only be the Nazi authorities) be ostracized and left to their divine retribution... Galen’s sermon probably had a greater impact than any other one statement in consolidating anti-”euthanasia” sentiment; hence, Bormann’s judgment that the bishop deserved the death penalty. (The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide By Robert Lifton :93-94)

It is hard to explain what the neopagans....believe. They do not know themselves. Their movement is a part of the new nationalism and of a peculiar National Socialist mysticism. It has no articles of faith and it parades its lack of dogma. All of the various types of neopagans are agreed only in one thing-their rejection of Christianity...(The Nordic Pagan Chant Grows Louder by Albion Rossberlin The New York Times, Aug 4, 1935; pg. 3-4) (Emphasis added)

“The political problem of our day” is the problem of National Socialism. Its “double character as a political experiment and as a religious institution of salvation shuts out any possibility of dealing with the question it puts ‘only’ as a political question and not, indirectly and directly, as a question of faith as well. Consequently, in no event can the church adopt a neutral attitude to the political problem of today.” National Socialism cannot be understood unless it is seen “as a new Islam, its myth as a new Allah, and Hitler as this new Allah’s prophet.” It is a church, although a very secular one, of which to be a member means to affirm its principles “in the form of faith, of mysticism and fanaticism.” If it exhibits, therefore, “all the characteristics of an ‘anti- church’ fundamentally hostile to Christianity,” then it must become evident, by the way in which the church of Jesus Christ confesses its faith, that the Christian rule of faith and life and the National Socialist rule of faith and life are mutually exclusive. No peace is possible between confessing to Jesus Christ and accepting the sovereignty of National Socialism. It follows, then, that “the church may and should pray for the suppression and casting out of National Socialism, just in the same sense as in former times and when confronted by a similar danger she prayed for the ‘destruction of the bulwarks of the false prophet Mohammed.’” This argument formed the basic content of a lecture by Barth before a meeting of the Swiss Evangelical Organization of Help for the Confessional Church in Germany on December 5, 1938. It was therefore presented in support of the Confessional churches of Germany, whose fight for the independence of the church from Nazi politics and Nazi views has attracted the attention of the entire world. (National Socialism and Christianity: Can They Be Reconciled? by Wilhelm Pauck The Journal of Religion, Vol. 20, No. 1. (Jan., 1940), pp. 15-17)

This is logically false. The statement, “Evolution explains how complex life may derive from simple life.” does not imply that life at any given moment (i.e. now) is more complex that at any other point in time.

Given the empirical evidence that Darwinism is said to explain it is generally a theory that explains progression, that's why its main metaphor is a Tree of Life and so on.

In other words, life today may be less complex than it was yesterday. This is not a theory of progression.

Except that it generally has to be given what exists. Progress isn't "necessary" in the abstract or in every specific instance, it just generally has to be an explanation of the progression of Life given the empirical evidence.

Evolution merely describes how one type of living thing may evolve into another.

The average layman tends to confuse a path with a direction.

Uh uh. The average person assumes that evolution is generally a theory of progression not because of all the imagery and metaphors of progression but because they're just simple people.

So here we have a bald assertion, followed by a few suppositions, followed by a non sequiter, followed by a conclusion. I note a painful lack of anything resembling evidence.

But your ignorance isn't necessarily my responsibility. If you want to believe that the economic metaphors which Darwin projected onto Nature "just happened" to match late-nineteenth century capitalism (as Marx suggested) instead of Darwin projecting them and drawing them out, that's fine with me. For that matter, perhaps that same form of capitalism came to recognize itself in Darwinism by another happenstance too. God knows that we can't admit things happen by intention because people are intelligent....

Arguing with such an immature (and possibly insane) Fafarmanesque troll is a wate of time. He’s clearly not engaging with us, so why should we engage with him?

I'm talking past the Herd to anyone capable of intelligence and intelligent design anyway. Given your terms the text that you write here was dictated by natural selection or some other blind process, therefore it is actually caused by the mating habits of ancient worms and the like.

In just two sentences you display your ignorance for all to see, and accuse one of your critics of ignorance.

Only because he is ignorant. Darwinian evolution was proposed as a theory of progression, its metaphors and imagery are drawn to show sequences of progression and given the fossil record it generally has to explain progression and that is what it is said to explain.

You quite obviously have not taken the time to understand evolutionary theory...

You will obviously parrot whatever argument is popular within the Herd. Ever since the Herd began to see a need to distance itself from the scientific racism and so on in its past it has begun to deny the history of the theory of evolution as well as basic logic.

You are fooling yourself if you think you know what claims evolutionary theory makes. I suggest you go and learn some actual biology. From a textbook that has been written by actual scientists, i.e. people who know what they’re talking about.

