…and this is a 
Orson Scott Card, Intelligent Design advocate
Category: Creationism
Posted on: January 21, 2006 1:01 PM, by PZ Myers
Orson Scott Card has written a long essay defending Intelligent Design.
Oy, but it is depressing.
It's a graceless hash, a cluttered and confusing mish-mash of poorly organized complaints about those darned wicked "Darwinists". He lists 7 arguments. Then he repeats his list, expanding on them. Then he goes on and on, hectoring scientists about how they should behave. For a professional writer, it's just plain bad writing—I'm struggling with how to address his arguments, but he's written such a gluey mass of tangled ranty irrationality that it's hard to get a handle on it. Ugly, ugly, ugly…and why do these guys all seem to think the way to defend the ideas of ID is to whine about the perfidy of all those scientists? Not once does he bring up any evidence for ID.
Card can't discuss the evidence, because he doesn't know or understand the evidence. That's apparent when he begins by praising Behe's Darwin's Black Box, and regurgitates the argument from irreducible complexity. Irreducible complexity is not a problem for evolution, and Behe is a tired old fraud who hasn't had a new idea in 15 years. That Card would be impressed with DBB says only that he doesn't know much biology and that the depth of his thinking is remarkably shallow.
Oh, well. I'll try the brute force approach and discuss each of Card's arguments in turn. This will get long.
His first complaint is that ID and creationism aren't the same thing, and we're just being mean to conflate them.
1. Intelligent Design is just Creation Science in a new suit (name-calling).
1. You have to be ignorant of either Creation Science or Intelligent Design—or both—to think that they're the same thing. Creation Science is embarrassing and laughable—its authors either don't understand science or are deliberately deceiving readers who don't understand it. Frankly, Creation Science is, in my opinion, a pack of pious lies.
Card hasn't read the testimony in the Kitzmiller case, I presume. That was one of the points made: that the textbook the ID proponents were pushing on the schools began its editorial history as a creationist tract. The founding father of the Intelligent Design movement, Phillip Johnson, wrote this:
"If we understand our own times, we will know that we should affirm the reality of God by challenging the domination of materialism and naturalism in the world of the mind. With the assistance of many friends I have developed a strategy for doing this,...We call our strategy the "wedge."
What is disingenuous is to claim that ID proponents are not driven by the same ideological motives of the old-school creationists: all that has changed is that they've become more clever about hiding those motives. If creationism is a pack of pious lies, then so is ID; ID is even less honest than upfront creationism.
But the problems that the Designists raise with the Darwinian model are, in fact, problems. They do understand the real science, and the Darwinian model is, in fact, inadequate to explain how complex systems, which fail without all elements in place, could arise through random mutation and natural selection.
There's a series of false assertions. The Designists do not raise legitimate problems; I've looked, and a good problem would be one that prompts interesting research. They just don't, and I note that Card fails to list any of these "problems". The IDists assert problems, which is trivial and easy to do, given that our knowledge is incomplete—the real issue is whether they can provide tools to approach the answer. They don't.
They also don't understand the real science. Behe's work is glib nonsense that ignores any rebuttals, Dembski doesn't understand the theorems he criticizes, and Wells' Icons of Evolution is an embarrassing example of poor scholarship. I don't see any evidence that these people actually understand evolution (and sometimes, that they get it completely wrong), which leads into Card's next complaint.
2. Don't listen to these guys, they're not real scientists (credentialism).
2. Real science never has to resort to credentialism. If someone with no credentials at all raises a legitimate question, it is not an answer to point out how uneducated or unqualified the questioner is. In fact, it is pretty much an admission that you don't have an answer, so you want the questioner to go away.
That is correct, degrees aren't that big a deal, and I've said so myself. What matters is evidence, logic, and methodology—claiming that those on the side of evolution are the ones practicing credentialism is exactly backwards, though.
It's the Discovery Institute and other creationists before them who wave around lists of "X hundred scientists who doubt evolution!" Project Steve was set up to mock that tactic. It's Jonathan Wells who got a Ph.D. as a tactic to use in his goal of "destroying Darwinism". My side relies on the evidence and the science; the ID side relies on authority and propaganda.
Card continues this practice of getting the problem backwards in his next complaint.
3. If you actually understood science as we do, you'd realize that these guys are wrong and we're right; but you don't, so you have to trust us (expertism).
3. Expertism is the "trust us, you poor fools" defense. Essentially, the Darwinists tell the general public that we're too dumb to understand the subtleties of biochemistry, so it's not even worth trying to explain to us why the Designists are wrong. "We're the experts, you're not, so we're right by definition."
Behe and his group don't think we're stupid. They actually make the effort to explain the science accurately and clearly in terms that the lay audience can understand. So who is going to win this argument? Some people bow down before experts; most of us resent the experts who expect us to bow.
The irony is that there are plenty of Darwinists who are perfectly good writers, capable of explaining the science to us well enough to show us the flaws in the Designists' arguments. The fact that they refuse even to try to explain is, again, a confession that they don't have an answer.
I find this the most infuriatingly dishonest of Card's arguments. It's transparently stupid.
Where are these "Darwinists" who tell the public they're too dumb to understand biochemistry? Look at most of the people promoting evolution, and what do you see? College professors, professional educators, who put most of their day-to-day effort into teaching 18-22 year old kids subjects like biochemistry. We know the subject is difficult, but if we thought people couldn't learn it, we'd be out of a job. Another category of people promoting evolution are the popularizers, scientists and journalists and writers, who are explicitly reaching out to the general public to explain these ideas. Is Carl Zimmer demanding that people bow down before him? Yeah, there are writers who patiently try to explain things—here's a list—we don't refuse to explain, instead the creationists refuse to listen.
