Yesterday we looked at the advertisement that crackpot creatard Kevin Wirth wrote to try to get us to buy his crappy Expelled knock-off, a book called Slaughter of the Dissidents. The book is written by non-expelled young-Earth creationist Jerry Bergman.

That right there is an interesting point. This whole “doubting Darwin” campaign is the brainchild of the “Intelligent Design” folks, such as the Discovery Institute and Kevin Wirth’s own adorable Access Research Network. These old-Earth creationists insist that their “theory” has nothing to do with religion. So what do they do? The Discovery Institute goes out of their way to promote Ben Stein’s movie, which directly links ID creationism to religion. Then Kevin Wirth goes out of his way to publish and promote a book written by a young-Earth creationist. These people are even incompetent at hiding the religious basis of their “theory”!

I took Kevin up on his offer of receiving a free chapter from the book. He sent me chapter 18: “The Peloza, Bishop, and Johnson Cases”. Apparently that’s all this book is, just a long, itemized list of all the alleged cases of “Darwin doubter discrimination”. What a scintillating read that must be! Well, let’s get scintillating!

As a result of attempts by Darwin skeptics to secure a place both at the table of scientific discussion and in the classroom…

These so-called “Darwin skeptics” don’t belong in the classroom until they secure a seat at the table of scientific discussion. And they don’t belong there until they actually come up with some evidence. Whining about being left out or going to court isn’t the way to remedy things. The answer is much simpler. Just give us some scientific evidence. They’ve had 150 years, and they’ve yet to provide any.

…the federal courts have put evolution “virtually beyond criticism.”¹

That superscript leads you to the footnotes for this chapter. It’s five whole pages of footnotes! Almost every footnote is to document some quotation that they mined from elsewhere. There’s a total of 78 footnotes for this chapter alone! This book is just one giant Kevin Wirth quote dump!

Court rulings in cases involving those who are open critics of Darwinism have been blatantly discriminatory, dishonest, and unconstitutional. Indications now exist that the Supreme Court is aware of this and may try to correct this problem in future rulings.

So Bergman, a non-lawyer/non-Constitutional scholar, thinks that when his side loses, the ruling is unconstitutional. Protecting the First Amendment is the definition of a constitutional ruling, but Bergman is pouting that impartial courts clearly see that his guys are wrong. Then he tells us that the Supreme Court needs to step in. Why? So the activist judges can legislate from the bench?

In past cases involving Darwin skeptics, my research of over 100 cases over the past 30 years indicates that schools typically presented trumped-up and often obviously bogus reasons for dismissal or denial of tenure such as incompetence, erroneous claims that a faculty member falsified documents, or other allegations that were clearly proposed to cover up the real reason—religious discrimination.

Of course it never crosses Bergman’s mind that maybe those were the actual reasons! Remember that the movie Expelled presented just a few cases of alleged discrimination. You would think that those cases would be the strongest examples. Yet in every case, discrimination is not the real story.

Bergman then gets into the specific cases that this chapter is devoted to: The Peloza, Bishop, and Johnson Cases. I don’t have access to all of the materials that Bergman does, so I have no way of knowing what the real story is. It’s fair to assume that these cases are no stronger than those portrayed in Expelled.

The Bishop case is a possible exception to this. On its surface, and as portrayed by Bergman, it does appear that maybe the courts went too far. Allegedly, Bishop, a college professor, mentioned very briefly that he “doubted Darwin”, and that’s the extent of what he said. Supposedly he spent no more than 2–5 minutes out of the entire 2250 minutes of class time. I have no problem with a professor very briefly mentioning this. In fact, I would think it’s beneficial for the students to know what the professor’s biases are, so they can be aware of how they might color his instruction.

As we’ve seen from Expelled, cases like this are seldom exactly as portrayed by the creationists in their whine-fests. I would certainly be open to finding out more about this case, but I can’t take Bergman at his word here. His book has not managed to prove its credibility in the rest of this chapter.

Throughout Bergman’s discussion of these cases, he repeatedly makes two assertions: That evolution is atheistic and that creationism isn’t religious. Both of these assertions are false.

