It's also akin to the Wingnuts whole approach to all science that contradicts their religious dogma. Knowing that most people consider it the "fair thing" to allow all sides of an issue to express themselves, they use this to create false controversies in science and then insist that "both sides" get to state their case.

That may be a good political value, but it is not a valid application of scientific method. Science is not a political process (even if there are some personal politics involved among various scientists). There are not two sides to a scientific question, but rather a set of facts and observations that science tries to understand through theories that best explain those facts and observations. As more facts become known, science adjusts it's explanations to best fit the entire set of observations.

Meanwhile, politicians (as our representatives) have to develop policies that best reflect our current state of scientific knowledge, with the understanding that our state of knowledge will change over time and require new policies to respond to that.

Theology is just the opposite. The "knowledge" is fixed and cannot change and if science contradicts that dogma, then the science must be wrong regardless of the evidence. So in their view, anytime science contradicts religion, there is a "controversy" that requires public discussion and political conflict. And once they can make it a political issue, "both sides" have to be represented.

ExBrit, If you liked John Dean's book, you'll love The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing.

Shamelessly yours, Greg

Put simply, creationism is the "Swiftboating" of science. Just like any other "cause" it is driven from the top for power and politics; very little actual religion involved.

This is their MO: take a completely radical position and market it relentlessly, so that by sheer exposure, it achieves legitimacy. Then, the moment they're able to engage you in an argument over it, they've won something -- because you give them legitimacy by arguing with them. It's an ingenious strategy and was used effectively by Hitler, among others.

I was watched a *painful* "debate" on Evolution v. Creationism. The biologist came out with facts and a clever argument (essentially: evolution has a mechanism is more godly than Genesis) which fell on deaf ears due to the venue and the approach of the creation guy.

I've seen this approach from other politicians:

1) Dismiss the argument with a repetitious claim. It's important to give your followers a vocabulary with which to defend themselves in an argument.

2) Create a punishment for disobedience.

In the "debate", it was that Evolution, as taught in schools, relied on more imagination than science. Anyone could draw the pictures they drew (1). And if you considered evolution, you'd be turning your back on God and condemning yourself to hell (2).

Conservatives do it with everything. They say, "We don't torture," tell us getting into specifics would empower our enemies and then tell us in question form that the consequence of not torturing is that we'll be attacked again.

Well, since you don't believe in Intelligent Design you obviously don't support the troops!

Bev, If I ever get any royalties out of this, I definitely owe you a cut! (For others on here, Bev wrote a generous blurb on Amazon for the book). --Greg

All kidding aside, I really did enjoy the book.

The problem for me is that this is not an issue on which liberals are 100% right and conservatives are 100% wrong. There are many issues for which that it true, but this is not one of them.

Naturalism is an ideology. It should not be taught in schools without references to other valid ideologies. That is the valid objection to the teaching of naturalistic evolution in public schools.

I watched the PBS program and had similar thoughts and the strategy and tactics of the Right.

The strategy of the Discovery Institute, Social Security privatizers as well, is to set up a "compromise" that furthers their agenda, while undermining the agenda of their opponents.

The tactic is to be completely immune to reason, even to the point of being willing to lie.

Thus, they gain as allies the compulsive centrists and split-the-difference moderates, who make up the vast majority of our brain-dead punditry and a small, but crucial slice of supremely ignorant independent voters.

Could you define "naturalism" and "ideology"? Which ideologies do or do not have experimental evidence supporting them, or is that necessary?

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

.. or that God doesn't have anything to do with disasters, and it's just us silly people who try to hang stuff we don't like around God's neck. (Assuming there's a neck there at all, of course... )

Frankly, in my opinion, they use their god as an excuse so they don't have to confront the fact that human beings do bad things to each other all the time and most of the misery in this world is the result of human greed and jealousy.

What's more interesting to me is that the disasters sent never seem to arrive.

Gee, Greg Anrig, that was a pretty fast jump from calm reason:

Throughout, both Darwin’s theory and the arguments made on behalf of intelligent design were presented carefully, engagingly, and clearly enough so my kids (and even I) could fully understand them.

to blind faith condemning the infidel:

The selling of “intelligent design,” and the idea itself, has much in common with Social Security privatization, supply-side economics, the invasion of Iraq, school vouchers, and other half-baked causes that the right has relentlessly been pushing in recent decades.

So freeing the schools from religion and subjecting them to the marketplace of ideas is good, but freeing them from government/union control/ineptitude and subjecting them to the marketplace is... like religion?

That's what I was going to say. They're about as well intentioned as a wolf in the hen house.

