Why are prominent conservative ‘thinkers’ defying reality to support the concept of intelligent design? Ron Bailey at Reason has some speculation in this old piece:
What’s going on here? Opponents of Darwin traditionally have been led by biblical literalists, whose “arguments” on the subject have been generated mostly by the Book of Genesis. Now their camp includes some of the most prominent thinkers in the conservative intellectual movement.
As a matter of historical curiosity, this new turning of neocon eyes toward heaven comes just as Pope John Paul II has officially recognized that “the theory of evolution is more than an hypothesis.” Indeed, it comes as evolutionary thinking itself is shedding considerable light on an array of questions and problems, from brain growth to the development of immune systems, from sociobiology to economics, from ecology to software design. Such research is yielding anti-designer results. F.A. Hayek long ago recognized the phenomenon of “spontaneous order” and described how it arose in markets, families, and other social institutions. Now, ingenious computer models are confirming Hayek’s insights. It is increasingly obvious that social systems, from commerce to language, evolve and adapt without the need for top-down planning and organization. Order in markets is generated through processes analogous to Darwinian natural selection in biology. In other words, we can indeed have apparent design without a designer; the world is demonstrably brimming with just such phenomena.
But the neocon assault on Darwinism may not be based on either science or spirituality so much as on politics and political philosophy. That is the view of Paul Gross, a biologist and self-described conservative. Gross is much concerned with the interplay of science and politics–he is the co-author of the 1994 book, Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science–and is puzzled by the attacks on evolutionary biology by people whose political views he largely shares. Regarding Commentary’s anti-Darwin article, he says he is mystified that the magazine “would publish the damned thing without at least passing it by a few scientists first.”
Gross believes that the conservative attack on Darwin may be a case of tactical politics. Some conservative intellectuals think religious fundamentalists are “essential to the political program of the right,” says
Ugh. I came by this old piece via the Corner, and thought it worthy of a read. At any rate, Derb is over there pissing off the entire joint by saying nasty (not really, at least by Balloon Juice standards) things about Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb. Just click the link and star scrolling down to read the last day’s exchanges in reverse chronological order.
I think Ramesh Ponneru is about to cry.
Another Jeff
It really shows just how far off the deep end many on the far right have gone when Derb comes off, on certain issues such as Schiavo and ID, as the sane one.
Richard Bottoms
I am shocked to find out that conservative intellectuals feign religious belief to keep the southern hicks happy in the Republican Party.
My only question is why is this news? You don’t really think Dr. Frist thought Terri Shiavo was alive in there? The religious right has been played for fools for 25 years.
This has been such a satisfying few months.
Indian casinos use anti-gambling Baptists to make millions with help from Ralph Reed, and their lobbyists gloat about the hicks stupidity.
Jewish leaders finally start waking up to the fact that a sect whose philosophy revolves around Satan destroying them in the end may not be such a good idea.
Keep it coming.
neil
I like the Derb myself. He strikes me as honest, although maybe that is simply because he describes conservative policies and philosophies in ways that make both conservatives and liberals cringe. But I did enjoy watching everybody get worked up into a froth about what he said about teenage girls. (Full disclosure: I am engaged to a woman 8 years older than myself)
Though I am now really curious what the deal is with his wife. And I also wonder why he doesn’t show up on those occasional lists of high-profile conservative pundits who have written novels with explicit, twisted sex scenes.
BIRDZILLA
They can never prove evolution becuase there is no missing link all they can show for evolution is a few puny bone fragments and fossels that show no proof
Steve S
Interesting. I didn’t know Cliff May was a National Review pundit. They always publish his little op-ed’s in our local newspaper and simply identify him as managing editor for some newspaper.
Anyway, I haven’t read the whole thing, but I am disturbed that Derb used the term ‘proles’ in a setence. I’ve never heard that one before, and when I looked it up it’s attributed to Marx.
BIRDZILLA – I think you’ve been watching too much Munsters television.
Richard Bottoms
Denigrate evolution if you will, but at least it is a theory with a long history of scientific inquiry behind it.
Meanwhile in the ID fantasyland:
Physicist George Gamow worked out a remarkable empirical prediction for the theory: If the big bang is true, he calculated, the universe should be bathed in a certain type of radiation, which might possibly be detectable. Another physicist, Robert Dicke, started working on a detector at Princeton University to measure this radiation. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson ended up discovering the radiation by accident at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J., in 1965, after which just about everyone accepted the big bang as the correct theory.