Evolution is atheistic in the same way that history is atheistic. Neither assumes a divine influence or guiding hand. What’s doubly puzzling is how Bergman can “see” the atheism in evolution, but he can’t see the obvious religion in creationism. He tries to frame the creationism as merely “anti-Darwin”, but this is a mere word-game.

Creationists like Bergman get so hung up on linking evolution to Darwin (apparently trying to paint biology as a cult of hero worship) that they get snagged on the many parts of evolution that are non-Darwinian. Darwin only proposed natural and sexual selection as the mechanisms by which evolution took place. Our understanding is much more complete now. The scientific literature is full of non-Darwinian articles. This fact alone puts the lie to everything Bergman writes in this book and Stein says in his movie.

Inspired by the minor motion picture! You’ve gagged through the movie, now gag through the book! Yes, if you couldn’t get enough of the movie that is coming soon to a $1 bargain bin near you, now you can read about even more made-up stories of “Darwin-doubter” persecution!

Crackpot creatard Kevin Wirth hopes to cash in on the Ben Stein blandwagon. He’s publishing a book by one of the “hundreds” of alleged expellees, Jerry Bergman. As we saw yesterday, Bergman wasn’t “expelled” for being a creationist. He was fired for lying about his credentials.

Kevin has given his book the rather salacious title Slaughter of the Dissidents. Let’s see what Kevin says on the book’s web page:

By now you’ve probably heard about that infamous movie so many people are talking about called EXPELLED, starring Ben Stein.… I urge you to hurry up and go check it out while it’s still playing for a limited engagement at your local theatre.

It’s a limited engagement, because the auditoriums are empty! Despite a strong opening weekend (due to subsidized tickets), word of mouth killed this turd deader than Kevin’s chances of actually understanding evolution.

Slaughter of the Dissidents picks up where that movie “Expelled” leaves off.… On another front, perhaps you’ve heard about the Evolution Academic Freedom Bill making the rounds in various states these days?… The purpose of this bill is to protect the rights of students and educators to dissent with aspects of evolution without fear of reprisal. Yep, it’s become so bad we need to pass a law to protect these people! Actually, our existing laws should be sufficient, but the courts have seen fit not to uphold the rights of victims of this type of discrimination.

That’s because there are very few, if any, victims at all. The courts have found in almost all cases that no discrimination occurred.

As you read it you’ll discover that one of the most precious things we own is at risk, right here in America. What is that? In a word,

FREEDOM

Freedom to disagree without losing your job or being denied an earned degree. Freedom to tell people you dare to question any aspect of evolution on scientific grounds - without referencing any religious text.

Really, Kevin? And just what would those scientific grounds be? You never present any. Instead, you just whine that people who pretend to have some and never show it are victims.

Now How Much Would You Pay?

And speaking of religion, it looks like we live in an era where freedom OF religion has been twisted to mean freedom FROM religion.

Actually, Kevin, freedom of religion has always included freedom from religion. But that sure is a bizarre thing to bring up right now, isn’t it Kevin? I thought your whole argument for your creationism these days was that it wasn’t religious. Now you suddenly need to bring up religious freedom? Why does that cut so close to home when you’re talking about doubting evolution?

And the reaction of those who seek to harm Darwin skeptics for their crime of doubt is palpable, almost visceral.… The modern evolutionary elitist thugs leave no stone unturned in the wake of their rabid assault againt [sic] the freedoms of Darwin skeptics.

Kevin’s putrid purple prose is pathetic. People with such overwhelming persecution complexes are usually confined to mental institutions. When’s the last time you were evaluated, Kevin?

The root of this issue is freedom (not the self-serving sanctity of science as the opponents of Darwin skeptics argue…)

No Kevin. You’re wrong on both counts. It’s not about the “self-serving sanctity of science” (whatever that means). It’s that creationists like you are pretending that there is reasonable doubt about evolution, so you can sneak your disguised religion—”intelligent design” creationism—into the public schools, in violation of the First Amendment. You are the enemy of freedom here. You are trying to infringe upon our most precious freedom. The freedom of (and from) religion.

The author of this book, Dr. Jerry Bergman, has been the victim of this type of discrimination himself.

