Petr
12-21-2005, 08:15 PM
The bottom-line argument: evolutionists are elitist parasites that force the public to fund their speculations.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north335.html
Why Darwinists Fear Democracy
by Gary North
On December 24, I received a letter in response to my obituary for Mel Gabler.
Jesus, it's about time the fascist bastard died. I'm a scientist. I know he, and his wife, tried to make science politically correct with the religious crowd by opposing the teaching of evolution in public schools. It took the appearance of Nobel prize winning physicist Steve Weinberg before the Texas School Board textbook committee to undue the damage that the Taliban-like Gablers did to the teaching of evolution.
I'm glad the old bastard's dead. As he fries in hell, let him repent at leisure.
Regards
Bob P.
Lebanon, PA
Bob is confused about definitions: limited Constitutional government is not fascism. Limited Constitutional government thwarts fascism, which is a political theory based on the idea that the bureaucratic State should regulate the economy. Giovanni Gentile was the primary theoretician for Italian fascism. He wrote in 1932:
The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative. Individuals and groups are admissible in so far as they come within the State. Instead of directing the game and guiding the material and moral progress of the community, the liberal State restricts its activities to recording results. The Fascist State is wide awake and has a will of its own. For this reason it can be described as "ethical".
As to Bob's concept of eternity, Scientific American has yet to publish anything definitive. But Bob surely does understand politics. He also knows just how well the Gablers understood politics. He is unhappy that people like the Gablers have finally grasped the nature of the textbook scam that the evolutionists have been running for the past century: forcing the opponents of Darwinism to pay for compulsory educational institutions that teach Darwinism to their children.
WHO SHOULD DECIDE WHAT GETS TAUGHT?
This raises a fundamental political issue, one which has divided American voters since about 1921: the legitimacy of a majority of voters to determine the content of whatever is taught to children in tax-funded institutions.
The Darwinists are adamant: voters must sit down and shut up, fork over their tax money to university-certified academic experts, and send their children into the public schools. Bob is representative of this position.
Fundamentalist Christians are divided. Some believe that the public schools should teach both views, Darwinist and non-Darwinist, with equal time for both positions, with both taught as theories. Mel Gabler was representative of this position. Others believe that only creationism should be taught. There is no public representative of this position, yet as many as 40% of Americans polled hold this view, as we shall see.
I am adamant: the public schools should be auctioned off next Wednesday – Friday at the latest. R. J. Rushdoony was representative of this position: The Messianic Character of American Education (1963). So is John Taylor Gatto: The Underground History of American Education. I would go further. Property taxes should be reduced accordingly. All state and Federal aid to local school districts should cease, since all local school districts should cease, with all expenditures saved to become permanent tax reductions.
Ever since the Scopes Trial of 1925, Bob's viewpoint has been dominant where it counts: in the civil courts. Elected legislatures just can't be trusted.
DEMOCRACY DOESN'T COUNT
Bob and his peers are well aware of this truth: their opinions regarding man's origins are not shared by the vast majority of Americans. This fact bothers them, but not enough to surrender control over tax-funded education to the will of the people. It bothers them because they have lost the intellectual battle for the minds of men, despite their century-long monopoly over public education. The public still isn't buying the Darwinists' tuition-subsidized product.
For over two decades, the Gallup organization has polled Americans regarding their views on Darwinism, which teaches that biological evolution is an impersonal process resulting from unplanned interactions between natural laws (which may or may not evolve – a major in-house debate), the environment, and the facts of reproduction of various species. Darwin's disciples are adamant: God had no part in this process.
The public relations problem for Darwinists is this: the percentage of Americans polled who affirm this view of biological evolution has yet to hit 15%. Despite a century of absolute control over public school curriculum materials and university science departments, the Darwinists have been unable to persuade more than 12% of the population of the truth of their position. This is not an impressive academic track record.
An author in The New Humanist magazine, published in Great Britain, has bewailed the situation.
Opinion polls about teaching Creationism also make for depressing reading. A 2001 Gallup survey revealed that 68 per cent of Americans favour teaching Creationism in schools alongside evolution (29 per cent oppose). In a separate question about completely replacing evolution education with Creationism, the survey showed 40 per cent in favour of a Creationism-only curriculum but 55 per cent against. Some science educators actually took comfort from this news that a slight majority of Americans are in favour of giving evolution equal time with Creationism rather than eliminating it from schools entirely! In this climate, Darwin's followers are likely to remain an endangered species.
He then reprinted the results of two decades of polling by Gallup on these issues.
