As a lesbian trapped in a man’s body, I gotta say I loved this…
246 comments on “The comedy stylings of George Takei”
Yes, the irony doesn’t elude me that there’s plenty of people who would answer the same way when asked about African-Americans, and I doubt Hardaway would be so sanguine about that attidue. I wonder if anyone’s brought that to his attention.
In Hardaway’s forced (and I’m sure totally disingenuous) apology shortly after this, he said “As an African-American, I know all too well the negative thoughts and feelings hatred and bigotry cause.” Which, IMO, makes it all the more reprehensible that he would say this kind of thing, because as he says, he knows how much being a victim of bigotry hurts.
Here’s something funny…I found another press release that quotes him as saying “There are more important things to worry about than my comments. We should be more concerned about President (George) Bush and all the people dying in Iraq.” If he’s sincere and not just trying to get back in people’s good graces by trying to get the focus on somebody worse than him, then at least he’s not clueless about everything but it sucks that we’ve got guys like this on our side of the Iraq issue. I wouldn’t turn down any help they’d give as far as public statements and protests and donating money and whatever, but I wouldn’t like working with them when they harbor such hatred towards innocent people.
After all, the whole reason some of us oppose Iraq is because innocent people are dying; the last thing we want to see is somebody who has done no wrong dying or suffering, whether they are being killed or wounded or tortured at the hands of the U.S. military under Bush’s orders, or whether they are being hurt emotionally by Hardaway’s comments and rejection by society. People should live and let live.
If, for instance, this guy was raised to embrace the Bible, then his breeding tells him to abominate gays and also not to lie. So he was doing was he thought was right. Maybe we should hunt down his parents and ask him what they were planting in their kid’s mind.
That is certainly a possible reason for his feelings.
However, it’s not the only one, as I know. When I was in high school the word “fággøŧ” got thrown around a lot as an insult (probably still is, though not as much). That was a homophobic environment, and if I were to tell you that I was completely innocent and never had a bad thought about gay people at that point in my life I would be lying.
I didn’t grow up in a family of religious zealots or anything. For me, and I presume for other people, the thing that made us think of being gay as disgusting and make crude jokes and so forth was that we thought the idea of anal sex was disgusting. And, as far as we knew back then, only gay people engaged in anal sex. Even today, the thought of somebody voluntarily sticking any part of their body into the hole through which fecal matter is passed–particularly if they do it with no condom–is not really something I like thinking about. Any more than I like thinking about somebody giving somebody else a “Dirty Sanchez.” Guess that makes me fecalphobic.
I began to think about it differently when Freddy Mercury died, however, because suddenly a face had been attached to the faceless “fággøŧš” that got ridiculed all the time, and it was the face of somebody I respected. I saw the clips from Freddy giving interviews and could not help but realize that there was more to this guy than just his sexual orientation.
That, combined with the revelation that many, if not most, gay people don’t like the idea of making physical contact with human waste any more than I do (hence very thorough personal hygiene and use of condoms), was what made me do a 180 and become more accepting.
Anyway, my point is that nowhere in this story did the Bible or the Torah or the Koran play a part. Obviously, the hatred towards gay people exhibited by others *is* rooted in their religion, but this is not always the case. In my case, my parents had absolutely nothing to do with it one way or the other.
I think most genuinely, if (in my opinion) needlessly[,] think that gay marriage would be harmful to families….
But who has really done the most harm–Hardaway with his openly declared bigotry or the politicians who give lip service to the rights of gays even as they limit their career choices and the fundamental right to marry the person you love and live out the American Dream (albeit with a modification undreamed of by Ozzie and Harriet)?
We tend to focus on the overtly bad bigots while tolerating the everyday slights. It would be like getting all righteous against a Bull O’Conner while shrugging at the less clearly vicious injustices of the Jim Crow south.
You started by saying the motive to limit marriage to exclude gays isn’t hostile.
But when someone who publicly says nice things about gays withholds his support to gay marriage — he’s practically declared war on homosexuality.
Why yes, That’s Totally Normal Psychology.™
Hmm, looks like Mike is back to commenting on my posts again. Or maybe just attacking people’s kids…
That’s funny, I would have thought you were someone’s kid. But if you deny it, who am I to disagree?
I’ve been treating this story a bit like most of the Anna Nicole coverage.
(Click)… Next channel.
It was worth a side note on the news, but the coverage and reactions have been silly. He’s a moron and he said something to prove just how big a moron he really is. Big deal.
Last I looked, you can like or dislike anyone you want to so long as your personal dislike of them doesn’t come in to play in a employer/employee relationship or lead to criminal actions. From what little I’ve bothered following of this, this situation is neither of those two things. He has the right to be, in my POV, a moron and to show that he is a moron if someone asks him to do so.
He has a right to be a moron. People have the right to point out that he is a moron. Other people have the right to point out that, by their POV, he is correct in his views. It’s all only words. So long as it stays only words, so long as the words don’t turn into encouragement towards violence and so long as his professional actions toward any gay men he may end up playing against on the courts are not being hampered by his personal views, it’s really not that big of a deal.
Besides, it’s not like he said Belgium.
Hilarious!!! Brilliant!!!
As for Hardaway (“Hard”-heh heh heh) apologizing, nah. He was stating hoe he feels. Even if how he feels is repugnant, close minded, and prejudiced, it’s still how he feels.
Any hoo, atleast there’s no doubt the guy’s a jerk. Gotta feed baby.
Bill, there’s no real disagreement between you and me. You are correct that institutional prejudice is worst than a few words by an loud mouth bigot. I personaly don’t care much for those situations where some celebrity says something stupid and than goes through a whole public penance. However, the fact that we live today in a world (at least in the west) where homosexuality is slightly more tolerated, and prejudice slightly less tolerated, is because of a lot of small events in which intolerance was delegitimized. So basically we both agree that it is good that Hardaway got into some trouble for his words, but there are still many greater issues to deal with.
About Mike, you’re not missing anything.
Jerry, there is view, which I do not completley accept, that says that hate speech, in and of itself, harms gays, blacks, arabs, jews, mexicans, women etc. because if hate speech is common and acceptable, it makes it difficult for them to function in society. I don’t think I’m explaining this point of view very well, but I would imagine that it is very difficult for a homosexual attending a high school in which the word fággøŧ is in common use, even if there are no cases of gay bashing and he or she is not actualy prevented from doing anything. The hostile environment probably affects his or her life in ways we are not aware of.
Rob, it is no secret that sexuality is a very significant aspect of human identity and of human interaction. My theory is that homosexuality, or in the past the presence of women in the workplace, are or were perceived by society as a disturbance of the stability of that identity and interaction. In other words, it touches on a deep psychological level.
An interesting poll just came out that stated (and let’s keep in mind the usual caveats about the general uselessness of polls) that more people would vote for a gay president than they would an atheist one. Interesting if true. Mormons and old people didn’t do so great either which is possibly bad news for Mitt Romney and John McCain.
A certain Israeli liberal political party I sometimes vote for really wanted to have minorities on its ticket (Arabs, Gays, women, and Russians mostly). So somebody figured out that the most likely candidate to get on the list would be a transexual Circassian (small community of Arabic muslims who were brought by the Turks to Palestine/Israel from the Circassian mountains [Russia] in the 19th century).
OK. This would have been funnier without all the explanations.
Jerry, totally agree with you on the ANS coverage…but I don’t think Hardaway’s comments are of the same ilk. They reflect a viewpoint held by many people living in this country, and I think that’s a problem. Not that they live here, or hold those views, but rather that prejudice and discrimination based on sexual preference is something we’re still dealing with. Disregarding it as moronic, I think, is dangerous. You ignore morons, because they don’t know any better, and you can’t really help them change. Hardaway isn’t a moron, though. He holds a certain viewpoint that I think is detrimental to the ongoing development of our society.
Secondly, it’s true that in principal both the case of Haraway and the Dixie Chicks are cases of freedom of speech, but it seems to me that there should be a difference in the public preceptionand the public’s attitude toward someone using freedom of speech in order to criticize a policy or a political figure and when someone uses it to voice hatred toward a group. We shouldn’t get too relativistic.
Agreed but since prejudice against gays is tolerated and even to a degree encouraged in government–witness the bipartisan support for both the Defense of Marriage Act and the Don’t Ask Don’t tell policies–it becomes a bit hypocritical for society to come down hard on some athlete who simply speaks the same prejudice, without the fancy rhetoric and justifications.
Bill, there’s no real disagreement between you and me. You are correct that institutional prejudice is worst than a few words by an loud mouth bigot…. So basically we both agree that it is good that Hardaway got into some trouble for his words, but there are still many greater issues to deal with.
Bill simply made institutional reform a priority over challenging the public celebration of bigotry. His equating the retaliation against “I hate gay people…. I’m homophobic. It shouldn’t be in the world, in the United States, I don’t like it” with the retaliation against “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas” still stands.
Comparing the two agendas only makes sense if you consider any public criticism of white patriarchy to be predatory. It demonstrates the neediness underlying the pretense of invulnerability.
To Bill, reform doesn’t begin with crude Boston Tea Parties, but with fully evolved Declaration of Independences — and only for the reform he has no stake in. He holds others to abstinance from lying, rumor campaigns, and libel, but never himself. It’s how he shelters the status quo he seeks credit for criticising.
That’s how pretense shelters a predatory agenda.
So somebody figured out that the most likely candidate to get on the list would be a transexual Circassian
Why not a shrimp-headed welder with pods?
I shouldn’t have posted that bit. It requires too many explanations.
A transsexual circassian is gay/woman/arab/russian simultanously. namely four marginalized groups in Israeli society.
This party is very liberal, so it wants to help these groups. But most of its voters and candidates do not belong to marginalized groups but in fact belong to the more fortunate group of Israeli society — the equivalent of WASPs. It is also a small party with only 5-8 members actually entering our parliament. So they were at a bind between their desire to include members of these groups in their party, and the desire to have the people they like — who are like them — enter parliament. So somebody who embodies four of the marginalized groups at once would have been ideal way for them to satisfy both their liberal inclinations and have most of their buddies in parliament. basically you have a party of WASPy liberals trying to have a token minority.
It’s one of the, you’d have to have been there jokes — not really funny.
Bill, I think that shrimp is not kosher. I expect that would work against the welder…
It does sound pretty ridiculous, Micha.
Whoever this candidate of theirs is (if they have found a particular TS circassian, that is) I wish that person the best, but I doubt she (I’ll refer to the candidate as “she” since this person identifies as female and plans to have surgery to become physically female) will have any chance of being elected.
It’s just like if somebody in the U.S. ran for President who was black, and gay, and a woman, and wasn’t born in the country. Even being ONE of those things hurts your chances, you know?
It’s just like if somebody in the U.S. ran for President who was black, and gay, and a woman, and wasn’t born in the country. Even being ONE of those things hurts your chances, you know?
Well, yeah, if she wasn’t born here it pretty much reduces her chances to zero!
(Interesting plot idea–a candidate discovers, on the eve of the election, that they were actually born outside of the USA, thus disqualifying them. Or better yet, their opponent discovers it.)
Micha,
Yeah, I’ve heard that a lot as well but have never subscribed to it. I also tend to believe that there are two things that change the ability of words to harm over time.
The first is any person’s own ability to brush stupid crap like that off. I’ve pointed out before that I grew up in an area where I was the minority for most of my time there. I was the only white guy on my bus in two school districts. Whites were the minority in most of my classes in Petersburg and in some in Prince George. At a time before I was old enough to drive, I was one of only a handful of white kids in my neighborhood.
I had quite a few black friends, but there were lots of black kids in Petersburg that were as racist towards whites as any 50’s Southerner stereotype you can think of would be towards blacks. I had lots of nasty things said to me based on nothing more the color of my skin. I also had a few acts of violence thrown my way based on my being white. Violence I met with violence until I got a reputation as someone you didn’t mess with. But words? Couldn’t care less. The people saying those things didn’t know me, weren’t my friends and meant absolutely less then nothing to me. Their words had no power in my mind. Their words couldn’t hurt me.
It’s something I point out to other officers from time to time when they take offense to something said by some loudmouth. Lots of people like to say lots of fun things to/at police just because we’re there and they’re morons. So what? Why should I give a moron’s words any value by allowing them to have any meaning to me?
