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Palin's War On Science

October 27, 2008, 6:26PM

Click Here for C Hitchens latest takedown of the ineffably cretinous Sarah Palin. He may be a rum besotted rapscallion with a curmudgeonly disposition, but when he takes down the fatuous, I'm glad he has girded his loins and stormed the Circus Maximus.

Bottom line: if God created all things bright and beautiful and vile and odious, then DNA is useless, and research to perfect serum innoculations against bird flu are pointless. We can all go happily to our graves content in the knowledge that it is God's Will....

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I'd recommend to Sarah Palin that she read J. Robert Oppenheimers beautiful essay "The Open Mind" from the collection "Prospects in the Arts and Sciences."

To quote a small section:

For the truth is that this is indeed, inevitably and increasingly, an open and, inevitably and increasingly, an eclectic world. We know too much for one man to know much, we live too variously to live as one. Our histories and traditions — the very means of interpreting life — are both bonds and barriers amongs us.
Our knowledge separates as well as it unites; our orders disintegrate as well as bind; our art brings us together and sets us apart. The artist’s loneliness, the scholar despairing because no one will any longer trouble to learn what he can teach, the narrowness of the scientist — these are unnatural insignia in this great time of change.

For what is asked of us is not easy. The openness of this world derives its character from the irreversibility of learning; what is once learned is part of human life. We cannot close our minds to discovery; we cannot stop our ears so that the voices of far-off and strange people can no longer reach them. The great cultures of the east cannot be walled off from ours by impassable seas and defects of understanding based on ignorance and unfamiliarity. Neither our integrity as men of learning nor our humanity allows that. In this open world, what is there, any man may try to learn...
We shall have a rugged time of it to keep our minds open and to keep them deep, to keep our sense of beauty and our ability to make it, and our occasional ability to see it in places remote and strange and unfamiliar; we shall have a rugged time of it, all of us, in keeping these gardens in our villages, in keeping open the manifold, intricate, casual paths, to keep these flourishing in a great, open, windy world; but this, as I see it, is the condition of man; and in this condition we can help, because we can love, one another.

Sorry for the longish quote. But there is no better response to unthinking, closed minds everywhere...

Posted by rationalcauses
October 27, 2008 9:52 PM | Reply | Permalink

Wow. Interesting essay. Oppenheimer was an intriguing individual, and multi-dimensional. What can you say about a man who, having facilitated the development of the greatest destructive force humankind had known--would quote the Bhagavad Gita:'Now I am become the Destroyer of Worlds'. I always thought that nuclear proving test where he uttered those sentiments was what Yeats had prophesied with his 'What rough beast, it's hour come round at last' refrain.

I always liked this quote from the grandfather of Aldous, Thomas H. Huxley: “Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing”.

Posted by c4Logic in reply to a comment from rationalcauses
October 28, 2008 5:46 AM | Reply | Permalink

Yes, what a great quote!

Posted by rationalcauses in reply to a comment from c4Logic
October 28, 2008 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink

You've been on a roll today, c4Logic!

And rationalcauses, thanks for the lovely quotes, which I doubt Sarah would read - or comprehend.

Posted by TheraP
October 27, 2008 10:11 PM | Reply | Permalink

Thanks, TheraP! And by the way, although this is not the place for it - I heartily second your comments about the reply/rec problem...it's a no-brainer. It's the very definition of a bad user interface when the wrong thing happens more easily than the right thing..commenting on that elsewhere...

Posted by rationalcauses in reply to a comment from TheraP
October 27, 2008 10:14 PM | Reply | Permalink

Bush has been at war with science his whole presidency. Cross out facts you don't like. Reports that don't suit you? Toss 'em in a drawer somewhere. FDA's useless.

Science has been politicized for awhile.

Posted by Drifter
October 28, 2008 8:58 AM | Reply | Permalink

If you want to get a sense of the mindset against science, you can watch this PBS NOVA program online:

Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial

I think we really need to send this to any GOPer we know. Would you really want these people on your school board?

Posted by mageduley
October 28, 2008 11:45 AM | Reply | Permalink

I saw this. Excellent. And although it's a fictionalized version of events, Inherit the Wind is a pretty good telling of the Scopes monkey trial. The courtroom testimony was lifted verbatim from the trial transcript.

Here is the court transcript with Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan locked in Socratic dialogue. Brilliant.
Scopes Trial

Posted by c4Logic in reply to a comment from mageduley
October 28, 2008 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink

The fact is that the Dems have also let us down with regards to science. While they haven't gone the lengths of the Bush administration to warp or squelch government science reports (which is a new low and not necessarily linked to general GOP thinking), the Dems have still been frightened off by the religious right. They need to combat Palin's hardline quite strongly.

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain all declined a primary-season science debate invitation from the non-partisan and heavy weight organization Sciencedebate2008.

Moreover, Obama and McCain had a "faith debate" before succumbing to even answering written questions posed to them by Sciencedebate2008. That was disheartening.

We all know -- and agree -- that the religious right must be purged from these discussions and, by and large, they are part of the GOP.

However, after being elected, I hope Obama and the Democrats shows a lot more backbone in this area. They should not be viewed a "science-friendly" just because the GOP's right wing is "science-phobic". The record on this topic during this campaign has been rather poor on both sides and we need to admit that.

Posted by clearthinker
October 28, 2008 5:06 PM | Reply | Permalink

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I was raised by a kindly old gentleman in the wilderness near the Rio Branco. He died of natural causes when I was 16, and I drifted down river in a bark canoe not knowing what I would find and eventually arrived at a settlement of Franciscan missionaries.It was then I discovered that we had not been the only white men left after the Nuclear Holocaust, that in fact, there had never been a Nuclear Holocaust, and there was no need to forge our own bronze and iron and live off the bounty of the rain forest. I was probably kidnapped as a small child. I have dim memories of someone called Mae and Pai. I wandered the Pan American highway till I settled for a time in Zipolite, Mexico, where I worked as a silversmith. Eventually I met a beautiful young woman who was independently wealthy and she married me and took me to live in N Ca where we live on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. I have my own forge, and do blacksmithing for the local horses, in addition to my silver and bronze work. Adaptation to modern civilization has been a challenge for me ever since I realized I was deprived of my natural family and raised by someone who, though kind, must have been something of a lunatic. He did teach me many practical survival skills, however so I guess he wasn't all bad. I have ambivalent feelings about my whole childhood.

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