All Opinions Are Not Equal

What's up with news stories with totally inaccurate attention grabbing headlines? 

For the past couple of days, headlines have proclaimed some variation of the following headline, Obamacare Will Cost 2.5M Workers by 2024. However, if you read the articles, it becomes clear that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) did not conclude that the ACA was a causative factor in the decrease of workers. The CBO concluded the reduction in worker hours was almost entirely because of workers choosing to work less. According to the CBO report, “The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in business’ demand for labor."

The problem is straightforward. A lot of people never read past a story's headline so their conclusions are based on a misleading headline. Some of those who read the article have poor reading comprehension skills and come away still believing that the ACA will cause 2.5 million people to lose their jobs. All of these misinformed people like to share their invalid information and the chain of people firmly believing information that is false grows by leaps and bounds. Couple that with the American belief in individualism and that all opinions are equally valid, and ill-informed opinion becomes fact for millions.

I think one of the dumbest statements that I see far too often is, "I'm entitled to my opinion." When people declare, "I'm entitled to my opinion," what they really mean is my opinion is of equal value to all other opinions.

There's no entitlement to be ignorant. If my opinion is that a giant turtle carries the world on his back around the sun, then my opinion has no value; it's worthless. Stating that I'm entitled to have it doesn't make it have merit. It's still worthless and of no value. 

All opinions are not equal. We do ourselves a disservice when we pretend that they are. All we need do is examine how many publicly funded schools in multiple states are allowed to teach creationism under state science education standards as an alternative to evolution. Additional states are poised to pass legislation this year to expand the science curriculum to include creationism.

Replacing intellectual analysis with personal opinion undermines our ability to make decisions based on facts and knowledge rather than belief. Ethics play second fiddle to a mish-mash of personal beliefs and emotions about groups of which we are not a member. A key tenet of our constitution's Bill of Rights is that the government shall not establish or govern religion, yet hot button issues such as abortion and gay marriage that divide us at present, center around the attempt of some Christians to impose their belief system on our system of secular law.

We have many issues confronting us that we must address as a nation and as a part of the world. Climate change is a reality, not an abstract theory. Access to clean water, clean energy, and clean air are essential to the survival of all of this planet's inhabitants. Working together is necessary, but to do so we have to develop diplomatic strategies and policies for resolving our differences and not fall back on wars and police actions as problem solvers. We need to work collectively on solutions to these issues, not cling to opinions shaped by misinformation and narrow belief systems that we have elevated to the level of absolute fact.

Intelligent Disdain

In Missouri and Indiana this month, bills have been put forward in the legislature to return "intelligent design" to the classrooms. Because their children are apparently not stupid enough yet.


I occasionally hang out on a blog called Stone the Preacher (it's run out of Hope Chapel in Hermosa Beach, CA); I ended up there rebutting one of the standard canards of the fundamentalists (I think it was "atheists have no morals," but at this late date, I'm really not sure), and I kept going back, probably because I thrive on conflict. And run-on sentences. And recently, Pastor Steve, a young-earth creationist, made the mistake of mentioning "intelligent design."

I've always loved that phrase because of its inherent idiocy. "Intelligent design" is creationism wearing glasses and a clown nose, and the adjective is so clearly in conflict with the noun that people should be unable to avoid stuttering when they say it. Every attempt to sneak it into schools gets thoroughly destroyed in the courts, but that doesn't stop them from trying over and over again (for example, in Missouri and Indiana - and probably in some other state any day now).

Let's be honest: evolution explains why some of the ridiculous design flaws exist in the world. There is no "intelligence" in the "design" of the world, and examples are everywhere. Comedians have been pointing them out for years.

"God is a mechanical engineer! Look at this marvelous collection of joints and levers!"

"No, God is an electrical engineer! Look at the intricacy of these neurons and synapses!"

"No," said the city planner, "God is obviously a civil engineer. Sometimes, when nobody's looking, it's just easier to run a sewer pipe through a recreational area."

But fundies, being fundies, keep soldiering on, like particularly pious zombies on a quest for children's brains.

Let's consider the evidence. And remember, the people who believe this silliness also believe that God doesn't make mistakes.

1. As we develop in the womb, we form three sets of kidneys. The pronephroi ("forekidneys") appear in the fourth week; they degenerate pretty quickly, but the ducts are recycled to build the mesonephroi ("midkidneys"). And then those degenerate and the tubules are recycled in the metanephroi ("hindkidneys"), which are our permanent kidneys.

