May 1, 2011 by Dr. Mc.

After warning an audience against buying into Darwinian evolution too easily, I overheard someone in the audience say, “Well, I guess we could just scrap all progress and throw out evolution. (The sarcasm was obviously meant for me to overhear.) She didn’t realize how opposite the truth really is.
Take for instance the current case of the dune sagebrush lizard, or sand dune lizard (sceloporus arenicolus), proposed for the endangered species list by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. If it becomes classified as endangered, then its habitat becomes “protected,” and economic progress stops.
Don’t get me wrong. I love lizards, and enjoyed catching and keeping his cousin the eastern fence swift (sceloporus undulates) when I was a kid growing up in Alabama. They are found all over the southeast, and are very similar, as is the Western fence swift (Sceloporus occidentalis ), found from Texas to California, and the sagebrush lizard (Sceloporus graciosus), found everywhere between Texas and Idaho.
And that’s my point: One word you will find in all the above citations except the Fish & Wildlife report is “common.” We are holding up progress for a lizard that has abundant replacements.
Some scientists make a living by identifying “species,” even naming them after themselves on occasion, without ever drawing up a clear definition of what a “species” really is. They leave us with the mistaken impression that every species is unique, took millions of years to “evolve” (another poorly defined word), and is irreplaceable. In fact each of these lizards only differ by concentrations of certain options (alleles) in the same genomic structure. It’s like pigmentation differences in humans, and we are not different species for it.
It seems strange to me that scientists are all about clarification until it comes to these two terms, species and evolution. If the clarification there would be faced and dealt with, we could then get some real progress in other areas. Why not do it? Because once those terms became clear, then Darwinian evolution itself might become an endangered species.

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April 27, 2011 by Dr. Mc.

I have listened inattentively to radio talk shows and call-ins for years. Don’t eat while listening, because they definitely are not good for digestion. They talk of degeneration in our culture and of how government is taking away our basic religious freedoms. Morality takes a backseat to economics. They are disturbing, because of how correct they are. I have mentally joined in on the complaining, even if I have not called in.
But in a democracy, who can we blame? No, I don’t think we need a push for more Christians involved in politics. Yes, we do need more, but that is hardly the core problem. A democratic society merely reflects the people, and Christian leaders can only do so much when society is going the other way.
We complain about how Thomas Jefferson is misrepresented today on the “separation of church and state” issue, and yet why has it only been a problem in the last 50 years? Maybe it’s because for the last 100 years we have separated God from our state of mind.
Does my Christian service begin and end with attending “services?” Does reading my Bible affect the way I live? Do I talk with Him as I walk through my day, or is that just for my “prayer time?” If not, then I deserve my government. Correction begins with deciding whether God is real in my own life.
No more separation.

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April 18, 2011 by Dr. Mc.

I have to say something. Academic Freedom acts are happening to the chagrin of well-organized oppositions. By mid-February of this year the NCSE sounded the alarm that bills for the protection of teachers in relation to teaching balance in science controversy had already been proposed in seven separate state legislatures. Last week, HB368 passed in the Tennessee House by a vote of 70 to 28, hardly close, and opposition confesses that the identical Senate bill, SB368, will probably pass and be signed into law.
The fascinating thing is that the major groups in opposition to such legislature all claim to be protecting science, yet this bill and others like it only promote the teaching of more science, not less. The opposition constantly speaks of religion being snuck into the classroom, of Creationism and Intelligent Design, while the bills speak of helping students learn to think critically. The bills often contain specific paragraphs saying religious interpretations are expressly prohibited. They must say it because of the accusations of the opposition, not because of any suggestive wording in the bills themselves.
The more the opposition focuses on non-issues and objects to teaching critical thinking, the more suspect is their confidence in how scientific their positions really are.

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March 5, 2010 by Dr. Mc.

