Richard Dawkins, meet Mary Mapes

There is a tragedy being played out on radio and television and in bookstores across America. Mary Mapes, a once-respected news producer, is out energetically demonstrating that she is emotionally (and morally) incapable of dealing with reality, that she screwed up big time by trying to sway an election with forged documents. Her mantra is that "no one has proven to me that the documents were forgeries", not realizing that she (and maybe Al Franken) are the only people left in America who still believe that.

We all have a streak of the Mary Mapes Syndrome in us. None of us like to admit we're wrong. But maybe we can learn something here.

At the heart of the Mapes' spectacle is the argument about whether it was Mapes job to prove that the documents were authentic, or whether it was up to the rest of us to prove that they were forgeries. This is not as ridiculous as it sounds. The great philosopher of science, Karl Popper, held that "all knowledge is provisional, conjectural, hypothetical - we can never finally prove our scientific theories, we can merely (provisionally) confirm or (conclusively) refute them".

So, even in the scientific community, we have a respected, coherent approach which has been widely adopted, which involves continuous attempts to "falsify" existing scientific theories as new data emerges. But Popper ignored human nature. When people become enamored of an idea, and when their careers and their self-images become extensions of that idea, it can become impossible for them to admit that the idea has been falsified, no matter how much new data is on the table. The Mapes Syndrome.

But does the Mapes Syndrome actually happen to scientists? All the time. We see the Mapes Syndrome, for example, in the fascinating non-debate between neo-Darwinists and Intelligent Design theorists.

You would expect, given that there are hundreds of scientists now "out" in the Intelligent Design community, that a robust peer review process would be hard at work, evaluating the ID challenge to the neo-Darwinist paradigm. We would expect dozens of articles on ID in the Journal of Molecular Evolution or in Smithsonian. And we'd see a couple of debates a week on college campuses, with one debate a month televised like WWF, featuring the big guns (Dawkins vs. Demski, Gould vs. Behe, Ruse vs. Denton). Great fun. The heart of what science is all about.

What do we actually see:

• The peer reviewed journals in the field actively suppressing publication of ID articles.
• Neo-Darwinists cravenly avoiding debate across all of academe
  
• Professors being fired for questioning Darwin's General Theory (not even for advocating ID)
• Research grants being cancelled for questioning Darwin's General Theory
• Doctorates being withheld for questioning Darwin's General Theory
• School boards being sued to prevent any suggestion that there are questions about Darwin's General Theory

In short, we see the abandonment of science and its replacement with the use of positional and political power to prop up a theory. (When a group of advocates resorts to brute force to prevent the falsification process, you know that they know that their pet theory is in trouble.) What we're seeing is a recognition by neo-Darwinists that they can't defend the General Theory with data and logic within the constraints of the peer review process (which is to say they can't defend Darwin with science) and so they'll defend it any way they can. This produces whole departments behaving badly.

But we have to look with sadness at what Mapes Syndrome does to the individual scientist. When Michael Ruse shrieks that "Evolution is a fact, fact, FACT!", he has clearly rejected Popper's admonition that "all knowledge is provisional, conjectural, hypothetical" and he has left himself unable to recognize falsification when it happens. He has become Mary Mapes.

When Richard Dawkins states that “It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)," he has painted himself into such a tight corner that the only way out is through a vale of humiliation. No matter what the data says, he'll never walk that vale. Richard Dawkins, meet Mary Mapes.

Where are all the "almost horses"?

Neo-Darwinism is, as we know, being challenged by new data from molecular biology and genomics and information theory. But we should not lose sight of a pattern of data from the good old fossil record that casts serious doubt on neo-Darwinism's General Theory all by itself.

There are 300 million catalogued fossils. (This makes any argument that "we haven't dug enough yet" indefensible.) In this mountain of data, Darwin's General Theory predicts there should be millions of examples of a kind of fossil I call the Almost-But-Clearly-Not-Quite Species.

An example: We have bunches of fossils for a First Horse (Hyracotherium) that lived about 50 million years ago. We can track forward in time from First Horse to the more recent Orohippus and Merychippus and Pliohippus, and we've found plenty of fossil evidence for these. Using the same logic, and relying on the neo-Darwinist's assurance that evolution is a continous series of small steps, we can track backwards in time to an animal that has all the features of Hydracotherium except one feature that is clearly from a different genus, not equus. This is the Almost-But-Clearly-Not-Quite Horse. As the General Theory is stated, it predicts we will find ABCNQ Horse fossils just as surely as we find Orohippus fossils.