No. As we discussed yesterday, he hasn’t.

There is no one better qualified than Jerry to bring you this book.

No. Somebody who actually was the victim of this type of discrimination is better qualified than Jerry to bring us this book. Tell you what, Kevin. You go find that person, if he exists, and then we’ll read your book.

But Wait! There’s More!

Next, Kevin gives us some highlights of this book. OK, if we must. Let’s slog through them:

Which sitting jurist actually ruled on one of these cases before he was appointed to the Supreme Cour? [sic]

I don’t know, but I hope your book is better proofread than this ad.

When is it OK to teach ID or creationism at most universities?

In comparative mythology classes.

What are the landmines you absolutely must avoid if you are an educator?

Teaching creationism! (duh!)

What is the most common (but incorrect) assumption made by most Darwin Doubting educators that often leads to their termination?

Believing that there is legitimate scientific doubt about evolution.

What are the various situations that have spelled doom for the careers of hundreds of educators and scientists?

Wasting time talking about creationism instead of doing legitimate research and getting published in peer-reviewed journals.

Is it really true that there are no peer-reviewed articles published in reputable science journals written by Darwin skeptics?

No. Anti-evolutionists have been published, but they confine their articles to matters not directly linked to evolution. There have been no creationism articles published in legitimate peer-reviewed journals.

What academic institutions have had incidents where educators were let go, or were pressured to change their curricula, or were thwarted in some way from getting a degree or were marked down on their grades?

I don’t know. There sure weren’t any in Expelled.

But You Won’t Pay $300! You Won’t Pay $200! In Fact, You Won’t Even Pay $100!

As is typical in internet marketing, there’s no price listed at the end of the ad. In fact, you can’t even buy the book. He says it’s being released on May 30th. Instead, he tries to get you onto his mailing list, where he can ply you with spam after spam, extolling the virtues of the book, until he’s managed to expel every one of your brain cells and you buy the book. In exchange for getting spammed, Kevin promises to send you a free chapter of the book.

I’m taking a bullet for you people here. I gave him my email address, so I could get the free chapter. We’ll look at that tomorrow.

Our old buddy, crackpot creatard Kevin Wirth is publishing a book! But don’t worry. He didn’t write it. He’s only the publisher. I don’t need the type of book Kevin could write. I already have several books of quotations.

The book that Kevin is bringing to market is written by some clown named Dr. Jerry Bergman, and it’s called Slaughter of the Dissidents: The Shocking Truth about Killing the Careers of Darwin Doubters. I’m sure it’s a good book. We can rely on Kevin to bring us nothing but the highest caliber of ideas. Kevin is, after all, the guy who told us that Ben Stein is the modern Rosa Parks.

Before checking out Kevin’s book, let’s find out some more about the clown who wrote it. Jerry Bergman’s Wikipedia entry says:

Dr. Bergman is an adjunct associate professor at Medical University of Ohio and also teaches biochemistry, biology, chemistry and physics at Northwest State Community College in Ohio. He has taught at the college level for 35 years including seven years at Bowling Green State University, 6 years at the University of Toledo, and 20 years at Northwest State.

It then goes on to list a buttload of legitimate degrees this guy has. The one blemish is that his Ph.D. comes from the (now defunct) unaccredited Columbia Pacific University. This is the same esteemed pillar of higher learning that gave a Ph.D. to pop-quack John Gray (Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, his Degree is from Neptune). In Bergman’s case, it really doesn’t matter how good the Ph.D. is. He has enough other credentials that we can agree that the guy is a good scholar, even if we disagree with his opinions. In fact, he apparently has a good track record of getting published. Wikipedia says:

He now has over 700 publications in a variety of scientific and popular journals….

That statement doesn’t tell us which publications, the subject matter, and how many were peer-reviewed, but I’m happy to concede that a large chunk of that 700 could be real science.

OK then. The guy seems legitimate. He’s not some drooling ignoramus that Kevin Wirth pulled out of the audience at The 700 Club. Let’s see what else Wikipedia says:

Bergman’s opinions on creationism are often published by Answers In Genesis.