The second factor is time and public acceptance of an idea. 100 years ago, a white man standing on a street corner in Georgia and calling for his fellow “gentlemen” to get some rope and head out to lynch some blacks might have been a major threat to the local black population. Today the moron would end up arrested, probably given a mental evaluation and, if he were a public figure, shunned and booted from whatever position he held. 50 years ago, blacks and Asians were portrayed in films in a manner that would not be accepted by the general public today. An entertainer then could be able to do a routine with hate filled rants and racial slurs that would get him banned from most places today and, if he were, say, a well known TV star, get him in temporarily career threatening jeopardy.
Dingbat made a stupid statement that, while maybe 70 or 80 years ago would have flown with the general public, won’t fly today. How truly powerless were his words? He may have only found support with the fringe minority that thinks like he does. The majority of Americans reacted by expressing their distaste for his comments. He got in lots of trouble and had his employer spank him over it. The majority of the population that expressed their views on the subject did so to call him to the mat over his statements.
His words have no power. The greatest risk here is going so overboard in punishing him that he can in some way start playing up a victim status in the face of extreme overreaction.
Bobb,
“They reflect a viewpoint held by many people living in this country, and I think that’s a problem…”
But it is a problem that is diminishing with each generation. It is a problem that more and more people see as a problem and act to correct or remove. But it is a belief that many hold and it would be wrong to tell them that they may not express it.
Mind you, I’m not saying others should not stand up and counter the statements or make an argument against expressed stupidity. It’s like with Kanye West declaring that Bush hates black people and that “they” were down there killing “us” for just trying to get food. I argued with several people here and lots of people outside the net-world that he was a moron and what he said was both full of it and just one part of an ultimately extremely self destructive POV to hold for various reasons. At no time did I say he shouldn’t be allowed to say such things (outside of questioning his choice of when and where) and I don’t think he should be financially punished for being an idiot. He has a right to be a fool and to prove it to the world as often as he wishes.
“Disregarding it as moronic, I think, is dangerous. You ignore morons, because they don’t know any better, and you can’t really help them change. Hardaway isn’t a moron, though. He holds a certain viewpoint that I think is detrimental to the ongoing development of our society.”
Calling it moronic isn’t dangerous so long as people don’t ignore anything that might grow from something like that. Write off words as nothing more then words. If he converts his beliefs into actions or has supporters that try to create physical or financial harm to gays, then you act and act decisively. You make an example of such fools because actions such as that are detrimental to the ongoing development of our society. But the odd group of fools, and groups that are growing smaller with time, opening their mouths and inserting their feet won’t mess with the development of our society. We’ve had people like this for as long as we’ve had society and likely always will. They’re not a problem so long as the majority continues to grow and continues to deem such behavior to be the boorish examples of moronic mouthbreathers that it is.
100 years ago, a white man standing on a street corner in Georgia and calling for his fellow “gentlemen” to get some rope and head out to lynch some blacks might have been a major threat to the local black population. Today the moron would end up arrested, probably given a mental evaluation and, if he were a public figure, shunned and booted from whatever position he held.
Directly taking steps to preserve your privilege isn’t inherently moronic or insane. Doing so publicly merely sacrifices that privilege’s most reliable shelter — denying it even exists.
100 years ago, the privilege of white patriarchy in the US did not depend on such a denial. Now those who would preverse it must resort to painting any criticism of white patriarchy as predatory — by comparing “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas” to “I hate gay people…. I’m homophobic. It shouldn’t be in the world, in the United States, I don’t like it.”
preserve
Bill Mulligan:
Article II of the U.S. Constitution states that the president must be a natural born citizen of the U.S. Unless I misunderstand the meaning, that doesn’t preclude he or she being born outside the U.S.- so long as his/her parents are U.S. citizens. That would automatically make him/her a U.S. citizen.
In other words, if for example, your parents- both U.S. citizens- were living in Germany when you were born, you’d be a U.S. citizen and eligible to run for president.
Though why anyone would _want_ to is beyond me. As Milo Bloom said in a 1988 (or late 1987) storyline about the search for a presidential candidate, “we need a complete fool.” He turned to Steve Dallas, who, not being a _complete_ fool, immediately shouted, “forget it!”
Again, someone born outside the U.S. to U.S. citizens is also a U.S. citizen. Neither Governor Granholm nor Governor Schwarzenegger could be president (barring a constitutional amendment) because they were born outside the U.S. (in Canada and Austria, respectively) to parents who weren’t U.S. citizens.
Now I’ve a question on a related note, one I’ll throw out to the room: If “Bob’s” mother has, say, dual U.S. and Canadian citizenship; his father has dual U.S. and German citizenship and Bob is born in Spain, how many citizenships can he claim? All of the above, or just some?
Rick
Mormons and old people didn’t do so great either which is possibly bad news for Mitt Romney and John McCain.
Someone should do a poll about the likelihood of voting for a candidate with a reputation for serious anger management problems. That would probably sink John McCain and Rudy Giuliani.
Howard Dean, too, but then he’s not running.
Rick–thanks for the correction. I feel like a dope; I’d always thought being born outside of the country disqualified a person. (Which would be a pretty silly reason to disqualify anyone).
Den–you’re right that both John McCain and Rudy Giuliani have shown flashes of temper before. Whether or not it hurts them might depend on how it is perceived and/or reported. I remember McCain being critisized for telling Connie Chung to go away after a primary loss, like that was a big display of ill temper. Of course, a lot will depend on how they contrast with the Democratic candidate. Would any display of anger look even worse when compared to Hillary’s relatively unemotional personality? It would depend on the viewer, I guess and whether or not the story the media decides to play on it “candidate Loose Cannon” or “Candidate Soulless Robot”. Niether of which is fair to the actual people involved but there we go.
It’s an unfortunate fact, but these days, candidates should realize that their every move and word can be recorded and analyzed by not only the media, but also the bloggers as they post it on U-tube. Howard Dean shouted to be heard over a cheering crowd and the next day, everyone thinks he’s a psycho. Teresa Heinz-Kerry tells a reporter with a long history of doing hatchet pieces on her and her family to “shove it” and everyone acts like she literally ripped his throat out. What’s the first thing most people think of when they hear Dan Quayle? Potatoe.
Both McCain and Giuliani have reputations for being short-tempered and vindictive. Whether that’s deserved or not, I don’t know, but I doubt there’s anything either could do to change that perception at this point.
“To which they would say that who are you to say that it’s wrong for them to feel that way? Their point of view would be that there’s something wrong with you for *not* being abominated. And they’ll claim that their position is backed up by the word of God. So you’ve got a tough road ahead of you.”
Oh, I’m not saying that I want to argue with them. I’m just saying that being open about his hatred actually *is* worse than avoiding the subject. One implies a deeper problem than the other.
For example, President Kennedy smoked cigars. However, he tried extremely hard not to be seen smoking cigars, to the point that he’d shove them in his pocket when the press showed up. The Secret Service joked about needing to line his pockets with asbestos because of all the holes he’d burned in them.
Kennedy did that because he didn’t want the children of the nation to see him smoking and take after his example. Now, I don’t think I can convert every smoker to have that attitude, but I do hold Kennedy in higher regard on that subject than all the people who’ve honestly tried to convince me that smoking doesn’t cause cancer.
Well, yeah, if she wasn’t born here it pretty much reduces her chances to zero!
I thought there was some kind of legislation in the works that’d make it possible for Schwarzenegger to run eventually, but I forget where I heard that.
Posted by: Jason M. Bryant at February 22, 2007 12:24 PM
I’m just saying that being open about his hatred actually *is* worse than avoiding the subject.
I have to disagree. If you really believe something, you should have the guts to say so. Moreover, the only way we can change irrational attitudes like bigotry towards gays is if those attitudes are out in the open where we can all have a good look at them. Covert bigotry is harder to fight because it’s harder to spot.
Posted by: Rob Brown at February 22, 2007 12:35 PM
I thought there was some kind of legislation in the works that’d make it possible for Schwarzenegger to run eventually, but I forget where I heard that.
That would require more than just “legislation.” It would entail an amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
There was talk of an amendment to get rid of the native born citizen requirement a few years ago when Ahnold had just recently gotten elected the governator. It kind of died down when his education reform initiatives got mired. Now that he’s won reelection easily, maybe they’re start talking him up for 2012.
I’m of two minds on this. On the one hand, I’d hate to go through the amendment process just for the ambitions of one man. On the other hand, the native born clause is really outdated and undemocratic. To be truly fair, it should be amended to just requiring the president to be a citizen in good standing.
I heard a suggestion the other day that we should amend the constitution to limit us to one president from Texas per century. Now that’s an amendment I could whole-heartedly support.
“Kennedy did that because he didn’t want the children of the nation to see him smoking and take after his example.”
That may be it, but I tend to suspect it may have had something to do with his having a fondness for Cuban cigars, and he didn’t want to have people seeing him puffing away on Havana Golds for obvious political reasons.
PAD
I had heard once that the day before JFK signed the Cuban embargo, he stocked up his humidore.
Jerry, perhaps a better demonstation of the point of viw that hate speech is bad in and of itself is this: a black cop serving in a police force in which racist language is common might find it difficult to perform his job, and will be unlikely to be promoted, even if there will not be clear signs of discrimination.
However, I tend more to agree with your point of view. The fact is that the fact that hate speech is less accepted today is not because of laws restricting freedom of speech, but because freedom of speech was used in order to change the way people think and behave.
“I have to disagree. If you really believe something, you should have the guts to say so. Moreover, the only way we can change irrational attitudes like bigotry towards gays is if those attitudes are out in the open where we can all have a good look at them. Covert bigotry is harder to fight because it’s harder to spot.”
I wonder. Do you think that the fact that racist language and behavior are less acceptable today was the result of an internal change leading to an external one, or an external change leading to an internal change? Was it first unacceptable to say racist things, and as a result racism become not only less acceptable on the outside, but eventually was removed (to a degree) from peole’s minds? Or did the rejection of racist language have to begin with an internal change?
———————-
“It does sound pretty ridiculous, Micha.
Whoever this candidate of theirs is (if they have found a particular TS circassian, that is) I wish that person the best, but I doubt she (I’ll refer to the candidate as “she” since this person identifies as female and plans to have surgery to become physically female) will have any chance of being elected.
It’s just like if somebody in the U.S. ran for President who was black, and gay, and a woman, and wasn’t born in the country. Even being ONE of those things hurts your chances, you know?”
I shouldn’t have posted that story, it requires too many explanations. The Israeli electoral system is different from the American.
To translate to American terms: suppose Ralph Nader was looking for a running mate for the next presidential elections. Obviously Nader has no chance of being president and his running mate’s identity probably only matters to the tiny group of ultra-liberal people who support Nader, and even then only those who bother being active in his party. But being the ultra-liberals that they are, they would want to have a running mate that will belong to an under-represented group like women, gays, blacks, hispanics and so forth, despite many of them being white heterosexuals (Nader will not consider giving up his candidacy of course so that such a person would be the presidential candidate). But which group should they satisfy? Which group is more important? And what about all of the possible staunch liberal candidates, the veterans of many struggles, who have the misfortune of being white? This is the kind of funny problems ultra-liberals such as myself, who vote for small liberal parties, have to face.
During our elections the liberal party I vote for used to joke that the ideal candidate would be a transexual-circassian, since it would satisfy four groups inside this rather small party: gays, russians, feminists, and arabs, each one of which had there own candidate they wanted to support. (there was no actual transexual candidate) Most of the voters however, although very liberal, were none of the above. They were mostly non immigrant heterosexual jews. The candidates they really liked were like them too. But they also wanted to feel that they were doing something for minorities.
And now to an even more boring explanation of the Israeli electoral system, proceed at your own peril:
The Nader analogy I wrote above doesn’t completelt fit. Israel doesn’t have a presidential system. We vote for political parties. A party gets seats in our 120 member parliament based on the number of votes it gets. I think about 50,000 votes is one seat ans so on. Each party has a list of people who fill the seats one by the party. In a small party like the one I vote for, the 10th person on the list has a very slim chance of getting in. No. 1 is the leader of the party. Part of the internal political process of the different parties involves constructing that lists, often by internal primaries. I think this aspect of our system is better than yours because votes don’t go to waste. Even if you hold a minority position you still have some candidates in parliament.