But there aren't any ABCNQ Horse fossils. None at all. Nor are there any ABCNQ cats. Or ABCNQ camels. Or ABCNQ sharks. Or ABCNQ anythings. (Please don't drag out that fully-formed bird.)

Darwin's General Theory predicts that for each genus there is an ABCNQ species. The fossil record doesn't have a single authentic example of a cross genus ABCNQ. With a fossil library of 300 million, there are millions of “dogs not barking” here. This goes beyond "failure to corroborate". This is falsification of Darwin's General Theory. (I must point out that the progression within the equine family, once the prototype equine DNA strand appears, offers rich corroborating evidence for Darwin's Special Theory. The same can be seen in the fossil record of thousands of other species, once the complete genus or species prototype DNA strand is available to select from in the natural selection process.)

Despite any evidence for the ABCNQ Horse the General Theory requires, Darwinians still passionately believe in the General Theory. " Belief without proof" is the dictionary definition of "faith". Faith is a subject for religion classes. Darwin's General Theory needs to be taught in a comparative religion class. Darwin's Special Theory is respectable science, and can be taught in science class.

Can There Be A Decent Left?

In Dissent Magazine and in Free Republic, in the spring of 2002, Michael Walzer asked the question: "Can there be a decent left?" The answer is simple. No, there can't!

Mr. Walzer is a optimist, and so he suggested that the left could be decent, if only they would do some reasonable things. Unfortunately, in the ensuing years, there is no evidence that the left has done any of those things.

I am a pessimist. History shows us that Calvin's doctrine of Total Depravity is only slightly overstated.

I would argue that the left has not been decent in the last three years (and will not be decent in the future) because the left has explicitly rejected the behavioral elements that Merriam-Webster tells us go into the word "decent".

Here is Merriam-Webster defining the word [with some pruning]:

Decent - From the Latin decens "to be fitting", akin to decus "honor and dignus "worthy".

1. Archaic a: appropriate b: handsome

2.a: conforming to standards of propriety, good taste or morality b: modestly clothed

3: free from immodesty or obscenity

4: fairly good but not excellent

5: marked by moral integrity, kindness and goodwill

To us on the right, this all sounds pretty obvious. Most of us teethed on a behavioral code straight out of Leviticus...indeed even tougher. Most of us had mothers equipped with the killer phrase "That just isn't done." (My mother could deliver that phrase with an eyebrow; speech wasn't necessary.) Wiping your nose on your sleeve JID. Hitting a girl JID. Cheating on a test JID. Running away in battle JID.

But leftists have explicitly adopted an amoral behavioral code. That code has been famously articulated in an "anti-Creed" by Dr.William Provine of Cornell University. Two of the key statements in that creed are:

1. "There are no inherent moral or ethical laws, no absolute guiding principles for human society."
2. "Free will - the freedom to make un-coerced and unpredictable choices among alternative courses of action - simply does not exist."

Think of the implications. If there are no moral laws, then the words in the dictionary definition of "decent" have no meaning at all. And when someone falls short of "decent", (lets say when a President lies under oath about a Monica), then that person can not be accountable, first because there is no moral code to be broken, and second, because the person had no free will anyway, so the idea of "fault" is passe. We have seen how this works (and how well it works in our society).

And so, while a decent person worries about "conforming to standards of propriety, good taste or morality", a leftist revels in "piss Jesus".

While a decent woman worries about being "modestly clothed", a leftist dresses like this:

While a decent director could struggle through a murder mystery "free from immodesty or obscenity", a leftist director makes a movie's signature scene an actress with no underwear exposing her groin to the camera, with no apparent purpose in the story line.

While a decent senator is "marked by moral integrity, kindness and goodwill", the left gives us rhetoric like:

"There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud." -- Sen. Edward Kennedy on Iraq, Sept. 18

"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings." Dick Durbin on Guantanamo, 6/14/05

Or Sen. Barbara Boxer, (D-CA), responding to a question about whether Senate Democrats will use a filibuster to block President Bush's expected Supreme Court nominee: "It means a minimum of 5,000 women a year will die. So all options are on the table," she said.

Bottom Line: The left will not be "decent" moving forward, because "decent" requires accepting some rules...and leftists consider that an obsolete concept, both in their personal lives and in their public behavior.

It's February 17, 1600, And We're Burning Bruno

It's February 17, 1600, and in the Campo de' Fiori in Rome, a scientist named Giordano Bruno stands chained to a stake, burning. His crime: Among other things, he defended Copernicus' radical notion that the earth revolves around the sun.

