YOU already know about the scientific method, and you’re aware that its development is one of the finest achievements of the Enlightenment. But do you really understand the enormous gulf that exists between our philosophical outlook and pre-Enlightenment thinking? Here’s one example:

At the website of Answers in Genesis (AIG) we found a fascinating new article titled Other Religious Writings: Can They Be From God, Too?

Most of that article isn’t relevant to our blog, but two consecutive paragraphs struck us as being quite interesting:

God never tried to prove His existence or prove that His Word is superior to other writings. God simply opens the Bible with a statement of His existence and says His Word is flawless (Genesis 1:1; Proverbs 30:5). The Bible bluntly claims to be the truth (Psalm 119:160), and Christ repeated this claim (John 17:17).

For the sake of completeness, we’ll give you the King James version of those cited passages:

Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

Proverbs 30:5 “Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.”

Psalm 119:160 “Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever.”

John 17:17 “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.”

Okay, that’s what the Good Book says. Now what? Here’s the next paragraph in the AIG article:

In fact, if God had tried to prove that He existed or that His Word was flawless, then any evidence or proof would be greater than God and His Word. But God knows that nothing is greater than His Word, and therefore He doesn’t stoop to our carnal desires for such proofs.

So there you are. That’s perhaps the ultimate argument from authority.

You are also familiar with the Scottish Enlightenment, which so strongly influenced the Founding Fathers who led the American Revolution. That Wikipedia article says: “[T]he thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment asserted the fundamental importance of human reason combined with a rejection of any authority which could not be justified by reason.”

It was only by rejecting blind obedience to authority that the Founders could entertain the idea of rebelling against their king and establishing a totally new form of government — one which had never seen on earth, and which was certainly not described in scripture. As we’ve noted before, there was no scriptural basis for concepts like a decentralized federal republic, a two-house legislature, limited government with enumerated powers, representation based on population, checks and balances, prohibiting religious qualifications for holding office, allowing secular oaths, and providing that a man-made Constitution was the supreme law of the land. But that’s what the Founders gave us.

Obviously, the American Revolution was no garden-variety palace coup. It was utterly … well, revolutionary. And to put it simply: No Enlightenment, no Revolution.

Despite the extra-ordinary achievements of the past two centuries, it’s obvious that the authoritarian mode of thinking still has wide appeal. For the folks at AIG, it’s not merely the basis for their religious outlook, it’s their entire worldview. It’s also obvious that scriptural authority is the sole basis for creationism, which has no foundation whatsoever in science. See: The Folly of Creationism.

You know all that, but have you given much thought to the connection between creationism and those who want to rewrite the philosophical history of the Revolution? The thinking in both cases is the same, and you can easily observe it at work in the same people whenever the circumstances permit. See Texas Education War: Phase Two.

So please, dear reader, remember that what’s at stake here isn’t just the theory of evolution. We’re concerned about much more than the confused ravings of misguided simpletons. What’s really going on is a conflict of infinitely greater importance. We’re engaged in a war for the preservation of the Enlightenment, which is the ultimate accomplishment of Western Civilization.

It’s a war we can’t afford to lose.

[Related posts: Salem and Philadelphia: A Tale of Two Cities and Discovery Institute: Enemies of the Enlightenment.]

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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BRACE yourself. We’ve found an amazing item titled The choice is simple enough: It’s either God or the abyss. It appears in the Mansfield News Journal, a daily newspaper in Mansfield, Ohio.

We can’t tell if this is a letter-to-the-editor or maybe a piece written by one of the News Journal’s columnists. There’s a picture at the link, showing what appears to be the author. We’ll leave it up to you to decide if he’s drooling.

This … this thing is so incredibly embarrassing that we won’t give the author’s name. He’s described as being age 65, of rural Bellville, and he “has been in the insurance and investment business for 30 years.” We’ll copy only some of this letter — or column, or whatever it is — adding bold for emphasis and Curmudgeonly commentary between the paragraphs.

