Expelled - the Jake LaMotta of Creationism.

That's where science in my opinion, this is just an opinion, that's where science leads you. Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place. Science leads you to killing people.

- Ben Stein


Oh it all reeks of desperation doesn't it? 

The oxymoronically named "creation science" movement in America is like a slap happy prize fighter who can't realize he's losing. Worse, he just takes his beating until his face is an unrecognizable mess and figures because he is still standing at the final bell, he has won some kind of moral victory.

Remember that line from Raging Bull when Jake LaMotta takes a vicious beating at the hands of Ray Robinson. His blood drips from the ropes and his face looks like he kissed the express train. And despite the one sided, brutal ass whupping he took, he walks up to Robinson and says "You didn't get me down, Ray. You never got me down, Ray."

That's the creation science movement, or as it likes to call itself today while dressed up in drag - Intelligent Design.

For anyone who is keeping score, the movement has been doing the Jake LaMotta - with all that former fighter's, er, charm and, uh, grace - for more than a decade now. Having not produced a single shred of evidence for their claims (they still haven't figured out that declarations of faith that an ancient religious text is perfect, a scientific theory does not make.), having been told by the Supreme Court of the United States that they cannot violate the establishment clause of the constitution by teaching the Bible in science class, and having lost yet another high profile court case two years ago in Dover, creationist blood is all over the ring.

And still they say "You didn't get me down, Ray. You never got me down, Ray"

Battered, bruised and bleeding, the 21 century dress up version of creation is called Intelligent Design (This is the creationism redux that was used as a speed bag during the Dover trial) and its has decided to risk its remaining brain cells with yet another trip into the ring - this time as a documentary with a tenuous grip on facts called "Expelled." I'm not going to review the film here. It's been so completely ripped to shreds by reviewers like this one, or this one by Richard Dawkins called Lying for Jesus, that there isn't any need for me to go on about it other than to say if you do go see it, be prepared for an assault upon your higher reasoning centers the likes of which you have not seen since the Y2k panic.

What I want to talk about here is the utter dishonesty of the entire ID scheme. You see, there is a myth, largely propagated by the poorly named Discovery Institute in its own hilariously bad videos that are more devoid of fact than your average Access Hollywood episode, that ID came about because some cutting edge scientists got together and realized that Darwin was wrong and really some "unnamed" supernatural designer created all life.

The reality is that ID is the brain child of a Christian apologist lawyer who wouldn't know good scientific thinking from a hole in the ground. Goes by the name of Philip Johnson. Johnson, uh, designed the whole ID thing as a way to get around pesky Supreme Court rulings that said no Bible in the science class. Now, when asked for TV cameras about ID, he will contend there is a real controversy among scientists about about ID. (This is a lie. Only members of the tiny but loud ID creationist movement say there is a controversy. And in any case "teach the controversy" is one of their transparently bad back door attempts to slip god into science class.)

But when speaking to fellow believers, the truth comes out. The idea behind ID is to change science so that it accepts untestable conclusions about supernatural causation. Then, once that is accepted, you just push people toward believing that causation is the Christian god and Shazam! Christian utopia!

Johnson called this Trojan Horse approach to evangelism "the wedge strategy" and it so impressed the good folks at the Discovery Institute, that they founded their entire ID strategy upon it, as laid out in the infamous Wedge Document - something the institute still tries to distance itself from even though it lays out their wishful thinking and near theocratic plans in detail.

Anyway, when before the right audience Johnson drops all pretense about being scientific and admits the bait and switch he wants to pull off:

The objective (of the wedge strategy) is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism vs. evolution to the existence of God vs. the non-existence of God. From there people are introduced to 'the truth' of the Bible and then 'the question of sin' and finally 'introduced to Jesus.

- Phillip Johnson

Right from the horse's mouth. These people have no interest in science. They want to convert people to their version of their religion. Period. It would be funny if these folks were not so serious about it. LaMotta took a huge amount of punishment, but that didn't make him less dangerous in the ring. Johnson et all are very serious even if they keep on losing and losing big.

So what has this to do with Expelled? Well, Stein and the gang want us to believe two things about their film. First, it is a movie about academic freedom and attempts to crush a rival theory to evolution by "expelling" pro-ID scientists. Or as Stein puts it, to keep science from ever touching god. The other thing is that Darwinism is evil because it promotes atheism and thusl created Adolf Hitler.

Both claims are just plain false, and if you read the reviews I linked to above, they are both dealt with well enough. What interests me is the first claim. (I've discussed the bizzaro claims that Hitler's actions were the result of atheism elsewhere in the Handbook.)

While Stein blathers on about defending academic freedom in the film and in SOME interviews, in others he is more candid about his reasons for making the film. Like Johnson, when in front of the right audience (read creationists) he is more than happy to detail his true beliefs.

