Yokels now writing News-Gazette editorials

I had some time over the holidays and was thinking of writing a response to this editorial about Illinois's recent gay marriage bill in the News Gazette where the Editors basically say "Let's put the rights of minorities up to a vote!" I even started, but didn't get very far in it. Blogging, like math, is hard.

Oh, but then they had to go and publish, "Brace yourself for more changes to accommodate others' lifestyles" written by local yokel Ray Elliott. I've never really been sure what that word, "lifestyles" actually means, but judging by the context in which it gets thrown around, it sort of boils down to "homos having the buttsex."

Illinois has civil unions, but two lawmakers tried to introduce a bill for marriage equality just a few weeks ago. It made it out of committee, but didn't get a floor vote. It's not clear if it will get introduced this session or not.

Mr. Elliott says it's the job of legislators to put citizen's rights up to a vote:

Times and attitudes do change, no question about that. So brace yourself, as we must, for more change and more demands to fit others' desired lifestyles.

"Lifestyles." Anyway. Poor Mr. Elliott. He's got all these scary homosexual activists demanding he make all these changes to accommodate such frivolous things like inheritance and hospital visitation. The demands placed on him are so outrageous that I've compiled a comprehensive list of the changes Mr. Elliott will have to make if marriage equality comes to Illinois:

• ... 

So demanding.

Next, Elliott waxes nostalgic about The Good Ol' Days:

I grew up in a small village in southern Illinois...

Well, there's your problem right there.

... where people never locked their doors, left their keys in their cars, stayed married to one another for life but were ostracized if they divorced or dared to live together, unmarried.

Judging by what I've found online, Mr. Elliot is a white man who came of age in (I'm guessing) the 1950s. So he's talking about a time when men could beat their wives with impunity, women were second class citizens, and the colored folk knew their place. All in all, a lot of the 1950s and even 1960s wasn't so great if you weren't a white, heterosexual man.

Then he goes on this truly bizarre anecdote about this guy that rolled into town that had a lot of wives and told him and his buddies all about it while they were drinking RC Cola and put peanuts in their drink and I lost track and don't know what the fuck he's talking about at this point.

So brace yourself, as I said earlier: what about those people who want to marry up with more than one wife or one husband or a combination of both? Will they legally be allowed to follow the lifestyle of their choice, if everybody agrees?

It's sort of sad that the fact that he pulled out the "First queers, then polygamy!" trope seems restrained to me. After all, he could have gone full-on "If we let a man marry a man, then there's nothing stopping a man from marrying a duck!"

Somehow, I think we'll be OK. We managed to legalize interracial marriages without things deteriorating into man-marrying-female-goat territory. A number of other states have instituted marriage equality without becoming a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

The News-Gazette discovers women are a bunch of dirty sluts

I was thinking about coming off my long blog hiatus by bitching about the News-Gazette's recent editorial approving of the new Presidential power to assassinate American citizens he has declared to be terrorists, when they came up with an even more annoying one. In this case, it's one about how unmarried, teen girls are having all these babies and that's why you can't have nice things.

I'm certainly not going to disagree with the notion that becoming a teenage mother can have severely negative consequences for a woman. Not to mention the difficulty it places on a young woman trying to finish high school, let alone college, childbirth is a significant financial cost when it comes to health care.

After a long series of statistics about the high cost of maternity, the News-Gazette's main complaint in their editorial is that Obama has made it difficult to kick these girls off of Medicaid.

What can the state do about reducing its cost for Medicaid births? Thanks to President Barack Obama's national health care plan, the answer is nothing.

Obamacare rules forbid any reductions in eligibility requirements that might cut the Medicaid rolls. Indeed, over the new few years, many thousands more Illinois residents are expected to be added to the Medicaid rolls under Obamacare.

So, really, this editorial has nothing to with teen mothers at all. After discussing the impact teen pregnancy has to a young woman's future, the core message to their editorial is that society shouldn't be paying for the cost of their health care. After all, what an unemployed, 16-year old mother needs to go with her newborn is a $10,000 medical bill.

The editorial characterizes the problems with Medicaid funding as the "high cost of social collapse", that it's "social disintegration", and that these young women have a "dangerous social pathology." I'm honestly surprised this editorial doesn't call these girls "welfare queens."

Of course, there's one way to make sure that teenagers don't become mothers and fathers, and that's comprehensive sex education. Information about and access to birth control does, shockingly, prevent unwanted pregnancy. (Now, I swear there was another recent editorial where the N-G approved of employers being allowed the "religious freedom" to restrict their employees access to birth control, but I can't seem to find it now.) In fact, any discussion of how to prevent what the N-G claims is a scourge upon our society is conspicuous in in its absence.

It is a standard trope of the right-wing that America is deteriorating and if only we went back to 1950s social policy/enforced mandatory prayer in schools/put gays back in the closet/slut-shamed women more, everything would get better. So this teenage-pregnancy-cum-Medicaid-collapse scandal is, of course, part of that:

It's a seemingly intractable problem that reflects a slow and steady cultural decline.

Except that's not true! According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, the teenage pregnancy rate in Illinois dropped 40% between 1988 and 2005. (That's the most recent data I could find.) According to this article in The Economist, not only are a lot of other factors about American life better than they have been in the past, but the teenage pregnancy rate is the lowest it's been in 40 years.

A racial double standard at the News-Gazette

OK, I don't mean to pick on the N-G and I don't want this blog to turn into a Gazoo bash-fest, but this has been rolling around in my head for a couple of weeks and wanted to get it down.

