Posted on 06/14/2006 9:48:34 AM PDT by suspects
I know, I know. Ann Coulter is Satan.
She's vicious. She's outrageous. She is not to be tolerated. I understand.
But I have a quick question for you: Have you actually read her book?
I mean, as you're gathering your ropes and lighting your torches and looking for a well-placed tree limb, don't you think you should take an hour or two and, you know, read what Coulter actually said?
"But Michael, who would ever read such filth? Such hateful extremism! She's a witch! Burn! Burn!"
And so goes the debate with the American Left...
Call me crazy, but before I joined prominent Democratic lawmakers around the country demanding that Godless be banned from book stores (the dunking stool and public stocks will be waiting for Coulter at the Paramus, N.J., Barnes & Noble next week), I'd want to know what is in the darn thing. Based on their writings and public statements, it appears that not one of the would-be book banners has done so.
"Why waste our time, Michael? She's just a bomb-thrower. A name-caller!"
True, it's hard to take seriously people who describe their political opponents as "stupid," "ugly" "vile," "viperous," "rabidly hateful," "foaming-at-the-mouth," "sub-human," or who suggest they go kill themselves. But Ann Coulter didn't say any of these things. No, these are comments from media outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Ad Age magazine about Ann Coulter.
The London Times even labeled her the "Bitch Goddess of American conservatives." I guess they were offended by all that name-calling.
The editorial invective rolls across Coulter like a muddy river from the maw of the mainstream media. However, what the London Times and New York Times and, alas, the Charleston City Paper are unlikely to do is actually review Coulter's book. And the one thing the hair-pulling liberals shaking with rage on talk TV refuse to do is confront the actual arguments Ann Coulter presents.
The Coulter cranks scream over two sentences in Godless about the "Jersey Girls," those four hyper-political, media-hungry 9/11 widows Coulter shames by quoting them accurately. Meanwhile, there are 281 pages of arguments, insults, and outrageous-but-on-point invective that raise issues worth debating. Plus footnotes.
Did angry Democrats join forces with the "Witches of East Brunswick" to politicize the 9/11 Commission for personal satisfaction and political gain? Shouldn't people spreading the idiotic fallacy that George W. Bush was responsible for the World Trade Center attack be criticized, even if they lost loved ones on that horrific day? Did these women cheapen the legacy of 9/11 as they appeared in Democratic campaign ads and pushed Democratic talking points on Larry King?
Ann Coulter says "yes." She's got pages of arguments and cheap shots to back it up. Whatta you got?
Oh, sorry, I forgot. You're a liberal. You don't read books you disagree with. You ban them. That's why you're so much better than those mouth-breathing evangelical morons who elected Bush.
Reading Godless means no longer being able to declare sainthood for pseudo-spy Valerie Plame or her hapless, fourth-rate hack of a husband, "Ambassador" Joe Wilson. (Coulter's recounting of Wilson's failed foreign service career, culminating in his post as Ambassador to Gabon, is hilarious.)
Reading Godless means facing the fact that the American Left has abandoned the principle of self-government and now opposes the very idea of democracy when it comes to abortion, the definition of marriage, and the operation of "public" (insert ironic laugh here) schools. She also reminds us that, before 1860, Democrats were also proudly "pro-choice" on the issue of slavery, too.
Coulter's opponents avoid all this by simply refusing to fight. She comes out swinging, they come out whining. Unfortunately for them, the facts aren't going to change, the arguments won't go away, and 500,000 people are going to read her book. When they're done, they'll be smarter, she'll be richer, and you — my book-banning, name-calling, debate-avoiding liberal friends — will have done more than Coulter ever could to prove her point.
Is Ann Coulter mean? Is she nasty? Maybe, maybe not. But the question normal people will be asking is "Is she right?" My advice to you would-be "Ann"-nihilators would be to stop whining and start reading.
Anne's no demagogue. She's brutally logical. Are you perhaps suffering from Battered Conservative Syndrome?
What crackpot argument...
