In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Scopes Monkey Trials, part deux

Jill

Why are we still debating this? Listen up, wingnuts: Science class is for teaching science, not religion. Not “we don’t know, so God must have done it.” Not “evolution is only a theory” (gravity is also only a theory, but I’m not gonna start agitating for my kids to be taught intelligent falling). End of story.

“Nearly 2,000 years ago, someone died on a cross for us,” said board member William Buckingham, who urged his colleagues to include intelligent design in ninth-grade science classes. “Shouldn’t we have the courage to stand up for him?”

I must have missed the part in the Bible where Jesus says, “Thou shalt not teach your children accurate scientific information.”

65 thoughts on Scopes Monkey Trials, part deux

  2. On the other hand, PZ Myers’ Puzzling over Theory is a beautiful thing.I especially love the “puzzle” metaphor, because in the social “sciences” we have a looser relationship with the outcomes we expect our theory to produce (more missing pieces, and a harder time telling what the picture will be).

    Of course, we don’t have anyone reminding us that a certain “someone” died on our behalf (what? Aristotle? Socrates? Ptolemy? Thucydides?).

  3. I must have missed the part in the Bible where Jesus says, “Thou shalt not teach your children accurate scientific information.”

    Dunno. Maybe a radical interpretation of the second chapter of 1 Corinthians? The passage about the wisdom of God as unfavorably compared with other types of knowledge?

  4. What, precisely, does Jesus have to do with creationism? The two are not interconnected; it’s not like if God *didn’t* create the Earth in six days, He *couldn’t* create Jesus.

    Note that the whole concept of Jesus-dying-for-people’s-sins was a *process* (birth, teaching, death, resurrection), just like evolution is a process. Creationism, on the other hand, is a case of “God-made-up-his-mind-and-it-happened, and if this was so much of a better idea, then He wouldn’t have needed Jesus, He could have made up his mind to forgive us AND THEN DONE IT, rather than muddling through this Son-coming-to-earth-growing-up-and-dying stuff that I really don’t get the logic behind (unlike evolution, which makes sense), and if God first created (six-day-Earth) and then later used a process (use-Jesus-incomprehensively-to-forgive-sins), then that would be evolution of thought on God’s part, which would make God a growing, changing being rather than omnipotent and all-knowing—ERROR! ERROR! ERROR! Universal destruction imminent! Proceed to escape pods! This is not a drill! Universal destruction imminent! Please remain calm! This is the Apocolypse! Universal destruction imminent! Have a nice day!

    —And if God did create the Earth, six-day, speak-and-it-happens style, why switch to processes when it was INconvenient to do so? Processes make sense in the creation of the Universe; if you’re painting a masterpiece you work it up step by step, brushstroke by brushstroke, rather than hastily churning something out, and it’s more impressive and dynamic if you keep changing and improving it, if you keep creating. The process becomes as important as the finished product, except that it doesn’t need to be finished. Finished is the end. *I* think that if God created the Universe (which is not science, of course), She would have come up with the brilliant plan of natural selection, and then watched as Her Universe came alive on its own, as She created it to do. A static picture to look at, or a limited machine that does the same things over and over again, or a creation so dynamic and varied as to match its Creator. Which would any artist be proudest of creating?

    And I think any God would be proudest to have people who *choose* to believe, rather than who are taught or coerced to believe. It doesn’t need to be science, or fact. Belief is a privilege, and an honor.

  5. All the rain that fell in Louisiana and Texas during Hurricane Rita were, in fact, tears from angels who felt betrayed by the proposed cirriculum. Intelligent crying, I think.

    You really do find the most unreconstructed nutjobs on school boards, though. They’re like Tom DeLay, but without the people/organizational skills.

  6. And I think any God would be proudest to have people who *choose* to believe, rather than who are taught or coerced to believe. It doesn’t need to be science, or fact. Belief is a privilege, and an honor.

