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

The most amazing thing about Godless is the amount of intellectual meat Ann Coulter has packed into its pages.

Godless: The Church of Liberalism
by Ann Coulter
(Crown Forum, 310 pages, $27.95)

What's most amazing about Ann Coulter's book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, is the amount of intellectual meat she packs into 281 breezy, barb-filled pages. Among the topics the blonde bomb-thrower discusses in some depth are the following: liberal jurisprudence, privacy rights and abortion, Joe Wilson's modest career and inflated ego, and the solid record of failure in American public schools. The topics of Intelligent Design and Darwinism, to which the last eighty pages of text are devoted, are analyzed in even greater detail.

As one would expect from an author with a legal background, Supreme Court cases are high on Coulter's hit-list -- especially the idea of a "living Constitution." Citing various cases-in-point, Coulter shows that this popular doctrine is nothing more than a paralegal pretext for making the Constitution say whatever liberal judges want it to say. Though such a philosophy grants to the nation's founding document all the integrity of a bound and gagged assault victim, it at least has the virtue of mirroring liberals' self-referential view of morality.

Another dogma that Coulter skewers is the liberal commandment, "Thou Shalt Not Punish the Perp." This counterintuitive principle not only rejects the link between incarceration and lower crime rates, it also permits benevolent judges (like Clinton federal court nominee Frederica Massiah-Jackson) to shorten the sentence of child rapists so that other innocent children can pay the price for society's sins.

An unexpected bonus in this chapter is the author's extended sidebar on Upton Sinclair, the muckraking author of Boston who, as his own correspondence shows, knew Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty but chose, for ideological and financial reasons, to portray them as innocent victims. In a related chapter, "The Martyr: Willie Horton," Coulter provides detailed information about Horton's crimes, Michael Dukakis' furlough program, and the precise nature of the Horton ads aired in the 1988 presidential campaign

CONTINUING THE RELIGIOUS IMAGERY, Coulter asserts in chapter five that abortion is the "holiest sacrament" of the "church of liberalism." For women this sacrament secures their "right to have sex with men they don't want to have children with." A corollary of this less-than-exalted principle is the right to suck the brains out of partially born infants. How far liberal politicians will go to safeguard this sacrament whose name must not be spoken (euphemisms are "choice," "reproductive freedom," and "family planning") is shown by an amendment offered by Senator Chuck Schumer that would exclude anti-abortion protestors from bankruptcy protection. How low these same pols will go is illustrated by the character assassination of Judge Charles Pickering -- a man honored by the brother of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers but slimed by liberals at his confirmation hearing as racially insensitive. Coulter notes that the unspoken reason for this "Borking" of Pickering was the judge's prior criticism of Roe v. Wade.

The single chapter that Coulter's critics have honed in on is the one that exposes the liberal "Doctrine of Infallibility." This religiously resonant phrase applies to individuals who promote the Left's partisan agenda while immunizing themselves from criticism by touting their victim-status. In addition to the 9/11 "Jersey Girls," Coulter identifies Joe Wilson, Cindy Sheehan, Max Cleland, and John Murtha as persons who possess, at least by Maureen Dowd's lights, "absolute moral authority." Curiously, this exalted status isn't accorded victims who don't push liberal agendas. Perhaps the fact that Republican veterans outnumber their Democrat counterparts in Congress, 87 to 62, has something to do with this inconsistency.

Coulter's next chapter, "The Liberal Priesthood: Spare the Rod, Spoil the Teacher," focuses on the partisanship, compensation, and incompetence level of American teachers. A crucial statistic in these pages concerns the "correlation [that exists] between poor student achievement and time spent in U.S. public schools." In this regard, comments by Thomas Sowell and Al Shanker stand out. Sowell notes that college students with low SAT and ACT scores are more likely to major in education and that "teachers who have the lowest scores are the most likely to remain in the profession." From a different perspective, the late President of the American Federation of Teachers stated, with refreshing bluntness, "When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children." The words of John Dewey, a founder of America's public education system, also fit nicely into Coulter's state-of-the-classroom address: "You can't make Socialists out of individualists -- children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone is interdependent." Coulter responds, "You also can't make socialists out of people who can read, which is probably why Democrats think the public schools have nearly achieved Aristotelian perfection."

The last third of Godless focuses on matters scientific. Chapter seven, "The Left's War on Science," serves as an appetizer for Coulter's evolutionary piece de resistance. Prior to that main course, Coulter provides a litany of examples that illustrate the left's contempt for scientific data that doesn't comport with its worldview. Exhibits include the mendacious marketing of AIDS as an equal opportunity disease, the hysterical use of anecdotal evidence to ban silicon breast implants, and the firestorm arising from Lawrence Summers's heretical speculation about male and female brain differences.

