I’m cutting the monster a lot of slack with the headline.
P. Z. Myers publicized the e-mail exchange involving Bodie Hodge, a minor deity at the anti-science, creationist organization Answers in Genesis (AiG). Myers was nice to the guy, contrary to the usual creationist cartoon of Myers as somehow immoral for being a non-worshipper of gods. Well, he was nicer than I would have been. But Myers expects Christians to exhibit no sense of shame, no common sense, and twisted morality. I expect bettter of them.
A reader posed that age-old question to Hodge: Is the Christian rule against lying so strong that a Christian should tell Nazi troops where Jewish families are hiding? Hodge weasels later by saying he hopes he never has to make such a choice, and that he really doesn’t know how he’d act in that situation. But this comes only after he says that telling a lie to Nazis to save Jews will get one burned in hell. And then he goes on to note it’s better to be in good with God than to act morally.
In other words, better to become an accomplice in the murder of Jews than to stand up against murderers.
I don’t get how these charlatans of religion, reason to such a point.
What would Jesus do? We know. When the crowd was threatening to stone to death a woman guilty of adultery and she sought refuge with Jesus, Jesus stood up to the mob and saved her life. Just execution of Biblical law or shelter the accused, Jesus stood against the murder, even murder sanctioned by the religious rules of the community.
We also know that scripture endorses deception from time to time. You know these AiG clowns are charlatans when they say stupid stuff like this. Hodge tries to explain away another case of deception by inventing a scenario not found in scripture in which the lie doesn’t get told.
He’s forgotten the story of Jacob and Esau, and how Jacob and his mother conpsired to deceive Isaac in order to steal away Esau’s birthright (Esau and Jacob were twins, by the way). Jacob got away with the deed, was then blessed by God. He took a new name: Israel. He lived on to be the seed of Judaism, the religion Jesus followed and the foundation of Christianity.
To AiG, it appears that scripture is just a dusty old book, except when they can twist it to support their bigotry. Here’s irony for you: The story of Jacob is in Genesis. You know, as in “Answers in Genesis.” They don’t even know their own namesake book!
Here in America, as a nation we overcame that morality-or-religion problem with Huck Finn. The ill-educated young teen, an absentee to grammar, faces the moral decision as he floats down the Mississippi with Jim, an escaped slave who has saved Huck’s life and is in other ways a very good friend. Huck notes that the preachers are all agreed that Huck’s moral duty is to turn Jim in as an escaped slave, to condemn Jim to a continued life of slavery, should Jim survive the lashing. Huck Finn puts the dilemma squarely: Whether to obey God and turn in Jim to the authorities, or to burn in hell and let Jim live the life of a free man. Huck agonizes, but decides: He’ll burn in hell rather than give away his friend.
Myers wrote:
As a non-Bible believing amoral godless atheist, my first thought was that this is trivial: you lie your pants off. The ‘crime’ of telling a lie pales into insignificance against the crime of enabling the death of fellow human beings.
According to Bodie Hodge of AiG, though, I’m wrong. The good Christian should reject lies, Satan’s tools, in all circumstances, and should immediately ‘fess up the location of the Jews. He backs it up with Bible quotes, too.
If we love God, we should obey Him (John 14:15). To love God first means to obey Him first–before looking at our neighbor. So, is the greater good trusting God when He says not to lie or trusting in our fallible, sinful minds about the uncertain future?
Consider this carefully. In the situation of a Nazi beating on the door, we have assumed a lie would save a life, but really we don’t know. So, one would be opting to lie and disobey God without the certainty of saving a life–keeping in mind that all are ultimately condemned to die physically. Besides, whether one lied or not may not have stopped the Nazi solders from searching the house anyway.
As Christians, we need to keep in mind that Jesus Christ reigns. All authority has been given to Him (Matthew 28:18), and He sits on the throne of God at the right hand of the Father (Acts 2:33; Hebrews 8:1). Nothing can happen without His say. Even Satan could not touch Peter without Christ’s approval (Luke 22:31). Regardless, if one were to lie or not, Jesus Christ is in control of timing every person’s life and able to discern our motives. It is not for us to worry over what might become, but rather to place our faith and obedience in Christ and to let Him do the reigning. For we do not know the future, whereas God has been telling the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10).
Gosh. I never thought of it that way. So…all those Christians who sheltered Jews during WWII are actually burning in hell right now for their sinful wickedness? That is so counterintuitive, it must be true!
One more time we should side with morality, and against creationist distortions of Christianity and morality.