Card's claims aren't just nonsense, they're offensive nonsense.
Now watch: more reversals.
4. They got some details of those complex systems wrong, so they must be wrong about everything (sniping).
4. When Darwinists do seem to explain, it's only to point out some error or omission in the Designists' explanation of a biochemical system. Some left-out step, or some point where they got the chemistry wrong. They think if they can shoot down one or two minor points, then the whole problem will go away.
Wow. This is ironic. All Intelligent Design creationism has are god-of-the-gaps arguments—and all Card himself has been able to do in this essay is claim that IDists point out flaws in evolutionary explanations. We aren't to rely on credentialism, but on the actual evidence for a position…so pointing out that the Designists have a poor understanding of the evidence seems like a valid criticism to me.
They ignore several facts:
The Designists are explaining things to a lay audience, and Behe, at least, tells us up front that he's leaving out a lot of steps ... but those steps only make the system more complex, not less.
Yes, biological systems are complex, and more complex than the caricatures of creationists suggest. This, however, is not an argument for design. Evolution, as a process built on the refinement of random events, is extremely good at generating complexity. Which will produce the more complex arrangement of parts, a guy with a milling machine, or a winter storm at the beach that throws up a tangled pile of driftwood?
The Designists are working from secondary sources, so they are naturally several years behind. Of course a scientist who is current in the field will understand the processes better, and can easily dismiss the Designists as using old, outmoded models of how the systems work.
"Several years behind"? They haven't even started! You do not build a research program on secondary sources, but on direct observations of phenomena in nature. Shouldn't we dismiss ideas generated by people who understand the processes more poorly than we do, that are based on interpretations of secondary sources, and are base on old, outmoded models? Whose side is Card on here?
What they never seem to show is how the new understanding reveals a system that is not complex after all, one in which each step in the process confers independent benefits on the organism and therefore could have evolved through random mutation and natural selection alone.
They don't do this because the current findings rarely reveal a simpler process than was previously thought. Almost invariably, they find that the system is more complex and therefore harder to explain, and therefore the Designists have even more of a point than they thought.
Errm, name some, Mr Card. I think you're making stuff up.
In comparisons of extant organisms, we are going from one complex, highly derived form to another; that's what we'd expect. But when we look at individual systems, we do see patterns of change that sometimes involve increases in complexity over time, and sometimes decreases (again, what we'd expect; evolution does not impose a direction against or in favor of complexity). We can look at the history of many components and see a pattern of evolutionary change…for instance, in the evolution of the immune system, which also happens to be one of the icons of Intelligent Design creationism.
5. The first amendment requires the separation of church and state (politics).
5. The church and state argument is deliberately misleading. First, the Designists are not, in fact, advocating "God." They are very careful not to specify who or what the Intelligent Designer might be. So they are not advocating for any particular religion, or any religion at all. For all anyone knows, the supposed Intelligent Designers might be an alien species of mortal, ungodlike beings.
I actually have some sympathy with this argument. I think court cases are stop-gap measures to prevent the advance of ignorance into our public school system, but don't actually address the root causes of the problem. If we focus only on case-by-case attempts to block the creationist challenges without actually getting out there and educating people, we're doomed.
However, Card's argument is flawed in two ways. One, as I mentioned above, the motivations of the founders of the Intelligent Design creationism movement are religious, and the followers are blatantly so—see Bill Buckingham and Sharon Lemburg. It's built with a religious goal, and the majority of it's proponents see it as a clever ploy to advance religion into the public schools.
Two, it wouldn't matter if they were peddling little green men, ala the Raelians—it's still wild speculation with no supporting evidence, and doesn't warrant inclusion in the public school system. That's the nub of the problem, not religion, but the unscientific nature of the speculation.
6. We can't possibly find a fossil record of every step along the way in evolution, but evolution has already been so well-demonstrated it is absurd to challenge it in the details (prestidigitation).
6. The "we can't possibly find every step along the way" argument is an old one that doesn't actually fit the current situation. It is the correct answer when defending the idea of evolution against those who believe in an ex nihilo creation in six days.
The fossil record is very clear in showing the divergence of species, with old ones going extinct and new ones arising over a long period of time. And the general progression is from simpler to more-complex organisms. The fact that evolution takes place is obvious. You don't have to find some improbable fossil graveyard where each generation conveniently lay down next to their parents' bodies when it came time to die.
But fossils only show physical structures, and the Intelligent Design argument concedes the point. The Designists (or at least the smart ones) are not arguing for biblical literalism. They freely admit that evolution obviously takes place, that simple organisms were followed by more complex ones.
They also accept the other obvious arguments for evolution, like the similarity of genes among different species. They have no problem with the idea that chimps are so genetically similar to us because we share a common ancestor.
Whoops. Mr Card is showing his lack of knowledge of the subject. Many of the IDists certainly do deny common descent: Paul Nelson, for instance, and Phillip Johnson, and perhaps he should read some of Casey Luskin's babble. I would love to know what that Moonie, Jonathan Wells, thinks about common descent. Perhaps these are not the "smart ones"?
Their argument isn't against evolution per se. Nor are they doubting that natural selection takes place. Their argument is that the Darwinian model is not a sufficient explanation.So "we can't find fossils representing every step of evolution" has nothing to do with the issues being raised. The Designists are not anti-evolution. They are anti-Darwin.
Read Johnson. Their argument is against naturalism. It's even deeper than Card knows: they are fighting against the foundations of all of science.
