Does God Like Republicans?

For evidence hard to refute, please click on the image below.

Chomsky and Hitchens Interview

Noam Chomsky and Christopher Hitchens, arguably the two most prominent public intellectuals of recent years, participated in the following radio discussion. The focus falls on how the media frame “mainstream” debate and stifle opposition to received doctrines. Duration: 5 x 10 minutes (audio only).

“Belief” In Evolution

Apart from the political implications of “Intelligent” Design, and the movement’s obviously subversive intentions for school science curricula, consider what is wrong with the following video:

The fallacy is that evolution is a belief. It is not a belief. Belief is what you do when you are seeking to align your views with the most compelling explanation for a set of facts. Now, scientifically, evolution is a theory that seeks to do this, but at the same time, it is an observation, not an inference to an explanation. The inference happens later during the formulation of testable hypotheses on the back of the observation that evolution happens. Evolution is a fact. Not divinely revealed but observed by mankind. In The Devil’s Chaplain Richard Dawkins has written about his very clearly.

Even if they are nominally hypotheses on probation, these statements are true in exactly the same sense as the ordinary truths of everyday life; true in the same sense as it is true that you have a head, and that my desk is wooden. If scientific truth is open to philosophic doubt, it is no more so than common sense truth. Let’s at least be even-handed in our philosophical heckling.

On another level, evolution (and in the video the questioner implies biological evolution) is a process. For example, John McCain’s bald patch has evolved. The English language has evolved. It is a descriptor term for a series of events leading up the present state of affairs. In the scientific context specifically this can be traced back for living organisms and their speciation using a range of techniques from carbon dating, paleontology and genetics. That’s just observation. Trumping that with the dim declaration (one with no explanatory power whatsoever, incidentally) that “God” made things a particular way is a belief. And it’s one that demands a lot of work to maintain against the tide of evidence pointing to the better conclusion.