Remember way back when, like two months ago, before Sharia Law came to Oklahoma, when the Islamic community center in Manhattan was dominating the news cycle? The News-Gazette had this editorial about that time. The editorial, called "Right, not rights, is the real issue" tries to draw a false equivalence between that Florida pastors "Burn the Koran Day" and the building of the center. The editor admit that the Muslims living in New York have every right to build their community center but that, somehow, they are morally wrong to do so. It closes with:

The message sent to Muslims by burning the Quran is unmistakable to most, just as the message being sent by Muslims in building the mosque near the 9/11 ruins is equally unmistakable. One is a threat, as Jones freely conceded, while the other is a victory lap, as Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf disingenuously denies.

According to the News-Gazette, Muslims going about their lives in their hometown and building what is basically a church, is a "victory lap" celebrating the attacks 9/11.

But just a few weeks ago, the News-Gazette published this editorial about the recent racially-based (but possibly not, see below) attacks against white men in the Champaign-Urbana area. The editorial argues that cries for black community leaders to speak out against the attacks are unfair, saying:

[Leaders in the black community] didn't commit the attacks. They didn't encourage the attacks. They don't know the individuals who are committing the attacks. They are as disturbed by this senseless violence as everyone else...

Is the white president of the local chamber of commerce responsible when a white man robs a bank? If not, why would a black minister be called to account for the malicious criminality of a black assailant?

But that's the one of the dangers posed by this string of assaults. They tear at the community fiber and encourage tribal instincts. They make people forget we're all in this together, that as residents of this community we have far more that brings us together than sets us apart.

So let's get this straight: when attacks such as these are committed by black men, they are the responsibility solely of the perpetrators involved. When attacks are committed by Muslims, the worldwide Muslim community should be held collectively accountable, even nearly a decade later.

Am I the only one that sees a bit of a contradiction here?

(Like I said, this has been rolling around in my head for a couple of weeks now. I was inspired to get off my lazy ass and write this partly by Monday's article, Polar bear deconstruction by Joel Gillespie at Smile Politely.)

Is the News-Gazette ashamed of its readers?

For those of you reading that aren't local (all three of you), there has been a spate of what appear to be unprovoked attacks on people in the C-U area. It's not clear if they're linked or if they're racially motivated, but they've all been by black teenagers with white victims. Robbery was involved in at least one of the attacks, but not all of them.

That being said, I just noticed that all the News-Gazette articles on the subject have had their comments closed. I can't find this trend on any other N-G topic. Just as examples:

• Attacks reported in Champaign
• Unprovoked attacks in Champaign may be linked
• Two Champaign men charged in attack on man on campus
• Two accused in attacks make first court appearance
• Second teen charged in beating of former weatherman
• Former TV weatherman victim of unprovoked attack

That's not to say that these articles don't bring the crazies out of the woodwork. So far it seems that, on the articles that had open comments at one point, they largely consisted of:

• See how racist black people are?
• This wouldn't have happened if we had concealed carry in Illinois.
• These teenagers should be given the death penalty/put in prison for the rest of their lives/beaten within an inch of their lives.
• This is happening because black children don't have fathers because single motherhood is glorified in black culture.
• If these were white teens beating up black people, there would be riots in the streets! (But I'm not racist.)

Does anyone know if Crazy Mayor Schweigart has weighed in on this? Maybe they're all socialists from Kenya or something.

A racist editorial from the News-Gazette

My fears that the yokel series would have to be put on hiatus after the revamping of the News-Gazette website removed their Letters to the Editor have abated. I'm loathe to use the word, but I can't really find any alternative to calling last Wednesday's editorial, "Car bomb may be another sign of change in tactics," racist.

Apparently, the editors learned all they need to know about the world watching James Bond movies, where all the evildoings of the world are masterminded by Osama bin Laden while he strokes his white cat and complains about the absence of sharks with laser beams on their heads.

The editorial was obviously inspired by the recent near-bombing in Times Square. This sentence basically sums up the thesis of the editorial:

This is, of course, but another event in the long-running effort by Middle Eastern terrorists to attack this country and kill civilians. But it also reflective of an ominous change in strategy.

Wait, strategy? I'm sorry, do "Middle Eastern" terrorists all have a bi-weekly meeting in Dubai where they get together for falafel and bomb-making seminars? No, there is no such unified group as "Middle Eastern terrorists" so they can't even have an overall strategy let alone shift their tactics. (I feel a bit like Alice pointing out that she hasn't had any tea, so she can't take more.) Such childlike, simplistic analysis is like claiming a "shift in musical style by blonde artists" because Lady Gaga is not Madonna.

After mentioning 9/11 (which will probably define "terrorism" in the minds of Americans forevermore) and the USS Cole bombing, both nearly a decade old now, here's the N-G's rationale for claiming a "shift in tactics" on the part of "Middle Eastern terrorists":

But starting with the shooting of members of the U.S. military at Fort Hood, Texas, terrorists' efforts have been simpler – most certainly deadly but less spectacular.

The Ford Hood shooting spree was followed by the attempted Christmas Eve destruction of an airliner by a single passenger carrying a bomb in his underwear and the attempted car bombing in New York City.

So the editors claim these dastardly Middle Eastern terrorists have changed their tactics based on three incidents: the Fort Hood shooting, the underwear bomber, and the failed Times Square bomb. There's just one problem.

None of these terrorists are Middle Eastern.

Nidal Malik Hasan, the accused Fort Hood shooter was born in Virginia. He went to school, college, and worked in his family's restaurant in Virginia. Then he did his medical school residency 250 miles away in Washington DC. Then he went to Fort Hood, Texas. I can't find anything that suggests he's ever left the country, let alone qualifies as a "Middle Easterner." He also has no ties to terrorist groups. So what qualifies him as a "Middle Eastern terrorist" other than the color of his skin?