THE REMAINING CHAPTERS OF GODLESS all deal with Darwinism. Nowhere else can one find a tart-tongued compendium of information that not only presents a major argument for Intelligent Design but also exposes the blatant dishonesty of "Darwiniacs" who continue to employ evidence (such as the Miller-Urey experiment, Ernst Haeckel's embryo drawings, and the famous peppered moth experiment) that they know is outdated or fraudulent.

Within this bracing analysis, Coulter employs the observations of such biological and philosophical heavyweights as Stephen Gould, Richard Dawkins, Michael Behe, and Karl Popper. The price of the whole book is worth the information contained in these chapters about the statistical improbability of random evolution, the embarrassing absence of "transitional" fossils, and the inquisitorial attitude that prevails among many scientists (and most liberals) when discussing these matters. 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.

Coulter's final chapter serves as a thought-provoking addendum to her searing cross-examination of evolution's star witnesses. "The Aped Crusader" displays the devastating social consequences that have thus far attended Darwinism. From German and American eugenicists (including Planned Parenthood's Margaret Sanger), to Aryan racists, to the infanticidal musings of Princeton's Peter Singer, Darwinian evolution boasts a political and philosophical heritage that could only be envied by the likes of Charles Manson. Yet it is a history ignored by liberals for whom Darwin's theory provides what they want above all else -- a creation myth that sanctifies their sexual urges, sanctions abortion, and disposes of God.

Coulter's book is clearly not a systematic argument for the idea that liberalism is a godless religion. Indeed, prior to the material on evolution, the concept is treated more as a clever theme for chapter headings than as a serious intellectual proposition. In those final chapters, however, Coulter manages to present a cogent, sustained argument that actually begins to link modern liberalism (or more specifically, leftism) to an atheistic perspective. At the very least Coulter succeeds in raising an important issue -- namely, that American courts currently ignore the religious or quasi-religious character of a philosophy that pervades public institutions and is propagated with public funds. This fact, if honestly recognized, would render contemporary church-state jurisprudence untenable. A Court taking these arguments seriously would have to recognize that all philosophies, including "liberalism," swim in the same intellectual current as religion.

THUS FAR, THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA have focused almost all their attention on Coulter's take-no-prisoners rhetorical style -- and particularly on the "heartless" remarks about those 9/11 widows who seem to be "enjoying their husbands' deaths so much." Clearly, diplomatic language is not Coulter's forte, as one would also gather from this representative zinger: "I don't particularly care if liberals believe in God. In fact, I would be crestfallen to discover any liberals in heaven."

What undercuts the liberals' case against Coulter on this score, however, is their own (not always tacit) endorsement of vile epithets that are regularly directed against President Bush and his supporters by the likes of Cindy Sheehan, Michael Moore, and a gaggle of celebrity politicos. Coulter employs the same linguistic standard against liberals (with a touch of humor) that they regularly use (with somber faces and dogmatic conviction) when they accuse conservatives of being racist homophobes who gladly send youngsters to war under false pretences to line the pockets of Halliburton executives. Hate-speech of this stripe is old-hat for leftists.

Until Air America, Helen Thomas, and most Democrat constituencies alter their rhetoric, I see no reason for conservatives to denounce Coulter for using, more truthfully, the same harsh language that leftists have employed, with no regard for accuracy, since the time of Lenin. When liberals denounce communist tyrants as fervently as they do real Nazis, then it will be time for Coulter to cool the rhetoric. Until that time her "verbal reprisals" serve a useful function within an intellectual marketplace that resembles a commodities pit more than a debating society.

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer who lives in Oceanside, California. He is a regular columnist for San Diego's North County Times. His book reviews have also appeared in the American Enterprise Magazine, First Things, and Touchstone.

This means that there are no fossils of things like a dog with antennae or a fish with hair.

You really have no clue as to what the theory of evolution says, do you. If either of these were found EVOLUTION WOULD BE FALSIFIED.

"It is as though they were just planted there, without evolutionary history."

I cannot find this quote in anything but creationist sources, which tells me it has probably either been quote mined or made up from whole cloth. Any movement that has to lie about what someone says in order to support itself is probably not worth listening to. However, there is a ready answer (complete with footnotes) to show up your Cambrian Explosion claims:

Claim CC300:

Complex life forms appear suddenly in the Cambrian explosion, with no ancestral fossils.
Source:

Morris, Henry M. 1985. Scientific Creationism. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, pp. 80-81.
Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. 1985. Life--How Did It Get Here? Brooklyn, NY, pp. 60-62.