Since John McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone I hope this has all been worked out!
I’m pretty sure that, like a military base in a foreign country or an embassy, the Panama Cannel zone was considered by treaty to be US territory at that time, so McCain should have nothing to worry about.
Besides, he’s never going to win anyway. 🙂
“That may be it, but I tend to suspect it may have had something to do with his having a fondness for Cuban cigars, and he didn’t want to have people seeing him puffing away on Havana Golds for obvious political reasons.”
Eh, it’s probably both.
I’m just saying that being open about his hatred actually *is* worse than avoiding the subject.
I have to disagree. If you really believe something, you should have the guts to say so. Moreover, the only way we can change irrational attitudes like bigotry towards gays is if those attitudes are out in the open where we can all have a good look at them. Covert bigotry is harder to fight because it’s harder to spot.
***
The suggestion Hardaway’s statement — “I hate gay people…. I’m homophobic. It shouldn’t be in the world, in the United States, I don’t like it” — did anything to eleviate the oppression against gays is very generous with burdens other people are carrying. It’s all kinds of wrong.
“Irrational” doesn’t mean “oppressive,” “predatory,” or “wrong.” According to Jung, irrational personalities judge unconsciously and observe consciously. Witch-burnings were the last throes of a completely-rational pious social.
If you mean “oppressive,” “predatory,” or “wrong,” you can say “oppressive,” “predatory,” or “wrong” — don’t seek shelter behind terms you’ve demonstrated you don’t understand.
The implication that all rationality leads to the same rationality is, in itself, a crude form of rationality (an NYC-area NPR station ID citing a guy saying this airs all the time).
Intelligent design isn’t irrational, it simply disregards evolution — it’s a conflict of incompatible rational paradigms. Even atheist Kurt Vonnegut admits evolution makes as much sense as a tornado whipping into a hangar and slapping a 747 together — and considering how often evolution is misinterpreted, by capitalists, by communists, by supremacists, siding with intelligent design over the observation-heavy theory of evolution is clearly more rational.
***
Do you think that the fact that racist language and behavior are less acceptable today was the result of an internal change leading to an external one, or an external change leading to an internal change? Was it first unacceptable to say racist things, and as a result racism become not only less acceptable on the outside, but eventually was removed (to a degree) from peole’s minds? Or did the rejection of racist language have to begin with an internal change?
Poor people will talk about money. Rich people will tell you talking about money is impolite.
As the privileged shelter their privileges by making discussion of their privileges taboo, predators will shelter their predatory agendas with denial.
When racism was not considered predatory, publicly defending white patriarchy wasn’t a problem. Now white patriarchy has to be sheltered by comparing “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas” to “I hate gay people…. I’m homophobic. It shouldn’t be in the world, in the United States, I don’t like it” — where any criticism of white patriarchy gets painted as predatory.
Even atheist Kurt Vonnegut admits evolution makes as much sense as a tornado whipping into a hangar and slapping a 747 together
Okay, suddenly the bits you referred to from Galapagos a while back make a lot more sense: Vonnegut fails to understand evolution at the most basic level. Good to know. (And intelligent design requires the highly irrational step of saying “life, or at least some aspects of it, require an intelligent designer to explain them–but the intelligent designer doesn’t require an explanation.” Throwing up one’s hands and saying “Well, I guess we don’t need to explain this part” isn’t rational–it’s deliberate avoidance of rationality, even if it tries to cloak itself in rational terms.)
Even atheist Kurt Vonnegut admits evolution makes as much sense as a tornado whipping into a hangar and slapping a 747 together
Whoadawha??? I’m guessing this is from Mike. Well, yikes.
(pause while I read his post–don’t want to be accused of taking something out of context).
Well, that was the usual thing, though the fact that some people never change their tune has nothing to do with evolution. I don’t know if Mike will claim that the Vonnegut reflects his own view or is just something he threw in their to appear intellectual. It is, regardless, pure nonsense. Vonnegut is an intelligent man but saying “evolution makes as much sense as a tornado whipping into a hangar and slapping a 747 together” would, if true, indicates that a basic knowledge of biology is not one of his great strengths.
All of this, of course, assumes that Mike actually has his facts straight–a dangerous assumption, given the source. For example, I am having trouble finding evidence that Mr. Vonnegut has said this and given the science knowledge he has shown in the past it seems rather out of character. The statement sounds a good deal like something British astronomer Fred Hoyle said: the random generation of a simple cell was as likely as “a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.”
Note that this is an argument against the chemical origin of life and has nothing–zip, nada–to do with evolution of life forms on earth. Believing, as some do, that life began on earth from an extraterrestrial “infection”, if you will, is interesting but completely meaningless to a discussion on evolution. A common mistake, no big deal (unless one is arrogant enough to include statements like “don’t seek shelter behind terms you’ve demonstrated you don’t understand.” Then you look like an ášš.)
Perhaps Vonnegut was quoting Mr Hoyle in his novel Timequake (one creationist online indicated that something like the quote appears in the book) but that is not the same thing as it being his opinion. Work of fiction and all.
But regardless of whether or not Vonnegut believes this, it is a seriously flawed argument. for many reasons, not the least of which is that nobody claims that complex molecules spontaneously pop into existence by sheer chance. Were that the case every snowflake would be a thermodynamic improbability.
Evolution, like all theories of the natural sciences, seeks an explanation that does not require an the involvement of intelligent forces. It seeks to explain biological phenomena by a mechanistic (is this the proper term?) explanation, just as physics explains the motion of planets and the behavior of atoms, or geology the formation of mountains and continents.
This methodology of seeking mechanistic explanations to natural phenomena is considered preferable for 3 reasons:
1) It reduces the need to speculate about external forces of which there is no empiric evidence available, such as an intelligent designer.
2) It’s main tool is observation of the phenomena themselves.
3) The explanation offered by natural sciences seem satisfactory.
Evolution is opposed by people for three reasons:
1) It seems counterintuitive. In everyday human experience, complex things, like planes or clocks, are the result of human minds designing them. It is difficult for people to accept that complex biological organisms, especially humans, are the result of an inanimate process. Some even claim that they can scientifically proove that it is impossible that such complex organisms were formed in the way evolution describes.
2) Human tradition tended to attribute intelligent will to the forces of nature — gods, spirits etc. Maybe it is an aspect of human nature to animate things? This tradition culminated in the belief in a God who is intelligent and controls or at least intiated natural phenomena. Furthermore, tradition is a strong social and psychological force, and reliion has a long tradition.
3) A mechanistic explanation of human existence, especially one that compars humans with other animals runs contrary to the way humans preceive humanity, especially in the context of human morality. (Mike for example speaks against evolution because of its connection to certain ideologies that tried to extend the evolutionary explanation to the realm of human sociology and history).
——–
Mike is correct that both evolution (and other mechanistic explanations) and intelligent design are equally rational explanations, assuming you adopt a rational attitude for your subject matter. Science does not have to automatically reject the possibility of intelligent agents to be rational. Natural sciences do so because explanations that do not assume intelligent agents are better. Social sciences and humanities on the other hand deal with phenomena connected with intellligent agents (mostly) — humans. However, even if science were to discard the requirement that the explanation of natural phenomena will not use intelligent agents in its explanations, it would still require that the subject matter of the study will be addressed rationaly. That would mean the intelligent designer wil not be treated with the reverence that religious people attribute to god, but instead he will be studied in the same dispassionate way way that a rock, a planet, a virus, a social institution, or human psychology are studied.
[I should qualify what Isaid earlier in two cases: ecology studies human influence on the environment, and quantum physics speaks about the way an intelligent observer affects behavior of particles.]
It has long amazed me that people–religious ones particularly–are so resistant to the idea of evolution.
Not all, of course. The Pope has no problem with it. One can simply state that evolution is the means by which God (or whatever supernatural force one believes in) has used evolution to get us to this point. Since virtually all educated religious people have no trouble accepting that God uses natural means to me the earth spin and the seasons change it seems to me the height of hubris to think that only Man could not be achieved through nature. The stars and the planets, oh sure, but not mighty man!
I would answer the objections in order:
1) It seems counterintuitive. In everyday human experience, complex things, like planes or clocks, are the result of human minds designing them. It is difficult for people to accept that complex biological organisms, especially humans, are the result of an inanimate process. Some even claim that they can scientifically proove that it is impossible that such complex organisms were formed in the way evolution describes.
Life is chemistry and chemistry is fully capable of getting order out of randomness, at least in the short term. Again, I would use the example of the snowflake–it is not a miracle that water forms such perfect crystal forms. The odds of such a thing forming randomly from atoms is probably 1 bazillion to 1. It happens because it is not random.
2) Human tradition tended to attribute intelligent will to the forces of nature — gods, spirits etc. Maybe it is an aspect of human nature to animate things? This tradition culminated in the belief in a God who is intelligent and controls or at least intiated natural phenomena. Furthermore, tradition is a strong social and psychological force, and reliion has a long tradition.
And I would respect that. Science can’t disprove God. A smart person of a religious nature should welcome science in its search to find the means by which God does His handiwork. Indeed, one could argue that those who try to supress such knowledge are working contrary to God’s will.
3) A mechanistic explanation of human existence, especially one that compars humans with other animals runs contrary to the way humans preceive humanity, especially in the context of human morality. (Mike for example speaks against evolution because of its connection to certain ideologies that tried to extend the evolutionary explanation to the realm of human sociology and history).
Animal, plant, protist, fungus, bacteria–these are the options, folks. I’ll take animal and be happy about it.
As for those who try to either use or deny evolution to advance some political agenda, well, that’s probably true for every scientific truth. It’s no reason to deny the science.
I would not argue against intelligent design on the basis of it being irrational; only that it is not scientific and, as such, not proper for the teaching of science.
Intelligent design works for some because it’s easy. No research, no questions. Any time you hit a dead end, insert the “Intelligent Designer”. Or, to keep it simple, a “Being with God like Powers.
Most of the folks I’ve met who take I.D seriously are the same bunch who call global warming or climate change a myth. Evidence be dámņëd, we’ll go with B.W.G.P.
IMHO, these people fear the idea that maybe there’s no one in charge, and we’ll have to clean up the mess ourselves.
I don’t know if Mike will claim that the Vonnegut reflects his own view or is just something he threw in their to appear intellectual.
Yes, Vonnegut cited a scientist, referred to him as if they were acquainted, and did not challenge his expertise. The name Hoyle sounds familiar, I don’t doubt it’s him, and your citation of Hoyle suits me fine:
[The] probability of life originating on earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane sweeping through a scrap-yard would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747.
Though Vonnegut cited Hoyle somewhere else, Hocus Pocus mentions in passing microscopic organism traveling on meteors and astreroids and such. Germs that were discovered to have survived on a lense exposed to the lunar surface have also been cited as an example of how space-traveling germs could survive.
Note that this is an argument against the chemical origin of life and has nothing–zip, nada–to do with evolution of life forms on earth.
Evolutionary theory proposes that all life has a common ancestry.
Considering a proven theory of the origin of life could make or break evolutionary/intelligent design theory — the topic I was addressing — saying the origin of life has absolutely nothing — zip, nada — to do with evolution is counter-intuitive to the point of mental retardation.
When you talk here about students, I hope you’re speaking as a driving instructor, and not some kind of science teacher.
But regardless of whether or not Vonnegut believes this, it is a seriously flawed argument. for many reasons, not the least of which is that nobody claims that complex molecules spontaneously pop into existence by sheer chance. Were that the case every snowflake would be a thermodynamic improbability.
In a letter to Joseph Dalton Høøkër of February 1 1871, Charles Darwin[™] made the suggestion that the original spark of life may have begun in a “warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present, [so] that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes”.
Unless you are referring to the literal appearance of matter from nothingness — why Hoyle’s observation would depend on the literal appearance of matter from nothingness you’ll have to explain — the above quote by Charles Darwin™ from 136 years ago qualifies as a claim as valid as any other that life blossomed by mere chance.
…and considering how often evolution is misinterpreted, by capitalists, by communists, by supremacists, siding with intelligent design over the observation-heavy theory of evolution is clearly more rational.
(Mike for example speaks against evolution because of its connection to certain ideologies that tried to extend the evolutionary explanation to the realm of human sociology and history).