Even more blatantly wrong is the N-G's claim that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is a Middle Easterner. He's from Nigeria. Just to put that in perspective, it's 4500 miles from Kabul, Afghanistan to Lagos, Nigeria. It's only 3500 miles from Washington, DC to London, England.

Now, the Times Square bombing suspect is a naturalized American citizen from Pakistan. (I think Pakistan is generally considered South Asia rather than the Middle East, but it's close, so I won't quibble.) It's still a bit sketchy at this point, but there's no Al Queso link even alleged, and the involvement by the Pakistani Taliban is fairly unclear. But it doesn't look like Shahzad has any ties to any group that has attacked the US before. Yet, the N-G lumps him in with all the other "terrorists."

There's one thing I find notably missing from the editorial: not a single mention of the (alleged) terrorist cell recently arrested on US soil, the Hutaree. This was a group that the United States Attorney's Office says were planning to target agents of the US government for assassination using weapons of mass destruction. So why is this not a "change in tactics" on the part of terrorists? Could it have something to do with the fact that the Hutaree are a bunch of white Christians from Michigan?

I don't expect local newspaper editors to be experts in foreign policy. But I don't think it's unreasonable to expect people that claim to be journalists to at least know that two of the three bombers they're talking about were born half the world away from the Middle East.

It's symptomatic of what the right-wing does all the time. They oversimplify fairly complex matters into black and white, Us and Them, white people and Scary Brown Terrorists. Such easy-to-swallow media narratives do probably make for better copy, but not true understanding of our complex and increasingly international world.

The News Gazette screws the pooch

The News-Gazette redid their website this week and all I can say is "Really? This is what you've been bragging about unveiling?" It's like the N-G staff decided they wanted to maximize their appeal to the MySpace demographic or something. The previous site wasn't great, but at least it did what it needed to do. Take a look at it yourself, from a year ago. However, the new design is ... bleah. Worst of all the site's usability is poor and in many ways is a downgrade from the previous one. Here's my take on the worst of the new elements

You can't get to articles. Go to one of the sections, say "Local News". You can scan (and scroll, and scroll, and scroll) the five articles on that page. Now try to go to the next page of articles. Oh wait, you can't. You get to see five articles and that's it. An article that was replaced with a more recent one today? Nope. Yesterday's? Nope.

The search engine is useless. Did you know there was an election this month? The News-Gazette doesn't. I tried searching for "Alexi Giannoulias election" (totally at random) and found articles from 2009, 2008, even one from 2006. Nothing about the recent election. The search engine just vomits your search results in a huge pile with no way to sort them by date, refine the search, or make it useful in any way.

Letters To The Editor are gone. Not by accident; they've actually said (via Twitter, of all places) that Letters will now only appear in the print edition. You have to be kidding me. Was there a meeting on this decision? Were there emails titled "How we can alienate and disrespect our readers"? Come on, you have people interested enough in an issue that they take the time to compose a letter and send it in, and you decide to hide these from your readers? Lord knows I've had enough chuckles poking fun at some of them, maybe the N-G has decided they're actually embarrassed about caliber of the people that write in.

The more I think about this, the more I think it's a stupid idea. I'm not aware of any online newspaper with an Opinions section that doesn't have their Letters online.

That freakin' Twitter feed. Get rid of it. Now. It's not that it doesn't add much to the front page, but it's animated. It's annoying. It distracts me by constantly flickering in the corner of my vision while I'm trying to read. It's not like it's a live feed, updating with new tweets as they come in. No, it just cycles through past tweets, from hours ago. I'm not sure Twitter users have an attention span of more than eleven minutes; what happened seven hours ago is ancient history to them.

Contrast the new N-G site with the Daily Illini (which I haven't looked at in a couple of years and has been totally redesigned since). That's a student-run paper and it looks much less bush-league than the N-G's.

Why is the News Gazette violating it's own policy?

The News-Gazette has a policy of not printing "letters published elsewhere". So why did they publish David Smith's noxious letter? I've found it published at least in part in at least five different locations:

• the Illinois Review blog
• the Freeport, IL Journal Standard
• the St. Louis Suburban Journal
• the Galesburg, IL Zephyr
• this Family Research Council press release

A married yokel

I swear, these yokels are trying to be the death of me. It's like they get together after the weekly Ku Klux Jesus meeting and plot ways to make my blood pressure go up. And I keep falling for the bait. This week our yokel is Harold Miller of Urbana, who is obsessed with thinking about your penis. But not, you know, in a gay way or anything.

How can any intelligent person, using simple common sense, not realize the stupidity in calling homosexual behavior "marriage"?

Well, as an intelligent person, using simple common sense, I don't think anyone actually is calling homosexual behavior "marriage." Not anymore than anyone is calling heterosexual behavior "marriage." I think what people are saying is that gay people shouldn't be treated any differently from straight people.

In all of recorded history, genuine marriage has always been between a man and a woman, male and female, as was designed and intended.

Well, actually, no. In all of recorded history, genuine marriage has pretty much been between a man and a woman and a woman and a woman. Usually underage and usually with her consent being optional.

Even animals are smarter; did anyone ever see two bulls shacking up?

Really? Really? We're supposed to base human sexual behavior off the behavior of cattle? Perhaps Mr. Miller could give me an example of one bull and one cow "shacking up," because, to the best of my knowledge, ranchers generally keep one bull for quite a few cows. You know, like the Mormons used to do.

It's always ironic when people try to use animal behavior to prove that human homosexual behavior is "unnatural," seeing as there homosexual behavior in animals is widespread and well-documented. There are gay penguins in Manhattan, Germany, and China. The German penguins took in an egg that was abandoned by its Biblically heterosexual parents, hatched and raised it. The Chinese penguins were given were given an egg and became "the best parents in the whole zoo". One of the gay San Francisco penguins recently broke up with his boyfriend and moved in with a female penguin proved once and for all that Mother Nature has a sense of irony.