These people are self centered, egomaniacal scum. Greg's point is proven in this post - everything they 'argue' eventually leads to nauseatingly bad faith.

The Repubs are a party of henchman, and liars with absolutly no scruples - think about the Swiftboat scum - the Lee Atwaters of the world.

If the liberals adopted the strategies of the conservative right and sacrificed analysis and facts to marketing perceptions,then I would not support their positions either. The value of web sites like this and other expressions of sanity and reason derives from their avoidance of slick and deceitful arguments.

If by "set you free" you mean "compel you to embrace my ideology", than I would have to differ.

Where the approaches to the all these subjects are like religion is that in all cases, the right starts by saying that such and such is true, now how do we use the evidence to prove it.

That contrasts with a scientific approach that says here's the evidence, what does it tell us about the truth.

This is the central divide of our time.

Are we to follow evidence and reason where they lead or are we going to bend evidence and logic to assure they lead where we want them too?

The nemesis of rational thought is the infamous Us Good\Them Bad false dichotomy. Look at our history. Look at your own habits of speech.

Yes, the Repubs are our opponents, but let's not demonize them overmuch. If we make of them our mortal enemies, how are we supposed to live with them as neighbors after we win?

You don't actually believe they sit around and conspire in the terms used in earlier posts, do you? Within their groups, they are indeed well intentioned. But they tightly define the scope of their in-group, and violently defend the borders, more tightly and violently than we on the Left like to believe we do. Violence is done to the rest of us by their exceedingly narrow definitions of We, the People.

The Right tends to believe more strongly in absolute divides, especially between good and evil. They enshrine a mistaken understanding of the way our brains compare things at the center of their theology. They tend more often to mistake the ability of our minds to draw lines, to describe and define and decide, for absolute divisions. But we do it, too.

Our binary, ratio-making brains play tricks on our minds, making us think that "we" and "they" are two absolutely divided things. Our fingers are separate, yes, and they arise from the same hand. Where's the mystery in that?

Many of my friends and family are Repubs. They are not as you describe them. Of course, I know you didn't mean it that way, but then, why overgeneralize? "We" say "they" are to blame for all society's ills; "they" blame "us."

Sitting on either side of an illusory divide and hurling insults at each half of our greater self is beneath the dignity of being human.

[Side A] --- [Side B]
[Good God USA, Israel, sometimes UK Us Me Mine] --- [Evil Devil Axis of Evil Them You Yours]

Earth's every visual system can look on this and discriminate "things" on opposite sides of lines. But do you see the indivisible field in which these "things" arise, in which all things find their common ground?

That's us. We and the Republicans are not absolutely divided. E pluribus unum: out of Many, Union. "A house divided cannot stand."

If we're going to complain of the Divide-and-Conquer frame of mind, we oughtn't use it in the complaint. We stand, united in our sovereignty, just exactly as these words right here are standing in this field right now.

Can we disagree and criticize without hating? Do we really want to mutually demonize each other all the way to Hell?

Science is not an ideology.

It is a method for discovering truth through experimentation and observation.

Biology is NOT an "ideology". The Theory of Evolution is the basis, the backbone, of modern biology. Biology is NOT "naturalism", that is a deliberate twisting of meaning and terminology.

Try again with a real argument.

the commentor is just saying to adopt the techniques, the way of addressing issues. the suggestion isn't to start using bogus information the way the right wing does, it is to use more updated and effective techniques in combination with real, valid information. right now the fight is 'correct information' vs. 'tested marketing strategies', and the marketers win. the fight should be 'marketers using bad info' vs. 'marketers using good info'.

By dictionary definition, I don't see how naturalism is an ideology. In any event, if you are trying to refer to biological science, you might try a less archaic word than naturalism. Naturalism is not commonly used with respect to science. Are you suggesting science is an ideology?

All ideologies have compelling evidence

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

It's a fairly broad leap from "Darwinism" to current experimental biology, where it is possible to demonstrate selection and show its manifestation in the genomes of successive generations.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

A code of conduct, a covenant, between a people, their land, and their creator.

The problem comes from trying to universalize what is in fact a code of conduct for only the Israelites. I found a letter to an editor on this very topic.
__________________

Joel Stein, in his commentary, makes a number of fundamental interpretive errors. His conclusion that "God is capricious" results from his misunderstanding that Scripture, in some places, is a record of the rebellious, evil deeds of man, who refuses to keep God's law, and that these deeds are abhorred by God. He then visits with A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically, and agrees with him that every precept found in Scripture is applicable to all men of all ages and that the keeping of all of them flawlessly commends us to God. Displeasing God by failing to keep them, then, consigns one to hell.