With all the learning they get at that reeking cesspool the creationism museum, you’d think they could demonstrate the moral fiber of a tobacco-chewing, food-stealing, school-cutting runaway teen, Huckleberry Finn.
Full AiG post below the fold (I expect them to strike it down when they rethink; let all Christians pray to God they do rethink).
This may be the #1 hoax site on the web: Martinlutherking.org. Certainly it is a site dangerous for children, because it cleverly purports to be an accurate history site, while selling voodoo history and racism.
A racist group bought the domain name (note the “.org” suffix), and they’ve managed to keep it. The site features a drawing of Martin Luther King, Jr., on the first page. The racist elements are subtle enough that unwary students and teachers may not recognize it for the hoax site it is.
It is both racist and hoax: Note the link to a racist argument on “Why the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday should be repealed;” note the link to a hoax page, “Black invention myths.”
Students, nothing on that site should be trusted. Teachers, warn students away from the site. You may want to use that site as a model of what a bad site looks like, and the importance of weighing the credibility of any site found on the web.
Why do I even mention the racist, hoax site? Because it comes upi #3 on Google searches for “Martin Luther King.” Clearly a lot of people are being hoodwinked into going to that site. I’ve seen papers by high school students citing the site, with teachers unaware of the site’s ignoble provenance.
Here are a few good sites on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; you can help things by clicking on each one of these sites, and by copying this list with links and posting it on your blog:
I can’t bite my tongue and let idiots rage on unfairly and inaccurately about important matters.
Earlier I noted the difficulties with reality at Texas Darlin’. The warden of the blog dropped by and suggested I should join the discussion there if I had something to say. It always ends badly. Someone there says something plug ugly stupid, and I note the facts. My posts get edited, or censored.
Some post linked there, and I looked. I couldn’t resist. The owner and commenters are flailing around like a bass in the boat, trying to make a case that Sonia Sotomayor shouldn’t be a justice of the Supreme Court. They have convinced themselves that she’s a racist, she’s sexist, she got where she is solely because of affirmative action and the Great Cabal that Runs the World. And they are stuffing tinfoil in their ears now — it makes their hats leak, but it keeps them from hearing anything that might upset them.
I expect they’ll remove my posts soon. If you care, I’ve made some defense of Sonia Sotomayor, and I copied the posts below the fold. Texas Darlin’ inmates correspondents repeat every canard about Sotomayor you can imagine. And some you can’t imagine.
Texas Darlin’ is neither.
I am persuaded to do a series of posts on the nomination of Sotomayor. In the interim, here’s my attempt to square things at Texas Darlin’, below the fold.
Cover of Desmond and Moore's 2009 book, Darwin's Sacred Cause
It’s another grand book on Darwin from the team of Adrian Desmond and James Moore, based on their deep diving into the archives of writings from and about Darwin in his own time. Their earlier book, Darwin, is a bit of a modern classic in biography, and a must-read for anyone seriously studying Darwin and evolution.
Desmond and Moore confront the claims head on, it appears. How will creationists change their story to accommodate these facts? Or, will creationists resort to denial?
One theme that may be supported in the book is the realization that pursuit of a noble cause frequenly ennobles those who pursue it. Certainly it is easy to make a case that Darwin’s hatred of slavery and advocacy for its abolition colored his views of what he saw, though perhaps not so much as what he saw colored his views of slavery and abolition. Desmond and Moore have a chapter that discusses Charles Lyell’s trips to America, and Lyell’s different views on slavery having traveled the American south. Lyell did not travel as an abolitionist, and his views suffer as a result. Lyell was a product of his times in the portrait Desmond and Moore paint. Darwin demonstrated the power of science, and the power of personal use of science, in using the facts to overcome racism; Darwin used his experience and study to rise above the times. That may be the difference between the men, why we celebrate Darwin today, and remember Lyell as a good scientist, but usually a footnote to Darwin.
Because ideas matter. The right to express ideas, and the right to be able to read ideas, are at the foundation of our liberties.
Again in 2007, books most frequently targeted for banning include And Tango Makes Three, a delightful children’s story about two penguins taking care of an orphaned egg (too much like homosexuality), and Mark Twain’s powerful, essentially-American novel that makes the case against racism, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (ironically, because complainants claim to find the book racist).
People who ask that these books be pulled from the shelves often fail to recognize the irony — why should we ban a book about caring for orphans, or the book that makes the case against racism?
Again at Café Philos, the anti-Darwin fifth columnists do their best to continue distortions of history, in this case, in high irony, claiming NOT to defend John Freshwater.
