How Sarah Palin Could Prove Darwin Wrong by Becoming the Stupidest President in History

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The most recent scuttle-butt, the smart-money, the self-appointed pundits, those in-the-know as well as those who don't have two clues are making the safest bet on the planet: Sarah Palin wants to run for President.

What if she succeeds?

Her "election" (or "selection") to that high office would be cited as proof that Darwinian 'natural selection', often mistakenly called survivial of the fittest, is absolutely wrong. She will have proven that merit is not rewarded! She will have raised the question: why frickin' bother? She may have become an inspiration to drop-outs and fuck ups all over the world. She may have legitimized incompetence. She will have inspired several generations of goof-offs, lay-abouts, dumb-asses and run-o-the-mill jerks and YouTubers! I have not yet mentioned thousands, perhaps millions of inmates of various kinds of 'institutions' who must be turned loose upon an unsuspecting world should S. Palin continue to roam free!

Think about it --is it fair or even legal to keep petty screw-ups locked up when Sarah Palin has her finger on a button that could destroy the world? The wrong folk are behind bars or asylum walls!
Indeed, Sarah is on a mission --but not from God. She seems out to prove that stupidity is its own reward, that morons can ruin if not run a country, that huge amounts of money may be saved by following the example of Bush/Perry Texas with respect to education. Again --why bother educating people when morons acquire all the rewards of productive work done by other folk?!

In Texas, for example, the victims of the Bush/Perry war on education are literally warehoused in corporate owned/operated prisons. It's a payoff to the corporate-owned prisons for their support of the Texas GOP. It's the GOP/moron way! It's the Fascist way! There's big money in it! The big corporations will love her.

An Inspiration to Idiots and Drooling Morons All Over the World

Palin is in a position, then, to prove conclusively that "survival of the fittest" is dead wrong. Both sour cream and idiots will rise to the top in her wake! Ground will have been broken! A Brave New World will have been hatched from odious pods! Idiots everywhere will be similarly inspired to "...try and take over the world!" [apologies to Pinky and the Brain]

In times like these, I am inclined to believe that the right wing would stoop ...uh...stop at nothing to discredit Darwin while getting a certifiable kook in the White House to prove him wrong. Instead, they will have proven the 'Peter Principle' that in a heirarchy of any sort, each employee rises to his/her level of incompetence. I would suspect exactly that had not Palin already risen to her level of incompetence. I am sorry for those who no longer have a goal to pursue. (not really!)

Of Darwinism and Social Darwinism

by Robert B. Reich 

The Conservative Movement, as its progenitors like to call it, is now mounting a full-throttled attack on Darwinism even as it has thoroughly embraced Darwin’s bastard child, social Darwinism. On the face of it, these positions may appear inconsistent. What unites them is a profound disdain for science, logic, and fact.
...
The modern Conservative Movement has embraced social Darwinism with no less fervor than it condemned Darwinism. Social Darwinism gives "conservatives" a psuedo moral justification for rejecting social security and supporting tax cuts for the rich. "In America," says Robert Bork, "‘the rich’ are overwhelmingly people – entrepreneurs, small businessmen, corporate executives, doctors, lawyers, etc. – who have gained their higher incomes through intelligence, imagination, and hard work." Any who is not a part of the ruling elite should be indignant and rightly so! Bork has implied that if you are not rich, you are not worthy; if you are not rich, you are not smart; if you are not rich, you have no talents worth saving or even exploiting. This idiot should have been roundly grilled and excoriated for those vicious, stupid and utterly fallacious comments!
...
The only consistency between the right’s attack on Darwinism and embrace of social Darwinism is the utter fatuousness of both. Darwinism is correct. Scientists who are legitimized by peer review and published research are unanimous in their view that evolution is a fact, not a theory. Social Darwinism, meanwhile, is hogwash.

"Bastard Child" at the very least! Social Darwinism does not follow from "Darwinism" and, worse, it attributes to Darwin positions he never took. Interestingly, the term "survival of the fittest" was never used by Darwin. Though it has been variously attributed, Hofstadter traced the phrase to rail road men and other early "robber barons":

Railroad executive Chauncy Depew asserted that the guests of the great dinners and public banquets of New York City represented the survival of the fittest of all who came in search of fortune. They were the ones with superior abilities. Likewise railroad magnate James J. Hill defended the railroad companies by saying their fortunes were determined according to the law of survival of the fittest.

—Hofstadter, Richard; 1959; Social Darwinism in American Thought, Braziller; New York.

Elsewhere, the term is attributed to Herbert Spencer who clearly inspired a generation of radicalized, latter-day "industrialists" all of them lacking the "...quality of mercy" so immortalized with but a few words by Shakespeare.

[Herbert] Spencer said that diseases "are among the penalties Nature has attached to ignorance and imbecility, and should not, therefore, be tampered with." He even faulted private organizations like the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children because they encouraged legislation.

—Social Darwinism and American Laissez-faire Capitalism 

An equally fallacious corollary to "Social Darwinism" is often phrased: the rich are rich because they are better, work harder and are more intelligent." To be expected, George W. Bush put it more crudely: “The poor are poor because they are lazy!” In the same vein, the conservative economist Joseph A. Schumpeter likened recessions to a "douche"! That leaves on to wonder: who decides who gets "douched"? Indeed, millions were douched by R. Reagan. Many never returned to steady employment! Reagan "douched" their jobs, their unions, their families, their futures!

Only sociopaths believe that a tiny and shrinking elite should be empowered --to the exclusion of everyone else --to decide matters of life and death and well-being! It is unconscionable that by its pursuit of obscene riches, just 1 percent of the nation may with its purely fiduciary interests decide matters of life or death for millions, indeed billions all over the world.

It is difficult not to conclude that New Orleans after Katrina is but the disastrous consequence of this kind of "blame the victim" bullshit!!! It is insane and unconscionable to believe that because short-sellers, Wall Street insiders, quick buck artists and robber barons have gotten in front of a wave that they are justified in asserting a right --by virtue of wealth --to make decisions that threaten human life, indeed, a global future.

It is not surprising that Spencer's influence continues, not in the field of biology, but in economics, specifically those theories associated with the right wing: the American apologists, William Graham Sumner and Simon Nelson Patten.

No doubt, Spencer’s ideas received a major boost after Darwin's theories were published, but the issues were muddled at the outset and have remained so since. It is unfortunate that the application to social thought of the terms "adaptation" and "survival of the fittest" became known as "Social Darwinism". In fact, they are neither "Darwin" nor are they "Social".
More recently, the work of John Nash, the subject of the motion picture, A Beautiful Mind, argued persuasively that not only games but societies and economies benefit from cooperation and community more than they benefit from competition which is often disastrous in its many effects among which are poverty. I would have supposed that "business" would have welcomed a more prosperous middle class. A more prosperous middle class buys more stuff. If the robber barons cannot figure that out, they are not merely crooked and evil but STUPID!

Spencer, and Social Darwinists after him, took another view. Spencer believed that because society was evolving, government intervention ought to be minimal in social and political life --nevermind that government is but a function of society! It is then unreasonable that government should be responsible to society overall.

Influenced by Spencer, many describe American capitalism in terms of the “rational man” making rational decisions in a free and "rational" market. In practice, however, economic decisions may or may not be rational and free markets are merely hypothetical, existing only in charts, curves and diagrams. It is a mistake to believe that "rational self-interest", said to work collectively behind Adam Smith's "invisible hand", has had anything but an irrational effect. In most cases --a harmful if not tragic effect!

"Social Darwinism" and other defenses of robber baron practices may sound good in theory. Despite despite conservative efforts to force reality into a mold, bad theory is still bad theory. Models must describe reality —not the other way round. The right wing are incurable "theorists" proposing unworkable fantasies like supply-side economics [trickle-down theory] and other failed schemes.

Nash proved that cooperation is often more successful than competition, leading to the inevitable conclusion that societies which rationalize discrimination, income disparity, and social injustice on a fallacious basis are apt not be so successful themselves. In fact, they rarely are. The utterly failed administration of Ronald Reagan is the specimen that proves it! Only the administration of George H.W. Bush had worse figures for both job creation and GDP growth. In fact, every Democratic President since WWII has a better record. The nation could not afford another Bush but, thanks to election fraud in Florida, it was stuck with yet another one.

It was a mistake to reward the "losers" with another "Reagan", another chance to cheat the people, another opportunity to wage aggressive war for the purpose of stealing oil and other resources.
In the motion picture, A Beautiful Mind, Nash, portrayed by Russell Crowe, is in a favorite watering hole with two colleagues, later termed "negotiants" in his theories. The three young males were distracted by three unattended, attractive females. Among them, a blonde, was seen to be most desirable, i.e, "hot"! Nash immediately saw a mathematical certainty of failure should all three males "hit on" her. Equally certain, mathematically, was rejection by the remaining unattended females who would then be insulted, becoming "second and third choices." Some fifty years later, Nash still polishes and refines the mathematics behind the "hustle", the logic that favors cooperation over competition.

...it is more desirable to be accepted than to accept

(!), so with there being reduced pressure to avoid the penalty of the {0,0,0} payoff when there is failure at the first step then the players naturally adapt at equilibrium by becoming "less accepting" and "more demanding." (The demand parameters...rise as the acceptance rate quantities decrease, but this turns out to be at a logarithmic rate).

...the players can be viewed as in a sort of "continuous auction" process where...the players are able to "bid"...and get into the process of cooperation. And this continuous version of the voting process seems probably to be good for generalization to any number of players. --John Nash from a published email [emphases mine, LH] The word "theory" is either misunderstood by the right wing or it is perverted for it's propaganda value. There is nothing wrong with "theory" per se, though the word is exploited by the right wing as a pejorative except, significantly, when it is applied to Spencer and, more recently, Milton Friedman or Arthur Laffer. Accurately, the negative connotations implied are simply not to be found among those who use the word "theory" academically or in science. This linguistic abuse is propaganda.

It must be noted that Einstein was, likewise, a "theorist"; so too, Newton. Einstein has been confirmed no more times than Darwin; Newton is close enough for mundane applications or "government work". Significantly, neither "theory" has been challenged in court —though both theories may one day be replaced or reconciled with a "theory of everything" [TOE]. The problem is simple: there is a political agenda behind the campaign of attacks on Darwinism even as the same constituency supports Intelligent Design --a monicker designed to "sound Darwinian" though it clearly is not!

Theories are never of a final form. Unlike ideology, real science is self-correcting as new facts emerge from research. Darwin's theories were confirmed by Mendel, accommodated Mendel which, in turn, tended to confirm Darwin. The science of genetics and the discovery of "mutations" confirm Darwin beyond any reasonable doubt. And, along the way, no one, no real scientist ever hired a consulting firm, a focus group, a PR agent or a K-street lobbyist.

The anti-science right wing is more interested in how best to "spin" a lie, how best to 'couch' a crock-o-crap, how best to gull the gullible, how best to dump a load!

Future discoveries will modify our view of Darwin, but that does not discount Darwin nor our views. Theories of evolution themselves evolve. Our view of Einstein, for example, is already modified but in no way discounted. In the main, he is confirmed. And when a unified field theory is achieved it will be the result of many scientists each of whom will owe much to Einstein.

No one ever sued because Einstein is at odds with a particular dogma. No one has dared picket a school for daring to teach "Relativity". It is certain, however, that no future discovery will confirm "intelligent design" —a logical fallacy on its face and quite beyond any confirmation of any kind!
"Facts" tend to be narrowly phrased; theories, by contrast, embrace a wide but finite set of related facts. Darwin and the sciences that followed him are entirely consistent with new discoveries in the field of genetics. [See: Science and Human Values, Jacob Bronowski]

Intelligent design is of a religious nature; people have a right to believe it, a right guaranteed them in the U.S. First Amendment. But "intelligent design" explains nothing! Worse than a circular argument, it is beyond proof, in fact, meaningless. It raises other issues, themselves either unexplained or unexplainable. For example: who designed the designer? The question itself assumes a designer --a circulus in probando fallacy. People are free to believe fallacies, but they must not be free to impose lies or fallacies upon other people at tax payer expense! And who is this 'designer' if not 'God'? 'Intelligent Design' is 'stealth religion', a Trojan Horse, that tries to pass itself off as 'science'. It was hoped that an unsuspecting school system would sneak it into the science curriculum. The problem is: 'intelligent design' is NOT science!