It’s always refreshing to see a paper like the New York Times publish a piece that makes a point I made in my blog months earlier. Yes, there is strong parallel between the way objections to the global warming belief system is being handled and the handling of objections to Darwinian evolution. People are noticing the parallel and viewpoint discrimination is being addressed in some state legislatures.
Interestingly enough, the author engages in another parallel herself. She positions opposition to the global warming belief system as religious, just as defenders of status-quo evolution position its objectors. This blankets all Darwin skeptics, even though their ranks include prominent agnostics, atheists, and people of other diverse religious positions. There is no reason to assume the same does not also hold for global warming scare objectors.
Notice that no science is ever alluded to in the Times article, only opinions and categorizing of the opponents (read that “name-calling”). Perhaps white evangelical Protestants are more likely to not believe the global warming dogma, because they already see the misconduct of orthodox scientists in squelching the evolution debate. Does this somehow mean the objectors are wrong? What does it matter what reason motivates a person to propose a scientific investigation. What should matter is if the hypotheses and subsequently accumulated evidence passes the rigor of the scientific method.
Why even talk about what some pole says about people’s opinions? Why is the evidence not the issue instead of opinions? The article frames white evangelical Protestants as bad guys because they are more skeptical of the global warming consensus than the general population. (We are given no information about what black evangelical Protestants think, so they may be more or less skeptical than white.) The way the argument is framed obscures the larger truth: Only 36% of the general population buys the idea that there is a human-induced global warming issue. In my math classes that would be considered quite short of a majority. Does the author of this article somehow miss that her politically correct view still represents the minority of Americans?

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November 13, 2009 by Dr. Mc.

The Christian Science Monitor reported that as of November 14 “military investigators’ position thus far that Hasan acted alone and without instruction when he attacked Fort Hood’s Soldier Readiness Processing Center Nov. 5, killing 13 and wounding 29.” Many conservative bloggers and pundits are arguing that Hasan should be considered as, and tried as, a terrorist; and that the whole thing would not have happened but for political correctness blinding us from the symptoms of the impending danger.
That may well be, but I think they are still missing a larger and more important point, one also missed during the Bush administration and also hidden as a result of politically correct word “terrorism.” Ladies and gentlemen, our enemy is not terrorism, and there can be no war on terrorism. Terrorism is a technique. It’s killing and maiming innocent people to demoralize and disorganize them. To say there is a war against terrorism would be like the British among the American revolutionaries saying that they were engaged in a war against fighting behind trees. No one wants to offend Muslims by pointing out that in every attack that we label as “terrorism,” the perpetrators have acted in the name of Allah.
No, that’s not my point either. Most Muslims seem to live peacefully enough, no more willing to believe and act on every word of the Qur’an as God’s word than most Christians do in respect to the Bible. The culprits are that faction known as radical Muslims, but that is still not the carefully hidden truth of the matter.
It is important to know if Hasan acted alone in order to trace down any “sleeper cells” or other yet-to-be-discovered strategies in opposition to the US. But the pursuit is also fueled by an intentional ignorance. People want to believe that we are threatened by an organization or a group of organizations like organized crime. It isn’t. The enemy is not a new kind of mafia. It is an ideology. Let me be more blunt: It is a certain belief about the nature of God—Who He is, what He values, and what He rewards and punishes. Yes, a person can buy into and act upon an ideology, especially a religious one, without being recruited into an “organization.”
Some rightly fear that if this fact is acknowledged by the masses then Christians will come under even more attack as all religious beliefs are rolled together. This may also be, but it still does not reach the depths of the distasteful truth.
In his small but powerful book Knowledge of the Holy, A.W. Tozer argues from the very first page, that “what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” The more I think about this, the more I am convinced it is true.
The carefully hidden truth is that everyone has a belief about God, and that (here’s the part most difficult to swallow) that belief drives all persons’ behaviors. It does not just affect the behavior of those people who say they believe IN God. The statement concerns what we think ABOUT God. All of us have a belief ABOUT God, which is driven by what we think about God.. or is it the other way around? It doesn’t matter in this case. Those who think they have freed themselves from God and religion are wrong. What they think about God drives their behavior no less than it does for those who have different conclusions about who and what He is (or it is, depending on their belief system). We all are driven by religious beliefs, and we cannot help but act on them and (even irrationally) defend them against those who would have us compromise them. Some will think I have digressed from the usual topic of this blog. I haven’t.

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July 13, 2009 by Dr. Mc.