Not in defense of Freshwater’s walking over the Constitution and zapping burns on students in the shape of a cross? Why bother to go after Darwin? No explanation is necessary. It’s like the story of the frog and the scorpion. Creationists are like scorpions. It’s in their nature. (I believe it is a corruption of human nature that creationism visits on those who allow the demon in.) (“Paging Bobby Jindal! Creationist Demon Possession in the Louisiana Governor’s Mansion; what? You’re already there? When’s the exorcism this time?”)
In a cartoon, Darwin bans “Laissez faire,” a shorthand for “Social Darwinism,” and eugenics from his house. Unknown cartoonist, from a short essay on Northwestern University’s discussion book, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, by David Quammen.
Here’s the exchange. If you find it boring, my apologies. I do weary at the prospect of having to do this again, and again. On the crashed hard-drive of my first laptop, I have files now 15 years old discussing this same silly claim. I’m posting here for the record, for my easy reference, with hope that someday it will not be necessary to post this stuff at all. You may need some of these links some day, and here they are, below the fold.
Richard Weikart is an arm of the Discovery Institute’s disinformation brigade. A couple of years ago he published a book attempting to link Darwin to the Holocaust in a blame-sharing arrangement. This book and some of its arguments appear to be the foundation of the text used to write the script for the mockumentary movie “Expelled!” featuring Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein.
Which is to say, the basis for the movie is dubious. Weikart’s scholarship creating links between Darwin, science and Hitler is quite creative. It is also based on arguments created from Darwin’s writings that mislead the innocent about evolution, science and history, or which get Darwin and evolution exactly wrong.
Michael Ruse published an op-ed in a Florida paper in February — a piece which is no longer available there (anybody got a copy?Nebraska Citizens for Science preserved a copy) — and Weikart responded, restating his creative claims. Alas for the truth, Weikart’s canards are still available at the Discovery Institute website, putting an interesting twist on Twain’s old line: The truth will go to bed at night while a falsehood will travel twice around the world as the truth kicks off its slippers.
Looking for Ruse’s piece, I found Weikart’s response here and here. I composed a quick response pointing out the problems, which I would like to posit here for the record — partly because I doubt Darwiniana gets much traffic, partly because the censor-happy folks at Discovery Institute don’t allow free discussion at their site, and partly so I can control it to make sure it’s not butchered as Weikart butchers Darwin’s text.
Weikart’s strip quoting of Darwin is most disappointing. [Weikart wrote:]
Darwin claimed in chapter two of The Descent of Man that there were great differences in moral disposition and intellect between the “highest races” and the “lowest savages.” Later in Descent he declared, “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.” Racial inegalitarianism was built into Darwin’s analysis from the start.
Darwin argued the differences in intellect and manners between the “highest” of men and the “lowest” of men did NOT change the fact that we are are all related — legally, Darwin’s argument would evidence a claim absolutely the opposite of what Weikart claims. Here are Darwin’s words from Chapter II of Descent of Man, as Darwin wrote them, without Weikart’s creative editing:
Nor is the difference slight in moral disposition between a barbarian, such as the man described by the old navigator Byron, who dashed his child on the rocks for dropping a basket of sea-urchins, and a Howard or Clarkson; and in intellect, between a savage who uses hardly any abstract terms, and a Newton or Shakespeare. Differences of this kind between the highest men of the highest races and the lowest savages, are connected by the finest gradations. Therefore it is possible that they might pass and be developed into each other. [emphasis added]
That’s not inegalitarianism at all — Darwin’s saying they are the same species, related closer than the poets allow. If we stick to the evidence, and [do] not wander off into poetic philosophy, we must acknowledge that Darwin’s own egalitarian spirit shows here in the science, too. It would be an odd kettle of fish indeed that a crabby guy like Hitler, who shared the antiscience bias of Weikart’s organization, would suddenly accept the science of a hated Englishman that ran contrary to his other philosophies. Who makes the error here, Hitler or Weikart? If they both think Darwin endorsed racism, they both do — but there is not an iota of evidence that Hitler based his patent racism on science, let alone the science of an Englishman.
As to the second quote, Weikart leaves the context out, and the context is everything. Darwin is not arguing that “savages” (the 19th century word for “aboriginals”) were less human, nor that they are a different species. He was arguing that in some future time there would appear creationists like Dr. Weikart’s colleagues at the Discovery Institute who will deny evolution because, once Europeans and others with guns conduct an unholy genocide (which Darwin writes against in the next chapter), and once humans wipe out chimpanzees, orangs and gorillas, the other great apes, the creationists can [then] dishonestly look around, blink their eyes and say, “Where are the links? There cannot be evolution between (Animal X) and humans!”