A fact, for example, is the equation that describes the acceleration of falling objects; examples of theory are both the Newtonian and the Einsteinian view of "gravitation" —though 'gravitation' is conceived of differently by both. The entire science of genetics confirms Darwin who, interestingly, did not have the benefit of Mendel's research when he wrote Origin of the Species and the The Descent of Man. It was Mendel's research that described the very mechanism by which Darwin’s “traits” are --indeed --passed on to succeeding generations. Darwin --despite the lies about this theory --has been confirmed! Evolution is an observable fact! Accurate predictions are, in themselves, evidence in support of theories. [See: Evolution in Action, Julian Huxley]

Evolution is a verifiable fact!

Any organism which survives long enough to procreate passes on its genes to another generation. Random changes in genetic code are variously attributed [mutations] but are statistically significant, dictating the very speed with which evolution occurs. Every farmer who has deliberately bred for specific characteristics knows the truth of evolution. Every cowboy who has ever said --never kill a slow roach; you just improve the breed --is a Darwinian.

It could be said, however, that no one has yet produced a new specie by selection. But they have indeed done just that! Consider wheat! Wheat does not grow in the wild. Related to ancient grasses, wheat is clearly the result of an ancient application of "artificial selection." Had wheat evolved naturally, it would be found growing wild like prairie grass. But it isn't and it didn't.

If God effected a "special creation" for every biological entity in his cosmos, how are we to account for wheat? The original ancestor became extinct --also an ancient and undocumented event. As human beings had not yet evolved, no one was around to document the extinction of the progenitor of "wheat".

Evolution is often considered to be so true as to be trivial: what survives survives. Critics of Darwin will often cite the tautology though it does not support them; it supports Darwin. Organisms which survive pass on their genes as well as mutations. Getting to pass on your genes is nature's reward for having survived long enough to do it. This is quite beyond debate.

Adaptation! Natural Selection! Evolution!

Some of the more subtle critics of "Darwin" say that "survival of the fittest" is a circular argument: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest. There are some problems with that:

1. Darwin never used the term "survival of the fittest"! That dubious honor belongs to Herbert Spencer, a "Social Darwinist" who never understood Darwin, nor was he "social"!


2. Even if the term "natural selection" is more properly substituted for the bogus term "survival of the fittest", the argument is circular only if the invalid conclusion that "only the fittest survive" is added! The invalid value judgment –survival of the fittest –is falsely attributed to Darwin.

There is nothing circular about the observed fact that in any given generation, some organisms survive and procreate, others do not. Defining traits are thus passed from one generation to another. Over time great changes often occur over numerous, multiplying lines. Over longer periods of time, greater changes are evinced. This has been computer modeled with real world numbers.
One of the greatest examples of "evolution in action" is Carl Sagan's memorable episode in which he cited and demonstrated the example of the Heikegani Crab. The Heikegani Crab, native to Japan, is famous for a carapace resembling that of a human face, specifically, a Samurai warrior.

As Sagan told the story, the crab are found near the scene of a significant battle involving Japan's storied Samurai warriors. The Samurai were defeated, their bodies succumbed to the waters as Sagan relates. Many years later, humble fisher folk, recalling the historic battle, threw back into the waters those catches whose carapace most resembled a human face, especially the fierce face of a Samurai. In Darwinian terms, the resemblance thus acquired "survival value". Like Nash's equilibrium, "survival value" can be quantified. If you are a crab and your carapace looks remotely "human" to those who might otherwise stir-fry and eat you, you have much better chance of surviving. Those crab most resembling Samurai warriors today are the descendants of those who had been "thrown back". There are no descendants of those more ancient crabs that were caught, boiled and/or basted before they could begat little crabs.

The proponents of "intelligent design" have erected several straw men. Evolution, for example, has nothing to do with "coming down from the trees". [See: Richard Leakey's "The Origin of Humankind" ; also: Answers to Creationist Nonsense!]

Social Darwinism, clearly, is one of many ideas that have harmed mankind. It has provided a rationalization for the perpetual, deliberate impoverishment of large segments of our society. Social Darwinism has done so with a baseless theory, a theory fallaciously associated with Darwin. Darwin would have had nothing to do with it! In simpler terms, the philosophical basis for the American right wing is this:

"Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons? Then let them die and decrease the surplus population."

—Scrooge

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The 'Qualty of Mercy' is Missing in Action, A Casualty of War, Ignorance, Right Wing Idiocy

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

For many years, the American right wing, has militated against anything that makes life worth living or bearable. The GOP has actively promoted the enrichment of an American elite (just 1percent of the population) as it actively pursues the impoverishment of every other class, i.e, those not benefiting from GOP tax cuts.

Ronald Reagan's tax cut of 1982, for example, enriched only the top twenty percent of the total population, the 'upper quintile' as it is charted with the official statistics compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and published by the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The trend, though reversed briefly during the Clinton administration, resumed under the Jr Bush.

That just one percent of the total population owns more than the rest of us combined is a recipe for economic collapse as 'elite' wealth is exported to offshore bank accounts where it does not create jobs or pay taxes, where it, in fact, does no good whatsoever to anyone but the dwindling neo-oligarchs who presume to rule over us.

These inequities have nothing to do with merit, as the American right wing would have you believe. Gordan Gecko [see: Wall Street] and Milton Friedman were wrong: greed is NOT good! To believe those official cover stories, you must forget everything that you learned in your first semester of university economics. You must discount, for no logical reason, every major economist from Ricardo to Krugman, from Adam Smith to Karl Marx, from conservatives to liberals, from Nazis to Communists. You must believe that all of them were wrong! You must believe that only Arthur Laffer and Ronald Reagan were correct!

You must suspend all critical analysis and swallow the kooky cult kool-aid that tells you: wealth trickles down! You are expected to swallow this 'pill' and to help you out, the American right wing sugar-coated it and given it a focus-group approved but, nevertheless phony, made up name: supply-side economics.

Supply-side economics is peddled, sold disingenuously. The right wingnuts who support it must surely have known that its result is the continued enrichment of an increasingly tiny elite. Reagan's tax cut of 1982, for example, enriched only the upper quintile. Subsequent largesse has benefited only the top one percent of the population, the so-called 'ruling elite'. It is for the benefit of this elite that 'our' government now wages war for oil and threatens the rest of the world with the world's largest nuclear arsenal,

If the bogus-economics were not enough, the right-wing also promotes the idea that the ruling elite of just one percent is rich because they are better, that they are smarter, wiser, that they are, in fact, deserving of this wealth but you --who work and pay taxes --are not! To those who peddle this crap, I say --politely --fuck you! Let's take another look at the origins of this screwed and utterly fallacious clap trap in 'Social Darwinism'.

"The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes"

—Portia, The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare

Of Darwinism and Social Darwinism

by Robert B. Reich

The Conservative Movement, as its progenitors like to call it, is now mounting a full-throttled attack on Darwinism even as it has thoroughly embraced Darwin’s bastard child, social Darwinism. On the face of it, these positions may appear inconsistent. What unites them is a profound disdain for science, logic, and fact.
...
The modern Conservative Movement has embraced social Darwinism with no less fervor than it has condemned Darwinism. Social Darwinism gives a moral justification for rejecting social insurance and supporting tax cuts for the rich. "In America," says Robert Bork, "‘the rich’ are overwhelmingly people – entrepreneurs, small businessmen, corporate executives, doctors, lawyers, etc. – who have gained their higher incomes through intelligence, imagination, and hard work."
...
The only consistency between the right’s attack on Darwinism and embrace of social Darwinism is the utter fatuousness of both. Darwinism is correct. Scientists who are legitimized by peer review and published research are unanimous in their view that evolution is a fact, not a theory. Social Darwinism, meanwhile, is hogwash.

"Bastard Child" at the very least! Social Darwinism does not follow from "Darwinism". Worse, it attributes to Darwin positions Darwin never took. Interestingly, the term "survival of the fittest" was never used by Darwin. It has been variously attributed, but Hofstadter seems to attribute the phrase to rail road men:

Railroad executive Chauncy Depew asserted that the guests of the great dinners and public banquets of New York City represented the survival of the fittest of all who came in search of fortune. They were the ones with superior abilities. Likewise railroad magnate James J. Hill defended the railroad companies by saying their fortunes were determined according to the law of survival of the fittest.

—Hofstadter, Richard; 1959; Social Darwinism in American Thought, Braziller; New York.

Elsewhere, the term is ascribed to Herbert Spencer who inspired a generation of radicalized, latter-day robber barons. None of them evince the "...quality of mercy" so immortalized by Shakespeare:

[Herbert] Spencer said that diseases "are among the penalties Nature has attached to ignorance and imbecility, and should not, therefore, be tampered with." He even faulted private organizations like the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children because they encouraged legislation.

—Social Darwinism and American Laissez-faire Capitalism

An equally fallacious corollary to "Social Darwinism" is often phrased this way: the rich are rich because they are better, work harder and are more intelligent. George W. Bush put it more crudely: “The poor are poor because they are lazy!” In the same vein, the conservative economist [Austrian school] Joseph A. Schumpeter likened recessions to a "douche". When something is 'douched', something else is 'washed away'. Significantly, economic policies enriching but one percent of the population result in the 'washing away' of those who are poor! Those 'douched' include millions made homeless by Ronald Reagan's depression of some 2 years or more. Those douched include the recent victims of both Katrina and a BP oil spill disaster that still exacts a toll upon the livilihoods and habitats along the entire Gulf Coast. But, if we are to believe the latter-day robber barons of the right wing, it is all the fault of the victims for getting in the way of progress and greed! 'Greed is good', they will tell you!

It is not surprising that Spencer's influence continues, not in the field of biology, but in economics, specifically those theories most often associated with the right wing: the American apologists, William Graham Sumner and Simon Nelson Patten.

No doubt, Spencer’s ideas received a major boost after Darwin's theories were published, but unfortunately, the issues have been muddled ever since. Simply, the application of "adaptation" and "survival of the fittest" to social thought is known as "Social Darwinism". Social Darwinism is wrong because it is not only a false analogy, it is also an unprovable value judgment. Real 'Darwinism' --of the biological kind --is, by contrast, verifiable, applies to every species and does not assert a 'value judgment. It merely describes an observed process. When it ceases to describe or explain, it will be discarded like every other failed theory. That has not yet happened.

You will not hear the other side of this story on Fox or Limbaugh. In other words, neither Fox nor Limbaugh or similar ilk will tell you the truth. Part of this 'other side' is found in the work of John Nash, recently the subject of the motion picture, A Beautiful Mind, argued persuasively that not only games but societies and economies benefit more from cooperation and community than from competition. Spencer, and the Social Darwinists took the oppose and unfortunate view, a view which was eagerly adopted by liars throughout the right wing because 'Social Darwinism' lends an imprimatur of respectability to what is, in fact, obvious and false propaganda.

Spencer believed that because society was evolving, government intervention ought to be minimal in social and political life. It is conveniently forgotten that government is but a function of society and responsible to it. Influenced by Spencer, many describe American capitalism metaphorically as a “rational man” making rational decisions in a free but presumably 'rational' market. In practice, however, economic decisions may or may not be rational and the free market is only hypothetical. Some markets have been shown mathematically to be 'irrational'. Moreover, "rational self-interest" is said to work collectively behind Adam Smith's "invisible hand".

Conservatives have worked mightily to force reality into the conservative mold. But models must describe reality —not the other way round. Nash proved that cooperation is often more successful than competition, leading to the inevitable conclusion that societies which justify discrimination, income disparity, and social injustice upon a fallacious Social Darwinism, are apt not be so successful themselves.

In A Beautiful Mind, Nash, portrayed by Russell Crowe, is in a favorite watering hole with two colleagues, later termed "negotiants" in his theories. The three young males were distracted by three unattended females. Among them, the blonde, was believed to be the most desirable. Nash immediately saw a mathematical certainty of failure should all three males "hit on" the blonde. Rejection by the remaining unattended females was mathematically certain. Who wants to be treated as a 'second' or 'third' choice? Some fifty years later, Nash still polishes and refines the mathematics behind the only chance that three "geeks" might have with three 'hot' young women. Their only chances lie in cooperation --not competition:

...it is more desirable to be accepted than to accept (!), so with there being reduced pressure to avoid the penalty of the {0,0,0} payoff when there is failure at the first step then the players naturally adapt at equilibrium by becoming "less accepting" and "more demanding." (The demand parameters...rise as the acceptance rate quantities decrease, but this turns out to be at a logarithmic rate).

