Brain Food (Amazingthing about Godless is the amount of intellectual meat Ann Coulter has packed...)

The American Prowler ^ | 6/30/2006 | Richard Kirk

[bandleader]

I presume that you're referring to the same people who rolled their eyes with despair when Ronaldus Magnus referred to The Former Soviet Union as:"THE EVIL EMPIRE"?

[bandleader]

Why should she PARSE?

[bandleader]

Not to mention HYPOCRISY!

[goldstategop]

Liberals are atheists. And so far not a single one has stepped forward to counter the arguments in Ann Coulter's book. Their silence is tantamount to an admission she's made her case. Liberals focused on a few words about the Jersey Girls because they can't honestly refute the argument about who they are with facts. And like with atheists in foxholes, there are few atheists in America. About the only full time endeavor of liberals, if you go by what the ACLU is doing, is to purge America of God. So if liberals believe in heaven, they haven't shown it. In that sense, Godless is this century's intellectual tour de force.

(The Palestinian terrorist regime is the crisis and Israel's fist is the answer.)

[UCANSEE2]

Creation is what happened 'in the beginning'.

Evolution is what happened ever since.

Survival and procreation are the two driving forces in all life forms.

Evolving is a necessary part of survival.

[UCANSEE2]

"Your lack of understanding is not a strike against the theory of evolution."

Your lack of understanding God and creation is not a strike against God.

[UCANSEE2]

I have noticed that those with arrogant attitudes always demand others provide answers, but never give any answers.

Reason: They really have no answers, but are looking for someone to find a way to prove (scientifically) that God exists and did create the universe.

Unfortunately they will not use the one thing that works, and that is faith.

As smart as 'scientists' truly are, one wonders why they cannot explain gravity nor magnetism. Yet they accept it 'on faith'.

[ChessExpert]

Excellent article (excellent book). I liked the following from the article (emphasis added):

Unlike biologist Richard Lewontin, who candidly admits that a prior commitment to materialism informs his allegiance to evolution, most of his colleagues (and certainly most of the liberal scribblers Coulter sets on the road to extinction) won't concede that Darwinism is a corollary, rather than a premise, of their godlessness.

[ArGee]

OK - I only went to the first link on Chernobyl and decided that the authors of the paper didn't get Ann's point. They didn't so much refute her as they did argue a different point altogether.

This is a rather typical approach. I won't call it disengenuous because they probably thought they were arguing Ann's point. But I would disagree.

I will also say I haven't cracked my copy of Godless yet. I base this statement on their quote in the article.

FWIW: I understood Ann's argument to be:

The worst possible nuclear disaster created by some of the worst possible nuclear engineers on the planet didn't come close to being the disaster it was predicted to be. Therefore, we should be allowed to pursue nuclear power in the U.S., where we have the best possible nuclear engineers on the planet.

That isn't the same as saying it wasn't a disaster or that we don't care who was hurt.

Shalom.

[ArGee]

What does it really matter?

If I understand correctly, Ann actually answered that question.

Many Christians have twisted the tenets of Christianity to do some terrible things. But the terrible things that atheism leads to are the logical result of the tenets of atheism.

If people are accidents, then what we do to them doesn't matter. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

Shalom.

[Ichneumon]

[She brilliantly slams the left then becomes a fool by blasting evolution.]

Do you understand what she meant by "being condescended to by a tarot card reader?"

Yes, it means that she was foolish enough to fall for the bizarre falsehoods of the anti-evolution propaganda mill. Almost everything she says in her chapters on evolution is either plain wrong or a gross distortion.

[Ichneumon]

I thought it was a brilliant expose of Darwinism and evolution. Wonderful.

Actually, she has contempt for her readers -- she lied to you over and over again in those chapters, knowing that most of her readers would swallow it unquestioningly.

[Ichneumon]

Many Christians have twisted the tenets of Christianity to do some terrible things. But the terrible things that atheism leads to are the logical result of the tenets of atheism.

...and that has what to do with evolution? Are you under the bizarre misconception that evolution and atheism are synonymous? Are you unaware that the *majority* of American evolutionists are also Christians?

If people are accidents,

That's not what evolution says.

then what we do to them doesn't matter. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

Even this is silly and fallacious.

[Ichneumon]

Liberals are atheists.

Some are, some aren't, just like conservatives.

It always amuses me when folks are clueless enough to claim that "liberals are atheists" at the same time that they rant loudly and often about liberal churches who oppose the war and so forth. Who do you think *goes* to those churches, son? Liberal Christians!

And so far not a single one has stepped forward to counter the arguments in Ann Coulter's book.

You're kidding, right? You've been spending too much time in the echo-chamber -- get out of FR for a little while and go have a look at some of the liberal blogs. Whether you agree with them or not, it takes a remarkable amount of ignorance to say that none of them have "stepped forward to coutner the arguments in Ann Coulter's book". They most certainly have.