Look, this is amusing, but it's also pathetic. Card is sitting there at his computer, trying to tell us what IDists believe, and he's getting it all wrong; he's trying to tell us what scientists believe, and he's not only getting it wrong, he's telling stories that are 180° reversals of the scientific position. He's a caricature of the ranting right-wing poseur, making up his "facts" as he goes along to support an uninformed position. Some pundit.
7. Even if there are problems with the Darwinian model, there's no justification for postulating an "intelligent designer" (true).
7. Yes, there are problems with the Darwinian model. But those problems are questions. "Intelligent design" is an answer, and you have no evidence at all for that.
Quite right. There are problems in evolution; if there weren't, it wouldn't be a very interesting field of study. Intelligent Design creationism is an assertion without evidence, but I wouldn't go so far as to dignify it by calling it so much as an answer—the Flying Spaghetti Monster is also an "answer". We should have higher standards than that.
There's much more in Card's article. He goes on at length complaining about those wretched scientists who are trying to push their Darwinian religion on everyone, but it's all undercut by his sublime and unreasoning ignorance of what scientists actually say. I mean, seriously, he's ranting about "Darwinists"; there aren't any real Darwinists anywhere, it's a code word used by creationists and nothing more, so you have to understand that I read this kind of thing with a superior smirk, watching the little whiner reveal how little he knows of the subject every time he uses the word.
Here's one excerpt from his protracted temper tantrum to show you what I mean.
Evolution happens and obviously happened in the natural world, and natural selection plays a role in it. But we do not have adequate theories yet to explain completely how evolution works and worked at the biochemical level.
That is a true statement, according to our present state of scientific knowledge.
And when Darwinists scream that we do too know how to explain evolution, and it's natural selection, so just stop talking about it, they are dogmatists demanding that their faith—the faith that Darwin's model will be found to explain everything when we just understand things better—be taught in the public schools.
His potted summary in bold is something I, and virtually all of the biologists I know, would mostly agree with. (The one problem is that phrase "at the biochemical level", which means something rather specific to most of us; I hope he's not trying to suggest that there are mechanisms other than physics and chemistry operating on the molecules of life, which would be just silly. I think he just wanted a nicely pretentious science-y word to toss into his statement, so I'll let it pass.)
It's pretty much exactly what we want taught in school. We then want the instructors to go on and explain what evolution is and cover the major concepts and lines of evidence supporting it, of course; mentioning some of the problems real scientists work on is a fine idea, we'd just rather the genuine areas of controversy were discussed, rather than the bogus baloney the Discovery Institute likes to talk about, and it would really help if before they discussed the bleeding edge they were prepared with the fundamental concepts first.
Ah, but that last paragraph…that's where Orson Scott Card the pompous opinionated twit bellows out. There are no "Darwinists". We aren't screaming that we know how to explain all of evolution. We don't think it's all natural selection. We aren't telling people to stop talking about it. We aren't being dogmatic, we aren't demanding "faith" be taught in public schools. This is nothing but Card's straw man.
We are saying that evidence should be taught, that students should understand the best available theory that explains that evidence. We want students to question using the tools of observation and reason and experiment, not revealed knowledge and the dicta of authoritarian dogma. We don't think speculation of the sort the Discovery Institute pushes warrants serious commitment in the school curriculum; if you want to talk about it, fine, go ahead (everyone does anyway!), just don't pretend it is a substantive issue.
I like some of Card's writing. It's sad to see that in addition to being a hateful homophobe, he's also an apologist for bad science and poor science teaching with a feeble grasp on what science is actually about.
For more painful reading, Card has a discussion board on his essay.
Comments
I've always strived to keep my admiration for someone's creative work separate from my loathing of the same person's politics or other views, but I just can't bring myself to read Card since I first came upon his disgusting anti-gay stuff some years back. I think I can live a long happy life of reading SF even if I don't read Ender's Game.
Posted by: Jaquandor | January 21, 2006 1:08 PM
If his homobigotry hadn't already left me in the deepest contempt of him, I would have lost any respect for Card that I held.
Posted by: Kristjan Wager![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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January 21, 2006 1:09 PM
And to think he was once one of my favorite writers. So sad. I won't even pick up his books these days.
Posted by: donna | January 21, 2006 1:13 PM
Yup, he horribly mischaracterises "Darwinism" and mildly misunderstands the issues. In his defence, he does also give the ID proponents a well-deserved slating.
Posted by: Corkscrew | January 21, 2006 1:20 PM
I like Cards's science fiction. In fact one of his books in the Ender series, Xenocide, was instrumental in my realizing I had been misled about the evidence against evolution (and my subsequent deconversion). I don't understand how someone who can write so well about a group of people who are fed religious beliefs to keep them oppressed can be so obtuse when it comes to his own beliefs. Hopefully he is merely misinformed and will take the time to investigate the facts.
Posted by: Ben | January 21, 2006 1:31 PM
Card is a mediocre, Mormon Sci-Fi writer that has cruised on one clever book (Ender's Game) and has otherwise just re-written various Mormon tales to an audience that is, by-and-large, ignorant of the origins of his tales. The danger of Card is that due to his audience's ignorance of his plagiarized plots, they tend to think he's a creative genius instead of a mediocre writer who steals ideas from the Book of Mormon and cobbles them together, and thus he's elevated to s a status of competency he does not deserve.
Posted by: Moses | January 21, 2006 1:37 PM
From what I have read of Card, he seemed to have a firly good understanding of basic biology. His use of genetics in his Bean series, for example, is supprisinly accurate. The problem is that he is VERY religious. He sticks mormonism into everything he writes.