We’ve seen this pattern before. Otherwise-intelligent people are blinded by their religion. Well, if you’re going to be a creationist, you might as well go whole hog. Don’t be one of those wimpy Discovery Institute (“OK, we’ll give you microevolution but not macro!”) Old-Earth Creationists! No siree! You want to be the worst of the worst: An Answers in Genesis (“T-Rex ate coconuts in the Garden of Eden!”) Young-Earth Creationist! Accept no substitutes! (Except for logic. You’ll need to use substitute logic. And evidence. You’ll need to substitute fake evidence for real evidence. And persecution. You won’t really get persecuted, so you’ll just have to pretend you are.)

In the 1990s he was also known for his Usenet postings to the talk.origins newsgroup. Many of his views are highly controversial, such as implying a causal relationship between Darwinism, Nazism, and the Holocaust.

Oh. He’s a Steinist.

Bergman was involved in a tenure controversy early in his career. Wikipedia says that he was originally hired by Bowling Green State University. He did not receive his Ph.D. on the expected timetable, so his employment at BGSU became tenuous. Ultimately:

In 1978 Bergman was denied tenure. Bergman believed this was due to his involvement in the creation movement and his religious beliefs and subsequently filed with both the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Ohio Civil Rights Commission on the grounds that he had been discriminated against on the basis of religion, with both agencies ultimately ruling that he was not let go due to his religious beliefs, but because his peers voted to terminate him.

Like the typical creationist who won’t let go of his beliefs even when presented with clear evidence to the contrary, he wouldn’t accept the ruling:

Bergman filed suit against Bowling Green State University in federal district court in 1980, alleging that his due process rights had been violated and that he had been denied tenure on the basis of his religious views.… The case was dismissed in 1985. Bergman appealed but the appeal was turned down in 1987. The court ruled that the reason he was let go was because of ethics, namely that he claimed to have credentials in psychology when, in fact, he “had no psychological credentials.”

Bergman apparently is still convinced that he was discriminated against, or else he wouldn’t have written this book that Kevin Wirth is shilling. Isn’t it interesting that somebody with over 700 publications to his credit couldn’t find a legitimate publisher for his book? The fact that he had to stoop to using the services of somebody as unqualified in logic as Kevin Wirth suggests that Bergman’s book is, like his discrimination lawsuits, wholly without merit.

Tomorrow: Kevin Wirth tries to sell us some tripe.

Sane Blog says it best:

As reported in this CNN article, the pope has reaffirmed the catholic position on birth control. It is difficult to imagine a single policy which has been responsible for ensuring more poverty of women, disease and the blocking of development in Africa and other impoverished nations of the world. The catholic church does not love preventing suffering - the catholic church actually loves suffering.

Douglas Adams died seven years ago today. I thought it would be fitting to direct you to Richard Dawkin’s eulogy of Adams.

Go read this post at Violent Acres. It’s hysterical!

Church services always started off quiet enough with the organ playing and parishioners quietly whispering greetings and shaking hands. But among the kids, there was a kind of electricity in the air. Half of the time, we could barely contain ourselves. We knew that if things went well, it was likely we’d see some crazy ass shit.

(via Pharyngula)

That’s not a literal quote, but it’s the logical extension of the latest wild claims of the Discovery Institute. In a recent hallucination on their propaganda website, the Discovery Institute screamed this headline:

Methodists Nail Darwinian Nazi Record, Repent U.S. Past, Warn About 21st Century Eugenics

That caught my attention. Have the Methodists succumbed to DI propaganda? Let’s take a look. The insane ramblings of the DI begin with:

The quadrennial international convention of the Methodist Church, meeting in Fort Worth, today adopted an historic and detailed resolution deploring the legacy of Darwinian eugenics that saw its 20th century extreme expression in the theories of Adolf Hitler.

That sure sounds like the Methodists are laying some of the blame for the Holocaust on Darwin. We’ll check into that claim in a minute. Let’s see what else the DI says:

Yes, that would be the Nazi ideology that the Darwinists of today—and major media—pretend sprang on the world fresh from the head of Hitler…

No. That’s exactly the opposite of what we’ve been saying. I know the DI monitors all the major biology blogs, so they definitely know that we’ve said that what Hitler was doing was selective breeding. This is a technique that is almost as old as civilization. Since they’ve definitely read this fact in numerous blogs, the only conclusion we can come to is that the DI is deliberately lying. Making up facts is how the DI does “science”, so why should the way they argue be any different? Discovery Institute: No Facts Allowed!

