…and this is a 
Hey, St Petersburg, Florida!
Category: Creationism
Posted on: January 12, 2008 2:43 PM, by PZ Myers
You've got a real winner running for mayor down there. Bill Foster is another ignorant creationist running for political office.
"Evolution gives our kids an excuse to believe in natural selection and survival of the fittest, which leads to a belief that they are superior over the weak," Bill Foster wrote board members in a letter received this week. "This is a slippery slope."
He continued: "One of the Columbine shooters wrote on his Web site, 'You know what I love? Natural selection! It's the best thing that ever happened to the Earth. Getting rid of all the stupid and weak organisms.'"
Rather than reducing our kids' exposure to evolution, let's increase it. The problem with what Bill Foster believes, a belief he shares with the Columbine punks, is that it has nothing to do with evolutionary biology — in their ignorance, they've swallowed a whole pop-culture, religious line of bullshit about the theory. Biology does not advocate killing the stupid and weak; it does not preach some kind of objective superiority of one class of people over another; it merely describes what happens in the natural world.
Maybe if the Columbine killers had gotten a more accurate version of evolution from a science teacher rather than the idiot's version they got from people like their conservative preachers and the Bill Foster's of the world, they wouldn't have held those ridiculous distortions of the idea.
I hope all you St Petersburg residents are planning to vote for some other person. You don't really want an ignoramus in charge of your city government, do you?
Comments
They'll ruin the Dali museum down there. One of the tour guides claimed Dali was a creationist too because of his depiction of DNA in paintings next to wooden crosses. Quite the contrary...he was mocking the church.
Ask Bill what he's gonna do about the Manatees instead.
Posted by: danley | January 12, 2008 2:53 PM
Religion gives you the right to feel superior to everybody.
Posted by: tsig | January 12, 2008 2:55 PM
Perhaps children shouldn't be taught about avalanches either. That would encourage them to kill people under tons of snow and ice.
Posted by: Andrés | January 12, 2008 2:56 PM
Actually, evolutionary theory tells why words like "superior," words that come from our religious past and fundie present, are not descriptive of biology at all. And while it's simply a fact that the "fittest" survive, evolutionary theory tells us that the "fittest" is no constant, as well as that being weak, and/or kind and pro-social, could be best in many circumstances.
Indeed, the religious almost always thought (and do think) that certain groups are superior, while evolutionary theory "deconstructs" such notions into meaninglessness.
How do you like sharing the same warped view of science that a couple of sociopaths had, Foster? And how do you like being possibly responsible for creating more sociopaths through your ignorance and dishonesty?
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | January 12, 2008 2:59 PM
The St. Pete's mayoral election
just got a pure stupid injection.
I might like to run
for that city in the sun,
but I'm allergic to genuflectin'
These local races, it seems,
can only be won from your knees.
With God on your side,
all you must hide
are your anti-constitutional schemes.
I hope that when this races is done
the person that they say has won
isn't this tool
or a similar fool
or any creationist spawn.
Posted by: Rich Stage | January 12, 2008 3:11 PM
Generally, I try to stay out of religious debates involving evolution, since people's beliefs are their own business regardless of their connection to objective reality. However, when someone running for public office so clearly misinterprets a scientific theory for his own benefit, he gives up that sanctity of belief. The idea that the theory of evolution by natural selection has anything to do with Columbine (or Hitler, or any of the other human tragedies people have tried to link to it in the past) is beyond ridiculous. Religious and non-religious people both do awful things, and though our sometimes violent nature inevitably has something to do with our evolutionary past, it has nothing to do with belief in that theory.
Posted by: Ian | January 12, 2008 3:14 PM
Evolution does give you the right to think you are superior to the weak.
I know, because my pastor told me that all you hell-bound sinners believe in evolution, because it gives you the right to judge people.
No Christian, saved by the blood of Jesus, ever thinks he is superior to you hell-bound godless sinners.