Their silence is tantamount to an admission she's made her case.

Your deafness is tantamount to an admission you're wearing earmuffs.

Liberals focused on a few words about the Jersey Girls because they can't honestly refute the argument about who they are with facts. And like with atheists in foxholes, there are few atheists in America.

NICE OF YOU TO CONTRADICT YOURSELF.

If there are "few athiests in America", then how can the 40% or so of Americans who are liberals all be "atheists"? That would be more than just "a few".

So if liberals believe in heaven, they haven't shown it. In that sense, Godless is this century's intellectual tour de force.

She's just reinforcing your prejudices by parroting many transparent falsehoods, and you're lapping it up. That doesn't make her an intellectual.

[Radix]

"... parroting many transparent falsehoods..."

Which ones are you referring to?

Do you mean such things as the adult stem cell research that has led to remarkable results in the medical field?

Or perhaps the embryonic stem cell research which has led to ummm...nothing so far?

Presumably by now you have actually read the book.

Why then would you mischaracterize it and omit the portions where she actually makes claims about that are so far are unrefuted?

Please acknowledge that you have not read the book in order that I can ignore you with a certain peace of mind!

[ChessExpert]

I thought it was a brilliant expose of Darwinism and evolution. Wonderful.

I am sure that it is. I haven’t gotten that far in the book but am looking forward to it. I read chapter five because of the QUOTE, then read chapters one through three. For what it’s worth, I intend to buy one of your books also. There are only so many hours in the day and I spend too much of my free time looking at chess. Your endorsement means a lot.

[Ichneumon]

FWIW: I understood Ann's argument to be: The worst possible nuclear disaster created by some of the worst possible nuclear engineers on the planet didn't come close to being the disaster it was predicted to be. Therefore, we should be allowed to pursue nuclear power in the U.S., where we have the best possible nuclear engineers on the planet.

Do you realize how vapid an "argument" that is? "The disaster was incredibly devastating, but just because we were afraid it might have been even worse, nuclear power must be okay!"

Look, I have nothing against nuclear power myself, but that "argument" is just stupid.

If she wanted to just examine the actual extent of the Chernobyl accident and argue that it's an acceptable risk or one that can be eliminated through careful engineering, that's one thing, but that's not what she did. Instead, she tried to make it sound "not so bad" because worst-case projections were worse. That's bizarre, and ultimately irrelevant.

Furthermore, she misrepresents a lot of the basic facts about Chernobyl, in order to falsely make the human and economic cost look less devastating and tragic than it really is. She "forgets" to mention that 4,000 children contracted thyroid cancer from it (most survived due to immediate treatment but this is still tragic to the families and the children will have to take replacement hormones for the rest of their lives), 330,000 people lost their homes and had to be relocated, hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on cleanup, recovery, compensation, etc., over 100,000 people are on permanent disability due to effects of the accident, etc. etc. And she also "forgets" to mention that the indirect death toll due to long-term radiation exposure has turned out to be unknowable (not non-existent as she implies) because the breakup of the Soviet Union has made controlled before-and-after studies impossible (because too many other factors have changed as well).

Even the things she does report are poorly treated by the "hey, it could have been worse!" treatment she gives it -- 4000 known dead due to "acute radiation exposure" is more than in 9/11. Speaking of which, how would *you* feel about anyone who tried to minimize terrorism by saying (and this is almost a word-for-word parallel to Coulter's comments on Chernobyl), "the number of dead on 9/11 did not prove as dire as had been predicted -- instead of the tens of thousands of WTC workers feared trapped in the tower, there were 2,595. Only 157 deaths were directly attributable to the plane impacts."

In short, she uses Michael Moore techniques.

[Ichneumon]

You are not embarassed by the behavior of such consistent evolutionists as Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Sanger?

No, because they would have done the same things with or without any findings of science to use as a cheap excuse for their policies.

Let's turn that around so you can see how slimy and pointless a tactic that is: You are not embarassed by the behavior of such consistent Christians as the KKK and the Inquisition?

Or even Hitler? People are so desperate to try to attack science by straining to blame it for Hitler and more, as if that somehow makes the science not true -- this twaddle comes up so often I can deal with your current scummy attempt by just quoting from prior posts where I had to deal with other people who think "guilt-by-association" is some kind of mature way to deal with something they don't want to think about:

Hitler didn't invent Darwinism, he just used it as an excuse to "clense" the races.

Gee, really? Then why do his private notes show that he based his idea of inferior races on the Bible? Hitler's own handwritten notes, drawing an outline of his philosophy:

Hitler divided his study into five sections:

1. The Bible
2. The Aryan
3. His Works
4. The Jew
5. His Work

Under the first section, "The Bible -- Monumental History of Mankind", he lists these topics (among others): "2 human types-- Workers and drones-- Builders and destroyers", "Race Law", "First people's history (based on) the race law-- Eternal course of History".