...the players can be viewed as in a sort of "continuous auction" process where...the players are able to "bid"...and get into the process of cooperation. And this continuous version of the voting process seems probably to be good for generalization to any number of players.
[John Nash from a published email; emphases mine, LH]

The word "theory", meanwhile, is either misunderstood by the right wing or perverted for its propaganda value. There is nothing wrong with "theory", though the word is consistently used by the right wing in a pejorative sense except, significantly, when it is applied to Spencer or, more recently, Milton Friedman and Arthur Laffer. If you should 'theorize', you are called a 'theorist'; but if a right wing partisan (Milton Friedman) 'theorizes', he/she is celebrated. In fact, the negative connotations implied are simply not to be found among those who use the word "theory" either academically or scientifically.

This linguistic abuse is sheer propaganda. The most glaring example is the right wing abuse of the word theory to discredit critics of what is --in fact --an 'official theory' of 911. Inexplicably, hypocritically, and stupidly --those critical of the Bush administration are called 'theorists' but those espousing the 'official theory' are not. In fact, the official theory is shot-through with fatal flaws; it cannot possibly be true; it violates the law of established physics. It requires 'faith' in the impossible.

To believe the 'official theory' you must believe that Hani Hanjour got on board without a ticket, that he walked through what NTSB data states was a locked cockpit door, that he either bailed out or got raptured within seconds of the crash! Neither Hani's name nor that of any alleged hijacker is to be found on the only official list of Flt 77 passengers: the official autopsy report released to Dr, Olmsted via an FOIA request. There are many, many more fatal inconsistencies which utterly disprove the official theory. Any one, however, is enough to bring down the entire rotten edifice. The official 'theory' is, in fact, utter clap-trap for which there is simply no credible, verifiable or admissible evidence in support.

It must be noted that Einstein was, likewise, a "theorist"; so, too, was Newton. Einstein has been confirmed no more times than Darwin; Newton is close enough for mundane applications or "government work". Significantly, neither "theory" has been challenged in court —though both theories may very well be replaced one day by a "theory of everything". There is a political agenda behind the campaign of attacks on Darwinism even as the same constituency supports Intelligent Design --a 'theory' but a baseless one.

Theories are never of a final form. Unlike ideology, real science is self-correcting as new facts emerge from research. Darwin's theories were confirmed by Mendel, accommodated Mendel which, in turn, tended to confirm Darwin. The science of genetics and the discovery of "mutations" confirm Darwin beyond any reasonable doubt. The 'theory' of evolution has, itself, evolved.

Future discoveries will modify our view of Darwin, but that does not discount it. Our view of Einstein, for example, is already modified but in no way discounted. His equations with respect to the effect of near light speeds upon both time and space have been irrefutably confirmed. It is a fact that time slows down as speeds near that of light; it is a fact that matter nearing light speeds contract in the direction of travel.

No one has ever sued simply because Einstein is at odds with a particular dogma. Admittedly, Einstein may have escape bigoted, fundamentalist scorn simply because very few people understood him. It seems that that is still the case. It is certain, however, that no future discovery will ever confirm "intelligent design" —a logical fallacy on its face and quite beyond confirmation of any kind! Theories explain "facts" but facts can often confirm good theories as "fact”, just as facts have confirmed both Darwin and Einstein.

"Facts" tend to be narrowly phrased; theories, by contrast, embrace a wide but finite set of related facts. Darwin and the sciences that followed him are entirely consistent with new discoveries in the field of genetics. [See: Science and Human Values, Jacob Bronowski]

Intelligent design is of a religious nature and people have a First Amendment right to believe it just as I have a First Amendment right not to believe it. I have a First Amendment right to debunk it if I can. And I can! Intelligent Design is bad theory because it explains absolutely nothing and raises other issues which are beyond scientific explanation, thus, a violation of Occam's Razor. Implied it the name "Intelligent Design' is an 'Intelligent Designer'. Who is this 'intelligent designer'? If nothing living or intelligent exists without having been designed first by an 'intelligent designer', then who designed the designer? Who designed the designer of the designer ad infinitum? In short, 'intelligent design' explains nothing; it merely postpones the inevitable, putting at the end of an infinite but meaningless string. Moreover, an unanswerable question which assumes a designer, Intelligent Design is a circulus in probando fallacy. People are free to believe fallacies, but they must not be free to impose them upon other people —especially at tax payer expense!

A fact, for example, is the equation that describes the acceleration of falling objects; examples of theory are both the Newtonian and the Einsteinian view of "gravitation" —seen differently by both. The entire science of genetics confirms Darwin who, interestingly, did not have the benefit of Mendel's research when he wrote Origin of the Species and the The Descent of Man. It was Mendel's research that described the very mechanism by which Darwin’s “traits” are passed on to succeeding generations. Accurate predictions are, in themselves, evidence in support of theories. [See: Evolution in Action, Julian Huxley]

Evolution is often considered to be so true as to be a trivial tautology: what survives survives. Critics of Darwin will often cite the tautology though it does not support them; it supports Darwin. Species which survive, in fact, pass on their genes as well as the random mutations of those genes. This is quite beyond debate. Every farmer who has bred for specific characteristics knows the truth of it. Every cowboy will tell you that if you kill a slow roach, you improve the breed.

Evolution! Adaptation! Natural Selection!

Critics of Darwin raise a strawman. They say that "survival of the fittest" is a circular argument: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest. There are a couple of problems with that:

1. Darwin did not use the term "survival of the fittest"! That dubious honor belongs to Herbert Spencer, a "Social Darwinist" who never understood Darwin, nor was he "social"!
2. When the term "natural selection" is more properly substituted, the argument is not circular and would be so only if the invalid conclusion that "only the fittest survive" is added! The invalid value judgment –survival of the fittest –is falsely attributed to Darwin. Darwin merely described an observed process and gave it a 'name'. He did not attach a 'value judgment' to it as his critics have claimed.

The proponents of "intelligent design" have erected several such straw men. Evolution, for example, has nothing to do with "coming down from the trees". [See: Richard Leakey's "The Origin of Humankind" ; also: Answers to Creationist Nonsense!]

It has been said that no one has yet produced a new specie by selection. But, indeed, farmers have done precisely that! Consider wheat! Wheat does not grow in the wild. Obviously related to ancient grasses, wheat is clearly the result of an ancient application of "artificial selection." Had wheat evolved naturally, it would be found growing wild like prairie grass. But it isn't and it didn't. It is nothing less than the result of an very ancient application of 'artificial selection' in which was 'created' over time an entirely new species.

Social Darwinism, clearly, is one of many ideas that have harmed mankind. It has provided a rationalization for the perpetual and quite deliberate impoverishment of large segments of our society and, insidiously, it has done so with a baseless theory that is fallaciously associated with Darwin.

In simpler terms, the philosophical basis for the American right wing is this:

"Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons...then let them die and decrease the surplus population."

—Scrooge

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Bad Faith and Dead Kennedys

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

When Galileo was compelled to recant, it is said that he muttered inaudibly under his breath: "...but it does move". Earth, of course. The Catholic Church had maintained its doctrine of an unmoving Earth in unmoving space, from a noumenal 'God's eye view'. I may recant if someone holds a gun on me, but I will always be in danger of muttering too loudly and blowing my cover. Galileo was threatened with death.

If I should be compelled to recant my liberal, progressive views of both politics and metaphysics, it will be because the American right wing will have created and enforced a dictatorship of both the very stupid and those who choose to be ignorant, a 'faith based dictatorship' , a 'faith based tyranny'.

Those who know better but rationalize their accommodation with such a dictatorship epitomize what Existentialists call 'bad faith'. Any school curriculum, any dictatorship derived from either deliberate ignorance or 'bad faith' must be opposed, nipped in the bud, eventually overthrown, crushed and replaced upon true democratic and egalitarian principles subject to reality checks, pragmatic expectations, good sense, good faith.

Belief in God is one of many forms of "bad faith" (mauvais foi). Bad faith, according to Sartre, is the human attempt to escape from freedom and responsibility — and from the anguish, forlornness, and despair that are the existential consequences of freedom and responsibility in a world without God. This escape [or] evasion may take place through the vain attempt of theistic religion to synthesize the in-itself with the for-itself in the concept of God

--Notes on Sartre

My views are entirely consistent with religion based upon 'good faith'. Is there such a religion? I am at odds with 'bad faith'. Faith, itself, does not require proof or even meaningful sentences. Faith is just that: faith. Logically, 'certitude' --which is certainly the best word to describe the more militant fundamentalist churches --is inconsistent with faith, though fundamentalists claim to have it. They don't. They have certitude which is inconsistent with faith,

One cannot have faith if one is certain and if one is certain faith is not required. Many modern fundamentalists profess a 'faith' called Christianity but insist that the tenets of that 'faith' are 'factual' and must, therefore be taught in public schools at public expense. If that were true, why do evangelists preach 'faith' under tents and/or super churches? Which 'way' do they prefer their fundamentalist Christianity? Forced upon a populace or freely chosen by free people?

'Militant Christians like Sarah Palin cannot have it both ways. Either their beliefs are a matter of faith and therefore inappropriate in a science curriculum. Or they are a matter of truth or falsity: if proven true, they are taught! If proven false, they are banned from public schools for that reason alone. For that reason alone the teaching of a religious dogma in any guise is inappropriate in a science classroom.

By definition, religion must not be militant. When it is, it ceases to be religion. Even the fundamentalist baptist church I grew up in 'preached' that the acceptance of Christ must be chosen freely! It follows, then, that if coerced or induced through brainwashing or social pressure, the choice is not free. Like a bad vaccination, it doesn't 'take'. Religious views of any sort may be taught dispassionately in Anthropology curricula. It is completely inappropriate, however, to teach in public tax supported school systems any religion as anything other than a sociological or anthropological phenomenon.

That brings up the matter of William Jennings Bryan who was, in many respects, a very admirable and honest person. But at Dayton, TN he supported efforts of the state to impose upon a curriculum a religious agenda. As I have pointed out: by definition, 'faith' cannot be imposed. Any oath imposed by law or coerced at the point of a gun or threat of excommunication is invalid. The very notion is self-contradictory.

A more recent example is Sarah Palin who has a record of trying to put 'creationists' on School Boards so that local school districts may be forced to teach 'creationism', a pseudo science which has no business in a public school system. This is not a matter of faith; said 'creationists' believe their theory to be fact not merely the religious faith that their acts seem designed to conceal. They have made this a political issue! It is now fair game for debate, fair game for richly deserved ridicule, fair game for uncompromising opposition, fair game for unapologetic scientific refutation.

As John McCain sought the Presidency, Cafferty said of Sarah Palin "this woman is one 72 year old's heartbeat away from the White House and if that doesn't scare you it should." It is no less frightening than the inquisition, no less frightening than the Pope who forced Galileo to recant, no less frightening than a bad ruling in Dayton, TN where Clarence Darrow had defended the rights of a young teacher to present to his classes the Darwinian point of view.

As 'science', the 'creationist' ideology is easily disproved. David Dawkins was challenged recently to prove creationism false! I do not recall Dawkins' response but my own was but one sentence: if we can look up at the sky at night and see Andromeda, 'creationists' are wrong! Andromeda has been proven to be some 2 million light years distant. This result can be duplicated easily enough by scientists but even amateur astronomers can achieve the same confirmation. With a bit of Trig and parallax, the distance to Andromeda can be determined even by amateur astronomers. We see Andromeda as it was some 2 million years ago; therefore, the creationist belief that the universe is very young and the earth itself just six thousand years old is very, very wrong. To make the point: if we can see Andromeda at all, 'creationism' is not only wrong, it is not science ---but faith. At last, every galaxy and every nebula, every object seen in the Hubble Deep Space photo to the right utterly disproves Sarah Palin and her followers and it does so decisively. There are many more objects much more distant than Andromeda and they are easily discerned by the Hubble telescope. That we can see them, Palin is disproved.

The 'creationist' position with regard to the teaching of 'creationism' in public schools is a straw man. Every curriculum I have ever seen teaches all science as method, theory and verification. If it does not do this, it is not science. But creationism is not science, not even scientific theory, subject not to verification but religion, accepted upon 'faith' and requiring no confirmation as a result of observation and scientific method.

Because of the genius of our founders, people are free to act upon their religious convictions and may worship in the church of their choice –or not! Nevertheless, a 'religious conviction' must never be confused with a verifiable fact. A religious conviction must never be taught or compelled of anyone at tax payer expense.

There are many things in which I have faith. But, I would hope never to make the mistake of trying to prosecute those do not share my faith. In the meantime, both of us are free to argue until the last dying, red sunset.