    Which brings me to something that has puzzled me since my childhood in the 50’s (when as a Jewish kid I got the choice of saying a Xian prayer or standing in the hall) — why do followers of Christianity require a public endorsement of their religion in order to sustain their beliefs? Other religions in this country barely get public recognition of their existence and yet followers are able to maintain their beliefs. But take down one nativity display and the cries that Christianity is being persecuted out of existence start up immediately (even better, last year someone wrote to our local paper complaining about persecution because businesses put up signs that said “Happy Holidays” instead “Merry Christmas.”)

  7. I think it’s important to recognize the distinction between creationism and Intelligent Design, Kyra. ID has even less to do with Christianity (specifically) than Creationism; it stipulates that biological processes/design are so complex as to reveal patterns of sentient design, similar to how scientists can discern the crop circles that are natural phenomena from the crop circles that are man-made hoaxes by observing distinctive man-made clues.

    Personally, I think it’s bullshit, just “evolved creationism,” because the theory works backwards from a strictly unknowable presumption – namely, the idea that we can empirically determine the concept of what a “sentience” that would be “required” for the “intelligent design” might look like.

    We can tell the man-made crop circles because we have a frame of reference – what man is capable of and how he operates. Intelligent Design lacks this necessary point of reference, so it’s really “this stuff is so complex that some really, really smart designer made it.” Which doesn’t sound too different from ancient Greeks that theorized the cause of lightning to be Zeus’s angry wrath.

  8. ID has even less to do with Christianity (specifically) than Creationism

    But Bill, let’s be frank: ID is Creationism reskinned with a gloss of scientific respectibility. Of course, that gloss disappears like a cracker in a sandstorm when you scrutinize it. But, as PZ Myers would yell at you: ID and Creationism are the same thing, even though insidious zealots will try to tell you otherwise.

  9. So, my question is: who designed the Designer?

    No, really. If the breadth and complexity of the Universe and Everything In It points to the intelligent design of said Universe, and assuming that someone/thing that could do such a thing is totally beyond our *actual* capability to comprehend it, isn’t one forced to ask where that Designer came from? Because if something as awesome and complex as the Universe couldn’t “just develop” on its own, and the Creator/Designer is THAT much more complex to be able to do so, someone must have designed him/her/it/them, or the whole theory starts to break down. Doesn’t it?

    Gaaaaah…. sorry. Near completed philosophy minor raising its ugly little head again. I’ll try to control that from now on.

    P.S. Please don’t assume from this question that I’m an atheist. My religion (or lack thereof) is not the question here. I’m just trying to understand the logic behind ID and coming up short.

  10. I agree with this wholeheartedly. The dichotomy is that I am a Christian. Actually, this is not exactly true. I try to live with Christian principles, but I have disassociated myself from “the Church” because I think they’re mostly a bunch of misled, misinformed, bigoted, narrowminded people who think that the only place to find the answers for everything is in the Bible. I don’t agree. So, I don’t really call myself a Christian. I prefer to be spiritual rather than religious. And I pity those in the church who don’t know the difference, and there are many of them.

    Anyway, I believe that both Creationism and Evolution both have some good points, and it’s my personal opinion that both happened – to the extent that God created the basic building blocks and Evolution took care of putting them together. As far as this belief is concerned, I heartily agree that Creationism should be reserved for Sunday school while Evolution should be taught in science classes.

    I don’t think churchy things really belong anywhere at a public school, and I furthermore think Evolution should be taught even at Christian private schools (good luck on that one, though). The only place for religion at a public school is in a comparative religions class, and only then if it doesn’t become a platform for the teacher to push students towards one or another ideology.

    I have never had a problem with people who are strictly Creationists or Evolutionists. I simply have a problem when they try and force me to accept their total point of view on something without allowing for the grey area I see between both ideas. It’s my belief, not theirs, so back the hell away. Live and let live, for God’s sake.

  11. If people are going to criticise the Theory of Evolution, I wish they would first bloody well learn what the definition of ‘Theory’ is.

    I have been told “It’s only a theory.” The non-scientific community seems to think theory means ‘we have no idea really, but here’s something off the top of my head.’