The Methodists’ resolution—adopted by a vote of 836 to 28—apologizes for the denomination’s own failure to resist the eugenics movement in this country in the 20th century. They were not alone…. But no other mainline Protestant denomination has yet had the courage to admit to the racism of Darwinist eugenics and the supine attitude that leading American religious leaders, as well as the scientific establishment, adopted towards it.

It is true that many people bought into the eugenics movement in the early 20th century, and many scientists were among them. However, eugenics is not “Darwinism”. Darwin discovered how species evolve. He did not “discover” that killing six million Jews would produce a Master Race.

The Methodists’ Apology

Let’s turn now to what the Methodists have actually written in their resolution, “An Apology for Support of Eugenics”:

The study of eugenics did not begin with Hitler or his German scientists, but rather was first promoted by Sir Francis Galton, in England. Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, who expanded on Darwin’s theories and applied them to the human population.

That’s funny. This is the same document that the Discovery Institute read, but I don’t see anything about Charles Darwin creating eugenics. Sir Francis Galton took Darwin’s theories and misapplied them to human society. Darwin is not responsible for the actions of his cousin, and the Methodists are not claiming that he is.

Galton’s successor at the helm of the Eugenics Society was Major Leonard Darwin (1850- 1943), a son of Charles Darwin. Leonard Darwin, who ran the Eugenics Society until 1928, made the transition from positive to negative eugenics, and promoted plans for lowering the birthrate of the unfit.

Again, this is another one of Darwin’s relatives. That family was really into this stuff. But once again, don’t blame Chuck for his wayward son.

There’s a lot more to the Methodist document (and I encourage you to read it), but that’s pretty much all they had to say about Charles Darwin. Nowhere are they blaming Darwin for either eugenics or the Holocaust. Has the Discovery Institute no shame?

The Hindenberg caught fire and crashed 71 years ago today. That event has nothing to do with this blog. I just thought the above picture was funny.

We all know of the problems of the authenticity of the Bible. It was originally a loose conglomeration of fables by desert dwellers, passed down by oral tradition. These stories were a mishmash of original ideas, imported legends, fanciful embellishments, and gross exaggerations. Eventually, they started to get written down, by widely-scattered people. That left us with a lot of stories, many duplicates and variants, and even more contradictions. Eventually, somebody had to sit down and figure out which books belonged, which version of those books belonged, which didn’t, and what to do about all of those contradictions.

This process happened at least twice. The first time was by the Jews, to compile the Hebrew Bible (later called the “Old Testament” by the holier-than-thou Christians). The second time was by those snooty Christians, around 325 C.E., because Constantine ordered 50 copies of the Bible. At that time, there wasn’t one unified set of stories. Kind of hard to deliver to the emperor 50 copies of something that you don’t even have one copy of. The priests had to quickly get together and figure out what to include and what to throw away. Both scholarship and politics figured heavily in this process. Thus, the Bible is a book of tall tales written by committee. Divinely inspired, my ass.

It would be bad enough if the Bible had stopped mutating like a bad sci-fi movie monster by the time it was originally canonized in 325 C.E. But no. These were the days before the printing press, so every time you needed a Bible, you had to find some monk to hand-copy another one for you. Many errors, omissions, and deliberate insertions crept into the book as it progressed through the centuries, giving us today thousands of variants.

Along the way, various influential people with one particular ax or another to grind decided they wanted a different version, so they commissioned their own committees to create their own new versions.

Quite a mess.

Finding a Less-Error-Filled Version

If you’re going to read the Bible—either because you believe this crap, or because you just want to see what crap the credulous actually believe—you’re going to want to find a Bible that is as close as we can get to the original stories. You don’t want to be reading fantastic, incredible stories that were put in later. No. You want your fantastic, incredible stories to be pure, unadulterated fiction!