This almost seems like an elegant bit of engineering, but really, it's more like building an Eiffel Tower as scaffolding for another Eiffel Tower, which is used as scaffolding for a final, bigger Eiffel Tower, and you rip down each one as you go (I don't remember where I saw that metaphor, but it's perfect). It's an unnecessarily complex process, and it's just evidence that evolution had a number of false starts along the way, and had to go back and refigure what it was building.

(On the subject of kidneys, why is the gene for polycystic kidney disease dominant? Why make it 50% likely that you'll inherit a painful, life-threatening condition?)

2. The female quoll (an Australian marsupial) has only six teats, but gives birth to a litter of 18, meaning that the 12 slowest or weakest die of starvation. A 66% death rate makes sense to you? Was God weeding out the weak ones? Why didn't He just build them right to begin with?

3. While you’re in Australia, look up the mystery of a kangaroo’s teeth, for that matter. The grasses they eat are tough, and wear down the front teeth of the 'roo. So, to make up for this, they evolved were designed with an unusual ability: as the front teeth wear down, they fall out and the back teeth move forward to replace them.

Which sounds great, except that they don't have the ability to grow new teeth. So by the time they're 15 or 20, they run out, and starve to death. Apparently, God hates kangaroos, and wants to see them suffer.

4. Birds of the family Sulidae (boobies and gannets)...

...heh, heh... I said "boobies"...

4. Birds of the family Sulidae are diving birds, plunging into the water from the sky. One of their adaptations to this is that they don’t have external nostrils – the water would get shoved up their noses on impact. But even without external nostrils, they have everything else that makes up a nasal airway inside their beaks. It’s just that the nostrils are sealed off at the outside. Having nasal airways that can’t work is pretty pointless design. Although evolution tells us why they’re there, it makes you wonder why God would choose to install a completely pointless structure inside the bird's beak. Did He build it from spare parts from another bird?

If these things, and so many others, are designed, that’s some pretty shoddy craftsmanship.

Maybe God occasionally gets drunk on sacramental wine while He's working?

The Tea Party: Full of Insignificant Sound and Fury

I find myself again needing to wash my mouth out with soap, having engaged in another round of WTF with no expletives deleted. When I was a child my mother temporarily banned me from watching Lassie. I would cry so hard every time Timmy got lost, fell down an abandoned mine shaft, or was otherwise in peril (pretty much a weekly occurrence) that my mother was concerned about my emotional well being. I'm thinking that maybe I should ban myself from watching or reading any news; my vocabulary is in danger of becoming that of an old sailor.

My latest round of profanity was in response to Tuesday's debate between Christine O'Donnell (R) and Chris Coons (D), both candidates for Delaware's U.S. Senate seat. Although nominally a Republican, O'Donnell has aligned herself with the Tea Party platform. During the debate, held at Widener University Law School, the subject of religion and the law arose. Coons asserted that the separation of church and state provisions of the Constitution prohibits teaching Creationism in public schools (O'Donnell prefers the term Intelligent Design). O'Donnell countered with, "Where in the Constitution is separation of church and state?"

The audience, consisting mostly of law students gasped in horror but before you join them, take a gander at O'Donnell's follow-up observation to Coons assertion that the First Amendment establishes a separation of church and state, "The First Amendment does? ... So you're telling me that the separation of church and state, the phrase 'separation of church and state,' is in the First Amendment?" (emphasis added)

Technically, O'Donnell is correct. The text of the first amendment does not include the phrase "separation of church and state." The phrase is not found in the U.S. Constitution at all. The First Amendment states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

O'Donnell is a nut job but already the conservative media has put a different spin on her remarks, declaring that O'Donnell was pointing out the lack of any specific phrase in the Constitution proclaiming that there is to be a separation of church and state. I doubt that O'Donnell was really parsing out the language of the Constitution but was instead clueless as to the consistent interpretation of the 1st amendment. Technically, the phrase "separation of church and state" does not appear at all in the Constitution. The concept of separation of church and state is derived from the Establishment Clause of the 1st amendment. I wish that Coons had countered with that observation rather than sparring with O'Donnell as to whether the First Amendment literally contained the words separation of church and state; it doesn't.

I'm not just nitpicking. I've been thinking about how the far right has commandeered this election year and determined the parameters of the issues up for debate. I think that we have to reframe the argument. We can't afford to be sloppy with language.

O'Donnell didn't lose any votes because of her gaffe. If Coons had acknowledged that the precise phrase is not in the Constitution but that the language that is there was interpreted in the writings of no less than Thomas Jefferson to mean that there is a wall of separation between government and religion, then he would have deflated O'Donnell's argument and her ego. Many historians and students of the law trace the phrase "separation of church and state" to a letter written in 1802 by Thomas Jefferson in which he observed that the First Amendment built "a wall of separation between Church and State." There is also a couple of hundred years of jurisprudence that has consistenly interpreted the language of the First Amendment regarding religion, aka the Establishment Clause, as calling for the government to refrain from being in the business of promoting or censoring religious belief or lack thereof. In spite of O'Donnell's protestations to the contrary, separation of church and state has long been established as a valid Constutional interpretation solidly grounded in the First Amendment.

