Ed Brayton is a freelance writer and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Or perhaps he's just not on the mailing list from the Discovery Institute. In his latest column, Chuck Norris says:
Flying under the legislative radar this past week was potential McCain running mate and governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindal's signing into law of Senate Bill 733, which allows " local school systems to approve the use of supplemental instructional materials for teaching science classes." What opponents are up in arms about is that, with SB 733, teachers could supplement evolutionary teachings with materials on Creationism or Intelligent Design.
Oops. He went and let the cat out of the bag. Chuck, repeat after me: SB 733 allows teachers to offer objective, scientific critiques of current theories, including evolution. That's bullshit, of course, and we all know it, but you've got to stick to the talking points or other people will find out it's bullshit too. And speaking of bullshit...
What many might not realize, however, is that our founders were familiar with naturalistic and evolutionary views of the sciences. Evolution has been around a lot longer than Darwin. And criticism for it has also been around a lot longer than Ben Stein's movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." The Founding Fathers were well-aware of the arguments for and against naturalism. They were familiar with the sciences and arguments for and against theism and naturalism since well before the time of Christ.
Wow. Just wow. Someone gave this ignoramus a column, for crying out loud. There are people who actually take him seriously. That's frightening.
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Comments
Make sure you save that page for evidence before it gets 'scrubbed' by WND. It will come in handy when the trial comes.....
Posted by: FastLane | July 9, 2008 10:03 AM
Notice how there's no mention of evolution in the Declaration of Independence? That proves that America is a Creationist nation and we should be teaching Genesis in our civics classes!
Posted by: jpf | July 9, 2008 10:13 AM
Ed:
I'm sure you've seen that commercial where NunChuck Norris chases down those two punks who made fun of him and kicks their asses. Just sayin'.
Posted by: democommie | July 9, 2008 10:31 AM
I love the title of his new book, Black Belt Patriotism. It's so much better than his rather unwieldy, Secret Power Within: Zen Solutions to Real Problems. Though I admit it beats the working title, Are You There God? It's Me, Chuck. I'm imagining this latest book as the kick-off of a series. Expect soon, Quivering Palm Evangelism, Head-butting Homosexuality, and Katana Personal Grooming.
Okay, now I'm picturing a ghostwriter with a big bottle of Advil and a bigger bottle of whisky.
Posted by: Abby Normal | July 9, 2008 10:40 AM
Guess who's Chuck's source for the founders and evolution/creationism? David Barton, of course!
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | July 9, 2008 10:43 AM
Forgets, or just doesn't care. That's always been the strategy, after all; one message for the in-group, another for the rest. Their problem is their hilarious inability to actually keep the two messages separate.
Posted by: MartinM | July 9, 2008 12:56 PM
Our founding fathers were not hep to relativity or quantum mechanics. We should remove those from the curriculum.
Posted by: Herod the Freemason | July 9, 2008 1:10 PM
By the way, I just finished my speech for the conference in Austin and, true to form, I did manage to weave in a Chuck Norris slide.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | July 9, 2008 1:18 PM
Guess who's Chuck's source for the founders and evolution/creationism? David Barton, of course!
I just saw him in a commercial talkng about his "reliance on original sources." Well hey, how about reliance on google once and a while Mr. Barton!
Our founding fathers were not hep to relativity or quantum mechanics. We should remove those from the curriculum.
A pretty simple point. But one that kinda escapes Mr. Barton and Mr. Norris for some weird reason. I dunno why.
Posted by: 386sx | July 9, 2008 2:07 PM
The Founding fathers believed that science and reason are the necessary elements to protecting the American experiment of democracy and civil liberties.
It is only befitting that enemies of democracy and civil liberties are also enemies of sound science and reasoning ;-)
Posted by: Shawn Wilkinson | July 9, 2008 2:51 PM
No doubt some of the founding fathers believed in creationism. Well, Chuck, do you know what else they believed in? Slavery. Fortunately we're smart enough today to realize that they weren't always right about everything.
Posted by: Jason | July 9, 2008 3:41 PM
Sad to say, but even the Founding Fathers were confronted (and confounded) by "blessed ingnorance".