While the Left has historically challenged us to think for ourselves in matters of science and reason, the right wing aligns with superstition, certitude and the authoritarian imposition of both. That is the very definition of 'right wing'. One is what what does and 'right wingers' in almost every instance oppose experiment, pragmatism, science and the corollaries --free speech and inquiry. Right wingers oppose, therefore, the very tenets upon which Western Civilization rests.

I respect those who profess a faith in 'good faith'. Jean-Paul Sartre and Bertolt Brecht addressed what it means to have integrity far more persuasively than any 'bible thumping' fundamentalist preacher that I had been forced, as a child, to endure. Both Sartre and Brecht addressed the issue of bad faith, essentially, the 'condition' in which an individual appropriates a false notion of self and as an inevitable result, the world. Bertolt Brecht summed it up bluntly: "A man who does not know the truth is just an idiot but a man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a crook". The fashion photographer Richard Avedon was more succinct: "You cannot expect another man to carry your shit!"


The GOP --as a whole --is premised upon 'bad faith' derived either from 'religion' espoused in 'bad faith' or GOP exploitation of religion to get votes. The names Reagan and Bush come to mind. To that extent much or all organized religion in America --especially the 'super churches' -- is but a mass manifestation of 'bad faith'. I believe it to be dangerous and subversive.

People do not seek religion because they wish to be moral. People seek religion because they are fearful –fearful of truth, fearful of responsibility, fearful of dying! I doubt there is any statistical correlation between the espousal of religion and morality except the incidental one that in order to pretend to be moral, you cannot afford to be caught being immoral. Many a tel-evangelist has been caught with his pants down or fly undone having earlier told his 'flock' to keep their own zipped up!

I am in good company when criticized for raising doubts among the faithful. Upon his conviction on similar charges, Socrates was forced to drink hemlock. He might have saved himself had he recanted --a tactic favored by the establishment. The tactic is a Faustian bargain in which one trades his soul for his life. Because he believed that "a man's soul is his self" –an existentialist point of view --St. Thomas More turned down the offer. In Robert Bolt's great play A Man for All Seasons, More tells his daughter, Meg:

"...when a man takes an oath, Meg, he's holding his own self in his own hands. Like water and if he opens his fingers - he needn't hope to find himself again".

A description of 'bad faith'.

Later, when More is sold out by the ambitious Richard Rich: "Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... But for Wales ----?"

Another great existentialist play from the period is Jean Anouilh's Becket; ou l'honneur de Dieu. As the title suggests, Becket, having first served his King with distinction, found his 'honor' in the service of "God". To act contrary to that would have been, for Becket, the supreme act of 'bad faith'. Forced to make the existential choice, Becket chose the honor of God above his duty to his King. Simplistically, he lost his life --murdered in the Cathedral --but saved his soul. By contrast, poor Galileo saved only his life.

I saw both 'Beckett' and 'A Man for All Seasons' in the same year in which I heard Stokely Carmichael address an audience at Cullen Auditorium on the University of Houston campus. It was historic --Stokely Carmichael's promise to keep alive the revolution that the assassinations of RFK and Martin Luther King Jr seemingly ended. With them, the 'dream' died.

JFK could have, might have made the Faustian bargain with the Bush crime family that even then, via the Sr Bush, directed the CIA effort against Cuba. Instead, JFK refused to provide air cover for the abortive 'Bay of Pigs', a CIA operation. He also promised to 'smash the CIA into a thousand pieces'. Whomever benefited from the murder of JFK is guilty of it. With some effort and the utter rejection of the obvious cover stories, JFKs killers would most certainly have been brought to justice. The guilty are always most motivated to lie about a crime and the most pernicious lie about the JFK assassination is the magic bullet theory.

RFK threatened the same people. Just recently, a BBC documentary established that RFKs 'killers' were most certainly CIA. Martin Luther King, of course, represented the 'black' revolution that would have rocked the establishment. He too was a threat to the CIA. Many years later, a little known self-professed 'liberal', Steve Kangas, would publish to his website, 'Liberal Resurgent', an article exposing a sordid history of of CIA crimes and interventions from Guatamala to Cuba, from Iran-Contra to Watergate. The article is entitled: The Origin of the Overclass. Kangas would be found dead in a men's room in the Pittsburgh office building owned and occupied by Richard Mellon Scaife, the spider behind the effort to impeach Bill Clinton. Kangas, it is said, committed suicide by shooting himself twice in the mouth! It is a story that one must accept upon bad faith.

All of this 'odd' history is explained easily enough: coincidence. It is only coincidence that the dead Kennedys had also been a threat to the CIA. It is only coincidence that Kangas had zeroed in on conservative crimes and BS just as Scaife was bankrolling a jihad against Clinton. It was just coincidence that Bush Sr was hanging around the front entrance to the Texas School Book depository just minutes prior to the murder of JFK. It was just coincidence that tramps looking like E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis et al were arrested for just hanging around the rail road tracks that run north and south just behind the grassy knoll. It was just coincidence that Martin Luther King Jr seemed to have prophesied his own death with his 'I Have a Dream' speech.

If a man's soul is his 'self', then one may never find it in 'organized religion', a standardized tour through preconceived dogma. By definition, every individual must take this journey and experience it for him/herself. Because it differs with each individual, it cannot become scripture. However, the 'form' seems always the same: the 'individual, in crisis, is given a choice: his life or his soul. It is no coincidence that this 'form' is likewise the structure of almost every work of literature worth reading or watching. It was Jean-Paul Sartre who summed it all up in one sentence: 'A man is nothing else but what he makes of himself!'

Darwin, Darwin and Dayton

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Ideas That Have Helped and Ideas That Have Harmed Mankind

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

It is said that Galileo recanted but muttered under his breath --"but it does move". Galileo had sinned against the Church. He had dared to indulge an independent opinion, a 'right' that Americans have sadly taken for granted. Whether Galileo was more fortunate than Giordano Bruno who was burned is a matter of debate. In England, Sir Thomas More was given the choice between conscience or King. More chose conscience and paid for it with his life.

Just as we moderns had grown complacent, a recent regime forced upon us an existentialist choice. Bush forever divided America. Those Americans supporting his regime are responsible for the choice they made; they are morally complicit in Bush's crimes of aggressive war and mass murder. Bush himself can and should be charged with crimes that are under US federal statutes punishable by death.

I may recant if someone has a gun to my head, but, like Galileo, I may be in danger of muttering audibly and thus defeating the purpose of muttering. At a time when the religious right either hires or creates phony 'think tanks' to promote creationist and/or 'intelligent-design' propaganda designed to pass muster with the likes of Sarah Palin, my views are entirely consistent with any religion based upon 'faith'. What the 'faithful' have forgotten is that 'faith' does not require proof or even meaningful sentences. Nevertheless, I still support the right of religious folk to espouse nonsense though, strictly speaking, a 'belief' is nonsense if logically impossible. Therefore, I believe it logically impossible to believe 'nonsense'. There is a difference between merely professing a belief and believing.

'Certitude' --the best word to describe the more militant fundamentalist churches --is inconsistent with faith. If one is 'certain' upon irrefutable proof faith, then, is not merely unnecessary but impossible. Coercion of any sort, including social pressure, is likewise incompatible with 'faith'. The word 'faith' connotes doubt. Those who are without doubt are without faith. Faith is what those who have doubts hang onto. Put another way --those who have 'faith' do not 'know' and those who 'know' have no need of faith. Faith is of all types. As a validictorian speaker at my high school put it: even the atheist has 'faith'. Some atheists have faith that there is no hell to be paid for 'denying' the 'religion' that many had tried to force upon them.

True religion by definition, cannot be militant and if militant ceases to be religion. A cult, perhaps, but not religion. There are no Christian soldiers. Conversions upon the point of a gun or sword 'don't take'! Even the fundamentalist baptist church I grew up in 'preached' that the acceptance of Christ must be chosen freely! Coercion or brainwashing is self-defeating, destroying 'souls' --not saving them. Like a bad vaccination, it doesn't 'take'. The excesses of both Protestant and Catholic faiths throughout European history are all the more tragic because neither side occupied moral high ground; all persecutions and horrific tortures were utterly baseless both logically and morally. Religion is a form of insanity in an individual and when shared among many throughout society --mass insanity. Religion has harmed humankind.

That brings up the matter of William Jennings Bryan, a self-professed 'fundamentalist Christian', who was, in many respects, a very admirable and honest person, perhaps a 'Ron Paul' of his day. But at Dayton, TN he supported efforts of the state to impose upon a curriculum a religious agenda. By definition, 'faith' cannot be imposed. Any oath imposed by law or coerced at the point of a gun or threat of excommunication is invalid. The very notion is self-contradictory. [See: Darrow, Darwin and Dayton] A more recent example is Sarah Palin who has a record trying to put 'creationists' on School Boards.

This is not a matter of faith. Certainly --for creationists, 'creationism' is not a matter of fact; they believe their theory to be fact. But 'creationism' is not subject to methodical verification as is the case with science. It is the process of verification that defines science --not the end result of either research or verification. 'Creationists' have forgotten that lesson --if they had ever learned it to beging with. Creationism is bad religion and even worse science. Both 'intelligent design' and 'creationism' are dogma --not science. Science is neither a body of knowledge nor a finite set of unchanging facts. It is, rather, a process by which meaningful statements, knowledge, sweeping theories are subject to rigorous empirical test. Both 'Intelligent Design' and 'Creationism' have harmed humankind.

The 'creationist' ideology espoused most recently by Sarah Palin is easily disproved. She believes the world is but 6,000 years old and human beings walked with or beside Dinosaurs. Simply, if we see the galaxy in Andromeda, 'creationists' are wrong! Andromeda has been proven to be some 2 million light years distant. We see Andromeda as it was 2 million years ago. If we can see it at all, 'creationism' is not only wrong, it is not science. Nor --because it is often coerced --is it faith. It harms humankind.

We can see Andromeda. In fact, I found Andromeda as a kid growing up in West Texas. I had nothing more than a good pair of binoculars that my uncle had given me and a star map. It is the only Galaxy that is visible to the naked eye. The idea that we are capable of discovering 'truth' for ourselves has helped humankind!

If we had discovered no other object, we must conclude, therefore, that the universe is at least two million years old. Of course, there are many more objects that are much, much more distant than Andromeda and they are easily discerned by the Hubble telescope, a bit more advanced than a simple pair of hand me down 7x35 binoculars duct taped to a half-assed tripod. With a bit of Trig and parallax, the distance to Andromeda can be determined even by amateur astronomers.

The 'creationist' position with regard to the teaching of 'creationism' in public schools is a straw man. Every curriculum I have ever seen teaches all science as theory. But creationism is not science and is not scientific theory. It has no place in a public school. Scientific theories are subject to proof. A religious 'creationist' would never subject any religious dogma to 'proof'. I believe that dogma has harmed humankind.

Because of the genius of our founders, people are free to act upon their religious convictions and may worship in whatever church they might prefer. But a 'religious conviction' must never be confused with a verifiable fact.

There are many things in which I have faith. But, I would hope never to make the mistake of trying to prosecute those do not share my faith. In the meantime, both of us are FREE to argue until the last red, dying sunset. It has been said that "... the Left -- from the beginnings of humankind -- has challenged us to think for ourselves, in both matters of reason and faith, while respecting those who have proven themselves advanced in studies or achievements in various fields:" I think that is our role. I respect those who profess a faith in 'good faith' but not those of 'bad faith' and its hand-maidens --dogma and superstition.

Jean-Paul Sartre and Bertolt Brecht addressed what it means to have integrity far more persuasively than any 'bible thumping' fundamentalist preacher that I had been forced, as a child, to endure. Both Sartre and Brecht addressed the issue of bad faith, essentially, the 'condition' in which an individual appropriates a false notion of self. Simply, those of 'bad faith' are not only lying to others, they are lying to themselves. Bertolt Brecht summed it up bluntly: "A man who does not know the truth is just an idiot but a man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a crook". The photographer Richard Avedon was even more direct: "You cannot expect another man to carry your shit!"

I suspect that the GOP --as a whole --is premised upon 'bad faith', hence my antipathy. Moreover, I suspect that much of this is derived either from 'religion' espoused in 'bad faith' or GOP exploitation of religion to get votes. [Reagan and Bush Jr most prominently] To the extent that organized religion in America (especially the 'super churches' of the 'super fundamentalist evangelical movement) is but a mass manifestation of 'bad faith' the exploitation may be mutual.