Posted by: Steven Carr | January 12, 2008 3:37 PM
That is (David W.) "Bill" Foster. Apparently his almost polar opposite, Bill Foster is running in the Illinois primary to fill Dennis Hastert's abandoned seat. So, I'll be voting for Bill, but there's no way I'd vote for "Bill"
Posted by: Don't Panic | January 12, 2008 3:45 PM
No Christian, saved by the blood of Jesus, ever thinks he is superior to you hell-bound godless sinners.
Of coarse not. That's up for Jesus to decide who is superior. It's not up to the believers to decide. That's up to Jesus. And then Jesus let's us know.
Anyway, we are all equal right up until the point when they start throwing people into hell. So pack up them birdie wings because you'll be needing them. (Like that one time when Jesus flew up into the clouds like a big birdie.)
Posted by: birdiefly386sx | January 12, 2008 3:51 PM
Interesting claim Mr. Foster makes. I was raised Southern Baptist, and my preacher grandpa sometimes spoke nostalgically of the days before the Civil War. The Southern Baptist Convention was formed to prevent those liberal Christians from ending slavery... Religion has often been used to justify labeling classes of people as inferior (women), deserving slavery (the "children of Ham"), fit for killing (Papists, Shi'ites, Jews, Wiccans).
Science is never normative, but religion is, and sometimes has evil results.
Posted by: Kermit | January 12, 2008 3:52 PM
Don't pluralize names with apostrophes! Bad P.Z.; bad!
Not nearly as bad as being a drooling malcontent like Bill Foster, though.
Posted by: Heliologue | January 12, 2008 3:55 PM
Apropos of general creationist idiocy, a fellow calling himself "Karl Priest" just showed up at my place, and since he was rude on his first appearance, I'm calling open season. Tits for tats, nits for gnats. . . .
Posted by: Blake Stacey | January 12, 2008 3:57 PM
I read the full letter available on that page.
Ugh! What a conniving idiot. My sympathies to the educated in Florida.
Posted by: MS | January 12, 2008 3:59 PM
Merely mentioning Columbine in any discussion about why evolution is somehow 'evil' is tantamount to invoking Godwin's Law.
What depresses me isn't that these people are out there, it's that they're politicians and they're receiving VOTES for this claptrap.
Posted by: James Cronen | January 12, 2008 4:00 PM
you know, looking at Rich Stage and Cuttlefish, I have to say that this last year on Pharyngula has spawned not one, but two decent poets (and has motivated several others as well).
adds a lot of color to these threads, which many appreciate, I think.
Viva la Pharyngula!
...and thanks to cuttle and rich and the others that have decided to let their right-brains loose.
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 12, 2008 4:01 PM
"Evolution gives our kids an excuse to believe in natural selection and survival of the fittest, which leads to a belief that they are superior over the weak," Bill Foster wrote board members in a letter received this week. "This is a slippery slope."
Um, and assuming that a human GOD crafted us, special, to rule the planet makes us... less full of ourselves? Hmm.... logic...
Posted by: Kcanadensis | January 12, 2008 4:02 PM
Here, have some random woo!
http://www.sheldrake.org/nkisi/
Posted by: me | January 12, 2008 4:04 PM
Sure, and one of the common misframings among the public is to wrongly compare natural predation with person-on-person violence. But a lion killing a gazelle is like a person killing a gazelle, not like a person killing a person. Higher animals don't kill each other that often, but I may be mistaken (most of the stylized fights like between rams unusually end with the less-dominant loser conceding, and being let off, as with wolves etc, AFAIK.) I do think it is important for biologists (no quotes since I'm not quoting someone) to educate the public against "social Darwinism" being either desirable or a legitimate deduction from natural selection. They shouldn't be afraid to point out that Republicans, the supposedly "religious" party, promotes and supports social Darwinism in practice.
Posted by: Neil B. | January 12, 2008 4:08 PM
PS: You guys should know that Pat Robertson is planning to buy a local paper, The Virginian Pilot. That would ruin it as legit news, making it perhaps worse than Faux. (Hey, we philosophers and kin don't want revelationists spoiling the dignity, such as it is, of us figuring up "what it's all about" in our own heads! ;-/ )
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080111/landmark_robertson.html?.v=1
Posted by: Neil B. | January 12, 2008 4:15 PM
Thanks, my fishy friend!
