It can be said that one who consciously lies and deceives others is dishonest; however, one who believes that lie and propagates it isn’t. However, if a person is propagating such a lie, that person is necessarily one of the two: deceiver, or deceived.

Such is the case with anyone who uses the terms “Darwinism” and “Darwinist”.

Why is it? Because those terms are both inaccurate, and loaded.

They’re inaccurate because modern evolutionary theory, much like any science, has itself evolved, and biologists know much more about the workings of evolution than Darwin did, more than 150 years ago. While, say, religious beliefs themselves change and evolve with time (anyone who believes today’s Christianity has anything to do with what Jesus preached is completely deluded, and should someday try to read the gospels as what they really say, without any preconceptions), they don’t do that openly. In other words, there are branches of Christianity which claim to want to “go back to the basics”, but, typically, you don’t see “Christians” claiming that Jesus was on to something, but “we’ve improved over his primitive teachings”. They do that (after all, the apocalyptic, “sell everything you have, the end is near” trappings of Christ’s Christianity couldn’t have lasted long as a religion, at least with any degree of earthly success), but they don’t claim that — or, if they do, then they have to accept that Jesus was just a man, and such a belief can no longer be called “Christianity”. Islam is a popular example of that (to them, Jesus was just a mortal prophet).

Science, however, evolves, and while the founder / discoverer of a branch is honored and respected, scientists don’t treat his or her words as “holy” or as dogma. No biologist would ever say something like “it’s like this, because Darwin said so.” In science, reality is the final arbiter, and no hypothesis or theory is ever sacred. If anyone ever disproves (with evidence) evolution as we know it, science will abandon it and replace it with a better predictive explanation; the fact that nobody has managed to do it in almost two centuries (and it wasn’t from lack of trying) should tell us something.

We don’t call gravity “Newtonism”, because Newton wasn’t the be-all, end-all of gravity — nor did he claim to be. His writings aren’t the final word on gravity. There is no “final word”, but any new “words” must be tested against reality, and must be able to predict new situations as accurately as possible (say, the orbits of planets). “Newtonism” would suggest that modern physicists worship Newton, that they take his word as dogma, that modern physics are just a case of spreading Newton’s word to the unenlightened. You know, much like religion?

“Darwinism” is exactly the same. The implication of the term is that evolutionary biologists worship Darwin, that modern biology is just the study, understanding and spreading of Darwin’s word. That such a belief is dogmatic, and taken on faith. You may not mean it that way, but that’s what the word implies. If you disagree, consider what saying “Newtonism” instead of “gravity” sounds like.

And yet I keep seeing the term tossed around. Especially — of course — by intelligent design advocates. Who, as Expelled has shown, are not necessarily the most honest people around. Now, if you say “Darwinism” instead of “evolution (by natural selection)”, which are you? The deceiver, who fully knows the implications of such a loaded term, but wants to promote the idea of evolution as a Darwin-worshipping cult? Or the deceived, who was fooled by the former?

A reader called Ashlea has replied to my post Natural Selection and Eugenics with this comment:

I fully believe that what Hitler did WAS Eugenics. And Darwinism is a direct link to this and other things. By eliminating a God and a creator, you really do eliminate the value of human life. If one believe that firstly, he was out on this earth by some cosmic accident, that his life is nothing more than to live and to die, and that after he does there is nothing left, no after life, what value does it have? So of course people are going to look at the "evolution" of people from mud or apes or whatever the case, and they are going to try to "perfect" it. If human life is NO more valuable that the life of an animal, which why would if be if we were once animals, and we have no soul, then what is the harm in picking and choosing and killing??
It has also led to other things, such as euthanasia and abortion. If life is as valueless as Darwinism suggests, then why not just kill of the ones who are "useless"?
What we need to realize is that Yes! We were created by an Intelligent Designer. Look at what trying to prove this wrong has done??? Resulted in the death of Millions of innocent people, people with a purpose in life.

I had started to reply with a comment there, but the reply was getting too long, so… a new post it is.

Ashlea: I’m sorry, but you are guilty of several common mistakes there. I’ll try to enumerate them:

I fully believe that what Hitler did WAS Eugenics.

No argument there (although it has been argued by some that the Holocaust wasn’t really done to perfect humanity, but because Hitler envied the Jews.)

And Darwinism is a direct link to this and other things.

