Well, I just realized that on good ole Internet Explorer, my blog is horribly misaligned.
I’ve been using Opera and Firefox, so I haven’t realized until now.
So if you’re reading this in a terribly messed up layout, stay tuned as I fix it later today.
UPDATE: Well, I’ve been trying, but I simply can’t get the layout to look right in IE. It keeps wanting it to put the main text below the menu. Looks great in Firefox, though.
So, sorry to the two or three of you who read my blog. =)
I’ll try to get it fixed after I get back Sunday or Monday.

(Update at the end.)

Been reading around on blogs about Intelligent Design and evangelical attacks on “natural sciences,” and I can’t help think, what’s so wrong with the natural sciences?
Here are some quotes of things I’ve come across:

“In my personal journey, I have found that one of my biggest struggles to break free from my naturalistic upbringings has been where I begin my thoughts.”
NewSojourner

“‘So long as methodological naturalism sets the ground rules for how the game of science is to be played, (intelligent design) has no chance (in) Hades.’ — William Dembski, senior fellow at the pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute.”
Uncommon Descent

“Good stuff Keith, as usual. American Christians grew up in a naturalistic and materialistic culture and thus, by default, think in those terms.”
a comment in The Christian Mind

“If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree, our strategy is intended to function as a “wedge” that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points.”
“The Wedge Strategy” of Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture

“It is, therefore, with urgency that those concerned Christians must come to consider the nature and deleterious influence of philosophical naturalism. Naturalism, because of its enormous influence on contemporary thinking as well as its basic hostility to the truth the Christian holds to be so precious, constitutes one of the greatest foes with which the twentieth century Christian must do battle.”
Secular Threats to Christianity

These snippets exemplify the position of the evangelical and fundamental Christian currently, in regards to science.

Before addressing the absurdity of these positions we have to make sure of what it is we’re talking about. After all, the word “naturalism” which is a human invention to give a symbol to a concept as are ALL words, can really mean whoever the speaker wants it to mean.
For example, here is what Dictionary.com says of “naturalism”
n.
1. Factual or realistic representation, especially:
a. The practice of describing precisely the actual circumstances of human life in literature.
b. The practice of reproducing subjects as precisely as possible in the visual arts.
2. a. A movement or school advocating such precise representation.
b. The principles and methods of such a movement or of its adherents.
3. Philosophy. The system of thought holding that all phenomena can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws.
4. Theology. The doctrine that all religious truths are derived from nature and natural causes and not from revelation.
5. Conduct or thought prompted by natural desires or instincts.

And a more expanded discussion of naturalism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)

Now, note an important distinction in the definition of philosophical naturalism:
“Naturalism is any of several philosophical stances, typically those descended from materialism and pragmatism, that does not distinguish between the supernatural and the natural. It does not claim that phenomena or hypotheses commonly labeled supernatural necessarily do not exist or are wrong, but insists that they are not inherently different from any other hypotheses or phenomena and can be studied by the same methods.”

Naturalism does not necessarily state the “supernatural” does not exist, but that what is thought of as “supernatural” have natural explanations and causes. Naturalism does not say that God does not exist, but rather IF God exists, he/she/it should be studyable by the same methods everything else can be.

That’s kind of obtuse. But suffice it to say that naturalism does not deny God, but instead focuses on the natural phenomena of existence. If God exists outside all laws of nature and physics, etc, then God is not a subject of naturalism.

I am a naturalist, AND I am a deist. I believe in natural explanations and causes for all things, but that God created all things and set it in motion. It’s not unreasonable for naturalism and religion to coexist, so long as each one knows its place and limitations.

But the naturalism that I see evangelicals and fundies railing against is a codeword for natural sciences: biology, geology, cosmology, archeology. All the sciences that study and research the natural universe and defines the way things work, have worked, and will probably work. And why is this stance patently absurd? Because a naturalistic approach to science is effective and progressive and the alternative is destructive and dangerous.