The article by this rural insurance salesman is nominally about Dr. Tim Berra, Professor Emeritus of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology at Ohio State University. Berra has recently donated his collection of rare mammals and aquatic specimens to the Smithsonian Institute. That news is the pretext for one of the most ignorant and malignant rants against the theory of evolution we’ve yet seen.

We are told that Berra wrote: “The theory of evolution is arguably the greatest idea the human mind ever had.” That bothers today’s author. Okay, here we go:

In this statement by Berra, we have a peek into the religion of atheistic evolution and its high priest, Charles Darwin. In Berra’s “Evolution and the Myth of Creationism,” he attacks fundamentalist Christians who espouse a 6,000-year “young” earth and a literal 6-day creation.

The article goes on to state that Berra could:

… examine the most intricate, gorgeous living systems — view the vastness and order of an unfathomable universe — and conclude that all came to be by chance without a shred of intelligent thinking. [He even believed] … life originated from inanimate (non-living) chemicals. … [And he] never wavers from this presupposition that all living plants and animals have their derivation in non-living, inorganic matter. All life forms from the simple to the complex are the product of inorganic chemical reactions.

Gasp! The deluded evolutionist actually believed that stuff. Today’s author is clearly horrified. He tells us:

This belief is the slippery slope, and the implications of this system of thought are vast and beyond the darkest of your imaginings. Chances are your mind has never darkened this door. Let’s open it!

Okay, here it comes — raw sewage from the mind of a full-blown creationist. The fetid flow begins:

In this “natural” world, you are an accident that has happened, a purposeless, worthless blob of protoplasm, a massive ball of chemical and electrical reactions caused by various stimuli. … As an animal, the only two functions basic to you are procreation and survival from disease, famine, predation and death. “Survival of the fittest!”

The implications of this thought system are vast and ominous and terrible.

Yes. It’s not at all like the joyous existence of humans in the world of Noah’s Ark, where at any moment all life on earth may be destroyed by divine will. Let’s read on:

For the atheist, we are living in a universe that is completely material. There is no personal or absent Creator and nothing beyond the grave. Here are the ultimate conclusions:

Note the assumption that a scientist must be an atheist. Today’s author is just getting warmed up. We continue:

Nothing is intrinsically evil because evil does not exist. How can evil originate from amoral, inorganic matter. There is no absolute right or wrong. My truth is not your truth nor yours mine — and your truth be damned! All morals, ethics and systems of belief are made up. All ideas, ways of thinking and patterns of life are mental imaginings and coping mechanisms. Pain and pleasure are sensory nerve endings responding to various stimuli. You are just a thing whose ancestors were one-celled amoebas.

He’s not fully cranked up yet. Here’s more:

You cannot have a moral code in a material world. If “all animal life, including human, is related by descent from a common ancestor” (Darwin), then the human species is merely an animal with usually a bigger brain. Ethics? Ethical animals? — an anomaly! The origin of an ethical life: the goo pond? The seven deadly sins and more are spawned in an amoral world. As long as you can do it and not get caught, go for it, because there’s nothing after nothing!

Aha! That explains why so many biology majors become drug dealers, mass murderers, and operators of global brothel chains that offer the services of enslaved children. Moving along:

The Golden Rule? Have you seen another animal species who wanted to be treated with fairness and dignity? It’s kill or be killed. …

[...]

Socrates argued that conscience is innate. An animal has a conscience? …

[...]

In his [Berra's] material world nothing is scientifically valuable, in his natural universe nothing is irreplaceable, nothing is preserved, nothing is intact, nothing is forever. In the end, all will face the abyss.

[...]

Berra was just a genetic quirk, a chance happening in the evolutionary chain of events with absolutely no reason or purpose for his existence but as luck would have it.

We’re just picking out the highlights, so to speak. You’ll have to click over to the Mansfield News Journal if you want to read it all. Here’s how it ends:

How can truth, beauty and goodness come from the rocks? I don’t have that kind of faith!

So there you are, dear reader. The choice is yours. You are facing the abyss.

