Ann Coulter weighs in on Darwinism

uncommondescent.com ^ | William Dembski

[Tribune7]

I’m happy to report that I was in constant correspondence with Ann regarding her chapters on Darwinism — indeed, I take all responsibility for any errors in those chapters. :-)

[RonDog]

I've come to the conclusion that Ann Coulter is the Andy Kaufman of conservatism; you never know if she's serious, or tongue in cheek, but you do know she is trying to grab attention in the slyest manner possible.

At least Rush has always been upfront about being primarily a performer ("demonstrating absurdity by being absurd");

I'm never quite sure about Coulter.

From last year's TIME magazine cover story about Ann:

...But as Coulter herself points out in Is It True What They Say About Ann?, "I think the way to convert people is to make them laugh or to make them enraged ... Even if I could be convinced that if I had gone through 17 on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hands, I might convince one more liberal out there, I think I’d still write the way I write, because it gives me laughs."

Coulter told me that when her editor suggests cutting a line from a column to save space, "I’ll ask him, ‘But is it funny?’ And if he says it’s funny, I’ll cut an actual fact [instead]."

[PatrickHenry]

Hee hee.

[Sam Hill]

"I see absolutely no sarcasm in his contradiction, and you have been unable to identify any."

You really think most people in the audience see the essence of Christianity as this;

"In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross."

No. No sarcasm there. That clearly is the essence of why Christ died on the cross, to get even with the Jews. That's what Christianity is all about.

This speech was delivered in Munich, in Catholic Bavaria. I don't think the audience would have taken that literally. But you, being a Hitler scholar in addition to all of your other achievements surely know best.

I'll note that the two tired quotes you trotted out are regular features on crackpot lunatic left sites, such as this:

NoBeliefs.com (Freethinkers)
http://www.nobeliefs.com/index.htm

And I suspect that is where you got them, or someplace very similar.

No serious historian doubts Hitler's contempt for Christianity. He said:

"The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity.” July 5, 1941. Table Talk p. 7.

There are hundreds of similar quotes for each of these you can find on you leftwing crackpot sites.

If these posts are your idea of scholarship, you are a joke. Which, given your preposterous back-patting, seems pretty clear anyway.

[swmobuffalo]

"Thanks for providing us with yet another example of anti-evolutionists revealing that they're complete idiots on the subject they attempt to "critique" or "disprove"."

I provided you with no such example. I don't subscribe to most of the antievolutionist diatribe. I subscribe to the fact that science has yet to prove that "chance" created the intricacies of the human body, the precise aerodynamics of an eagle's wing or the somewhat clumsy nearly impossible flight of a bumblebee. When science can prove that then I MIGHT change my mind.

[swmobuffalo]

"but no God"

Then you weren't really looking, were you?

[Dimensio]

Then you weren't really looking, were you?

Perhaps if you could describe physical attributes of "God" that can be observed when looking out of a window. I sit next to a window, so it should be easy for me to determine if the physical attributes that you list are discernable.

[Ichneumon]

The bottom line is this …. If I do not agree with you then I have not read your post because I am one or all of the following ignorant of the facts, unable to comprehend a real debate or argument or a religious zealot, or just plain stupid.

I can disprove your false accusation very easily -- by pointing out that you have "not agreed with me" many times on this thread, yet not *once* have I called you "ignorant of the facts", or "unable to comprehend a real debate or argument", nor have I called you a "religious zealot", nor have I called you "just plain stupid".

Yet again, I have to ask that you attempt to base your posts on something I've *actually* done or said, instead of just repeating your bizarre hallucinations about me. Thanks.

We disagree … and you know what, its ok.

Of course it is. I never said that it wasn't, although you continue to fantasize that I have.

Your primary argument is … I disagree because I do not know the facts,

I never once said that to you. Why don't you stop making false accusations against me?

but these facts are facts as you wish them to be

Such as?

… I disagree with many of your assumptions …

Go right ahead.

its ok that I do ….

I never said that it wasn't.

It does not make me ignorant or uninformed …

I never said that it did.

it just means we disagree and its ok that we do.

Fine.

[And if you find that "a blast", then it appears you're just trolling -- posting things in order to get a kick out of the kind of response you trigger, instead of in order to have an actual conversation where ideas are exchanged.]

Of course I have mocked you, and made snide remarks … it is precisely because you do get so agitated.

...which is the hallmark of a troll. Thanks for admitting it. A troll, by definition, is someone who post things in order to provoke a reaction that they find amusing. Which you have just admitted.

I have been here too long to be a troll,

ROFL! Sorry, but length of tenure hardly disqualifies someone from trolling, as you have clearly demonstrated. or have I said that you do nothing *but* troll. Clearly, though, you have trolled for your own amusement on this thread, and you admitted that you have.

but you are free to think as you wish … its ok.

Gosh, thanks.

Bye Bye

[js1138]

You are engaging in a bit of pagan animism. Most people gave up seeing spirits in rocks and trees when monotheism came along.

[WildHorseCrash]

The quest began as an exodous from religious persecution...How could God be incidental in that?

Because we're talking about the Declaration of Independence. The "fleeing religious persecution" people were in the 17th century, whereas the "founding the United States of America" people were in the 18th century. And the latter were primarily concerned with not getting pushed about by Parliament (since there was no longer any French threat on the frontier... thanks, Britain!)

The "founding the United States of America" people were more concerned about self-government and low taxes and less about God and religion. And, in fact, where religion played a role in the revolution, it was the colonists who were to the intolerant ones. The Quebec Act made it okay for the French-Canadians to practice Roman Catholicism, even in the Ohio Country. The protestant Virginians didn't want to get Rome-ish cooties, so they labeled this Act one of the Intolerable Acts.