Posted by: dbpitt | January 21, 2006 1:38 PM
PZ,
Card is a writer of infinitely malleable sentences, most beautiful, many intriguing, and all artificial. Outside their novels, most writers are a little thoughtless, many are shallow, and Card is a fundementalist Mormon, too. That doesn't help here, he thinks as a fundementalist. The likes of Faulkner, Hemingway, and Steinbeck were anything but shallow, but neither were they damned by a mindless religion; Card is so damned.
The rest of my point is, why put yourself to all this effort, to preach to the choir and waste your energy on this tedious tool of the tabernacle clergy?
Sure, Identify it, put it out there, but then let nature take its course, and the ignorant will gravitate toward the ignorant.
Go birdwatching, grade papers, and we'll start the OSC books boycott.
Posted by: Leung Shu Ren | January 21, 2006 1:40 PM
Orson Scott Card can't help himself. As an article of faith, he thinks he knows who the creator is. Card is a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mormons believe that godhead is attainable and that the God of the Bible (and of the Book of Mormon) was once as we are. Given that background and world view, how can Card resist intelligent design? Someday he expects to be an intelligent designer himself. (When Card is god of his own universe, I hope he divinely inspires his creatures to write better scriptures than the hackneyed Book of Mormon.)
Posted by: Zeno | January 21, 2006 1:49 PM
While Card is a Mormon, he is not a "fundamentalist Mormon." In fact, he has gotten in spats with the church for some of his writings.
I've met Scott and spent time talking with him, and was very surprised how open-minded he seemed. (This was about 5-6 years ago, when I had several meals with him at a sci-fi convention.) However, this article seems very naive, much more so than I would expect from him. He's a man of quite incisive intelligence, and it surprises me even more to see such fallible logic.
This said, he lost a child a few years ago, and perhaps his world-view has changed.
Posted by: Kirk | January 21, 2006 1:55 PM
When a person finds Joseph Smith more convincing than Charles Darwin, there really is no need to go into the details.
They're just mad I tell you.
Mad.
Posted by: Ick of the East | January 21, 2006 1:56 PM
Interesting to see a lot of former-enjoyers of Card out there (I'm one too). First read Ender's Game, and in my usual style, went out and got everything I could find of his. I only found his anti-gay and his religious stuff in more recent years when I went on more of a used-book hunt. What a complete disappointment for someone who has talent, and is good at explaining the work he does (he has a how to write sci-fi book out there that is pretty good -- I think it's out of print but bought it used years ago).
Great analysis as always PZ.
Posted by: Kate | January 21, 2006 2:08 PM
I think the proper response to this one is that it's flagrant bullshit. The IDists are most certainly advocating God -- that's the whole point of their movement, in their own words! And what sense would it make to complain about "natrualism" being a barrier to accepting ID if ID only posits natural entities?
Just because they've framed their argument in such a way that it isn't logically necessary for the designer to be God doesn't mean this isn't what they're advocating to the public. How many prominent ID advocates believe the designer is a space alien? Zero, by my last count.
And even still, some of their arguments do logically necessitate that the designer is God. Cosmological fine-tuning, for example, would require a god of some sort, not just a space alien.
Posted by: Steve Reuland | January 21, 2006 2:13 PM
For those who dallied in USENET in the early to mid 90s, Card's homophobic polemic was widely disseminated, despite threats to sue anyone who emailed or posted it.
As for writing, yeah, Ender's Game and a few others are remarkable books, but he's written some stinkers too. Lost Boys is so bad it's hard to believe it was written by the same person. Tortured reasoning and writing.
Posted by: Wayne | January 21, 2006 2:19 PM
It seems Scott has hit a problem that plagues many SF authors, the explosion of knowledge and the attempt of the nonscientist writer to keep pace. After all, in some areas of science, we are beginning to see discoveries which were undreamed of twenty years ago. Faulkner, Hemingway, and Steinbeck wrote of things they knew, had seen, or had second hand accounts. The SF writer dreams up societies and civilizations and scientific advances without the advantage of observation. At the same time, get a scientific concept wrong and you are pilloried so you do research.
In the good old days of notecards and reference books, knowledge was exposed more slowly and you knew which journals or books to look to for information. The proliferation of websites promoting all sorts of ideas, good, bad or just plain ugly, increases the chances writers will pick up nutjob or incorrect information since the temptation is there to do an hour's research instead of hours or days of research. We mistake ease of access with quality of knowledge contained.
It is unfair to criticize Scott as a one hit wonder as many of us are one hit wonders in one way or another. About once a decade, the latest set of Young Turks in the SFWA decide that there is too much deadwood in the organization and set about pruning the membership. It never succeeds because if they did do away with everyone who managed to publish a DAW S&S fifteen years ago, there would not be enough people left to pay the dues to keep the organization going.
Educate Scott, if you feel he is wrong. Maybe he just has not reviewed the same information you have. Maybe he is not willfully, obdurately ignorant. If he refuses to be corrected, then is the time to excoriate him.
Evolution isn't that difficult of an idea to pick up with a little reading; the world's first herdsman or first farmer was also the world's first evolutionist.
Posted by: ent lord | January 21, 2006 2:19 PM
"Educate Scott, if you feel he is wrong. Maybe he just has not reviewed the same information you have. Maybe he is not willfully, obdurately ignorant."
All evidence is firmly to the contrary. Personally I'm quite glad I discovered noxious opinions before I read any of his books. Saved me bothering with them.