Darwin wrote:
At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked (18. ‘Anthropological Review,’ April 1867, p. 236.), will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, [emphasis added] and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.
In the end, Darwin wrote against genocide, against racism, and in favor of the higher thinking abilities of all dark-skinned people. He wrote in favor of Christian morality. Darwin himself remained a faithful, tithing Christian to the end of his life.
Such a man, and such amazing science, deserve accurate history, not the fantastic, cowardly and scurrilous inventions Dr. Weikart has given them. We should rise to be “man in a more civilized state” as Darwin had hoped.
2007 was the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court Decision in which she played a key role, Loving vs. Virginia. In that decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state laws against interracial marriage are unconstitutional.
The romance and marriage of Mildred and Richard Loving demonstrate the real human reasons behind advances in civil rights laws. They left Virginia to avoid facing prosecution for having gotten married; but when they wanted to be closer to family, they wrote to then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. He referred them to the American Civil Liberties Union, who financed the case to get the law changed.
Richard and Mildred Loving, screen capture photo from HBO documentary, “The Loving Story.”
Peggy Fortune [daughter] said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural Milford. She did not disclose the cause of death.
“I want (people) to remember her as being strong and brave yet humble — and believed in love,” Fortune told The Associated Press.
Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.
“There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause,” the court ruled in a unanimous decision.
Her husband died in 1975. Shy and soft-spoken, Loving shunned publicity and in a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, insisted she never wanted to be a hero — just a bride.
“It wasn’t my doing,” Loving said. “It was God’s work.”
Mildred Jeter was 11 when she and 17-year-old Richard began courting, according to Phyl Newbeck, a Vermont author who detailed the case in the 2004 book, “Virginia Hasn’t Always Been for Lovers.”
Richard died in 1975.
History loses another hero.
Update: Just as one more showing of how things have changed, this is the headline of the story of Mrs. Loving’s death in the Fredericksburg, Virginia, Free Lance-Star, the local newspaper in Mrs. Loving’s home county, Caroline County: “CAROLINE HEROINE DIES”
I’ll wager the Virginia headlines were quite not so glowing in 1967.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana (The Life of Reason, vol. 1: Reason in Common Sense)
Last year a seventh grade kid approached me about a problem he had with the Texas history text. He pointed to a photograph of a Ku Klux Klansman, pointy-hood and all. It was a photo probably from the 1920s, in no way flattering to the Klansman, and it accompanied a couple of paragraphs explaining the resurrection of the Klan in that era. The book explained what some did to fight the Klan (not enough, but that’s a topic for another time).
“That’s racist, Mister!”
I asked him why he thought the photograph was racist.
“That’s a Klansman! They killed people!”
Yes, it’s a Klansman, and yes, Klansmen killed people unjustly. That’s part of history, a part of history we need to remember to prevent it from happening again. I explained that the photo did not endorse the Klan in any way, and that section of the book actually spoke against their actions.
“You’re a racist, Mister! That picture is racist and should be cut out!”
Our conversation had taken an inexplicable (to me) turn, away from the content of the photo or the book, into uncharted realms of inanity.
“Why don’t you take your complaint to the principal, and tell your parents about it,” I said. “I think this is a conversation you and I should have with your parents present.”
Of course, the student did nothing I asked. Within a week I had a handful of other students complaining about the picture. Some of those conversations were better, but not much. Students had a difficult time understanding how reading about racism was not practicing racism. Learning about the mistakes of the past in order to avoid them, was the same as making the mistakes, the students argued.
This occurred shortly after several parents in another Texas school district had complained about the use of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because it contains a slang term for “negro” now considered particularly offensive when used by whites. The complaining parents were black. Never mind that this great American novel’s point is that racism is wrong, slavery an abomination to a just God, and that Jim is much greater a man than those who held him captive in slavery.
I worry that too many people lack enough education in history to make rational decisions about what should be considered “good to read” and what should genuinely be kept out of curricula.
Case in point: A janitor and student at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI) was investigated for creating a “hostile work environment,” and one of his offenses appears to have been his reading of a history of a defeat of the Ku Klux Klan in South Bend, Indiana. It is unclear from details we have, but it appears complainants could not tell the difference between reading the history of a Klan defeat, and reading a book promoting the Klan.