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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IN the Contra Costa Times, a daily newspaper in Walnut Creek, California, we read Fossil find in Beaumont fuels earth age debate. It’s written by Josh Dulaney, described as a staff writer. Here are some excerpts, with bold added by us:

The discovery of a ground sloth skull west of Beaumont has stoked the debate between evolutionists and creationists over man’s origins and the age of the earth. Some scientists say the fossil dates back 1.8 million years.

This sounds like a nice fossil find. What’s the debate? Let’s read on:

“It’s one more grain of sand on the beach of evidence for evolution,” said Jim Blauth, a biology professor at the University of Redlands.

[...]

Some scientists said the sloth fossil is the first from the Ice Age to have been discovered west of the Rocky Mountains. But they have their doubters.

Doubters? We continue:

Creationists who believe the earth is only about 10,000 years old balk at talk about the fossil’s age. Among them is Frank Sherwin, a writer and speaker with the Dallas-based Institute for Creation Research. Sherwin, who holds a master’s in zoology from the University of Northern Colorado, said while such findings are exciting, claims made about the ancient date of the skull should be met with skepticism.

Sherwin? We’ve run into that name before. Check out this biographical page about Frank Sherwin, III, which describes him as “an Aide de Campe to ICR’s President, Dr. John Morris.” Why does this newspaper report the ravings of a young-earth creationist from the Institute for Creation Research?

Here’s more:

“The fossil record doesn’t document these alleged millions and millions of years the evolutionists talk about,” Sherwin said.

His organization believes man and animals were created at virtually the same time. Secular scientists stumble over the complexities of the natural world and continue to adjust the age of the earth to fit their theories, Sherwin said.

Perhaps this is the kind of information demanded by the readers of the Contra Costa Times. Or maybe the reporter, Josh Dulaney, is a creationist who is exploiting the fossil find so he can be “helpful” and “journalistic” by presenting all sides. Moving along:

Sherwin pointed to the rate of genetic entropy among humans as evidence for his beliefs. Many young earth creationists teach that the human genome is deteriorating at such a pace that people would already be extinct if they were created millions of years ago.

Moreso, young earth creationists such as Sherwin believe their theory squares with the Bible’s account of origins in the first two chapters of Genesis. “We don’t find the enormous time periods in Scripture,” Sherwin said. “We take a literal six day creation.”

Our rough estimate is that the newspaper is giving at least twice as much space to the young-earther as to the genuine scientists. Isn’t journalism grand? On with the article:

But not all creationists agree that the Genesis account teaches God made the world and everything in it in 144 hours. “Our perspective is that the earth is 4.5 billion years in age,” said Fazale “Fuz” Rana, an Upland scientist who is vice president of research and apologetics at Reasons to Believe, a faith and science ministry based in Glendora.

Want another link for your collection of creationist websites? Okay, this is where “Fuz” Rana hangs out: Reasons to Believe. They’re old-earth creationists. The article continues:

There is much at stake in the debate among creationists, said Rana, who has a doctorate in chemistry with an emphasis in biochemistry and did some post-doctoral training at the universities of Virginia and Georgia.

Young earth creationism is a roadblock to many looking into Christianity, he said. “The young earth perspective really sets the Christian faith up for ridicule. When they say that the earth is young and ridiculously young, then it’s very hard for anybody who has a bent toward science to take the Christian faith seriously.”

This journalist is not only giving creationists far more ink than scientists, but now we’re getting conflicting opinions from the various sects of creationism. We rarely see their differences set out so clearly in the same article. Let’s read some more:

“A lot of Christians are afraid of science and they bury their heads in the sand,” he [Rana] said. “A lot of young Christians who are taught young earth creationism go to college and (are taught something different) and abandon their faith.”

It’s that frequent experience that has many pastors explaining several interpretations of Genesis to their congregations rather than camping dogmatically on a young earth view as some have done in order to protect against charges of theological liberalism.

Now we’re learning about conflicts among preachers. All this because of a ground sloth skull. Want more? Sure you do.

“I tell them to approach it from all angles,” said Pastor Danny Carroll of Water of Life Community Church in Fontana. “There are several different points of view. I walk them through it and help them understand the differences and perspectives.”