Hitler was actually privately basing his racial view of mankind on *Biblical* foundations.

Here's a Nazi propaganda paper -- no mention of evolution or Darwin, but references to Christ in regards to "driving the devil from the lands":

The headline reads, "Declaration of the Higher Clergy/So spoke Jesus Christ". The caption under the cartoon of the marching Hitler Youth reads, "We youth step happily forward facing the sun... With our faith we drive the devil from the land."

He just thought that "natural selection" thing needed a little boost I guess.

No, Hitler thought God needed a little boost:

"I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.."
-- Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf"

While we're on the subject, did the Ku Klux Klan subscribe to Darwin when they were trying to keep the "mongrel races" in "their place" and preventing them from "polluting" the white race through intermarriage, or were they a bunch of God-fearing Christians? Let's check, shall we?

In 1916, the oath for joining the KKK included the following questions: "Each of the following questions must be answered by (each of) you with an emphatic "yes": [...] Fourth. Do you believe in the tenets of the Christian religion? [...] Eighth. Do you believe in and will you faithfully strive for the eternal maintenance of white supremacy?" Source: FBI internal document, "The Ku Klux Klan, Section 1, 1865-1944 .

And the Christian foundation of the KKK is hardly limited to 1916, in 1953 they declared that the only membership requirement was to "believe in God and the United States" (source), and even today they're still a proudly bible-thumping group (see also here).

Here's another goody from that same FBI document:

In 1922, Evans gave Stephenson the job of organizing the Klan in Indiana. Stephenson hired full-time organizers and found Indiana a fertile field for the Klan's traditional program directed against Catholics, Jews, Negroes, and foreigners, which he extended to include communists, bootleggers, pacifists, evolutionists, and all persons the Klan considered immoral.

Let's see... The KKK versus the "evolutionists"... Okay, I know which side the angels are on in *that* face-off...

Hey, mc5cents, if evolution is the root of all evil, how do you explain the Christians in the KKK despising the evolutionists instead of being inspired by them?

Meanwhile: The KKK is against the evolutionists, Ann Coulter is against the evolutionists -- so which side does that put her on?

Oh, and speaking of Coulter -- she cluelessly claims that "the first genocide in recorded history" occurred after "Darwinism gained currency" (hey, it also happened after "the New testament became popular, is she asserting cause-and-effect *there* too?), but clearly the woman's an idiot. She laughably tries to say that "the first genocide in recorded history" occurred sometime after 1859 (when Darwin published his book on evolution), but anyone with even a smidgen of knowledge (which leaves out Coulter, apparently) knows that there have been genocides for thousands of years, including several detailed in the Bible, countless throughout Asia and Africa, and notably the genocide of the aborigines in Tasmania, committed against the "savages" by good Christians quoting scriptural "justification", which ironically a number of anti-evolutionists have tried to blame on "Darwinism", despite the fact that it happened in *1847*, more than a decade BEFORE Darwin had published his first work on evolution...

So just how stupid *is* Ann Coulter, that she can say the "first genocide in recorded history" happened after 1859? The word "moron" seems woefully inadequate. And she's not very honest either.

And:

I also await you to break your silence on the fact that the KKK and other groups explicitly rested their actions firmly on religious grounds, and explicitly *attacked* evolutionists. If you and Coulter can play guilt-by-association by mentioning that Marx liked Darwin, I'll be glad to return the favor and point out that you're on the same side as the KKK with regards to being pro-Christian and anti-evolution. That means exactly as much as the Hitler/Marx/Darwin twaddle, so tell me again how much stock you put into such stuff. [...] It's one thing to note that "Darwinism" has been misused and abused -- but name me one ideology that hasn't been.

It's quite another to cluelessly argue that because it has been misused, it must be wrong, like most of the idiots who try to make the "Hitler and Darwin" association using the most tenuous connections and stretched arguments.

Evolutionary biology merely describes what happens when nature operates without intervention. It's no more a "justification" for genocide than the science of hydrology (which deals with floods, among other things) is an excuse for purposely drowning people because floods occur naturally, or epidemiology is a justification for biological warfare because epidemics happen in nature.

Science describe how things happen when nature is left to take its course -- only a moron would argue that this is how things *should* be or that humans are bound to "assist" nature in killing off the weak and drowning people who live in the paths of flash floods and infecting people who are at risk of pathogens.

Nor is there any justification in evolutionary biology for the notion of "lower races" -- according to genetics we are all "equally evolved", since we have all been subjected to an equal timespan of natural selection since our last common ancestor.