Depending on when you want to start counting, humans have lived non-philosophically naturalistic for hundreds of thousands of years. We have used religions which become mythologies since the beginning of tribal man to explain the natural world. Spirits, faeries, gods, demons, kami, magic, have been a part of humanity from the beginning up until, well, even today. Christians and Wiccans and every religion in between believes in some sort of non-material cause-and-effect for events and processes in the world. God or the Goddess, angels or spirits, they’re all part of the realm of non-naturalism. Even “science” was filled with spiritualism or non-naturalism until the last hundred or so years. With the bright exceptions of a few ancient Greeks here, a few enlightened Italians there, early “naturalistic” sciences were filled with the supernatural. Alchemy, phrenology, animal magnetism, hundreds of other early “scientific” concepts were attempts at using a rational approach to discovery and explanations of phenomena, but they all fail fundamentally until true scientific materialism, the scientific method, and absolute adherence to naturalism was not just encouraged, but enforced in the scientific community.

If you have a hypothesis, great. Now prove it. And prove it again. Now let someone else test and prove it. And if that can be done, then the hypothesis become a scientific law or a scientific theory depending on the nature of the phenomena. If you can’t prove it, if it’s not subject to being disproved, is not testable and observable, then it’s not in the realm of science.

Now, that’s generally where evangelicals stop in understanding science and decide to fight against it without understanding the implication of the scientific method. Because something like God is not testable, not observable, not (dis)provable, God is not in the realm of science. That’s not to say God does not exist!! That is to say that science has no interest in proving or disproving God, and thus God is outside the realm of naturalism.

So, what good is naturalism? Why is science so concerned about only what is observable, testable, (dis)provable? Because since taking that point of view a little over a hundred years ago, we have an endless list of advances in the last 150 years that outweigh the previous 150,000 years combined. Flight, safe flight, space flight, medicine, improved agricultural products and techniques, longer life-spans, less infant mortality, the ability to save premature births and prevent serious birth defects, safe food processing, the Internet, well, you get the point. The life we live today of incredible luxury and insane knowledge has come from naturalism. Our ability to visit our moon and other planets, the depths of the oceans, none of it due to religion or theology, all of it due to naturalism in science.

Now, I know some people who would have no problem with going back to a pre-industrial civilization. Farming the land, small towns, 50 year life expectancy full of back-breaking work from birth to death, 50% mortality at birth (for both mother and child,) subject to disease and illness, etc etc. When people blithely say we should eschew the ways of naturalism and go back to the ways of our religious heritage, that’s what that would mean. If we replace naturalist science with science subject to belief in supernatural and unobservable and untestable “evidence,” we will have sciences rampant with misconceptions and errors and crazy ideas and there would be charlatans and idiots selling their snake oils, and there would be no space exploration or concrete understanding of any natural process.

Meteorology would go from using technology to predict tornadoes to using prayer and divining rods. Medicine would go from molecular biology to prayer and herbalism. What’s the point of ANY discovery if all knowledge is revealed to us by books and prophets? How can any progress be made when it’s assumed there’s no laws of nature defining anything and God/angels/spirits can affect anything at a whim?

Evangelicals and fundies dependent upon modern medicine and safe cars and safe food and lively Internet blogs and safe houses, forget that none of it would be possible without strict adherence of naturalism in science and eschewing that which cannot be tested, retested, observed. Once we allow for the supernatural in science, science becomes guesses and alchemy and witchcraft. Don’t think that will happen? Take “Intelligent Design.”
“Intelligent Design (or ID) is the controversial assertion that certain features of the universe and of living things exhibit the characteristics of a product resulting from an intelligent cause or agent, not an undirected process such as natural selection.” In order to get this pseudo-Creationism belief into schools, the proponents of ID are being very careful to say “oh, we’re not saying GOD is the ‘intelligent designer!’” So if ID is valid and if ID gets into schools as stated by the people pushing it into school districts, the idea of extraterrestrial aliens as designers of humanity gets a foothold into education. And there it starts.