Carroll said many pastors get rattled when they read of discoveries allegedly dating back millions of years and he was once one who felt he had to defend his faith. But too often the discoveries are disproven by later findings, he said.

It must be tough to be a creationist preacher. Young earth? Old earth? Which version of creationism should be taught? Carroll teaches them all — maybe even flat earth — but not evolution. Never that!

Now the journalist returns to the scientist who was quoted at the start of the article:

On the other hand, creationist theories don’t impact the work of professors like Blauth. Students rarely bring up creationism in his class. “Occasionally the subject will come up,” he said. “The debate is really sort of irrelevant or moot in most biologists’ minds.”

Blauth said his colleagues are upset more by the effort of creationists to get their theories taught in the public school system.

At last we come to the end:

“I think it’s ironic that people are trying to dress up their beliefs in religious clothing,” Blauth said. “That’s how I would interpret what they are doing. One of the amazing things about our brains is we can hold ideas that are contradictory to each other.”

He probably meant to say “trying to dress up their religious beliefs in scientific clothing.”

So there you are. We imagine this enlightened news coverage will cause furious controversy among the readers of the Contra Costa Times. Sometimes a ground sloth fossil will do that.

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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NEWS of The Controversy is slow, so we visited the website PhysOrg, “a leading web-based science, research and technology news service which covers a full range of topics.” There we found Scientists think ‘killer petunias’ should join the ranks of carnivorous plants. Here are some excerpts, with bold added by us:

Scientists from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Natural History Museum believe that carnivorous behaviour in plants is far more widespread than previously thought, with many commonly grown plants – such as petunias – at least part way to being “meat eaters”.

They’re serious. Here’s a link to the abstract of Murderous plants: Victorian Gothic, Darwin and modern insights into vegetable carnivory, published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society.

Let’s read on:

Carnivorous plants fascinated Charles Darwin, and he and his friend Sir Joseph Hooker (Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew at that time) had an extensive correspondence concerning them. Darwin’s book Insectivorous Plants played a critical role in the idea that plants could eat animals being generally accepted. Before this, many botanists (including Linnaeus) had refused to accept that this could be the case.

Darwin strikes again! He not only took the mystery out of creation, but now we have to keep a watchful eye on the stylish carnation in our Curmudgeonly lapel — it may be out to get us.

We continue:

Plants like petunias and potatoes have sticky hairs that trap insects, and some species of campion have the common name catchfly for the same reason. However, some of the commonly accepted carnivores have not been demonstrated to have the ability to digest the insects they trap or to absorb the breakdown products. In their paper, Chase et al. review each of the groups of potential carnivores.

If you can’t even trust a potato, then what can you trust? Here’s one more excerpt:

Professor Mark Chase, Keeper of the Jodrell Laboratory at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew says, “Although a man-eating tree is fictional, many commonly grown plants may turn out to be cryptic carnivores, at least by absorbing through their roots the breakdown products of the animals that they ensnare. We may be surrounded by many more murderous plants than we think.“

There you are, dear reader. Now you know that the world is far more dangerous than you ever imagined. Even the divinely-shaped banana that fits so cozily in Ray Comfort’s hand may turn out to be an assassin.

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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THIS squabble has become a mini-series with unintended consequences. The neo-theocrats at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture (a/k/a the Discoveroids) are now so far out of that “science closet” they’ve been hiding in that they can never go back again.

It began here: Thrilled About ClimateGate, but the Discoveroids couldn’t control themselves. Matters swiftly escalated to this: The Mask Falls Away. (Hey, that one post got almost 9,000 hits so far.) That’s where we identified the “vindication of all kooks” doctrine — which holds that if the legitimate views of global warming skeptics had been wrongly suppressed, then all science dissent has been similarly mistreated, and therefore the science-denial of creationism is now respectable.

But it didn’t stop there. The situation continued with Another ClimateGate — Creationism Coupling, and then it went into high gear: Frenzy in Seattle!