Here I can’t agree. Both Dawkins’ quote in my post and my own follow-up to it clearly explained that eugenics is simply an attempt to apply the millennia old selective breeding of animals to humans — which is artificial selection, and has nothing to do with Darwinian evolution (not "Darwinism", but that’s a subject for another post), which is based on natural selection.

By eliminating a GOd and a creator, you really do eliminate the value of human life.

I disagree, and such a thing has never been proved. You’ll note that virtually everyone who says "without God, life is pointless" is a believer… and if they were right, then atheists would be sad, nihilistic, suicidal people who saw no point to anything. That is, of course, not the case at all. In other words: only the people who need an external justification for their lives believe that such an external justification is universally needed. Forgive me for the harsh comparison, but this is like an addict who claims that nobody could ever live happily and healthily without the drug.

Besides, even if you were right, and life were pointless without a god, it would not follow that a god would exist. Something is not more likely to be true simply because the consequences of it being false "would be bad". Please see this entry in my FAQ for more details.

If human life is NO more valuable that the life of an animal, which why would if be if we were once animals, and we have no soul, then what is the harm in picking and choosing and killing??
It has also led to other things, such as euthanasia and abortion. If life is as valueless as Darwinism suggests, then why not just kill of the ones who are "useless"?

Again, you are confusing two separate things. Darwinian evolution describes how things work, now how people ought to behave — and neither Darwin nor modern biologists advocate eugenics (which, again, is artificial selection, and which humanity has performed on animals and plants for ages).

You also imply that human life is only worth anything if we have something known as "souls". This is the old argument: theists claim that a finite life is worthless; I say that its finite quality only makes it more precious, more worthy of being lived to the fullest. And, look — I care for other people even though I don’t believe they have supernatural, immortal "souls"! Isn’t this weird, according to your way of seeing things?

I’d also argue that euthanasia and abortion arise from respect for human life and dignity, not from lack of it, but that’s another story.

To conclude, most of your comment was an appeal to consequences. You didn’t try to show either how evolution doesn’t happen, or how intelligent design does; you just claimed that, if evolution is true, "things would be bad", therefore it must be false, and intelligent design wins "by default". Sorry to say, but that’s not very convincing…

P.S. - I’m glad you didn’t use the "Hitler and Stalin did what they did because they didn’t believe in God, therefore they thought they could do anything" argument. My reply to that one would have been a lot less nice…

… they put up a sign like this:

From the article:

Pastor Byrd says the sign is not meant to be racial or political but rather to make people think.  “His name is so close to Osama I have a feeling he might be Islamic therefore he doesn’t recognize Christ,” Pastor Byrd said.

and:

Pastor Byrd told News Channel 7 he would ask his congregation to vote on whether to keep the sign.  They voted unanimously to keep the sign up Sunday night.

Jonesville Church of God does not have any African American members.

You know what really infuriates me about this? Not that these assholes do this, but that it works. A good percentage of Americans probably “have a feeling” that Obama might be a Muslim, simply because of his name. How stupid can you get?

(via Friendly Atheist)

Richard Dawkins has posted an open reply to a letter from a Jew deceived by Expelled, who believed the propaganda movie’s absurd claims without any fact checking. I suggest you read Dawkins’ reply in full, of course, but the subject of this post is this part in particular:

Hitler did attempt eugenic breeding of humans, and this is sometimes misrepresented as an attempt to apply Darwinian principles to humans. But this interpretation gets it historically backwards, as PZ Myers has pointed out. Darwin’s great achievement was to look at the familiar practice of domestic livestock breeding by artificial selection, and realize that the same principle might apply in NATURE, thereby explaining the evolution of the whole of life: “natural selection”, the “survival of the fittest”. Hitler didn’t apply NATURAL selection to humans. He was probably even more ignorant of natural selection than Ben Stein evidently is. Hitler tried to apply ARTIFICIAL selection to humans, and there is nothing specifically Darwinian about artificial selection. It has been familiar to farmers, gardeners, horse trainers, dog breeders, pigeon fanciers and many others for centuries, even millennia. Everybody knew about artificial selection, and Hitler was no exception. What was unique about Darwin was his idea of NATURAL selection; and Hitler’s eugenic policies had nothing to do with natural selection.