The Old Testament social and dietary laws were for Israel alone in that era, and were designed not only to separate Israel from the surrounding pagan nations, but to illustrate the holiness of the true God. In the New Testament era, we are only to follow the commands of Christ, who said that the essence of the law was fulfilled in two commandments, to love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.
__________________

When the Habiru invaded Canaan, their priests inverted the signs and symbols of the endogenous Goddess and pointed them instead to a bachelor Father with a very bad temper.

Everybody who reads the bible seems to think they and only they are the ones to whom it is addressed. Birds don't fly with borrowed plumage, the old saying goes: we need a mythology that integrates us with our time and land like a placenta integrates mother and fetus.

Society is sick because our myths aren't fulfilling their life-giving function.

This, I believe, is the central problem facing progressives today: do we continue to lose ground to conservative platforms that are sold to the marketplace of voters by deceptive and disingenuous means, simply because we value truth? Or do we employ our own deceptive and disingenuous means to advance our own (truly better) social platforms?

This is a false choice.  You are essentially saying that any thought given to how an idea is packaged and communicated is "deceptive and disingenuous".  But that is not true at all. 

I'm wondering if you are an engineer by any chance, because this attitude is very common among engineers who think that the best product wins in the market and the best thing one can do is just recite what great features a product has and that will be enough.  Well Silicon Valley is littered with the corpses of companies that thought that way.  The product that is best technically rarely wins out over a different product that is marketed more effectively.  The fact is that being smart about communication and understanding how people react to ideas is key to selling anything at all.  And there is nothing dishonest or disreputable about it. 

I also wonder whether liberals suffer somewhat from having to fight rearguard actions so often.  The foundations of the modern American state have been under assault for quite a while by movement conservatives and liberals are often in the position of defending the status quo.  My guess would be that playing defense is less conducive to fostering effective communication strategies.

Lexicographers are not terribly well qualified as biologists. For that matter, "nature" is essentially a lay term. Now, if you found a biologist that claimed biology didn't include humans, that might be a man bites dog sort of story.

Why do you consider "naturalism" a current and relevant term? Do typical high school science curricula consist of chemistry, physics, and naturalism? Once you get beyond a college freshman course in general biology, does the biology department offer courses in micronaturalism, cellular naturalism, or, perhaps in the interdisciplinary courses, naturalochemistry or naturalophysics?

Using general dictionary definitions to characterize fields of study is worthy of...a sound bite. In this case, a dog sound bite, rather like the five upstairs going ARFARFarfARF, which means "I bark, therefore I am. If I stopped barking, I might not be."

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Simply put, liberals are more interested in being right, while conservatives are more interested in winning.

No, liberals are more interested in the results of their policies, while conservatives are more interested in winning, no matter what the results. Taking your small vs large government for instance, even when small government has been shown not to work (think Katrina), conservatives do not waver from promising even smaller government, while liberals will work to fix what went wrong.

As John Maynard Keynes said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

Or as Molly Ivins put it, "There's never been a law yet that didn't have a ridiculous consequence in some unusual situation; there's probably never been a government program that didn't accidentally benefit someone it wasn't intended to. Most people who work in government understand that what you do about it is fix the problem -- you don't just attack the whole government."

I think that on a certain level you're correct here in that marketing IS important. But so too is the product.

The problem as I see it is not so much that progressives do not "market" their positions well enough (although they could definitely use some improvement) but rather that the consumer base is grossly...inept. We are after all a country that has cultural contempt for intelligence - brawn over brains. Not only do the consumers buy the bum product being pitched to them by these conservative snake-oil salesmen but once it breaks (see immediately) they run out and buy yet another product from them. And the utterly nonsensical process repeats itself over and over and over again. It's as much the fault of the consumer as anyone else's.

isn't science a cause too? people tell me, "but science is self correcting..."

I think creationism is very important and should be taught because people, indeed, create their own realities.

as far as I can tell, there's a similar amount of "truth streching" in sciences and religion.

w/o the ability to analyze our own beliefs and creeds, science is lost. I think it's unfortunate that religous study has been gutted because "bright minds," these days, earn more in the materialistic scientific application than philosophy and religion which have become step children.

To boldly go...

I suppose I am atrocious, as I consider it an excellent idea to separate emotion from intellect when attempting to understand the physical universe. Your arguments, as far as I can tell, are emotional.

Science accepts it is fallible, but is, perhaps apelike, trying to keep climbing the tree. Religion is static.