Observing the rationality of you siding with intelligent design over a theory you don’t understand isn’t speaking against evolution.
Posted by: Micha at February 22, 2007 02:40 PM
Do you think that the fact that racist language and behavior are less acceptable today was the result of an internal change leading to an external one, or an external change leading to an internal change?
Interesting question. In the U.S., the civil rights movement of the 1960s forced our nation to see the ugly results of racism. Television had a lot to do with it: people could see peaceful black demonstrators being shot with police water cannons and attacked by police dogs. Our collective conscience was awakened, and as a result racist language gradually became less and less socially acceptable as people began to realize just where racism leads.
Granted, we haven’t gotten to the “promised land” Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about, but we’re closer now than we were 40 or 50 years ago.
Anyway, my initial remark admittedly was a shot from the hip. It is a good thing that bigoted langauge today results in society’s disapprobation. A few decades ago, Michael Richards could have gotten away with his recent racist tirade. Not so today. That’s a good thing.
It’s a double-edged sword, though. In today’s environment of “political correctness,” I don’t think anyone could get away with doing a T.V. show like “All in the Family.” That’s unfortunate. I was just a youngster when that show was in first run, and I believe it had a lot to do with helping me form my social conscience. Archie Bunker’s escapades were cautionary tales that screamed, “Don’t be like this.” We can’t change bigoted attitudes unless we first identify them and discuss them, just as doctors cannot treat a cancer that is undiagnosed.
Considering a proven theory of the origin of life could make or break evolutionary/intelligent design theory — the topic I was addressing — saying the origin of life has absolutely nothing — zip, nada — to do with evolution is counter-intuitive to the point of mental retardation.
The origin of life is a completely different issue from evolution. This is not rocket science. Imagining that the first life on earth came from space viruses or cosmic bacteria does not, in any way shape or form, change evolutionary theory. The name of the book was On the Origin of Species, not On the Origin of Life.
I also fail to see how bacteria arriving on earth from space has much to do with Intelligent Design. Are these supposed to be Intelligent Bacteria, Mike? Did they arrive in a bacteria spaceship of their own design? You’re like those goofs who head off to Africa to look for surviving relic dinosaurs, thinking that this will disprove evolution when evolution has nothing–zip, nada, zero–to do with theories of the disappearance of the dinosaurs.
When you talk here about students, I hope you’re speaking as a driving instructor, and not some kind of science teacher.
Yet they somehow are able to figure out the difference between abiogenesis and evolution. And these are 9th graders.
In a letter to Joseph Dalton Høøkër of February 1 1871, Charles Darwin[™] made the suggestion that the original spark of life may have begun in a “warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present, [so] that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes”.
Yes. Um, your point?
Oh! You think that is inconsistent with the idea that nobody believe that life just randomly came together from chemicals, like Hoyle’s imagined 747. See, Mike, here’s the thing–there is a discipline called chemistry that explains why, under certain circumstances, simple chemical compounds become more complex chemical compounds. It isn’t random and a matter of pure chance. Darwin was correct that his primordial pool could very reasonably be imagined to be capable of forming complex compounds from simpler ones. Whether or not that is really how life on Earth came about is something we may never know. But what is not proposed by any scientist I know of is the idea that somewhere in a pool of goo all the various parts randomly and spontaneously came together to form an amoeba. The first self replicating molecules were not alive, by the modern definition of it anyway.
But again, none of this is part of evolutionary theory. As wikipedia states The origin of life from self-catalytic chemical reactions is not a part of biological evolution, but rather of pre-evolutionary abiogenesis. They tend to get lumped in together by the careless.
Also, considering only one pair of matching snowflakes has ever been verified, you may want to clue us all in on how the shape assumed by every snowflake isn’t thermodynamically improbable.
What the old saw about no two snowflakes ever matching has to do with any of this is beyond me. (at any rate it is probably virtually impossible for them to be exactly identical–exact same number of atoms? Doubtful.) And as to why snowflakes are not thermodynamically improbable…go talk to the folks in Oswego, now still shoveling 142 inches of improbability off their roofs. Snowflakes are formed from crystals. Crystalline water forms the structures it does because of very specific ways the water molecules interact with each other.
Why do snowflakes not violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics? Because the Earth is not a closed system. Energy flows in. Not. Rocket. Science.
This from the guy who tells others “don’t seek shelter behind terms you’ve demonstrated you don’t understand.” But that’s Our Mike. The perfect storm of arrogance and ignorance, always convinced that the best defense is offensiveness. Don’t ever change.
Mike for example speaks against evolution because of its connection to certain ideologies that tried to extend the evolutionary explanation to the realm of human sociology and history
Which is a common argument made by people who don’t have any competing data to counter a scientific theory that they don’t like. I find it being made all the time for everything from global warming to evolution and the big bang. The argument goes that scientists are advancing certain theories not because that’s what the data supports, but because they’re communists/nazis/atheists who want to undermine our society or force us to accept a certain political ideology. For people like that, facts aren’t facts, they’re just tools to be manipulated for one agenda or another. If your theories don’t support their agenda, it’s not because you found facts they didn’t know about. It’s because you have a different agenda. To them, everyone has an agenda. Except themselves of course, they just want to expose the “truth” against your facts.
Manny has it right, ID appeals to people because it’s an easy to gloss over complex ideas that they don’t understand. But just because Professor Behe can’t imagine a mechanism that would produce a flagellum through natural selection doesn’t mean that one doesn’t exist.
ID, though, is boring. If you don’t understand something, just put up a sign that says, “here God intervened” and stop asking questions. Perhaps, though, that is their agenda. Questions, after all, could lead to more questions, which might lead to independent thought.
Can’t that.
“2) Human tradition tended to attribute intelligent will to the forces of nature — gods, spirits etc. Maybe it is an aspect of human nature to animate things? This tradition culminated in the belief in a God who is intelligent and controls or at least intiated natural phenomena. Furthermore, tradition is a strong social and psychological force, and religion has a long tradition.
And I would respect that. Science can’t disprove God. A smart person of a religious nature should welcome science in its search to find the means by which God does His handiwork. Indeed, one could argue that those who try to supress such knowledge are working contrary to God’s will.”
Ultimately, the probem for religion is not the theories that scientific knowledge offers, or any challenge that it does or does not offer to the idea of God. It is a problem of the authority of knowledge. The authority of religions comes from tradition — knowledge passed down. and only religion has the authority to interpret tradition. The moment a person suggest another, competing source of knowledge, reason, observation, that person is challenging the authority of tradition and of those who interpret it. It doesn’t matter if it is an ancient Athenian philosopher, 9th century Muslim philosopher, a 12th century professor in Paris, or a 19th century biologist. The fact that such a person claims knowledge without depending on tradition is bad enough. It is even worse if the knowledge he or she offers does not include god as a part of the explanation as modern science does.
“Animal, plant, protist, fungus, bacteria–these are the options, folks. I’ll take animal and be happy about it.”
Next you’ll be saying that the earth is not the center of the universe, and then that our traditions are simply social institutions no different from other inferior cultures. People wil start questioning authority. You’re corrupting our youth Bill. Socrates was executed for this.
Oh, since Mike copyrighted Daewin every time you mention him in class you have to pay royalties.
Mike wrote:
“…and considering how often evolution is misinterpreted, by capitalists, by communists, by supremacists, siding with intelligent design over the observation-heavy theory of evolution is clearly more rational.
(Mike for example speaks against evolution because of its connection to certain ideologies that tried to extend the evolutionary explanation to the realm of human sociology and history).
Observing the rationality of you siding with intelligent design over a theory you don’t understand isn’t speaking against evolution.”
To prefer a theory like intelligent design over a theory like evolution which is counterintuitive and hard to understand is understandable, it’s human nature, it is not even completly irrational.
Prefering the not really scientific theory of intelligent design over the scientific theory of evolution because of political movements that misused that theory is irrational.
“Intelligent design works for some because it’s easy. No research, no questions. “
I don’t think so. Science also finds itself at times stuck with no answers. And theology is not easy — speculating about divine beings is not easy. Intelligent design is more satisfying on some level for human psychology.
———————
“Do you think that the fact that racist language and behavior are less acceptable today was the result of an internal change leading to an external one, or an external change leading to an internal change?
Interesting question. In the U.S., the civil rights movement of the 1960s forced our nation to see the ugly results of racism. Television had a lot to do with it: people could see peaceful black demonstrators being shot with police water cannons and attacked by police dogs. Our collective conscience was awakened, and as a result racist language gradually became less and less socially acceptable as people began to realize just where racism leads.
Granted, we haven’t gotten to the “promised land” Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about, but we’re closer now than we were 40 or 50 years ago.”
I think the two processes happened simultanously. Some people went through internal change because black’s were humanized. Others changed there behavior because of social pressure by the first kind of people. some people went through both processes.
“Anyway, my initial remark admittedly was a shot from the hip. It is a good thing that bigoted langauge today results in society’s disapprobation. A few decades ago, Michael Richards could have gotten away with his recent racist tirade. Not so today. That’s a good thing.”
Agreed.
“It’s a double-edged sword, though. In today’s environment of “political correctness,” I don’t think anyone could get away with doing a T.V. show like “All in the Family.” That’s unfortunate. I was just a youngster when that show was in first run, and I believe it had a lot to do with helping me form my social conscience. Archie Bunker’s escapades were cautionary tales that screamed, “Don’t be like this.” We can’t change bigoted attitudes unless we first identify them and discuss them, just as doctors cannot treat a cancer that is undiagnosed.”
Today we have comedians and comedy shows like Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Sarah Silverman, Southpark, the Daily Show, Bill Mahr, that examine political correctness and what’s hidden beneath it. They are very edgy. Different comedy for a different time.
Micha, I don’t understand what you mean by this: “Mike is correct that both evolution (and other mechanistic explanations) and intelligent design are equally rational explanations, assuming you adopt a rational attitude for your subject matter.”
For one, this sounds circular…everything would be rational if you assume it’s rational? Well, of course. You can look at any number of religious/cultural explanations of the world around us, and if you adopt the stance that the beliefs of that culture/religion are rational, then their observations are of course rational. Ancient Greek and Roman cultures, for example, held the rational belief that Gods actually existed, and interacted in a physical, tangible, visible way with the world around them. Hëll, how many people were running around in ancient Greece claiming to be sons or daughters of Zeus?
ID is only rational if the idea of the Designer…God in most cases…is rational. But it’s not a rational idea. I’m a fairly spiritual guy, I totally believe in God, but I know it’s not a rational belief, because it’s based on nothing more than my feelings and what I’ve been told. If anything, it’s based more on the things I don’t know than anything.
Evolution, on the other hand, is totally based on observations and conclusions based upon what we see of the world around us. It’s a rational theory because it’s based on facts. With evolution, you trace the evolutionary development through genetic and fossil records, and you draw the conclusion that species are evolving into other species over time. There are very real and tangible facts to observe, study, and compare. With ID, you say God designed all life. That’s it. There’s nothing to see, nothing to study, nothing to compare. A rational person would not accept ID, without some irrational motivation. Religion is irrational, because it almost universally deals with the unproven, the unknown, and the unknowable. You take religion on faith, which often contradicts or even replaces rationality.
What is troubling is that evolution continues to this day as a sound scientific principle–what else are strains of diseases which mutate to resist various medications if not evolution? Are Godhuggers (if enviornmentalists are treehuggers, then those who substitute God’s work for nature’s should be Godhuggers) going to claim that God is so into micromanaging that he’s actually deciding which diseases should live and die?
PAD
Considering a proven theory of the origin of life could make or break evolutionary/intelligent design theory — the topic I was addressing — saying the origin of life has absolutely nothing — zip, nada — to do with evolution is counter-intuitive to the point of mental retardation.
Imagining that the first life on earth came from space viruses or cosmic bacteria does not, in any way shape or form, change evolutionary theory.
Evolutionary theory includes timelines, does it not?
What evolutionary timeline does not include a demarcation between the time when there is no evidence of life and the time when there is?
Just because fossilized remains give record to the changes of life, but not its origin, it’s a very crude rationalization, Lothar, to say establishing the origin of life contributes nothing to establishing the credibility of evolution.
It’s Not Rocket Science.™
When you talk here about students, I hope you’re speaking as a driving instructor, and not some kind of science teacher.