One must not conclude that because of my views with regard to religion that I am immoral or amoral. I parted company with religion because I wished to be moral. Had I wanted to be immoral, I could very have remained in the church that my parents tried, in vain, to force me into. Since that time, I have shunned many another harmful cult.

Statistically, there is either no correlation between the espousal of religion and morality or none at all. Moral people may be found among atheists and agnostics. Therefore, one concludes, people do not seek religion because they wish to be moral. The histories of almost every organized religion is proof of that. Indeed, if people were inherently and naturally moral, there may have never existed a 'need' for religion.

I have been criticized for raising doubts among the faithful! I am in good company. Upon his conviction on similar charges, Socrates was forced to drink hemlock. He might have saved himself had he 're-canted' --a tactic favored by every 'establishment' including both Catholic and Protestant denominations. The tactic is a Faustian bargain in which one trades one's soul for one's life. Because he believed that "a man's soul is his self" [ the existentialist point of view ], St. Thomas More, like Socrates, refused the 'offer' that it was believed he 'could not refuse'. In Robert Bolt's great play "A Man for All Seasons", More tells his daughter, Meg: "...when a man takes an oath, Meg, he's holding his own self in his own hands. Like water and if he opens his fingers - he needn't hope to find himself again". That, I believe, is a good description of 'bad faith' as Sartre defined it. Later, when More is 'sold out' by the ambitious Richard Rich: "Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... But for wales ----?"

Another great existentialist play from the period is Jean Anouilh's Becket: ou l'honneur de Dieu. As the title suggests, Becket, having first served his King with distinction, found his 'honor' in the service of "God". To act contrary to that would have been, for Becket, the supreme act of 'bad faith'.

Forced to make the existential choice, Becket chose the honor of God above his duty to his King. Simplistically, he lost his life but saved his soul. Poor Galileo! He saved only his life. I saw both movies in the same year in which I heard Stokely Carmichael address an audience at Cullen Auditorium on the University of Houston campus. It was historic --Stokely Carmichael's promise to keep alive the revolution that the assassinations of RFK and Martin Luther King Jr the following year would end. With them, the 'dream' died. Carmichael electrified the audience when he proclaimed: "I do not need a law passed by the white man to tell me that I am free! I was BORN free! I AM Free!" I am of Native American descent and likewise free! I hold this nation responsible for the genocide it perpetrated upon my ancestors. I am not subject to unjust laws of any source and most certainly not those of a regime that was illegitimate in its inception and criminal in its execution.

JFK could have made the Faustian bargain with the Bush crime family that was even then, via the Sr Bush, directing the CIA effort against Cuba. RFK threatened the same people.

Recently, a BBC documentary established that RFKs 'killers' were most certainly the CIA. Martin Luther King, of course, represented the 'black' revolution that would have rocked the establishment. King's ideas have survived him and helped humankind.

If one's soul is one's 'self', then one may never hope find it in 'organized religion', a standardized journey through preconceived dogma. By definition, every individual must take this journey and experience it. Because it differs with each individual, it cannot become scripture. The 'form' seems always the same: the 'individual, in crisis, is given a choice: his life or his soul. It is no coincidence that this 'form' becomes the structure of almost every work of literature worth reading or watching.

At the heart of a growing divide between the secular quest for knowledge and the religious conservation of dogma are two contrary views of the universe. 'Particle' and 'wave' are just words to describe a 'noumenon' --as Immanuel Kant would have called things as they just are --before names are stuck on them, things NOT as they are perceived or measured but thing in the state of mere 'being'. Kant may have referred to it as a God's eye point of view though his view of 'God' is probably not shared by American fundamentalists.

The universe itself is the logical consequence of uncertainty. A 'particle' is the 'snapshot' we make of a 'wave'. Waves, by definition, are manifested only over time --a noumenal existence in motion. Certainly --Heisenberg's 'uncertainty principles' is verbally stated thus: a 'particle's position or its velocity may be measured at any given instant but not both at the same instant.' To use the photographic analogy, a 'particle' is a 'high shutter speed snapshot' of a wave; the 'wave' itself is like a 'time exposure' --a 'wave' at longer exposures, a 'particle' at much higher speed exposures.

I like the photographic analogy. My photograph of 'something' (a noumenal existence of some sort) that makes a looping motion as it moves from 'point' A to point 'B' will look like a SOLID object if my shutter speed is slow enough. The same 'object' making the same looping motion while moving from the same point 'A' to point 'B' will look completely different if photographed at 1,1000th of a second. Depending upon how quickly the 'object' is moving, my photograph might even suggest the shape of the actual 'object'. The faster my shutter speed, the closer I get to the actual shape of an actual object but at the expense of being able to determine its speed. By measuring the 'blur' against a known 'shutter speed', I might have determined the object's speed relative to the camera. A 'looping' object may describe a 'sine wave' as it moves. For example, we think of the moon as orbiting the earth. But because the earth is itself orbiting the sun, the moon's orbit about the earth is wave-like, weaving its way to and fro as the earth proceeds in its orbit about the sun.

Some orbits may be 'frozen' sine waves. In the Neils Bohr model, an electron is said to orbit the nucleus of an atom. But as both nucleus and electron are in motion, the 'orbit' is better described as a wave. Is it particle or is it wave? It depends on how you look at it. It is both depending upon how it is 'looked at' or, to use the analogy, how it is 'photographed'. Electrons are particles if their position is pinned down, but waves otherwise. At the quantum level, particles are just smaller blurs. One wonders if anything really exists at all. To use the photographic analogy again --what shows up on the 'photograph' depends upon the shutter speed. Slow shutter speeds make blurry photographs in which a small object may appear to be large and blurry. Specifically, a moving object photographed at a slow shutter speed is 'larger' in the direction of its movement. A very fast shutter speed will result in a smaller, sharper object. Both its location and shape are determined with greater accuracy. Similarly, Heisenberg's equation describes the relationship between the accuracy of a position vis a vis a velocity.

A precise determination of velocity can only be made at the expense of a precise determination of the object's position. As a very small child, I asked my father during a car trip how fast we were going. He replied that we were going 50 mph. I asked what that meant. He explained that we would travel fifty miles over the course of an hour. Being a kid, I shot back: "But how fast are we going RIGHT NOW?" That's what Heisenberg dared to ask: how fast is that particle going right now? He concluded that you cannot know both a particle's speed and its position at the same time.

The scientist must approach the study of the universe with the naivete of a child, daring to ask questions that are free of guile and preconceived notions. It was a child, I believe, who called Kant's 'noumena' a 'God's eye' view of the world. A jaded adult might lose amid a gestalt of prejudices and pre-conceived notions a perspective so fresh and transparent.

Over the course of an hour long trip, a car is a fourth dimensional shape that has manifested over the trip's duration of one hour. That 'shape' may resemble the line that is drawn on a map. Over the duration of an infinitesimal fraction of a second --a high shutter speed snap shot --the car's 'shape' will be the one you recognize as the object that sits in your garage.

Two astronomers –Hulse (a student) and his professor Taylor were studying a radio star pair at the huge Arecibo radio observatory in Puerto Rico (it’s 305 meters across). The star pair they observed was coalescing and the energy it was loosing during this coalescence was exactly as predicted by Einstein. They received the Nobel Prize in 1993 and from then on the skepticism evaporated and all scientists believed that, due to this indirect evidence, gravitational waves did indeed exist.

--Robert M. L. Baker, Jr;.Layperson’s Description of High-Frequency Gravitational Waves or “HFGWs”Lecture given at the Science and New Technology Special Interest Group at The California Club, Los Angeles, California, USA. October 17, 2006

Raymond Chiao remembers the day, during his childhood in Shanghai, when his brother built a crystal radio set and invited him to try it. "When I put the earphones on, I heard voices," he says. "That experience had something to do with my going into physics." Chiao has since become well known for his work in quantum optics at the University of California at Berkeley. Now he is preparing an experiment that, if it works (a not insubstantial if), would be the biggest invention since radio. Chiao argues that a superconductor could transform radio waves, light or any other form of electromagnetic radiation into gravitational radiation, and vice versa, with near perfect efficiency.

Such a feat sounds as amazing as transmuting lead into gold--and about as plausible. "It is fair to say that if Ray observes something with this experiment, he will win the Nobel Prize," says superconductivity expert John M. Goodkind of the University of California at San Diego. "It is probably also fair to say that the chances of his observing something may be close to zero."

GRAVITY TRANSDUCER would reflect incoming electromagnetic radiation (green) as gravitational waves (orange). The radiation must be polarized in a so-called quadrupole pattern.

--Scientific American - May, 2002 , A Philosopher's Stone

I like the description of 'gravity waves' as ripples in the fabric of space-time. There are on the 'innertubes' some very interesting GIF animations of 'gravity waves' that have been rendered in 3-D graphics programs. These are, of course, representations in two dimensions of a fourth dimensional phenomenon. Thought of in that way, such a craft is a time machine where 'time' is the apparent motion seen in the interference patterns of two dissimilar gravity wave fronts. One gets the idea. Upon Captain Jean Luc Picard's command --engage --the Enterprise would begin a journey in 'warp drive'. If such a craft capable of exploiting the interference patterns generated by two or more dissimilar wave fronts is ever built, inter-stellar travel will allow one to surf the universe, catching a gravity wave and soaring off into space.

---

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Religion Under a False Flag

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

During the Bush regime, a GOP constituency of religious fanatics, fundamentalists, and deniers of science mounted a full-court press against the principles of Democracy and the enlightenment. They put forward a dark age agenda: 'Intelligent Design', a stealth religious ideology cooked up by right wing focus groups --not scientists. It is religion under a false flag.

The body of evidence supporting evolution is overwhelming though ignored, misstated and rationalized by those having a political agenda. There is evidence that it was concocted, full-cloth, by a right wing focus group. To be expected, scientific evolution, indeed, science in general, is opposed and mis-characterized by advocates of bigotry, superstition and faux science. Like Relativity, theories of evolution challenge common prejudices regarding humankind's place in the universe. Unlike Relativity --often abstract and impersonal --evolution challenges the individual's self-esteem but only in those cases in which that 'self-esteem' is dependent upon a 'personal relationship' with 'God'.

It is impossible to date the historical resistance of religious authority to reason, logic or science. Authority seems always to have resorted to propaganda, fallacy and force in defense of lies, shibboleth, and baseless theology. Socrates was found guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens, sentenced to drink hemlock, and thus became a martyr for the cause of free inquiry. The Catholic Church utilized the Holy Inquisition to "persuade" heretics and forced Galileo to 'recant' a position in which it was posited that the Earth 'moved' about the sun. Though they opposed the authority of Rome, Protestant reformers were no more friendly to scientific inquiry. John Calvin in Geneva and Martin Luther in Wittenberg were no more disposed to science than was Rome. Today, there are statistical correlations between religious belief and an alarming, rising number of "hate" crimes. I dare say that every lynching down south was done by 'God-fearin'' Christians who would have claimed that they were doing 'God's work'.

When the US House passed the "Defense of the Ten Commandments" amendment to the juvenile justice bill, zealots of the Religious Right chanted the mantra: the USA is a Christian Nation! A press conference was attended by Gary Bauer and Rep. Robert Aderholt (R, Alabama), the sponsor of the amendment. Aderhold said:

The Ten Commandments represent the very cornerstone of the values this nation was built upon, and the basis of our legal system here in America".

And on various message boards, a chant, a mantra was taken up:

The legal foundation of this nation is the Ten Commandments

First of all, the 'religious right' appears not to have bothered reading the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

--US Constitution, Bill of Rights, Second Amendment

An "...establishment of religion" is defined as follows:

...a church that is recognized by law, and sometimes financially supported, as the official church of a nation. Also called state church. Cf. national church.

Therefore, it is a violation of Constitutional law should tax revenues find themselves in church coffers. "Faith based charities"—like “intelligent design”—are therefore religious in nature. Surely that fact is not lost on the Bush administration which clearly refers to them as "faith based". A program cannot be, at once, "faith-based" and "secular". But that is precisely the issue that Bush folk have tried to blur or perhaps have both ways. What is a faith based organization apart from its affiliation with an established church? And what is a church if not a place where religion is practiced?

George Washington also chimed in on the issue:

"The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine."

--George Washington, Treaty of Tripoli

And it was James Madison --author of the First Amendment, indeed, the Bill of Rights --who penned the very words: "Congress shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion..."