It's August 17, 2005, and at the Smithsonian, a scientist named Richard Sternberg stands chained to a stake, burning. His crime: As editor of a peer-reviewed scientific journal, he permitted publication of an article challenging Darwin's General Theory. (Links are to three detailed stories.)

This is yet another example that Darwinists no longer dare engage in debate within the rules of the scientific method. They have resorted to every kind of intellectual chicanery, including, as here, personal and professional attack.

I Was Bamboozled

My last post examined what I thought was an essay from a Darwinist responding to the numerous calls for debate with the Intelligent Design community. I criticized his unprofessional approach to argumentation.

It turns out, the essay was parody, and I, like several others, didn't catch it.

In retrospect, I ask myself why the "contributor's" name (Dr. Falduh Rall) wasn't a flag. My answer to myself was: "In a world where Noam Chomsky, Rashid Khaldil and Abid Ulla Jan are respected opinion leaders, Falduh Rall doesn't even cause a ripple."

I ask myself why the extreme rhetoric in the essay wasn't a flag. My answer was that the parodist didn't exceed the intensity of the rhetoric heard from the Darwinists every day. Note Peter Ward's article in The News Tribune yesterday. Not only does it use the same frantic ranting as the Rall piece, but it contains exactly the same logical fallacies.

It's worth while to read the Peter Ward article and reread the Rall essay. And then ask the question: "How come we can't tell a real Darwinist essay from a parody, even when we know we've got one of each?"

Open Letter To Tony Snow

Yesterday in Town Hall, you suggested it would be good to have a rational debate between proponents of evolution and proponents of intelligent design. You are not going to see a rational debate about Darwinism/Intelligent Design, because Darwinists don't dare debate.

Your first two questions ("Does science reveal truth? And, does God exist?") expose the problem immediately.

1) Darwinists have recognized that their theory is in trouble within the rules of the scientific method, and so they have moved the fight into the personal, professional and political arena. (I provide chapter and verse at www.wesmelling.blogspot.com, and attached as Word.) The behavior of the Darwinists in dealing the the ID 400 has become as extreme as the behavior of the geo-centrists in dealing with Copernicus, Bruno and Galileo. Yes, science does expose truth, and so Darwinists are deathly afraid of science.

2) Darwinists, in an attempt to evade scientific exposure, are actively
attempting to redefine the word "science":
- from: “a systematic method of continuing investigation that uses observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena”
- to: “the human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us.” (Paraphrase of Bruce Chapman at
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2739).

Since the scientific question "Is design observable in nature?", when answered in the affirmative, has sometimes led liberal arts majors like me to the philosophical and theological question "Does God exist?", Darwinist atheists are deathly afraid of the scientific design inference question, and determined to confuse the scientific question with the theological one.

It is a tribute to Darwinist rhetorical skill that they have bamboozled many minds into confusing the scientific question "Is design observable in nature?", (which science can and should address), with the theological question "Does God exist?", (which science can not address). Note that the ID 400 takes excruciating care to keep the scientific and theological questions separate.

(And yes, Tony, you were bamboozled.)

If you think I am overstating the situation, I ask you to invite Richard Dawkins to debate Michael Behe, on air, refereed by an editor from a scholarly journal that has published peer-reviewed papers from both schools.

Open Letter To Tony Snow Part 2

To: Mr. Tony Snow

E-mail: tonysnow@foxnews.com

Dear Mr. Snow,

Two days ago in Town Hall, you suggested it would be good to have a civil debate between proponents of evolution and proponents of intelligent design.

I replied by e-mail that such a debate could not happen, because the Darwinists will not permit it to happen, and because Darwinists do not feel morally bound to let it happen.

Yesterday, I noted that a leading Darwinist spokesman agrees with me. Dr. Falduh Rall, Ph.D., Dynamic Evolutionary Biohistory, was invited by Dr. JonathanWitt to guest blog on an ID site called Intelligent Design The Future. (http://www.idthefuture.com)

I attach Dr. Rall's entire first essay so that you can see the approach
Darwinists take to the debate, and I call your attention to three striking elements:

1. Dr. Rall starts by putting Dr. Witts' title in sneer quotes. I have
attached a copy of Dr. Witts' CV to let you judge if there something
specifically flawed about Dr. Witts' education, and I raise the question of whether ad hominem sneer quotes are an intellectually respectable form of scientific disputation.

