In March of 2009, I publicly lambasted President Obama for appointing an outer space fanatic to head NASA. The President called for another mission to the moon (yawn), but instead NASA bombed it for no reason. I got a lot of flack from the experts, including one commenter named “Basdv.”
Yet in response to my trenchant criticism (and NASA’s going off the deep-end), Obama changed his mind, basically eliminating NASA altogether. The space lobby even trotted out Neil Armstrong to make some statements, despite his suspicious identity. Without a manager, hopefully Houston will have another problem sooner than later.
UPDATE: Thousands of readers wrote in to condemn me for wishing that NASA would repeat the incident involving Jim Lovell. On the contrary, by “another problem” I mean an existential crisis for NASA itself.
Obama has appointed an outer space fanatic to be the President of NASA. This means that we’re set to spend trillions more on floating around in space, as we have already. And get this: NASA wants to return to the moon. I’ll give one dollar to anyone who can name even fifty good findings from the moon. It was completely useless!
As any Berkeley professor can tell you, animals rights activists are getting more violent by the nanosecond. But, given certain recent events, I’m beginning to contemplate what President Obama once said: “[D]oing nothing in a period of repressive violence is itself a form of violence.” Perhaps animal rights activists are, for the first time in their angry lives, on to something.
The coming animal genocide is already being foreshadowed in zoology. And the justification appears to be tough economic times. This is known as the “starve the beast” tactic, pioneered by philosopher of rights Leo Strauss, later developed into its modern form by Richard Weaver. While politically it’s a Machiavellian brilliant move, it’s morally dispicable. But Zoology isn’t the only field where we can see that a storm is coming. Bird Studies has also issued some ominous omens, corroborated by everyone. But this is just where it starts to get interesting.
My more sophisticated readers will have read enough Neil Postman to know that our society is basically run by Technopolists. Professor Postman coined this term, and it refers to those whose primary modus of operandi is that technology not only be used, but more or less worshiped as mankind’s salvation. Sound silly? It may have back in the 1980′s when technology was largely fictional, but now it is a reality realer than realness itself. Combine the disturbing facts about birds with the recent development of flying cars, and you might begin to get the picture. Never mind the primitive out-of-date propaganda we’re sending out kids, innovations like flying cars are the wave of the future. And these innovations have a one-to-one correspondence with the animals they are replacing. Using Bayes’ Calculus a la cartes Richard Swinburne, it is enormously improbable that this is just coincidence.
Of course, as Professor Postman warned us, technopoly comes with a price. And the genocide against animal life has consequences both dire and ironic.
Looks like Postman’s “childhood” isn’t the only victim in this race to the technopological finish line; the entire animal kingdom is going down with it.
First, I should say that I like Intelligent Design. It questions cherished assumptions held by arrogant scientists and other scholars. Furthermore, it strives very hard to be just like science, in order to undermine it. This is a noble goal, reminiscent of Obama’s biography, where he reminisced about being “behind enemy lines” in corporate America.
However, just because something falls under the category of muckraking, doesn’t mean that it is always good. There are many examples of bad muckraking. In fact, bad muckrakers like these give bad names to the rest of us. I can’t count the number of times people have assumed that I was one of these people, before even looking at my arguments! It’s quite frusrating. You have to be able to distinguish between good controversial figures, and bad ones. Legitimate commentators like nutritionist Kevin Trudeau, and complete quacks like Denise O’Leary. So without much further ado, I will just list a few of the difficulties I have with Intelligent Design.
Intelligent Design is not really Science
All Intelligent Design does is concede ground. Real science gains ground. Can anyone point to an example of Intelligent Design winning an argument? I sure can’t. Intelligent Design has also failed to acheive a paradigm shift. All people do in Intelligent Design is leave the movement. This has all the characteristics of a cult. But back to paradigm shifts, Hans Küng has taught us that scientific shifts occur best when left alone by religion. Who is Dembski to lecture Küng? And who is O’Leary to lecture Dembski? Ipso facto, who is O’Leary?
Intelligent Design fails to produce technology
It has long been obvious that the halmark of science is building neat things. What are some of these neat things? Escalators, pop machines, cures for diseases, spaceships, and lasers. Name one technological innovation produced by Intelligent Design. I bet you can’t name one. And all this for a movement with “intelligent design” in the middle of its very name.
Intelligent Design contradicts the law of entropy (aka the Law of Thermo Dynamics)
The arguments of intelligent design continually get more and more complex and absurd and overly wordy. But according to entropy, things get simpler (and, ergo, more appealing). How then does Intelligent Design survive? This is one of the lesser known objections to ID. Note that ID people often use Entropy against evolutionists! Can you believe it? More serious scientists have pointed out their flaws.
Those are just three things to think about. I would point out as well that not all critics of Evolution are silly. I myself have posted a simple conceptual objection to Modern Synthesis. But there are others. One might take a hint from David Berlinksi, a very well-respected mathematician who has posited interesting critiques. You can watch him below, and I leave you with this video.