    Bah.

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  13. But Bill, let’s be frank: ID is Creationism reskinned with a gloss of scientific respectibility. Of course, that gloss disappears like a cracker in a sandstorm when you scrutinize it. But, as PZ Myers would yell at you: ID and Creationism are the same thing, even though insidious zealots will try to tell you otherwise.

    Well, yes and no. “No” because in specific terms, they are quite different in scope, as creationism typically focuses around a central mythology, whereas ID is a much more narrow injection of faith into science (though some proponents no doubt really see it as a scientific endeavor), simply limiting itself to the concept of proving a “design requiring higher sentience.” Young Earth Creationists wouldn’t like many of the proponents of ID, for example. Now on it’s face, ID’s gloss of scientific respectability approaches legitimacy – but the fundamental problem I see, however, is that it’s not falsifiable. How do you disprove that something is so complex as to require “alien (godlike) sentience.” And what yardstick do we have to indicate or define the nature of said omnipotent sentience? And vice versa, how would you even begin to prove it?

    So, my question is: who designed the Designer?

    Bingo.

    This is a central challenge to ID (which ducks the question by saying that that’s beyond the theory’s mandate) as well as religion in general (which ducks the question by saying ‘the Creator always was,’ which sort of devalues the entire creation mythology, IMO)

    But what do I know – I’m convinced that Mongo the Spacemonkey created the Earth and all of it’s inhabitants from his transgalactic monkey ejaculate less than 2,000 years ago. Shrug.

  15. I am a Catholic who does not have an opinion one way or the other about intelligent design. It raises very complex issues that I have not sorted through. Rather than try to wade through the arguments, I’m content to accept John Paul II’s conclusion that evolution is not inconsistent with Catholic doctrine.

    However, several times I have read that Einstein believed in God based in part on his amazement of what he learned in studying physics. Einstein expressed this in a way that seems to me to be supportive of intelligent design. For example, Einstein wrote:

    “We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they were written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations.”

    Why is that when Einstein says this everyone says “oh, he’s so wise,” but when proponents of ID say similar things, people say “they’re dumb hillbillies”?

  16. — Why is that when Einstein says this everyone says “oh, he’s so wise,” but when proponents of ID say similar things, people say “they’re dumb hillbillies”?

    Because Einstein was putting that forth as an *opinion*, and not as something that should be taught in high school science classes as *fact*. Or even as a “possibility”. And he was not demanding that it be part of a science curriculum (sp?) in high schools.

    Science class is for science. Religious instruction classes are where you discuss religious possibilities (if you’re lucky) or your particular doctrine (if you’re not lucky enough to have a teacher who concedes that other doctrines have a point and some striking similarities to your own). Home and philosophy classes are also good places to discuss those topics. Science class is where you discuss how to logically come to conclusions based upon evidence that you have obtained or can reproduce from other people’s experiments/observations. It’s where you learn that at “theory” in science means an opinion that you can back up with facts and has, in fact, BEEN backed up by enough facts to more or less prove it. However, science is an intelligent enough field to admit when they don’t have enough evidence to state something completely conclusively; that there might in fact be data that no one has yet encountered. Hence, “theory” for ideas that might still have wiggle room left. (See “Laws of Motion” as opposed to “Theory of Relativity”.)

    Yeah, I’m a fairly decent science geek. Didn’t have much physics or some of the other advanced classes, but I understand the principle of scientific method, repeatable experimentation, and the value of being able to *dis*prove something as well as prove things. And the more I learn about the world, the Universe, and the universe within the smallest particles yet known, the more I stand in slack-jawed amazement and awe. Science doesn’t diminish my sense of wonder in the Universe; it enhances it.

    For the record: I’m completely cool with the idea of there being a universal Creator. I just don’t think that any one religion has a actual grasp of what that Creator would have to be to have Created the Universe in the first place, and I don’t think we CAN understand it. And, actually, that’s an OK thing. (I also don’t think that any being that could have created the Universe really cares who we sleep with and whether or not we worship it, but that’s another debate entirely.)

