They're Getting DUMBER

[filkertom]

The Carpetbagger Report, by way of Crooks and Liars, aims us to Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, and a darling little dissertation called "On Men And Monkeys: The Oldest Fight In The Culture War, II". Here's the money quote (their emphasis):

Evolutionists claim that their battle against creation-science is primarily a "scientific" issue, not a constitutional question. But our treasured U. S. Constitution is written by persons and for persons. If man is an animal, the Constitution was written by animals and for animals. This preposterous conclusion destroys the Constitution. The... Humanists leave us with no Constitution and no constitutional rights of any kind if they allow us to teach only that man is an animal.

They apparently intend to run with this.

Have at.

Comments

[phillip2637.livejournal.com]

"If man is an animal...."

Maybe that makes more sense if one lives in the USA, but for me it has about as much logic as:

BEDEVERE: Exactly. So, logically...
VILLAGER #1: If... she... weighs... the same as a duck,... she's made of wood.
BEDEVERE: And therefore?
VILLAGER #2: A witch!

(Lifted from here (http://www.churchofcriticalthinking.com/archives/000160monty_python_and_the.html))

[signy1.livejournal.com]

Well, I can see the point they're desperately trying to make-- the problem seems to lie in a basic refusal to understand what the word 'evolution' means. Say we define 'evolution' as a theory that posits the gradual but definite transformation from a lower to a higher and therefore entirely different form of life. Fair?

Now, the whack job writing the article seems unaware that the process of evolution, by its nature, differentiates a species from its predecessors. In short-- humans are no longer australopithecines. Different species. Humans are also not small, shrewlike mammals. Entirely different species. And-- let's go all the way back, here-- unicellular creatures wriggling through the organic soup are also not humans, and do not deserve the bloody vote.

The writer seems to be trying to argue that pro-evolutionists are saying that apes, as our distant relatives, are exactly like us and vice versa. Obvious flaws in the reasoning, but about all one could expect from a rabid creationist, I suppose. I think they're getting desperate.

[umbran.livejournal.com]

Fair, yes. Accurate? Not terribly

Evolution in no way guarantees a transition from "lower" to "higher". Evolution doesn't give a whit about our value judgements of high and low. ,

That, actually, is at a major root of the problem. These folks want to be above all other animals, special, unique. But evolution does not say that they are.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Ahhhhh, but God did, when he gave Adam dominion over all the other animals. [rolls eyes at Genesis 1:27-28]

[umbran.livejournal.com]

If we need to look beyond basic human greed to find a source for our general poor stewardship of the planet, Genesis is probaby the place to look.

[poltr1]

Too many people have misconstrued "dominion" as "domination". It's not. It's "stewardship". At least that's how I consider it.

I'll chalk this up to bad translation. It's probably moot to debate whether this was intentional or unintentional.

Gaaah. I think I'm gonna go listen to some Devo now.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

They both come from a word meaning "master." I don't think there's any good reason why the writers and translators of the original texts shouldn't have been wrong in that way too.

The world didn't come with a manual, or a list of does and don'ts, at least not one that has been generally accepted and followed. People in former times may have believed in the Christian God, but they sure as heck didn't follow his teachings in their daily lives to any great extent at all. There's no reason to suppose they'd have treated the "Whole Earth Catalogue" with any greater respect.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Better an animal like an ape than a vegetable like her. I've never yet met a vegetable with a brain -- not that they can't exist, but on this world, they neither evolved nor were Uplifted :-)

I call more bullshit, in the form of yet another double standard. Either humans can think -- whatever their origin -- or the essay is meaningless. The fact of sentience and its origins are two separate items, and trying to link them is simply disingenuous at best; outright deception and lying, at worst. (And where, O Gentle Reader, do the liars end up in the Afterlife? But that's a kettle of horses of a VERY different hue.)

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

If there were any validity to this argument that if humans are animals, they have the same rights as other animals, no more and no less, then it would lead to the conclusion that the Constitution applies to all animals, not to none. There is certainly nothing in the Constitution that says it only applies to "special non-animal created-de-novo-by-God-in-their-final form" human beings.

This is an argument from someone who has given up on reason (giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming they have the capacity for it in the first place) and is just stringing together words to incite emotional reactions.

