Bruce Chapman has an article up over at the Discovery Institute's Media Complaints blog that is really a must read. There are several statements in there that would qualify as absurd even by DI standards (like the one where he talks about someone being "outranked" by other scientists), but one in particular is so totally off the top that I'm having problems thinking of an anti-evolutionist statement that tops it. (If you can think of one, feel free to cite it in the comments.)
The following quote is taken directly from Chapman's article. I'm going to place it below the fold to give you a fair opportunity to stop eating or drinking before you read it.
But then, here comes Dawkins, backed by a parade of voluble atheist scientists who far outrank Scott. They are the famous experts, she is a lobbyist with a political approach that is too-smart-by-half.
Yes, you did just read that right. Bruce Chapman, PRESIDENT of the Discovery Institute, just used the phrase "lobbyist with a political approach that is too-smart-by-half" to refer to someone other than himself. The guy that runs the Discovery Institute just used the word "lobbyist" as an insult while talking about another human being. Absolutely unreal.
- Log in to post comments
I'm starting to wonder whether these people have any self-awareness whatsoever.
@ Tyler
I'm thinking they don't. Certainly, that's the only conclusion that a rational person can draw from their post-Dover behavior. Their behavior over "Expelled" has only been the latest manifestation of their abject lack of self-awareness.
I read that little bit of, well, I'm sure what it was. Where on earth does he get the idea that the NCSE is trying to cover up anything? Is he trying to manufacture some fictional controversy here? I don't get it. Sure, guys like Dawkins and Myers do not agree with Scott or the other "framers" camp on tactics or approach but, there is hardly any cover up of that and, certainly, there is little disagreement on the main issue of where they stand as far as teaching Evolution vs. Creationism.
Seems to me, Chapman is starting to sound kind of desperate in the grasping at straws sense of the word.
Sigh...
Even if the concept itself weren't absurd, the idea of Dawkins outranking anyone is hilarious. The most common (scientific) criticism of him is that he hasn't done any serious research for 20 plus years. And his ideas were always controversial.
Problem - Your headline is totally and wildly inaccurate.
It should read: Bruce Chapman - Whiny Baby Sobs In Print
Maybe: Bruce Chapman - Still No Make Sense
Or: Bruce Chapman - Yes, Can Haz Hissy Fit
Possibly Bruce Chapman - Master Baiter Of Irony
HTH )
Eh, just use Atrios' term for it: WATB
This is just standard projection. They have the big tent strategy, where no inner conflicts like the age of the earth, or whether common descent is established, will be voiced. So they naturally try to project that weakness onto the other side. They don't seem to get that with independent thinking people (ie, people not like them), there will be differences of opinion.
Do the comments need to be from an established anti-evolution individual or anyone? If from anyone, there was a nice little creationist I was talking to on usenet a while back who insisted "Einstein repented of his belief in evolution before he died and professed a belief in God." I tried to explain to him that he probably meant Darwin but that the story was not true. He insisted he meant Einstein. I that worse?
The Disco Toot seems to be comprised of two major elements:
xian dominionist fundie wackos like Wells, Chapman, Nelson, and Billy Bob Dembski; and just plain dummy tools like Casey Luskin and Anika Smith.
They should be mocked and ridiculed at every opportunity.
Chapman is cranking out the verbiage! He managed to get an opinion piece in the Seattle Times in which he writes, "...Where facts and reason might fail to persuade, personal attacks are employed..."
Get this, he's not talking about the movie he's touting, which compares scientists to Nazis and Stalinists, he's talking about "Darwinists."
The very next article in Evolution News and Spews is even worse, actually:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/04/expelled_does_not_try_to_blame.html
"Expelled does NOT try to "blame Darwin for the Holocaust�
With the attacks on Expelled from distraught Darwinists coming faster and sharper, I thought I'd ask Discovery senior fellow --and columnist for the Jewish Forward-- David Klinghoffer to provide us with some commentary to help put various aspects of the film into context. Here then is his first installment.
This week I�ll be blogging about a contentious issue raised by Expelled, its linking of Darwinian theory with Hitlerian ideology. Critics have misconstrued the point Ben Stein makes in the film. Expelled does not � repeat: DOES NOT -- try �to blame Darwin for the Holocaust,� as the subhead on an attack piece at the Scientific American website puts it.
Instead it shows the indebtedness of Nazism to ideas expressed in Darwin�s writing.
Darwin�s theory of evolution is enmeshed in a worldview, Darwinism, that emerges clearly in The Origin of Species and, more so, in The Descent of Man. Hitler gave to Darwinism his own evil twist. Yet Hitler without Darwin�s influence, however indirect, would not have been the same Hitler we know from history. Without Darwin�s legacy to draw on, Hitler would have been compelled to frame his appeal to the German people in greatly altered terms.
That�s different, it should be obvious, from blaming gentle Charles Darwin for genocide.
Yet the author of the SciAm review, editor-in-chief John Rennie, feels that the movie should have given a fuller picture of Nazism�s philosophical genealogy:
"The most deplorable dishonesty of Expelled, however, is that it says evolution was one influence on the Holocaust without acknowledging any of the other major ones for context. Rankings of races and ethnic groups into a hierarchy long preceded Darwin and the theory of evolution, and were usually tied to the Christian philosophical notion of a �great chain of being.��
This reminds me of cloddish literary feminists who used to complain that Huck Finn is a sexist novel because Mark Twain includes no major female characters. The obvious reply to the critique is that Huck Finn isn�t about women. It�s a story about two men on a raft!
Expelled isn�t about Christianity�s legacy as it pertains to Jews. It�s about Darwinist suppression of dissent in American academic life. But when it does widen its focus to take in the broader legacy of Darwin�s ideas, it very reasonably touches on the way Hitler took Darwinism to a conclusion that should not be surprising.
To insist that the movie deliver a complete accounting of all the threads of thought that, woven together, resulted in Nazi mass murder is an expectation that would have made it cumbersome verging on impossible for Expelled to raise the subject it does.
Hitler�s debt to Darwin has long been known to mainstream scholars, from Hannah Arendt down to the latest Hitler biographers, as I�ll discuss tomorrow. Keeping that debt from wider public awareness is perhaps what John Rennie would prefer.
Oh, look, on another post there, the ID promoters tell an outright lie!
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/04/raising_the_bar.html
"Did you know that most of the evidence claimed for evolution is actually not evidence for evolution? That's right. Remember the mountain of evidence that evolutionists say is supposed to make evolution a fact? Well, most of it consists of biological findings that merely have been interpreted according to evolution."
Creationists have been saying that for decades. Sorry, but I know better! Creationism can accomidate all the scientific data, by assuming that God is a liar or an idiot, but it cannot EXPLAIN the data like evolution does. Evolutionary hypotheses explain data by ruling out other possibilities. For example, the fossil evidence shows that birds evolved from dinosaurs. DNA sequences show that birds are most closely related to crocodiles, which are also indicated by the fossils to be related to dinosaurs. If DNA sequences indicated that birds were most closely related to fish, evolution would be discredited, because the various lines of evidence used to support evolution should NOT contradict each other!