"The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, It ill never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

--John Adams

John Adams —one of the chief rabble rousers —was witness to and instigator at the founding of this nation. He was in a position to know whether or not it was founded upon Christian principles. Secondly--the 'Ten Commandants' are not exclusively Christian and believing in them does not make one a Christian. Moreover, the validity of the injunction: 'Thou shalt not kill' is not exclusively Christian nor is belief in the Christian faith required to subscribe to it. Moreover, the commandment so overly broad as to be meaningless. Kill what? Are only other human beings covered or does the prohibition extend to every living thing? Will this provision apply to robots when they achieve consciousness?

In constitutional terms, charitable choice boils down to this: religious organizations can receive government money to provide public services without sacrificing their religious character provided (1) the funding scheme does not somehow give bonus points to organizations simply because they are religious, and (2) individual users of the services have meaningful choices among providers and are only exposed to religious providers voluntarily. It’s an approach to First Amendment interpretation that over the last two decades has been gaining ground at the Supreme Court, evidenced most dramatically by this summer’s landmark decision blessing the use of education vouchers at religious schools.

- Dennis R. Hoover, Faith Based Administration

It is doubtful that any of Bush's "faith based initiatives" money has gone to Jewish, Islamic, or, indeed, any organization but Evangelical Christian organizations!

"Bush's faith-based initiative also privileges Christianity above all other religions. After sifting through every grant announcement I could get my hands on from Bush's faith-based offices, I couldn't find a single grant issued to a religious charity that wasn't Christian -- no Jewish charities, no Muslim charities, nothing. And when I spoke with Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, he confirmed that no direct federal grants from his program had gone to a non-Christian religious group. This kind of religious favoritism is exactly what the Constitution's establishment clause was put in place to prevent."

- Esther Kaplan, Journalist and community activist

Unless you are a bible thumping evangelical, tax money finding its way into the coffers of Evangelical Christian organizations with which you most certainly disagree is theft! Unless you subscribe fully to fundamentalist Christianity, you have been robbed! If you are Hindu, Jewish, or Kabbalist, you have been robbed! Clearly --GOP 'Faith Based Initiatives' are blatant and arrogant violations of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. They fly in the face of Founders' intentions. They are an insult to the intelligence of every truly patriotic American.

The Bush administration was the culmination of an insidious sea change in how this nation had viewed its own history. The founders were 'deists' and with stunning solidarity and an equally stunning dearth of dissent affirmed the proposition that the US was not founded upon the Christian religion, indeed, any religion whatsoever. The founders cited no other authority for their work but the people themselves. God does not get even a footnote. The US Constitution is not a "Ten Commandants" believed handed down by God.

The US Constitution is the work of men, specifically, a convention of elected delegates to Philadelphia in 1787. If the Constitution should prove faulty, unworkable, or, in any other way, impractical, the people themselves bear the responsibility. There is no use blaming God. 'He' had nothing to do with it.

The US Constitution is an existentialist document, a matter of deliberate choice by a people facing up to the facts of their founding and willing to take responsibility for the future they believed they could create or shape. If God was to be summoned, it would be done by individuals acting alone and within the dictates and limits of their consciences. It would not be done by a theocracy; it would not be done by an act of Congress; it would not be done by a single article or phrase in the new charter; it would not be done by a latter day Calvin or Luther. It would not be done by a 'state' to whom people were subservient due to theology.

The US Constitution is significant by what it does not do. It does not cite --as its source of authority --a transcendent being. It does not favor the Christian religion in any language. It does not cite or reference the works of theologians, saints, or prophets. It does not anoint a "King" who, in turn, cites a "divine right" to rule. The word "Christian" is not used at any time in any way. Nor "Muslim", nor "Buddhist", "nor "Hindu", nor "Kabbalist". Nor does the Constitution mandate the worship of any sort of any deity of any religion. No article mandates a day of worship. No article mandates a liturgy. The names of deities, religions or sects are not mentioned nor are they cited as sources of power or authority.

The word "myth" is too kind for latter ideologues who persist in trying to rewrite our nation's history. Assertions that our legal system is founded on the Christian Bible is a deliberate lie manufactured and perpetrated by American fundamentalists like Pat Robertson and other evangelists who have made huge fortunes exploiting irrational belief systems, misconceptions, deliberate lies, naive myths and psychotic fantasies.

Neither a State nor the Federal Government can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither a State nor the Federal Government, openly or secretly, can participate in the affairs of any religious organization and vice versa. "In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect `a wall of separation between church and State.' " Everson, 330 U. S., at 16, quoting Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 164 (1879). The dissenters agreed: "The Amendment's purpose . . . was to create a complete and permanent separation of the spheres of religious activity and civil authority by comprehensively forbidding every form of public aid or support for religion." 330 U.S., at 31-32 (Rutledge, J., dissenting, joined by Frankfurter, Jackson, and Burton, JJ.).

- The U.S. Supreme Court, ROBERT E. LEE, individually and as PRINCIPAL OF NATHAN BISHOP MIDDLE SCHOOL, et al., PETITIONERS v. DANIEL WEISMAN etc.

Following is the quote by Jefferson, referenced by the Justices, in which Jefferson referred to the "wall of separation" between church and state:

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should `make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State."

-- Thomas Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists, January 1, 1802

The justices have simply buttoned it all up. There is no ambiguity in the decision itself. There is most certainly none in Jefferson's phrase "wall of separation." We may, however, dispense with some of the persistent myths about our "Christian" founders. For a start, few (if any) were Christian. Many were deists. Others were, we suspect, atheists.

Deism is a religious philosophy and movement that became prominent in England, France, and the United States in the 17th and 18th centuries. Deists typically reject supernatural events (prophecy, miracles) and divine revelation prominent in organized religion, along with holy books and revealed religions that assert the existence of such things. Instead, deists hold that religious beliefs must be founded on human reason and observed features of the natural world, and that these sources reveal the existence of one God or supreme being.

- Wikipedia entry for "Deism"

Thomas Paine did say:

"I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

Thom Paine is not quoted by 'rightists' saying that he believed religions should interfere in the affairs of state. Rightists have not quoted Paine saying that he was opposed to the 'separation of church and state'. Rightists have not quoted Paine saying that he favored giving Christians preferential treatment over Muslims in programs called "Faith Based Initiatives". Moreover, Thomas Paine was not a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and, therefore, was not a 'founding father' however great his treatise: Common Sense.

Then, of course, there is the opinion of the man who has was and is called the Father of his Country, George Washington:

"The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine."

--George Washington

This sentiment would be echoed in the Treaty of Tripoli of 1797 to which the U.S. was signatory:

Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

--1797 Treaty of Tripoli

About that, Tom Peters writes:

Does the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli say that "The Government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion?" YES!

...

More generally, we can't imagine how the absence of Article 11 in the Arabic version effects [sic] the separationist argument. It was the English version of the treaty that was approved by President Adams and Secretary Pickering, and this version unquestionably contained Article 11. Similarly, when the Senate ratified the treaty, they did so knowing full well that the English version declared that the United States was not a Christian nation. The separationist implications of the treaty can't be escaped by arguing that the Arabic version may not have contained Article 11; the President, Secretary of State, and Senate thought it did, but approved the treaty anyway.

...

--Tom Peters, 1797 TREATY WITH TRIPOLI

For rational people, this debate is over. The case is closed. The separation of church is complete. And that is the law.

To bolster their case, accommodationists have produced reams of quotations from famous early Americans to the effect that religion is important to public life, or that the founders themselves were religious men. As we demonstrated elsewhere, some of these quotes are either fabricated or taken out of context. Others (as we suggest in this section) are taken from people who were either opponents of the Constitution (eg., Patrick Henry), or who played no role in the framing of the Constitution or other important American documents (eg., Daniel Webster). Finally, we argue that the overwhelming majority of these quotations are irrelevant to what's at issue in the separation debate: one can be religious, and even believe that religion is important for public life, without believing that the state should have the power to aid religion, either preferentially or non-preferentially. -

Separation of Church and State Homepage

Many fundamentalists have clearly demonstrated that they don't understand the terms 'founding father', 'framer' etc. Both terms refer only to those who attended and participated in the 'framing', the actual writing of the U.S. Constitution, that document which literally created the United States. Fundamentalists, ignorant of the most basic and essential facts of our history, apparently believe that any historical name --Paul Revere, Benjamin Franklin, Daniel Boone et al --are 'framers', 'founding fathers' etc. Not so! Only those participating in the creation of our nation at the Philadelphia Convention are 'founding fathers'.

Fundamentalists have lately tried a different tact, arguing that the 'wall of separation' is "one way". In other words, government may not prohibit or, in any way, interfere with religion but that religion may interfere with the functions of government. But which religion, I wonder, is allowed this 'privilege'? Islam? Uh huh! It is impossible to imagine the likes of Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell actively supporting the participation of 'Islamists' in the US government. Yet --that is but one reductio ad absurdum of their absurd and idiotic notion that the 'wall of separation' is 'one way'. Moreover, the late Steve Kangas asserts that that is an impossibility in any case. By definition, religious control i.e, "interference" with the "state" infringes upon the rights of other sects, atheists, deists, or agnostics. The best refutation, however, is found in a decision of the US Supreme Court:

Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between Church and State."

--The U.S. Supreme Court, ROBERT E. LEE, individually and as PRINCIPAL OF NATHAN BISHOP MIDDLE SCHOOL, et al., PETITIONERS v. DANIEL WEISMAN etc.

The Religious Right will often cite certain isolated professions of faith. In themselves, the quotes fall far short of proving that the founders had in mind founding the nation upon the Christian religion, indeed, a Christian theocracy. Jefferson, moreover, backed up with deeds his belief that there should be a "wall of separation" between church and state.

When Patrick Henry proposed to tax the citizens of Virginia in order to support "some form of Christian worship", Jefferson opposed it. Jefferson designed a bill for Religious Freedom which completely separated religion from government in Virginia. His bill passed while none of Henry's "theocratic" ideas were even introduced in either Virginia or the U.S. government.

The right, however, will cite other aspects of American history, the Pledge of Allegiance, for example. It must be pointed out, however, that the original pledge did not contain the words "under God". Those words were introduced much, much later at the insistence of the right wing and its addition to the pledge cannot possibly support the false position that the U.S. was, in any sense, founded upon any religious ideology whatsoever. Moreover, it was not until after the Civil War that U.S. currency had printed on it the words: "In God We Trust". Indeed, these words on a dollar cannot in any way support the right wing, fundamentalist position. In any case, some believe money to be 'evil'. As a child, I recall fundamentalist 'evangelists' screaming that it was easier for an elephant to pass through the eye of a needle than it would be for a rich man to enter the 'Kingdom of God'.

Nor can fundamentalists find support in a SCOTUS decision of 1892. In the case of Holy Trinity Church vs. United States, Justice David Brewer wrote in dicta that "this is a Christian nation." But Brewer wrote that in dicta i.e, a personal opinion. It is not a legal pronouncement. It does not establish case law. It does not support the religious agenda of the radical right. It does not have the force of law. Feeling obliged to explain, Brewer himself stated:

But in what sense can [the United States] be called a Christian nation? Not in the sense that Christianity is the established religion or the people are compelled in any manner to support it. On the contrary, the Constitution specifically provides that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.' Neither is it Christian in the sense that all its citizens are either in fact or in name Christians. On the contrary, all religions have free scope within its borders. Numbers of our people profess other religions, and many reject all.

--Supreme Court Justice David Brewer

It may be left to the scrappy John Adams to close the book on the absurd assertions of religious folk.

The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

--John Adams, "A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America" [1787-1788],

Though he had hopes that "...men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice", he foresaw the present debate. In doing so, he gave us the best ammunition against them. Reason! I cite his line "...it will never be pretended that any persons ... had interviews with the gods ...". It is interesting that as the 21st Century often seems in danger of slipping into a new dark age, the antidote is often found in the lucid minds of 18th Century statesmen --Jefferson, Washington, Adams et al.

Mixing governance with religion is a bad and discredited idea as evidenced by those who espouse it.

"The national government ... will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality."

--Adolf Hitler, Nazi Fuhrer

Hitler's remarks have been said in very nearly the same words by the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, John Ashcroft, Gary Bauer and George W. Bush --an American Taliban, an American Fourth Reich!

