John G. West is an Idiot

July 8th, 2008 RWA Posted in News |

UPDATE: Jim Manzi offers his own response to West here.

Oh my dear NRO, is there a more bipolar on-line journal around? You regularly publish brilliant pieces by John Derbyshire, Mark Steyn, Deroy Murdock and Thomas Sowell, but then you turn around and post something like…this.  John West  of the Discovery Institute is already notorious for his rabid anti-science views and dogged determination to be ignorant of the very things he pretends to have authority to discuss, but man, this article is so stunningly stupid, that after you read it, you’ll be like one of the zombies in Return of the Living Dead, running around screaming “brains brains!” in a desperate attempt to replenish your cerebral cortex following its accelerated decay. It starts out has just another yawn-inducing Discoveroid diatribe crowing over their “victory” in Louisiana but as you near the end of the first page, the stupidity really begins:

Fearful of being branded “anti-science,” some conservatives are skittish about such efforts to allow challenges to the consensus view of science. They insist that conservatives should not question currently accepted “facts” of science, only the supposedly misguided application of those facts by scientists to politics, morality, and religion. Such conservatives assume that we can safely cede to scientists the authority to determine the “facts,” so long as we retain the right to challenge their application of the facts to the rest of culture.

No, John. They say we shouldn’t question currently accepted scientific facts because as of yet, there is no evidence to suggest we should do so otherwise, and scientists similarly oppose intelligent design not because they are inherently anti-religious, but because there is no evidence to suggest any of its propositions are true. West here seems to be attacking NRO contributors John Derbyshire and Jim Manzi, both staunch defenders of science. Manzi, in particular, has written two excellent pieces on science and its relationship to conservatism (here and here) in which he explicitly calls on like-minded conservatives to be more science-literate and engage themselves closer to actual science, not that peddled by creationists or anti-environmental groups. True conservatism, Manzi argues, relies on facts and evidence, not on pretending that they don’t exist or are irrelevant to discussions of politics or morality. The conservatives West denounces are less afraid of being anti-science than they are at being lumped together with ignorant individuals and fringe lunatics; they saw what happened to the Republican party when it became too cozy to the John Birch Society, or what happened to liberalism when it allowed the yippies to besmirch its good name, and they don’t want it to happen again.

First, the idea that a firewall exists between scientific “facts” and their implications for society is not sustainable. Facts have implications. If it really is a “fact” that the evolution of life was an unplanned process of chance and necessity (as Neo-Darwinism asserts), then that fact has consequences for how we view life.

Well duh, of course facts have implications! As David Mamet might say, why do you think we call them facts? They’re the basis of theories and laws in science, and given that West’s pet theory depends on the absence of information to sunstain itself, it’s no wonder he is so deadset against the use of scientific facts in making decisions. We may call this the “Liberty Valance” attitude to debate: when facts conflict with myth, print the myth. Sorry John, but in science, logos trumps mythos and pathos every time.

It does not lead necessarily to Richard Dawkins’s militant atheism, but it certainly makes less plausible the idea of a God who intentionally directs the development of life toward a specific end. In a Darwinian worldview, even God himself cannot know how evolution will turn out — which is why theistic evolutionist Kenneth Miller argues that human beings are a mere “happenstance” of evolutionary history, and that if evolution played over again it might produce thinking mollusks rather than us.

Bzzt, wrong again West-o. Theistic evolutionists like Miller and Francis Collins maintain that evolution is the very process used by their deity to acheive His desired ends. After all, we’re capable of making predictions on the basis of our knowledge of how evolution works; why shouldn’t God? I don’t share this theistic view, but that is neither here or there; what matters is that they recognize where and when both science and religion must respect their boundaries. It’s pretty funny that the Discoveroids continue to maintain that the designer doesn’t necessarily have to be the Abrahamic God, or to understand how the design process was undertaken, yet here we have one of their representatives not just using the G-word, but being presumptuous enough to think that he knows what was going on His omnipotent head all those billions of years ago…

Second, the idea that the current scientific consensus on any topic deserves slavish deference betrays stunning ignorance of the history of science. Time and again, scientists have shown themselves just as capable of being blinded by fanaticism, prejudice, and error as anyone else. Perhaps the most egregious example in American history was the eugenics movement, the ill-considered crusade to breed better human beings.

Well, presuming that West has actually read Manzi’s articles, he should know that Manzi and other science-minded conservatives aren’t demanding “slavish deference to science”, and nor are most scientists, for that matter. They are demanding scientific literacy, which means not just knowledge of facts and theories, but of the scientific method itself through they are discovered, and which is the entire basis of the “scientific consensus” West disparages.  Of course scientists have their own ideological blind spots, as Derbyshire has noted, but those are the faults of individuals, and everyone has them; scientists themselves are a remarkably diverse bunch, and you find them across the political spectrum on most issues. Science itself, as a means of knowing and as a guideline for work, does a remarkably good job at cancelling out such biases.  Eugenics (yawwwwwnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!) is once again brought up as a straw man in this argument, which has nothing to do with the Lousiana case except as another rhetorical dodge for West in the absence of evidence.

America is a deeply religious country, and no doubt many citizens interested in certain hot-button science issues are motivated in part by their religious beliefs. So what? Many opponents of slavery were motivated by their religious beliefs, and many leaders of the civil-rights movement were members of the clergy. Regardless of their motivations, religious citizens have just as much a right to raise their voices in public debates as their secular compatriots, including in debates about science. To suggest otherwise plainly offends the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

“What” is that so many citizens lack the scientific literacy to comment on these hot-button issues. They have the right to have their voices heard, but as long as they are ignorant of the facts (oooh, did I just say facts again?) they do not have the right to be taken seriously. And as he trots out the role of religion in abolition and the civil rights movement, West conveniently ignores those individuals who have used religion to justify slavery, segregation, and generally treating people like crap. Takes one to know one, John.

Conservatives should not support such anti-religious bigotry. Neither should they lend credence to the idea that it is anti-science to encourage critical thinking. In truth, the effort to promote thoughtful discussion of competing scientific views is pro-science. As Charles Darwin himself acknowledged, “a fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.”

It’s not pro-science when you try to interject non-scientific views into the discussion; it’s just counterproductive. “Critical thinking” has already sent the humanities and much of the social sciences into the toilet, and West and his cohorts are trying to do the same to the hard sciences.  If West is really concerned about people looking at the facts, he should provide them…but he doesn’t. We’ve “fully stated and balanced” all the evidence and arguments from both sides, and the results are in: it’s Evolution 1, Intelligent Design 0.  I’d say “better luck next time”, but really John, just give it up.