Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Lies, Damn Lies, and Creationists; Klinghoffer at the Washington Post

Lies, Damn Lies, and Creationists

David Klinghoffer is an intelligent, and well educated man. That is why he has been given lots of money by the far-right, creationist Discovery Institute. He earns this money by misdirection and lying. I would not call him a liar if I thought he was stupid, or ignorant. An excellent example is his 2/22/2011 editorial for the Washington Post.

Klinghoffer begins by the false premise that Darwin is the key figure in modern evolutionary theory, or that what we feel emotionally about Darwin should have more than rhetorical value. He also wants us to ignore that for 30 years there has been a steady increase in the percentage of Americans who understand human evolution, and that this is equally taken away from biblical literalists, and “undecided.” What has been fixed is the ~38% of theistic evolutionists who acknowledge evolution, including humans, and attribute this to God’s will. This is the accepted standard of the Catholic church, and most mainline Protestant churches. There is another appropriate saying of Mark Twain’s, “Figures don't lie, but liars figure.”

But the misdirection builds higher. He wants us to ignore that it is the biblical literalists who have a religiously motivated rejection of not only evolution, but all sciences. To follow Klinghoffer’s request to ignore literalists, is to ignore that there is a conflict at all. (There are a tiny number of pantheist, neo-pagan, and other creationists. But, taken all together, they couldn’t fill a stadium). But, Klinghoffer’s pay rate as a Discotute depends on promoting Intelligent Design creationism, and their opposition to science. And it is all of the sciences that are rejected by mystical thinkers because scientific theories are exclusively materialist, and they really work. As Klinghoffer’s fellow Discotute, Wiliam Dembski wrote, “…but let’s admit that our aim, as proponents of intelligent design, is to beat naturalistic evolution, and the scientific materialism that undergirds it, back to the Stone Age,” April 14, 2004.

Klinghoffer then switched to hyping a book by another Discovery Institute hack about Alfred Russle Wallace. Wallace was a pantheist, and spiritualist, positions just as objectionable to Klinghoffer’s paymasters as Darwin. What does appeal to them is that Wallace can be misrepresented as an opponent to Darwin. This is a 2 for 1 lie; Wallace never viewed himself as opposed to Darwin, plus both Darwin and Wallace are very distant for evolutionary biology as taught today.

So, Klinghoffer has done his best for creationism, and earned another paycheck. The unresolved question is why the Washington Post facilitated him? Will we see commentary from Ken Ham, or Fred Flintstone next?

Posted by: GaryHurdPhD | February 23, 2011 5:52 PM
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