Should we worry? I’d like your opinions, and experiences if you have any; details of the Indianapolis case below the fold.
He claimed in a thread here to have posted his “final answer” to my frequent urgings that he get the stuff accurate. We can hope it’s his last post on the topic since he won’t fix the errors. We’ll ignore the eerie homage to “final solution” that one could find in his phrasing.
Statue of Charles Darwin as a distinguished scientist. This statue stands (sits?) outside Castle Gates Library in Shrewsbury, Darwin’s boyhood home. The library resides in the 16th-century building which housed Shrewsbury School when Darwin was a pupil. Photo: Pete’s Favorite Things
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Tony Campolo argues that Charles Darwin supported the kind of racism that would eventually lead to Nazism and, by extension, the Holocaust (“The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism,” Jan. 20). This point cannot be sustained upon closer examination of Darwin’s writings. In On the Origin of Species, Darwin made use of the term race on a number of occasions, but almost exclusively in reference to animals and plants. He did not relate his conclusions about plants and animals to the human world, and he never advocated “the elimination of ‘the negro and Australian peoples,’ ” as Campolo insists.
In Descent of Man, Darwin did not rank “races in terms of what he believed was their nearness and likeness to gorillas,” as Campolo states. In fact, Darwin did the exact opposite, taking apart theories about the origins of humanity that suggested that different races originated from different (and inferior) species. Darwin’s fundamental position was that any differences we have are either overshadowed by our similarities or so mutable that they have little explanatory power.
Jonathan C. Friedman Director
Holocaust and genocide studies
West Chester University
Science has evolved
Tony Campolo’s rant draws a tenuous connection between what he sees as Charles Darwin’s personal prejudices and Nazism in an effort to make us think twice about teaching Darwin’s scientific principles (Inquirer, Jan. 20). Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. Should we not study the Declaration of Independence? The fact is that the science of evolution, with 150 years of substantiated science behind it, has evolved well beyond Darwin. David Messing Willow Grove
Teaching equality
Saying Charles Darwin’s “theories are dangerous” (Inquirer, Jan. 20) is like saying Newton’s Laws are dangerous. Darwin’s concepts have been proven by developments in biology, geology, paleontology and other sciences since his time. Fortunately, as Tony Campolo notes, few people currently read Darwin’s works, so we hardly have to feel threatened that “he sounds like a Nazi.” In the last 50 years, we have gone from a society that accepted Jim Crow to one that recognizes it is a diverse, multiracial nation. We have a long way to go to be fully accepting of that diversity, but teaching evolutionary science in the schools is vital and necessary, hardly dangerous. Let’s leave teaching the humanity and equality of all persons to our religious institutions.
Richard S. Greeley St. Davids
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Tony Campolo is an evangelical Christian, a sociology professor and preacher who for the past 15 years or so has been a thorn in the side of political conservatives and other evangelicals, for taking generally more liberal stands, against poverty, for tolerance in culture and politics, and so on. His trademark sermon is an upbeat call to action and one of the more plagiarized works in Christendom, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s Coming” (listen to it here).
Rev. Tony Campolo; photo from Berean Research.
Since he’s so close to the mainstream of American political thought, Campolo is marginalized by many of the more conservative evangelists in the U.S. Campolo is not a frequent guest on the Trinity Broadcast Network, on Pat Robertson’s “700 Club,” nor on the white, nominally-Christian, low-budget knock-off of “Sabado Gigante!,” “Praise the Lord” (with purple hair and everything).
Campolo came closest to real national fame when he counseled President Bill Clinton on moral and spiritual issues during the Lewinsky scandal.
His opposite-editorial piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday, “The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism,” is out of character for Campolo as a non-conservative evangelistic thinker — far from what most Christians expect from Campolo either from the pulpit or in the college classroom. The piece looks as though it was lifted wholesale from Jerry Falwell or D. James Kennedy, showing little familiarity with the science or history of evolution, and repeating canards that careful Christians shouldn’t repeat.
Campolo’s piece is inaccurate in several places, and grossly misleading where it’s not just wrong. He pulls out several old creationist hoaxes, cites junk science as if it were golden, and generally gets the issue exactly wrong.
Evolution science is a block to racism. It has always stood against racism, in the science that undergirds the theory and in its applications by those scientists and policy makers who were not racists prior to their discovery of evolution theory. Darwin himself was anti-racist. One of the chief reasons the theory has been so despised throughout the American south is its scientific basis for saying whites and blacks are so closely related. This history should not be ignored, or distorted.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
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