In vivid contrast, true marriage is natural, normal, beautiful and sacred.

Sure it is. Just ask Brittney Spears.

A patriotic yokel

It's, well, no day in particular, but that means it's time for another in the Local Yokels series! Yes, where we learn all about the woefully ignorant, yet vocal residents of our society. They're like homeschooled yodelers.

This Local Yokel is Paul V. "Pete" Springer from Fisher, IL and the N-G titled his Letter "Country has drifted from biblical teaching". With a title like that, I think you know what you're in for, so let's get started.

In anticipation of experiencing another day commemorating our independence, I looked up the definition of patriotic. I found it as follows: "One who loves his country and jealously guards its welfare."

Yeah, because I know I anticipate the arrival of a holiday by sitting down for a nice session with the dictionary. A real patriot would have sat down with the Bible, not Mirriam-Webster. Obviously this is just another example of our country straying from its biblical roots.

Seriously, what is with people starting off an argument or a speech by giving the dictionary definition of a word? You see it all over the place. Is there some sort of crappy template these people are using?

I love our country and appreciate the many freedoms we enjoy, particularly our freedom to worship, and I am reminded that 52 of the 55 men who signed our Constitution were so claimed orthodox evangelical Christians.

That's an impressive reminder indeed, especially considering that 39 people signed the Constitution. Maybe he's using faith-based math. Obviously, Mr. Springer's love of his country is surpassed only by his ignorance of it.

When I think of how our country has drifted from the many biblical beliefs/teachings that were practiced at that time, I am dismayed.

Really? The many biblical teachings practiced at that time? Slavery, the subjugation of women, the execution of gays and lesbians, the persecution of Native Americans, what's not to love?

The Bible was considered to be God's Word and a guide for living, and was the basis for our laws.

And here we get to the real Christian chauvanism. The Bible has never been the "basis for our laws." The Constitution is the basis for our laws. It is a completely secular, non-religious document. Nowhere does it cite the Bible for support. I would challenge Yokel Springer to find me a bicameral legislature in the Bible. Or any elected body. Trial by jury? Copyright? Religious pluralism? In fact, it specifically states "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

Today the Bible is made fun of and is no longer taught to our children.

Really? I wasn't aware that churches no longer discussed the Bible in Sunday School in Fisher, IL.

Consequently our morals have deteriorated to such an extent that I think our country is in danger of self-destruction.

Is there something about religous people constantly thinking that the end is nigh? Does it have something to do with their belief that Judgement Day is all but upon us (and has been immanent for about 2000 years now)?

To name a few changes contrary to biblical teaching that we now seem to accept:

1. The taking of God's name in vain

I'll mention that to Zeus next time I see him. I'm sure he'd be happy to strike people with a few thunderbolts.

2. No longer setting aside a day of rest.

Funny, it's Saturday and I'm writing this from my own home. I'm not just having one day of rest, I plan to have another tomorrow, too. Thank you, union agitators, for the weekend!

3. Homosexuality.

4. Same sex marriages

5. Divorce.

Gosh, just what is the point in being a Christian if you can't regulate other people's sex lives? You can't even smack your wife around these days and expect her to stay with you anymore.

6. Abortion,

Exodus 21:22: "If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine." Clearly not the same thing as killing, no matter what the pro-life crowd says.

Honestly, our country is in pretty good shape. We're having some problems at the moment, but they're primarily financial, not moral. People are more likely now to be able to live productive, healthy happy lives than ever before. We even let women own property. Shocking

Math. It matters.

From a letter in today's News-Gazette

The reason that the Big 3 cannot compete is executive salaries. The math once again proves how wrong Kruse is for blaming the autoworkers. The top two General Motors executives combined salaries were over $22 million in 2007. Divide that by 3.8 million cars sold by GM in 2007, and you find that these two salaries added over $5,800 to the price of every car GM sold in America last year.

Yes, please. Divide $22 million by 3.8 million. Did you get 5,800?

The pentayokel

OK, this has gone from amusing to depressing to downright annoying. Yet another letter by a yokel from the Ghetto of Ignorance® was in the News-Gazette. This one by Mark Thompson of Dewey. As before, since these people aren't capable of having an original thought, the standard creationist claims are identified by a link.

Au contraire, evolution as a theory is entirely inconclusive. For all they preach the evolutionists have little evidence for the record.

Let's ignore for the moment the fact that "inconclusive" doesn't make sense in this sentence. I imagine he's trying to say it's not backed up by evidence. The only reason evolution is the dominant theory in biology is that it is consistent with the evidence. It's the only theory that's consistent with all the evidence.

• CA202. Evolution has not been proved.

Universal reproduction could not have evolved randomly; it is beyond scientific probability (insert DNA, any organ, voluntary and involuntary bodily systems, flora and fauna).

• CA100. Argument from incredulity.

I have a hard time fisking this because ... what the hell is "universal reproduction?" Is he talking about sexual reproduction? If so, I guess he has no problem with organisms that reproduce asexually having evolved? Ghetto of Incoherence is more like it.

Creationists, especially the casual, letter-to-the-editor writing kind like to talk about things being beyond some level of probability and therefore impossible. It's a crock, of course. You can't calculate the probability of events like that. (We'll ignore again whatever the hell he means by "scientific" probability.) The head yokels, the ones that write the books for the yokel audience, come up with metaphors like a tornado in a junkyard constructing a 747. But that's a false analogy. Evolution isn't random. It's stochastic. It has an element of randomness, but it's not a random process.

