Free Speech

This morning, I had occasion to visit a blog based course site I have developed, for working with a church in the Caribbean. This is a sample of the stalking and vandalism I discovered there, from the hate site owner: xxx, the religious wacko who owns and runs this site, blames all the world’s ills, including Hitler and the nazis, on Darwin, atheists, and material evolutionists. To see the truth about Hitler and the nazis, see these XXXXXXX: XXXXXX is a LYING, arrogant, bloviating, sanctimonious, ignorant, uneducated, abusive, delusional god zombie. See this site for a lot more about XXXXX: November 18, 2011 3:17 AM Now, this vandalism of a site wholly unrelated to the matters debated at UD (and Read More ›

One of the most common objections to design thought is the idea that it is about the improper injection of the alien  supernatural into the world of science. (That is itself based on a strawman misrepresentation of design thought, as was addressed here a few days ago.)

However, there is an underlying root, a common distortion of the origins of modern science, which Nancy Pearcey rebutted in a  2005 sleeper article as headlined, that deserves a UD post of its own.

Let’s clip the article:

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Lest there be any lingering doubt about how far Darwinians might go in the enforcement of the dogma, it now appears that even beauty pageant contestants are not immune to consequences for failing to toe the Darwinian line. Contestants in this year’s Miss USA pageant are being asked questions about whether evolution should be taught in public schools. Fox News reports:

In on-camera interviews set to be posted on the official Miss USA website, 2011 pageant hopefuls are being asked if they believe evolution should be taught in schools, and if they would ever pose for nude photographs.

[This post will remain at the top of the page until 5:00 pm EST today, June 10. For reader convenience, other coverage continues below. – UD News]

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This is mildly off-topic. And I’m guilty of little bit (maybe a lot) of ‘venting’. But here’s a link to what has allegedly happened at Oregon State University. It appears that a scientist whose children are on their way to Ph’D’s at OSU are being thrown out of the Ph’D program (one has been there 4 years already) because faculty members with connections to local Democratic politics are not happy that the scientist ran for state office as a Republican. It is simply mind-numbing what has happened to our Universities. When I was young and in college in the 60’s, the local SDS (Students for a Democratic Society–of Marxist bent) chapter yelled and screamed for a “free speech” area to Read More ›

I was a big fan of Robert J. Ringer in the 1970s (author of the runaway bestseller WINNING THROUGH INTIMIDATION — which was not about learning to intimidate others but about preventing others from intimidating you — good information if you have to deal with Darwinists). In the 1980s Ringer became a champion of libertarianism, which he has continued to the present, especially through his blog. In the last few years I’ve corresponded with him and learned that he too is a Darwin doubter. At his request, I wrote a short piece for his blog titled “Saving Our Freedoms from Darwin”: [EXCERPT:] Paternalists have always been infatuated with Darwin. Yet, having embraced Darwinism as a tool for social control, they became loath to Read More ›

This is the title of an opinion piece that appears in the latest issue of the liberal-left weekly UK magazine, New Statesman. It is written by Michael Reiss, who 18 months ago was forced out of his position as director of communications at the Royal Society because he said that creationist and ID views should be treated critically but respectfully, when raised by students in science classes. (As you can see from the end of the piece, he is eminently qualified to speak on these matters.)  Reiss’ sacking has been perhaps the most public demonstration of an Expelled-like phenomenon in Britain to date. To this day, I am surprised at how little outrage it generated. I protested immediately at the Read More ›

Today’s Fox News website had this little story, entitled Climate Scientists Plan to Hit Back at Skeptics. In the article, Stanford University climate researcher Paul R. Ehrlich had this to say about global warming skeptics:

“Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate, we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules,” Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher, said in one of the e-mails.