2. Dr. Rall then asserts that the 400 scientists on public record as
questioning Darwin's General Theory...simply "don't exist. You can touch them, squeeze them, stuff a sock in their mouths and tell them to love Big Brother, but that doesn't mean they're really there. How so? They're not scientists. Ergo, the scientists aren't there." Tony, I have attached the list of the 400 so that you can examine the doctorates, and see if any of them seem scientific to you, and so that you can decide whether defining them away is an intellectually respectable form of scientific disputation.

3. Dr. Rall then applies appellations to the 400: "The second zero describes each of the 400 scientists who aren't scientists: they're zeros, losers, super-stupid dummies." I raise the question of whether name-calling is an intellectually respectable form of scientific disputation.

Note that at no point in his essay does Dr. Rall present any scientific proof. If there really were "No controversy, no controversy, no controversy!", Dr. Rall wouldn't waste all that passion, he would simply back up a dump truck full of facts and logic, and he would bury Dr. Witt's Website. But he can't. And that's the point.

Tony, this isn't my father's scientific method. Is it possible that someone like you could shame Darwinists back into the cold light of scientific methodology?

Open Letter to Kevin Drum

On ProfessorBainbridge yesterday, the professor noted that Kevin Drum had issued a list for DNC self-examination. I have edited the list with [hopefully] helpful suggestions.

Dear Kevin,

America needs two parties. And you can’t build a consensus around “The other guys are always wrong”, without additional intellectual content. But I notice that your list is heavy on examining packaging and phrasing, and light on examining principles. So I offer some edits to your list of the things the Democrats might look at.

Here’s your original:

MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD....Hum de hum. I'm bored today. What to talk about? I know — let's try to figure out what the hell is wrong with Democrats these days. How come people won't vote for us? Everyone seems to be talking about that today.

I don't actually know the answer, but I think I've collected the leading candidates:

1. Too socially liberal. Need to move to the center. Too openly offended by the concept of God, and specifically:
a. Delighted to let the ACLU be perceived by the electorate as an action arm of the Democrat Party.
b. Unyielding in requiring that previously Jewish/Christian candidates for office forswear their religious beliefs
c. Comfortable to let the NEA be perceived as a Party indoctrination arm, and to let the NEA energetically chase Yahweh out of government schools, while actively promoting all other gods (and No_God).
2. Too wishy washy. Need to be loud and proud liberals. Too ready to worship idols, and specifically to worship:
a. Power above principle
b. Power above the well-being of the governed
c. Power above the safety of the nation
3. Too tin-eared. We're terrific on the issues, but we need to frame them properly. Too open about defaming God, and specifically
a. Too generous in funding artists who propose to demean God
b. Too openly thrilled when the entertainment arm of the Democrat Party demeans God.
c. Too joyful about tearing down reminders of God.
4. Too wimpy. Need to convince Americans we can kick Osama's butt. Too insistent on creating a society where productive people must work 80-hour weeks to pay the taxes to support non-productive bureaucrats.
5. Too wonkish. People don't want laundry lists, they want character. Too openly contemptuous of a father/mother-based family unit, and specifically:
a. Too insistent on teaching 5-year-olds that their parents’ Judeo-Christian values are wrong.
b. Too quick (and deliberately sadistic) about state seizure of children, and especially when the issue is leftist value vs. Judeo-Christian value. (If you wonder why I attribute this behavior to Democrats instead of to bureaucrats, I would ask you to find me a Republican bureaucrat who has done it.)
c. Too committed to asserting that parents are too stupid to participate in decisions about school selection, curriculum, medical treatment, value system inculcation and discipline.
6. Too gutless. Need to get down in the gutter with Karl Rove and rip his lungs out. Too enthusiastic about murder, and specifically:
a. Far too aggressive about lenient sentences and generous paroles for convicted murderers, leading too often to second and third murders
b. Too quick to apologize for murdering Muslim terrorists.
c. Way too comfortable riding on the “death with dignity” train.
d. Way too supportive of the college professors who are calling for Jews in Israel to be exterminated.
e. Willing to make abortion the Party’s single most important issue
7. Too shortsighted. Need to create liberal versions of the Heritage Foundation to help us build long-term vision. Too enchanted by and committed to sexual promiscuity, and specifically
a. Too insistent on teaching schoolchildren to be promiscuous
b. Too insistent in the face of data that “adultery is both universal and chic”.
c. Unable to say “You can trust his promises even though his wife can’t!” while keeping a straight face. (OK, I’ll grant you Carville can.)
d. So committed, in the DNC’s entertainment arm, to promiscuity as a worldview, that “what makes more money” is ignored.
8. Too tired. Need to break loose from the past and offer fresh, original ideas. Too comfortable with theft of property, and specifically
a. Too quick to advance the value proposition that “If you vote for me, I will steal from him and give to you”.
b. Too happy about recent expansions of eminent domain
9. Too splintered. Need to quit pandering to the interest groups that actually vote for us. Too dependent on (and comfortable using) falsehood, and specifically
a. Energetically defensive of Democrats who perjure.
b. Stupid enough to let DP leadership tell easily checked lies in the face of blogswarms.
c. Willing to carry false personal vilification to the point where it would turn the stomach of a goat. (When CNN’s fact checker tells you a NARAL ad is fraudulent, it really should give you a clue you’ve jumped the shark.)
d. Proud of the public perception that the MSM is a DNC propaganda arm and that the MSM is brazenly dishonest. Delighted with the use of known-to-be-forged documents and deliberate misquotes by the MSM. Stupid enough to let the NYT, LAT and WaPo suppress all good news from Iraq in a marketplace where Michael Yon and a dozen others post good news every day
10. None of the above. It's the media's fault. The Democrat Party has a core organizing principle that reads: “Thou shalt covet!”


