Tag Archives: ID

When you have no argument

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Resort to an ad hominem or strawman.

It really is that simple. This must be such a universal “rule of thumb” that there must be a section in Genesis which tells people to do it. (This would also nicely explain why so many of the offenders are devout theist cranks)

Anyway, to kill a quiet Sunday afternoon (avoiding my research tasks), I visited UncommonStupidity (not an ad hominem, I am not saying their arguments are false because they are idiots – the two are co-incidental) again. Today I was rewarded with a piece about how Darwin was “anti-Irish” (amusingly titled “Darwin and the Irish … again“). If you are doing a course in logical arguments or similar, then check this out. It is an online example of how many logical inconsistencies and fallacies you can cram into a single blog post. I am sure this is a record – even by UncommonStupidity’s standards. This time it is O’Leary taking up the keyboard and he begins:

Apparently, one of the Thumbsmen has claimed that Bill Dembski overstated/misstated (or whatever) Darwin’s contempt for the feckless* Irish, with their endless stream of brats (combined, of course, with his approval of the thrifty and allegedly cautiously procreative Scot).

Which is hilarious, because contempt for the Irish was part and parcel of Darwin’s Brit toffery – a social code everyone in those days understood. The Potato Famine, when so many thousands starved to death within easy reach of abundant food exported from Ireland, would be incomprehensible apart from it. Indeed, I heard its fell echoes a century later, as a child in a far distant land.

No, Dembski did not misquote Darwin. Darwin meant exactly what he said. The problem is that what Darwin meant is incompatible with the theory he is famed for advancing.

With a start like that, you just know it is going to be good. Obviously O’Leary (good old Irish name, eh?) has a special insight into what Darwin actually thought and, equally, finds it valid to view his opinions from the comfort of 21st century society and our values. Maybe his intelligent designer provides this insight… Anyway, this line of nonsense progresses to:

Either natural selection produces survival of the fittest (Spencer’s term, quoted with approval by Darwin as a suitable description of the main point of his theory) or it does not. But Darwin believed – irrationally – that the Irish were both most likely to breed and succeed and less fit, and therefore a menace.

Wow. I told it was a good start. Now, the actual opinions of Darwin aside, “survival of the fittest” is not the “scientific” way of discussing evolution. It is a buzz word people use to try and explain things to the layperson. It happens in science all the time. For example, e=mc2 is an approximation of the proper theory because the full details are fairly complicated.

Another “failing” of the theistic argument is the combination of Science and Morality. A scientific theory does not have to be “morally” acceptable to an arbritrary social system. The two talk about different spheres of existence. If Darwin was contemptous of the Irish – so what?

O’Leary seems to really miss the point about what natural selection is and how it works, and sadly the potatoe famine acts as an example that artificial circumstances can allow large populations which are not “fit” to grow. (All this is comensurate with the science)

All in all (I can not be bothered addressing the other logical inconsistencies), this is another example of UncommonStupidity trying to show “evolution” is incorrect because Darwin was not a nice person. Sadly, theists are used to an idea hinging on a single individual’s values and remaining unchanged for thousands of years. In science this really is not the case. Will they ever get the idea?

[tags]Darwin, Evolution, Science, Philosophy, Logic, Intelligent Design, ID, History, Creationists, Creationist Fools, Woo, Crackpot[/tags]

Uncommon Stupidity

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It has been awhile since I have “braved” the well of stupidity, vitriol, hatred and confusion which is Uncommon Descent but today I had a look.

Wow.

The stupidity remains. An entertaining highlight was ““No thanks, I’ll take two fivers” — Dumping Darwin from British currency.” Now, this really is full of nonsense. I was planning to post some select highlights but there are too many to choose from!