Check out the clips in this Youtube video by way of an for instance. In it Stein says two very revealing things. First, and I quoted him above, that science leads to killing people. Not science cures illness, feeds the hungry, sends humans into space, creates technology we use everyday, but to killing people. That is what science is to him - the road to murder. The other comes when asked why he thinks its important to see Expelled. And he says its because he wants people to believe they are god's creation. No talk about academic freedom or expanding the frontiers of science. But because he wants to covert you. Period. It's about religion. It's always been about religion. Like every other high profile member of the ID community, Stein reveals his true purpose - its not about science, its about religion.

And its only about their version of Christianity. The producers of Expelled would not include biologist and Catholic Ken Miller in the film because, they said, he would confuse the issue. Miller actually disproves Expelled's entire premise - that "Big Science" is hunting down scientists who believe in god and kick them out of the club. Miller, who helped bury ID at the Dover trial with his brilliant explanations of evolution, is a well known Roman Catholic. The very fact that he, and the rest of the 40 per cent of the National Academy of Science that do believe in some kind of god, even exists blows the movie's entire premise to, if you will excuse the expression, kingdom come.

But fortunately Expelled isn't getting much traction beyond those to whom the film is preaching what they already believe. It has been widely panned. Its box office returns were actually pretty good its open weekend when believers put down their money to see it. After that, the returns dropped like LaMotta should have. Bottom line, however, is that the creationists lose. Again.

However, this won't stop them. Already we are seeing the next strategy. Infantile "academic freedom" bills are before several states and are being used as a way to try yet again to creep creationism into the class room through the back door. These bills will likely be demolished when the court challenges come.

But for now the Ben Steins and Phillip Johnson's of the world can stand there bleeding after another beating and say "You never got me down." Some pugs just never know when the fight is over.

On ghosts, goblins, and credulous journalists - from the Standard

Sir, there is a distinct difference between having an open mind and having a hole in your head from which your brain leaks out.

-James Randi

The following appeared in my column fro the St. Catharines Standard on May 8.

We should stay open-minded, Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins sometimes says, but not so open-minded that our brains fall out.

In an age when we are trying to cure cancer, protect the environment and make sense of increasingly powerful tools of genetic manipulation, Dawkins' point has a particular and urgent weight to it.

But, alas, the titanic challenges of today, which can only really be grasped with a degree of scientific literacy, aren't good enough for some who would rather retreat into the mush-headed world of angels, ghosts, goblins, the Fort Erie cougar and gasoline under a buck a litre.

Consider, for example, stories about a local teen competing on YTV's Ghost Tracker. It blurs the line between real science and new-agey nonsense as teens are judged on their "skill" at tracking ghosts. The producers even use made-up technobabble to make it all sound scientific. (The Keefer Mansion apparently rates high on the "paranormal index," whatever that is.)

Even more insulting to the intelligence are recent reports about the efforts of the Niagara Area Paranormal Society. They don't have positron gliders or the ECTO-1, but like the Ghost Trackers, they have a heap of impressive-looking equipment. You know, microphones, cables, cameras. The entire Radio Shack-does-Ghostbusters ensemble.

So these, uh, "investigators" recently visited the Welland Museum to hunt down some ghosts. No one was slimed, but they claimed to have recorded mysterious voices emanating from the ether - evidence, they say, of the kin of Casper lurking in the museum.

I don't want to vent about this, but given the uncritical reporting on these things, consider this column the rational response.

Ghost hunting as a scientific endeavour is on par with holistic dentistry, tarot card reading, past-life regression and intelligent design. Fortunately, amid the throngs of the credulous are those willing to strike back with a dose of scientific skepticism. Like James Randi by way of a for instance.

Randi, a Toronto native who lives in Florida, is North America's top gun when it comes to debunking the claims of paranormal, um, "detectives."

He doesn't say the supernatural is impossible, but rather there isn't a shred of evidence to back up claims of seeing dead people or UFOs or reading the future in tea leaves.

"If these people want to make claims about paranormal phenomenon, they have to prove it," he told me in a recent interview.

Randi put forward a million-dollar prize to anyone who can prove it using rigorous scientific testing. To date, every attempt has failed miserably.

So what about these "voices" recorded at the museum? It might seem impressive at first blush. A faint murmur emanating from the dark. But when it comes down to it, either they are the voices of spirits or they are not. Period. And Randi says there is nothing supernatural in what the society found.

We live in a soup of electro-magnetic signals, he says. Cellphone traffic. FM radio stations. Disembodied messages are literally all around us all the time.

Randi said ghost hunters adjust their audio gear to the upper range of its sensitivity and because they do not shelter their equipment from the EM racket, they record strange sounds.

"You don't need to be near a powerful signal to pick this stuff up," he says. "It's everywhere. Any good soundman knows how to filter it out."