I refer interested readers to Joseph Storey's Commentaries on the Constitution - especially the significance he attributes to the Preamble which states:

"We the People of the United States, ... do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Significantly, the Preamble does not state that God ordained it, nor, indeed, any lawgiver but the people themselves. Nor is the Constitution based - as Gary Bauer had said - on the Ten Commandments. The "Ten Commandants" are not cited anywhere in the Constitution. Though it has the tone and voice of "Sacred Text" [See E.L Doctorow previously cited], the only authority cited by the Constitution is that of the people themselves. That is important. According to Joseph Story, a preamble may not enlarge or confer power that is not found in the body of the document:

§ 459. The importance of examining the preamble, for the purpose of expounding the language of a statute, has been long felt, and universally conceded in all juridical discussions. It is an admitted maxim in the ordinary course of the administration of justice, that the preamble of a statute is a key to open the mind of the makers, as to the mischiefs, which are to be remedied, and the objects, which are to be accomplished by the provisions of the statute.

. . .

§ 462. And, here, we must guard ourselves against an error, which is too often allowed to creep into the discussions upon this subject. The preamble never can be resorted to, to enlarge the powers confided to the general government, or any of its departments. It cannot confer any power per se; it can never amount, by implication, to an enlargement of any power expressly given. It can never be the legitimate source of any implied power, when otherwise withdrawn from the constitution. Its true office is to expound the nature, and extent, and application of the powers actually conferred by the constitution, and not substantively to create them.

--Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Stealth Ideology

The GOPs fundie base lapped it up, preferring to believe that the very worst 'President' in U.S. history George W. Bush --a war criminal and mass murderer --conducted daily "interviews" with God. Bush always implied that there was a special relationship between himself and a deity of his imagining, his psychosis, or his cunning manipulation of a 'base' that was easily duped. It was the basis of his would-be dictatorship! God (if he exists) had nothing to do with it, did not ordain it, did not consult the cabinet, nor Congress, no the Pentagon, nor K-street.

I am particularly interested in the timing of a 'stealth ideology', in fact, a phony ideology cooked up by a GOP/right wing/theocratic focus group who wish to 'get around' the separation of church. They came up with a phony science, in fact, a theocratic position disguised as science, a stealth ideology. It would be marketed as 'Intelligent Design'. A right wing 'think tank' forged what is now infamously called the 'wedge issue' which they attributed to the 'left' in an effort to discredit leftist criticism of 'Intelligent Design', a psuedo-science at beast, a work of crass, 'false flag' forgery at worst. "A giant urban legend", they call this so-called 'wedge document'. They flatter themselves. I learned about it on their own websites. No one on the "left" would have written it and even the Freep [Free Republic] --not the 'left' --says the Discovery Institute is the culprit. These idiots can't even get their stories straight!

A better word than giant is "conservative circle jerk"! What's typical of this camp fire coziness is the mutual satisfaction both conservative entities hope to get by blaming others for their crookery and/or idiocy.

All is done in the name of their search for absolute knowledge, a fool's errand if there ever was one. Warning: don't be fooled by the link on Freep that says "Evolution News". It goes straight to a Discovery Institute shill site, a "front" that has nothing to do with real or scientific theories about evolution. It's a typical right wing bait and switch.

Now --both sites blame the left! But for what? No one on the left wrote it; even Freep attributes the document to Discovery. But the left is supposed to have fallen for it!! Stop me, my sides are hurting!

It is fair to characterize Intelligent Design [ID] itself as nothing more than a public relations campaign if not a transparent hoax.

In 1999 someone posted on the internet an early fund raising proposal for discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture. Dubbed the “Wedge Document,” this proposal soon took on a life of its own, popping up in all sorts of places and eventually spawning what can only be called a giant urban legend. Among true-believers on the Darwinist fringe the document came to be viewed as evidence for a secret conspiracy to fuse religion with science and impose a theocracy. These claims were so outlandish that for a long time we simply ignored them. But because some credulous Darwinists seem willing to believe almost anything, we decided we should set the record straight.

--Free Republic: Discovery Institute's “Wedge Document”: How Darwinist Paranoia Fueled an Urban Legend

I have news for "Free Republic". Telling me what I already know does not refute me. Repeating what so-called "Darwinists" know about the ID movement hardly amounts to a broadside. The freeper site, in fact, borrows its post verbatim from the discovery Institute (or is the other way 'round?). I can hardly call the freepers unbiased. At last, the only refutation of what were, in fact, ID tactics amounts to mere labeling, name-calling, typical of the ilk. If the "Wedge Document" is an "Urban Legend" it is only so among the stooges of the right wing, the circle jerk, the closed loop of closed minds. Until I stumbled upon the pair of them, I had never heard of the damn thing!

The discovery of "Wedge Document" itself means that someone created it even as the ID movement discredited itself. The ID movement has always been a mere PR campaign, perhaps the very campaign described and revealed by the "Wedge Document". That it might have been created to discredit one side or the other simply doesn't matter. Even before it was discovered, there was every reason to suppose that a subversive, anti-science sub-culture was overtly out to subvert the pursuit of truth itself anyway. The "Wedge Document" simply makes no difference one way or the other. ID is creationism in fancy dress and big words not even understood by its 'authors'.

That is the crux of it. ID proponents are all about content and ideology. The pursuit of truth, by contrast, is about method and reason.

The Wedge Document is an internal memorandum from the discovery Institute (the leading proponent of Intelligent Designer "Theory") that was leaked to the Internet in 1999. The discovery Institute later admitted to its authenticity. Since then, discovery Institute hasn't talked very much about the document, or the strategy it outlines. The reason is crushingly obvious, since the Wedge Document makes it readily apparent that the discovery Institute is flat-out lying to us when it claims that its Intelligent Designer campaign is concerned only with science and does not have any religious aims, purpose or effect.

--Lenny Frank re: The "Wedge Document" [document reprinted on Frank's site]

Frank is entitled to his opinion. It is at least as good as the various opinions of the Discovery Institute and that's not saying much. Frank states that Discovery owned up to the document. But who cares? A movement is what a movement does! What does the 'wedge document' tell you about the people who puked it up? Nothing it says about science is of any significance between its very existence speaks volumes about the liars throughout the right wing, Discovery Institute, and fanatics throughout the religious right and the otherwise extremist right wing! Those methods are precisely what makes ID not science.

...we are convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source. That source is scientific materialism. This is precisely our strategy. 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 very beginning of this strategy, the "thin edge of the wedge," was Phillip Johnson's critique of Darwinism begun in 1991 in Darwinism on Trial, and continued in Reason in the Balance and Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds. Michael Behe's highly successful Darwin's Black Box followed Johnson's work. We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.

--The Wedge Document

The "Wedge Document" reads like a right wing strategy paper.

FIVE YEAR OBJECTIVES

1. A major public debate between design theorists and Darwinists (by 2003)
2. Thirty published books on design and its cultural implications (sex, gender issues, medicine, law, and religion)
3. One hundred scientific, academic and technical articles by our fellows
4. Significant coverage in national media:
• Cover story on major news magazine such as Time or Newsweek
• PBS show such as Nova treating design theory fairly
• Regular press coverage on developments in design theory
• Favorable op-ed pieces and columns on the design movement by 3rd party media
5. Spiritual & cultural renewal:
• Mainline renewal movements begin to appropriate insights from design theory, and to repudiate theologies influenced by materialism
• Major Christian denomination(s) defend(s) traditional doctrine of creation & repudiate(s)
• Darwinism Seminaries increasingly recognize & repudiate naturalistic presuppositions
  
• Positive uptake in public opinion polls on issues such as sexuality, abortion and belief in God
• Ten states begin to rectify ideological imbalance in their science curricula & include design theory
6. Scientific achievements:
• An active design movement in Israel, the UK and other influential countries outside the US
  
• Ten CRSC Fellows teaching at major universities
• Two universities where design theory has become the dominant view
• Design becomes a key concept in the social sciences Legal reform movements base legislative proposals on design theory

ACTVITIES Research Fellowship Program (for writing and publishing) (2) Front line research funding at the "pressure points" (e.g., Daul Chien's Chengjiang Cambrian Fossil Find in paleontology, and Doug Axe's research laboratory in molecular biology)(3) Teacher training (4) Academic Conferences (5) Opinion-maker Events & Conferences (6) Alliance-building, recruitment of future scientists and leaders, and strategic partnerships with think tanks, social advocacy groups, educational organizations and institutions, churches, religious groups, foundations and media outlets (7) Apologetics seminars and public speaking (8) Op-ed and popular writing (9) Documentaries and other media productions (10) Academic debates (11) Fund Raising and Development (12) General Administrative support

Real Science vs Phony Crap and/or Focus Group Propaganda

Science does not hire PR firms, recently called "think tanks" for PR reasons. Science does not try to sell you on relativity, evolution, quantum physics or string theory. Science is ever self-correcting. Science is not an ideology, it is a method and a process.

Science is not a set of shibboleths to which you must pay obeisance or pledge allegiance. Science cannot, by definition, become a cult, a religion or an entrenched ideology. What might be a working hypothesis today may be disproved tomorrow. Intelligent Design is "creationism" written in jargon and in stone. 'Creationists' are not interested in giving up precious theories in the face of cold, hard fact. 'Intelligent design' is hardly intelligent, considerably ideological, and most certainly disingenuous. It is defined by its "content", it is a dogma sold politically. It is not and cannot be science. The "Wedge Document" proves, forever, the un-scientific nature of "Intelligent Design".But the environment proved hostile. In its final form, creationism took on a protective camouflage, like octopi and lizards. It evolved into: INTELLIGENT DESIGN!

Intelligent design was thus packaged. It is stealth ideology designed (not so intelligently) to pass itself off as science. But it was found out and exposed.

Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs' scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator. To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.--Judge John E. Jones III, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District

An issues clarification is in order. The case was not about whether one has a right to believe, indeed, teach "intelligent design". It was about whether or not the state has a right to teach religious dogma in state and locally supported schools.People are still free to believe whatever dogma, however cockamamie, they wish. They are still free to teach it at home and in religiously supported institutions. The decision in no way impinges upon one's right under the First Amendment to believe and espouse whatever bullshit they choose to believe. As the following headline properly suggests, the decision was about teaching science in science class and, presumably, religious dogma in the churches.

EVOLUTION CONSENSUS PREVAILS IN RULING TO KEEP RELIGION OUT OF SCIENCE CLASS

From his Pennsylvania courtroom, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III did a great service to the nation. Not only did Jones rule that it's unconstitutional for the Dover, Pa., public schools to present "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution in biology classes because it merely advances a particular version of Christianity. But in a painstakingly supported and often scathing 139-page opinion Tuesday, he also debunked many of the myths surrounding the so-called debate over evolution.

The following passage from John Stuart Mill is especially relevant in an age in which latter-day "Puritans" have tried to finance their religious practices with public tax dollars:

Wherever the Puritans have been sufficiently powerful, as in New England, and in Great Britain at the time of the Commonwealth, they have endeavored, with considerable success, to put down all public, and nearly all private, amusements: especially music, dancing, public games, or other assemblages for purposes of diversion, and the theatre. There are still in this country large bodies of persons by whose notions of morality and religion these recreations are condemned; and those persons belonging chiefly to the middle class, who are the ascendant power in the present social and political condition of the kingdom, it is by no means impossible that persons of these sentiments may at some time or other command a majority in Parliament. How will the remaining portion of the community like to have the amusements that shall be permitted to them regulated by the religious and moral sentiments of the stricter Calvinists and Methodists? Would they not, with considerable peremptoriness, desire these intrusively pious members of society to mind their own business?

--John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

...

Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as "intelligent design" to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms. As this article goes to press, the Ohio Board of Education is debating whether to mandate such a change. Some anti-evolutionists, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial, admit that they intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a "wedge" for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God.

Scientific American

The exhibition on evolution at the magnificent new science department at the Museum of Natural History in New York is countered by a proliferation of Creationist Museums around the country (US). A new production of Inherit the Wind may not reach an audience large enough to any good i.e., to educate Americans about a domestic, ideological danger.

Columbia University professor Philip Kitcher strikes back with Living with Darwin. Kitcher's position is not that ID ("Intelligent Design") isn't science but that it is "dead science", consisting of propositions long ago discredited, some by Darwin himself. Darwin is, of course, ignored and attacked by demagogic politicians, the religious right and various sycophantic politicians. Darwin's arguments against ID are still valid, merely ignored by the religious right.

Kitcher would strike an uncomfortable truce astride an increasingly fanatic right wing on the one hand and genuine science on the other. Kitcher would hope this possible, even necessary, if science is to survive at all. Is such an unholy truce possible? Can real science live in a world in which experiment is replaced by referendum, where propaganda impersonates evidence?