[min0taur.livejournal.com]

If human beings aren't animals of some sort, then we must not belong here (come to think of it, I probably belong on a planet that gives me fewer ideological headaches). I see a (well, yeah) fundamental divergence here in the basic concept of what an "animal" is. If an animal "is" an ad-hoc arrangement of chromosomes that engages in an exchange of energy with its environment and is just the latest stage in a generations-long tryout of features, then it's a process and not "really" a thing, which is a problem if you want your things to be eternally unchanging. If an animal "is" a fixed form extruded from protoplasm like the plastic critters in the Ol' MacDonald's Farm Playset, then it's a thing, all right, and you can put it on any rung of the Great Chain of Being that suits yer convenience, and expect it to stay there with all the other Right Answers. People with that outlook get all upset when they reach for their things and come away with a handful of gooey processes (ewwww). If one thing can turn into something else, what's to protect the overprivileged from turning into the disenfranchised?

[markbernstein.livejournal.com]

When I was 15, and went to camp, one of my cabin-mates was from the south. In one evening's discussion, the topic of evolution came up, and he expressed his position with wonderful brevity.

He said, "I ain't descended from no ape."

Pretty much every argument against evolution I've ever seen is a restatement of that premise.

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

What a bunch of idiots. So if "man" isn't an animal, does that make "him" a vegetable? or a mineral? *headdesk*

[tnatj.livejournal.com]

I'm just trying to figure out the errors in reasoning. I guess it starts with a fundamental error in definition (confusing sub-classes with equivalence), then goes on to jumping to conclusions, illicit process, undistributed middle terms ...

non sequitur! non sequitur! non sequitur! ...

[pyrephox.livejournal.com]

I...the...WHAT?

One of the things I persistantly fail to understand about the creationist movement is the revulsion for the idea that humans are animals. Although I'm surprised that the Constitution is valued at all by them, really...it wasn't handed down from On High by God.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think in their mindset it was... via the Modern Prophets i.e The Founding Fathers. Who supposidily intended America to be a Christian Nation.

Still, it makes a kind of twisted sense that way, the fundies ignore the consitution just as much as the bible in the pursuit of their own goals of securing absolute power.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

By this logic, none of us should be permitted to drive, vote, or hold office because we were, at one point, infants.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

I rather think that's the intent. Except of course for the ones doing the shouting, because the rules obviously don't apply to them, because they're Special and Christians who are Loved by God! Unlike the rest of us.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Oook! Oook!

[seanmonster.livejournal.com]

Eek?

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

Okay, so by the same token:

"We, the Carbon-Based Life Forms, in order to form a more perfect union..."

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

Others have said this, but I'll echo the sentiment:

The mental scheme used here is that Man Is Special. As I've told my physics students for the last few years, when we get to Models of the Solar System:

"Ptolemy, and many other since his time, liked to believe that Man is at the center of everything. I mean, that the whole universe was created ENTIRELY for our benefit and literally revolved around us."

These are the people who demand special status above and beyond others. These are, in short, the bigots, the racists, the homophobes: They simply MUST be de-facto Better Than Everyone Else.

[mathmuffin.livejournal.com]

Despite the learned discourse posted here on the underlying logic of Virginia Armstrong's statement about evolution and the constitution, I think phillip2637 pegged it at the beginning. This statement isn't designed to be logical. It is designed to appeal to the emotions. It could be summed up as, "The evolutionists say we are animals! Could animals write a document as great as the Constitution? No! If we believe the evolutionists, we might as well toss our so-called Constitution in the garbage! The evolutionists want to destroy this nation!"

It's a pep rally speech to stir up more support (monetary support, I presume) from people who are already against teaching evolution. It is not meant to be smart, and perhaps Dr. Armstrong is blushing in embarrassment right now that her paragraph is being viewed by people who will notice that it is nonsense.

There are some threads of logic in there to disguise the rant. I think it alludes to an old Christian argument against atheism that since God is the source of moral authority, atheists must have no morals beyond immediate self-interest. That argument was debunked long ago by atheists and agnostics, such as the philosopher Bertrand Russell, who lead reasoned and moral lives. But the same argument could be twisted to say that if people are evolved, then they have no moral authority, and thus, they cannot give the Constitution any moral authority.

Erin Schram

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

So we're destroying the Constitution by leaving the Constitution out of it?

