Progressive Democrat Issue 56: THOUGHTS

Last issue my thoughts section was a long essay on the Republicans’ and the religious Right’s deliberate attempts to deny science and misrepresent facts in order to further their own agendas. It was inspired by reading a biography of Darwin and by a letter to the editor in the scientific journal Nature where a scientist accuses the religious right of a kind of misrepresentation and denial of facts that he calls "Intelligent Deception". Today, inspired by an article from BBC, I want to revisit and expand on that diary, discussing another aspect of the Intelligent Deception campaign to replace reality with dogma. In this case I want to discuss how corporate greed leads to a "Lobby for the Denial of Science" which, along with the "Intelligent Deception" movement, dominates the modern Republican Party, turning into a machine for misleading the public.

First, for those who missed it, I want to revisit the letter to the editor in Nature that sparked my last rant.

Nature 438, 422 (24 November 2005)

Is the ID debate proof of an intelligent deceiver?

Richard Palmer1

1. Systematics and Evolution Group, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E9, Canada

Sir:

In the ongoing debate over whether intelligent design (ID) should be taught as a legitimate alternative to evolution in schools ("Expert witness: the scientists who testified against intelligent design" Nature 438, 11; 2005), I suggest that ID could be presented as an alternative so long as it is always accompanied by a third option: intelligent deception.

This hypothesis proposes that the ID movement is motivated by an 'intelligent deceiver'. Individuals who understand how to debate alternative scientific hypotheses would never intentionally promote religious dogma as science. So an intelligent deceiver must be at work, guiding proponents of ID to sow confusion over valid scientific debate.

To exclude intelligent deception from debates over ID versus evolution could be considered hypocritical on both legal and moral grounds. And if proponents of ID reject the hypothesis of intelligent deception, their objections would be most interesting to hear, particularly the ones that dismiss the deceiver without imperilling the designer.

I think Palmer is right. And what I discussed in my last diary is how the right wing attack on evolution is only part of a much larger, surreal and almost psychotic attack on reality. From the situation in Iraq, to evolition to global warming, the right wing is pushing ideology over facts. There are those whose fear of doubt and debate is so great that they will do ANYTHING, including blatant deception, to prevent facts and science to win the day.

Science is a very specific process of hypothesis, testing and revision of hypothesis. When a hypothesis is tested, that test has to be able to solidly DISPROVE the hypothesis. Otherwise it is not a valid scientific test. A hypothesis is something you do your best to disprove. If your careful testing is unable to disprove the hypothesis, then that hypothesis is supported by your test. As years go by and many scientists submit a given hypothesis to successive rounds of testing in an attempt to disprove it, the hypothesis gets refined and further supported until it has such robust support from so many tests that we call it a "theory." A theory is not something that is proven. Nothing in science can ever be definitively proven. A theory can merely be so thoroughly supported that further hypotheses can be built upon it with confidence and very accurate predictions can be made from it. Often years later new information comes up that requires further refining of the theory, but the basics remain intact.

The Creationism/ID/Evolution "debate" is not a scientific debate. The scientific debate was over long ago, settled in favor of evolution, and has moved on to bigger and better things like determining whether evolution has been continuous or punctuated, whether the evolution of the universe is best described by a point-particle or a string theory, etc. But society has backtracked and is now having a renewed debate NOT about science, but about the role of science in society. The debate is not about evolution, which is scientific fact as much as anything is, but is about how society values religion versus science and whether society should favor fact over belief when deciding what to teach in schools.

This same societal psychosis, where facts are willfully denied in favor of ideology, is also occurring in the realm of atmospheric sciences. This willful ignorance and psychotic denial of the reality of global warming is another front in the right wing Intelligent Deception campaign. And it is making the United States a laughing stock around the world because of our anti-Science leadership. From BBCnews:

In his final speech as president of the Royal Society, Lord May of Oxford will say scientists must speak out against the climate change "denial lobby"...
"Ahead of us lie dangerous times," he will say in his fifth and final anniversary address.

"There are serious problems that derive from the realities of the external world: climate change, loss of biological diversity, new and re-emerging diseases, and more.

"Many of these threats are not yet immediate, yet their non-linear character is such that we need to be acting today.

"And we have no evolutionary experience of acting on behalf of a distant future; we even lack basic understanding of important aspects of our own institutions and societies.

"Sadly, for many, the response is to retreat from complexity and difficulty by embracing the darkness of fundamentalist unreason.”

Lord May will say that fundamentalism applies not only to organised religions but to lobby groups on both sides of the climate change debate.

The climate change "denial lobby" and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) opposed to nuclear power are not exempt from a denial or misrepresentation of scientific facts, he told reporters in London...

Another danger to the enlightenment of science came from the growing network of fundamentalist and lobby groups in the US that campaigned for creationism to be taught in science classes, he added.