This, in retrospect, is obvious, but I hadn’t seen it explained so succinctly and clearly before. Eugenics has nothing to do with Darwinian evolution! Animal (and even plant) breeders have known about selective breeding for millennia (indeed, I think it’s even mentioned in the Christian Bible), ages before Darwin or the concept of the evolution of species. Anyone who breeds dogs, horses, birds, etc. knows perfectly well that you can cross specimens with particular characteristics to achieve desired results (say, a new hair or plumage color, or a bigger or smaller animal, or one with other specific characteristics). This can be seen as artificial selection.

Darwin’s new idea was: what if something like this also happens in nature, without intervention? And what if that is how the species in the world today have came to be? In other words: natural selection.

Eugenics (the attempt to “perfect” the human race according to one’s beliefs or preferences) has nothing to do with natural selection. It’s simply an attempt to apply the ages old selective breeding of animals to humans.

Of course, I’m not even considering blaming animal breeders from thousands of years ago for the Holocaust. That would simply be ridiculous. But blaming something completely unrelated (Darwinian evolution) for it is even more ridiculous. Eugenics is a disgusting distortion of selective breeding (which is itself blameless for eugenics); it’s completely unrelated to evolution / natural selection.

And, when you should know better than to say such an absurdity (as some filmmakers do), it’s also a dangerous, evil lie.

If we stay with animal analogies for a moment, owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will draw the conclusion that they are god. (Cats may sometimes share the cold entrails of a kill with you, but this is just what a god might do if he was in a good mood.) Religion, then, partakes of equal elements of the canine and the feline. It exacts maximum servility and abjection, requiring you to regard yourself as conceived and born in sin and owing a duty to a stern creator. But in return, it places you at the center of the universe and assures you that you are the personal object of a heavenly plan.

– Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist (introduction)

The new Expelled Exposed site is up. Until yesterday, it was just a collection of links, but now it’s a “full” site, addressing the lies from the Expelled propaganda film. I’d recommend everyone read it.

Alonzo Fyfe is completely right.

Rep. Monique Davis apologized to Rob Sherman, the atheist she told to “get out of that seat” because he “believes in destroying”, which she equates with being an atheist, who has no right to go to court in “the land of Lincoln where people believe in God”. She apologized to him, personally, for insulting him, personally. As if no bigotry was involved.

Alonzo compares it with Mel Gibson’s outburst against a Jewish policeman.

Did Gibson apologize just to the cop for insulting him personally? No, nor could he have done just that. He apologized to the Jewish people in general. He wasn’t just insulting the cop, he was accusing Jews for causing wars and being responsible for a number of evils in the world. That was not just rudeness, that was bigotry.

Why should Davis’ outburst be treated differently? Why should people be satisfied with a personal apology for rudeness? She showed as much bigotry to all atheists as Mel Gibson did to all Jews. Do atheists have less rights? Have we bought into their propaganda so much that we’re willing to be reviled and demonized, and not do a damn thing about it? In which way are atheists morally inferior to Jews, or to any other group? Why should this kind of bigotry be excused, when it wouldn’t be if the target was any other?

Not to mention that Davis is not an actor, but an elected official. She has a much bigger responsibility for her actions than Gibson.

Read the comments on Alonzo’s post as well, where he gives suggestions on who to contact in order to demand a real apology (or resignation) from Davis. Like I said before, complaining to Davis is useless: the fact that the people she sees as the most obscenely evil  in the world criticize her actions only confirms their “righteousness” in her mind.

The first time I was faced with the term “Moral Zeitgeist” was when reading Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and, according to Wikipedia, the term was indeed coined by him. “Zeitgeist” is a German word that means “the spirit of the times”, and, therefore, the Moral Zeitgeist refers to the evolution of society’ views on morality.

Dawkins himself provides a perfect example of how the Moral Zeitgeist has changed throughout history (which I’ve again stolen from Wikipedia):

Slavery, which was taken for granted in the Bible and throughout most of history, was abolished in civilized countries in the nineteenth century. All civilized nations now accept what was widely denied up to the 1920s, that a woman’s vote, in an election or on a jury, is the equal of a man’s. In today’s enlightened societies (a category that manifestly does not include, for example, Saudi Arabia), women are no longer regarded as property, as they clearly were in biblical times. Any modern legal system would have prosecuted Abraham for child abuse.