Logic is a pretty flower that smells bad.

[poltr1]

....to quote Mr. Spock.

As far as I know, evolution is still a *theory*, and hasn't been proven to be true or false.

The story of Creation as documented in Genesis 1 is the cornerstone of Judeo-Christian mythology. But there's an unstated assumption that this is "the word of God" (and therefore, God exists).

Intelligent design tries to merge these two ideas, but it still relies on the assumption of the existence of a higher-order being.

It's the classic case of faith vs. science, and will continue until CNN (or the Discovery Channel) teams up with the Time Lords and goes back in time to record a documentary as to what really happened.

People are the craziest animals.

"... that it's a demon... a DANCING demon! Eugh -- something isn't right there...."

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but... as far as is known, evolution is a fact.

See, this is the problem. One of the cornerstones of this whole non-debate is that the word "theory" has different meaning to a scientist than to a layperson. A "theory" is not a good but unproven guess; a theory is an explanation that has been scrutinized, tested, proved, verified, gone over to hell and back and still works. Nobody's come up with a functional alternate "theory" of gravity, for instance; that is every bit a theory as the theory of evolution, or more specifically the theory of natural selection.

Evolution happens; the theory of natural selection explains it.

Intelligent design puts forth no explanation except "it's too complex to have 'just happened', therefore something created it". A political cartoonist last year provided a helpful flow chart of the process; everything led to a big block in the middle which read, "A MIRACLE OCCURS".

The problem with this "classic case of faith vs. science" is that the practitioners of faith are trying to force our educational system to give this non-theory, non-explanation, fairy tale equal weight to an explanation which has been researched for 150 years.

Re: "... that it's a demon... a DANCING demon! Eugh -- something isn't right there...."

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

...as opposed, of course, to the mere eighteen hundred years or so that intelligent, articulate and educated people have been discussing, interpreting and examining the fairy tale. I refer you to any Talmudic scholar of your choice.

I'mnotsayingthey'reright I'mnotsayingthey'reright I'mnotsayingthey'reright!!!

Just, you know, if we're talking about seniority here...

"... Bunnies, bunnies, it must be BUNNIES! ... Or maybe midgets...."

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

[snort][chuckle][guffaw]

Ahem. What I was trying to impart to our young friend was that, while there is indeed a period of at least 1,800 and perhaps as many as 4,000 years of various historical text to examine (at which Japan and China, at 6,000 years each, thumb their noses, HAH) regarding the philosophical underpinnings of this whole foofrah, there is not the threat of a breath of a whisper of a shadow of a ghost of a glimmer of a particle of a sliver of a shred of a hint of a chance of a mote of a smidgen of a dollop of a promise of a hope of any scientific evidence at all in favor of Intelligent Design. At absolute best, it is in the purvey of philosophy classes, or comparative religions, or history of religion. Scientifically, it's got all the veracity of those little family drawings on the front of an envelope of sea-monkeys.

Re: Logic is a pretty flower that smells bad.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

Actually...no.

Intelligent Design doesn't "try to merge these two ideas". Intelligent Design says "this all must have been done by someone, somehow, because gosh darn it, WE can't figure it out".

There is no possible compromise between that and "through random changes, encourage and discouraged by environmental pressures, live grew and modified itself to resemble what we see today".

Re: "... Bunnies, bunnies, it must be BUNNIES! ... Or maybe midgets...."

[tandw.livejournal.com]

Nitpicking and not going after your main point: I think 6,000 years is a bit of an exaggeration. The Yellow Emperor, commonly held to be the first Emperor of China, dates to ca. 2500BC; per Larry Gonick, there are very few written records from that time. Laozi founded Taoism around 600 BCE, and Confucianism also dates back to around then. In Japan, the Jomon pottery period (from which, IIRC, we have little or no written records--the native Japanese writing systems were developed within the last 1500 years or less) didn't end until after 1000 BCE. So Talmudic scholars are still in the running for oldest/longest running religious commentary.

None of that makes any difference. We're talking about two very different things, here, and scholars have not spent eighteen hundred years testing the explanatory power and predictive utility of any religious tradition. Spend even 150 years doing that, and then we can legitimately compare the two.

[batyatoon]

... okay yeah that's dumb.

I tried writing four or five responses to it, but pretty much they all came down to "okay yeah that's dumb."