"By their own writings, this group has a much wider agenda which is to replace scientific materialism by something more based on faith," he said.

He called on scientists to take a more active role in speaking out against so-called "intelligent design" and other threats to modern scientific values.

"The only thing I can see scientists doing is being more energetic as citizens - getting out there and trying to convince people that that's not a very wise way to behave," he explained. "That's no easy recipe."

Right wing America is engaged in a campaign of Intelligent Deception and is supported by the "denial lobby" in its efforts to ignore reality. Evolution is a cornerstone of modern science, supported by ample evidence. And global warming is an observed fact whose occurrence is so closely correlated with increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, which, in turn, is so closely correlated with increased human generation of carbon dioxide, that the idea that human activity is increasing global temperatures is almost blatantly obvious. We know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. That is solid scientific fact. We know humans have been engaging in rapid deforestation of the planet and have been burning fossil fuels at an increasing rate, thus releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by two mechanisms. We know that the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide closely matches what one would expect from the release of carbon dioxide humans have been causing. Given the known release of carbon dioxide we have been doing, and given the known effect atmospheric carbon dioxide has on global temperature, the famous "hockey stick" graph showing the correlation between the two is NOT really controversial. It is practically proof of principle rather than hypothesis. We KNOW more carbon dioxide leads to warming and we KNOW that we are putting more carbon dioxide into the air so why do we pretend to be surprised that we are causing warming?

The majority of the predictions that atmospheric scientists predicted a decade ago have been coming to pass. That really means that the hypothesis of global warming is a solid scientific theory because it has been successfully predictive. Scientists predicted increased storminess (we have had a record hurricane season this year and many years have shown increased storminess recently), the northward spread of tropical diseases (West Nile, for example!), melting glaciers (in full swing from the alps to Mt. Kilamanjaro), the break up of the Antarctic ice sheet (which began dramatically a couple of years ago), the melting of the permafrost (just starting), etc. All of this was predicted based on the theory of global warming and all of it is coming true. That is science, folks!

Yet big oil companies, out of sheer, unadulterated greed, have formed the "lobby for the denial of science" in order to make Americans ignorant of global warming so that they can continue to profit from fossil fuels. The Republican Party has become the pawn of the "lobby for the denial of science" as well as the political wing for the religious fundamentalist "Intelligent Deception" movement. The Republican Party has led the way in the fight against reality and for a psychotic denial of facts. Republicans like the corrupt and callous Joe Barton (TX-6) have led the political fight in favor of denial and deception. Barton has even tried blatant intimidation of the most famous American global warming scientists by threatening their funding and calling into question their scientific integrity. A corrupt Republican calling into question the integrity of scientists! The Bush Administration and large segments of the Republican Party are playing the intelligent deceiver, deceiving America to get their way. Republicans wrap themselves in Christianity and declare Crusades and act as the political front for greedy corporations and religious extremists. In the process they subjugate fact to belief. They suppress scientific evidence showing that global warming is upon us here and now in their belief that what is good for big oil companies is good for America. They suppress evidence that world fisheries are declining in their belief that deregulation of fisheries is a good thing. They suppress evidence for the harmful effects of mercury and arsenic on children in their belief that deregulation of environmental standards is a good thing. They suppress facts about the Iraq War in their belief that it is a Crusade that will make America strong.

WE have to fight this folks! America CANNOT be guided by belief over fact. That is not how America was founded. It is a violation of the secular, rational plan that the Founding Fathers had when they wrote the Constitution. It is impractical and intellectually dishonest to, as the Bush administration and the Republican Party have been doing, try and deceive the entire world to push an agenda of faith, whether that faith is in neocon ideology or Christian fundamentalism. Our nation, built to be a place where all religions and beliefs are allowed, was never intended to favor ANY belief over common sense facts.

I call upon Americans to reject the reactionary anti-intellectualism of the Republican Party for a revival of science, common sense and an emphasis on facts. I think a good place to start is to focus hard on defeating Joe Barton, the Republican front man for the war on global warming scientists. go to my “Defeat the Katrina 11" website and donate to the general fund for the TX-6 race. I suspect that this race will be a sleeper for awhile, but will get hot in the last weeks of the campaign in 2006. That would parallel the OH-2 race. But this time we really have a chance to give this race some early attention. Please keep an eye on it and give when you can! There is an excellent Democrat, David Harris, running against Barton. David Harris now has his website up if you want to read more about him: http://www.followmetodc.com/

For those who are interested in more on the scientific issues, the Union of Concerned Scientists addresses all of these issues, from evolution to environment to energy issues.


The National Center for Science Education focuses on evolution and protecting education from creationists.

Finally, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State focuses on keeping America the secular, rationalist nation that the Founding Fathers intended it to be.

Please join in the fight against the Intelligent Deceivers and the Lobby of Denial.