Basically the post (by Dembski) is that we (the British) should drop Darwin from the £10 note. He starts off going on about how, with the new twenty, the Bank of England is changing the “famous person” on the note and continues:

This is a news-worthy cause for British Darwin-doubters, who should urge that Darwin be dumped from the 10-pound note whenever there is a new security-upgrade version, on grounds that he is the chief prophet of the materialist religion, and his presence on the 10-pound note is an inappropriate endorsement of that materialist religion and its related anti-religious ferment. Now, it’s true that Britain has no 1st Amendment, but still, Britain is trying to be multi-cultural. A part of the effort could include a long list of choice inflammatory quotes from the new anti-religion books currently out in the bookstores (and in Darwin’s own writings — see the previous post here at UD); the effort could point out that the government, by honoring Darwin, implicitly lends its prestige to their venom.

See what I mean? Gibberish at its best. Dumbski Dembski moves on to talking about Darwin being a racist (nonsense but the UDders seem to like it) and decides William Wilberforce would be a better contender (on the apparent advice of the Fabian Society but I can find no confirmation of that with the search engine there…). This leads to a fantastic line of woo:

Thus, this effort would also kick-off a comparison of what good has been brought to the world by these two people — Darwin vs. Wilberforce. Nazi Eugenics vs. the abolition of slavery. Is there really any contest?

Which brings up the reason I keep posting juicy bigotted and racist quotes by Darwin and his disciples here at UD. While the intellectual community may know them, the general public does not. Suppose the public decided that every time it accepted a “Darwin” (a 10-pound note) in payment or in change for a purchase, it was implicitly endorsing those terrible quotes? People would likely say, “No thanks, I’d rather have two fivers. I don’t take money that praises racists and bigots — and neither should you.”

In other words, promote a boycott of the Darwin 10-pound note because it promotes racism. It’s like putting Robert E. Lee on the ten-dollar bill because he was a great general, and ignoring the cause he served. This would work particularly well because the goal of the Fabians and other multiculturalists is to re-define Britain to be racially-inclusive. Thus there is a particular reason to highlight the racism of Darwin and get rid of him.

I really do think this is some one going off the deep end. Proponents of ID still have no science, evidence or data to support their ideas. The best they can aim for a rather pathetic attempt to paint a dead person in a bad light. They constantly fall foul of the fallacious idea that attacking a person (Darwin, Dawkins etc) is the same as attacking their ideas. In really, it wouldn’t matter if Darwin was racist (he wasn’t – at least not by the standards of his time), it wouldn’t even matter if what Darwin thought was the “Theory of Evolution” was wrong. Things have changed. Time has passed. Science has progressed and the theory of evolution has evolved.

Sadly, the IDers are trapped in a world which means not only are they incorrect but they are incapable of properly arguing their side, but can never give in.

You have to pity them, don’t you?

National ID database

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For this, go to the source and read it. No more secrets by Steve Boggan is a very very disturbing account of how “joined-up government” and national ID documents will mean the end of anything resembling privacy.

The blurb on the printed page says:

“Tony Blair insists his government is not building a Big Brother-style super-database. But all the talk of ‘perfectly sensible’ reforms and ‘transformational government’ masks a chilling assault on our privacy”

Brilliant article. It’s almost too much to take in and it might leave you feeling very depressed. But, really, if you live in the UK, you should read it.

Prove or Disprove

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Short one as not much to rant about today, however some general web surfing has made me think about a few issues in science related to Evolution / Creationism.

The scientific method is well established and is certainly the “generally accepted” way of defining what is scientific and what isn’t. This method, not some half baked 2000 year old text which has been re-written more times than I can count, provides the yardstick against which all science is measured – be it Evolution, Relativity, Electromagnetism, anything. Without it, well, it’s back to the dark ages.

The crux of the method is the ability to make testable predictions and carry out proper experiments which can falsify the theory. You dont actually have to prove the theory wrong for it to be scientific (although this is a common misconception of the term) but you need to be able to construct an experiment which could prove the theory wrong. This is important so make a note of it.