Ann Coulter: The Wedge for the Masses
Having been a sounding board for Ann Coulter on chapters 8-10 of GODLESS, I’m happy to see the entire book now that it is out. Ann is taking Phillip Johnson’s message as developed in DARWIN ON TRIAL and REASON IN THE BALANCE and bringing it home to the masses. Critics will dismiss it for its hyperbole, lack of nuance, and in-your-face attitude. But she has the gist just right, which is that materialism (she calls it liberalism) dominates our culture despite being held by only a minority of the populace and has become an agenda among our elites (academy, scientists, media) for total worldview reprogramming. Close to half the book is devoted to science and evolution. I cannot help but feel that GODLESS will propel our issues in the public consciousness like nothing to date. Phil Johnson’s DARWIN ON TRIAL took ten years to sell 300,000 copies. I expect Ann will sell more than that in ten weeks.
*Via that site, one can access a lot of good material. Some of it is from men who are really pretty good pennies.
Dan Aykroyd: Jane, you ignorant slut! (said to news anchor, Jane Curtain, on Saturday Night Live)
It was like a coffee clatch on the Uppar-East-Syde, it was nauseating, the few moments I did see.
Now only if they had the testicular appendages to actually invite Ann on to take them all on, now that would have been a show for Larry's ratings....
* LOL The appeal to snobbery and "expertise" is evolutionary liberalism in its final form .
Until just recently I have ignored all the Intelligent Design advocates are nutz and Creationists make THEM look sane exchanges, but, I have decided to do some digging around.
You're going to have to come-up with something more rhetorically lethal than a line of labels. All the Christians I know are not cowed by labels. In fact, when such labels are thrown-around, the Christains I know roll-up their sleeves and try to find out what the rhetorical fog bank is intended to hide.
I do not dismiss Anns work for hyperbole, lack of nuance, etc. I dismiss it for being pig-ignorant nonsense.
Here's a sample which has come into my hands from page 225:
Instead of gradual change occurring by random mutation and natural selection choosing the most "fit" to survive and reproduce--in other words, "Darwin's theory of evolution"--Gould and Eldredge hypothesized that evolution could also happen really fast and then stop happening at all for 150 million years. Basically, what happens is this: Your parents are slugs and then suddenly--but totally at random--you evolve into a gecko and your brother evolves into a shark and your sister evolves into a polar bear and the guy down the street evolves into a porpoise and so on--and then everybody relaxes by the pool for 150 million years, virtually unchanged.Note some key points, per Ann. Punctuated equilibrium is a non-Darwinian theory, discarding mutation and natural selection. It is a single-generation Goldschmidtian "hopeful monster" theory with some mysterious mechanism of its own.
The question is thus not whether this is stated without nuance, in your face, and hyperbolically, but whether Ann and Dembski combined could find a fact if you taped it in front of their eyes. (He apparently so held her hand through the writing of the evolution chapters that he takes responsibility for all errors. He's shouldered quite a burden, there.)
Here are two sober sources on what Ann is talking about.
Speciation By Punctuated Equilibrium.
The first thing you see:
A group of creatures gets isolated from the rest of their species. They can evolve easily, because they are a small group. Later, they spread and replace their parent species. Examples are known.Hmmm. Where's the "shazam?"
The second thing you see:
Only a small portion of the world has been geologically explored. Only organic beings of certain classes can be preserved in a fossil condition, at least in any great number. Widely ranging species vary most, and varieties are often at first local, -- both causes rendering the discovery of intermediate links less likely. Local varieties will not spread into other and distant regions until they are considerably modified and improved; and when they do spread, if discovered in a geological formation, they will appear as if suddenly created there, and will be simply classed as new species. The Origin of Species, Chapter 14, p.439WHO wrote that?
On down the page:
So, PE rejects no old mechanisms and posits no new ones, merely putting old ones into a particular higher-level scenario.What Is The Mechanism Of Evolution In These Cases?
