Sam Brownback's ghost writer gives us the Republican candidate's opinion of science and reality. He's against 'em both. On principle. The amount of deliberate misinformation, bad science, and even worse theology in this op-ed achieves a new high on the Idiocies Per Sentence Index (tm). However, while there is plenty of stupidity to unpack in Brownback [update: PZ Myers tears into Brownback with a vengeance], I'd like to focus on only one small rhetorical detail, which is usually ignored during triage by first responders to the latest "intelligent design" creationist atrocity:
If [belief in evolution] means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it.
One word interests me here: "materialistic." Brownback, or rather, Brownback's ghost, is punning on the meaning of "materialism." Doing so is a small but important piece of standard "intelligent design" creationism rhetoric. And it highlights exactly how cheap a fraud it is.
What's wrong with that? Absolutely nothing, of course. And that's the point of the creationist's pun, to confuse the everyday notion of evil materialism with the morally neutral meaning of the word within science. In everyday life, we're appalled by materialistic behavior like the vulgar accumulation of vast wealth (GOP excepted). But that is light years removed from being appalled by one of the major operating premises of science, that reality has a natural explanation. Dembski and Brownback deliberately confuse the two, punning on our rejection of materialistic moral values to create sympathy for a rejection of scientific materialism (ie, epistemological standards).
And once you reject scientific materialism and open science up to - their term, not mine - supernaturalism, well, then astrology becomes a scientifically plausible theory. And UFOs. And ESP. And "intelligent design" creationism.
Harrumph! I'll thank you not to lump UFOs in with a fraud like Intelligent Design! I see 'em all the time. Been aboard one or two as well. We'll probe that another time...
Indeed. "Intelligent design" creationism is just a bad joke. A very bad joke. It prizes punning over reality. And no one, Republican or Democrat or otherwise, who puts any credence in this joke should be taken seriously for the position of dogcatcher, let alone president of the United States.
No shit! I don't want my dogs in the hands of that idiot!
Nor my country either, what's left of it. What does that moron think he's doing, anyway?
Creation Myths are pretty universal. The common one we hear about, "On the seventh day...", Adam & Eve, bad snake, etc. etc., is pretty boring as such things go. No pizzazz. I like the Navajo one better.
According to the Diné legend, we're in the Fourth World. Brownback y ilk are in about the twelfth. Or is that their century?
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