In TGD, Dawkins also provides quotes from people who were, in their time, seen as progressive liberals, such as Thomas Huxley or Abraham Lincoln, but which nowadays make one cringe and gasp in shock because of their racism or sexism. This all shows one thing: our perceptions have changed. What was accepted, even seen as highly moral, many years ago, is now seen as abusive and immoral. This does not happen instantly (though it’s more quick than it may appear, especially in recent years, with mass communication and, now, the Internet), nor to the same degree in all places, of course. And changes are not always for the better (e.g. political correctness, which often prevents people from calling things what they are). But, in general, they are. Things do become better. Societies are far from perfect, but people today have more empathy than they used to have, centuries or even decades ago. Racism and sexism are condemned, have been erased from law books, and those who are still racists or sexists are seen as the bigots they are by educated people. We understand, more than we used to in the past, that life is precious, and that the suffering of other people is as real as ours, even if they look different or have different customs.

Note that I am not saying that morality itself is subjective. Slavery didn’t “become” wrong only in the 19th century, it was always a cruel, brutal suppression of basic human rights. What I’m saying is that the general public’s views on morality have changed, and will continue to change — mostly for the better. One consequence of this is that people might be excused for supporting slavery 500 years ago, but nowadays there’s absolutely no excuse, because they ought to know better.

Of course, the very fact that the Moral Zeitgeist changes and evolves with time proves one thing clearly: that most religious believers don’t get their morality from religion. (Those that do, in the western world, usually have “Phelps” somewhere in their name.) The morality in, say, the Christian Bible is nothing special for its time; not more enlightened, not more advanced or progressive (do believers really think that, before the 10 Commandments, everyone thought that murder was a pretty neat idea?), not “radical” in any way. Jesus himself might sound different, but what he was preaching was mostly an apocalyptic cult whose believers expected the end of the world in their lifetimes; it was Paul that turned Christianity into a religion, with — much like other contemporary religions such as Judaism — all the sexism and support of slavery that was the norm at the time.

While most believers today don’t get their morality from religion or the Bible at all (which is a good thing, too), many still think that they do. But, in fact, their morality mostly fits in with the current moral Zeitgeist. Beliefs such as “God is love”, “God loves everyone” and “God wants us to be happy and free” have no Biblical basis at all; they were made up by believers when society came to appreciate those ideas.

Of course, there are some who do cling, to a degree, to parts of Biblical morality. That is why, for example, churches before the American Civil War opposed emancipation; after all, weren’t people of color the descendents of Ham, condemned to slavery in Genesis? Wasn’t slavery Biblical? Didn’t Paul command slaves to obey their masters?

What about sexism? Well, the Bible clearly states — both in the OT and the NT — that women are the property of men. Who are we to change God’s law? Women should stay at home, not speak in church, and never have authority over men. Guess who opposed equal rights the most.

Of course, eventually even the churches relent, when society has advanced so much that they risk becoming irrelevant. The Mormon church used to forbid black priests; that changed… and, according to them, it was due to a “new revelation”. Christian churches now want to take credit for the end of slavery (because “God loves everyone”, of course), when they were its biggest supporters back then. Churches these days don’t prevent black people from entering, or women from speaking. But all that happened later than with the rest of society. Religion based on scripture, revelation and authority is by nature conservative, and only evolves when forced to, when they are so displaced from society that they face possible obsoleteness or even extinction. One could say that religion, in general, is always behind the Moral Zeitgeist, because it is religion that is always the last to change. And that’s in the west; note how Islam resists change and clings to 13th century morality. They do it through force, fear, and isolation; the more people know, the more they question. The imams know perfectly well how Christianity lost many of its privileges in the west, and want to avoid a similar fate at all costs.

Now, if religion has to follow the rest of society or become irrelevant, if more and more of its original morality is nowadays obsolete and ignored… if society’s views on morality are always in front of religion in terms of progress, and religion has to play catch up… if you realize that in 10 or 20 years the Moral Zeitgeist will have shifted even more, and will be even more different from religion’s original tenets, forcing it to keep adapting… why not dismiss religion as a source of morality altogether?

Source: Cectic

This shows perfectly what the theists’ beef is, IMO. No matter how much they deny it, their goal is to insert religion in science classes, nothing more… and they won’t be satisfied with a true neutral position, where science classes only teach science. To them, not saying “goddidit” is “promoting atheism”… and they can’t have that.