Response:

The Cambrian explosion was the seemingly sudden appearance of a variety of complex animals about 540 million years ago (Mya), but it was not the origin of complex life. Evidence of multicellular life from about 590 and 560 Mya appears in the Doushantuo Formation in China (Chen et al. 2000, 2004), and diverse fossil forms occurred before 555 Mya (Martin et al. 2000). (The Cambrian began 543 Mya., and the Cambrian explosion is considered by many to start with the first trilobites, about 530 Mya.) Testate amoebae are known from about 750 Mya (Porter and Knoll 2000). There are tracelike fossils more than 1,200 Mya in the Stirling Range Formation of Australia (Rasmussen et al. 2002). Eukaryotes (which have relatively complex cells) may have arisen 2,700 Mya, according to fossil chemical evidence (Brocks et al. 1999). Fossil microorganisms have been found from 3,465 Mya (Schopf 1993). There is isotopic evidence of sulfur-reducing bacteria from 3,470 Mya (Shen et al. 2001) and possible evidence of microbial etching of volcanic glass from 3,480 Mya (Furnes et al. 2004).

There are transitional fossils within the Cambrian explosion fossils. For example, there are lobopods (basically worms with legs) which are intermediate between arthropods and worms (Conway Morris 1998).

Only some phyla appear in the Cambrian explosion. In particular, all plants postdate the Cambrian, and flowering plants, by far the dominant form of land life today, only appeared about 140 Mya (Brown 1999).

Even among animals, not all types appear in the Cambrian. Cnidarians, sponges, and probably other phyla appeared before the Cambrian. Molecular evidence shows that at least six animal phyla are Precambrian (Wang et al. 1999). Bryozoans appear first in the Ordovician. Many other soft-bodied phyla do not appear in the fossil record until much later. Although many new animal forms appeared during the Cambrian, not all did. According to one reference (Collins 1994), eleven of thirty-two metazoan phyla appear during the Cambrian, one appears Precambrian, eight after the Cambrian, and twelve have no fossil record.

And that just considers phyla. Almost none of the animal groups that people think of as groups, such as mammals, reptiles, birds, insects, and spiders, appeared in the Cambrian. The fish that appeared in the Cambrian was unlike any fish alive today.

The length of the Cambrian explosion is ambiguous and uncertain, but five to ten million years is a reasonable estimate; some say the explosion spans forty million years or more, starting about 553 million years ago. Even the shortest estimate of five million years is hardly sudden.

There are some plausible explanations for why diversification may have been relatively sudden:

The evolution of active predators in the late Precambrian likely spurred the coevolution of hard parts on other animals. These hard parts fossilize much more easily than the previous soft-bodied animals, leading to many more fossils but not necessarily more animals.

Early complex animals may have been nearly microscopic. Apparent fossil animals smaller than 0.2 mm have been found in the Doushantuo Formation, China, forty to fifty-five million years before the Cambrian (Chen et al. 2004). Much of the early evolution could have simply been too small to see.

The earth was just coming out of a global ice age at the beginning of the Cambrian (Hoffman 1998; Kerr 2000). A "snowball earth" before the Cambrian explosion may have hindered development of complexity or kept populations down so that fossils would be too rare to expect to find today. The more favorable environment after the snowball earth would have opened new niches for life to evolve into.

Hox genes, which control much of an animal's basic body plan, were likely first evolving around that time. Development of these genes might have just then allowed the raw materials for body plans to diversify (Carroll 1997).

Atmospheric oxygen may have increased at the start of the Cambrian (Canfield and Teske 1996; Logan et al. 1995; Thomas 1997).

Planktonic grazers began producing fecal pellets that fell to the bottom of the ocean rapidly, profoundly changing the ocean state, especially its oxygenation (Logan et al. 1995).

Unusual amounts of phosphate were deposited in shallow seas at the start of the Cambrian (Cook and Shergold 1986; Lipps and Signor 1992).

Cambrian life was still unlike almost everything alive today. Using number of cell types as a measure of complexity, we see that complexity has been increasing more or less constantly since the beginning of the Cambrian (Valentine et al. 1994).

Major radiations of life forms have occurred at other times, too. One of the most extensive diversifications of life occurred in the Ordovician, for example (Miller 1997).

References:

