Denyse O'Leary

While we are on the subject of media/new media, here’s an interesting account of legacy mainstream media (LMSM) spin on an issue unrelated to the ID controversy – US immigration policy.*

The chosen example merely shows that LMSM can slant any controversy as long as everyone who has a say on the news desk is absolutely convinced about who the winners will ultimately be.

In LMSM, such stories usually get framed as a black and white morality play. On the ID issue, for example, doubts about Darwinism – of whatever kind – are treated like this: Bad or irrelevant “religion” attempts takeover of good and useful “science.”

Okay, so go be a profane, beer-swilling unbeliever somewhere if you like. But if you dare to wonder whether school kids should be told some of the textbook stretchers and fudgies, you are one disloyal bunny. It’s bad enough that you even know that the books are full of stretchers and fudgies , where Darwinism is concerned.

Next thing we hear, you will be handling diamondback sidewinders for Jesus way down deep in some East Carolina swamp** …. Hey, you read your fate here first.

This situation is not new. Doubts about Freudianism were routinely framed, years ago, as evidence of psychological problems, and doubts about Marxist economics were not tolerated from people who ate macaroni and cheese in order to pay off a mortgage. There is no middle ground or alternative viewpoint in a morality play.

What’s new is the challenge created by the new media, which empower alternative viewpoints like no other has ever done. To see why, consider what, precisely, is changing.

The blogosphere, the Web, and e-mail have undermined the newsgathering function of major media as such. They are not needed the way they used to be. Read More ›

Young readers do not want to rely on a god-like figure from above to tell them what is important, and they certainly do not want news presented as gospel. The media world can no longer lecture; it must become a place for conversation. – press lord Rupert Murdoch, Chairman, News Corporation, quoted as part of the advertising for a conference on the growth and importance of the blogosphere (January 29–31, 2007). Now, say what you want about Murdoch, he made money in media. Darwinists profess ongoing amazement that the public does not just gasp and obey when Darwin lobbies huff that there are no reasonable, science-based objections to Darwinism. They clearly do not grasp what Murdoch is saying. Pronouncements from Read More ›

This editorial from the Akron Beacon Journal – against allowing any student to know that Darwinism could be questioned on factual grounds – is an interesting bit of social history because it is complete boilerplate, beginning to end. You can deduce a large proportion of the pieties of middle-class Americans (courts are right, professional bodies are right, organizations of “concerned scientists” are to be trusted … well, even when they are not right or trustworthy, they are actually right and trustworthy because it is NEVER right to allow oneself to be disturbed by thinking that they might be wrong or untrustworthy …. ) An intriguing fact about the times we live in is that, in my experience, the people who Read More ›

Bill Dembski noted that the inimitable PZ Myers has attacked Ken Miller, anti-ID Catholic poster boy, for thinking there is any evidence for theism.

I agree that PZ is having another junior moment, but it is nonetheless instructive.

National Center for Science Education’s Eugenie Scott, who knows more about retailing crude Darwinism to middle American shopaholics than anyone, has insisted, “One clergyman with a backward collar is worth two biologists at a school board meeting any day!”

 (Yes, she really apparently told Science and Theology News that in April, 2002. I would be curious to know if she would say the same thing in the same terms today.)

When I first started writing By Design or by Chance?, my recent book on why there is an intelligent design controversy in North America today, I found constitutional lawyer Phillip Johnson’s comments on theistic evolution (the point of view Miller espouses) illuminating. Johnson is the godfather of the ID guys, but don’t let that deter you. He wrote that it is culturally okay to say

As a Christian, I believe by faith that God is responsible for evolution.

but

It is emphatically not acceptable to say, “As a scientist, I see evidence that organisms were designed by a preexisting intelligence, and therefore other objective observers should also infer the existence of a designer.”

because

The former statement is within the bounds of methodological naturalism, and most scientific naturalists will interpret it to mean nothing more than ‘It gives me comfort to believe in God, and so I will.’ The latter statement brings the designer into the territory of objective reality, and that is what methodological naturalism forbids.