Posted by: Samnell | January 21, 2006 2:41 PM
Great, yet another reason for me to dislike Orson Scott Card.
This interview was the first time I found myself appalled by him:
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2000/02/03/card/
I've enjoyed a lot of his fiction, even though his later Ender series books have been soulless cash-ins. I wish he wouldn't try so hard to get rid of his fans.
Posted by: Johnny Pi | January 21, 2006 2:41 PM
It's a shame about Card. Yes, Ender's Game was fantastic. I read his most recent, the incoherent Magic Street, and I could only shake my head sadly. To think this is the man who used to go to conventions around the country holding his satirical "Secular Humanist Revival" meetings and warning against the kinds of religious extremists who are (irony of ironies) the very folks supporting ID.
Another SF writer who has gone over to kookville is James P. Hogan.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is going on with these people?
Posted by: Martin Wagner | January 21, 2006 2:44 PM
"Ender's Game" wasn't so great, anyway. I always got the feeling that the writer was more interested in stringing long, convoluted sentences around just to hear his own voice. This was when I was in high school back in the 80s, and I knew nothing of Card's interesting opinions. I finished the book just because I used to feel one had to complete those books they started, no matter how awful (I'm smarter than that now).
I never read another of his door-stoppers. My opinion: you are missing out on nothing by skipping Card's work. If you want far-out sci-fi transhumanism read Greg Bear, instead.
Now remind me to never find out what Bear has said in public about all this stuff...
Posted by: clvrmnky | January 21, 2006 2:45 PM
Some commenters seem to think that PZ should either ignore Card’s posting or simply indicate that it is wrong and leave it at that. I beg to differ. I want to express my appreciation for PZ and others like him who have explained in detail why many superficially impressive writings are wrong.
About 35 years ago, I recall a friend asking me what I thought of von Daniken’s books about aliens and UFOs and “Chariots of the Gods” and suchlike. I remember being embarrassed that about all I could say was that I thought he was wrong. I really didn’t know enough about the subject to say anything more than that. I subsequently started reading articles in The Skeptical Enquirer about spoon bending and other popular nonsense. I started to learn some basics about science, experimental protocols, statistics, and human biases as a result. It would have been better if I’d been able to learn some of this in grade school, but the skeptical articles gave me a second chance to learn.
It is true that a given article explaining exactly why someone’s argument is deficient or defective or just plain wrong is not likely to produce a lot of converts. However, if one believes in the importance of reasoned argument, I think that the practice of critical analysis is an essential element in teaching others.
PZ fights for what he believes in. I hope that he can continue to do so for many more years.
Posted by: VKW | January 21, 2006 2:50 PM
I'm also a former Card reader. Oddly enough, I lost patience with Card's apparent lack of passion for his work long before I became annoyed with his homophobia and latent Fundamentalism. And maybe it's only reasonable that he's gone this route -- his goals as a science fiction writer (to reach an audience largely concerned with the marvels of the technological future and the endless horizons of humanity's free reach achieved thereby) and as a member of a self-important religious cult (to funnel an audience into a narrow and self-aggrandizing mode of thought and encourage them to give up their independence of thought along with 10% of their income) are irreconcilable with one another. What I saw beginning in the mid '90's was the cognitive dissonance as he gradually attempted to suck his science-fiction audience into his religious funnel. He has to a startling degree failed -- almost every time he's brought up in discussion, it's to talk about what a crappy writer he's become and how obnoxious his real views about the world are. Which is a sad thing for me to contemplate because I really did like his early work. He once possessed a truly fantastic imagination, and there are Card books out there that people exposed to the bullshit above would simply not credit as being written by the same man. The darkening of that intellectual light in the name of self-aggrandizing "faith" is a painful thing to see.
Posted by: slippytoad | January 21, 2006 3:13 PM
Maybe he's planning a new Sci-Fi book about the Intelligent Designer, and he's just seeding the market. If he can get all of the fundie's to buy his books, he'll have millions in new revenue.
Posted by: Jim H | January 21, 2006 3:16 PM
I'd like to unecho the praise for Xenocide. That novel, not Card's disgusting anti-gay bigotry, is what made me stop reading Card's fiction.
Ever read a book that was so bad that it ruined your remembered enjoyment of the author's other books? It's not an experience that has happened to me often, but it has happened. For me, Xenocide was that book. Parts of the "Gloriously Bright" thread would have made a good story on their own, but they were spoiled by being embedded in the rest of the novel. Reading Xenocide made me interpret Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead differently, and not for the better. It magnified literary flaws in those books that I'd previously been willing to overlook.
And, from reading Xenocide and Speaker for the Dead, it doesn't surprise me that Card has now revealed himself as yet another apologist for creationism. The portrayal of scientific research in those books is laughably bad. I have the sense from those novels that Card doesn't think scientists are very bright. He certainly doesn't have a good idea of what scientists do.
Posted by: Matt Austern | January 21, 2006 3:17 PM
Card is right about Columbus, though. FWIW.
Posted by: John Wendt | January 21, 2006 3:35 PM
Science fiction has never had very much to do with science. As a genre, it's a lot closer to mythological narratives like the Sanskrit puranas than to realist fiction. The subject matter may be science or technology, but the tune never goes with the lyrics. As Michael Crichton pointed out in an opinion piece in SCIENCE a couple of years ago, real science is exceedingly dull to the vast majority of people and commercial science fiction writers must tart it up radically in order to make a living. (Chrichton ought to understand these things--he's a world-class charlatan.)
Posted by: Jim Harrison | January 21, 2006 3:39 PM
What I don't understand from this essay is why Card needs to 'contribute' to this debate. Obviously he is part of that large group of people, who, unhindered by any knowledge, just have to ventilate their opinion.