Yet they somehow are able to figure out the difference between abiogenesis and evolution. And these are 9th graders.
You can’t even make the intuitive leap Hoyle based his statistical conclusion on evolutionary paradigms without explicitly being told so.
And it isn’t like you don’t have a history of disregarding plainly worded English if Hoyle’s notes cite fossilized records.
Dude, your salary so belongs to me.
But regardless of whether or not Vonnegut believes this, it is a seriously flawed argument. for many reasons, not the least of which is that nobody claims that complex molecules spontaneously pop into existence by sheer chance. Were that the case every snowflake would be a thermodynamic improbability.
Unless you are referring to the literal appearance of matter from nothingness — why Hoyle’s observation would depend on the literal appearance of matter from nothingness you’ll have to explain — the above quote by Charles Darwin™ from 136 years ago qualifies as a claim as valid as any other that life blossomed by mere chance.
Oh! You think that is inconsistent with the idea that nobody believe that life just randomly came together from chemicals, like Hoyle’s imagined 747.
In as much as I disagree Charles Darwin™ is Nobody™ — yeah.
So belongs to me.
Also, considering only one pair of matching snowflakes has ever been verified, you may want to clue us all in on how the shape assumed by every snowflake isn’t thermodynamically improbable.
What the old saw about no two snowflakes ever matching has to do with any of this is beyond me. (at any rate it is probably virtually impossible for them to be exactly identical–exact same number of atoms? Doubtful.) And as to why snowflakes are not thermodynamically improbable…go talk to the folks in Oswego, now still shoveling 142 inches of improbability off their roofs.
In as much as the shape of each snowflake is virtually unique — yeah.
So Belongs To Me.™
…this sounds circular…everything would be rational if you assume it’s rational?
Jung distinguished judging functions (functions that model, iconifying functions — thoughts or feelings) as rational, and observing functions (functions that record, empirical functions — sensing or intuiting) as irrational.
As far as all beliefs model the world or an aspect of it, Counselor,™ they are rational.
I’ve had ID supporters try to explain to me why evolution on a micro scale…slight changes in color, or developing bigger teeth, or a flu virus developing a resistance to the flu vaccine du jour…doesn’t support the idea of so-called macro evolution, which was defined to me as one species changing into another.
After which I showed through maths how a 1% change in size every 100 years takes T-Rex from a 30′ long monster down to the size of a large chicken in something like 25,000 years.
In this case, ID/faith is totally overriding rationality, in the sense that ID is being used to replace evolution. ID and evolution can coexist, just so long as one understands that they aren’t talking about the same thing. ID, unless you take it to mean that God not only designs all life, but he also is changing all life around us, merely looks at the origin of life. Evolution doesn’t look at the origin of life at all, although eventually perfect knowledge of the evolutionary tree would, logically, reveal the origin of life.
• 
Yes, the irony doesn’t elude me that there’s plenty of people who would answer the same way when asked about African-Americans, and I doubt Hardaway would be so sanguine about that attidue. I wonder if anyone’s brought that to his attention.
In Hardaway’s forced (and I’m sure totally disingenuous) apology shortly after this, he said “As an African-American, I know all too well the negative thoughts and feelings hatred and bigotry cause.” Which, IMO, makes it all the more reprehensible that he would say this kind of thing, because as he says, he knows how much being a victim of bigotry hurts.
Here’s something funny…I found another press release that quotes him as saying “There are more important things to worry about than my comments. We should be more concerned about President (George) Bush and all the people dying in Iraq.” If he’s sincere and not just trying to get back in people’s good graces by trying to get the focus on somebody worse than him, then at least he’s not clueless about everything but it sucks that we’ve got guys like this on our side of the Iraq issue. I wouldn’t turn down any help they’d give as far as public statements and protests and donating money and whatever, but I wouldn’t like working with them when they harbor such hatred towards innocent people.
After all, the whole reason some of us oppose Iraq is because innocent people are dying; the last thing we want to see is somebody who has done no wrong dying or suffering, whether they are being killed or wounded or tortured at the hands of the U.S. military under Bush’s orders, or whether they are being hurt emotionally by Hardaway’s comments and rejection by society. People should live and let live.
If, for instance, this guy was raised to embrace the Bible, then his breeding tells him to abominate gays and also not to lie. So he was doing was he thought was right. Maybe we should hunt down his parents and ask him what they were planting in their kid’s mind.
That is certainly a possible reason for his feelings.
However, it’s not the only one, as I know. When I was in high school the word “fággøŧ” got thrown around a lot as an insult (probably still is, though not as much). That was a homophobic environment, and if I were to tell you that I was completely innocent and never had a bad thought about gay people at that point in my life I would be lying.
I didn’t grow up in a family of religious zealots or anything. For me, and I presume for other people, the thing that made us think of being gay as disgusting and make crude jokes and so forth was that we thought the idea of anal sex was disgusting. And, as far as we knew back then, only gay people engaged in anal sex. Even today, the thought of somebody voluntarily sticking any part of their body into the hole through which fecal matter is passed–particularly if they do it with no condom–is not really something I like thinking about. Any more than I like thinking about somebody giving somebody else a “Dirty Sanchez.” Guess that makes me fecalphobic.
I began to think about it differently when Freddy Mercury died, however, because suddenly a face had been attached to the faceless “fággøŧš” that got ridiculed all the time, and it was the face of somebody I respected. I saw the clips from Freddy giving interviews and could not help but realize that there was more to this guy than just his sexual orientation.
That, combined with the revelation that many, if not most, gay people don’t like the idea of making physical contact with human waste any more than I do (hence very thorough personal hygiene and use of condoms), was what made me do a 180 and become more accepting.
Anyway, my point is that nowhere in this story did the Bible or the Torah or the Koran play a part. Obviously, the hatred towards gay people exhibited by others *is* rooted in their religion, but this is not always the case. In my case, my parents had absolutely nothing to do with it one way or the other.
You started by saying the motive to limit marriage to exclude gays isn’t hostile.
But when someone who publicly says nice things about gays withholds his support to gay marriage — he’s practically declared war on homosexuality.
Why yes, That’s Totally Normal Psychology.™
That’s funny, I would have thought you were someone’s kid. But if you deny it, who am I to disagree?
I’ve been treating this story a bit like most of the Anna Nicole coverage.
(Click)… Next channel.
It was worth a side note on the news, but the coverage and reactions have been silly. He’s a moron and he said something to prove just how big a moron he really is. Big deal.
Last I looked, you can like or dislike anyone you want to so long as your personal dislike of them doesn’t come in to play in a employer/employee relationship or lead to criminal actions. From what little I’ve bothered following of this, this situation is neither of those two things. He has the right to be, in my POV, a moron and to show that he is a moron if someone asks him to do so.
He has a right to be a moron. People have the right to point out that he is a moron. Other people have the right to point out that, by their POV, he is correct in his views. It’s all only words. So long as it stays only words, so long as the words don’t turn into encouragement towards violence and so long as his professional actions toward any gay men he may end up playing against on the courts are not being hampered by his personal views, it’s really not that big of a deal.
Besides, it’s not like he said Belgium.
Hilarious!!! Brilliant!!!
As for Hardaway (“Hard”-heh heh heh) apologizing, nah. He was stating hoe he feels. Even if how he feels is repugnant, close minded, and prejudiced, it’s still how he feels.
Any hoo, atleast there’s no doubt the guy’s a jerk. Gotta feed baby.
Bill, there’s no real disagreement between you and me. You are correct that institutional prejudice is worst than a few words by an loud mouth bigot. I personaly don’t care much for those situations where some celebrity says something stupid and than goes through a whole public penance. However, the fact that we live today in a world (at least in the west) where homosexuality is slightly more tolerated, and prejudice slightly less tolerated, is because of a lot of small events in which intolerance was delegitimized. So basically we both agree that it is good that Hardaway got into some trouble for his words, but there are still many greater issues to deal with.
About Mike, you’re not missing anything.
Jerry, there is view, which I do not completley accept, that says that hate speech, in and of itself, harms gays, blacks, arabs, jews, mexicans, women etc. because if hate speech is common and acceptable, it makes it difficult for them to function in society. I don’t think I’m explaining this point of view very well, but I would imagine that it is very difficult for a homosexual attending a high school in which the word fággøŧ is in common use, even if there are no cases of gay bashing and he or she is not actualy prevented from doing anything. The hostile environment probably affects his or her life in ways we are not aware of.
Rob, it is no secret that sexuality is a very significant aspect of human identity and of human interaction. My theory is that homosexuality, or in the past the presence of women in the workplace, are or were perceived by society as a disturbance of the stability of that identity and interaction. In other words, it touches on a deep psychological level.
An interesting poll just came out that stated (and let’s keep in mind the usual caveats about the general uselessness of polls) that more people would vote for a gay president than they would an atheist one. Interesting if true. Mormons and old people didn’t do so great either which is possibly bad news for Mitt Romney and John McCain.
A certain Israeli liberal political party I sometimes vote for really wanted to have minorities on its ticket (Arabs, Gays, women, and Russians mostly). So somebody figured out that the most likely candidate to get on the list would be a transexual Circassian (small community of Arabic muslims who were brought by the Turks to Palestine/Israel from the Circassian mountains [Russia] in the 19th century).
OK. This would have been funnier without all the explanations.
Jerry, totally agree with you on the ANS coverage…but I don’t think Hardaway’s comments are of the same ilk. They reflect a viewpoint held by many people living in this country, and I think that’s a problem. Not that they live here, or hold those views, but rather that prejudice and discrimination based on sexual preference is something we’re still dealing with. Disregarding it as moronic, I think, is dangerous. You ignore morons, because they don’t know any better, and you can’t really help them change. Hardaway isn’t a moron, though. He holds a certain viewpoint that I think is detrimental to the ongoing development of our society.
Bill simply made institutional reform a priority over challenging the public celebration of bigotry. His equating the retaliation against “I hate gay people…. I’m homophobic. It shouldn’t be in the world, in the United States, I don’t like it” with the retaliation against “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas” still stands.
Comparing the two agendas only makes sense if you consider any public criticism of white patriarchy to be predatory. It demonstrates the neediness underlying the pretense of invulnerability.
To Bill, reform doesn’t begin with crude Boston Tea Parties, but with fully evolved Declaration of Independences — and only for the reform he has no stake in. He holds others to abstinance from lying, rumor campaigns, and libel, but never himself. It’s how he shelters the status quo he seeks credit for criticising.
That’s how pretense shelters a predatory agenda.
So somebody figured out that the most likely candidate to get on the list would be a transexual Circassian
Why not a shrimp-headed welder with pods?
I shouldn’t have posted that bit. It requires too many explanations.
A transsexual circassian is gay/woman/arab/russian simultanously. namely four marginalized groups in Israeli society.
This party is very liberal, so it wants to help these groups. But most of its voters and candidates do not belong to marginalized groups but in fact belong to the more fortunate group of Israeli society — the equivalent of WASPs. It is also a small party with only 5-8 members actually entering our parliament. So they were at a bind between their desire to include members of these groups in their party, and the desire to have the people they like — who are like them — enter parliament. So somebody who embodies four of the marginalized groups at once would have been ideal way for them to satisfy both their liberal inclinations and have most of their buddies in parliament. basically you have a party of WASPy liberals trying to have a token minority.
It’s one of the, you’d have to have been there jokes — not really funny.
Bill, I think that shrimp is not kosher. I expect that would work against the welder…
It does sound pretty ridiculous, Micha.
Whoever this candidate of theirs is (if they have found a particular TS circassian, that is) I wish that person the best, but I doubt she (I’ll refer to the candidate as “she” since this person identifies as female and plans to have surgery to become physically female) will have any chance of being elected.
It’s just like if somebody in the U.S. ran for President who was black, and gay, and a woman, and wasn’t born in the country. Even being ONE of those things hurts your chances, you know?
It’s just like if somebody in the U.S. ran for President who was black, and gay, and a woman, and wasn’t born in the country. Even being ONE of those things hurts your chances, you know?
Well, yeah, if she wasn’t born here it pretty much reduces her chances to zero!
(Interesting plot idea–a candidate discovers, on the eve of the election, that they were actually born outside of the USA, thus disqualifying them. Or better yet, their opponent discovers it.)