"Weapons no human in his right mind would use"? And what defines right mind? Is deterrence an irrelevancy?

"The Other is just a thing"? Wasn't there a bad science fiction movie called that?
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

I agree. Dems need to tell much better stories. (Colbert is our generation's greatest working poet, IMHO.)

Is the Last Supper true? Is the Sistine Chapel true? Are creation myths true? A myth is true in a different sense than a newspaper story is true. We use the terms synonymously, but a myth is not a lie.

What is a myth, anyway?

A myth is a metaphor; a metaphor is a vehicle for going from ignorance to understanding. The language of myth is art.

Myths integrate peoples with places, like placentas do. Humans are born early. We take forever to mature, if we do at all. During infancy and childhood, a functioning mythology acts "as a womb with a view," in Joseph Campbell's memorable phrase, where we may finish our gestation and transform into being social humans.

Over the course of a life, myths provide mileposts and guidance specific to this or that culture.

A myth is a story by which you live your life. It doesn't belong in the same category with newsy truths.

So I agree, Dems need to learn to tell much more interesting stories. Studs Terkel is one such storyteller. It's up to us artists and poets to produce from the wells of our souls the life-giving waters of mythology in the forms of the world in which we're living.

Star Wars comes to mind, as does the Matrix, as examples of virtuosic treatment of mythic themes in modern forms. Are they true? Their science needs great rigor, 'cuz of all us techno-geeks, yes, but the rest? The stuff of which dreams are made, no?

BAHAHAHA! You're arguing with your own misconceptions, my friend.

Are we to follow evidence and reason where they lead or are we going to bend evidence and logic to assure they lead where we want them too?

Well said. I agree. That is the crucial question. We answer it in every living moment. Truth doesn't accrue to us from the outside, we construe it from within. We can never be fully apart from that we seek to know, yet we must step aside from ourselves if we are to get even a glimpse of our true selves.

This is the paradox at the heart of this discussion. On the Right, they assert, forever and for always, that their divisions of things are god-given. On the Left, we assert that our divisions are scientifically-determined and even more true than religious truth.

The two categories of Truth, Science and Religion, are incommensurate. A functioning myth, every bit as essential to being human as a brain, is true in a different sense than a newspaper is true. Is it true that Raven was blackened in a fire during one of his adventures, and that's why all crows are black? You have to answer that in terms of the system in which it is asked. We didn't create myths for securing grant money.

I know Republican engineers with such sharp scientific minds, I won't step near for fear of losing a limb in a casual conversation. I know liberals who have the most absurdly superstitious ideas of how the world works.

Neither of us gets to claim big-T truth for our side by definition. We have to go through this excruciating process right here, right now, all the time. Am I going to bias what I say next, just to push my words over yours? Am I going to allow this discussion to take me where IT goes, not where I want it to go?

Scientists aren't infallible, and using the scientific method doesn't guarantee truth. We on the Left violate our own principles when we try to use big-S science in the same way the Right uses god.

Mythologies are living organs; they require constant upkeep. Ours have shriveled and died. Our society is about as healthy as a SCUBA diver who has run out of air but is a long way from surfacing.

(By the way, I can assure you, by the 500 or so Hubble images I use for my screen saver, I do indeed love my science. I just don't worship it as the font of all big-T truth. Haven't you seen Planet of the Apes, where whatshisname finds out the apes are worshiping a nuclear bomb? Replacing one god with a mechanical substitute doesn't help.)

I don't think you understand the meaning of science.

Here's a Wikapedia entry on the philosophy of science, which I think hits a lot of the main points. Note that from the beginning it does admit that as in all things, there's room for debate about the definition, but just because there's room for debate on the definition doesn't mean there's no definition at all.

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

"You can fool most of the people most of the time."

If thats true democracy is finished. It may be an ideological position for me, but I refuse to accept that.

-Dave Adams-

It's not just a pattern, it suggests organization or coordination of some sort.

Conservative elites have only one program - to dismantle the New Deal and all it's vestiges. They are wealthy, harber a grudge, have lots of time and nothing better to do and so are willing to plot and connive over decades, and longer if need be, the over throw of FDR and his legacy.

We know they have adopted the Straussian strategy, called Neoconservativism: Elite's rule over the masses using religion to control the masses (see Saudi Arabia or traditional Banana Republics).

(Note: Any religion will do, not just Christianity, or evangelical fundamentalism, but any religion - so you have right wing evangelicals closing ranks with right wing mainline protestants, closing ranks with right wing Catholics, closing ranks with right wing fundamentalist Jews)

This strategy has paid huge dividends.