A textbook about basic biology: "Deduction 3: If the hypothesis of evolution is true, then we would expect to find only the simplest organisms in the very oldest fossiliferous strata and hte more complex ones only in more recent strata." (Science as a Way of Knowing: The Foundations of Modern Biology
by John Moore :151)

I just have one question for you to ponder: if evolutionary theory has a “scheme” that life proceeds from simple to complex, how come there are still simple organisms?

It seems that you need to go read a basic biology textbook.

Then go and read The Origin of Species. Only after you’ve done that should you come back here to participate in the discussions.

"...and as natural selection works solely by and fore the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection." --The Origin of Species (Darwin: The Indelible Stamp (Four Essential Volumes in One)
Edited by James D. Watson :600)

I just have one question for you to ponder: if evolutionary theory has a “scheme” that life proceeds from simple to complex, how come there are still simple organisms?

And, no, I won’t make the obvious parody, i.e. who else would believe biblical literalism, because that’s a cheap shot and too easy.

You remind me of a creationist rube. In fact you're like a bad parody of them from the Darwinian side. At any rate, I'll go along with Darwin and some ancient genius in believing that a good summary of things is: "Let the Earth bring forth Life..."

So, then, Mynym, can you please explain in detail how the Theory of Evolution was able to inspire both Communism and Nazism? Can you please explain how studying extinct animals and trying to understand how these organisms interacted with their environments would inspire a person to go out, round up and kill as many non-Aryans as possible?

A textbook about basic biology: “Deduction 3: If the hypothesis of evolution is true, then we would expect to find only the simplest organisms in the very oldest fossiliferous strata and hte more complex ones only in more recent strata.” (Science as a Way of Knowing: The Foundations of Modern Biology by John Moore :151)

It's ironic that progressives are typically ignorant enough to believe in the Darwinian creation myth and seem to derive much of their moral relativism from a Darwinian worldview which they believe to be scientific.

mynym: This is logically false. The statement, “Evolution explains how complex life may derive from simple life.” does not imply that life at any given moment (i.e. now) is more complex that at any other point in time. Given the empirical evidence that Darwinism is said to explain it is generally a theory that explains progression, that's why its main metaphor is a Tree of Life and so on. In other words, life today may be less complex than it was yesterday. This is not a theory of progression. Except that it generally has to be given what exists. Progress isn't "necessary" in the abstract or in every specific instance, it just generally has to be an explanation of the progression of Life given the empirical evidence.

But your ignorance isn't necessarily my responsibility. If you want to believe that the economic metaphors which Darwin projected onto Nature "just happened" to match late-nineteenth century capitalism (as Marx suggested) instead of Darwin projecting them and drawing them out, that's fine with me. For that matter, perhaps that same form of capitalism came to recognize itself in Darwinism by another happenstance too. God knows that we can't admit things happen by intention because people are intelligent....

not a DIdiot; just playing devil's advocate

One sample size of each is not very extensive though. Not sure a conclusion
can be drawn from so little data. Or if there is a conclusion it is probably not very scientific.

How about the other Discovery Institute fellows? Do they have publications too?

Also people could argue that picking Carrol who is a especially distingushed scientist as a comparision was not very fair. Using somebody a little
more ordinary for comparison would have been better.

Ok this website sucks. It eat my well written comment replacing
it with a silly error. I'm too lazy to write it again. Sorry folks

But your ignorance isn’t necessarily my responsibility.

It eat my well written comment replacing it with a silly error.

so why should we engage with him?

If one define complexity by the number of ‘unique’ and ‘differentiated’ cell types then yes, mulicellularity is by definition more complex but then we have an issue of deciding why this definition of complexity is more privileged than say one based on the number of genes, the length of the DNA, etc.

Also people could argue that picking Carrol who is a especially distingushed scientist as a comparision was not very fair.