Could one person win the lottery every day of his life, unaided, probability or impossibility? Math science suggests "random evolution" as one chance in trillions.

• CF002.1. Tornadoes in junkyards do not build things.

What the hell is "math science?" Again, you can't calculate the odds for evolution. It's not a probabilistic event. It's like saying, "What's are the odds of gravity?"

On the other hand, evolution theorists can't rule God out of the equation statistically. After all, they believe in "any" chance.

• CA602. Evolution is atheistic.

And here, of course, we have it. Mr. Thompson equates evolution with atheism. Since he knows atheism is teh evil, so evolution must be, too.

"Random" evolution didn't create this marvelous, interwoven, natural world from a crucible of metals and gases; statistically and scientifically impossible, beyond reason.

Scientifically impossible, huh? So I guess all those, you know, scientists just missed that fact. That God we have Mr. Thompson of Dewey, Illinois, to tell us what is scientifically possible.

Math science favors this hypothesis, as does reason, as miraculous design is everywhere. Open your eyes, see?

• CI100.1. Look; is design not obvious?

There's that "math science" thing again. I guess this whole line of argument is the "stamp your foot and shout, 'It is too created!'" method of rhetoric. To paraphrase the Goblin King, if design is apparent and obvious literally everywhere, from every biological species to subatomic particles to even the very laws of physics that make the whole thing possible, what's your basis for comparison? If literally everything is designed, how do you know what a non-designed thing looks like?

Creationism does not refute science; it guides it, quite logically, on an enlightened level that stands the test of reason. No spin, just reasonable logic and math science, a theory that should be taught in school, alongside the random evolution theory, given the lack of conclusive facts. A totally reasonable stalemate.

• CA041. Teach the controversy.

Well, no, actually. Creationism does not guide science. There is nothing in science that requires religious belief. You don't need to be a Christian for an electron microscope to work, nor do you have to be a Hindu to study the human genome.

We're not at a stalemate. Creationism lost the game over a hundred years ago, and now they're just trying to change the rules.

Previous yokels:

• Local yokel disproves evolution?
• Another local yokel
• The third yokel's the charm
• Buy three yokels, get one free

Buy three yokels, get one free

The News-Gazette is trying to kill me. That's the only explanation I can think of for them publishing another creationist letter to the editor. This time it's by Dee Mulligan of Urbana. As usual, I'll give links to the Index to Creationist Claims for each bogus statement she makes.

It has been wonderful to see the debate over the theory of evolution and creationism once again emerging.

Not really, since there isn't any such debate. The debate, such as it was, was settled nearly a century ago. The only "debate" that rages is that ignorant Christians just keep demanding that their theology be treated as science.

I have a graduate degree and aced all the biology classes by feeding back answers the professors wanted. But they never convinced me that evolution makes any sense.

I'm sorry to see that Ms. Mulligan wasted this part of her education. Rather than actually learn anything, she treated her university as a series of hoops that needed to be blindly jumped through.

A friend of mine in college took Physics 101 as a pass/fail course. For him, it was just a mandatory prerequisite, and he didn't really care. His grades were reasonably good, so for the final exam, he just sat down and memorized a bunch of relevant equations without any actual understanding of what they were for. Ms. Mulligan apparently not only did the same this for her biology classes, but has the absolute hubris to demand that her pretend-knowledge be treated on the same level as actual experts in the subject.

My objection is that it is a theory. It is not taught as such in most cases. It is taught as fact.

Evolution is both theory and fact. We also teach atomic theory, quantum theory, the theory of relativity, and the germ theory of disease. Ms. Mulligan doesn't really understand the technical definition of the work "theory." That's what comes of blowing off your biology classes and getting your science lessons from your preacher.

• CA201. Evolution is only a theory.

I remember sitting in high school biology and looking at pictures of Cro-Magnon man.

It was absolutely taught as fact. Of course, we all know now it was just a hoax.

Whaaaaat? Cro-Magnons aren't a hoax. They were the first Homo sapiens to inhabit Europe, alongside the Neanderthals. It's kind of an archaic term, sure, but it's hardly fraudulent.

The saddest part of this is that literally 10 seconds of searching the Internet would have shown here this. There's Wikipedia article and the Britannica article. Hell, even the laughable Conservapedia has a stub article on Cro-Magnon man. But no, Ms. Mulligan couldn't be bothered. She's comfortable wearing her ignorance on her sleeve.

So science can be wrong. As a matter of fact, Karl Popper argues that a hypothesis or theory must be falsifiable if it is does not admit the possibility of being false.

The "science can be wrong" gambit is a classic one. It's basically just a way of saying "since we don't know everything, we know nothing." Can we assume that if Ms. Mulligan is diagnosed with cancer she won't accept treatment for it since we don't know everything about cancer? I suspect we were wrong once or twice there.

If education is to be complete, then all theories on the beginning of the world and we mortals should at least be explored or mentioned. It cannot be proved that we evolved from a single cell.

Uh, no. We don't study rejected theories except to mention that they are incorrect. Unless Ms. Mulligan is suggesting medical schools should have to explore the theory that disease is caused by bad air? Should science classes have to teach alternatives to atomic theory? No, of course not.

And what's with this fascination with "proof," anyway? It's something that's come up in a couple of the previous yokel letters. Science doesn't deal in proof; it deals in evidence. You want proof, go study mathematics.

• CA040. Fairness demands evolution and creation be given equal time.
• CA041. Teach the controversy.

By the way, where did that cell come from? And it cannot be proved that God created the world. They both take faith to believe. The creation story has been around for at least 6,000 years. How long has the theory of evolution been around? As for me, I choose God.