  17. That seems like a reasonable response, though I still have no opinion about whether ID provides a valid critique of evolution or not. To the extent it is, it would properly be part of a science class.

    (The “who we sleep with” question is another debate but a more interesting one. God cares about sex (“who we sleep with”) because how we handle sex is so important to who we are and how we relate to others. Sex is, obviously, in an important way by which we love one another and, as a consequence, is highly charged with meaning; at the same time, heterosexual sex is the manner through which God shares with us the gift of creating new life. We can use our freedom to misuse sex just as we can use our freedom to do wrong in other ways. Thus, if there is a God who judges us, how we loved and used the gift of sex will not be exempt from judgment.)

  18. Oh dear, oh dear. We are starting to have this “debate” in Australia too. The day my girls get taught that utter ID crap in a science class is the day I walk in and pull the headmaster’s pants down in front of the school. ID makes my bloody blood boil. Why not go the whole hog and teach spoon bending in metalwork or numerology in maths.

  22. And yet another argument arises where a libertarian, rather than statist, approach to government would disappear the conflict. Want your kid to go to a school that teaches religious theories of origin? Send them there. Want them to go to a secular school? Send them there. Want them to learn about Mongo the Space Monkey and his Transgalactic Spunk of Speciation? Send them to Bill’s house, and may God have mercy on your soul.

    The conflict arises from various parties insisting that ONLY ONE TRUE WAY can be taught – ironically enough, though, the balance of power in the schools rests in the secularists’ hands, so they’re the ones demanding total control, while the normally-more-militant religious folk simply ask for a seat at the table. Why not just get the government out of the business of deciding final truths, and instead let people school where they wish and how they wish?

  23. Flute, who’s talking about when the life of a fly begins? Generally the issue in sex ed is when human life begins.

  26. ID is not a valid critique of science. It’s an attempt to remove critical thinking from science. It’s “soft” creationism: “We can’t know anything for sure, therefore every possibility, no matter how wild or unsupported, is of equal worth.” The end result of this, of course, is God; the people making this argument stop mentioning other “possibilities” as soon as they get their feet in the door.

    The objective is to get people to discard scientific rigor in order to make creationism palatable. Even if this were not the underlying purpose, discarding scientific rigor would be appalling–once that goes, your children cannot learn to be scientists. Of course all theories are not created equal: phrenology and neurology; evolution vs. the inheritance of learned traits. Unless we want every science textbook to start with, “Submitted for your approval…” we have to stick with the ones that have some data to support them.

    And “We can’t know for certain, therefore we should make no rational hypotheses,” is not the right way to think of scientific inquiry. The sensible viewpoint is this: “We can’t know anything for sure, therefore we should keep asking and searching, but should devote primary, basic attention to learning about and sorting theories that have evidence behind them. Since there is no evidence to support the existence of an intelligent designer, we must not pretend otherwise. And we will not confuse issues of faith with issues of empiricism. We can no more answer questions about God in a biology class than we can make human physiology into a religious question.”

    The problem with introducing God’s interest–one particular concept of one particular God, at that–in human sexuality into a public-school sex-ed class is that it would mean using a classroom to promulgate religious teachings.

  27. Flute sex is fun but, no, it has not surpassed the making babies thing. It seems attractive at first to separate the two but it leads to big problems. Two of the biggest problems are the following: 1. women are treated even more as sex objects; 2. cheap sex leads to treating human life cheaply — when a couple is just “having fun” but an unexpected baby does come along, they are more predisposed to kill the baby (“we were just having fun with each other, we never intended to stay together for life and raise a child”).

    I would love to debate sexuality issues with you further (I find sexual morality very interesting as a subject), but I can’t because I’ve got to run, plus it’s not fair to the readers of this string because the subject is supposed to be ID rather then sex.

  28. Excellent Dan, better get those contramaception classes going then hadn’t we. And a note to blokes, make sex crap so as not to treat your partner like a sex object.