Question '82 '91 '93 '97 '99 '01
God created people in present form within last 10,000 years 44% 47% 47% 44% 47% 45%
Evolution occurred over millions of years guided by God 38% 40% 35% 44% 40% 37%
Evolution occurred with
no interference by God 9% 9% 11% 10% 9% 12%
Don't Know 9% 4% 7% 7% 4% 6%
'
In a study of public opinion in 1999, political science professor George Bishop at the University of Cincinnati observed:
Despite rising levels of people with college educations in this country, views on creationism have remained steady over the last 15 years. Nearly a third of college graduates, 31 percent, in recent Gallup polls, still believe in the biblical account of creation. This is somewhat of a theoretical riddle.
It gets even more perplexing.
A recent study of American scientists showed that only five percent believed in the creationist view of human origins; a majority (55%) endorsed the Darwinian position, but a large percentage (40%) also subscribed to the theistic evolutionist perspective. Since many scientists consider the controversy surrounding evolution and creationism a political issue, they are reluctant to join in the public debate, according to Bishop.
They are reluctant to join in the public debate because they know where their bread is buttered: in university departments that are accredited by their Darwinist academic peers. Accreditation conveys state-enforced monopoly benefits in the competition for students, funding, pay scales, and tenure. Discretion is the better part of valor. They remain silent.
OLD MCDONALD HAD A THEORY
In summarizing Dr. Bishop's findings, American Atheists, Inc., had these explanations for the recalcitrance of die-hard creationists:
Critics suggest that differences in education and social expectations may marginalize women, steering them away from careers in hard sciences, and that ethnic minorities suffer due to lack of equal spending for schools and other services. Regional differences may emerge due to varying public budgets for education; poor rural areas, for instance, have less money to spend on classrooms, science labs and good texts than their upscale, industrial area counterparts.
It seems that creationists are mostly women, people of color, and farmers.
Most Americans live in cities. People surveyed by Gallup pollsters are mostly urban. Then why don't they buy into the public schools' certified worldview? All science textbooks are screened at the state level, which is why the Gablers were able to have so much clout. An explanation of creationist beliefs that rests on "bad texts" is not what I would call rigorous.
The underlying assumption of those who offer such a theory is that fundamentalist Christians are rural bumpkins. This has been the academic Establishment's Party Line ever since William Jennings Bryan in 1921 began calling for a level academic playing field in the public school classrooms: no more monopoly of Darwinism in the textbooks. I have provided extensive evidence for this in my 1996 chapter, "Darwinism, Democracy, and the Public Schools," available free on-line. Typical was an editorial in the New York Times (Feb. 9, 1922), which announced: "Kentucky is not the only State in the Union, by any means, for whose village theologians the name of Darwin is still one with which to scare children."
The folks at American Atheists, Inc., blame Americans, not the scientific community's implausible arguments, for this lack of acceptance of Darwinism. "The scientific world view has thus far failed to complete Darwin's revolution in the land of One Nation Under God ... We don't stack up well as a nation. Religious belief tends to be inversely correlated with what most scientists would say is simple fact."
MOUSETRAPPED
Let's talk about a simple fact. A mousetrap is made up of components. Eliminate just one component, and the device will not work. There is no way for random natural processes to produce anything so complex as a mousetrap on an incremental basis. The unconnected parts convey no competitive advantage. Yet a cell is vastly more complex than a mousetrap. So is an eye. (When I think of the logic of Darwinism's theory of natural selection, I think of the line in A Christmas Story: "You'll shoot your eye out, kid!")
This "simple fact" of mousetrap evolution was presented by cellular biology professor Michael Behe in his 1996 best-seller, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. He calls his criticism the theory of "irreducible complexity." Behe's book has inflicted more damage on Darwinists than anything published since 1859. Yet the argument is quite simple. Anyone who has not been indoctrinated by graduate school biology can readily understand it. Its simplicity is what is driving Darwinists crazy – or worse, from their point of view, to theism.
A few weeks ago, Anthony Flew, one of the most famous atheists in the world, announced that there must have been design in the universe. He has publicly recanted his lifelong atheism. He says he felt compelled to follow the evidence.
Snap!
PUTTING THE SHUCK ON THE BUMPKINS
To the extent that the American academic Establishment is Darwinian, it is of necessity politically elitist. The self-certified, self-accredited professorate wants its academic work funded by taxpayers. The professors also want their worldview written into the textbooks that are paid for by taxpayers. They want no back-talk from voters. They see democracy as a matter of temporary convenience. Whenever democracy threatens to transfer the monopolistic power they possess over the allocation of money extracted by compulsion from taxpayers, they abandon all pretence of honoring democracy.