Unfortunately, the proponents of ID aren’t operating this way. Instead of doing science, they are writing popular books and op-eds. As a result, ID remains theoretically in the same scientific place it was when Phillip Johnson wrote Darwin on Trial — little more than a roster of evolutionary theory’s weakest links.
When Behe was asked to explicate the science of ID, he simply listed a number of things that were complex and not adequately explained by evolution. These structures, he said, were intelligently designed. Then, under cross-examination, he said that the explanation for these structures was “intelligent activity.” He added that ID “explains” things that appear to be intelligently designed as having resulted from intelligent activity.
http://www.stnews.org/Commentary-2439.htm
As a Christian it is not inconpatible to believe in God and evolution. As a conservative you should be horrified to know your movement has been hijacked by anti-science zealots.
Hmmm, isn’t there some other part of the world where there’s a lot of that going on???
Richard Bottoms
>Anyway, I haven’t read the whole thing, but I am disturbed >that Derb used the term ‘proles’ in a setence.
Umm, I think he was being ironic in that the communists believed in one truth for them and one for the masses.
You know, like Kristol does.
Ironic, isn’t it.
Steve S
I kind of suspected that he was being sarcastic, but it was hard to tell. It appeared he was being ironic, but you never know. Reading NRO is about like reading Pravda. You don’t know if them saying “bringing democracy to the little brown people” is a sarcastic quip, or are they being serious.
Walker
Having debated with proponents in several forums on the Internet, I get the impression that some of them see ID as the best hope for “recapturing the definition of science”. As in going back to the pre-Enlightenment definition, before this whole Naturalism stuff appeared. They blame Naturalism for the rise in secularism and athiesism.
While there may be some truth to this, there is a reason Naturalism caught on so well. That’s because it is the only method of inquiry that has definitely worked. (You might point to logic and mathematics as being separate from Naturalism. However, by itself, that field tells us nothing about the external world.) It is because it works that it is a public good taught in public schools, and not some alternate religion.
To the naive, ID looks like a “science” without Naturalism that works. Unfortunately, it does not.
That’s one theory. Then of course, there is the whole effort of the think tanks to undermine science because they don’t like the policy decisions of scientists, thought I am not convinced that is related to this. But it certainly has helped. If only the think tanks would stick to questions of policy and stop trying to spew authoritatively about science they know nothing about.
SeesThroughIt
Speaking of stuff you aren’t sure is sarcastic or not, this has got to be parody, right? Like, it’s a DougJ webpage or something. I’m 99 percent sure it is, but that last 1 percent is all too aware that there really are a lot of people out there who are unironically like this.
Steve S
So I’m also disturbed by the NRO’s calling something Scientism? What the f is that?
SeesThroughIt – Looks like parody… like Jesus’ General.
DougJ
Evolution is nothing more than a theory dreamed up by the elitist, loony, northeastern left in order to denigrate God as well as His son Jesus Christ. As such, it is nothing more than another battle in the war against Christmas. It goes hand-in-hand with moral relativism, gay marriage, the slaughter of womb babies, and the state-sponsored execution of Terri Schiavo. And even it didn’t (though it certainly does), it would still have very little evidence supporting it. There are gaps in the theory as wide as the Grand Canyon — which, by the way, did not form gradually over thousands of years by erosion but was created in one fell swoop by our Almighty Creator. (Same for Mount Rushmore)
To those who cower in fear of the overwhelming political and media pressure brought to bear by militant secularists, I say this: Someone died on a cross for us two thousand years ago. If we won’t speak for Him, then who will?
Richard Bottoms
>Evolution is nothing more than a theory dreamed up by the >elitist, loony, northeastern left in order to denigrate God >as well as His son Jesus Christ.
There are meds that will help with all that.
DougJ
You’re right, Richard, there are meds that would cure the moonbats of their Darwin uber alles delusions.
Steve S
DougJ – I think you mean proles.
SeesThroughIt
Great post, DougJ, except you forgot to state, “My grandfather was not a monkey!” as indignantly as possible.
Richard Bottoms
Anyway the main point of all this is you folks in the ID camp are the usual bunch of saps the Republicans depend on. So fixated on some silly religious based nonsense they pledge to support, you don’t carp about giveaways to the wealthy.
Suckers.
Krista
BIRDZILLA Says:
That’s just because they haven’t caught you yet, Birdzilla.
demimondian
The question, I think, is whether DougJ’s grandfather was a sockpuppet.
aop
Exactly what I’ve been saying. Say what you will about the mud people, but they have homicide bombers willing to defend whoever they believe in. Where are our homicide bombers?