Micha,
Yeah, I’ve heard that a lot as well but have never subscribed to it. I also tend to believe that there are two things that change the ability of words to harm over time.
The first is any person’s own ability to brush stupid crap like that off. I’ve pointed out before that I grew up in an area where I was the minority for most of my time there. I was the only white guy on my bus in two school districts. Whites were the minority in most of my classes in Petersburg and in some in Prince George. At a time before I was old enough to drive, I was one of only a handful of white kids in my neighborhood.
I had quite a few black friends, but there were lots of black kids in Petersburg that were as racist towards whites as any 50’s Southerner stereotype you can think of would be towards blacks. I had lots of nasty things said to me based on nothing more the color of my skin. I also had a few acts of violence thrown my way based on my being white. Violence I met with violence until I got a reputation as someone you didn’t mess with. But words? Couldn’t care less. The people saying those things didn’t know me, weren’t my friends and meant absolutely less then nothing to me. Their words had no power in my mind. Their words couldn’t hurt me.
It’s something I point out to other officers from time to time when they take offense to something said by some loudmouth. Lots of people like to say lots of fun things to/at police just because we’re there and they’re morons. So what? Why should I give a moron’s words any value by allowing them to have any meaning to me?
The second factor is time and public acceptance of an idea. 100 years ago, a white man standing on a street corner in Georgia and calling for his fellow “gentlemen” to get some rope and head out to lynch some blacks might have been a major threat to the local black population. Today the moron would end up arrested, probably given a mental evaluation and, if he were a public figure, shunned and booted from whatever position he held. 50 years ago, blacks and Asians were portrayed in films in a manner that would not be accepted by the general public today. An entertainer then could be able to do a routine with hate filled rants and racial slurs that would get him banned from most places today and, if he were, say, a well known TV star, get him in temporarily career threatening jeopardy.
Dingbat made a stupid statement that, while maybe 70 or 80 years ago would have flown with the general public, won’t fly today. How truly powerless were his words? He may have only found support with the fringe minority that thinks like he does. The majority of Americans reacted by expressing their distaste for his comments. He got in lots of trouble and had his employer spank him over it. The majority of the population that expressed their views on the subject did so to call him to the mat over his statements.
His words have no power. The greatest risk here is going so overboard in punishing him that he can in some way start playing up a victim status in the face of extreme overreaction.
Bobb,
“They reflect a viewpoint held by many people living in this country, and I think that’s a problem…”
But it is a problem that is diminishing with each generation. It is a problem that more and more people see as a problem and act to correct or remove. But it is a belief that many hold and it would be wrong to tell them that they may not express it.
Mind you, I’m not saying others should not stand up and counter the statements or make an argument against expressed stupidity. It’s like with Kanye West declaring that Bush hates black people and that “they” were down there killing “us” for just trying to get food. I argued with several people here and lots of people outside the net-world that he was a moron and what he said was both full of it and just one part of an ultimately extremely self destructive POV to hold for various reasons. At no time did I say he shouldn’t be allowed to say such things (outside of questioning his choice of when and where) and I don’t think he should be financially punished for being an idiot. He has a right to be a fool and to prove it to the world as often as he wishes.
“Disregarding it as moronic, I think, is dangerous. You ignore morons, because they don’t know any better, and you can’t really help them change. Hardaway isn’t a moron, though. He holds a certain viewpoint that I think is detrimental to the ongoing development of our society.”
Calling it moronic isn’t dangerous so long as people don’t ignore anything that might grow from something like that. Write off words as nothing more then words. If he converts his beliefs into actions or has supporters that try to create physical or financial harm to gays, then you act and act decisively. You make an example of such fools because actions such as that are detrimental to the ongoing development of our society. But the odd group of fools, and groups that are growing smaller with time, opening their mouths and inserting their feet won’t mess with the development of our society. We’ve had people like this for as long as we’ve had society and likely always will. They’re not a problem so long as the majority continues to grow and continues to deem such behavior to be the boorish examples of moronic mouthbreathers that it is.
Directly taking steps to preserve your privilege isn’t inherently moronic or insane. Doing so publicly merely sacrifices that privilege’s most reliable shelter — denying it even exists.
100 years ago, the privilege of white patriarchy in the US did not depend on such a denial. Now those who would preverse it must resort to painting any criticism of white patriarchy as predatory — by comparing “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas” to “I hate gay people…. I’m homophobic. It shouldn’t be in the world, in the United States, I don’t like it.”
preserve
Bill Mulligan:
Article II of the U.S. Constitution states that the president must be a natural born citizen of the U.S. Unless I misunderstand the meaning, that doesn’t preclude he or she being born outside the U.S.- so long as his/her parents are U.S. citizens. That would automatically make him/her a U.S. citizen.
In other words, if for example, your parents- both U.S. citizens- were living in Germany when you were born, you’d be a U.S. citizen and eligible to run for president.
Though why anyone would _want_ to is beyond me. As Milo Bloom said in a 1988 (or late 1987) storyline about the search for a presidential candidate, “we need a complete fool.” He turned to Steve Dallas, who, not being a _complete_ fool, immediately shouted, “forget it!”
Again, someone born outside the U.S. to U.S. citizens is also a U.S. citizen. Neither Governor Granholm nor Governor Schwarzenegger could be president (barring a constitutional amendment) because they were born outside the U.S. (in Canada and Austria, respectively) to parents who weren’t U.S. citizens.
Now I’ve a question on a related note, one I’ll throw out to the room: If “Bob’s” mother has, say, dual U.S. and Canadian citizenship; his father has dual U.S. and German citizenship and Bob is born in Spain, how many citizenships can he claim? All of the above, or just some?
Rick
Mormons and old people didn’t do so great either which is possibly bad news for Mitt Romney and John McCain.
Someone should do a poll about the likelihood of voting for a candidate with a reputation for serious anger management problems. That would probably sink John McCain and Rudy Giuliani.
Howard Dean, too, but then he’s not running.
Rick–thanks for the correction. I feel like a dope; I’d always thought being born outside of the country disqualified a person. (Which would be a pretty silly reason to disqualify anyone).
Den–you’re right that both John McCain and Rudy Giuliani have shown flashes of temper before. Whether or not it hurts them might depend on how it is perceived and/or reported. I remember McCain being critisized for telling Connie Chung to go away after a primary loss, like that was a big display of ill temper. Of course, a lot will depend on how they contrast with the Democratic candidate. Would any display of anger look even worse when compared to Hillary’s relatively unemotional personality? It would depend on the viewer, I guess and whether or not the story the media decides to play on it “candidate Loose Cannon” or “Candidate Soulless Robot”. Niether of which is fair to the actual people involved but there we go.
It’s an unfortunate fact, but these days, candidates should realize that their every move and word can be recorded and analyzed by not only the media, but also the bloggers as they post it on U-tube. Howard Dean shouted to be heard over a cheering crowd and the next day, everyone thinks he’s a psycho. Teresa Heinz-Kerry tells a reporter with a long history of doing hatchet pieces on her and her family to “shove it” and everyone acts like she literally ripped his throat out. What’s the first thing most people think of when they hear Dan Quayle? Potatoe.
Both McCain and Giuliani have reputations for being short-tempered and vindictive. Whether that’s deserved or not, I don’t know, but I doubt there’s anything either could do to change that perception at this point.
“To which they would say that who are you to say that it’s wrong for them to feel that way? Their point of view would be that there’s something wrong with you for *not* being abominated. And they’ll claim that their position is backed up by the word of God. So you’ve got a tough road ahead of you.”
Oh, I’m not saying that I want to argue with them. I’m just saying that being open about his hatred actually *is* worse than avoiding the subject. One implies a deeper problem than the other.
For example, President Kennedy smoked cigars. However, he tried extremely hard not to be seen smoking cigars, to the point that he’d shove them in his pocket when the press showed up. The Secret Service joked about needing to line his pockets with asbestos because of all the holes he’d burned in them.
Kennedy did that because he didn’t want the children of the nation to see him smoking and take after his example. Now, I don’t think I can convert every smoker to have that attitude, but I do hold Kennedy in higher regard on that subject than all the people who’ve honestly tried to convince me that smoking doesn’t cause cancer.
Well, yeah, if she wasn’t born here it pretty much reduces her chances to zero!
I thought there was some kind of legislation in the works that’d make it possible for Schwarzenegger to run eventually, but I forget where I heard that.
Posted by: Jason M. Bryant at February 22, 2007 12:24 PM
I’m just saying that being open about his hatred actually *is* worse than avoiding the subject.
I have to disagree. If you really believe something, you should have the guts to say so. Moreover, the only way we can change irrational attitudes like bigotry towards gays is if those attitudes are out in the open where we can all have a good look at them. Covert bigotry is harder to fight because it’s harder to spot.
Posted by: Rob Brown at February 22, 2007 12:35 PM
I thought there was some kind of legislation in the works that’d make it possible for Schwarzenegger to run eventually, but I forget where I heard that.
That would require more than just “legislation.” It would entail an amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
There was talk of an amendment to get rid of the native born citizen requirement a few years ago when Ahnold had just recently gotten elected the governator. It kind of died down when his education reform initiatives got mired. Now that he’s won reelection easily, maybe they’re start talking him up for 2012.
I’m of two minds on this. On the one hand, I’d hate to go through the amendment process just for the ambitions of one man. On the other hand, the native born clause is really outdated and undemocratic. To be truly fair, it should be amended to just requiring the president to be a citizen in good standing.
I heard a suggestion the other day that we should amend the constitution to limit us to one president from Texas per century. Now that’s an amendment I could whole-heartedly support.
“Kennedy did that because he didn’t want the children of the nation to see him smoking and take after his example.”
That may be it, but I tend to suspect it may have had something to do with his having a fondness for Cuban cigars, and he didn’t want to have people seeing him puffing away on Havana Golds for obvious political reasons.
PAD
I had heard once that the day before JFK signed the Cuban embargo, he stocked up his humidore.
Jerry, perhaps a better demonstation of the point of viw that hate speech is bad in and of itself is this: a black cop serving in a police force in which racist language is common might find it difficult to perform his job, and will be unlikely to be promoted, even if there will not be clear signs of discrimination.
However, I tend more to agree with your point of view. The fact is that the fact that hate speech is less accepted today is not because of laws restricting freedom of speech, but because freedom of speech was used in order to change the way people think and behave.
“I have to disagree. If you really believe something, you should have the guts to say so. Moreover, the only way we can change irrational attitudes like bigotry towards gays is if those attitudes are out in the open where we can all have a good look at them. Covert bigotry is harder to fight because it’s harder to spot.”
I wonder. Do you think that the fact that racist language and behavior are less acceptable today was the result of an internal change leading to an external one, or an external change leading to an internal change? Was it first unacceptable to say racist things, and as a result racism become not only less acceptable on the outside, but eventually was removed (to a degree) from peole’s minds? Or did the rejection of racist language have to begin with an internal change?
———————-
“It does sound pretty ridiculous, Micha.
Whoever this candidate of theirs is (if they have found a particular TS circassian, that is) I wish that person the best, but I doubt she (I’ll refer to the candidate as “she” since this person identifies as female and plans to have surgery to become physically female) will have any chance of being elected.
It’s just like if somebody in the U.S. ran for President who was black, and gay, and a woman, and wasn’t born in the country. Even being ONE of those things hurts your chances, you know?”
I shouldn’t have posted that story, it requires too many explanations. The Israeli electoral system is different from the American.
To translate to American terms: suppose Ralph Nader was looking for a running mate for the next presidential elections. Obviously Nader has no chance of being president and his running mate’s identity probably only matters to the tiny group of ultra-liberal people who support Nader, and even then only those who bother being active in his party. But being the ultra-liberals that they are, they would want to have a running mate that will belong to an under-represented group like women, gays, blacks, hispanics and so forth, despite many of them being white heterosexuals (Nader will not consider giving up his candidacy of course so that such a person would be the presidential candidate). But which group should they satisfy? Which group is more important? And what about all of the possible staunch liberal candidates, the veterans of many struggles, who have the misfortune of being white? This is the kind of funny problems ultra-liberals such as myself, who vote for small liberal parties, have to face.