Miller, alas, seems to have drawn some conclusions from believing in God that do not amount simply to joining a mob against ID – hence genuine Darwinists attack him.

But what intrigued me most about Johnson’s analysis was his thoughts on the hatred directed against ID biochemist Michael Behe. Read More ›

I cannot believe I am hearing this nonsense again! The debate over the teaching of purposeless evolution in the school system retails more urban legends than a group of high school girls smoking in the women’s can.

In the Correspondence section of Nature, we can read, from U Kutschera , Institute of Biology, University of Kassel, Heinrich-Plett-Strasse 40, D-34109 Kassel, Germany (Nature 443, 26(7 September 2006) | doi:10.1038/443026b), yet another defence of Theodosius Dobzhansky, as a Darwinist poster boy for theistic or even Christian faith, sort of:

Dogma, not faith, is the barrier to scientific enquiry

[ … ]

He collaborated for many years with Ernst Mayr, who, when asked about his religious views, replied: “I am an atheist. There is nothing that supports the idea of a personal God. On the other hand, famous evolutionists such as Dobzhansky were firm believers in a personal God. He would work as a scientist all week and then on Sunday get down on his knees and pray to God” (Skeptic 8, 76-82; 2000.

In about 1950, Dobzhansky and Mayr founded our modern ‘atheistic’ evolutionary theory. Their work showed that Christians and atheists can cooperate to develop scientific theories, as long as religious dogma is not mixed up with facts and experimental data. Unfortunately, this is exactly what young-Earth creationists and intelligent-design theorists are doing. They should read the 1973 essay in which Dobzhansky – an open-minded, non-dogmatic theist – thoroughly refuted their irrational claims.

Dobzhansky was, of course, free to believe whatever he wanted, but in what sense was he a Christian or a theist?

Australian biologist Stephen E. Jones, who keeps up with these things better than anyone I know, has the goods on Dobzhansky’s real state of faith. He writes me,

Dobzhansky really was an orthodox believer. That is, if you don’t count “fundamental beliefs of traditional religion, such as the existence of a personal God and of life beyond physical death”!:

and quotes :

Dobzhansky was a religious man, although he apparently rejected fundamental beliefs of traditional religion, such as the existence of a personal God and of life beyond physical death. His religiosity was grounded on the conviction that there is meaning in the universe. He saw that meaning in the fact that evolution has produced the stupendous diversity of the living world and has progressed from primitive forms of life to mankind. Dobzhansky held that, in man, biological evolution has transcended itself into the realm of self-awareness and culture. He believed that somehow mankind would eventually evolve into higher levels of harmony and creativity. He was a metaphysical optimist.” (Ayala, F.J. & Fitch, W.M., Genetics and the origin of species: An introduction,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Vol. 94, July 1997, pp.7691-7697, p.7693.

Now, I have to admit, I smile when I think of the middle Americans who go away from a meeting with the Darwinist spokesfolks, vastly relieved to hear that Dobzhansky was a “religious man,” and then they can go back to sanctified materialism with a good conscience. They certainly do not want to know that Dobzhansky’s views would hardly qualify him to be considered a Christian, let alone Orthodox, because the basic statements of the Creed stand in fundamental opposition to them.

Steve Jones offers some more information that might help: Read More ›

The reason some media never run short of bad news is that they can make bad news out of pretty well anything, including the end of scarcity of food in many parts of the developing world. Remember when it was too late  to save humanity from starvation? Thirty years ago I used to hear people explain that evolution had programmed us all to produce more people than could be fed. “Man is a species that has overbred,” and all that. There are some really remarkable comments in this hot-weather scare, including “This is the first generation in history where children may die before their parents,” Steinbeck told the conference. Oh? Centuries ago, nothing was more common, actually, than parents burying Read More ›