That the creationists are still pleading for some God-free, Supreme Court-acceptable version of creationism to be included in the tax-funded curriculum indicates that they are slow learners. They still believe in the right of one group of voters to compel other voters to pay for the indoctrination of the masses. They still believe in the academic presupposition of the Darwinists, namely, that experts are entitled to exercise coercive control over the funding of education, and therefore also over the content of education.
This is why the creationists, scientific or otherwise, will continue to lose the academic battle for control over tax-funded schools. They are up against dedicated career professionals whose only religion is the power religion, and who are already on the State's payroll. In contrast, the creationists believe in democracy's God-given authority to legitimize academic coercion. Those who control the education system don't believe this and never have. On the contrary, the educrats believe in coercion for its own sake. Democracy is seen merely a temporary means to an end. It is a convenient ruse to baffle the bumpkins.
When it comes to a theory of education, the creationists really are bumpkins. They want equal time for Jesus in a system based on coercion rather than evangelism, on coerced funds rather than donations, on state power rather than family authority. They seek a level playing field in a rigged game. They have abandoned Mount Sinai in preference for Mount Coercion.
Then they wonder why they keep losing.
CONCLUSION
Darwinism has been on financial life-support for a hundred years. To put it out of its misery, voters need only pull the plug. Vote no on every school bond issue. Pull your kids out of the public schools. Pay as you go. As I said in front of 10,000 Christian activists at a rally in Texas in 1980, "If every Baptist in Texas pulled his child out of the public schools on Monday, there would be no public schools on Wednesday."
Reforming the public schools is like sending a physician into the local red light district to certify the health of the industry's full-time professionals. This makes things physically safer for their clients. Demand therefore increases. I ask: "Why subsidize debauchery?" But, then again, I'm an extremist.
Bob replied, "I find it quaint about your notion of science is that it's a democracy."
No, Bob, I don't regard science as a democracy. But I regard your hand in my wallet and the tax man's gun in my belly as having been originally justified in the name of democracy. I'm ready to drop the whole matter – just as soon as you and your accomplices quit living off non-Darwinists' productivity by threatening us with jail and confiscation for refusing to bankroll your version of science. When you got the tax man to fund your projects at our expense, you moved from science to politics. You're addicted to our money. If we ever pull the plug, you will have to fund your own worldview. Horrifying, isn't it?
December 27, 2004
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north335.html
Why Darwinists Fear Democracy
by Gary North
On December 24, I received a letter in response to my obituary for Mel Gabler.
Jesus, it's about time the fascist bastard died. I'm a scientist. I know he, and his wife, tried to make science politically correct with the religious crowd by opposing the teaching of evolution in public schools. It took the appearance of Nobel prize winning physicist Steve Weinberg before the Texas School Board textbook committee to undue the damage that the Taliban-like Gablers did to the teaching of evolution.
I'm glad the old bastard's dead. As he fries in hell, let him repent at leisure.
Regards
Bob P.
Lebanon, PA
Bob is confused about definitions: limited Constitutional government is not fascism. Limited Constitutional government thwarts fascism, which is a political theory based on the idea that the bureaucratic State should regulate the economy. Giovanni Gentile was the primary theoretician for Italian fascism. He wrote in 1932:
The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative. Individuals and groups are admissible in so far as they come within the State. Instead of directing the game and guiding the material and moral progress of the community, the liberal State restricts its activities to recording results. The Fascist State is wide awake and has a will of its own. For this reason it can be described as "ethical".
As to Bob's concept of eternity, Scientific American has yet to publish anything definitive. But Bob surely does understand politics. He also knows just how well the Gablers understood politics. He is unhappy that people like the Gablers have finally grasped the nature of the textbook scam that the evolutionists have been running for the past century: forcing the opponents of Darwinism to pay for compulsory educational institutions that teach Darwinism to their children.
WHO SHOULD DECIDE WHAT GETS TAUGHT?
This raises a fundamental political issue, one which has divided American voters since about 1921: the legitimacy of a majority of voters to determine the content of whatever is taught to children in tax-funded institutions.
The Darwinists are adamant: voters must sit down and shut up, fork over their tax money to university-certified academic experts, and send their children into the public schools. Bob is representative of this position.
Fundamentalist Christians are divided. Some believe that the public schools should teach both views, Darwinist and non-Darwinist, with equal time for both positions, with both taught as theories. Mel Gabler was representative of this position. Others believe that only creationism should be taught. There is no public representative of this position, yet as many as 40% of Americans polled hold this view, as we shall see.