THE VOICE OF WARNING TO CHRISTIANS, 1800
by Pastor John Mitchell Mason (Scotch Presbyterian, NY)
...Mr. Jefferson's argument against the flood is, in substance, the very argument by which infidels have attacked the credibility of the Mosaic history. They have always objected the insufficiency of water to effect such a deluge as that describes. Mr. J. knew this. Yet he adopts and repeats it. He does not deign so much as to mention Moses: while through the sides of one of his hypotheses, he strikes at the scriptural history, he winds up with pronouncing all the three to be "equally unsatisfactory." Thus reducing the holy volume to a level with the dreams of Voltaire!
...But it was not enough for this gentleman to discredit the story of the deluge. He has advanced a step farther, and has indicated, too plainly, his disbelief in the common origin of mankind. The scriptures teach that all nations are the offspring of the first and single pair, Adam and Eve, whom God created and placed in paradise. This fact, interwoven with all the relations and all the doctrines of the bible, is alike essential to its historical and religious truth. Now what says the candidate for the chair of your president?
...After these affronts to the oracles of God, you have no right to be surprized if Mr. Jefferson should preach the innocence of error, or even of atheism. What do I say! He does preach it. "The legitimate powers of government," they are his own words, "extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbors to say there are twenty Gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
Ponder well this paragraph. Ten thousand impieties and mischiefs lurk in its womb...
Posted by: R Hampton | July 9, 2008 4:22 PM
R. Hampton-
Yes, that is precisely the kind of idiocy that Jefferson was confronted with during his lifetime by the religious right of his day. Which explains his anti-clerical fervor.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | July 9, 2008 4:41 PM
Ugh. I feel compelled to post this quote from Thomas Jefferson:
So it is true that Jefferson was a "creationist", insofar as he believed a (material!) God created life on Earth. But in a pre-Darwinian intellectual atmosphere there was simply no other way to account for how lifeforms are so well adapted to their environments. Hell, even arch-skeptic David Hume found himself at a loss as to how to explain life, even though he clearly realized that the natural theology (creationist) arguments failed.
The thing is that, in the 18th and early 19th century, naturalism/materialism and beliefs in a creator-god were not mutually exclusive. I see no reason to think that, if Jefferson had been aware of a natural explanation for how life came to be as it is without a creator god, he wouldn't accept it.
Of course, all this requires actually putting some thought into the historical situation of the Founders, something Chuck Norris' roundhouse-kick-addled brain can't be expected to do.
Posted by: Wes | July 9, 2008 4:55 PM
Wes said:
This explanation seems to completely discount the idea that possibly Jefferson (or indeed, Hume) simply concluded that they didn't know how the species on the planet came to be. That is, it buys into the "god of the gaps" explanation, which claims that when no scientific theory is available, "goddidit" must be accepted. I have seen no evidence that either Hume or Jefferson accepted this premise.
Posted by: Gretchen | July 9, 2008 5:00 PM
Have you noticed Chuck Norris starring a a Brit-com, playing a character named Foggy Dewhurst?
Posted by: mark | July 9, 2008 6:20 PM
Well, I'll admit that when it comes to Hume I'm relying on Daniel Dennett's interpretation of the ending of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Dennett surmised that Hume's concession to the design argument at the end (after spending the whole book ripping the argument to shreds) was not just a bit of pandering, but a real admission that he just couldn't see how else life on earth was created. This is from Darwin's Dangerous Idea, page 32:
"Philo is surely Hume's mouthpiece in the Dialogues. Why did Hume cave in? Out of fear of reprisal from the establishment? No. Hume knew he had shown the Argument from Design was an irreparably flawed bridge between science and religion, and he arranged to have his Dialogues published after his death...He caved because he just couldn't imagine any other explanation of the origin of the manifest design in nature. Hume could not see how the "curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature" could be due to chance--and if not chance, what?
Dennett's interpretation isn't the most widely accepted one, but I find it convincing.
As for Jefferson, it seems pretty clear to me from the quote I posted above that he believed in a creator-god of some sort, and that he also believed this creator god to be a material being. I was just quoting it to show that this dichotomy between "creationism" and "naturalism", which Chuck Norris is ignorantly relying on, wasn't necessarily the case in Jefferson's day. A lot of materialists back then were theistic or deistic, still relying on the notion of some kind of "god" to explain how humans came to be.