    But back to the topic. Are there any more stark raving mad creationists out there that feel like a dance?

  29. You can’t teach sex ed and escape the issue of morality. It’s totally impossible because sex inescapably involves morality issues. Sex ed that consists of solely “facts” (“if you use a condom you reduce your risk of disease and pregnancy”) strongly conveys the message that sex outside of marriage isn’t all that bad — otherwise, why would you be telling kids about the use of condoms? It also conveys, obviously, a message on the morality of the use of contraception – another “religious issue” that cannot be avoided.

  31. Dan, sex outside of marriage isn’t all that bad. Marriage has been but a mere blip on the recent historical timeline for humanity. Before it existed were people sinning?

  33. flute, my first lesson for you will be: how to spell contraception

    *Chuckle* Flute was making fun of you. You need to watch more television.

    And what about information like, “Having sex increases your risk of STDs” and “The only completely effective method of protecting oneself is abstinence.” Do those factoids carry moral messages? Are those moral messages less objectionable to you?

    Also, married people commonly use condoms and other forms of contraception.

  34. That’s what science does Robert. That is why ID is bollocks.

    By the way Dan, I’d hazard a guess that contramaception is used by *shock horror* married couples as well as amoral youngsters. And as for the general moral question, the number one thing that has advanced women in society, more than any suffrage movement, was the invention of the pill. Or would you prefer that that did not happen.

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  36. Why is that when Einstein says this everyone says “oh, he’s so wise,” but when proponents of ID say similar things, people say “they’re dumb hillbillies”?

    Personally, I think Einstein was being something of a dufus when he said things like that. Especially when he said “God does not play dice with the universe.” as a critique of quantum mechanics. Being smart and having described a part of the universe beautifully does not make someone always right.

    Laurie: I think if one posits a supernatural designer, then it is permissible to say that the designer just happened. If one posits a non-supernatural designer (ie humans were designed by an alien species as part of the uplift wars) then one must explain where the designers came from.

  38. By the way, on the question of when did life and human life began: Life began in the precambrian. All life has come from other life since then. Human life began in about 100,000 BC. All human life has come from other human life since then.

  39. Did the first two humans get married with God as their witness before getting it on? I guess we have to thank those early sinners for us being alive today.

  40. I find it interesting that the Christian pundits that are so deeply appalled by “cultural relativism” and “multicultualism” are so vocal in their calls for a plurality of perspectives when it comes to science.

  41. Flute – true, not all ideas are valid. The best way to find out which ones work is to let them all compete.

    But compete how? ID is based on marketing and pack mentality (my minister says its true, so it must be). It will win in any arena where evidence is not the yardstick, because scientists have to stick to the facts. ID creationists on the other hand can (and do) use distortion, fallacious arguments, downright lies, non-sequitirs and pseudo-scientific babble that can be very convincing if you don’t look at it critically. These creationists don’t want to level the playing field as I’m sure they would put it – because on a level playing field they would lose, sorry, they do lose (no biologist gives any credence to Intelligent Design).

    This whole thing is about the nature of reality: and that means looking at the evidence. ID creationism is actually a rather nebulous idea – really it’s just anti-evolutionism. As a view of reality that purports to be scientific, it doesn’t stand up, unless you start to tie science’s hands – and that is ultimately what creationists want to do.

    However, several times I have read that Einstein believed in God based in part on his amazement of what he learned in studying physics. Einstein expressed this in a way that seems to me to be supportive of intelligent design.

    You’re welcome to find that opinion supportive of your own religious beliefs, but it does not support ID creationism – in fact it covers everything that I think should enrage theists about ID. Lets remember what Einstein did that made him so awed – he examined reality and found that it obeyed certain elegant rules.

    Anti-evolutionism is about looking at one of the many elegant rules that structure the Universe and saying, ‘Nah, my God couldn’t do anything like that. He might try and create a Universe that worked in a beautiful fashion like that, but he wouldn’t do a very good job and he’d have to tinker with it every five minutes to make it work.’