I am adamant: the public schools should be auctioned off next Wednesday – Friday at the latest. R. J. Rushdoony was representative of this position: The Messianic Character of American Education (1963). So is John Taylor Gatto: The Underground History of American Education. I would go further. Property taxes should be reduced accordingly. All state and Federal aid to local school districts should cease, since all local school districts should cease, with all expenditures saved to become permanent tax reductions.
Ever since the Scopes Trial of 1925, Bob's viewpoint has been dominant where it counts: in the civil courts. Elected legislatures just can't be trusted.
DEMOCRACY DOESN'T COUNT
Bob and his peers are well aware of this truth: their opinions regarding man's origins are not shared by the vast majority of Americans. This fact bothers them, but not enough to surrender control over tax-funded education to the will of the people. It bothers them because they have lost the intellectual battle for the minds of men, despite their century-long monopoly over public education. The public still isn't buying the Darwinists' tuition-subsidized product.
For over two decades, the Gallup organization has polled Americans regarding their views on Darwinism, which teaches that biological evolution is an impersonal process resulting from unplanned interactions between natural laws (which may or may not evolve – a major in-house debate), the environment, and the facts of reproduction of various species. Darwin's disciples are adamant: God had no part in this process.
The public relations problem for Darwinists is this: the percentage of Americans polled who affirm this view of biological evolution has yet to hit 15%. Despite a century of absolute control over public school curriculum materials and university science departments, the Darwinists have been unable to persuade more than 12% of the population of the truth of their position. This is not an impressive academic track record.
An author in The New Humanist magazine, published in Great Britain, has bewailed the situation.
Opinion polls about teaching Creationism also make for depressing reading. A 2001 Gallup survey revealed that 68 per cent of Americans favour teaching Creationism in schools alongside evolution (29 per cent oppose). In a separate question about completely replacing evolution education with Creationism, the survey showed 40 per cent in favour of a Creationism-only curriculum but 55 per cent against. Some science educators actually took comfort from this news that a slight majority of Americans are in favour of giving evolution equal time with Creationism rather than eliminating it from schools entirely! In this climate, Darwin's followers are likely to remain an endangered species.
He then reprinted the results of two decades of polling by Gallup on these issues.
Question '82 '91 '93 '97 '99 '01
God created people in present form within last 10,000 years 44% 47% 47% 44% 47% 45%
Evolution occurred over millions of years guided by God 38% 40% 35% 44% 40% 37%
Evolution occurred with
no interference by God 9% 9% 11% 10% 9% 12%
Don't Know 9% 4% 7% 7% 4% 6%
'
In a study of public opinion in 1999, political science professor George Bishop at the University of Cincinnati observed:
Despite rising levels of people with college educations in this country, views on creationism have remained steady over the last 15 years. Nearly a third of college graduates, 31 percent, in recent Gallup polls, still believe in the biblical account of creation. This is somewhat of a theoretical riddle.
It gets even more perplexing.
A recent study of American scientists showed that only five percent believed in the creationist view of human origins; a majority (55%) endorsed the Darwinian position, but a large percentage (40%) also subscribed to the theistic evolutionist perspective. Since many scientists consider the controversy surrounding evolution and creationism a political issue, they are reluctant to join in the public debate, according to Bishop.
They are reluctant to join in the public debate because they know where their bread is buttered: in university departments that are accredited by their Darwinist academic peers. Accreditation conveys state-enforced monopoly benefits in the competition for students, funding, pay scales, and tenure. Discretion is the better part of valor. They remain silent.
OLD MCDONALD HAD A THEORY
In summarizing Dr. Bishop's findings, American Atheists, Inc., had these explanations for the recalcitrance of die-hard creationists:
Critics suggest that differences in education and social expectations may marginalize women, steering them away from careers in hard sciences, and that ethnic minorities suffer due to lack of equal spending for schools and other services. Regional differences may emerge due to varying public budgets for education; poor rural areas, for instance, have less money to spend on classrooms, science labs and good texts than their upscale, industrial area counterparts.
It seems that creationists are mostly women, people of color, and farmers.
Most Americans live in cities. People surveyed by Gallup pollsters are mostly urban. Then why don't they buy into the public schools' certified worldview? All science textbooks are screened at the state level, which is why the Gablers were able to have so much clout. An explanation of creationist beliefs that rests on "bad texts" is not what I would call rigorous.