I have aggregated my limericks here for those who want to read them.
Posted by: Rich Stage | January 12, 2008 4:17 PM
IDists and the other creationists seem never able to decide whether evolution creates values, or if it makes everything random and meaningless. Or if it evil because it is godless, or because it is a religion (implying, of course, that religion is evil and unwarranted).
So, unsurprisingly, we have Foster railing about what evolution "excuses," while the forums are plastered with idiots complaining that evolution makes humanity meaningless, not even superior to "the animals." Any chance they'll ever get their stories straight with each other?
It's worth noting yet again that Klebold and Harris, like Hitler, were more interested in a sort of "artificial selection" than what would normally be called "natural selection." True, the two become confusing when humans are killing other humans, however it's fairly clear that only in the broadest sense possible (in that all that we see is "natural") were Hitler or the Columbine shooters doing anything we'd call "natural," and in the sense of being quite aberrant, they themselves were involved in rather "unnatural acts."
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | January 12, 2008 4:17 PM
Hey! This Forster character is just following the lead of the top politician in the state:
http://www.wjhg.com/news/headlines/13715147.html
With practice passing bucks like that, the guy could get a job as Treasury Secretary.
Posted by: John Pieret | January 12, 2008 4:24 PM
What's really funny about the "evolution promotes evilness" arguments - besides that they're bullshit - is that even if they were correct, that wouldn't actually make evolution false. Scientists are in pursuit of truth here, not a socially acceptable lie. When people criticize evolution based on what effect (they wrongly claim) it will have on society, they're basically promoting social engineering (in the negative sense). By their logic, scientists should disseminate ideas based on the effect they'll have on society.
Posted by: Stephen | January 12, 2008 4:38 PM
When religious people regard scientific theories through their religious mindset, you get a weird transitional form. It's as if they were using the germ theory of disease to argue that this means we ought to invade people's bodies, or molecular theory means we must drop atom bombs on people. If you think those consequences are wrong, then don't "believe in" the theories.
Since their own descriptions include prescriptions and proscriptions, they think all descriptions must do the same thing. And as several have pointed out already, encouraging people to commit the Naturalist Fallacy is much more damaging to morality than anything coming from the science side.
Some former Christians have said that when they first 'lost their faith' they immediately went on sinful binges -- because that is what they were told they should and would do. It took a bit before they went "hey, this doesn't make any sense..."
Posted by: Sastra | January 12, 2008 4:44 PM
Obviously, the murder of one person by another being an example of 'natural selection' is stupid. But, let's assume Bill Foster's thinking is right. The Columbine killer's thinking immediately becomes inconsistent because they committed suicide. From that viewpoint, that means the killers were both superior to others (because they killed them), and inferior to others (because they, themselves, died).
Posted by: tinyfrog | January 12, 2008 4:45 PM
It'll be interesting to see how the St. Petersburg Times follows up on this as the election race progresses. It's a highly unusual paper -- a non-profit owned by the Poynter Institute, which is devoted to the encouragement and pursuit of excellence in journalism.
The paper has, in the past, pursued some stories with quite a liberal perspective. Among other things, a couple years ago it ran a whole series of feature stories that appeared aimed at encouraging the acceptance of transexuals -- very unusual for any US newspaper and especially so for one down in Southern redneck territory.
Posted by: chezjake | January 12, 2008 5:04 PM
Posted by: Les Lane | January 12, 2008 5:14 PM
I thought the mayors of cities dealt with zoning, police, fire, water, trash collection, parking, taxes, schools, and so on. Municipal planning and services.
Since when do mayors run on a platform to overthrow the US government, scrap the constitution, and set up a theocracy? Or to rearrange reality so that it conforms with someone's 4,000 year old bronze age mythology?