We already have a battle of pseudo-science in the public arena with crystals and ESP and UFO’s and Ouija boards and Tarot cards and astrology and other crap. Any of these things which base themselves on non-naturalistic concepts prove to advance science at all? Oh, how’s that Christian Science based belief of prayer is all you need working out? Save a lot of kids with leukemia has it? How’d you like to fly in a plane designed by someone who based his knowledge of aerodynamics on prayer? Or used Biblical knowledge to create an antibiotic? Or trusted in God to give him the knowledge to understand the effects of gravity, solar flares, cosmic radiation, and space vacuums when designing that spacecraft? If all knowledge should be revealed by God as it has been from 4000 BC, then there’s no reason to explore space at all in any case. Nothing out there that can’t be known through prayer and reading the Bible.

That wedge that evangelicals want to drive into naturalistic science is a wedge that will cut down the very existence they have grown accustomed to and rely on. They’re too blinded by faith to see that.

(Updated 5:00 pm CDT 29 Sept 05)
I got a mention on a very well read and respected and often quoted by other bloggers blog: The Christian Mind.
Don’t know if this is a good thing, but it’s kind of cool. =)
He links this very installment in: Methodological Materialism & The Slippery Slope, taking the most vitriolic portion of this very long entry as an example of the slipper-slope logical fallacy.
And despite the concept of taking that section out of context… he’s right.
What, you say? You think he’s right?
Yes. I am committing the logical arguement sin of slippery slope. (As well as, it can be argued, “proof by verbosity.” *grin*) I am making an illustration of the worst that can happen by going to the extreme of my arguement. Not very fair, and hopefully, not very acurrate.

Of course, so do many Creationists, evangelists, and fundies when they say naturalists, scientists, freethinkers, et al are trying to destroy religion and faith and make the world an amoral place by enforcing material, relativist ethics. Which is also a strawman fallacy.
Yes, you know there are many a speaker, bloggist, essayist who have made those claims.
So, we’re all guilty of using appeals of fear and slippery slope arguements. What I should have said implicity, instead of just implied, was that all of the above is my opinion of what could happen if supernatural concepts were widely accepted into the scientific method. I’m just trying to make a point.

But I think the point still stands. We have made all the scientific progress we have through eschewing spiritual, supernatural, non-material concepts in science. Once we did that and rigidly followed the scientific method where a hypothesis can not be accepted as a “law” or “theory” until it has been proven, proven by someone else, and have observable results, our knowledge and potential and ability as a human race grew more in 200 years than it had in 200,000 years.

And also, science has no desire to disprove God or make moves on morality or other concepts of faith and philosophy. Just because science requires hard evidence before it accepts a hypothesis does not change any idea of morality or objectivity or moral code. The two are unrelated.

On a wild hair, I did a search for those old “Choose Your Own Adventures” I used to read in grade school in the early 80′s. And I found them on Amazon.com! (All used of course.)
But looking through some of the titles really brought back great memories.
I was reading Edgar Alan Poe and Bradbury back then as well, around age 8 and 9, and RIGHT before stating to play Dungeons and Dragons, and these sci-fi and horror stories were intriguing, but the “Choose Your Own Adventures” were even more compelling because it made the actions in the books more vivid and personal. For obvious reasons.

I still remember feeling somewhat bothered and upset but thrilled and excited by having been shot and killed in the “Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey” book. Had an illustration of it too. And that really triggered the personal involvement I would have with the story of the moment since.

Here’s a couple of my favorites:

“Your Codename is Jonah”

“Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey”

But, this one was one of my favorites:
“Inside UFO 54-40″

Why? Because it contained a message that really struck home, stuck, and was blatantly obvious to the grade schooler I was.
One of the goals of the book, your goals, is to find Utopia. The perfect society. You could spend hours and hours trying to get there through various paths of choices, and as you’re flipping through the book, you see it’s there! With a two-page illustration and a fantastically wonderful ending, there it was. but the trick you finally come to realize, is that NO path leads there. And I looked at each page for one that would lead to the Utopia page, and it didn’t exist.
More than any other literary theme that I read in any books pre-age 10, that point actually made sense to me. You can’t get to Utopia. There is no way to achieve a perfect society, a paradise.