But his essay shows clearly how ID works for many people, by playing to their feelings that there must be something other than naturalistic explanations for existence.
It will be hard ignoring his IDiocy, while reading his SciFi...
Posted by: Akufu | January 21, 2006 3:44 PM
Mr. Meyer's,
I took the time to read most of your rebuttal to Mr. Card because you were patient and concerned enough to not let such ignorance and blindingly obdurate crappola pass without recognizing it as such. I needed no convincing but I Thank you for taking the time to let these fools know their baseless B.S. isn't passing the smell test with folks more informed than they are.
If conflating Intellectual Deception with Cretinism is mean than so Behe it. Idiocy Defined = Cretinism = G*d based Ca-Ca. Mean is inflicting stupidity on the masses. That's mean.
Posted by: burro | January 21, 2006 3:54 PM
Count me in as a long-since-ex Card reader. Xenocide was about as far as I got--the pompous prose had me skipping whole pages towards the end of that book.
It does seem to be the fate of most successful scifi and fantasy authors that there reaches a point in their career where their editor is either unable or reluctant to keep their charge in check. The result is interminable storylines spattered with preachy prose riddled with some underlying personal agenda.
Robert Jordan and Terry Goodkind are two popular fantasy authors I've had to give up on - Jordan for his deadly dull barely-even-plodding pacing and Goodkind for his multi-chapter diatribe against pacifism.
Even the greats of scifi are not immune. Compare the length of Asimov's early novels with the bloated tomes of his later works (Nemesis was his worst bloating offense) and Arthur C. Clarke seemed to become obsessed with repeating his famed "invention" of the satellite, scattering his books with all sorts of predictions that have no relevence whatsoever to the story.
In the end, I guess it's human nature to want to use whatever fame or notoriety you have to promote causes near and dear to your heart, to make a difference in the world. Sadly Orson Scott Card did not choose his cause wisely.
Posted by: Mike | January 21, 2006 3:55 PM
The danger of Card is that due to his audience's ignorance of his plagiarized plots, they tend to think he's a creative genius instead of a mediocre writer who steals ideas from the Book of Mormon and cobbles them together,
Fair's fair, most of the Book of Mormon is ripped off from contemporary sci-fi novels of the time, so in a way, he's just 'giving back'.
Posted by: george cauldron | January 21, 2006 5:06 PM
From what I have read of Card, he seemed to have a fairly good understanding of basic biology.
Funny, it was his stunning *lack* of knowledge about basic biology that drove the final nail in the Card-coffin for me. For reference, it's in Whatever of Earth (first book), a single line so mind-bogglingly stupid that it literally took my breath away.
Good job I wasn't a Card "fan-boy", it may have had long term psychological effects.
Posted by: Graculus | January 21, 2006 5:09 PM
Maybe he's planning a new Sci-Fi book about the Intelligent Designer, and he's just seeding the market. If he can get all of the fundie's to buy his books, he'll have millions in new revenue.
He can't be sci-fi's answer to Lahaye and Jenkins -- he's a Mormon, and let us not forget, the hardcore paleo-christians who buy those books hate Mormons. They don't even think they're christians. (Even tho Mormons act just like them.)
Besides, isn't lovable old Vox Day trying to become the Christian Right's favorite sci-fi writer? :-)
Posted by: george cauldron | January 21, 2006 5:12 PM
why do these guys all seem to think the way to defend the ideas of ID is to whine about the perfidy of all those scientists?
I think deep down we know the answer to that question.
Not once does he bring up any evidence for ID.
You act surprised.
Posted by: george cauldron | January 21, 2006 5:14 PM
Orson Scott Card is also a culture-warrior crackpot who in essays has claimed that blue-staters aren't real Americans and they brought the 9/11 attacks upon themselves because their wicked liberal lifestyles infuriated Osama as much as they infuriate real Americans.
Posted by: TTT | January 21, 2006 5:15 PM
P.Z. -- for more fun, you might take a gander at David Brin's blog, who seems to be partly in your camp, and partly nodding his head at Card's points. It's an odd post, to say the least, one that had me scratching my head at more than a few points.
Here's the link: http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2006/01/supporters-of-science-must-adapt.html
Posted by: Gregory | January 21, 2006 5:37 PM
Funny, it was his stunning *lack* of knowledge about basic biology that drove the final nail in the Card-coffin for me. For reference, it's in Whatever of Earth (first book), a single line so mind-bogglingly stupid that it literally took my breath away.
What was the line?
Posted by: Patrick | January 21, 2006 6:09 PM
Yeah, I'm wondering that, too. You can't just tease us like that.
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January 21, 2006 6:10 PM
Fair's fair, most of the Book of Mormon is ripped off from contemporary sci-fi novels of the time, so in a way, he's just 'giving back'.
Actually, most of it is cribbed from the King James bible and it has those errors, plus errors of its own making (like the iron sword, domestic horses, etc.)
Posted by: Moses | January 21, 2006 6:16 PM
Kirk sez:
"This said, he lost a child a few years ago, and perhaps his world-view has changed."
That may be, and I'd like to add that he was also one of the many (like LGF's Chaz Johnson) who, shortly after the attacks of 9/11, spun viciously right-wards, politically. In fact, this may be an attempt by him at another kind of pious lie -- or rather, a politically expedient one. He may know full well what he's selling is B.S., but because it aids those he perceives to be his political allies, he'll put whatever talents he has has a writer and fabricator to work...