Now, on to the wonders of creationism. Most, if not all, creationist propaganda carries the sole message that “Evolution is Wrong.” If you do a YouTube, Google or (especially) a MySpace search you come across all manner of idiocy and madness about the topic. People saying “evolution is wrong because … [insert nonsense].” Things range from the “missing link” oddity to crazy arguments like irreducible complexity. The main thing they all have in common is the nonsense and bad science which tends to back them.

The important thing, in the context of this post anyway, is the issue about disproving evolution.

First off, the fact that the lunatics (ID, YEC et al) are capable of coming up with a possible experimental circumstance which could disprove evolution reinforces the fact that evolution is scientific. Scientific does not mean true or correct. Newtonian Gravity was a scientific theory which turned out to be incorrect. This is part of the way science works. A scientific fact has more caveats than the average person would ever think of applying to something “factual.”

Secondly, and possibly more importantly, even if the lunatics did manage to disprove the theory of evolution, that does not mean Creationism takes a default win. That is not how science works. A flaw in general relativity (eg, interactions on the quantum scale) does not mean Newtonian Gravity is correct – or to be a more accurate analogy, a flaw in GR does not mean gravity is caused by bananas. Finding something in a theory which is wrong is the “Holy Grail” (all puns intended) of science. It means people get to advocate new Scientific theories (sorry, creationists, you dont count). People get Nobel prizes. People get huge amounts of funding. (and so on).

Intelligent Design / Creationism / whatever, is not scientific. It really isn’t. Saying “God Did It” is not science – even changing God to something you think will slip under the radar still does not make it science. If anything it is the end of science. It blocks further investigation because if anything is unknown or fails to meet the predictions you can just say “the creator wanted it that way and who are we to second guess the all-mighty one?”

Falsifying evolution would be a good thing, but it certainly would not mean creationism was the correct science. The theory of evolution is scientific. It almost certainly is not the endstate for our understanding of life and it makes no predictions about how life started, but it is a valid, solid, theory. Just like gravity. I am not going to even think of getting worked up about the “it’s just a theory” crap…

Blairspam

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This was going to get ignored but, the BBC having beaten us to it by featuring two Downing Street mass spams in a couple of days, it will have to be said. The government response to e-petitions is to fire off a patronising spam telling you that your concern was noted but Tony is now going to explain patronisingly and irritatingly why you are wrong and the government will pay no attention.

The UK government is experimenting with online petitions. Two had massive numbers of people taking part, to express opposition to road-pricing and/or the national ID card. There were over a million against road pricing and around 800,00 against ID. (You can see where people’s priorities lie…)

Now, clearly the only people who sign one of these are those who care strongly enough an issue to sit at at a PC, find the site, find the right petition and send their name, get an email and reply to it. Which requires knowledge of the whole process, plus the will to go through it. You’d imagine that you could multiply these numbers by at least 50 to get a true idea of the strength of feeling.

It’s like cheap MORI poll for the government. It requires an address and postcode. The government can get plenty of very detailed information about which issues people find important and where they live, which could be very useful in an election campaign.

How sane is then, to reply to everyone with emails that set the teeth on edge? I was shown a copy of the ID mail and it basically said

“Thanks for the e-petition. However, the government is not interested. You obviously don’t understand the issues or you wouldn’t have ventured your opinion. ID will fight crime, let you go to America and will hardly cost you anything. in any case it’s inevitable”

Ok, I admit to some exaggeration in the precis here. But it was way too long and boring to read (Yeah, yeah, people who live in glass houses…)

In fact, yesterdays’ blairspam alerted the Opposition to the fact that the ID was to be used as the basis for a national registry of fingerpints. Funny, you didn’t really mention this before, HM Government.

Today’s news item is the road pricing one. This was worded slightly more cagily – over a million opponents, remember – but the impression I got from the BBC was that the government was saying a slight more appeasing version of exactly the same thing “Tough, it’s inevitable but it will be out of our hands and private companies will run it. Nothing we can do mate”

Here’s my response:
**********************
Hi Tony

I welcome your move into the technological world of email spam, Tony. It’s an exciting new contribution to the democratic process.