Even the equipment these, er, "sleuths" use is suspect. Many like to use the Panasonic RR-DR60 audio recorder that was discontinued because it is particularly vulnerable to FM radio transmissions.

(Just Google that model number with the phrase "ghost hunter" and you'll see how coveted a prize it is.)

So the voices they record could be real - but they belong to radio DJs and cellphone users, not Sir Isaac Brock complaining about a sharp pain in his chest. Ockham's Razor wins again.

Of course, it doesn't help that news outlets often report the claims of these Edgar Cayce wannabes without so much as a critical thought, giving them undeserved credibility.

" 'There are no ghosts' doesn't make a very good story," Randi says.

But that is the story. As Carl Sagan used to say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If the local paranormal society had actual evidence of spirits they would have uncovered an entirely new field of science. I'm sure the Nobel folks would be interested.

At the very least, they could get a million dollars. So to the folks of the Niagara Paranormal Society and Ghost Trackers - Mr. Randi is waiting.

Sharia law in democracy? Bite me.

Why, then, should we be commanded to "respect" those who insist that they alone know something that is both unknowable and unfalsifiable? Something, furthermore, that can turn in an instant into a license for murder and rape? As one who has occasionally challenged Islamic propaganda in public and been told that I have thereby "insulted 1.5 billion Muslims," I can say what I suspect—which is that there is an unmistakable note of menace behind that claim. No, I do not think for a moment that Mohammed took a "night journey" to Jerusalem on a winged horse. And I do not care if 10 billion people intone the contrary. Nor should I have to. But the plain fact is that the believable threat of violence undergirds the Muslim demand for "respect."

-Christopher Hitchens

Back in October, during the provincial election in Ontario, I had occasion to interview Richard Dawkins on the subject of faith based schools. (you can find the interview here) He described something he calls "me-tooism." That is to say, sectarian groups wanting special treatment. In that case, because there are Christian schools that get state funding Muslims groups want it too. Of course, Dawkins says tax dollars shouldn't fund faith schools at all, and I agree with him.

I can only imagine, however, how he reacted to the Archbishop of Canteberry's recent suggestion that elements of Sharia Law - the Muslim legal code as found in their religious texts - be used in British courts. Of course, Muslims have cheered the suggestion while everyone else...well, most everyone else did not.

It's the ultimate me-tooism. The legal code isn't enough. They need their own religious laws to supplant them.

Sharia has been criticized, and justly I might add, for being utterly incompatible with democratic legal frameworks. Putting aside for the moment the utterly draconian state of those nations that apply sharia as their legal code, the insane punishments it mets out for crimes, and what's its done to women in those nations (including restricting what they wear and what they are allowed to do for a living), no religious code is compatible with democracy. It was for that reason the religious law courts were banned in Ontario in 2004 on the cusp of sharia becoming part of the civil law code.

The reason is simple. Religious codes are regarded as immutable. The word of god, or Allah, or Zeus or whatever. It cannot be questioned, it cannot be changed. You cannot challenge a tenant of something like sharia in court as unconstitutional, because the entire idea is that these are the laws of a perfect unchanging sky god.

Our justice system is designed to be answerable to the people, and laws that don't work, that are unjust, or need amending, can be through the legislative and executive branches of government - which do so through debate and consultations. Religious laws are regarded as perfect. Of course, as a practical matter, the priests, imams, clerics, monks and others who use and apply religious laws change their interpretations over time, but there is nothing democratic about the process, si there? It's a cleric saying "the law means thusly" and that's it.

And of course, let is not forget that the religious codes of the Bible and the Koran were written by people who had no clue what democracy was, lived in societies ruled by kings and had no idea what a free society is. That's why you don't find any mention of how to run an election, or defend free speech, or provide equal rights for all, in the Koran and bible. You don't get the right to lawyers, appeals, speedy trails, the right to see evidence or the right to be assumed innocent until proven guilty. These ideals were not born of Christianity or Islam and to deny citizens access to them by applying religious laws is an insult to everything democracy is.

(In fact, I ask you, how many Muslim nations are democratic? It's a really, really short list!)

Yet this is what we have to deal with these days. You hear sometimes from evangelicals that the so called "new-atheists" are too militant and "fundamentalists" The good archbishop has made the charge himself. And yet here we are, in an day and age where the leader of one of the largest Christians church in the world is advocating the secular justice system be amended to accommodate the profoundly undemocratic religious sensibilities of some Muslims.

Well, as Dawkins would say, its all barking mad.

The justice system is a justice system for all citizens. You don't get a separate legal system because of the colour of your skin, religious beliefs or what kind of music you listen to. You are Muslim, or Scientologist or whatever and think you deserve special treatment? Too damned bad. Democracy is not a religious enterprise. As Hitchens often says "Mr. Jefferson, build up that wall."

Sam Harris at AAI 07