During our elections the liberal party I vote for used to joke that the ideal candidate would be a transexual-circassian, since it would satisfy four groups inside this rather small party: gays, russians, feminists, and arabs, each one of which had there own candidate they wanted to support. (there was no actual transexual candidate) Most of the voters however, although very liberal, were none of the above. They were mostly non immigrant heterosexual jews. The candidates they really liked were like them too. But they also wanted to feel that they were doing something for minorities.
And now to an even more boring explanation of the Israeli electoral system, proceed at your own peril:
The Nader analogy I wrote above doesn’t completelt fit. Israel doesn’t have a presidential system. We vote for political parties. A party gets seats in our 120 member parliament based on the number of votes it gets. I think about 50,000 votes is one seat ans so on. Each party has a list of people who fill the seats one by the party. In a small party like the one I vote for, the 10th person on the list has a very slim chance of getting in. No. 1 is the leader of the party. Part of the internal political process of the different parties involves constructing that lists, often by internal primaries. I think this aspect of our system is better than yours because votes don’t go to waste. Even if you hold a minority position you still have some candidates in parliament.
Since John McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone I hope this has all been worked out!
I’m pretty sure that, like a military base in a foreign country or an embassy, the Panama Cannel zone was considered by treaty to be US territory at that time, so McCain should have nothing to worry about.
Besides, he’s never going to win anyway. 🙂
“That may be it, but I tend to suspect it may have had something to do with his having a fondness for Cuban cigars, and he didn’t want to have people seeing him puffing away on Havana Golds for obvious political reasons.”
Eh, it’s probably both.
***
If you mean “oppressive,” “predatory,” or “wrong,” you can say “oppressive,” “predatory,” or “wrong” — don’t seek shelter behind terms you’ve demonstrated you don’t understand.
Intelligent design isn’t irrational, it simply disregards evolution — it’s a conflict of incompatible rational paradigms. Even atheist Kurt Vonnegut admits evolution makes as much sense as a tornado whipping into a hangar and slapping a 747 together — and considering how often evolution is misinterpreted, by capitalists, by communists, by supremacists, siding with intelligent design over the observation-heavy theory of evolution is clearly more rational.
***
Poor people will talk about money. Rich people will tell you talking about money is impolite.
As the privileged shelter their privileges by making discussion of their privileges taboo, predators will shelter their predatory agendas with denial.
When racism was not considered predatory, publicly defending white patriarchy wasn’t a problem. Now white patriarchy has to be sheltered by comparing “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas” to “I hate gay people…. I’m homophobic. It shouldn’t be in the world, in the United States, I don’t like it” — where any criticism of white patriarchy gets painted as predatory.
Even atheist Kurt Vonnegut admits evolution makes as much sense as a tornado whipping into a hangar and slapping a 747 together
Okay, suddenly the bits you referred to from Galapagos a while back make a lot more sense: Vonnegut fails to understand evolution at the most basic level. Good to know. (And intelligent design requires the highly irrational step of saying “life, or at least some aspects of it, require an intelligent designer to explain them–but the intelligent designer doesn’t require an explanation.” Throwing up one’s hands and saying “Well, I guess we don’t need to explain this part” isn’t rational–it’s deliberate avoidance of rationality, even if it tries to cloak itself in rational terms.)
BTW….everybody here has heard of Conservapedia right?
Even atheist Kurt Vonnegut admits evolution makes as much sense as a tornado whipping into a hangar and slapping a 747 together
Whoadawha??? I’m guessing this is from Mike. Well, yikes.
(pause while I read his post–don’t want to be accused of taking something out of context).
Well, that was the usual thing, though the fact that some people never change their tune has nothing to do with evolution. I don’t know if Mike will claim that the Vonnegut reflects his own view or is just something he threw in their to appear intellectual. It is, regardless, pure nonsense. Vonnegut is an intelligent man but saying “evolution makes as much sense as a tornado whipping into a hangar and slapping a 747 together” would, if true, indicates that a basic knowledge of biology is not one of his great strengths.
All of this, of course, assumes that Mike actually has his facts straight–a dangerous assumption, given the source. For example, I am having trouble finding evidence that Mr. Vonnegut has said this and given the science knowledge he has shown in the past it seems rather out of character. The statement sounds a good deal like something British astronomer Fred Hoyle said: the random generation of a simple cell was as likely as “a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.”
Note that this is an argument against the chemical origin of life and has nothing–zip, nada–to do with evolution of life forms on earth. Believing, as some do, that life began on earth from an extraterrestrial “infection”, if you will, is interesting but completely meaningless to a discussion on evolution. A common mistake, no big deal (unless one is arrogant enough to include statements like “don’t seek shelter behind terms you’ve demonstrated you don’t understand.” Then you look like an ášš.)
Perhaps Vonnegut was quoting Mr Hoyle in his novel Timequake (one creationist online indicated that something like the quote appears in the book) but that is not the same thing as it being his opinion. Work of fiction and all.
But regardless of whether or not Vonnegut believes this, it is a seriously flawed argument. for many reasons, not the least of which is that nobody claims that complex molecules spontaneously pop into existence by sheer chance. Were that the case every snowflake would be a thermodynamic improbability.
Evolution, like all theories of the natural sciences, seeks an explanation that does not require an the involvement of intelligent forces. It seeks to explain biological phenomena by a mechanistic (is this the proper term?) explanation, just as physics explains the motion of planets and the behavior of atoms, or geology the formation of mountains and continents.
This methodology of seeking mechanistic explanations to natural phenomena is considered preferable for 3 reasons:
1) It reduces the need to speculate about external forces of which there is no empiric evidence available, such as an intelligent designer.
2) It’s main tool is observation of the phenomena themselves.
3) The explanation offered by natural sciences seem satisfactory.
Evolution is opposed by people for three reasons:
1) It seems counterintuitive. In everyday human experience, complex things, like planes or clocks, are the result of human minds designing them. It is difficult for people to accept that complex biological organisms, especially humans, are the result of an inanimate process. Some even claim that they can scientifically proove that it is impossible that such complex organisms were formed in the way evolution describes.
2) Human tradition tended to attribute intelligent will to the forces of nature — gods, spirits etc. Maybe it is an aspect of human nature to animate things? This tradition culminated in the belief in a God who is intelligent and controls or at least intiated natural phenomena. Furthermore, tradition is a strong social and psychological force, and reliion has a long tradition.
3) A mechanistic explanation of human existence, especially one that compars humans with other animals runs contrary to the way humans preceive humanity, especially in the context of human morality. (Mike for example speaks against evolution because of its connection to certain ideologies that tried to extend the evolutionary explanation to the realm of human sociology and history).
——–
Mike is correct that both evolution (and other mechanistic explanations) and intelligent design are equally rational explanations, assuming you adopt a rational attitude for your subject matter. Science does not have to automatically reject the possibility of intelligent agents to be rational. Natural sciences do so because explanations that do not assume intelligent agents are better. Social sciences and humanities on the other hand deal with phenomena connected with intellligent agents (mostly) — humans. However, even if science were to discard the requirement that the explanation of natural phenomena will not use intelligent agents in its explanations, it would still require that the subject matter of the study will be addressed rationaly. That would mean the intelligent designer wil not be treated with the reverence that religious people attribute to god, but instead he will be studied in the same dispassionate way way that a rock, a planet, a virus, a social institution, or human psychology are studied.
[I should qualify what Isaid earlier in two cases: ecology studies human influence on the environment, and quantum physics speaks about the way an intelligent observer affects behavior of particles.]
It has long amazed me that people–religious ones particularly–are so resistant to the idea of evolution.
Not all, of course. The Pope has no problem with it. One can simply state that evolution is the means by which God (or whatever supernatural force one believes in) has used evolution to get us to this point. Since virtually all educated religious people have no trouble accepting that God uses natural means to me the earth spin and the seasons change it seems to me the height of hubris to think that only Man could not be achieved through nature. The stars and the planets, oh sure, but not mighty man!
I would answer the objections in order:
1) It seems counterintuitive. In everyday human experience, complex things, like planes or clocks, are the result of human minds designing them. It is difficult for people to accept that complex biological organisms, especially humans, are the result of an inanimate process. Some even claim that they can scientifically proove that it is impossible that such complex organisms were formed in the way evolution describes.
Life is chemistry and chemistry is fully capable of getting order out of randomness, at least in the short term. Again, I would use the example of the snowflake–it is not a miracle that water forms such perfect crystal forms. The odds of such a thing forming randomly from atoms is probably 1 bazillion to 1. It happens because it is not random.
2) Human tradition tended to attribute intelligent will to the forces of nature — gods, spirits etc. Maybe it is an aspect of human nature to animate things? This tradition culminated in the belief in a God who is intelligent and controls or at least intiated natural phenomena. Furthermore, tradition is a strong social and psychological force, and reliion has a long tradition.
And I would respect that. Science can’t disprove God. A smart person of a religious nature should welcome science in its search to find the means by which God does His handiwork. Indeed, one could argue that those who try to supress such knowledge are working contrary to God’s will.
3) A mechanistic explanation of human existence, especially one that compars humans with other animals runs contrary to the way humans preceive humanity, especially in the context of human morality. (Mike for example speaks against evolution because of its connection to certain ideologies that tried to extend the evolutionary explanation to the realm of human sociology and history).
Animal, plant, protist, fungus, bacteria–these are the options, folks. I’ll take animal and be happy about it.
As for those who try to either use or deny evolution to advance some political agenda, well, that’s probably true for every scientific truth. It’s no reason to deny the science.
I would not argue against intelligent design on the basis of it being irrational; only that it is not scientific and, as such, not proper for the teaching of science.
Intelligent design works for some because it’s easy. No research, no questions. Any time you hit a dead end, insert the “Intelligent Designer”. Or, to keep it simple, a “Being with God like Powers.
Most of the folks I’ve met who take I.D seriously are the same bunch who call global warming or climate change a myth. Evidence be dámņëd, we’ll go with B.W.G.P.
IMHO, these people fear the idea that maybe there’s no one in charge, and we’ll have to clean up the mess ourselves.
Yes, Vonnegut cited a scientist, referred to him as if they were acquainted, and did not challenge his expertise. The name Hoyle sounds familiar, I don’t doubt it’s him, and your citation of Hoyle suits me fine:
Though Vonnegut cited Hoyle somewhere else, Hocus Pocus mentions in passing microscopic organism traveling on meteors and astreroids and such. Germs that were discovered to have survived on a lense exposed to the lunar surface have also been cited as an example of how space-traveling germs could survive.
Evolutionary theory proposes that all life has a common ancestry.
Considering a proven theory of the origin of life could make or break evolutionary/intelligent design theory — the topic I was addressing — saying the origin of life has absolutely nothing — zip, nada — to do with evolution is counter-intuitive to the point of mental retardation.
When you talk here about students, I hope you’re speaking as a driving instructor, and not some kind of science teacher.
Nobody:
Unless you are referring to the literal appearance of matter from nothingness — why Hoyle’s observation would depend on the literal appearance of matter from nothingness you’ll have to explain — the above quote by Charles Darwin™ from 136 years ago qualifies as a claim as valid as any other that life blossomed by mere chance.
Also, considering only one pair of matching snowflakes has ever been verified, you may want to clue us all in on how the shape assumed by every snowflake isn’t thermodynamically improbable.
Observing the rationality of you siding with intelligent design over a theory you don’t understand isn’t speaking against evolution.
Posted by: Micha at February 22, 2007 02:40 PM
Do you think that the fact that racist language and behavior are less acceptable today was the result of an internal change leading to an external one, or an external change leading to an internal change?
Interesting question. In the U.S., the civil rights movement of the 1960s forced our nation to see the ugly results of racism. Television had a lot to do with it: people could see peaceful black demonstrators being shot with police water cannons and attacked by police dogs. Our collective conscience was awakened, and as a result racist language gradually became less and less socially acceptable as people began to realize just where racism leads.
Granted, we haven’t gotten to the “promised land” Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about, but we’re closer now than we were 40 or 50 years ago.
Anyway, my initial remark admittedly was a shot from the hip. It is a good thing that bigoted langauge today results in society’s disapprobation. A few decades ago, Michael Richards could have gotten away with his recent racist tirade. Not so today. That’s a good thing.