Paul Tobin has an extensive web site called The Rejection of Pascal’s Wager. He has dozens of pages about the Bible and its history. It’s all very heavily footnoted, so you can check up on his claims. The writing sometimes gets a little dense, so it’s not always a breezy read.

Among his many pages is one titled “Not All Versions Are Created Equal”. He starts by telling us that there are two major problems with Bible translations:

The source documents. As there is not a single extant original (or autograph) copy of any of the books in the Bible, the reliability of the translation is affected directly by the quality of the source documents. For instance, the King James Version…, which was first published in 1611, is no longer considered reliable since it was not based on ancient texts. Modern versions are based on newly discovered, more ancient texts [as] well as scientific textual studies. So in general, more modern versions are more reliable than older ones.

As fundamentalism grows, the second issue, that of theological preconception becomes very important.This is what we will be looking at in depth on this page.

So here’s Tobin’s list of techniques that fundie translators use to produce a Bible that says what they want:

• Removing Contradictions by Quoting or Using Less Authoritative Texts
• Removing Difficulties by Translating in “Soft Focus”
• Removing Reprehensible Passages by Mistranslation
• Leaving Errors in Translation Unchanged
• Adding Words into the Bible Text

He gives some strong examples of each of these on his site. Go check it out.

Examples of bad Bibles, with particular fundie agendas, are The Book, The Living Bible, and The New International Version (NIV). I know I’ve encountered the NIV.

If you want to get yourself a better Bible, Tobin says that the best version available today is the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). It has the best scholarship behind it, and they tried to translate as bias-free as they could.

Of course, the NRSV is still a Bible. As the saying goes, that’s like putting lipstick on a pig. (No disrespect to pigs is intended!)

I don’t think we need to worry about Expelled. Ben Stein is doing a perfectly fine job of destroying its credibility all by himself.

Stein was on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson last Friday. This is what he said (minus the unfunny banter with Ferguson):

Darwinism doesn’t explain the laws of gravity. Darwinism doesn’t explain the laws of thermodynamics. …And we don’t want people to be fired if they say that the planets stay in their orbits maybe by something other than Darwinism. …His followers claim it explains everything including astronomy.

Update 4/29/08

It occurred to me that the above transcript is so absurd that many of you will doubt its veracity. Fortunately for us, we have YouTube! One quick look found the segment, which I have embedded here. You also might want to go by the actual YouTube page and read the comments. It’s about an eight-minute video, and I’ve given you the transcript of most of the relevant content. It’s amazing how little information is conveyed in a modern American entertainment program (if you can call Craig Ferguson entertaining). Anyway, enjoy! (The drug references add a surreal irony to this whole embarrassment.)

I found a good blog called Playing Chess with Pigeons, by Troy Britain. He mostly focusses on evolution and creationism. He has a lot of good articles. You should check it out.

What really caught my fancy was his explanation of the blog’s title. I’m going to reprint most of it here, with my comments:

The title comes (apparently) from a very amusing description of what it is like to debate creationists about evolution Scott D. Weitzenhoffer made in a comment on Amazon.com regarding Eugenie Scott’s book Evolution Vs. Creationism: An introduction (2004):

Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon — it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory.

I love it! That’s a great description. My blog has received its share of creationists, and the metaphor is pretty accurate. Troy continues:

Man, have I been there. It’s not just that antievolutionists are often completely ignorant of evolutionary theory, the state of the evidence, and the history of science. There have also been numerous times where I have been debating an antievolutionist or responding to their claims that I would have to take time to explain their own arguments to them. [emphasis added]

“No, you meant to say ‘Piltdown Man’ was based on a human skull and an orangutan jaw, not on a pig’s tooth. That was ‘Nebraska Man’ and it was based on a peccary tooth.”

That sure sounds familiar! Not only do they get it wrong, but they all seem to get it wrong in the same way!

Troy finishes with:

Add to this their constantly moving goal-posts, their tendency towards scatter-shot (keep throwing stuff against the wall and hope that something sticks) mode of argument, their constant digressions to irrelevancies, non sequiturs and other logical fallacies, and it gets pretty breathtaking.

I was going to flag a few examples of that from my blog, but that pretty much covers every creationist who visits us.