First because religion provides huge numbers of people who want to be subject to strong authoritarianism.

Second, religion became the vestige for tribalism and racism in the south - consolidating the gains of Nixon's southern strategy.

(Third: A phone call to the Vatican, got American Bishops stumping for Bush in the last election - winning for him, in the very least, hundreds of thousands of votes in Missouri, where the local Bishop said that if you voted for Kerry you had to go to confession before you could go to communion again - without these votes Bush might have lost in key swing states, all of which he needed to win the election)

The Ahmanson family is very active on the Religious front of 'movement conservativism'. They funded seed money and are on the board of "The Institute on Religion and Democracy" which is charged with invasively taking over main stream protestant religions and dragging them to the right and folding them into the Neocon movement. They have succeeded in their assault on Baptist and now target the United Church of Christ. To underline the political nature of this group, some of the board members are not even protestant, but Catholic.

see: http://www.ird-renew.org/site/pp.asp?c=fvKVLfMVIsG&b=278604

see the board member ship here (prepare to be shocked by the names you see):
http://www.ird-renew.org/site/pp.asp?c=fvKVLfMVIsG&b=356301

The Ahmanson's appear to be part of a small clique of very wealthy families that are involved in Movement conservativism at a very fundemental level. With just alittle research one would find the same names coming up again and again: Ahmanson's, the Koch family, Perhaps Schaifs and the Coors family are just a few that come to mind.

They fund many of these think tanks and foundations. It appears that guys like Robertson, Dobson and the late Falwell are their field commanders. (The enlistment of Robertson in the Giulianni campaign suggest a deal was made at higher levels and Robertson got his marching orders)

Behind this all is some kind of association amongst these families. I'd like to see some research about this. I do recall in a Frontline documentary a few years ago on how Bush became President, a brief interview with George Schultz, who said, that 'they' had heard about W.s surprising success against Ann Richards in Texas, and people were suggesting him to run for President.

Shultz then said (paraphrased from memory), "we gathered the usual suspects to gether and called him in for an interview" - he appeared to be cogent and serious, and though he didn't have the knowledge and experiance we'd like to have in president nominee, he certainly asked the right questions, and we said, yes, okay, this man can be a good presidential candidate."

From that point on W had all the money and organization he needed to win the nomination. They gave him an unprecedented $65 million war chest. Then McCain won the New Hampshire primary. W had to win the next round in Michigan and South Carolina, so they pulled out all the stops (including those of etiquette with some nasty swiftboating of McCain). W won that round, but his war chest was down to under $5million. A few weeks later it was back up over $65 million.

(What happened after New Hampshire was nearly unprecedented - W is only the first or second person to be elected President after losing New Hampshire, lots of people lose New Hampshire and get nominations, but almost never have they been elected).

Behind this is a movement that speaks of organization. Who were Schultz's 'usual suspects'? My guess is they are representatives of the same people as the same group of families that crafted the campaign to eliminate the estate tax. But that's only a guess.

It's not a conspiracy because what they are trying to do is not a crime (technically speaking, in a moral sense its probably a great crime, but these people don't house conventional morality).

It's not a conspiracy, just a movement. Where you stand is a function of where you sit. Its simple a movement, a party, a very small party, of very wealthy people who want ever greater concentrations in wealth and power. They want to undo the New Deal.

They want ever greater concentrations of wealth and power. They've embraced religion in a utilitarian sense to achieve their political and economic purposes. They have plenty of time, plenty of patience and for some I am sure, no better hobby then trying to manipulate society into their ideals.

It's all circumstantial, but it makes sense.

This is the only thing that makes sense. Bush's presidency makes no sense except from this perspective. Right wing religious fundementalism makes no sense except under this perspective (remember Christ commanded his followers to separate civics from religion, so use of religion in this way is fundementaly anti-christian).

Somewhere, it appears to me, there's a group of these families who have allocated out different areas of activity: you handle religion, you handle politics, you handle economics etc.... The Ahmanson's have been active on the religious front. It's just one example.

I think there's a great novel, book, epic movie here in the making - the attemped undoing of the American republic in its modern form.

He that hath a trade, hath an estate - from Poor Richards Almanac - Benjamin Franklin

Perhaps it should be taught in civics classes, like when they are talking about how Goebbels propaganda machine, used on behalf of the Nazis, the 'science of racism' employed, that sort of thing.

But not in a science class.

He that hath a trade, hath an estate - from Poor Richards Almanac - Benjamin Franklin