Theseus
Politicians shamelessly AND dishonestly using an issue for political gains…never saw that one coming!
Jon H
“Politicians shamelessly AND dishonestly using an issue for political gains…never saw that one coming!”
Well, it’s more notably the non-office-holding pundits and demagogues, rather than the politicians.
DougJ
And the others are idiots, obviously.
Brad R.
Some conservative intellectuals think religious fundamentalists are “essential to the political program of the right,” says
It’s true, really. The fundies are so stupid and easily manipulated that they make the perfect political soldiers.
Brad R.
Evolution is nothing more than a theory dreamed up by the elitist, loony, northeastern left in order to denigrate God as well as His son Jesus Christ. As such, it is nothing more than another battle in the war against Christmas. It goes hand-in-hand with moral relativism, gay marriage, the slaughter of womb babies, and the state-sponsored execution of Terri Schiavo.
“Womb babies?” It sounds like Fake DougJ is a Pastor Swank fan!
CaseyL
You bet your bippy that’s the not-so-hidden agenda. Remove naturalism from science, replace it with supernaturalism, and you have an instant Magical Correction Factor (“God,” or “The Higher Intelligence Formerly Known as God”) that allows you to disregard any scientific conclusions you don’t like.
Hell, you can even make a case that things like GCC are acts of Divine Will, and trying to fight or mitigate them is blasphemy.
skip
You are all missing the essential but hidden reason.
The neocons can scarcely laugh at biblical literalism (with regard to evolution) while embracing Israel’s biblical claim to the 80-year-long Kingdom of David.
Steve S
skip – Perhaps, although I honestly don’t think that most Americans support, even the neocons, for Israel is based upon a biblical reading.
It’s rather more simple. They simply have a right to exist as a nation.
There are a handful of people who take it further, but even amongst the neocons I beleive they are a minority.
CaseyL
The winger shock-troops come out:
Douglas County sheriff’s deputies are investigating the reported beating of a Kansas University professor who gained recent notoriety for his Internet tirades against Christian fundamentalists.
Kansas University religious studies professor Paul Mirecki reported he was beaten by two men about 6:40 a.m. today on a roadside in rural Douglas County. In a series of interviews late this afternoon, Mirecki said the men who beat him were making references to the controversy that has propelled him into the headlines in recent weeks.
“I didn’t know them, but I’m sure they knew me,” he said.
Mirecki said he was driving to breakfast when he noticed the men tailgating him in a pickup truck. “I just pulled over hoping they would pass, and then they pulled up real close behind,” he said. “They got out, and I made the mistake of getting out.”
He said the men beat him about the upper body with their fists, and he said he thinks they struck him with a metal object. He was treated and released at Lawrence Memorial Hospital.
“I’m mostly shaken up, and I got some bruises and sore spots,” he said.
Douglas County Sheriff’s Officials are classifying the case as an aggravated battery. They wouldn’t say exactly where the incident happened, citing the ongoing investigation. The sheriff’s department is looking for the suspects, described as two white males between ages 30 and 40, one wearing a red visor and wool gloves, and both wearing jeans. They were last seen in a large pickup truck.
Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 843-TIPS or the sheriff’s office at 841-0007.”
— Lawrence Journal-World, via dKos
ET
If Ramesh is about to cry it definitely seems like a good party.
W.B. Reeves
I’m shocked, shocked, to discover that there are members of the “Conservative brain trust” who pander to the superstitious, whose beliefs they do not share.
What I find more shocking is that there are reasonable, critically minded people for whom this would come as a surprise. It seems that thirty years of phony populist posturing, born of white backlash, has the power to cloud men’s minds indeed.
The so-called “Conservative” movement made this devil’s bargain long ago.
Anthony West
Himmelfarb may be an acclaimed historian, but her ignorance of science is truly astonishing. As you say, after reading quotes from her book Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, John Derbyshire wrote at NRO’s corner that:
“If her grasp of biology is as presented, she ought to be forbidden by law from using the word “Darwinism” in a sentence.”
The account of Himmelfarb’s ignorance made its way onto several blogs:
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/12/a_critique_of_h.html
http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/12/neoconservatives_and_evolution.php
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/derbyshire_himmelfarb_neocons_and_evolutio/
http://www.chriscmooney.com/blog.asp?Id=2286