    It’s like finding a Christian who doesn’t believe in Mount Everest because he doesn’t think that God’s Earth could have something so big and complicated in it. You’d think that instead he’d want to point at it and say, grinning from ear to ear, ‘See! God did that!’

  42. By the way Dan, I’d hazard a guess that contramaception is used by *shock horror* married couples as well as amoral youngsters.

    Contramaception! Eeheee! 😀

    Only married couples with so many insecurities that they need babymaking to stay together.

    Contraception might make your husband leave you and cheat on you and shit, but as long as you’re open to babies all the time, you get to trap him. Whoopiee! Besides, it also causes women to get married too old (read: over 20) and become all frigid and unavailable and all that good schtuff.

  43. It also conveys, obviously, a message on the morality of the use of contraception – another “religious issue” that cannot be avoided.

    Why? Because schools should be teaching young women that they should go to Yale and major in being housewives instead? Because no married wingnuts ever plan their families? Like, say, Michelle Malkin and all two of her kids, or Dr. Laura and all one of hers?

    Notice how all the pro-natalist wingnuts never seem to have a quiver full themselves.

  44. ID is based on marketing and pack mentality (my minister says its true, so it must be).

    That’s actually an example of argument from authority, not bandwagon thinking. You might want to make your examples match your rhetoric :-).

    These creationists don’t want to level the playing field as I’m sure they would put it – because on a level playing field they would lose, sorry, they do lose (no biologist gives any credence to Intelligent Design).

    If on a level playing field they will lose, then why resist their request to have their ideas mentioned? If their ideas fail that spectacularly, then surely the best possible way to destroy them would be to welcome them with open arms into the discussion, where they will be annihilated.

    Right?

    This whole thing is about the nature of reality: and that means looking at the evidence.

    This is a statement that works from an implied materialistic supremacy. It may be that looking at the evidence is sufficient to fully understand reality, although I doubt it. It seems far more likely that as starkly finite creatures, our ability to comprehend is innately limited. We may not have the ability to genuinely grok the nature of reality.

    As a view of reality that purports to be scientific, it doesn’t stand up, unless you start to tie science’s hands – and that is ultimately what creationists want to do.

    Well, certainly. That’s what anyone with any sense wants to do.

    Science is an incredibly useful mental tool. As an approach to understanding reality, it is of great value to us as a species. However, that does not mean that it is the only such tool, nor does it mean that the scope of science should be unlimited.

    Science, for example, has very little to tell us about moral values, or ethics, or spirituality. I do not care to live in a society where the scientific view of (say) morality is the view that everyone must accept; I “tie science’s hands” in that respect.

    Proponents of intelligent design (I am not one, btw) have one strong point in their favor: science and materialism fail completely to explain origins. Darwin explains how species change pretty well; how new species come into being, not nearly as well, but it’s possible to buy the evolutionary narrative if you’re willing to squint a little bit; how life itself came into being, it beats his pair of jacks.

    An answer to that critical question is essayed by ID, and it is my suspicion that evolutionists, who are bothered that their narrative seems to be missing “Chapter One”, truly resent that.

  45. Someone, do you know what the failure rate of natural family planning is? I’m sure you don’t. (Don’t feel bad– even most Catholics don’t know.) Another interesting statistic is the divorce rate among couples who use natural family planning. I know you don’t care, but you should look it up sometime.

    Since the invention of the pill and the ensuing sexual revolution, this is what we have witnessed: skyrocketing rates of illegitimacy, sexually transmitted disease, abortion and children growing up without fathers. As Mary Ann Glendon (that wingnut who is on Harvard Law School’s faculty) has put it, our nation’s moral ecology has suffered something akin to an environmental disaster, and the prospects for the clean-up are very uncertain.

    Feminists should focus on forcing business to accomodate mothers rather than denigrating women and children. There should be no reason why a woman who has children cannot pursue a career if she wants. But the attitude that money and career means more than family is a total turn-off (for me, this true regardless of whether it is a man or a woman who has the attitude). What’s wrong about a Yale graduate wanting to be a housewife? Nothing of course, unless you don’t value children and self-giving love.