Anyway, on the creative tip, I've never thought he held a candle to Frank Herbert or, later, Dan Simmons. Although he does a great portrayal of teenage boy inner life, IMHO.
Posted by: teh l4m3 | January 21, 2006 6:20 PM
"Card is a mediocre, Mormon Sci-Fi writer that has cruised on one clever book (Ender's Game) and has otherwise just re-written various Mormon tales to an audience that is, by-and-large, ignorant of the origins of his tales."
I would disagree. Yes, his writing is inconsistent, I've avoided reading the obviously Mormon stuff, and I can't comment on his politics. But I think his "Red Prophet" series is even better than the Ender series. Yes, it's got a strong mystical bent, but it's well written fantasy and a well designed world.
Posted by: Scott | January 21, 2006 6:42 PM
I've read the Ender story about 25 years ago, then the Ender novel. The second in the series was passable, the third I could not finish. I also read the Alvin trilogy. I gave up on OSC right about there and then.
He is in my state so he gives book readings locally every now and then, yet I coul dnever get myself to get out of bed to go see him.
On the other hand I risked life and limb (and speeding tickets) to go see Greg Bear - possibly the best SF writer today (I wrote a long list of "Essential SF" on my blog recently). We chatted after the signing for a little while. Gotta love a guy whose favourite recent book - and he read the whole thing! - is Gould's Structure. I hope he uses the insights from it for a novel soon.
David Brin is also good on biology, and he has written and published theoretical science papers that I thought were pretty good. I read his blog regularly and it mostly makes me mad. After a long and excellent series on the threats to Enlightement he is still capable of giving the Righties the benefit of the doubt, to consider them legitimate and to try to forge some kind of middle ground.
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January 21, 2006 6:52 PM
I must say, I'm really disappointed in that Card essay -- I thought he was smarter than that. His comment:
You have to be ignorant of either Creation Science or Intelligent Design -- or both -- to think that they're the same thing.
....is just nuts. I've found over the years that the more I've learned about ID, the more it starts to resemble that old-time religion, Creation Science. You have to be completely ignorant of the ID movement not to see the commonality.
The closest I've ever seen him get to ID before is in one of the Ender sequels, where he gets sort of vitalistic -- but in a SF context, it's easy to accept that as a plot device. In SF, you can expect some things that aren't exactly science-as-we-know-it.
The last thing I read by Card was the Alvin Maker series, which started out really well, but I think he got tired of writing it about two books before finally dragging it out to a horribly weak non-conclusion. In fact, he seem to have trouble with endings in general. I probably won't boycott Card -- but I won't go out of my way to read him, either.
Posted by: lt.kizhe | January 21, 2006 7:08 PM
Gregory writes:
"...David Brin's blog, who seems to be partly in your camp, and partly nodding his head at Card's points. It's an odd post, to say the least, one that had me scratching my head at more than a few points."
I don't read OSC's article as defending ID, per se. If you can get past the faulty reasoning in OSC's first 6 points, I think both he and Brin are trying to point out that the lay public often can't tell the difference between faith-that-science-will-find-the-answers, and the True Faith of ID. (Especially when one side deliberately tries to conflate the two.) A scientist's sputtering incredulous response to these hackneyed ID'ists just doesn't play well in Peoria (or Ohio, or Kansas, ...). People don't like being told they're stupid, even more so when it's true. ;-)
The ID'ists are playing their political cards well. I don't know what form it needs to take, but the "right" side in this debate needs to come up with a consistent political message. We're fighting an emotional appeal with logic. The logic may be correct, and certainly wins court cases, but it doesn't win votes.
Yes, better science education is a good answer, but that's a long term solution. And when 82.3879% (pick a number :-) of the students don't even take the science classes that are offered, it may not help even then. Sigh...
Posted by: Scott | January 21, 2006 7:14 PM
I think its safe to say that you've revealed his real name: Orson Scott Canard.
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January 21, 2006 7:22 PM
I don't like Card - most of his characters strike me as real asses. In all fairness, I've only read three of his books, but I disliked them enough not to pick up any more.
Give me Stephen Baxter - now there is a SCIENCE fiction writer!
Posted by: Amy | January 21, 2006 7:26 PM
David Brin is also good on biology, and he has written and published theoretical science papers that I thought were pretty good. I read his blog regularly and it mostly makes me mad. After a long and excellent series on the threats to Enlightement he is still capable of giving the Righties the benefit of the doubt, to consider them legitimate and to try to forge some kind of middle ground.
*seconds coturnix* Brin's central failing is that he equates the anti-intellectual sins of the right with those of the left. They are entirely different, n quality, quantity, and most importantly, impact on the political and social spheres in this country. It's a very odd blind spot he has. The right and left are not equal in their attacks on science, except in Brin's eyes.
Posted by: shinypenny | January 21, 2006 7:33 PM
The popularity of Ender's Game speaks more of the tendency toward adolescent megalomania among science fiction readers than of quality in the novel itself, which I found possibly the most naive in the whole starry-eyed subgenre of military sf.
Last I heard, Card was a teacher in a private boys' school - it's scary to think what kind of "education" his students might be receiving (or that this may be exactly what their parents want).
If the most active commenters on the discussion board PZ mentions are any example, sophomoric cheap shots are central to the curriculum.
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | January 21, 2006 8:29 PM
Orson Scott Card: What a card! Hehheh. Anyway, reading it here wasn't so bad, where it was neatly dissected. Of course, then I HAD to look at the lengthy homophobic rants. (Not a good idea after eating Indian food.) What exactly is wrong with homosexual marraige? His stream of gibberish was almost as irrational as a creationist! Perhaps this may be scheduled for dissection next?