Of course the audience of law students scoffed because they understood the jurisprudence interpreting and applying the 1st amendment, but has the average American even read the Constitution outside of a cursory reading in some middle or high school civics class, let alone studied it? Even if they have read the Constitution, it's likely that they will agree with O'Donnell that there is no mention of separation of church and state in the Constitution. To understand the meaning of the U.S. Constitution takes more than simply reading the words.

Die hard Tea Party members are not likely to be persuaded to change their beliefs no matter how succinct and valid the argument. However, there are a lot of people who are angry with the status quo and bewildered by all the voices claiming to offer solutions. They need clear, straightforward information that they can use to make jugments as to which voices speak with truth and honesty. O'Donnell speaks as if she's their friend and there are a lot of disenchanted people who are anxious to believe that she has their best interests at heart.

The left needs to take a lesson from Toto and pull back the curtain to reveal that O'Donnell is just a bad magic act, hiding behind a curtain, pretending that she's the Wizard of the Right. To do that we have to stop merely shaking our heads in laughter and declaring O'Donnell and her political cohorts to be appropriate objects of ridicule. We need to offer people another reality by exposing that the Tea Party rhetoric is filled with sound and fury but signifies absolutely nothing.

Dinosaurs don't pay taxes

In a way, we might look at the vast, seemingly endless and profoundly deep ignorance of Americans as a resource. Certainly many people make a good living from it. People who have less than an intelligent 4 year old's grasp of reality are willing to spend money to have their pathetic fantasies upheld in places like Dinosaur Adventure Land where you can view fake animals in a fake surroundings made to resemble fake history and pretend that the most certain things can be less certain than baseless conjecture.

Yes, I'm talking about Florida where for decades fake was like a second name for the state and sleazy roadside attractions and amusement parks made it a Mecca for kitsch enthusiasts and carloads full of rubes and hicks percolating down from Dixie. Much of it is still here, like the Weeki Wachee Mermaids and alligator wrestling and Lion Country Safari but as far as I know nobody is claiming that the mermaids are real or the lions were dropped off in Florida by Noah on his way to Turkey.

The fake history park in Florida flaunts things on their website like the idea that "the more is known about DNA the more difficult it is to escape the conclusion that all things have a personal creator." Of course there's no way around calling this a complete lie and if there is anything ineluctable about what's taught in Dinosaur Adventure Land is that nothing they say has any basis in fact whatever. Evolution as the origin of species and indeed as the origin of life from natural algorithms and natural law is not on its way out, isn't "just a theory" that Science is moving away from in the light of new data. Of course, the age of the Earth and of the universe is very accurately known and sorry, our planet is more than 4 billion years old and no man ever saw a trilobite or a Gorgonopsid or a Sauropod.

It's more than possible to escape the conclusion that existence of living organisms demands the existence of a deity and all their miracles and all the attempts to demonstrate otherwise have been shown to be fallacious and fraudulent. Yet, the Creationists persist in marketing their perverted epistemology demanding that unwillingness or inability to understand opens a window into understanding -- as though ignorance and stupidity were virtues. Wisdom through ignorance certainly winds through Christianity's bowels like a tapeworm but particularly through the kind of cartoonish fundamentalism sold like tawdry talismans at a flea market to tourists in T shirts.

It must be apparent that I view this kind of militant superstition as a cancer threatening any progress in learning and perhaps the safety of civilization itself and so you won't be surprised that I have to smile a bit to hear that an amusement park built on lies and the mockery of truth is in big trouble with the IRS for not paying employee withholding taxes and is due to be seized. Hardly surprising is it, that people who make a living telling lies and attacking the truth are dishonest?

Hardly surprising either that Kent Hovind, who founded the park and a ministry, Creation Science Evangelism, simply to profit by lying, would forget that Jesus told his followers to pay their taxes: “Ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ τῷ Θεῷ” or "Render unto Caesar. . ." Matthew 22:21

Hovind's position was that since he and his brothers in dishonesty worked for God, they didn't owe any taxes to the Government at all. I don't know what Jesus' position on obstruction of justice or last minute, back-dated, illegal transfers of property to avoid seizure was, but of course anything Jesus is supposed to have said is "just a theory" right? The argument was persuasive enough to get him 10 years in the slammer. For once Jesus and the Law -- and I -- seem to agree.