I suspect that you’re too stupid to understand half of what I write

Glen Davidson Says: September 29th, 2007 at 10:59 pm As it happens, Ben Stein doesn’t seem particularly impressed by the ID nonsense either. Not that it really should matter, given that he neither has expertise in science, nor has sense enough to recognize the importance of keeping pseudoscience from being forced into the university science departments. Nevertheless, this is what NY Times reports of Stein’s response: –…said in a telephone interview that he [Ben] accepted the producers’ invitation to participate in the film not because he disavows the theory of evolution — he said there was a “very high likelihood” that Darwin was on to something — but because he does not accept that evolution alone can explain life on earth. He said he also believed the theory of evolution leads to racism and ultimately genocide, an idea common among creationist thinkers. If it were up to him, he said, the film would be called “From Darwin to Hitler.– www.reason.com/blog/printer/122721.html Now this is a bizarre notion, though one pushed by IDists often enough. Ben needs to study the history of Germany versus that of England and the United States. Both of the latter have had and continue to have their faults, but they were the Enlightenment countries (the US in particular was founded on Enlightenment principles), and thus were not fertile ground for the nonsense of the Nazis (it is believed that occult beliefs played a large role in fostering Nazi anti-Semitism, for instance). Germany was open to such ideas, for a number of reasons, naturally (WWI, depression, etc.), but especially because the Enlightenment hadn’t really taken hold in Germany. From Germany came Hegel, Marx, and Heidegger (actually, Kant, too, but Kant’s pro-enlightenment notions had been quickly turned into Romantic thought by people like Hegel and Heidegger). Of course great scientists came from Germany as well, but the overall attitude of Germany was Romantic, and favored “spirit” over theories about hard evidence. Darwin, by contrast, was in the tradition of Hume, Newton, and a tradition that in both the judiciary and in science favored evidence over “feelings” and vague notions like ID or, indeed, the German Haeckel’s magical notions. Among the intellectuals of the Anglo world, Darwinism was taken up almost as a matter of course (most religious people in power did not oppose it), and despite a fair amount of Victorian notions in Darwin’s writings, including racist ideas, evolutionary theory was part of far saner societies than what appeared in Germany and in Italy. Evolutionary theory needed to move on from Darwin, in part because he included Victorian prejudices, and it most certainly did (one reason we don’t like yahoos like Ruloff calling today’s evolution “Darwinism”), for it was evidence-based science and thus became well-integrated with other science, like Mendelism. Meanwhile, the non-Enlightenment societies of Germany and the USSR largely rejected the “materialistic” ideas of Mendel and of Darwin. Did this itself make them the totalitarian nightmares that they were? No, of course not, however, bad ideas in science frequently are associated with bad ideas in government, and Nazi Germany and Stalinist USSR were no exceptions. In spite of all their faults, the UK and the US remained beacons of Englightenment, as the rejectors of the Enlightenment brought us war and genocides. Stein really ought to know about all of this much better than he does, for he ought to know a little about Jews and the improvement of their lot as the Enlightenment took hold. Medieval theocracies were cruel to Jews, and actually, to many many Christians as well. The Enlightenment brought relief to most everybody, other than that we had to fight and oppose the anti-Enlightenment societies of Germany and the USSR. So now what does Ben do? He attacks the Enlightenment itself through this movie, claiming that those who have no evidence and only desires to impose their will onto science, have been persecuted. You want Hitler, or at least theocratic dominance over what should be free science? Then keep this up, Ben. The Enlightenment is what demanded evidence before one is determined to be guilty, and the Enlightenment is what demands that science remain based in evidence and not in the wishes of Romantics and of atavistic theocrats. As ID’s Wedge Document points out, ID is really only a way of getting rid of Enlightenment ideas (it doesn’t call them that, but it is what they are), and hence the way to attack both our Constitution and the science that America needs to compete. If you don’t know science, Ben, at least try boning up some on history. Attacking the Enlightenment is the way to Hitler, as well as to other less odious but still objectionable impositions upon humanity. Force science to accept “standards” that reject the need for legitimate evidence, and not only have you destroyed the First Amendment, you have destroyed the Declaration of Indepence as well, and all that gave rise to freedom of thought and of science. There you go. You’re free, of course, to oppose the Allies and their anti-fascist standards, but if you succeed in your gambit, you had better not count on having freedom for much longer. Glen D http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

Good piece, Glen, but there seems to be a contradiction between "it's rather bizarre to try to blame Hitler on any particular idea or belief" and "Attacking the Enlightenment is the way to Hitler". I favor the latter; Hitler's psychology explains him, but it doesn't fully explain his place in world events.

Good piece, Glen, but there seems to be a contradiction between “it’s rather bizarre to try to blame Hitler on any particular idea or belief” and “Attacking the Enlightenment is the way to Hitler”. I favor the latter; Hitler’s psychology explains him, but it doesn’t fully explain his place in world events.

Hmmm ... the original context here was mynym's quoting Stove: "if Darwinism once furnished a justification, retrospective or prospective, for the crimes of capitalists or National Socialists", and later he wrote "It's silly to focus on Hitler, his ramblings or his limited intellect given that he wouldn't have been able to do anything without support." So I don't think it was "Hitler's diseased psyche" that was "blamed on any particular idea or belief”, at least not by our troll, and your comments about rejection of the Enlightenment leading to fascism struck me as more a propos.

Hmmm … the original context here was mynym’s quoting Stove: “if Darwinism once furnished a justification, retrospective or prospective, for the crimes of capitalists or National Socialists”, and later he wrote “It’s silly to focus on Hitler, his ramblings or his limited intellect given that he wouldn’t have been able to do anything without support.” So I don’t think it was “Hitler’s diseased psyche” that was “blamed on any particular idea or belief", at least not by our troll, and your comments about rejection of the Enlightenment leading to fascism struck me as more a propos.