Posted by: anonymous heterosexual | January 21, 2006 8:30 PM
"Enders game" was a terrific description of and argument on violence, except that the genocide ending ended the good read for me.
But the subsequent "Speaker for the dead" was a terrible soup of bad descriptions of how science is done and bad science. Card discusses "philotic waves" that are analog to the dead and buried 'pilot wave' concept. And yes, vitalism too.
If you are doing space opera or fantasy, fine. But in scifi that is a major faux pas - if you are pretending to do science at all it's better to use speculative unproven concepts, or at least concepts where the known problems can be fixed by new speculations.
Card seems terribly unsuited to discuss science or it's results. But since it reflects in his books after "Enders Game" he will hopefully be less read.
Posted by: Torbjorn Larsson | January 21, 2006 8:45 PM
Who's Orson Scott Card?
Posted by: Carl Buell(OGeorge) | January 21, 2006 8:58 PM
"Enders game" was a terrific description of and argument on violence
Eh, I'd disagree: the reader is subtlety set up to view Ender as an innocent and justified killer, regardless of the details surrounding his killings, solely because his motives are "good". I recommend you read John Kessel's essay, "Creating the Innocent Killer", in which he examines Card's treatment of the question of violence in Ender's Game.
Posted by: Anonymous | January 21, 2006 9:08 PM
"Behe and his group don't think we're stupid."
Oh the irony. Behe and his group are counting on people like Card to not only be ignorant of evolution and science, but to react so emotionally to the presentation of intelligent design creationism that they never think clearly about it.
Card has been duped. Worse, he's supporting the conmen that duped him.
Posted by: Ron Zeno | January 21, 2006 9:10 PM
Orson Scott Card owes his career to Omni magazine. They published his short stories (horror sci-fi, with more than a little misogyny thrown in for grins) in the late 1970s, prior to his getting the big book deal. (Considering that Omni was porn mogul Bob Guccione's attempt at a classy 'legit' mag, his championship of the deeply misogynist Card shouldn't be surprising.) He reads like Michael "Savage" Weiner swallowed a dictionary.
By the way: Does anyone know if it's true that he wasn't really born "Orson Scott Card"? The story I've heard is that he was plain old "Scott Card" growing up, but got the idea to add the "Orson" from one of the D&D characters he played. (I can't see this, though -- Card would have had to have been one of the first persons in the country outside of UW-Madison to be playing D&D for this to be true.)
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | January 21, 2006 9:10 PM
Ron Zeno: Yeah. That's why I think of Card as a slightly more articulate version of Michael Savage (aka Dr. Michael Weiner, the snake-oil salesman). There's the same intense feeling of entitlement, coupled with a white-hot rage at those who sees muscling in on his entitlement turf: women, gays, blacks, etc.
Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven describes the Mormon white-boy entitlement mindset -- and the insane violence that results when this entitlement is denied -- to a T.
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | January 21, 2006 9:16 PM
OSC has turned heavily rightward over the past 15-20 years or so. Even so, I thought he had better sense than to try and turn himself into a latter-day Joseph Fielding Smith (Mormon church president 1969-71 who despised "organic evolution and famously said men would never go to the moon). There was a time when Card would go to scifi cons and hold "secular humanist revivals", but this was before about 1990 or so, when he discovered teh gay in a big way and wrote a nasty article about it for a liberal Mormon magazine.
Card's been mining the Mormon mythos for many, many of his books. His Alvin Maker series? A takeoff of Joseph Smith. Homecoming Saga? Oh, Book of Mormon set in space. Now he's writing fiction about biblical women. I've not even tried to read those.
Remember, OSC is not a scientist, is not trained as a scientist (I believe his degree is from Brigham Young University in Drama), and is generally not qualified to speak on what he is speaking. Guess what? That makes him like so many other of the Intelligent Design types!
Posted by: Fluffy Halifax | January 21, 2006 9:17 PM
I'd be interested in reading that essay by John Kessel; he's a smart man and a good writer. Any suggestions on where I can find it?
Posted by: Matt Austern | January 21, 2006 9:17 PM
Patrick I'll have to paraphrase, because it's been a long while and I'm not going to look it up.
"Individual males are more important than individual females"
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
*gasp*
*pant*
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.....
Posted by: Graculus | January 21, 2006 9:23 PM
I haven't read through the last 55 comments so hopefully I am not repeating.
Since reading (but not completing) Orson Scott Cards "Xenocide" (a pathetic attempt to draw a second sequal from his very brilliant "Enders Game") discovering that he is an IDealologist is unsuprising.
Posted by: Terrorance | January 21, 2006 9:32 PM
Here's Kessel's article:
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/index2.html
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January 21, 2006 10:02 PM
Direct link:
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm
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January 21, 2006 10:02 PM
I admire a lot of Card's early writing, but as others have noted here, he's really lost it lately; the recent Ender follow-ons for instance are not only derivative, but seem aimed at proving political points about violence and evil in the world, the dangers of communism, etc. that make little sense and have no place in the story line we used to love.
But, to counter those who lay his present attitudes to his faith, I'm also a faithful member of the LDS (Mormon) church; the church as a whole has a very strong emphasis on education, and this anti-evolution attitude is, to the extent it's widespread among church members, only a reflection of the sad mis-education of our children across this country on the matter, over the last 100 years or so.
It's not because he's a Mormon that he's written this stuff. It's because he's somehow become a moron. Sorry Mr. Card.
Posted by: Arthur Smith | January 21, 2006 10:19 PM