Some of us have had a really hard time getting across the fact that the war on math is in fact a war on adding up numbers. That’s what the warriors mean — and they do mean it.
Similarly, a war on logic means just that. An attempted takedown of ID (here linked to opposition to Critical Race Theory) illustrates the point:
“In form, the fight over critical race theory in schools resembles earlier panics over the teaching of intelligent design and its cousin creationism,” observes Sarah Jones in a recent article for New York Magazine’s online Intelligencer website.
I found myself doing a double-take after reading that sentence. Does Jones really mean to suggest that those creating a “panic” over critical race theory (CRT) are like the dogmatic Darwinists who tried to create a “panic” over the teaching of intelligent design?
Bear with Me as I Explain
In her article, Jones essentially argues that worries about critical race theory have been ginned up by conservative provocateurs who play fast and loose with the facts. In her view, critical race theory is simply an effort to teach historical reality, and those attacking it are unfairly manufacturing a crisis over it.
But if that’s what she believes about those who are creating “panic” over CRT, then the logic of her comparison would seem to require a similar view of those who opposed intelligent design: The intolerant defenders of Darwinian evolution who tried to instill “panic” over the teaching of intelligent design must also have been provocateurs who were ginning up a fake controversy, while in reality there was nothing wrong with teaching intelligent design.
Surely Jones couldn’t actually mean that, I thought.
A Proper Comparison
Sure enough, she didn’t. Reading the rest of her article I realized she simply didn’t know how to frame a proper comparison. She actually was attempting to malign those who support intelligent design, not those who tried to create panic over it. Apparently neither she nor her editor is particularly good with logic.
John West, “Critical Race Theory and Intelligent Design: The Mixed-Up Comparison of Sarah Jones” at Evolution News
But that’s the whole point. The whole enterprise is a war on logic. It’s like the war on math and the war on science. And there is a sophisticated public for that.
Dr. West is assuming that logic is wanted. No, this is the same sort of thing as the attack on non-Darwinists as “white supremacists” when, in fact, almost all the white supremacy stuff was on the Darwinian side… The revolutionary genius today, such as it is, is in throwing logic to the winds and making a straight-up appeal to mere vulgar prejudice in their reading public.
We can’t tell you whether it will work. We can safely warn that it won’t be pretty and that it will never do any good.
See also:
At Scientific American: “Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy” Wow. Has the Darwin lobby hired itself a PR firm that recommended getting someone on board to accuse everyone who doubts Darwin of being a “white supremacist”? Quite simply, Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man is surely by far the most racist iconic document ever to be lauded by all the Right People! And getting someone to holler about “white supremacy” among Darwin doubters is, ahem, just a cheap shot, not a response to the stark raving racism in print of the actual document. Guys, try another one.
and
Darwinian biologist Jerry Coyne speaks out on a SciAm op-ed’s claims that denial of evolution stems from white supremacy. It seems obvious, on reflection, that Hopper’s piece is a disastrously clumsy effort on the part of Scientific American to get Woke. Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne thinks the mag is not just circling the drain but “approaching the drainhole.” To the extent that the editors couldn’t find someone who at least gets basic facts right, he has a point.