People, please, repeat after me: evolution is not abiogenesis. Or for those of you that don't know words not found in your hymnals, evolution has to do with how life changed on this planet, not where it came from. I guess these people fixate on this point since, in their creation story, everything was created in its current form, and so they don't see any difference between the history of life and the beginning of life.

You know what else has been around for a long time? The four elements. And guess what? It's wrong. It's the product of a time where people were ignorant about the world and how it worked. With the limited information they had at the time, it might not have been a crazy idea, but that doesn't mean it was right.

• CB050. Abiogenesis is speculative without evidence.
• CB090. Evolution is baseless without a theory of abiogenesis.
• CA612. Evolution requires as much faith as creationism.

Yeesh, I'm not even sure why I bother. As the quote goes, you can't argue someone out of a position they didn't argue themselves into.

Previous yokels:

• Local yokel disproves evolution?
• Another local yokel
• The third yokel's the charm

The third yokel's the charm

I had enough fun poking fun at the first two creationist yokels that wrote in to the News-Gazette, I thought I'd wrap up by looking at the letter from the third. This one is by Dan Yagow of Champaign:

Can a Christian accept evolution as fact? Can we believe human existence evolved from lower forms of life? Many say it is possible, but I see conflict. If a Christian accepts evolution, then what purpose or credibility does the Bible serve us?

One thing that's interesting about this line of "argument" is that it focuses entirely on human evolution. But evolution isn't just about how H. sapiens arose, it's about every species on the planet, from the towering dinosaurs to the bacteria that live all around us. They're every bit as evolved as we are. In the creationist mind, humans are special, dammit. We're not one of those dirty monkeys!

Notice the argument implicit in his last statement: if evolution is true, then the Bible is of no use. But that's not really an argument, is it? It's like saying that if the Earth isn't the center of the universe, then we're not special in the eyes of God, therefore the Earth is fixed in space and everything revolves around it.

• CH182. The Bible is influential.

A Christian follows Christ, claiming him to be holy and one with God the Creator... [snip irrelevant Bible quotes] If we embrace evolution, it's impossible to give God the credit he deserves. We would diminish his awesome power and exchange it for a faith in man's accomplishments.

Again, note the same implicit assumption as before. If evolution is true, my faith will be challenged, therefore evolution isn't true.

Why would evolution being true require awesome faith in man's accomplishments? It seems to me that if evolution were true, the credit belongs to all the billions of critters worldwide that crawled around in the muck and slime and dirt, from Tiktaalik to Archaeopteryx.

We would say that man's interpretation of how life originated makes more sense than the infallible intelligence of God. To claim that man evolved from lower forms of life does not fit with God's inerrant words.

In other words, "If it contradicts my interpretation of the Bible, it must not be true." A better excuse for intentional ignorance has never been spoken.

• CH100. The Bible says it; I believe it; that settles it.
• CH101. The Bible is inerrant.
• CH101.1. If part of the Bible is wrong, none of it can be trusted.

Consider this. There has been no scientific experiment that has successfully produced living cells from an arrangement of molecules evolution suggests.

Consider this. You haven't a freaking clue what you're talking about. Evolution doesn't say that a random arrangement of molecules got together to make a cell. Evolution isn't about the dawn of life. Even if God said "poof" and suddenly there was life on a barren Earth, evolution still could have caused that life to grow and develop into what we are now.

• CB010. The odds of life forming are incredibly small.
• CB010.2. First cells could not come together by chance.

The odds of it happening are remote. To believe that it can be done and that it occurred by accident over millions of years without any intelligence behind it would require immense faith.

Now wait a minute. We just went from "it couldn't happen" to "it couldn't happen without any intelligence behind it." So God-driven evolution is possible? Somehow I don't think that's what Mr. Yagow is saying.

• CA612. Evolution requires as much faith as creationism.

Again, we see that there's nothing new under the sun when it comes to creationist claims. Maybe evolution isn't true; otherwise, we'd expect to see their arguments (ahem) evolve to more persuasive forms.

Another local yokel

The editors at the News-Gazette are clearly conspiring to give me a coronary, because they published not one, but two, creationist letters to the editor last Friday. I'm not sure which is worse: that fact, or that these two pathetic examples are the best that the local forces of ignorance could muster. You know their arguments are tedious when they've been rehashed so many times they can be referred to by number. Let's take a look at the first, written by Mr. (Ms?) Kerwin Brown of Champaign:

Zielinski should know that theology is the branch of science that deals with God.

Really? That's really odd, because I just checked, and we don't seem to teach a single class on it in any of our science departments. I only missed a few classes, but if they covered transubstantiation in my Physical Chemistry course, it must have been in one of the few classes I missed. Maybe they covered rivers of blood in Environmental Engineering; I didn't take any of those classes. Funny, for theology being a branch of science, we do seem to have a lot of courses in the Religious Studies department.

Intelligent design is just an answer to how some particular events happen. A plausible answer to an event is called a hypothesis.

• CI001. Intelligent design theory is scientific.

Well, no. Intelligent design is just repackaged creationism. Kitzmiller vs. Dover proved that pretty much conclusively. That monkeys flew out of my butt is an answer to where monkeys came from, but that doesn't make it a reasonable hypothesis.

A person who backed the hypothesis of intelligent design as regards the beginning of life would propose that someone spontaneously changed the non-living matter into living matter.

Uh, yeah, that's what makes it creationism. This next bit may come as a news flash to Kerwin, but there's no difference between "non-living matter" and "living" matter. Life is not a property of matter like mass or color is.

They would back up their hypothesis by pointing to the fact that DNA requires enzymes in order to reproduce, and it is scientifically impossible for enzymes to get together with DNA by random chance.