According to a summary published
in Science Daily, researchers at Oregon State University have made a “fundamental new discovery” about the nature of birds that makes
the evolution of birds from dinosaurs pretty much untenable. Recapping a research article published in The Journal of Morphology, they explain that the femur (leg bone from hip to knee) of
all birds (and unlike all other land vertebrates) is in a fixed position in
relation to the hip. Otherwise, they could not hit the massive transfer of air
into and out of their air sacs as is necessary for flight. So what?
So birds did not evolve from dinosaurs. “It’s really strange that no one realized this before,” says Devon Quick, because “this is fundamental to bird physiology.” Fundamental and they
just now noticed.
I’m really not as interested in bird physiology as I am the reason it went unnoticed in the last hundred years of the advancement of science. Quick was quick to say (sorry, I couldn’t resist
that one), “We aren’t suggesting that dinosaurs and birds may not have a common ancestor somewhere in the distant past.” That would be a surefire career-killer. So
they couch the statement by suggesting “birds and dinosaurs may have shared a
common ancestor, such as the small reptilian thecodont.” Remember? You’ve seen them in every family tree of dinosaurs. It’s the little guy at the bottom of the chart, placed there as if it really was an animal species. It isn’t.
It’s a grouping of animals that paleontologists know have a few common characteristics, but no common decent. The scientific word for it is paraphyletic, but the easier to understand word is “myth.” So why even invoke the word? The inconvenient truth is that it saves face for the fact that there are no common ancestors.
But the Science Daily article even goes on to quote another scientist as saying, “There’s a lot of museum politics involved in this, a lot of careers committed to a particular point of view even if new scientific evidence raises
questions.”
There! I can’t believe they really said it. Will next year’s high school biology books leave out the picture of the thecodont at the bottom of the dinosaur family tree? Will the bird femur problem make it into those same books? Ever? What do you
think? After all, if they did, who would buy all those feathered
dinosaurs everyone has invested in?

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June 9, 2009 by Dr. Mc.

Sarah Palin has been cleared of all 13 ethics charges brought against her during her bid for the vice-presidency. Many will never hear this fact. Many who do, because of their news sources, will laugh and say, “See! I knew she was innocent!” But I hear and I’m saddened. I would that she were guilty than that this trend were becoming the norm in my country.
It is obvious that the accusations were made to defame during the election. It’s OK with the accusers that she is vindicated after it no longer affects the outcome desired.
It is also obvious that the charges were made to sway a public that cares about ethics. What an irony! Those who made each of the original accusations must have known, surely they must have at least suspected, that the charges they were bringing were untrue. This is not the same as two parties debating an idea for its truth. That should be encouraged. There is something ironic, however, about a group having the power to attack someone’s ethics in an unethical way. At the very least, they simply didn’t care about the truth more than they cared about their cause. This is not a condemnation of a party. It is a condemnation of a people. Oh, God, what is to become of a people who care more about their cause than about the truth?

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May 7, 2009 by Dr. Mc.

Recently you have probably heard the swine flu described in terms of deaths in Mexico, followed closely by words like “pandemic” and “quarantine.” Last time I heard, those deaths were in two digits. Any deaths are of course tragic, but for years the average lives lost to flu in the United States alone exceed 36,000. The world’s experience with swine flu hardly qualifies as a “pandemic.” As a matter of fact, people do not normally get swine flu. What people do normally get, however, is hype from the media. They got to keep you watching!
The part that amazes me is that it works. We do not get our medical information from science; we get it from popular media. Unfortunately we don’t even get most of what we call science from science. We believe and make our judgments based on a kind of “politically correct” science. By “politically correct,” I mean facts filtered and presented to the masses based on some group’s agenda. It is emotionally charged for some predetermined conclusion or action. I’m not even sure there is such thing as unbiased science, but I am sure we can do better. Does it matter? How about spending billions on finding a cure for a disease that is behaviorally correctable, while the number one killer, heart disease, receives about one eighth the funding?
Is there an agenda behind most of what we hear on global warming? I’ve seen the markers in Alaska where the glaciers once reached. No one doubts that the world is warmer than it was 200 years ago, but that was during what is now known as the “little ice age.” The earth’s temperature has fluctuated warmer and cooler as far as we can tell for all of recorded history–long before industrial pollution was invented. The cause of climate change is, to say the least, controversial. The leap that man is responsible is vanity. That we are thus able to fix it is arrogance. “You really can’t settle the issue by more heated debate…You need experimental data.”
But it sells newspapers, and it justifies research grants. It doesn’t boost either to point out that 95% of greenhouse gas is water vapor, or that CO2 is harmless to animals and essential for plants.
All my ranting so far is really about one thing: Our lives are so filled with other things, and we are so dependent on the digestion of ideas by other people, that we are suckers for someone else’s agenda. Could it be true of other “science”? Are the masses buying evolution because the evidence is so irrefutable, or could it be that the fit with secularism and research grants is not coincidental? After all, we must discover our self-made roots and whether other life has evolved out there. It’s too coincidental not to be questioned.

Posted in Culture & society, Politics, History, Science and faith | 4 Comments »

March 22, 2009 by Dr. Mc.