Out here, a guy running like that would be considered a kook and get a bit of coverage for comic relief. Not that a significant fraction of the voters might not agree with him on evolution. But he is running for mayor, not chief priest of the wingnuts.
Posted by: raven | January 12, 2008 5:17 PM
One gets tired of these idiocies and one needs a break.
Here is a TED lecture on some sealife.
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/206
Posted by: bernarda | January 12, 2008 5:38 PM
I am who of those fools who buys into the idea that the most successful species of animals are beetles and bacterium. They do not strike me as being "strong".
Ah, but wait, we are dealing with an fool who does not know the difference between a discredited idea about society (Social Darwinism) and biology.
Posted by: Janine | January 12, 2008 5:39 PM
And while it's simply a fact that the "fittest" survive
It's not a fact about organisms, which all perish. Perhaps if we stopped making this misstatement, people would stop getting the wrong impression.
It's a fact about traits within a population if the word "survive" is replaced with "dominate". Fortunately, not only the fittest traits survive, else species would be far more likely to perish when conditions change.
Organisms do not evolve, they develop. Populations evolve. Unless we state this clearly, we can't expect the populace to understand it.
Posted by: truth machine | January 12, 2008 5:45 PM
I grew up in St Pete, and hope they don't let me down. The St Pete Times is a good newspaper. Lets hope they keep this in the forefront and this jackass out of office.
Posted by: moondancer | January 12, 2008 5:55 PM
well, the St Pete times might be a good rag, but in reading the article i saw this:
Foster isn't the first Darwin critic to attempt to link evolutionary theory to violence and racism, but he is the first public figure in the Florida debate to do so.
which is hardly true, unless they only mean this specific mayoral race.
I guess they forgot about Katherine Harris, since she is no longer in the spotlight? I bet I could find others fairly easily.
understandable, I suppose, but an error nonetheless.
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 12, 2008 6:00 PM
And he did get rid of a stupid and weak organism. It's a shame he killed all those other people first, though.
But seriously, if the Columbine shooters were motivated by Darwinism, why would they remove themselves from the gene pool (actually, the same could be said about Hitler).
Posted by: Gregory Earl | January 12, 2008 6:02 PM
exactly, and that SHOULD be the focus: that improved standards might actually end up weeding out the misinformation that promulgates the likes of Foster's imaginings.
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 12, 2008 6:08 PM
I find it odd that the fundies go on about how science cant say anything regarding morality... but then turn around and say that evolution claims we should kill all the weak people!
Posted by: zak | January 12, 2008 6:13 PM
Since their own descriptions include prescriptions and proscriptions, they think all descriptions must do the same thing. And as several have pointed out already, encouraging people to commit the Naturalist Fallacy is much more damaging to morality than anything coming from the science side.
The worst offenders are free-market ideologues, who not only argue that free markets are "natural", and therefore (via the fallacy) good, but propose all sorts of policy changes to bring these "natural" forms about. And indeed, between the religious and the justifiers of inequity, morality is left in shambles, and poor Adam Smith, the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments who promoted sympathy and considered selfishness to be immoral (and who, BTW, was a close friend of atheist David Hume), is left spinning in his grave.
Posted by: truth machine | January 12, 2008 6:15 PM
PZ, you abused another apostrophe! What do you have against the genitive case?
Posted by: Kimpatsu | January 12, 2008 6:18 PM
Don't you mean ignoranus rather than ignoramus?
Posted by: Ming | January 12, 2008 6:41 PM
The horse s***t from these guys never ends. They scream about this straw-man argument about the "strong over the weak" at the same time they sit in their churches and gloat about how sinners will burn in Hell while they watch and laugh from Heaven. I guess it makes sense in their selfish minds; since their moral system has a sanction for attacking other people everything else must.
Posted by: Bob L | January 12, 2008 6:44 PM
By their logic, scientists should disseminate ideas based on the effect they'll have on society.