• CB010.2. First cells could not come together by chance.
• CB015. DNA needs proteins to form; proteins need DNA.

Seeing as how evolution doesn't suggest things happen by "random chance," this really doesn't have anything to do with his argument.

No theory, including the atheistic/agnostic theory of evolution, can be proven even though it can be tested.

• CA202. Evolution has not been proved.

Since the Catholic Church doesn't have a problem with evolution, someone really tell the Pope that he's an atheist. Does this mean we're going to go back to teaching that the Sun goes around the Earth? After all, if that can't be proven, I guess we have to teach all theories. And lest you think I'm exaggerating, there really are fundamentalist Christians that are modern-day geocentrists.

In schools, they do not mention God when teaching the theory of evolution, which means they are teaching the atheistic theory of evolution.

• CA602. Evolution is atheistic.

Folks, I think we have an entry for the 2008 Dumbest Argument of the Year contest. We may even have such a stupid statement here that no one else need bother to enter. It you don't mention God, you're teaching atheism? So if we don't teach that God wanted the United States to exist are we teaching the atheistic Civil War? If we talk about antibiotics without mentioning Jesus, are we practicing atheistic medicine? Secular is not atheist.

Sigh.

Local yokel disproves evolution?

No, just kidding. There was a letter to the editor in the News-Gazette the other day that was just so stunningly arrogant, misled, and flat-out wrong, that I couldn't resist responding here. Mr. Justin Bleich of Gibson City writes:

It has been proven many times that creationists appeal to the facts of science to support their view, while evolutionists appeal to the philosophical assumptions from outside science.

Creationists appeal to the facts of science? Um ... really? Maybe it's been proven in your Bible study group, Mr. Bleich, but among rational people, that's a load of hooey. Take this load of "proofs" for the existence of God. Go take a look through the literature sometime. You'll find lots of experiments, data, photographs, even. You won't find many creationists doing the same because they have no experiments. They have no data. They can only appeal to the ignorance and gullibility in their listeners and their religious beliefs.

When it has been proven that energy cannot be created or destroyed, how in the world would a single-celled organism, by chance, appear from nothing and eventually evolve into a multi-celled organism, like a fish?

What? Unless these single-celled organisms have internal fusion reactors, the creation or destruction of energy has nothing to do with evolution.

How, also, would this fish then evolve into a lion? Humans were not yet here to prove this.

I can't even tell if he's arguing that fish couldn't evolve into tetrapods like Tiktaalik because humans weren't around, or if he's arguing that if humans weren't around, nothing can be "proven." The latter, of course, would mean we can't know anything about astrophysics, geology, or who really built the Pyramids. After all, were you there? Did you know that it wasn't aliens with tractor beams coming out of their flying saucers?

Evolutionary scientists often use their assumptions to formulate the idea that nonliving organisms gave life to living organisms, and humans came from apes.

Um, huh? I'd love to find one of those "nonliving organisms" someday. I guess in his own incoherent way, Mr. Bleich is talking about abiogenesis, which has nothing to do with evolution.

Humans didn't evolve from apes! God, have these people learned nothing since the Scopes Monkey Trials? Mr. Bleich's assignment is to write "Humans and apes diverged from a common ancestor millions of years ago. One did not evolve from the other" one hundred times or until his crayon runs out.

Creation scientists have just as much right to our opinion as do evolutionary scientists.

No one is saying that creation scientists don't have their right to their opinion. Christian Scientists and modern geocentrists have the right to their opinion, too. They don't have the right to demand their weird beliefs taught in science classes as science.

The fact that rank ignorance survives even in this day and age frightens me. People like Mr. Bleich really want to drag us down back into the Dark Ages. And while he and his religious brethren are being so smug and self-righteous about their Godly beliefs, the rest of the world is going to pass us by in scientific knowledge.

My sympathies

I've given News-Gazette blogger Rhonda Robinson some crap over the years, but I'd like to offer my sympathies over the recent accidental death of her son.

More anti-science from the News-Gazette

Every once in a while, I poke my head in to the News-Gazette blogs. I'm not sure why; they're usually just about sports and weather and are only intermittently updated. (These people aren't actually paid to blog, are they?) One of the more disappointing ones is Rhonda Robinson's. Her history of promoting creationism, anti-vaccination, anti-contraception, and oh-my-god-the-Muslims-are-coming paranoia never fails to make me shake my head and fear for the future of the children she homeschools.

A couple of weeks ago, she came out with a blog entry about how recent school shootings are caused by the use of antidepressants. She has no actual information, but supports her conclusion through innuendo, insinuation, conspiracy-theories, and an appeal to alternative (i.e. ineffective) medicine.

Here is the sum total of her argument:

No doubt there will be calls for more gun control, tighter security, but what I want to know most is will they look in [NIU shooter Steven Kazmierczak's] medicine cabinet.

The overwhelming majority of adolescent and young adult shooters have all been on, or withdrawing from psychotropic medications.

That's the totality of her argument. These shooters were taking psychiatric medications, therefore the medications are at fault for the shootings. The fact that these men were taking antidepressants for a reason doesn't seem to register with her. The fact that they were actually mentally ill is, apparently, irrelevant.

Her appeal to authority is rich, too. She cites Julian Whitaker when he says:

...guns and movies don't cause these tragically frequent episodes of inexplicable violence. The real reason is written out on a prescription pad by psychiatrists and doctors all over the country-these monstrous acts were done not by criminals, but ordinary people high on prescription drugs.

What she doesn't mention is that Whitaker is an alternative medicine quack, who treats people by means of diet and exercise changes, nutritional supplements, and chelation therapies. He actually believes there is a conspiracy among drug companies to over-proscribe psychiatric medications to children.