However, I’m sorry to have to explain to you that there may be some misunderstanding here about the nature of consultation. This is for your own good and it was inevitable that someone would have to do it.

Consultation is not really achieved by hearing contrary views then telling the electorate that they don’t understand the issues and that process x is inevitable and is for our own good really.

It is actually not inevitable that the government carries detailed ID information on those citizens who aren’t engaged in organised crime deeply enough to escape the system.

It’s not inevitable that intrusive technology takes over from competent policework or that the data that we provide the government is dictated by the requirements of the US immigration service or that we even have to stump up our own cash so Big Brother can keep an even closer track of us(probably private sector) These seem a lot like political decisions, Tony.

I will just take this opportunity to explain what a “political decision” is . I have to admit I’m surprised that this is necessary for someone who’s worked his way to the job of Prime Minister, but that’s one of the drawbacks of our tragically underfunded private education sector….
*******************

And what a lucky coincidence that the announcement about partial troop withdrawal from Iraq (for once, slightly better than normal war news) was leaked on ID Emailspam day and released on the Road-price Emailspam day.

Blag blogs

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Phew. I can regain the will to live.

The post on atheist humour about a fake right wing blog, plus a comment by Alun about another absolutely brilliant parody site landoverbaptist.org had me wondering how many more of these other extremist blogs were fake.

I somehow ended up browsing an anti-church forum by following links from landoverbaptist. I noticed that some of the sites that people were griping about really had to be blatant spoofs.

I suddenly had a flash of Road to Damascus insight.

There are no right wing fundamentalist blogs or websites. There are no real creationist blogs. Intelligent design is just a joke that got out of hand. They are all just made by just a load of people with wierd senses of humour. This knowledge will restore your faith in the human race.

No wait! The most obvious intuitive argument against ID was the all-too-evident lack of intelligence in so many human beings – as shown ironically by the way that a completely irrational alternative to evolution was allegedly believed by huge swathes of people.

But, now science – in the shape of my empirical investigation of the existence of fundamentalist blogs – has proved that human stupidity is a false premise. Humans are rational intelligent beings after all.

D’oh, so there COULD be an intelligent design behind the universe….. 🙂

2 forms of ID – this is about the cards

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Are the letters ID inherently evil in that specific combination? They form an acronym for two of the main topics that spark up rants here – Intelligent Design (the belief that everything except evolution is so complex that God must have planned it in detail) and Identity Document (the UK’s psychiatrically-certifiable ID card scheme.)

It’s been a while since there was any complaint about the ID card scherme here. However, far from vanishing when it’s not in the news, it’s been creeping towards existence. THe BBC put up a page in December with arguments for and against. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork/A2319176  The Fors basically consist of  “there would be less illegal immigration, benefit fraud , ID theft and crime in general.” None of these arguments are convincing. Nor, even if they were all true, would they seem to constitute enough of a public good to justify the full-scale imposition of  such constraints on traditional freedoms. Surely benefit fraud is the responsibility of DWP, Immigration of the Home Office, crime of the police. Aren’t they up to doing their jobs any more? The truly comical argument for ID is this, though.

Enhance sense of community: The government believes that identity cards would create a sense of shared citizenship, belonging and security

(I wondered what that lovely warm feeling I get from my bus pass was.)

If you don’t even need to know what the BBC gives as anti-ID arguments, you have probably decided a long time ago that the whole plan is both silly and dangerous. (See http://www.no2id.net/IDSchemes/faq.php if you want to read the arguments and find out about campaigns.)