Well, many people, even many scientists, have that view. Many bioethics discussions focus on what should be funded, what science should be done, what truths should be pursued; the same goes for weapons technology. GWB threw something into his SOTU speech about a big push to go to Mars; of course GWB didn't mean it, is not JFK, wasn't embarrassed by Sputnik and superior Soviet science education ... and the idea disappeared from the public consciousness in no time. But what if he had made a big push to redirect society to deal with global warming, infusing lots of money into education and redirecting the scientific focus away from space-base weapons, cosmology, particle physics ... ? Science in practice is not a neutral enterprise that seeks all truth in all areas simultaneously; different truths serve different interests.
So I don't think the "scientists should study evolution even if that would lead to more evil" argument is very compelling or very politic. I think it's far wiser to point out the truth that people find all sorts of ways to justify their bad behavior, including misrepresenting the facts about evolution, and to emphasize certain facts, such as that dogs don't eat dogs -- their strength is cooperation.
Posted by: truth machine | January 12, 2008 6:46 PM
They scream about this straw-man argument about the "strong over the weak" at the same time they sit in their churches and gloat about how sinners will burn in Hell while they watch and laugh from Heaven.
projection; it's how they commonly defend their rationalizations.
often followed or accompanied by denial.
classic.
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 12, 2008 6:47 PM
and the idea disappeared from the public consciousness in no time.
holy crap, you ain't kiddin'!
I had even forgotten about that myself. OTOH, it's probably because I never took him seriously to begin with. Well, OK, I NEVER take anything he says as being worthy of retension, although, for history's sake, I probably should.
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 12, 2008 6:51 PM
It's worth noting yet again that Klebold and Harris, like Hitler, were more interested in a sort of "artificial selection" than what would normally be called "natural selection."
This is frequently formulated as "just helping nature along".
I have come to think that all these nature shows portraying lions catching antelopes as if this were a matter of NS in action, culling the weakest from the herd, have done great damage; they mislead rather than inform.
Posted by: truth machine | January 12, 2008 6:56 PM
btw, did anybody bother to read Foster's letter in full?
it's frickin' hilarious!
that ANYBODY, let alone someone running for public office, could publicly demonstrate such horrid ignorance is jaw droppingly laughable!
seriously, I am keeping a copy of that letter for my creobot files.
best laugh I've had all day.
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 12, 2008 7:01 PM
I have come to think that all these nature shows portraying lions catching antelopes as if this were a matter of NS in action, culling the weakest from the herd, have done great damage; they mislead rather than inform.
100% agree, and it's getting worse. I was terribly disappointed with the writing for the US version of "Blue Planet", and many of the cable channels that air nature documentaries appear to be pushing the "cryptozoology" crap of late.
It's looking like a throwback to the 70's.
the saving graces like the PBS series on evolution are much too far apart and too few.
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 12, 2008 7:06 PM
Probably satire, but so hard to tell these days ...
Posted by: truth machine | January 12, 2008 7:07 PM
the saving graces like the PBS series on evolution are much too far apart and too few.
We should all be doing what we can to get it shown more often, in more venues.
Posted by: truth machine | January 12, 2008 7:10 PM
We should all be doing what we can to get it shown more often, in more venues.
good point.
suggestions?
I know that the NCSE has been taking snippets for show and tell at various school board meetings, so I suppose that could easily be mimicked.
how does one convince cable stations to air such things, when they often rely on things like Nielson ratings?
I'm quite sure, unfortunately, that the shows with hosts going off to look for Bigfoot are far more popular than the series on evolution ever was.
It would be nice if our own government supported subsidies for showing such things more often, but I also know from direct experience they've never considered the issue more than of passing interest, outside of election cycles, and DURING election cycles most of their constituents unfortunately also express passing interest at best, or are very vocal in the opposing direction.
I wish it mattered more to congresscritters what NSF and NAS and AAAS had to say wrt to education in this country, but sadly, it doesn't.
anywho, woes aside, did you have some concrete suggestions as to how to promote more of the kind of thing PBS did?
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 12, 2008 7:19 PM
anywho, woes aside, did you have some concrete suggestions as to how to promote more of the kind of thing PBS did?