I'm not suggesting that psychiatric medications can't have serious side effects, or that they're not over-proscribed. I'm just saying that jumping to the conclusion that these shootings were caused by these medications based on no other evidence that the shooters were taking these medications, and ignoring the fact that they had underlying mental illnesses, is an example of poor critical thinking. Using that kind of logic to propose these medications be outlawed, as Whitaker does, is reckless and irresponsible.

Robinson doesn't mention that the two deadliest mass shootings in US history, the 1966 University of Texas Clock Tower shooting and the 1968 California State, Fullerton massacre, were both perpetrated by men who were seriously mentally ill, before the age of antidepressants. One was committed by a man who was depressed and had a brain tumor, the other committed by a paranoid schizophrenic. Undoubtedly, if their cases were discovered today they, too, would be on antidepressants. But that doesn't mean you can blame the violence on Prozac.

UPDATE: Just reacting to some of the stuff that's come up in the comments. I just want to say that we know that starting antidepressants can lead to an increased rate of suicidal behavior, especially in young people. So it's not entirely unreasonable to think that there might be a possibility that we might see an increase in violent behavior as well. Also, I don't think it's unreasonable to hypothesize that abruptly stopping antidepressants could lead to strange changes in behavior. As terrible as mass shootings are, they are fairly rare, so trying to establish a cause is difficult, at best.

My main complaint in this blog post was just to point out that Robinson sees a mentally ill person on antidepressants commit an act of violence and jumps to the conclusion that the antidepressants were to blame. Furthermore, she does so without evidence. She then goes on to quote a alternative medicine quack that thinks these rare events necessitate a complete ban on these drugs in spite of the fact that they have improved the quality of life for millions of people.

Can we get some intelligence in the design of the News-Gazette?

I rarely poke my head in at the News Gazette blogs, because they're usually fairly inane. About a week ago Rhonda Robinson blogged "Expelled: No intelligence Allowed - new movie, old debate", which is more disappointing than her usual conservative, self-pitying blather. What's unusual about this column is that the density of logical fallacies is so high is threatens to distort the flow of cars on I-74 due to its graviational pull.

Intelligent design creationists spout the same claims over and over. They used the same tired old arguments so often, that you can actually refer to them by number. The Index to Creationist Claims categorizes and indexes the standard creationist claims, distortions, and half-truths in a nice, tidy list for reference. Here I'll point out Robinson's fallacious arguments:

1. CA202: Evolution has not been proven. Robinson writes, "Why is a 150 year old unproven theory accepted as fact..", when in fact, evolution *has* been proven, in so far as science "proves" things. This leads us directly to the next one:
2. CA201. Evolution is only a theory. This can only be attributable to Robinson's ignorance of what constitutes a theory. Perhaps it's unfair to expect her to be familiar with such things, but it's she that has chosen to pontificate on science and it is she that is talking out of her ass.
3. CA002.1. Evolution leads to social Darwinism. Robinson quotes Ben Stein's blog about his upcoming creationist movie, "Darwinism, perhaps mixed with Imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism..." As the ICC points out, this is just the "is vs. ought" logical fallacy. Even if evolution leads inexorably to Social Darwinism (which it doesn't), that wouldn't mean evolution was false. Science tells us the way the world is, not the way the world ought to be.
4. CA005. Evolution is racist. Robinson/Stein continue: "[Social Darwinism is] a form of racism so vicious..." Ironically, Social Darwinism started in 1944, over 50 years after Darwin died and 85 years after the publication of The Origin of Species. So, was evolution valid for the period in between?
5. CA006.1. Hitler based his views on Darwinism. Robinson/Stein write, "[Social Darwinism] countenanced the Holocaust against the Jews and mass murder of many other groups..." Again, no. The evil of the Holocaust requires no more scientific theory than the selective breeding of livestock practiced by farmers for centuries. Hitler also referred to the Jews as bacteria that needed to be eradicated and cancer that needed to be excised. Shall we next accuse modern medicine of being racist and anti-Semitic?
6. CB910. No new species have been observed. Robinson/Stein continue, "Despite the fact that no one has ever been able to prove the creation of a single distinct species by Darwinist means..." Except for the fact that multiple new speciation events have been observed in insects, birds, fish, and mammals.
7. CB090. Evolution is baseless without a theory of abiogenesis. Still quoting Stein, Robinson writes, "Darwinism also has not one meaningful word to say on the origins of organic life..." Evolution isn't about the origin of life on this planet. It's about the change in the characteristics of the individual species. Abiogenesis, or the origin of life, is more speculative than evolution, but that doesn't mean it's impervious to science, either. I'm not sure why Stein feels necessary to wonder about the origins of "organic" life. Does he know about silicon-based lifeforms that I'm unaware of?

That's one creationist claim every 70 words or so in this blog post. That's pretty impressive for 500 words.

What I find the most irritating is the continual put-upon tone she takes in the posting. She asks "Are we still free to disagree about the meaning of life?" and why creationism is "not allowed to be heard." She even goes so far as to ask "Are we still free to disagree about the meaning of life without fear of persecution?"

Seriously, persecution? Rhonda, get down off the cross, we could use the wood. You can complain about persecution when creationists stop making a mint peddling books to the ignorant.

Robinson whines, "This is about science, and the freedom of ideas." Science isn't really about ideas. That's philosophy. Science is about evidence, and creationsists have none.

Hopefully, creationists will someday come up with some arguments that they haven't been parroting for decades, ignoring the evidence mounting against them. Until then, I'm just bored.

(Oh, and The Squire is still around. He stops by the comments and pretty much gives Robinson a good blog-lashing. Get back to blogging, you slacker.)