The theory of Punctuated Equilibrium does not say, and it shouldn't. There are a number of known evolutionary mechanisms, such as the Founder Effect, Natural Selection, neutral drift, sexual selection, and so on. Other mechanisms may be discovered in the future. There is no particular reason to expect that cases of Punctuated Equilibrium must all use the same mechanism. The point of the theory is only that evolution is more likely to happen to small groups, isolated from the homogenizing effect of the larger main group.
But let's try the second source.
All you need to know about Punctuated Equilibrium (almost)
So, not only is Ann not looking good, but Dembski himself seems blissfully unaware of rebuttals which have been regularly posted to creationist crackpots on FR for years. Perhaps he's militantly unaware.
- There are two common uses of "gradualism," one of which is more traditional and correct, the other of which is equivalent to Eldredge and Gould's "phyletic gradualism."
- Darwin was not a "phyletic gradualist," contrary to the claims of Eldredge and Gould.
- PE is not anti-Darwinian; in fact, the scientific basis and conclusions of PE originated with Charles Darwin.
- PE does not require any unique explanatory mechanism (e.g. macromutation or saltation).
- Eldredge and Gould's PE is founded on positive evidence, and does not "explain away" negative evidence (e.g. a purported lack of transitional fossils).
Anyway, they're both full of it. Rumors around Darwin Central HQ in the Galapagos are that some freepers with brains are preparing a detailed dissection. I haven't written for that project but I've peeked over a shoulder or two.
How long will such a thread last on FR when all the creos go into hissies at once? Could be funny.
That's what happens when a senior fellow is a Moonie who got a biology degree just to overturn Darwinism from within for Papa Moon.
And will this then, be the real purpose of the thread?
As I indicated on this thread, I am a newbie to the Intelligent Design - Darwin Controversies and so it wil take me some time to gain my footing.
However, the cursory familiarity I have with the subject indicates to me the labelling, name-calling, appeals to authority, etc etc does not speak well of those defending Darwin.
That's what happens when a senior fellow is a Moonie
LOL Well, that's a scientific put-down of the first order
You already have the knowledge of opposition points that Bill Dembski and Ann Coulter do. That's the good news.
The bad news is that you will probably be in the same position a year from now.
*Speciest
Arnold Ziffel.. . Arnold was a pig, but he was treated as the son of Fred and Doris Ziffel. Arnold could do pretty much anything he wanted. He was very talented. He could write his name, change the channels on the television, and play the piano. Arnold also attended school, carrying his lunchbox in his mouth, where he often played practical jokes on the other students.
He also fell in love with Mr. Haney's prized bassett hound "Cynthia", but in a scene full of pig grunts and dog barks, subtitles explained that they were realizing that their love could never be. Mr. Haney threatens to sue Mr. Douglas because Arnold has ruined Cynthia for show as she has begun to grunt like a pig too.
One story line had him inheriting millions of dollars as the sole descendant of the favorite pig of a pork-packing magnate, distinguished by his ability to predict the weather with his tail.
* It says a lot about you and your ilk when you assume pigs can't evolve into intelligent beings.
And do I have to remind you of the which-is-smarter-a-pig-or-a-horse debates between Messers Carson and McMahon?
And will this then, be the real purpose of the thread?
Look, if they go into fits when the standard falsehoods and misrepresentations of the anti-evolution brigade are exposed for what they are, that's an unavoidable side effect, but it's not the actual purpose. The actual purpose is to correct disinformation.
But if exposing falsehoods and reporting the facts throws them into conniptions, well, you might want to reflect on the implications of that.
Would you like me to ping you to the thread?
Each of you guys has his own way of approaching the problem. There's nothing wrong with yours. Trying to be ... diverting! Yes. At least it changes the subject.
But you are clearly signalling that it doesn't really matter for your purposes if Ann doesn't know nucleotides from nucleons. For a bit there, I thought you were pretending it did.
Of course I have. That's why I state that I'm writing up documentation of all of her many falsehoods and misrpresentations which appear in the book. Duh. Is English your first language?
Now, would you like to be pinged to it, or not?
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