James Robertson writes:
Europe’s war on free speech is the result of a profound identity crisis, one that is being generated by the blanket abandonment of traditional Judeo-Christian values coupled with mass immigration from Muslim countries. But in their zeal to criminalize free thought and free speech, the leftwing guardians of Orwellian political correctness are systematically destroying European democracy.
Not only are European elites using hate crime legislation to silence people with opinions that do not conform to official state policies. They are also dividing Europeans into two groups (the majority and the minority), each with different rights and responsibilities. The minority (Muslims, homosexuals, Socialists) is imposing its will upon the majority (non-Muslim, heterosexuals, non-Socialists) by aggressively prosecuting those who refuse to fall into line.
He provides some recent examples of what’s going on in the rest of the West. It’s bizarre, but not unbelievable. And, America is not immune from this kind of thinking. We have our own history of overcompensation, with so many incentives given to “minorities” that leaves a white male as perhaps the most disadvantaged person of all, as jobs and scholarships are given out based on diversity rather than on ability. I have no problem with equality – I don’t believe that “all men are created equal,” but I think it’s great that our Constitution created that equality. Of course, the Constitution is not what it used to be; and if we don’t watch it, in a few years it will be just a shadow of what it is today.
What happens, I think, is that what starts out as a very good and admirable desire for justice quickly turns into a shallow, mindless self-righteousness. We who have a new-found “tolerance” or understanding start to believe that we are perhaps better than those who may not be so tolerant. There is then created a New Elite, a self-righteous minority who out of force of will become the new majority. But, as G.K. Chesterton said, “Tolerance is the virtue of a man without convictions.” Where does that leave us? As the perception grows that overcompensation – and the corresponding oppression of contrary opinion – is the high moral ground, right and wrong become so convoluted that a voice of reason is looked at with suspicion. It is Orwellian, indeed.
Who, now, is the disenfranchised in the US? Note that some of Obama’s first acts as President were in direct opposition to the majority opinion. Note that a majority of people would like all the facts about evolution taught in our “public” schools. I could go on, but all you have to do is pick up the newspaper for more examples.
Roberton asks if the U.S. will follow in Europe’s footsteps. I think that as the issues become turned upside down, it is quite possible; and for some of our leaders, I think that this is actually the desired goal.
Mike, I notice that you often resort to name-calling and misdirection; why is that?
By the way, it’s interesting that when scientists do get caught falsifying information, that information continues to be used in textbooks if it supports evolution (i.e. Haeckel’s embryos, which still appeared in textbooks until just a few years ago).
You both seem very confident in this, and global warming isn’t a science, climatology is. And steve, you know jack all about fossils. But, really, why check it out when your pastor tells you not to look?
I think that what is going on here is that with your reliance on faith and religion to give you “facts,” you think that science is just some sort of false religion and you would be happy if it reverted back to the days when all discoveries had to be approved by the Chorch in order to be accepted.
When scientists “fudge” facts, they get caught. By other scientists. When people like those who work at the Disco Institoot fudge facts, they get caught, but they ignore it and pretend that the corrections never have occurred.
There are major transitional fossils, one of which is tiktaalik.
Modern day scientists are just like the rest of us.
They want their assumptions proven right even if they have to fudge the truth a bit.
Some of the assertions that pro evolution scientists make are patently false.
Where are the fossils of the evolutionary changes in animal life? They do not exist. That’s where.
But, it hs been proven that some scientists falsified so-called discoveries to taylor them to their own vision of what evolution ought be.
They are now doing the exact same phony science with so-called “Global Warming”.
Mike, Some of this is called “education.” If the students didn’t need to learn it, the course would be useless. The same holds true for history, English, etc. Most students come to college quite uneducated.
On the other hand, it’s a fact that many science teachers teach a very one-sided and inaccurate set of facts with regard to evolution. And, until very recently (and maybe still today), some textbooks contained information that was known to be false. As I’ve said countless times before, science shouldn’t be afraid of data that doesn’t match, etc. That’s what science does.
Wrong. “All the facts” means looking at even the evidence that doesn’t fit the standard models. Again, that’s real science.
That’s what I’ve been saying.
But Mike, (although I know you won’t accept this) people aren’t dismissing the scientific method… they’re rejecting a very skewed application of the scientific method.
If the people who were trying to push this through the schools would be honest as to what they mean by “all the facts of evolution,” then biologists wouldn’t be so adamant that the Orwellian “Academic Freedom Legislation” acts be fought back.
Biology teachers all ready have to waste an incredible amount of time in college correcting the misconceptions that college students bring to college-level biology courses. If the whiners at the Discovery Institute spent just half their time actually funding and doing research as they do promoting their propagandistic claims and lobbying legislatures to “protect” students whose sensibilities are offended by the process of science then they may someday present something worth teaching in science class. Up to now all they have produced are shoddy textbooks barely indistinguishable from the level of “Of Pandas and People.”
What they refer to as “all the facts” are misstatements and quote-mines and have less relevance to biology than astrology does to astronomy. Astrologists actually pay attention to accuracy in measuring the data of the distances of the planets and stars and their motions. What they do with astrology after that is pure woo.
The “all the facts” crew see measurable data and objective test methodologies as sideshow irrelevances, or as Dembski refers to them, “pathetic levels of detail.”
So, you can have all the arguments that you want about the theological implications of evolution, but it would best serve our high school students to be able to start with actual facts learned through the scientific method when learning science. That a majority of the people so easily dismiss the scientific method when it comes to biplogy (yet are willing to leave the other sciences alone,) is a statement of the poor education level in this country than a matter of some sort of rear guard oppression.
In this matter I see more of a reactionary pressure by religion to reassert its primary voice on all matters than the sort of fearful cloud of oppression from academia.
It doesn’t look good. I think if I wasn’t a believer in the next aeon, I would be scared spitless. Now I am just plain scared.