You have probably heard people saying “But it’s inevitable.”  You almost certainly feel that it doesn’t matter what you think about what the government does because it never makes any difference anyway, look how mass protests stopped the Iraq war involvement (not)

Well, there is actually one way you can let the Government know that it is a deeply unsavoury plan. Go to http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/IDcards/ and sign the online petition against ID. I normally regard petitions as utterly pointless but there are reasons why this may have some impact. It’s on a site set up by the government itself to get input. If they can be made to see that this is no vote-winner, even a potential “poll tax” issue, they are going to step back sharpish.

The fiasco of the government’s current IT systems is already a scandal. Every IT project seems to cost untold millions; comes in millions over-budget; leads to civil service redundancies so services get worse;  and it doesn’t work properly when it’s finally implemented. The ID card scheme requires a huge outlay on even more new systems. A minister would need to have either some very powerful friends who needed an IT contract or a strong ideological commitment to the idea of ID to want to keep pushing this expensive and unworkable plan in the face of serious evidence of opposition.

The Government had to give way on the medical records plan to the extent of allowing us to refuse to have our medical records open to any NHS employee (or journalist, nosy neighbour, private detective, etc.,  who knows an NHS employee). They may indeed give way on this scheme. Just wait till the cost to individuals sinks in to those people who don’t think ID is a bad thing in itself. We’d be doing the Government a favour by stopping them  pushing the ID plan through.

Jade out-voted. Wahay.

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Hopefully, the last word on the Celebrity Big Brother garbage. I see from the BBC site that the unpleasant Jade Goody has been voted off. Well that’s one good thing. (I had imagined hordes of racist morons voting for her.)

Is it too late to say that scapegoating someone like her doesn’t actually address the fact of endemic racism?

Casual racism exposed

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The uproar over Celebrity Brother is fascinating in itself. It’s obviously succeeded in dragging back attention to a tv show that can yield several degress of watchability to the test card.

THere was a great blog from TW here about the Big Brother fiasco.  (http://www.whydontyou.org.uk/blog/2007/01/17/racism-on-big-brother/) It says it all but I still feel like adding my proverbial tuppenorth.

I have actually watched one of these programmes. It does indeed reek of casual mindless racism. I  also watched a very old Celebrity Big Brother series (both in someone else’s house, I insist on adding, for the salke of my self-respect) in which  Chris Eubank, a black boxer,  was subjected to the same sort of behaviour, from people who were at least less blatantly moronic as these appalling women, no apparent outcry. Chris eubank was the first person ever to  to be evicted from CBB.

Ironically, in both cases the contestants who were subjected to this racially based exclusion behaved with an almost incredible degree of  forbearance. Chris Eubank seemed the only person in his house with any idea of a separation between a stage persona and a therapy session. He was calm and witty at all times. He wore silly outfits as a public-pleasing act. It didn’t work. He was obviously too sane for the house and must have struck a nerve with the largely moronic sector of the public who actually spend money on voting for these things.

These bitchy “celeb” women are not just morons. They were clearly threatened by a woman who is naturally beautiful,  seems normally intelligent. and appears to have done something (acting) to become a “celeb.”  The attackers have no claim on being known other than to have  copped off with a footballer to win a beauty contest or to have exhibit ed their awe-inspiring stupidity on national television.

However, their attitudes are not unique. Jade Goody’s boyfriend was  casually racist enough for a dozen wags in the bit that i had the misfortune to watch.  He didn’t even have the excuse of being a comically outclassed female.

I take issue with any approach that involves pretending that this casual racism is unique to these people and that hiding it will make it go away. If anything, this trash tv has done a service by showing the truly repulsive inature of British racism, which is unfortunately not confined to the people at the back of the queue when the mental and spititual gifts were being given out.

The very media that are now pillorying  a few backward  girls for giving the game away are the ones that are creating a climate of division. A trawl through the BBC’s own blog site about a woman wearing a burkha left me stunned with shock at the casually racist content of almost all the posts. 

Clearly our anti-racism strategies aren’t working. With apologies for pontificating, I’ll take this up in the next blog.