Anyone who tries to use evolutionary biology as "justification" for any kind of eugenics is, frankly, an idiot, and so are the people who attempt to make such a link.

If you or Coulter or Wiekart want to go after anyone stupid enough to misuse biology in this way, I'll be glad to cheer you on. If you want to lobby for including in schools short presentations which instruct students that to misuse biology in an attempt to justify racism or eugenics or genocide is to be evil and stupid to boot, I'll be right behind you.

But to try to slur evolutionary biology, or to try to advocate that it should be hidden under a rug, or that its science is somehow incorrect, just because there are a few maniacs around who will grasp for any thin shred of excuse to "justify" the evils they would go ahead and have done anyway for their own sick purposes, is frankly one of the most disgusting displays of cynical propaganda I've ever seen, on par with Michael Moore's demagoguery, and you and Coulter and Wiekart should be denounced as the dishonest rabble-rousers that you are who are more interested in attacking science education than you are in any feigned concern about the roots of genocide, because if you were actually concerned about the causes of genocide you'd be equally vocal about the way that belief in God itself has been endlessly perverted by Hitler, the KKK, Islamofacists, Christian Identity, the terrorists in Ireland, the Inquisition, the British monarchs who (at various times) burned Catholics and Protestants, etc. etc. etc. Oddly enough, though, I never hear you denouncing religion in general for these kinds of abuses the way you denounce "evolution" for the few times *it* has been allegedly invoked and misused as an excuse by people who would have found excuses for their bigotries and hatreds even without Darwin, which isn't the case for many religious persecutions that were fueled *purely* by religious disputes.

You do not see the connections between their thoughts and their actions?

I see connections between Hitler's rabid hatred of Jews and his actions. I see connections between Stalin's brutality and his actions. I see connections between Mao's lust for power and his actions. I don't see that a study of how species are shaped by nature suddenly turns anyone into a monster. These men would have been monsters in any age, whether Darwin had written books on biology or not. Plenty of racists through the ages have "justified" their innate racism by quoting scripture, too, but scripture didn't make them racists, it was just one of the things they used to try rationalize their behavior.

You wish to hallow the thought behind the actions, while disavowing the consequences?

What are you babbling about here? Nothing in evolutionary biology contains anything about murder or genocide or totalitarianism.

[Ichneumon]

There are people out there so wedded to the theory, that it's become their lodestar and they can't stomach any criticism of it. For them, even the slightest questioning of the ToE is like taking the Lord's name in vain.

Oh, puh-leaze... I've got nothing at all against legitimate criticism. It's the lies and gross misrepresentations used to dishonestly attack it I have "no stomach for", in exactly the same way that we conservatives have "no stomach for" Michael Moore's propaganda, and for exactly the same reasons. Those of us who value truth and honest discourse have our stomachs churned by liars and charlatans, and there are plenty of them in the anti-evolution movement. Coulter's book just parrots a big batch of the usual twaddle that anti-evolutionists use over and over again no matter how often it has been corrected, debunked, and exposed.

[Ichneumon]

["... parroting many transparent falsehoods..."]

Which ones are you referring to?

If you had read my post for context, you'd have seen that in that post I was specifically referring to her comments painting all liberals as atheists, but I also had in mind her non-stop falsehoods concerning evolutionary biology.

Presumably by now you have actually read the book.

I read it the day after it was released.

Why then would you mischaracterize it and omit the portions where she actually makes claims about that are so far are unrefuted?

Where do you hallucinate I have done such a thing?

Please acknowledge that you have not read the book in order that I can ignore you with a certain peace of mind!

Unfortunately for your peace of mind, I have read it, and am in the process of writing a very long critique of her chapters on evolutionary biology. Literally, almost everything she says about it is wrong. If you or anyone else wants to be pinged to it, FreepMail me.

I'm not the only one to notice that, either. It's so bad that over at Pharyngula (a biology-related blog, although it veers off into politics and other topics as well) they've put up a "Coulter challenge" -- at the end of this blog entry addressing Coulter's ludicrous claim that there's no evidence for evolution, there's the following challenge:

Like I said, I'm not going to take this tripe apart sentence by sentence, even though I could, given enough time and interest. I will suggest instead that if anyone reading this thinks some particular paragraph anywhere in chapters 8-11 is at all competent or accurate in its description of science, send it to me. I couldn't find one. That's where the obligation lies: show me one supportable claim in Coulter's farrago of lies and misleading statements and out-of-context quotes, and we'll discuss it.

So far no one's taken him up on it. He did a clarification the next day stating that, among other things, "Promising to pray for me, or assuring me that I will burn in hell" does not adequately meet the challenge.

There was another followup 8 days later to mention that no one has managed to find an error-free paragraph yet.

I concur -- it's harder to find anything *right* in those chapters than it is finding ten things just mind-blowingly wrong. She even lies about her own references.