Last week an official letter was sent by the ACLU and others to leaders in the Obama administration protesting the denial of academic freedom for certain persons seeking admission into the United States. The apparent reason for denial of these persons’ visas was outspoken ideological differences with our government. I am not here concerned with whether these people should be allowed into the United States nor do I necessarily take issue with the missions and approaches of all the organizations that signed the letter. I would however, like to recommend that the ACLU read again this letter that they have posted on their website the next time they wish to object to a teacher who simply presents ideological or scientific criticisms to Darwinian evolution theory. To make it easier for them, I have copied the entire text below, highlighting phrases and whole sentences that could as easily fit the
mistreatment of Darwin critics; whom apparently the ACLU finds more threatening to our civil liberties than political dissidents.

March 18, 2009

Dear Attorney General Holder and Secretaries Clinton and Napolitano:

Over the last eight years, the Departments of State and Homeland Security revivedthe practice of “ideological exclusion,” refusing visas to foreign scholars, writers, artists, and activistsnot on the basis of their actions but on the basis of their ideas, political views, and associations. As a result of this practice, dozens of prominent intellectuals were barred from assuming teaching posts at U.S. universities, fulfilling

speaking engagements with U.S. audiences, and attending academic conferences. Many of those barred from the United States were vocal critics of U.S. foreign policy.

We are writing to urge you to end this practice. While the government plainly has an interest in excluding
foreign nationals who present a threat to national security,no legitimate interest is served by the exclusion
of foreign nationalson ideological grounds.

To the contrary,ideological exclusion impoverishes academic and political debate inside the United States. It sends the message to the world that our country is more interested in silencing than engaging its critics.It undermines our ability to support political dissidents in other countries. And it deprives Americans of a right protected by the First

Amendment.See Kleindienst v. Mandel, 408 U.S. 753 (1972).No legitimate interest is served by the government’s use of the immigrationlaws as instruments of censorship.

In fact, ideological exclusion is a practice that history had discredited long before the Bush administration. During the Cold War, the United States used the ideological exclusion provisions of the McCarran-Walter Act to bar, among others, Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, Italian playwright Dario Fo, British novelist Doris Lessing, and Canadian

writer and environmentalist Farley Mowat. Those exclusions came to be seen as an embarrassment to the country, and virtually no one proposes now that those exclusions served the national interest. History will judge the ideological exclusions of the last eight years in the same way. Such exclusions are ineffective as a matter of security policy and they are inconsistent with the ideals that make this country worth defending.

The undersigned organizations are eager to see the new administration commit itself to these ideals. Accordingly, we respectfully ask (1)
that you evaluate applicants for admission to the United States on the basis of their actions rather than their political beliefs and associations; (2) that, as to foreign scholars, writers, artists, and activists who are deemed inadmissible under the Immigration and Nationality Act, you exercise your discretion to waive inadmissibility except where articulable national security interests unrelated to the applicant’s political beliefs or associations make waiver inappropriate; and (3) that you immediately revisit the specific cases listed below:

• Iñaki Egaña. Mr. Egaña is a respected historian and writer from the Basque region of Spain. In March 2006, Mr. Egaña traveled to the United States to conduct research for a book about Basque author Mario Salegi, who was a target of McCarthyism during the 1950s. Upon disembarking the plane, however, Mr. Egaña and his children were interrogated, detained for 24 hours, and forced to return to Madrid. The government has provided no explanation for Mr. Egaña’s exclusion.

• Haluk Gerger. Professor Gerger is a Turkish sociologist and journalist. He was jailed by Turkey in the 1990s for his writing about Turkey’s Kurds. Twice during that time, in its 1994 and 1995 Country Reports on Human Rights, the U.S. State Department cited Professor Gerger’s treatment as an example of the misuse of antiterrorism legislation to stifle freedom of expression. In 1999, when Professor Gerger was on trial again for his writings, the U.S. issued Professor Gerger and his wife 10-year, multiple entry visas. In October 2002, however, when Professor

Gerger and his wife arrived at Newark airport, border officials informed them that the State Department had cancelled their visas. The governmenthas provided no explanation for Professor Gerger’s exclusion.

• Adam Habib. Professor Habib, a South African national, is a prominent human rights activist and public intellectual. Although he earned his PhD in the United States, when he attempted to visit the United States in October 2006 for professional meetings, he was interrogated for seven hours at the border and then told that his visa had been revoked. After U.S. organizations filed suit to challenge his exclusion, the government notified Professor Habib that he had been denied entry on terrorism-related grounds. It still has not has not informed him, however, of the specific legal or factual basis for its decision. The evidence strongly suggests that Professor Habib has been excluded not because of any

connection to terrorism but because of his political activism.