Brocks, J. J., G. A. Logan, R. Buick and R. E. Summons, 1999. Archean molecular fossils and the early rise of eukaryotes. Science 285: 1033-1036. See also Knoll, A. H., 1999. A new molecular window on early life. Science 285: 1025-1026. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/285/5430/1025
Brown, Kathryn S., 1999. Deep Green rewrites evolutionary history of plants. Science 285: 990-991.
Canfield, D. E. and A. Teske, 1996. Late Proterozoic rise in atmospheric oxygen concentration inferred from phylogenetic and sulphur-isotope studies. Nature 382: 127-132. See also: Knoll, A. H., 1996. Breathing room for early animals. Nature 382: 111-112.
Carroll, Robert L., 1997. Patterns and Processes of Vertebrate Evolution. Cambridge University Press.
Chen, J.-Y. et al., 2000. Precambrian animal diversity: Putative phosphatized embryos from the Doushantuo Formation of China. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 97(9): 4457-4462. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/9/4457
Chen, J.-Y. et al., 2004. Small bilaterian fossils from 40 to 55 million years before the Cambrian. Science 305: 218-222, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1099213 . See also Stokstad, E., 2004. Controversial fossil could shed light on early animals' blueprint. Science 304: 1425.
Collins, Allen G., 1994. Metazoa: Fossil record. http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/phyla/metazoafr.html
Conway Morris, Simon, 1998. The Crucible of Creation, Oxford.
Cook, P. J. and J. H. Shergold (eds.), 1986. Phosphate Deposits of the World, Volume 1. Proterozoic and Cambrian Phosphorites. Cambridge University Press.
Furnes, H., N. R. Banerjee, K. Muehlenbachs, H. Staudigel and M. de Wit, 2004. Early life recorded in Archean pillow lavas. Science 304: 578-581.
Hoffman, Paul F. et al., 1998. A Neoproterozoic snowball earth. Science 281: 1342-1346. See also: Kerr, Richard A., 1998. Did an ancient deep freeze nearly doom life? Science 281: 1259,1261.
Kerr, Richard A., 2000. An appealing snowball earth that's still hard to swallow. Science 287: 1734-1736.
Logan, G. A., J. M. Hayes, G. B. Hieshima and R. E. Summons, 1995. Terminal Proterozoic reorganization of biogeochemical cycles. Nature 376: 53-56. See also Walter, M., 1995. Faecal pellets in world events. Nature 376: 16-17.
Lipps, J. H. and P. W. Signor (eds.), 1992. Origin and Early Evolution of the Metazoa. New York: Plenum Press.
Martin, M. W. et al., 2000. Age of Neoproterozoic bilatarian body and trace fossils, White Sea, Russia: Implications for metazoan evolution. Science 288: 841-845. See also Kerr, Richard A., 2000. Stretching the reign of early animals. Science 288: 789.
Miller, Arnold I., 1997. Dissecting global diversity patterns: Examples from the Ordovician radiation. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 28: 85-104.
Porter, Susannah M. and Andrew H. Knoll, 2000. Testate amoebae in the Neoproterozoic Era: evidence from vase-shaped microfossils in the Chuar Group, Grand Canyon. Paleobiology 26(3): 360-385.
Rasmussen, B., S. Bengtson, I. R. Fletcher and N. J. McNaughton, 2002. Discoidal impressions and trace-like fossils more than 1200 million years old. Science 296: 1112-1115.
Schopf, J. W., 1993. Microfossils of the Early Archean Apex Chert: New evidence of the antiquity of life. Science 260: 640-646.
Shen, Y., R. Buick and D. E. Canfield, 2001. Isotopic evidence for microbial sulphate reduction in the early Archaean era. Nature 410: 77-81.
Thomas, A. L. R., 1997. The breath of life -- did increased oxygen levels trigger the Cambrian Explosion? Trends in Ecology and Evolution 12: 44-45.
Valentine, James W., Allen G. Collins and C. Porter Meyer, 1994. Morphological complexity increase in metazoans. Paleobiology 20(2): 131-142.
Wang, D. Y.-C., S. Kumar and S. B. Hedges, 1999. Divergence time estimates for the early history of animal phyla and the origin of plants, animals and fungi. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences 266: 163-71.

Further Reading:

Conway Morris, Simon. 1998. The Crucible of Creation. Oxford.

Conway Morris, Simon. 2000. The Cambrian "explosion": Slow-fuse or megatonnage? Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 97(9): 4426-4429. (technical)

Schopf, J. William. 2000. Solution to Darwin's dilemma: Discovery of the missing Precambrian record of life. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 97(13): 6947-6953. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/13/6947

I cannot find your finch quote either. And, 200 years is a little short for speciation, even by Darwin's lights, so I call BS on this one.

Furthermore, they rest on the underside of branches, not on the outside of tree trunks. Subsequent studies showed that the moths that were supposed to have proven the "fact of evolution" had been dead, and pinned to the tree trunks by the "scientists" conducting the "study".

The underside of branches have bark too, dipstick. The moths had to hide from more than just birds. And, why would they resemble bark from pre-Industrial trees if they did not need to blend in? As for the contention the moths in the photograph were pinned to their branches, so what? How do you take a picture of a moth? Just about every photograph of insects made prior to a decade or so ago were made with dead, posed insects. This does absolutely nothing to support your position.

Indeed, all your "points" appear to be nothing more than rehashed crap from creationist sites -- and they don't do science there.

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