Ah, I miss those books!

It’s interesting, reading the couple of reviews for “UFO 54-40″ that other people learned the lesson to break the rules, leave the path. It’s interesting, thinking back, that while I may have intuited that lesson from the book as well, my main lesson was rather on the impossibility of getting to Utopia. Interesting.

The Pseudoscience of Intelligent Design by “benna”

I’ll paste the actual text below as that site is 90% comments.
This is a fantastic explanation of what Intelligent Design and Irreducible Complexity are, and why they completely fail both logically and as science.
I seriously doubt that any believer in ID will bother reading this article, however, as it’s probably a little above their heads. Whoa! Did I just imply that believers of ID are not smart people? Well… a little. But with some caveat. I understand science, beyond grade school level, is complex and a little difficult to grasp and only gets more difficult the more in depth in a field you go. In order to really understand why evolution is a fact AND a scientific theory you have to be capable of understanding some concepts that are above a 6th grade level. Likewise to understand how ID completely fails logically and scientifically, you have to be able to not only think critically, but not get a headache and sigh when matters of entropy in an open system and randomality in closed systems are discussed in enough details as to explain how ID is fantasy.

But what’s also of interest in the article below, and great concern, is the revelation of the agenda of the group that is actively trying to get ID accepted and taught. “Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture”. This very scary organization, as implied by their stated agenda, wants to destroy science and scientific understanding as we know it and replace it with fundamentalist Christian beliefs.

Read the article below!
(Some previous blogs of my own on the subject:
Irreducible Complexity Pulls Out Its Own Rug
This Is The Rosetta Stone Of Creationism vs. Evolution
that last contains an article that in my opinion is one of the best and complete refutations of ID.)

————————————————————————–
The Dover, Pennsylvania school board recently adopted a policy requiring that high school science teachers teaching evolution tell their students that evolutionary theory, a theory that has been shown to explain the origins of life time and time again, is flawed, and that intelligent design is a valid alternative. The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), along with the AUSCS (Americans United for the Separation of Church and State), and 11 parents, are suing the school board, accusing the board of violating the separation of church and state (Banerjee A16). They are quite right. The sole purpose of “Intelligent Design” is to make creationism look like a scientifically credible theory, so that it can be perpetuated in public schools, among other places. Intelligent Design, however, is not supported by scientific evidence, and is invalid as a scientific theory.

To understand the problems with Intelligent Design, first Read the rest of this entry »

Indeed, gravity IS a “scientific theory.” Gravity is not a “fact” as proponents of Creationism and Intelligent Design misunderstand the terms.
So, here’s a counter theory to gravity that should get equal time in schools:

Heard a clip of Rep. Christopher Shays grilling former FEMA Chief Michael Brown yesterday. When asked what Brown thought his biggest faults were, he gave a non-commital response and a response of “failing to understand the dysfunction that existed between the offices of the Mayor of New Orleans and Governor of Louissiana.” And Shay told him that sounded like one of those answers you give in an interview when asked “What is your greatest fault” and you reply “Working too hard.”

But here’s the crux of the issue: Brown was incompetent for the job, but is that his fault? Perhaps not. Who put him in that position? Bush.
Think about this: For whatever reasons Bush was voted into office in 2000, after sept. 11th 2001 his primary focus became the protection of the country. His focus and purpose, as Bush has said himself, was to protect the country. So, wouldn’t you think that the people he’d put into positions under him whose sole job it is is to protect the country from disaster, would be exceptionally qualified?
So after Albaugh left the position to help Americans make money in a post-war Iraq, Bush puts a man with no emergency management experience in the position of top person responsible for disaster recovery and relief.
Despite politics, despite party loyalties, despite religious fellowship of similar stated beliefs, can anyone really say Brown was a wise choice?