Readers of Planet Atheism will probably have already been flooded with posts talking about Rep. Monique Davis’ unconstitutional and hate-filled insults against Rob Sherman, who was testifying against Illinois (unconstitutionally) giving 1 million dollars to a Baptist church. Here is Eric Zorn’s original news report in the Chicago Tribune, and here’s PZ Myers’ post on RichardDawkins.net (which I link to instead of the original on Pharyngula, as this one includes contact information for people to do something about it, instead of just posting comments ).

Well, as this post’s title says, this is a prologue for the next one, about that particular quote from Davis. I wanted that one to focus on that quote itself, which is why I’m introducing the story here, in a separate post. The “real thing” comes later today.

Also, I’m not American, so there’s little I can do about it, but if you are, and care for that pesky thing called the Constitution (not to mention the civil rights issue of having non-believers demonized and insulted by politicians without consequence — imagine if Davis’ rant had been against a particular religion or skin color!), please follow the second link above for ways to make a difference. Even if you’re not an atheist, you should still care…

A little while ago, and for no apparent reason (I’m like that ), I thought about an Internet poll I’ve seen some time ago, which asked people what they thought was more likely about the development of life on Earth. If I remember correctly, the options were something like this:

1. God created the species as they are, less than 10,000 years ago (young earth creationism);
2. God created the species as they are, millions of years ago (old earth creationism);
3. God created life and directed evolution, starting millions of years ago (theistic evolution);
4. Life evolved without action from a god (natural evolution).

And it got me thinking…

We can think of the several hypotheses as a series of switches. God (as in “interfering”, not as in “existing”)? Yes or no. Old Earth? Yes or no. Evolution? Yes or no. With these switches, here are the 8 possible combinations (with 0 for “no” and 1 for “yes” — yes, I’m a computer geek. ):

This is the initial premise. But we can quickly remove a few contradictory combinations. For instance, no God and no evolution means that nothing accounts for the life we have in the world today. In other words, we can’t have a “0″ for both God and evolution. Evolution but no old earth is also impossible: nobody — scientists or creationists — claims that species could have evolved in just a couple of millennia, and both sides agree that man already existed 6,000 years ago. In binary terms, evolution requires an old earth (not the other way around, though).

So, the cut-down table (now with labels for each combination) amounts to this:

What more can we say about them? Well, for a start: evidence contradicts B and C, so they cannot be true. There is lots of evidence for both evolution and an old earth, and both are accepted by science — not dogmatically, not on authority, but because that’s where the evidence leads. The only reason people still claim B or C is this: it’s what the holy books claim. If you believe they are inerrant, then any evidence to the contrary must be ignored, like covering your ears with your hands and crying “la la la, I can’t hear you”. Of course, such a position is irrational, dishonest, and stupid. Creationism (old earth or young earth) is the denial of reality; it’s not a scientific hypothesis with any merit, because no evidence supports it, and a lot of evidence contradicts it. I can respect people who are honestly mistaken, but not those who lie to themselves, who deny reality, because it’s somehow uncomfortable.

So, if we care the least bit about reality, we must remove any combination with Old Earth=0 or Evolution=0. Therefore, the only remaining combinations are these (keeping the labels from the previous table):

Now, D is obviously theistic evolution, that is, evolution directed by God. This is undisprovable, because it doesn’t contradict the evidence (but, then again, Last Thursdayism, the theory that the universe was created last Thursday, but with everyone having memories of a fictional time before that, and with the world having been created to appear much older, is also undisprovable). There is, however, no evidence for it, either.

A is not necessarily atheistic naturalism; as I said before, “God” here means intervention by God, not necessarily existence. A can be naturalism, but it can also be Deism. Again, it can’t be disproved, and, again, there is no evidence of “no (intervening) God”. The main difference between A and D is that D adds another agent, which is not required, as A has the exact same evidence for and against it, and explains everything just as well. If both explanations are equally satisfactory and substantiated, but one of them has an extra entity, then Occam’s Razor tells us that the other one — with the least number of entities — is the most likely one. Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity, and the extra entity is unnecessary.

From this, we arrive at A as the most likely hypothesis. All available evidence agrees with it, and it is the simpler (in terms of number of entities) explanation.

… to make the world a better place:

Expelled

There.