    The intense egocentrism of feminism is nearly as ugly as the support of abortion (the two are very related). Abortion is the ugly face of modern feminism and the sexual revolution. It is horrifying to me that people condone the use of lethal violence against an innocent child to preserve a “lifestyle.” It is when I came to see that this is what liberalism stands for that I realized that liberalism is morally bankrupt and I quit voting Democratic (I had voted only Democratic for the more than 20 years that I had been voting).

  46. Someone, do you know what the failure rate of natural family planning is? I’m sure you don’t. (Don’t feel bad– even most Catholics don’t know.) Another interesting statistic is the divorce rate among couples who use natural family planning. I know you don’t care, but you should look it up sometime.

    Still not an excuse to force it down kids’ throats in PUBLIC school. You can keep your Catholic beliefs to your Catholic Church or school. They don’t belong in a place where people of different faiths belong.

    Now to get back on topic, the same also goes for creationism and ID. The point is NOBODY CARES WHAT YOUR RELIGION IS when we are talking about public education. I know, you have a problem with public schools…but I’m sorry, we do not live in a theocracy.

  47. Since the invention of the pill and the ensuing sexual revolution, this is what we have witnessed: skyrocketing rates of illegitimacy, sexually transmitted disease, abortion and children growing up without fathers.

    Not really. Highest U.S. teen pregnancy rate was in 1957. The difference, of course, is that most of those teenagers were married — I bring this up to show that teenage sex and pregnancy is nothing new. But I suppose teen marriage and 1950s housewife/breadwinner arrangements is what you’d like to revert back to? Teen pregnancy rates have declined since then; they’ve made steep declines in the past decade. Ditto with abortion.

    Feminists should focus on forcing business to accomodate mothers rather than denigrating women and children

    We do. Remember the ERA? Yeah, you can thank the Phyllis Schlafley and the right wing for that one. Feminists and liberals continue to agitate for things like equal pay for equal work, subsidized daycare for low-income working women, and comprehensive maternity/paternity leave policies. What, exactly, has the “pro-life” right been doing about this?

    What’s wrong about a Yale graduate wanting to be a housewife? Nothing of course, unless you don’t value children and self-giving love.

    I’m sorry, where did anyone say there was something wrong with it? If you’re referencing my post, I suggest you go back and actually read it.

    Abortion is the ugly face of modern feminism and the sexual revolution.

    Do your homework. Abortion has been around as long as sex has. Abortion techniques are in the earliest medical books. Abortion instruments were found at the ruins in Pompeii. Feminists didn’t invent it, and the sexual revolution didn’t start it.

  48. If on a level playing field they will lose, then why resist their request to have their ideas mentioned? If their ideas fail that spectacularly, then surely the best possible way to destroy them would be to welcome them with open arms into the discussion, where they will be annihilated.

    Sure, but let’s not call it education. Surely kids should be taught scientific theories, not harebrained ideas. Older civilisations believed rain gods made rain, we now know how rain is formed. Using ID to fill in the blanks is just lazy and stupid.

    Fact is: we don’t know everything about everything. Doesn’t mean some amazing being created it.

  49. Dan, I knew you were a prolife freak. I would agree with some of what you say, but the thing that just shits me is your use of gender in the definition of family. Why don’t more blokes take on the “housewife” role? Why is it that women have to do vacuuming and pots and pans? Why not men? Why is it that it is not the natural course of society for either parent to take an active role?

    Because of dickheads like you mate. Prolonging your inequitable sexism.

    Do you have any idea of the crime reduction that has happened since abortion was legalised? If you don’t agree with abortion, don’t have one. Shouldn’t be a problem for you.

  52. Robert, thanks, but I’m used to it. Hissy Cat called me a “dickfart” or something like that.

    With regard to Flute’s assertions, the claim that abortion has caused a decrease in crime has been debunked. While crime as a whole went down 18 years after Roe was passed, it actually increased among those who were born after Roe and decreased among those born before.