• Riyadh Lafta. Dr. Lafta, an Iraqi national, is Professor of Medicine at Baghdad’s Mustansiriyah University. In the fall of 2006, Dr. Lafta applied for a U.S. visa in order to attend a speaking engagement at the University of Washington that was to take place in April 2007. His visa application was denied. Although the government stated that the denial was the result of a “miscommunication,” the circumstances strongly suggest that Dr. Lafta was refused a visa because f conclusions he had drawn in a 2006 article regarding the number of civilian casualties in Iraq.

• Tariq Ramadan. Professor Ramadan, a Swiss national, is a professor at the University of Oxford and, in the words of Time magazine, “the leading Islamic thinker among Europe’s second- and third-generation Muslim immigrants.” In 2004, he was offered a teaching position at the University of Notre Dame; only days before he was to begin teaching, however, he was told that his visa had been revoked under a provision that renders inadmissible anyone who has “endorse[d] or espouse[d]” terrorism. After U.S. groups filed suit, the government abandoned the accusation that Professor Ramadan had endorsed terrorism. It continues to exclude him now, however, under the INA’s “material support” provisions. We believe that the material support provisions do not apply to Professor Ramadan, and the evidence strongly suggests that he has been excluded not because of his donations but because of his vocal criticism of U.S. foreign policy.

• Rafael de Jesus Gallego Romero. Father Gallego is a parish priest from the village of Tiquisio in North-Central Colombia, where he ministers to miners and peasants, facilitates community support initiatives, and runs a local radio station. Father Gallego is also a vocal critic of government-supported paramilitary units acting on behalf of multinational mining corporations. In the fall of 2008, Father Gallego received invitations to travel to the United States to address universities, activist organizations, community radio stations, and churches. The U.S. government simply failed to adjudicate the visa. Father Gallego eventually learned from the Provincial Jesuit, who has ties to the American Embassy, that his visa was going to be denied “for national security reasons,” buthe has never received a formal notification that his visa was adjudicated, let alone an

explanation of the grounds on which it was denied.

• Dora María Téllez. Professor Téllez was a leading figure in Nicaragua’s revolution against the brutal Somoza regime, and has served in her country as a government minister, political activist, and professor. She has also been a vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy. In 2004, she was appointed Robert F. Kennedy visiting professor in Latin American Studies at Harvard’s Divinity School and Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. When Professor Téllez attempted to enroll at a language class in California in preparation for that post, however,< class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">her student visa was denied on the ground that she had previously engaged in terrorist acts, despite the fact that she had been granted visas to enter the United States in the past.

Ideological exclusion compromises the vitality of academic and political debate in the United States at a time when that debate is exceptionally important. The practice was misguided during the Cold War and it is misguided now. We strongly urge you to end the practice and to immediately revisit the cases noted above.

Sincerely,

(Among others)

American Civil Liberties Union

American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California

American Federation of Teachers

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August 3, 2008 by Dr. Mc.

Noting that Alexis de Tocqueville completed Democracy in America in the early 1800’s, I am
amazed that he foresaw the American war of secession over slavery (1860’s) and
even that America and Russia would some day become world superpowers with
competing world views (1960’s). His power of prediction stem not from religious
claims, but from uncompromised logic, applied to carefully investigated of
facts, with clear understanding of human nature.

That understanding of human nature is most clear to me in Book 2, Chapter 2
of Democracy, where he addresses a subject that I wrestle with regularly
in my century–The inevitability (and value) of dogmatism.

According to de Tocqueville, not only are we all dogmatic,
we all must be dogmatic in order to think clearly and deeply. There are too many
things to think through, so we must trust someone else’s conclusions in order to
build and think completely about anything. Anyone who has traveled overseas, or
even into a variant of our own culture, has discovered how fatiguing it is to
simply go through the day: How and when does one cross the street? Which
direction does the traffic flow? What does a mail box look like? Things we
previously took for granted must now be thought about, draining our ability to
cope. So we in our daily lives accept as true many things we have not
investigated in order to think on other things. Our society is allowed to
accumulate knowledge, instead of reinventing the wheel every generation. This
serves us well more often than not. It is a good thing to trust and build on
trustworthy sources. But what happens when people trust the wrong source?

De Tocqueville draws another conclusion: The nature of
democracy leads people to depend more on majority thinking than on accumulated
experience.  "At periods of equality men have no faith in one another, by
reason of their common resemblance; but this very resemblance gives them almost
unbounded confidence in the judgment of the public; for it would seem probable
that, as they are all endowed with equal means of judging, the greater truth
should go with the greater number." In other words, majority thinking becomes
more powerful than experience handed down from our forefathers. History is lost.

That is a scary thought. And I’m afraid de Tocqueville has
predicted again the state of America and the free world. Those who can think,
must.

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