Historically, God was central to their quest...look at the documented record.

I have. That's how I know it was about taxes, liberty and government & not religion.

[WildHorseCrash]

Nice post. Very impressive.

[Mamzelle]

Impessive, indeed. Most of his posts take half a minute to scroll past!

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"As night follows day....

SOMEBODY made a reference to EVOLUTION and CHRISTIANITY."

Are you being deliberately stupid?

I said in one post that most people who accept evolution in the USA are Christians, and that's correct. Then you said something must be wrong, why is there so much sin? I answered that it was unconnected to a person's accepting evolution, or accepting creationism. And that is also true. There is no connection between believing in evolution and sinning (and not sinning), or believing in creationism and sinning (and not sinning). There is no evidence at all that evolutionists are any less moral than creationists.

And what kind of answer do I get from you?

""As night follows day....

SOMEBODY made a reference to EVOLUTION and CHRISTIANITY.

I wonder who?"



Your posts are more and more surreal.

[WildHorseCrash]

Then you weren't really looking, were you?

Sure I did. But if, in order to see this supposed evidence, once must "really look," then you've shown my initial point, that there is no evidence, but, rather, a subjective desire to have a pre-existing belief reinforced. Because those who don't have that pre-existing belief, (i.e., those who don't "really look") don't see what you see.

[WildHorseCrash]

Too bad you don't read them. Might learn a thing or two.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Too bad you don't read them. Might learn a thing or two."

I don't think it would have made any difference in this case.

[E-Mat]

"Everyone knows Stalin would never lie!"

So evolutionists seriously believe Stalin had a secret love affair with creation or ID?

[RightWingAtheist]

Aha, thank you.

[svcw]

I said bye bye.

[Ichneumon]

and I think that simply looking around at the wonders of nature proves the existence of God.

You really should work at having a better understanding of the word "prove" before you misuse it again, as you have in this sentence. It may "suggest" that to you, but it hardly "proves" it. Sloppy language leads to sloppy thinking.

It is preposterous to think that all this came about by chance.

Ah, yes, the old fallacy of "argument by incredulity", which is of the form, "I can't believe or imagine that something is true (or false) thus this is a good reason for thinking it isn't true (or false)."

To show the vacuity of your "argument", it can be employed with equal "validity" by an atheist: "It is preposterous to think that there are infinite beings!" Well gosh, *that* settles it, doesn't it? Oh, wait, no it doesn't. And neither does your version.

Additionally, there are four more glaring flaws in your "argument":

1. Your false presumption that the only two alternatives are: a) completely "by chance", or b) by the notion of God in the Christian Bible. No, sorry, this is known as the fallacy of the False Dichotomy. You've artificially set things up in such a childishly simplistic way that the "only" two choices you pretend to see are the preposterous (and cartoonish) on one hand, and the answer *you* want on the other. Nice try, but there are infinitely more possibilities than just those two, and in fact this is a remarkably dishonest "choice" you've set up, given that NOBODY, not even strict materialists, believe that the alternative to divine creation is anything as goofy and simplistic as "by chance". Which leads us to our next point:

2. The next glaring flaw inherent in your argument is that you falsely describe the infinitude of non-deity origins as "by chance". That's a ludicrously inadequate and flatly incorrect description of the many alternative views to the "GodDitIt(tm)" position. Yes, it *is* preposterous to "think that all this came about by chance", but that's exactly why no one *does* think that it happened that way. Why don't you learn a teensy weensy bit more about physical processes, cosmology, evolutionary biology, biochemistry, and a number of other things before you again say something as goofy as trying to sum them up with such a mindbogglingly inadequate description as "by chance"?

3. There's a similar flaw in your "on the other hand, God" side of your False Dichotomy. Even if you could manage to eliminate every single one of the infinite number of potential materialistic origins for "the wonders of nature", and good luck with *that* task, you *still* would not have "proven" the existence of "God" as you imagine it. It might very well have been the work of Xorg, an alien from the universe next door, completing his grad school project in his Universe Creation 204 course required for his advanced physics degree. Hint: Even if you could "prove by elimination", as you are so clumsily attempting to do, that our world couldn't have resulted from natural processes, you STILL would not have established the existence of "Jehovah" -- you would *ONLY* have established that *some* entity had a hand in it, *not* necessarily the one that matches the notion of a deity that some folks 2000 years ago thought seemed reasonable. I mean seriously, if the Bible had never existed, would your look out the window cause you say, "hey, this looks just like the kind of thing that a deity which gave his son for our sins and had rules against eating pork would come up with, not any other kind of deity..."? Need I point out that *other* folks have looked out *their* windows and concluded that it provided clear "proof" of the existence of Quetzalcoatl, who created this world (the fifth reincarnation of the world) and mankind from the dead bones of previous races and the blood from his own phallus?

4. You have "forgotten" to include in your so-called "argument" that many of the origins of things you see "out your window" are already understood to a high degree, and a) did not occur "randomly", and b) are known to be able to occur naturally, without the involvement of a deity which you seem to consider necessary.

You know, epistemology is a well-trodden field, and you might want to familiarize yourself with what's already known about it, and what's already recognized to be fallacious lines of argument, before you make another attempt at it as an amateur.

[Right Wing Professor]

No. No sarcasm there. That clearly is the essence of why Christ died on the cross, to get even with the Jews. That's what Christianity is all about

Read Martin Luther's 'The Jews and their Lies' and get back to me. It's freely available on the web.

You have no conception of the nature and pervasiveness of European anti-Semitism. You're arguing from ignorance. Educate yourself. Go visit the Prague Jewish Museum, or the equivalent.

Adolf Hitler, in his speech in 1922, said little that would have been any way unusual to his listeners. What he said was what most of them believed.