Its worth noting Ehrlich’s use of the phrase “merciless enemies”. In other words, challenge the preferred dogma, and you’re not just ignorant – you’re an enemy, and thus, by extension, deserving of any and all ad hominem attacks hurled your way. One can almost hear “let me assure you, we haf vays to make you accept the dogma!” Read More ›

Not content with their virtually complete hegemony over public school science education, now the Darwinists have a new ploy to eradicate ID from scientific consideration: just re-classify it away. In a petition, some PSU science students are demanding the complete re-classification and re-shelving of ID related books to a non-science category. Apparently the instigators of this petition believe that the mere presence of an ID related book on a science shelf serves to further confuse an already confused public about what is and is not science. Citing a recent survey by the NSF that “70 percent of Americans do not understand the scientific process,” the petition claims that “further confusion surrounding what is and is not science is particularly problematic.” According to the petition, (and the NSF), the general public is just to stupid to know the difference between “real” science, and philosophy masquerading as science. Read More ›

Philosopher at Large, Dr. Jerome Ravetz has a fascinating exploration of moral and peer review issues on ClimateGate as “Post-Normal science” at Watts Up With That

. . .
At the end of January 2010 two distinguished scientific institutions shared headlines with Tony Blair over accusations of the dishonest and possibly illegal manipulation of information. Our ‘Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035′ of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is matched by his ‘dodgy dossier’ of Saddam’s fictitious subversions. . . . The parallels are significant and troubling, for on both sides they involve a betrayal of public trust. . . .
Climategate is particularly significant because it cannot be blamed on the well-known malign influences from outside science, be they greedy corporations or an unscrupulous State. This scandal, and the resulting crisis, was created by people within science who can be presumed to have been acting with the best of intentions. Read More ›

Apparently round two of the controversy over the California’s Science Center’s cancellation of Darwin’s Dilemma is getting ready to take place. This was reported and discussed here back in October, as well as here and here in December.

Now, a California State Senator is calling the constitutionality of the censorship into question. Read More ›

Paul L. Williams is a name I first heard two years ago when I saw him interviewed on television about terrorist ambitions to create havoc in the United States. I hoped that he was exaggerating the threats, but after following some of his leads and reading two of his books I concluded that he was at least 90 percent correct and needed to be taken seriously. Nuclear-Biological-Chemical terrorism has been an interest of mine over the years. The first book I read that addressed this topic was TERRORISM: HOW THE WEST CAN WIN (1986), edited by then Israeli representative to the U.N. Benjamin Netanyahu (it seems I’ve heard his name since then). The essay by Alan Cranston in it, “The Nuclear Terrorist State,” still sounds surprisingly relevant to our present situation: “Does anyone doubt that if the Shah of Iran had succeeded in developing a full-fledged nuclear program in Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini would have used a nuclear weapon against Iraq? Does anyone now doubt that if Iraq had been permitted to make swift progress toward a nuclear-weapons capability, Saddam Hussein would have used a nuclear bomb against Iran? Or that either of them might have resorted subsequently to a nuclear strike in a jihad, a ‘holy war,’ against Israel?” (pp. 177-78)

Williams’ interview and books were in this vein, sounding a warning siren, along with many others, that the terrorist threats likely to materialize in the future promise to dwarf anything we’ve seen in the past. It’s one reason that, last I checked, survivalist James Wesley Rawles’ HOW TO SURVIVE THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT: TACTICS, TECHNIQUES AND TECHNOLOGIES FOR UNCERTAIN TIMES was doing better on Amazon.com than Richard Dawkins’ THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH: THE EVIDENCE FOR EVOLUTION (other reasons no doubt include that Dawkins’ book is sheer dreck from the standpoint of current evolutionary theory — see here). In any case, after a brief email exchange with Williams two years ago, I didn’t expect to hear much about him again except as a modern-day Cassandra, whose predictions would be ignored until too late. It was therefore with some dismay that I saw him appear in the press on a matter at once related and yet quite different.

Williams works as a journalist and it’s in this capacity that he is being forced, as an American citizen, to submit to a lawsuit in Canada. Specifically, for charging McMaster University with abetting terrorists and allowing radioactive materials to be stolen, McMaster is suing him for millions of dollars. How could he be tried in a Canadian court given that he broke no U.S. law and did everything that McMaster University is upset about on U.S. soil? Read More ›