Mostly I was fishing. It would help to know what PBS offers in terms of reproduction rights ... according to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/educators/index.html
they offer a "curriculum kit, specifically for educators, includes the seven-part Evolution series on video, seven short videos for use in class, four that highlight the teaching of evolution in real classrooms around the country, and a 40-page teacher's guide".
Posted by: truth machine | January 12, 2008 7:47 PM
My last name's Foster and I live in Florida. I really, really, hope that I'm not related to this guy.
Also, is Archaeopteryx really that unknown?
Posted by: Gary F | January 12, 2008 7:54 PM
Also, is Archaeopteryx really that unknown?
actually, I'm sure he's heard of it, it's just that it doesn't look some sci-fi 75% reptile - 25% bird "thing" to him.
*shudder*
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 12, 2008 8:00 PM
Mostly I was fishing.
sounds worthwhile to keep that bait in the water.
still fresh.
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 12, 2008 8:02 PM
Also, is Archaeopteryx really that unknown?
Yeah it's well known but they already have an explanation(s) for it. Just use your imagination and think of what you would say about it if you were a denialist, and there you go, they would probably agree with your explanation. :P
Posted by: 386sx | January 12, 2008 8:05 PM
natural selection is evil ... You know what else?
Gravity is evil, cause when you drop from up high, you die. It also brings asteroids down to Earth.
Electricity is evil, fire is evil.
Hell ... the whole Nature is evil!
Posted by: Arcturus | January 12, 2008 8:16 PM
I wonder what Foster's childhood was like. Specifically, what did he read in his spare time?
Before I reached the age of 12 my mother had provided my younger sibs and I with a complete encyclopedia (The Book of Knowledge, ironically) and books on dinosaurs, volcanoes, birds, monkeys, astronomy, relativity (Martin Gardner's Relativity for the Million) and so forth. (Thanks for the boost,Ma.)
Foster must have grown up on a literary diet composed chiefly of Jack Crick tracts. Poor fellow, so unprepared to engage in learning about the world was he as a child that his only viable choice as an adult is to attempt to rule over a tiny part of it.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott | January 12, 2008 9:05 PM
Oops. That would be Jack Chick.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott | January 12, 2008 9:07 PM
But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.
--Jesus, Luke 19/27
The bible gives kids the idea that if others do not submit to the worship of Jesus, it's ok to kill them.
This is a very slippery slope.
Posted by: Nic Nicholson | January 12, 2008 9:15 PM
Shades of the X-files (Agua Mala): Mulder says something like "Don't all the nuts roll down to Florida?"....he should have added "where they then run for public office".
The ignorance of these morons (anti-evolution crowd) is only exceeded by their utter laziness toward educating themselves as to what the Theory of Evolution actually propounds or as to what the word "theory" actually means from a scientific perspective. Betcha they all vote for the Huckster in the FL primary.
Posted by: foxfire | January 12, 2008 9:22 PM
Un-oh: Pat Robertson's trying to buy up the Virginian-Pilot so he can silence them: http://community.livejournal.com/dark_christian/1018373.html
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | January 12, 2008 9:25 PM
If you don't knit - bring a book to the next Bill Foster rally. When he is ready for the Q&A ask if he believes in the theory of gravity - it's just a theory.
535 Congressmen and women have to deal with the average person who votes. Where Bill Foster runs for office on this platform, he is appealing to the lowest ranking voters. Concrete thinkers with nothing more important to do but watch the 700 Club, donate their minimum-wage savings to shills and wait for their eternal reward.
Some people are too damn stupid to grasp just how these Bill Foster politicians manipulate them.
Posted by: Grolaw | January 12, 2008 9:34 PM
It appears to be cyclical. Every so often they'll show the "death from above" asteroid/comet disaster shows, then the bibble (was there an historical Jeebus?) shows, then the cryptozoology shows.
My thought is they need these insipid shows to pay the bills, and they pander to the masses.