The underlying assumption of those who offer such a theory is that fundamentalist Christians are rural bumpkins. This has been the academic Establishment's Party Line ever since William Jennings Bryan in 1921 began calling for a level academic playing field in the public school classrooms: no more monopoly of Darwinism in the textbooks. I have provided extensive evidence for this in my 1996 chapter, "Darwinism, Democracy, and the Public Schools," available free on-line. Typical was an editorial in the New York Times (Feb. 9, 1922), which announced: "Kentucky is not the only State in the Union, by any means, for whose village theologians the name of Darwin is still one with which to scare children."
The folks at American Atheists, Inc., blame Americans, not the scientific community's implausible arguments, for this lack of acceptance of Darwinism. "The scientific world view has thus far failed to complete Darwin's revolution in the land of One Nation Under God ... We don't stack up well as a nation. Religious belief tends to be inversely correlated with what most scientists would say is simple fact."
MOUSETRAPPED
Let's talk about a simple fact. A mousetrap is made up of components. Eliminate just one component, and the device will not work. There is no way for random natural processes to produce anything so complex as a mousetrap on an incremental basis. The unconnected parts convey no competitive advantage. Yet a cell is vastly more complex than a mousetrap. So is an eye. (When I think of the logic of Darwinism's theory of natural selection, I think of the line in A Christmas Story: "You'll shoot your eye out, kid!")
This "simple fact" of mousetrap evolution was presented by cellular biology professor Michael Behe in his 1996 best-seller, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. He calls his criticism the theory of "irreducible complexity." Behe's book has inflicted more damage on Darwinists than anything published since 1859. Yet the argument is quite simple. Anyone who has not been indoctrinated by graduate school biology can readily understand it. Its simplicity is what is driving Darwinists crazy – or worse, from their point of view, to theism.
A few weeks ago, Anthony Flew, one of the most famous atheists in the world, announced that there must have been design in the universe. He has publicly recanted his lifelong atheism. He says he felt compelled to follow the evidence.
Snap!
PUTTING THE SHUCK ON THE BUMPKINS
To the extent that the American academic Establishment is Darwinian, it is of necessity politically elitist. The self-certified, self-accredited professorate wants its academic work funded by taxpayers. The professors also want their worldview written into the textbooks that are paid for by taxpayers. They want no back-talk from voters. They see democracy as a matter of temporary convenience. Whenever democracy threatens to transfer the monopolistic power they possess over the allocation of money extracted by compulsion from taxpayers, they abandon all pretence of honoring democracy.
That the creationists are still pleading for some God-free, Supreme Court-acceptable version of creationism to be included in the tax-funded curriculum indicates that they are slow learners. They still believe in the right of one group of voters to compel other voters to pay for the indoctrination of the masses. They still believe in the academic presupposition of the Darwinists, namely, that experts are entitled to exercise coercive control over the funding of education, and therefore also over the content of education.
This is why the creationists, scientific or otherwise, will continue to lose the academic battle for control over tax-funded schools. They are up against dedicated career professionals whose only religion is the power religion, and who are already on the State's payroll. In contrast, the creationists believe in democracy's God-given authority to legitimize academic coercion. Those who control the education system don't believe this and never have. On the contrary, the educrats believe in coercion for its own sake. Democracy is seen merely a temporary means to an end. It is a convenient ruse to baffle the bumpkins.
When it comes to a theory of education, the creationists really are bumpkins. They want equal time for Jesus in a system based on coercion rather than evangelism, on coerced funds rather than donations, on state power rather than family authority. They seek a level playing field in a rigged game. They have abandoned Mount Sinai in preference for Mount Coercion.
Then they wonder why they keep losing.
CONCLUSION
Darwinism has been on financial life-support for a hundred years. To put it out of its misery, voters need only pull the plug. Vote no on every school bond issue. Pull your kids out of the public schools. Pay as you go. As I said in front of 10,000 Christian activists at a rally in Texas in 1980, "If every Baptist in Texas pulled his child out of the public schools on Monday, there would be no public schools on Wednesday."
Reforming the public schools is like sending a physician into the local red light district to certify the health of the industry's full-time professionals. This makes things physically safer for their clients. Demand therefore increases. I ask: "Why subsidize debauchery?" But, then again, I'm an extremist.
Bob replied, "I find it quaint about your notion of science is that it's a democracy."
No, Bob, I don't regard science as a democracy. But I regard your hand in my wallet and the tax man's gun in my belly as having been originally justified in the name of democracy. I'm ready to drop the whole matter – just as soon as you and your accomplices quit living off non-Darwinists' productivity by threatening us with jail and confiscation for refusing to bankroll your version of science. When you got the tax man to fund your projects at our expense, you moved from science to politics. You're addicted to our money. If we ever pull the plug, you will have to fund your own worldview. Horrifying, isn't it?
December 27, 2004