Islam Online recently organized an online debate, “Evolution vs. Intelligent Design”, between Turkish journalist Mustafa Akyol and National Center for Science Education spokesman Nicholas Matzke. Akyol tells me that he countered Matzke’s effort to portray ID as “Christian fundamentalism” to Muslims, thus urging them not to “buy” it. That’s amusing. Genuine Christian fundamentalists don’t see ID that way at all. ID guys, they correctly note, do not thump the Bible. Heck, the ID guys wouldn’t even thump Nick Matzke, unless they were in a really bad mood. Another Cuppyism: “The Age of Reptiles ended because it had gone on long enough and it was all a mistake in the first place.” – Will Cuppy, from How to Become Extinct

This new evo devo spoof site might be a good time to revisit the charming Will Cuppy (1884-1949), author of How to Become Extinct, a similar send-up of the ponderous truisms uttered on the history of life: Some fishes become extinct, but Herrings go on forever. Herrings spawn at all times and places and nothing will induce them to change their ways. They have no fish control. Herrings congregate in schools, where they learn nothing at all. They move in vast numbers in May and October. Herrings subsist upon Copepods and Copepods subsist upon Diatoms and Diatoms just float around and reproduce. Young Herrings or Sperling or Whitebait are rather cute. They have serrated abdomens. The skull of the Common Read More ›

Here is the ultimate explanation of evolution, but do not read it while you are drinking coffee.

Who sucker punched this guy’s selfish genes? (a 28 year old Ontario power company employee – a complete stranger – is donating part of his liver to help a toddler in Toronto who needs a transplant.) Oh, and here and here are some other everyday “genuine altruism” stories I happen to know about from Canada, one of them from the Toronto area, involving young guys, who (as a group) are supposed to be selfish, according to feminists. Toronto is not the City of Angels, by the way; readers can likely supply instances from their own communities. As philosopher David Stove would probably have said, if Dawkins was right about the “selfish gene”, these cases would be much more rare and Read More ›

I’m not sure how many people read the Comments to the Post-Darwinist, but some are quite interesting, so I want to draw your attention to a pair of them: In response to the post on the Coral Ridge TV special on social Darwinism, blogger Steven Carr commented that Hitler was a creationist: Hitler, of course, believed that mankind was specially created. Hitler explicity rejected Darwinism and the evolution of man. From Hitler’s Tischgespraeche for the night of the 25th to 26th 1942 ‘Woher nehmen wir das Recht zu glauben, der Mensch sei nicht von Uranfaengen das gewesen , was er heute ist? Der Blick in die Natur zeigt uns, dass im Bereich der Pflanzen und Tiere Veraenderungen und Weiterbildungen vorkommen. Aber nirgends Read More ›

Apparently, there is a big confab right now at the Vatican to decide what to say about intelligent design vs. evolution. A friend insisted, for some reason, that I offer an opinion. Heck, everyone is doing that, it seems. Ever since Pope Benedict XVI said, in his inaugural mass, that we are not “some casual and meaningless product of evolution,” the Catholic Church has found itself in the spotlight, asserting, against the adminbots and pundits of a materialist society, the we are purposeful and meaningful. The fact that I am a Catholic myself makes me less willing, not more willing, to butt in, but  how about this: Recover your heritage! Recover the traditional Catholic idea of evolution, which is not a Darwinian Read More ›

My most recent post talked about why Fr. George Coyne was asked to retire from the Vatican Observatory, after his vigorous campaign to oppose the Vatican’s efforts to distance itself from Darwinism (or “evolutionism,” as Cardinal Schoenborn likes to call it).

I shouldn’t have to point this out, but hey. Sidelining Fr. Coyne does not mean that the Vatican is weighing in on the interminable US school board wars.

Yes, the Pope used the term “progetto intelligente,” which is a functionally equivalent rendering of “intelligent design” in a homily. But only a naive person would imagine that the Catholic Church, which is thousands of years old, would stake all on current specific ideas of American biochemists, mathematicians, or astronomers.