Posted by: Rich Stage | January 12, 2008 9:56 PM
Sorry, I should have been more clear. My point was that scientists can't simply deny evolution - thereby outright lying - just because it causes people to turn into amoral dictators (which it doesn't but you get my point). Creationists are constantly attacking evolution on points that have nothing whatsoever to do with the actual truth of evolution. Their implication in doing so is that, even if evolution is true, we should just pretend it's not.
Posted by: Stephen | January 12, 2008 10:10 PM
Then he can sell it to Disney with an agreement that Disney do the silencing.
Posted by: MAJeff | January 12, 2008 11:25 PM
"Evolution gives our kids an excuse to believe in natural selection and survival of the fittest, which leads to a belief that they are superior over the weak," Bill Foster wrote board members in a letter received this week. "This is a slippery slope."
The irony is that this mindset that he attributes to evolutionary theory tends to occur among Republicans, the very people who rake in the majority of creationists' votes. Why that is continues to confound me.
Posted by: Brandon P. | January 12, 2008 11:29 PM
Actually, no matter what they were taught about evolution, the Columbine kids would've probably launched a rampage. What ailed those kids wasn't a lack of science, it was lack of empathy for others and a belief that they were entitled to what they were not getting from their peers.
Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | January 13, 2008 1:49 AM
Every so often they'll show the "death from above" asteroid/comet disaster shows, then the bibble (was there an historical Jeebus?) shows, then the cryptozoology shows.
so they cycle between pissing off astronomers, actual biblical scholars (think Hector Avalos), and biologists.
yes, I know that's not the goal.
:P
It just saddens me that over 30 years after "in Search Of", there still exists a vast majority of people in America that weren't satisfied with the non-answers provide by that show, and have to hear the same non-answers over and over again.
how many fucking times do we have to sonar sweep for Nessie before these idiots finally figure out it was never, and COULD never have been, there.
I rank the indulgence of this shit right at the same level of indulgence for creationism, and often have found that the credulous in one area (say, creationists), are very likely credulous in others like Bigfoot or Nessie.
I wonder how many of these idiots, seeing "the Waterhorse" will somehow become even more accepting of the idea of Nessie's existence?
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 13, 2008 2:20 AM
a belief that they were entitled to what they were not getting from their peers.
respect?
that appears to have been a primary concern of theirs, based on the writing they left behind.
there are two sides to the columbine issue, one is indeed a lack of empathy, but the other is:
what caused that lack of empathy to begin with?
trust me, it wasn't computer games, darwinism, or porn (I've heard all of these postulated as causative without the slightest shred of logic or evidence).
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 13, 2008 2:25 AM
That's a big part of why higher education reduces conservatism and republicanism. Even the mentally challenged are at least forced to meet and thus have direct personal experience of different people with different views - and will probably notice that those others aren't automatically monsters (though some may remain in denial of that). For the sub-group of the population which can only learn from personal experience, that's an important lesson. Unfortunately it still wears off with time (and apparently with raising a family!).
Someone who bothered to research this: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
Posted by: SEF | January 13, 2008 5:27 AM
If e-word is so bad.. then
Why they simply dont ask to deny H-word from learn books, too ?
Posted by: MrKAT | January 13, 2008 9:13 AM
Seems to me that biology does provide some useful "prescriptive" conclusions.
Humans are a "high-K" species, meaning that (like Kangaroos, but unlike "high-R" species such as Rabbits) we have relatively few offspring and need to invest much time and many resources to each one to perpetuate ourselves.
The policy implications of this, which include promoting contraception, reducing child abuse, and improving schools, day care, public health measures, etc, are profound and urgent.
A wider understanding of biology leads very directly to challenging what we're doing to our own, and future generations', environment, from carbonating the atmosphere and disrupting hydrological cycles to decimating the species count and flooding the biosphere with carcinogens & genotoxins.
The problem for the Bill Fosters among us is that these lessons contradict their own religious and short-term-economically based values. They find it psychologically necessary to distort and deny what little they grasp of scientific conclusions.