It’s a double-edged sword, though. In today’s environment of “political correctness,” I don’t think anyone could get away with doing a T.V. show like “All in the Family.” That’s unfortunate. I was just a youngster when that show was in first run, and I believe it had a lot to do with helping me form my social conscience. Archie Bunker’s escapades were cautionary tales that screamed, “Don’t be like this.” We can’t change bigoted attitudes unless we first identify them and discuss them, just as doctors cannot treat a cancer that is undiagnosed.
Considering a proven theory of the origin of life could make or break evolutionary/intelligent design theory — the topic I was addressing — saying the origin of life has absolutely nothing — zip, nada — to do with evolution is counter-intuitive to the point of mental retardation.
The origin of life is a completely different issue from evolution. This is not rocket science. Imagining that the first life on earth came from space viruses or cosmic bacteria does not, in any way shape or form, change evolutionary theory. The name of the book was On the Origin of Species, not On the Origin of Life.
I also fail to see how bacteria arriving on earth from space has much to do with Intelligent Design. Are these supposed to be Intelligent Bacteria, Mike? Did they arrive in a bacteria spaceship of their own design? You’re like those goofs who head off to Africa to look for surviving relic dinosaurs, thinking that this will disprove evolution when evolution has nothing–zip, nada, zero–to do with theories of the disappearance of the dinosaurs.
When you talk here about students, I hope you’re speaking as a driving instructor, and not some kind of science teacher.
Yet they somehow are able to figure out the difference between abiogenesis and evolution. And these are 9th graders.
In a letter to Joseph Dalton Høøkër of February 1 1871, Charles Darwin[™] made the suggestion that the original spark of life may have begun in a “warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present, [so] that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes”.
Yes. Um, your point?
Oh! You think that is inconsistent with the idea that nobody believe that life just randomly came together from chemicals, like Hoyle’s imagined 747. See, Mike, here’s the thing–there is a discipline called chemistry that explains why, under certain circumstances, simple chemical compounds become more complex chemical compounds. It isn’t random and a matter of pure chance. Darwin was correct that his primordial pool could very reasonably be imagined to be capable of forming complex compounds from simpler ones. Whether or not that is really how life on Earth came about is something we may never know. But what is not proposed by any scientist I know of is the idea that somewhere in a pool of goo all the various parts randomly and spontaneously came together to form an amoeba. The first self replicating molecules were not alive, by the modern definition of it anyway.
But again, none of this is part of evolutionary theory. As wikipedia states The origin of life from self-catalytic chemical reactions is not a part of biological evolution, but rather of pre-evolutionary abiogenesis. They tend to get lumped in together by the careless.
Also, considering only one pair of matching snowflakes has ever been verified, you may want to clue us all in on how the shape assumed by every snowflake isn’t thermodynamically improbable.
What the old saw about no two snowflakes ever matching has to do with any of this is beyond me. (at any rate it is probably virtually impossible for them to be exactly identical–exact same number of atoms? Doubtful.) And as to why snowflakes are not thermodynamically improbable…go talk to the folks in Oswego, now still shoveling 142 inches of improbability off their roofs. Snowflakes are formed from crystals. Crystalline water forms the structures it does because of very specific ways the water molecules interact with each other.
Why do snowflakes not violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics? Because the Earth is not a closed system. Energy flows in. Not. Rocket. Science.
This from the guy who tells others “don’t seek shelter behind terms you’ve demonstrated you don’t understand.” But that’s Our Mike. The perfect storm of arrogance and ignorance, always convinced that the best defense is offensiveness. Don’t ever change.
Mike for example speaks against evolution because of its connection to certain ideologies that tried to extend the evolutionary explanation to the realm of human sociology and history
Which is a common argument made by people who don’t have any competing data to counter a scientific theory that they don’t like. I find it being made all the time for everything from global warming to evolution and the big bang. The argument goes that scientists are advancing certain theories not because that’s what the data supports, but because they’re communists/nazis/atheists who want to undermine our society or force us to accept a certain political ideology. For people like that, facts aren’t facts, they’re just tools to be manipulated for one agenda or another. If your theories don’t support their agenda, it’s not because you found facts they didn’t know about. It’s because you have a different agenda. To them, everyone has an agenda. Except themselves of course, they just want to expose the “truth” against your facts.
Manny has it right, ID appeals to people because it’s an easy to gloss over complex ideas that they don’t understand. But just because Professor Behe can’t imagine a mechanism that would produce a flagellum through natural selection doesn’t mean that one doesn’t exist.
ID, though, is boring. If you don’t understand something, just put up a sign that says, “here God intervened” and stop asking questions. Perhaps, though, that is their agenda. Questions, after all, could lead to more questions, which might lead to independent thought.
Can’t that.
“2) Human tradition tended to attribute intelligent will to the forces of nature — gods, spirits etc. Maybe it is an aspect of human nature to animate things? This tradition culminated in the belief in a God who is intelligent and controls or at least intiated natural phenomena. Furthermore, tradition is a strong social and psychological force, and religion has a long tradition.
And I would respect that. Science can’t disprove God. A smart person of a religious nature should welcome science in its search to find the means by which God does His handiwork. Indeed, one could argue that those who try to supress such knowledge are working contrary to God’s will.”
Ultimately, the probem for religion is not the theories that scientific knowledge offers, or any challenge that it does or does not offer to the idea of God. It is a problem of the authority of knowledge. The authority of religions comes from tradition — knowledge passed down. and only religion has the authority to interpret tradition. The moment a person suggest another, competing source of knowledge, reason, observation, that person is challenging the authority of tradition and of those who interpret it. It doesn’t matter if it is an ancient Athenian philosopher, 9th century Muslim philosopher, a 12th century professor in Paris, or a 19th century biologist. The fact that such a person claims knowledge without depending on tradition is bad enough. It is even worse if the knowledge he or she offers does not include god as a part of the explanation as modern science does.
“Animal, plant, protist, fungus, bacteria–these are the options, folks. I’ll take animal and be happy about it.”
Next you’ll be saying that the earth is not the center of the universe, and then that our traditions are simply social institutions no different from other inferior cultures. People wil start questioning authority. You’re corrupting our youth Bill. Socrates was executed for this.
Oh, since Mike copyrighted Daewin every time you mention him in class you have to pay royalties.
Mike wrote:
“…and considering how often evolution is misinterpreted, by capitalists, by communists, by supremacists, siding with intelligent design over the observation-heavy theory of evolution is clearly more rational.
(Mike for example speaks against evolution because of its connection to certain ideologies that tried to extend the evolutionary explanation to the realm of human sociology and history).
Observing the rationality of you siding with intelligent design over a theory you don’t understand isn’t speaking against evolution.”
To prefer a theory like intelligent design over a theory like evolution which is counterintuitive and hard to understand is understandable, it’s human nature, it is not even completly irrational.
Prefering the not really scientific theory of intelligent design over the scientific theory of evolution because of political movements that misused that theory is irrational.
“Intelligent design works for some because it’s easy. No research, no questions. “
I don’t think so. Science also finds itself at times stuck with no answers. And theology is not easy — speculating about divine beings is not easy. Intelligent design is more satisfying on some level for human psychology.
———————
“Do you think that the fact that racist language and behavior are less acceptable today was the result of an internal change leading to an external one, or an external change leading to an internal change?
Interesting question. In the U.S., the civil rights movement of the 1960s forced our nation to see the ugly results of racism. Television had a lot to do with it: people could see peaceful black demonstrators being shot with police water cannons and attacked by police dogs. Our collective conscience was awakened, and as a result racist language gradually became less and less socially acceptable as people began to realize just where racism leads.
Granted, we haven’t gotten to the “promised land” Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about, but we’re closer now than we were 40 or 50 years ago.”
I think the two processes happened simultanously. Some people went through internal change because black’s were humanized. Others changed there behavior because of social pressure by the first kind of people. some people went through both processes.
“Anyway, my initial remark admittedly was a shot from the hip. It is a good thing that bigoted langauge today results in society’s disapprobation. A few decades ago, Michael Richards could have gotten away with his recent racist tirade. Not so today. That’s a good thing.”
Agreed.
“It’s a double-edged sword, though. In today’s environment of “political correctness,” I don’t think anyone could get away with doing a T.V. show like “All in the Family.” That’s unfortunate. I was just a youngster when that show was in first run, and I believe it had a lot to do with helping me form my social conscience. Archie Bunker’s escapades were cautionary tales that screamed, “Don’t be like this.” We can’t change bigoted attitudes unless we first identify them and discuss them, just as doctors cannot treat a cancer that is undiagnosed.”
Today we have comedians and comedy shows like Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Sarah Silverman, Southpark, the Daily Show, Bill Mahr, that examine political correctness and what’s hidden beneath it. They are very edgy. Different comedy for a different time.
Micha, I don’t understand what you mean by this: “Mike is correct that both evolution (and other mechanistic explanations) and intelligent design are equally rational explanations, assuming you adopt a rational attitude for your subject matter.”
For one, this sounds circular…everything would be rational if you assume it’s rational? Well, of course. You can look at any number of religious/cultural explanations of the world around us, and if you adopt the stance that the beliefs of that culture/religion are rational, then their observations are of course rational. Ancient Greek and Roman cultures, for example, held the rational belief that Gods actually existed, and interacted in a physical, tangible, visible way with the world around them. Hëll, how many people were running around in ancient Greece claiming to be sons or daughters of Zeus?
ID is only rational if the idea of the Designer…God in most cases…is rational. But it’s not a rational idea. I’m a fairly spiritual guy, I totally believe in God, but I know it’s not a rational belief, because it’s based on nothing more than my feelings and what I’ve been told. If anything, it’s based more on the things I don’t know than anything.
Evolution, on the other hand, is totally based on observations and conclusions based upon what we see of the world around us. It’s a rational theory because it’s based on facts. With evolution, you trace the evolutionary development through genetic and fossil records, and you draw the conclusion that species are evolving into other species over time. There are very real and tangible facts to observe, study, and compare. With ID, you say God designed all life. That’s it. There’s nothing to see, nothing to study, nothing to compare. A rational person would not accept ID, without some irrational motivation. Religion is irrational, because it almost universally deals with the unproven, the unknown, and the unknowable. You take religion on faith, which often contradicts or even replaces rationality.
What is troubling is that evolution continues to this day as a sound scientific principle–what else are strains of diseases which mutate to resist various medications if not evolution? Are Godhuggers (if enviornmentalists are treehuggers, then those who substitute God’s work for nature’s should be Godhuggers) going to claim that God is so into micromanaging that he’s actually deciding which diseases should live and die?
PAD
Evolutionary theory includes timelines, does it not?
What evolutionary timeline does not include a demarcation between the time when there is no evidence of life and the time when there is?
Just because fossilized remains give record to the changes of life, but not its origin, it’s a very crude rationalization, Lothar, to say establishing the origin of life contributes nothing to establishing the credibility of evolution.
It’s Not Rocket Science.™
You can’t even make the intuitive leap Hoyle based his statistical conclusion on evolutionary paradigms without explicitly being told so.
And it isn’t like you don’t have a history of disregarding plainly worded English if Hoyle’s notes cite fossilized records.
Dude, your salary so belongs to me.
In as much as I disagree Charles Darwin™ is Nobody™ — yeah.
So belongs to me.
In as much as the shape of each snowflake is virtually unique — yeah.
So Belongs To Me.™
Jung distinguished judging functions (functions that model, iconifying functions — thoughts or feelings) as rational, and observing functions (functions that record, empirical functions — sensing or intuiting) as irrational.
As far as all beliefs model the world or an aspect of it, Counselor,™ they are rational.
I’ve had ID supporters try to explain to me why evolution on a micro scale…slight changes in color, or developing bigger teeth, or a flu virus developing a resistance to the flu vaccine du jour…doesn’t support the idea of so-called macro evolution, which was defined to me as one species changing into another.
After which I showed through maths how a 1% change in size every 100 years takes T-Rex from a 30′ long monster down to the size of a large chicken in something like 25,000 years.
In this case, ID/faith is totally overriding rationality, in the sense that ID is being used to replace evolution. ID and evolution can coexist, just so long as one understands that they aren’t talking about the same thing. ID, unless you take it to mean that God not only designs all life, but he also is changing all life around us, merely looks at the origin of life. Evolution doesn’t look at the origin of life at all, although eventually perfect knowledge of the evolutionary tree would, logically, reveal the origin of life.