Why? It need not. Philosopher David Stove has already demolished Darwinism by doing nothing more than unpacking what neo-Darwinists really expect us to believe, to help them preserve their theory.

And if you really believe all that the Darwinists wish,

From what I can determine from recent pronouncements, the Vatican is not backing off the process of evicting Darwinism (“evolutionism”) as an innocuous belief system that a good Catholic can accept. Here’s Cardinal Schoenborn recently proposing an evolution debate:

Cardinal Schönborn, who sparked a worldwide debate in 2005 with an article in the New York Times on the subject, called for clarification of the difference between the “theory of evolution” and “evolutionism,” the latter understood as an ideology, based on scientific theory.

By way of example, the cardinal mentioned Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who saw in the publication of Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species,” “the scientific foundation for their Marxist materialist theory. This is evolutionism, not theory of evolution.”

The archbishop of Vienna warned against the application of this evolutionist ideology in fields such as economic neo-liberalism, or bioethical issues, where there is the risk of creating new eugenic theories.

[ … ]
Cardinal Schönborn explained that the phrase meant that “the theory, as scientific theory, has been expanded with new scientific data, but of course that phrase cannot be interpreted as an ‘Amen’ of the Catholic Church to ideological evolutionism.”

It should be obvious to any reasonable person that Schoenborn knows exactly what the issues around Darwinism (“evolutionism”) are and he is not backing down.

Early last week ,the news broke that, as of August 19, Fr. George Coyne, 73, director of the Vatican Astronomical Observatory, had been replaced by Argentinian Jesuit Fr. José Gabriel Funes as the new director of the Vatican Astronomical Observatory.

Coyne, who had been director since 1978, had become well known to the news media in recent months because of his opposition to Cardinal Schoenborn who, with the apparent blessing of the Pope, has been attempting to put some distance between the Catholic church and Darwinism since July 2005.

Maybe too well known.

The background to the issue is that John Paul II had said that evolution was “more than a hypothesis” but immediately went on to disclaim any materialist interpretation of it, which certainly includes Darwinism. However, the American pop sci media jumped on the first part of his statement like dogs on a rabbit, resulting in any number of essentially mistaken or misleading claims that the Catholic church “supports evolution.” These claims are, of course, used by those who would foist Darwinism on an unbelieving public.

In the sense in which the Catholic Church supports evolution, Michael Behe, the much reviled ID biochemist, also supports evolution. (Behe is a practicing Catholic, by the way.) That is, Behe and Schoenborn accept that evolution happens. But so? That doesn’t prove that Darwin was right about the power of natural selection or that today’s neo-Darwinists are right about anything at all. And those who revile Behe’s views would be unwise to hope for much better from the Vatican.

Apparently, Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education (called by some here the “National Center for Selling Evolution”) has attempted to spin Fr. Coyne’s departure as a normal retirement. He told Dick Fischer at the ASA discussion group that a media account that suggested otherwise was tendentious:

… after all, Coyne is 73 years old, and his retirement could have been predicted in any case. And there’s no reason to think that Coyne’s successor’s view differs from Coyne’s … “

Nice try, Glenn. But … Read More ›

If Darwinism is not failing, why would Darwinists now want to evade the name they accepted for nearly 150 years? Yes! Despite a clear history of a century and a half of acceptance, a key Darwinist actually did his best to make it sound like an insult. Read on!

Some wonder why I, a mere journalist, sense that Darwinism is doomed.

Well, I observe and interview people and study how they behave.

One curious fact is that the venerable term Darwinist now makes Darwinists uncomfortable.

This problem hit the top of my intray last year a Canadian church bureaucrat took me to task  because, she insisted that  in By Design or by Chance?, I was “following the ID lead” when I used the term “Darwinism.”

Now, in the early stages of research, I had made a careful study of the terminology used in the debate. I knew that “Darwinism” was commonly used among Darwinian evolutionists – probably only because Darwinism (and Darwinist) is easier and briefer.

So at the time, I dismissed the churchcrat summarily by pointing out the following:

Read More ›