The scientific community resolved the issue long ago; Darwin himself refuted ID with a mountain of verifiable evidence. That those issues are raised now among religious demagogues and politicians raises disturbing questions about the quality of scientific education. Has it failed entirely? Have zealots succeeded in isolating science? Is it the aim of "religion" to destroy the spirit of free enquiry? Will science itself be subject to laws by which an 'orthodoxy' is decreed under the rubric of 'democracy'? Will a latter-day 'Galileo' be forced to recant?

The identification of "evangelicalism" with the "right wing", however, seems to be a very recent aberration in light of the emergence of "Christian Socialism" in the 1840's. Thomas Hughes and others taught that Jesus Christ was the world first socialist. Indeed, Jesus is said by religious folk to have fed the multitudes! Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Cal Thomas most certainly wouldn't care and wouldn't bother!

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should `make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State."

--Thomas Jefferson, in his historic Danbury letter, January 1, 1802

Evangelical "Christianity", however, is a relatively recent development emerging in Britain with the conversion of John Wesley in 1738. The distinguishing characteristics of the American movement are of even more recent vintage. I am told that the "theology" of the Religious Right cannot be found in the bible but in the teachings of dispensationalism --a belief that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ will be a physical event. "He" will establish a world-wide kingdom centered in Jerusalem. Dispensationalism is associated with the end times prophecy, which finds omens of the Second Coming in current events. By consistently teaching that the Beast of Revelations, or the Antichrist, is a political leader, dispensationalism has, ironically, weakened the traditional Reformation-era identification of that figure with the Pope, and the Roman Catholic Church with the Whore of Babylon.

Lately, two views are found on the internet:

• George W. Bush, a deceiver of nations [at the very least: a deceiver of the United Nations!], is the beast. Support for which is found in Revelations:

  And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?

  --Revelation 13:4

• Bush, a fundamentalist fanatic is trying to bring about those events which are said to precede the Second Coming!

A fundamentalist friend said almost those very words to me, telling me that Bush was not like any other "President" in American History, and, oddly, I had to agree. He most certainly was not. My friend also said, in effect, who can make war against the United States and win? Well! Who can argue with that? Certainly, no power could make conventional war on the United States. Not mentioned by my "friend" is the fact that Colin Powell presented a case for war to the United Nations Security Council that consisted of plagiarized student papers, ten year old, black and white satellite photos, and fabricated evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Clearly then --by the standards of the religious right itself --the Bush administration deceived the entire world and did so deliberately!

W. B. Yeats painted a grim picture of end times in his famous poem: The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

--W. B. Yeats

Things have fallen apart. A failed war of naked aggression, Abu Ghraib, an incipient 'Great Depression', the stunning swift fall of the U.S. from a role of prestige and world leadership are the proof of it. It took Rome several hundred years to complete a fall. The US will have done it in less than a decade. Iraq defines "anarchy" as well as the "blood dimmed tide" in which some 1.5 million civilians are now dead! In the past, only the best had convictions and now all seem to have abandoned conviction for spin. Passions run rampant if not deep. Truth for the GOP is whatever they can trick you into believing. Sincerity is faked and lies are the new currency of the realm.

The Truth of Evolution

I wonder how many "creationist s" have bothered to talk to a farmer. Any farmer who has ever bred for specific characteristics can bear witness to the fact of evolution as it is understood today. Naturally, when I think of Kansas, I think of both The Wizard of Oz and wheat. Wheat does not grow in the wild, yet its origins are most certainly ancient wild grasses. One suspects that wheat benefited largely by what evolutionists would call artificial selection, a process in which natural selection is helped out, possibly by a farmer who knows how to breed or, in evolutionary terms, select, for specific characteristics. If every farmer knows the truth of evolution, so too every cowboy who ever warned: 'never kill a slow roach; you just improve the breed!'

I fear for future generations that may be victimized by a fanatic Christian "right".

We keep trying to explain away American fundamentalism. Those of us not engaged personally or emotionally in the biggest political and cultural movement of our times—those on the sidelines of history—keep trying to come up with theories with which to discredit the evident allure of this punishing yet oddly comforting idea of a deity, this strange god. His invisible hand is everywhere, say His citizen-theologians, caressing and fixing every outcome: Little League games, job searches, test scores, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, the success or failure of terrorist attacks (also known as “signs”), victory or defeat in battle, at the ballot box, in bed. Those unable to feel His soothing touch at moments such as these snort at the notion of a god with the patience or the prurience to monitor every tick and twitch of desire, a supreme being able to make a lion and a lamb cuddle but unable to abide two men kissing. A divine love that speaks through hurricanes. Who would worship such a god? His followers must be dupes, or saps, or fools, their faith illiterate, insane, or misinformed, their strength fleeting, hollow, an aberration. A burp in American history. An unpleasant odor that will pass.

Harpers, Through a glass, darkly: How the Christian right is re-imagining U.S. history

It is important that science be taught in school. Evolution was made clear to me in my junior high school science class. The topic was Giraffes which eat the leaves of trees in their habitat. Lamarck, we were taught, believed in acquired characteristics. In Lamarckian terms, the Giraffe had a long neck so that he could reach the leaves. The Darwinian view turns that on its head i.e, those Giraffes able to reach the higher leaves would pass their genes on to another generation which would inherit the longer neck. The short neck Giraffe would most certainly die before he could mate. Put yet another way, the long necked Giraffe survived and procreated because it had a long neck; it is inaccurate and fallacious to say that it had a long neck so that it would survive.

I have long considered the words "so that" to be red flags, signaling a question to be begged, a perversion of logic. The words so that almost invariably signal a thought process that works backward from end results. Human beings, having evolved brains, are capable of doing precisely that. It is fallacious to say that we have brains 'so that' we may think and, in various ways, use our brains to think, learn and, thus survive. We do all those thinks because we have brains.

Interestingly, Earnst Haeckel did not share Darwin's enthusiasm for natural selection as I have stated it in simple terms here. Haeckel, in his own version of Lamarckism, believed that biological diversity could be attributed to an environment acting directly on organisms to produce new species, new races.

There are crabs in Japanese waters that bear a "human face". They are the Heikegani crab, native to Japan. The carapace resembles a human face, or - with some imagination - a Samurai warrior. Legend has it that they are the re-incarnation of ancient Samarais, Heike warriors who died at the Battle of Dan-no-ura. (See: "The Tale of the Heike") Indeed, patterns on the carapace bear a striking resemblance to a human face.

Carl Sagan had a more colorful tale to tell. In his popular science television show Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, he linked the patterns to the local legend of the Heiki warriors. Sagan cited the crab as an example --not of natural but of unintentional artificial selection. Sagan told the story of local fishermen throwing back those crabs whose shells resembled the ancient Samurai warriors. Those not resembling Samurai were eaten. Those thrown back survived to pass on their genes.

Living beings themselves, therefore, may be thought of as "living fossils". We carry in our genes a code that is the result of billions of years of "code writing". Our own fetal development seems to mirror that process. According to Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919): "The ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny."

It is interesting that Intelligent Design is often espoused by the same political mindset that embraces "Social Darwinism". Both are equally bogus. Both are embraced by the right wing though they are incompatible theories. It is odd to find even fallacious perversions of Darwin espoused by a group that is identifiable by its hatred of all things Darwinian. It is equally odd to find Intelligent Design --however fallacious --espoused by a Social Darwinists. The obvious conclusion is that these people just haven't given even their own ideologies, let alone Darwin, enough thought.

Social Darwinism does not follow from "Darwinism". Worse, it attributes to Darwin positions he never took. The term "survival of the fittest" was never used by Darwin but has been variously attributed. Hofstadter attributes the phrase to rail road men:

Railroad executive Chauncy Depew asserted that the guests of the great dinners and public banquets of New York City represented the survival of the fittest of all who came in search of fortune. They were the ones with superior abilities. Likewise railroad magnate James J. Hill defended the railroad companies by saying their fortunes were determined according to the law of survival of the fittest.

—Hofstadter, Richard; 1959; Social Darwinism in American Thought, Braziller; New York.

Elsewhere, the term is attributed to Herbert Spencer who clearly inspired a generation of radicalized, latter-day robber barons and, bluntly, few of them evince the "...quality of mercy" so immortalized with but a few words by Shakespeare:

[Herbert] Spencer said that diseases "are among the penalties Nature has attached to ignorance and imbecility, and should not, therefore, be tampered with." He even faulted private organizations like the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children because they encouraged legislation.

—Social Darwinism and American Laissez-faire Capitalism

An equally fallacious corollary to "Social Darwinism" is often phrased this way: the rich are rich because they are better, work harder and are more intelligent. George W. Bush put it more crudely: “The poor are poor because they are lazy!” In the same vein, the conservative economist Joseph A. Schumpeter likened recessions to a "douche" leaving us to wonder just who is "douched" and how? More importantly: who gets to make those life and death decisions? It is difficult not to conclude that New Orleans after Katrina is but the disastrous consequence of "blame the victim" thinking.

It is not surprising, then, that Spencer's influence continues, not in the field of biology, but in economics, specifically those theories most often associated with the right wing: the American apologists, William Graham Sumner and Simon Nelson Patten.

Spencer, believed that because society was evolving, government intervention ought to be minimized. Nevermind that government is but a function of society and responsible to it. It is because of the lasting Influence of Spencer that the idea of the “rational man” making rational decisions in a free market is still in use. In practice, however, economic decisions may or may not be rational.

Conservatives work mightily to force reality into a conservative, theoretical mold but that's bad science. Models must describe reality —not the other way round. John Nash, the subject of the motion picture, A Beautiful Mind, argued persuasively that not only games but societies and economies benefit more from cooperation and community than from competition. It's a mathematical slap-in-the-face to laissez-faire, right wing economics.

While Bertrand Russell's work in the Principia Mathematica sought to ground mathematics upon a foundation of pure logic, it was optimistically thought that it would then be possible to construct a "Universal Truth Machine" - a "computer", if you will, that would produce all true theorems from any given set of axioms. A "formal system". Some twenty years later, Gödel's famous Incompleteness Theorems "proved" that no such machine is possible. There is always at least one true theorem that such a machine is incapable of writing - no matter how well it is programmed, no matter how well phrased the axioms. [See: 'Infinity and the Mind', Rudy Rucker]

The significance of Gödel's 'incompleteness theorem' is this: even as we near a phase in quantum physics when it appears that we may be able to write an equation which will amount to TOE, a Theory of Everything, we will come up short. No such theory is possible. Sir James Jeans wrote that we may never be able to open the back of the watch and describe its workings; likewise, as human beings striving to understand a universe of which we are a part, we may never be able to see the face of God and describe it. We become ourselves a part of an infinite regress.

But - we must be free to believe that the face exists and free to believe that it doesn't. We must be free to find the truth for ourselves. Fundamentalism denies you this. As Socrates put it: the unexamined life is not worth living. Our choices define who we are as individuals, and collectively, as a species. By denying us the freedom to make a defining choice, religious ideology robs our lives of meaning. Bertolt Brecht said "A man who does not know the truth is just an idiot but a man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a crook." Religious ideology parading as science is a crook.

Additional resources:

• Teaching Intelligent Design violates First Amendment, says Federal Judge
• A forceful rejection of `intelligent design'
  

the Holy Office in Rome forced Galileo Galilei to recant his scientific view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the universe. The heliocentric theory of the solar system was first forumalted by Nicolaus Copernicus, a Polish astronomer who refuted the geocentric models of Greek scholars Ptolemy and Aristotle.

Galileo Galilei first argued for the Copernican, sun-centric view of the universe in 1610 after observing the moons of Jupiter. At the time, the dominant view was still an earth-centric, Ptolemaic and Aristotelian theory. In 1612, opposition grew for a heliocentric view of the solar system. Two years later, Galileo was denounced by a Catholic priest who described his beliefs as dangerous and close to heresy. Galileo went to Rome to defend himself, but was warned never to teach nor advocate Copernican theory again.

In October of 1632, Galileo Galilei published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, a work which compared the Copernican system to the traditional Ptolemaic system. Upon publication, Galileo was ordered to appear before the Holy Office in Rome. In 1633, he was ordered to stand trial on suspicion of heresy. On the morning of June 22, the Inquisition, a Church tribunal which suppressed heresy, delivered its public sentence in three essential parts:

• Galileo was required to recant his sun-centric ideas
• He was ordered to be imprisoned
• His offending Dialogue was banned.

Galileo Galilei died from natural causes on January 8, 1642 while under house arrest. Although an unannounced part of his sentence prohibited the publication of his past or future works, he dedicated his final years to one of his finest works, Two New Sciences, a book which later earned him the title of "father of modern physics."

--June 22, 1633: Galileo Recants his Heliocentric Theory

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