I don’t live in LA, so I didn’t vote for the mayor or Governor, and there’s nothing I can do about the local governments of other areas. Regardless of what faults they have, it’s the job of the federal government to fill the gaps, take over where the local and state officials leave off. Especially, as set in law, when the state governor calls for a state of emergency FEMA becomes the head of operations. They’re in charge. And the Governor of LA asked for the state of emergency 2 days before Katrina made landfall. At that point Brown became the man in charge, and can anyone say, honestly, he was even remotely qualified?

So the ultimate blame is back on Bush. When that plain-spokn’ good ole boy who admits to not cottoning to “abstract thinking” became President, it became his responsibility to hire and appoint the best people for the various positions and posts. He didn’t.

It was a sign of things to come, in many ways, when he made a former envoy to Iraq his Secretary of Defense and an oil barron his Vice President.

This is just way too funny!
And very scary as I’m afraid it may not be too far from eventual truth!

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ibox/2005/ibox050509.gif

From The Denver Post:
The Bible as Museum Guide
and CNN:
"Intelligent design" debate back in court

*sigh*
And so the fight to promote ignorance continues.
It’s not a matter of questioning science. Believe it or not, science is all about questing and questioning. “How does this work?” Let’s find out. “Why does this work?” Let’s figure it out. “Will this work?” Let’s test it and find out.
And all throughout scientific history, science strives to test and question itself. That’s how errors and myths and misconceptions and fraud is discovered.
Mesmer and his hypnotisma nd “animal magnatism” was once half accepted by the scientific community. But by constant questioning and testing, we’ve discovered his theories to be bunk. Scientists have long ago discovered the bones of Lucy (as mentioned in that Denver Post article) were not what scientists though they were. And the fact that this Bible tour guy still marks the bones of Lucy as a scientific mistake as one of his proofs that “evolution” is questionable shows just how out of touch and misguided Creationists are.
Scientists (not theologeons) long ago discovered Lucy was not some “missing link” and no one in the scientific community believes she still is.
Unlike religion, science does not create some dogmatic “truth” about something and then defends it and refuses to challenge it. Science is constantly challenging itself and coming up with more refined data and better explanations.

Science is all about taking a phenomena, coming up with a hypothesis about it, testing it, and retesting it, then coming up with an explanation that fits the results. And if something comes along later to challenge those results, the process is repeated and new explanations are defined with new results.
Religion, on the other hand, works backwards. It takes a supposed explanation, and then tries to find evidence to support that explanation, ignore what doesn’t fit or claim refuting data is somehow erroneous but gives fantastic, unfounded, or old and out of date explanations as to why that conflicting evidence is no good.
Theologists are unaware of the constant progress and changes that occur in science and are constantly trying to disprove nullified evidence or using long disproven or mistaken “facts” to contradict current scientific methods or evidence.

It’s OK to question evolution. It really is. But if you’re going to question a “hole” or “gap” or “problem” in evolution, use science and not mythology to find better answers. Why are Intelligent Design advocates never taken seriously in the scientific world? Because a) the “gaps” they question are either completely misunderstood by them and actually have quite satisfactory scientific explanations, or b) the alternatives they offer for the “gaps” have no scientific credibility. Just because something appears too complex for evolution (whatever THAT’S supposed to mean) does not mean a supernatural force was involved. It means we don’t yet have all the necessary information. Or chances are more likely there already is a perfectly rational explanation that the ID or Creationist either is not aware of because they’re outside modern scientific movements or because they can’t personally wrap their minds around it.

Just because you can’t imagine something doesn’t mean it can’t exist.
Likewise, just because you CAN imagine something fantastic doesn’t mean it DOES exist.
Because an ID’er can’t imagine how “scaffolding” organs may help cellular flagellum to eventually evolve doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Just because someone imagines ghosts moving one’s car keys to a different than remembered location doesn’t mean ghosts exist.

(Added 3:30pm)
Interesting to note, from the CNN article:

Richard Thompson, the Thomas More center’s president and chief counsel, said Dover’s policy takes a modest approach.
“All the Dover school board did was allow students to get a glimpse of a controversy that is really boiling over in the scientific community,” Thompson said.