    Regardless though of whether it is true, consider how ugly that claim is: abortion is a good thing because it kills off black, poor people who tend to grow up to be criminals. Another ugly part of the support for abortion is that it always has had a eugenics aspect to it. It is well known that Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margret Sanger, was a blatant eugenecist who promoted birth control and abortion has a means of reducing undesirables (such as, in her view, blacks).

    As to the “if you don’t like abortion, don’t have one” argument, it is as about as convincing as the argument “if you don’t like slavery, don’t own one” or “if you don’t like child abuse, don’t abuse a child” or “if you don’t like wife beating, don’t beat your wife.”

  53. Robert, are you saying that if I didn’t use those names I would win people over?

    No, I’m not saying that.

    I’m asking you a question.

    Does calling people names make your position more attractive or convincing?

  54. It adds a certain je ne sais something Robert. It emotificates the speech mate. But to answer your question seriously. Yes it does.

    Now will you answer my question?

    Dan, Dan, Dan. Riddle me this, why do you use gender specific tags in your definition of “family”?

  55. Does calling people names make your position more attractive or convincing?

    Personally, I thought “dickfart” was pretty funny. If only for the mental image.

  60. flute: FWIW, I think you did an excellent job cutting through the BS surrounding the “calling names” controversy. No, dan is never going to listen to you and he is only using fake outrage over being called a dickfart (or whatever) to score points. However, I would like to point out that “pleb” is probably inaccurate: the highest probability is that dan and robert are frat boys or ex-frat boys: aristocrats, not plebs. Just to point out…

  61. Regardless though of whether it is true

    Now, wait. You just said that it had been debunked. If it were 100% false (and you offer nothing but assertion to say that it is), why bother positing “whether it is true”?

    The original researchers who presented their conclusions about abortion in part resulting in a lower crime rate did not say “Yay, more abortions, less crime!” Nor did they advocate abortion as a wise policy to eliminate crime. To suggest that they did is about as much of a fantasy as the “Sanger was a racist” stuff you guys drag out to suggest that putting on a condom is tantamount to cross-burning.

  62. Cheers Dianne, of course I meant pleb as in complete and utter ignorance. All good and well to surpress over half the population with wierd wacked out looney tune dumb as rhino poo moral values, but ooh call them a dickhead or dickfart and the walls of Jericho come tumbling down. Tossers.

  63. If on a level playing field they will lose, then why resist their request to have their ideas mentioned? If their ideas fail that spectacularly, then surely the best possible way to destroy them would be to welcome them with open arms into the discussion, where they will be annihilated.

    Right?

    I’m sure that’s almost exactly the same sentence I was responding to. Yes, right. But creationists don’t *want* a level playing field. They want ID Creationism to be considered science by the public without it having any scientific trappings. You obviously think that science doesn’t have the answer to everything – it doesn’t. Many also consider that ‘modern western medicine’ doesn’t have the answer to everything. But I still should expect to have to take a medical degree in order to work as a doctor at a hospital, that’s what hospitals are all about.

    What creationists want is the equivelent of every new patient at the emergency room being told, ‘Modern medicine continues to be tested, and gaps exist in medical knowledge. Faith healing is an alternative to conventional medicine. With respect to any medical treatment, you are encouraged to keep an open mind.’ Say that at home, on the news, in the street, in books, in newspapers and blogs… but do not say it in the place where people expect to be told things which we have evidence for.

    (I love the way they use ‘open mind’ there. Imagine, ‘Communism is an alternative to democracy. With respect to politics, students are encouraged to keep an open mind.’ Don’t worry, I will. o_O)

  64. Pacian, that is a great analogy worth anyone’s salt in this argument to pinch. Unfortunately how many christian revivals have you seen the miraculous laying of hands? They revel in ignorance and complete and utter stupidity.

  65. Fart boys and ex-fart boys…?
    Who are these people?…
    I am, he is, we are, Au-strayliaaaaans… We do not speak this strange lingo. As a great politician of ours once said, Please Explain!?

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