Now the Discoveroid hysteria has reached its inevitable climax. They’ve always tried to keep their theocratic goals a bit of a secret, although they’re disclosed in The Wedge Document so their dark purposes are generally known. But now that the Discoveroids believe they’re witnessing the collapse the “godless” edifice of science — the Final Days of science, as it were — they’ve become totally unrestrained.

We present to you, dear reader, some excerpts from Commenter Nails the Central Issue in ClimateGate: the Rigging of Peer-Review, which appears at the Discoveroid blog. The pretext for their latest blog entry isn’t terribly important, so we’ll skip over that. What matters are the Discoveroid remarks made in addition to the trivial substance of their article. Here are some excerpts, with bold added by us:

The pro-global warming blog Climate Change Denial is spinning like a top. Devastated by the revelation of pervasive fraud in climate science, the warmists are clearly dazed and grasping at any tactics that might salvage their ideological hijacking of science, now laid bare.

That’s now it begins. To the Discoveroids, the debate is over (so to speak). Let’s read on:

The most pervasive manifestation of this fraud is the perversion of the peer-review process; it renders all of the ‘consensus science’ that has accrued under that process essentially worthless. Peer review is to science as jury deliberations are to criminal justice. It is sacrosanct. If it is tampered with, the verdict — scientific or judicial — is worthless, and must be thrown out.

It’s long been observed that the Discoveroids’ “theory” about a magical mystery Designer hasn’t yet made an appearance in the peer-reviewed literature. The Discoveroid blogger is about to address that:

The peer-review process in evolutionary biology is at least as compromised as the peer-review process in climate science.

Oh? Here’s more:

There is no “consensus” when the deliberations are rigged. No scientific conclusion is valid unless the raw data on which it is based is available to all for inspection and replication, and no scientific conclusion is valid unless the peer-review process is free of coersion and of ideological bias

The Discoveroids have data? Who knew? They’ve been amazingly shy about presenting it. If they’ve been unfairly kept out of the recognized journals, they could nevertheless post their research at their own website. It’ll be seen. So where is it?

Moving along:

Is there ideological bias in evolutionary biology, as there obviously is in climate science? Perhaps we should ask the 98.7% of evolutionary biologists who don’t believe in a personal God that question.

See? We told you they were out of the closet.

Regardless of the merits of of that survey — and we suspect that the figure of 98.7% is way too high — we now see what the Discoveroids imagine has been the problem that prevents their ideas from being published in peer-reviewed journals. They have always seen themselves to be engaged in a religious struggle, and now they don’t care to conceal it any longer.

By the way, there’s no hint that this Discoveroid allegation of censorship by atheists is in any way connected to ClimateGate. Does anyone believe that global warming skeptics are the victims of an atheist conspiracy? No, of course not. Do the Discoveroids openly allege such a conspiracy? No, even they don’t go that far.

If the dots don’t connect, that doesn’t matter. Creationists don’t have to connect the dots. Here’s the end of the Discoveroid article:

It’s easy to get a ‘consensus’ when one side controls the jury. That’s a ’show trial’, which is a succinct description of the peer review process in evolutionary biology as applied to intelligent design.

Ah yes, it’s those accursed atheists who are rigging the game against intelligent design. But if that’s been the Discoveroids’ problem all along, how in the world do they plan to teach that controversy in science class?

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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ACCORDING to Poe’s Law: “Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won’t mistake for the real thing.” Poe’s Law is obviously applicable to The Controversy between evolution and creationism.

Having said that, we now present to you, dear reader, an excerpt from US Creationists back Climategate scientists, by Damian Thompson, which appears in the Telegraph of London:

This just in. The Institute for Scriptural Geology in Waco, Texas, today offered “unswerving support and fervent prayers” for the scientists caught up in Climategate. Professor Elmer Moody, director of the institute, told a press conference: “We know what it’s like to have the integrity of our research questioned by unbelievers, so our hearts go out to those good folks at the East Anglican University.

This is great stuff! We don’t want to interfere with your pleasure by excerpting and commenting on it, paragraph by paragraph. Click over to the Telegraph and read it for yourself.

Your Curmudgeon is giving this one his top rating — a full Five Grumps.

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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