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | January 13, 2008 9:53 AM
On a positive note, the comments to the article are mostly anti-Foster, so there is some hope!
Posted by: Steve | January 13, 2008 11:06 AM
Oh! Oh! Let me do a John C. Randolph impression:
"If all the kids had guns, that massacre wouldn't have happened!!!"
Posted by: Moses | January 13, 2008 11:15 AM
I think he just read a horrid little collection of fecal matter extruded by Jonah Goldberg--a book entitled "Liberal Fascism." And it is probably even more fetid than you imagine.
I grew up in St. Pete, back in the 50's. After clearing the shelves of all the nature and medicine related books in the adult section of the then-main library while still in grade school, I showed up for my very first science class in jr. hi. Wizened crone walks in the door and announces that evolution is a lie and the Imaginary Friend created the earth. . . You get the drift. That was the end of my hopes for studying science.
I'm back there, working nestled in the midst of the University of South Florida campus that houses the renowned School of Marine Science. I can see the Poynter Institute across the marina. All signs of intelligent life. And then clowns like this show me nothing has changed since 1952.
Posted by: hypatia | January 13, 2008 11:43 AM
To this day it is difficult to get beyond the propaganda that surrounds the lead-up and events in this Tragedy. However, while the first half of your assertion is true, the second half your assertion is one that has been debunked. The shooters had solid circle of friends.
The cause of the shooting was they were both crazy to a greater or lesser extent. One of them had some deep seated emotional issues and was, basically, a follower of the sicker individual who was a very dangerous psychopath.
Slate has a very good write-up of the myths surrounding Columbine: http://www.slate.com/id/2099203/sidebar/2099208/
And a very detailed article here which goes into the psychology of the killers: http://www.slate.com/id/2099203/
Posted by: Moses | January 13, 2008 11:47 AM
That may all be true (I really wouldn't know either way), but it should be remembered that Jonah is one of the relatively few conservatives who actually speaks out against creationism, out of the rather more who know what a moronic atavism it actually is. Here's Goldberg on the famous Republican debate where two (not actually a string, but bad enough) raised their hands to indicate that they don't believe in science:
corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NjRhODcyYzE2NGQyZTk1OGMzYTM4MzZkYmRlNTBiOTg=
I mean no praise for Goldberg, I just note that he's one to keep in mind as a possible weapon against the more stupid right-wingers in this particular battle.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | January 13, 2008 4:34 PM
@ichthyic- 'Jaw droppingly stupid' LOL Perfect when discussing Creo claims about transitional forms!
Duane Gish,some years ago did the classic Archaeopteryx comic denial with the 'One grand tail feather for all to see.' It is one thing to be near sighted (as am I), it is quite another to be blinded by stupid.
@Truth machine- #31 good post, very minor addendum: Populations live under changing conditions such that traits beneficial at one point in time may not be so at another.
Posted by: mothra | January 13, 2008 6:47 PM
Oh shit. I live in St. Petersburg.
Posted by: Jared | January 13, 2008 11:55 PM
And a very detailed article here which goes into the psychology of the killers: http://www.slate.com/id/2099203/
that was interesting reading.
thanks moses.
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 14, 2008 12:43 AM
PZ, did you verify that quote attributed to the Columbine killers? Lying about Dylan and Klebold is a common past time among Liars for Jesus. It's possible that the Columbine killers misunderstood natural selection, but it's also very possible that neither of them wrote what Foster claimed they wrote. In fact, I don't remember either of them having a web site at all.
Posted by: ndt | January 14, 2008 2:34 AM
Whoops, I meant Klebold and Harris.
Posted by: ndt | January 14, 2008 2:37 AM
If anyone has a philosophy that " . . . leads to a belief that they are superior over the weak," I would have to say it is the bible-thumping Christians who are so supportive of the US-supported Israeli government in Palestine, or how about the entire Republican party?
Posted by: Mark | January 14, 2008 6:33 AM
I think this guy would have better luck on the other side of the bay - Tampa and Hillsborough County seem like more fertile grounds for this sort