Earlier in the article:

Brown University professor Kenneth Miller, the first witness called by the plaintiffs, said pieces of the theory of evolution are subject to debate, such as where gender comes from, but told the court: “There is no controversy within science over the core proposition of evolutionary theory.”
On the other hand, he said, “Intelligent design is not a testable theory in any sense and as such it is not accepted by the scientific community.”

Just read this CNN article about the Iraq War “protest mom’s” arrest:
Sheehan arrested in front of White House

What struck me was the last paragraph:

“I would like to say to Cindy Sheehan and her supporters don’t be a group of unthinking lemmings. It’s not pretty,” said Mitzy Kenny of Ridgeley, West Virginia, whose husband died in Iraq last year. The anti-war demonstrations “can affect the war in a really negative way. It gives the enemy hope.”

Here’s my question: Who is the enemy? Do you know? Do you people who are so pro-war really understand who the enemy is?

Insurgents and terrorists, right? Guess what: As long as we’re over there, the insurgents and terrorists will never stop, we will never “win,” they will keep coming. The reason the insurgents keep blowing things up and keep attacking us is because we are still over there occupying Iraq. And for every insurgent killed two more come in.

As long as we’re still holding hands, figuratively and literally, with the Saudi royal family and putting military bases in the Middle East and overtly backing Israel, the terrorism will continue and WILL NEVER END. There is no way to win a war against terrorism so long as there is one person willing to bomb something to make a point, there will be terrorism. So long as we have a single soldier in Iraq, there will be someone who will try to kill him.

The only way to stop getting killed over there is to get out of there. Period. Unless we plan on carpet bombing all of the Middle East with nuclear weapons, there will always be people willing to kill and to die to get us out of the Middle East. And that’s the bottom line. Either we get our noses out of Middle Eastern affairs, or we resign ourselves to being forever the targets of insurgents and terrorists. Because there is no “winning” this war.

So, pretty much every morning for years, I listen to NPR on the way to work. And since getting XM Radio, I’ve been listening to “Air America” (even though I’m not a liberal…but I am extremely anti-Bush,) and so, by the time I get to work each day, I’m depressed about the state of the country and angry about the incompetence and immorality of the Bush admin.

So yesterday I started switching stations and landed on XM’s “Top Tracks” and listened to Meatloaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” I haven’t really heard that song since college cast and after-parties, and I sang with it all the way to work and was in a great mood! A little nostalgic perhaps. Today I sang with the Doobie Brothers and The Eagles and The Doors, and was in a great mood! So as much as I love and desire being informed and knowledgeable, I think I’m going to put a temporary embargo on morning news…perhaps until Bush is out of office. =) Because I’m really liking this good mood morning. =)

It be Talk Like a Pirate Day! I nearly forgot!
http://www.talklikeapirateday.com/
I really should do something with my http://www.grogmonkey.org site…

I wouldn’t have believed it, it’s so outlandish, if it hasdn’t been sustantiated. But here’s a couple of quotes Barbara Bush, George W.’s mom, has made:

She made these remarks about her interactions with the people quartered in the Astrodome following Hurricane Katrina:

Almost everyone I’ve talked to says, ‘We’re going to move to Houston.’ What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.
And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/barbara2.asp

And in an early interview regarding the Iraq war:

Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? It’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?

http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/barbara.asp

Now, in her defense, according to the Snopes pages linked above (a site dedicated to debunking urban legends) these quotes, when taken in context, aren’t quite as elietist and classist as they sound as a quick soundbite. Agreed, perhaps.
But they do help paint a general picture that supports the idea that the Bush family, in their history of priviledge, are very out of touch with regular Americans, especially poor and disenfranchized Americans. This is evidently not unusual for Barbara Bush to make rather classist remarks, and Bush family friends say George W. takes more after her than of George Sr. (Who, to be honest, I would MUCH rather have had as president again than his son George W.)