Kevin, by now you realize I’m suggesting that the DNC has worked itself into a position where it stands formally opposed to all ten of the Ten Commandments. I’m not talking about the plaque on the wall; I’m talking at the content level.

Perhaps someone in DNC leadership might tape up the red/blue map of America, and ruminate about whether a Party can win that country back opposing all Ten Commandments (and despising the folks who try to live them).

Hollywood has made it clear that it would rather give up revenue than make G-rated movies. The LAT has made it clear that it would rather go out of business than print good news from Iraq. Is the Democrat Party willing to go out of business before it will ease up on America’s traditional values

Optimism On The Evolution Debate?

I really want for Frederick Turner to be right. I hope that we have come to a tipping point where the evolution/design debate can by carried out by scientists using meticulous scientific methodology, with mutual respect and common humility among the truth-seekers.

But in practice, the suppression of ID in the political and academic arenas has been institutionalized as a vicious, non-scientific exercise. We have seen:

• A widely published PhD fired because he developed a radiation halo dating technique that suggested the earth was tens of thousands of years old.
• A double PhD denied tenure at Michigan State because he had “damaged the image of science” by suggesting flaws in neo-Darwinism
• A PhD candidate refused his PhD despite graduating summa cum laude because he believed in creation
• A PhD fired by Bowling State despite praise from colleagues and students and despite the fact that he had published more scientific papers than the rest of his department combined because he questioned Darwin

In practice, we have also seen Darwinians desperately evading scientific method. They have avoided refereed public debate, have pressed funding bodies to deny grants to alternate theories, have pilloried scholarly journals that published ID articles, have lobbied governments to coerce the teaching of Darwin's general theory as fact and have adopted a rich toolkit of intellectual chicanery, e.g. circular reasoning, mis-representation of evidence and mis-stating of the question. (Examples on request.) In short, they have adopted non-scientific methodology to prop up their thesis, raising the obvious question of why they can't just break the backboard with data and logic after 140 years of trying.

Dr. Turner suggests we can expect better of Darwinists than we have been seeing. I worry that what we've been seeing is well-formed Darwinian morality. Darwinism is a religion. It requires faith - a "firm belief in something for which there is no proof" [MW]. It has a creed, written by Dr. William Provine at Cornell and widely accepted in academe:

• The world is organized strictly in accordance with mechanistic principles.
• There are no purposive principles in nature whatsoever
• There are no gods and no designing forces that are rationally detectable
• There are no inherent moral or ethical laws, no absolute guiding principles for human society.

• Human beings are marvelously complex machines. The individual human becomes an ethical person by means of two primary mechanisms, heredity and environmental influences. That is all there is.
• When we die, we die and that is the end of us.
• Free will – the freedom to make un-coerced and unpredictable choices among alternative courses of action – simply does not exist.

Note that the fourth statement denies the existence of moral or ethical laws. The scientific method is one of the world's most painfully rigorous sets of moral and ethical laws. (I note that the Ten Commandments come with a Savior.) But Darwinists don't believe in moral laws, and I would argue that their behavior over the past five years confirms that their non-belief extends to the moral laws called the scientific method. I'd love to see calm, reasoned debate using scientific moral laws, but I don't think Darwinists will comply.