As for the "god of the gaps" charge, I'll go out on a limb here and say that, at least in Hume's case, he might have been well aware that it was a god of the gaps argument, but still couldn't think of any other plausible mechanism to explain how things came to be. Hume was certainly aware that the design argument didn't work, and he did an excellent job of refuting it. But in the end he still conceded to it, apparently fully aware it was a god of the gaps. I guess it all boils down to whether or not you consider his concession at the end of the Dialogues to be genuine or not. Some of Hume's other concessions to religious dogma really do come across as forced and insincere, so maybe that's the case here as well.
Jefferson might have genuinely found the design argument to be compelling, or perhaps he had read Hume's Dialogues and knew of the flaws in the argument. I won't speculate either way on whether he accepted a god of the gaps, because I don't know what he thought of the design argument. But regardless, he still seems to have believed in some kind of creator god.
Posted by: Wes | July 9, 2008 7:20 PM
Expect soon, Quivering Palm Evangelism, Head-butting Homosexuality, and Katana Personal Grooming.
Be careful around his Improved Critical Unarmed Strike when wielding +5 Sun Soul Gloves. Hell of a one-two punch!
Posted by: trog69 | July 9, 2008 8:20 PM
Well - it looks like Chuck Norris is showing his ingnorance once again! The "Holy Roller" should run for President or Governor because Chuckie seems to have all of the answers to everything that is going on in the world. The gas prices, the oil price increases, McCain's age, voting for that weirdo "Huckabee'" who sounds like he doesn't know his ASS from his ELBOW, (looking for another White House invitation Chuck with "Holy Mackeral"?), home schooling his kids, to shaving his beard because his kids said that he could be recognized "Yuck". I think that it's time that you packed it in you charter member of the "Over-The-Hill Stud Muffin". You have the ugliest looking "most beautiful woman" that I have ever seen, absolutely no personality. She could stop a million jewel watch from ticking. She is no compliment to you and your reputation of being "Mr. Nice Guy" and you are definetley not a "mentor" you former "Make-A-Wish" member. She always asked people how much money they had, why didn't you do some research before you hooked up with her, like ask the people who knew her from school what she is like? But then again if all you are interested in is bedding someone why ask! She left her husband because he has M.S. - she didn't want to take care of him, what happened wto marriage vows?
Posted by: Carl | July 9, 2008 10:09 PM
I'm afraid that Chuck's been nursing a grudge ever since having his clock cleaned by that heathen Chinee, Bruce Lee in "Enter the Dragon".
Posted by: democommie | July 10, 2008 12:22 AM
Um, Wes, The first sentence of the Jefferson quote has three misspellings/grammatical errors. I really don't think TJ himself was illiterate, so the fault lies elsewhere. :)
Bob
Posted by: Bob Carroll | July 10, 2008 8:46 AM
I have a need to always get the original cite, whenever possible. With regards tp The Nation's Founders, this has now become a much easier task, thanks to Google Books.
A much cleaner reference to the above mentioned Thomas Jefferson citation is:
Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, August 15, 1820
"The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition". Andrew A. Lipscomb, Editor in Chief, Albert Ellery Bergh, Managing Editor;. The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States, Washington D.C. 1903/1904
Volume XV, pages 269-276
A pointer to the quote is available through Google Books using this URL.
Also of note is that the Edition referenced here states it is The "Library Edition", yet I have discovered through multiple instances of double checking with a personal Memorial Edition collection that the pagination is exactly the same, so I've made the assumption the the Library Edition was a version of the Memorial Edition printed especially for library Usage. I could be wrong on this however, and have not located any strong bibliographic records which would indicate one or the other.
For anyone who may be interested, some of my forays into Google Books can be viewed here. Yes, the aliased URL is intentional, so bookmark after arrival, and yes, I am aware that the authorship is listed other than this one. I am a very private person, ok?
Posted by: a knight | July 10, 2008 11:43 AM
Posted by: Herod the Freemason | July 10, 2008 11:58 AM
Bob,
Don't blame me. Blame Stephen J. Gould. :D
A Knight,
Google Books rocks. One of the coolest things on the internet (if you're a bookworm like me, that is).
Herod,
I've read the Dialogues before. I just like Dennett's interpretation of it. Like I said, it's just one possible interpretation, and there are probably a lot of people out there who think it's dead wrong.
Posted by: Wes | July 10, 2008 3:03 PM