New Orleans: Who's to Blame?

Early reports show a Bush Administration still frightenly out of touch with the reality of life in America and the suffering in New Orleans. To be fair, the Senator Landrieu (D-LA) and Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) have proven woefully inept at leadership too, but more on that later.

• circulating a picture of Bush playing guitar while New Orleans drowns and burns: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050830/480/capm10108301730
• Bush gives a speech on Iraq--while people have gone without food and water for three and four days -- reason not to get out: " 'If Zarqawi and bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks,' Bush said. 'They'd seize oil fields to fund their ambitions. They could recruit more terrorists by claiming a historic victory over the United States and our coalition.' "
• The NYT is finally starting to realize that Rights' repetetition of the SCLM mantra doesnt' make it true: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/opinion/01thu1.html
• Condie caught spending thousands on shoes and watching Spamalot on Broadway:http://www.gawker.com/news/condoleezza-rice/index.php#breaking-condi-rice-spends-salary-on-shoes-123467
• Cheney still on vacation in Wyoming

New Orleans: Death & Anarchy Comes to Louisiana

The disaster of New Orleans is only slowly sinking in for me.

This is one of those times when watching the television actually give you better news than the print media or NPR: raw sewage and dead bodies floating in the flood waters; looting and crime; anarchy. Expect the Bushies to blame the looting on individual with bad morals. In part this is true and opportunists should be punished; however, many can't wait to buy the things they need to survive, and have to steal the food, drink, diapers, etc. to survive. When law and order break down, expect all kinds of behavior.

The Superdome accepted the residents who were left in the Big Easy, many of whom brought with them the social ills of the poor: violence and drugs. A toddler was raped; a couple of people were murdered. The are crack vials on the floor. Many people have now gone with out food or water for three or four days. Many have nowhere to go or no way to get out.

Am I Blue? Creationism, Part II

Evidence for FBR as zeitgeist and not merely my hobby-horse: last week's NYT series and Monday's poll question on WAMC, my favorite public radio station: "Should both evolution and intelligent design be taught in public school biology classes?" 80% of respondents in the unscientific survey say no. We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Like all the polls radio and televisions ask people to take on-line, no validity was promised.

Good thing: NYT reports today: "[A Pew Research Center] poll found that 42 percent of respondents held strict creationist views, agreeing that "living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time." In contrast, 48 percent said they believed that humans had evolved over time. But of those, 18 percent said that evolution was "guided by a supreme being," and 26 percent said that evolution occurred through natural selection. In all, 64 percent said they were open to the idea of teaching creationism in addition to evolution, while 38 percent favored replacing evolution with creationism.

Makes me wonder: what does the average American know about evolution or creationism? The hard core 38% understand creationism, I'm sure. Like most issues, however, my guess is most Americans couldn't tell you how evolution works or how creationism is supposed to supplant it.

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FBR: Intelligent Design

Google evolution and ID, and you'll get the scientific in's and out's. Here's a reputable article: http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.html.

The differences between ID and Young Earth Creationism is the difference between the ridiculous and the sublime. ID's basic assertion: biological life is too complex to not have a designer; complex systems cannot occur randomly. Logically, ID argues from a lack of information. There is no satisfactory answer for the question of complexity, therefore there must be a creator. At best this is deductive reasoning, at worst, it's a fallacy (either a slothful induction or a switch on who has the burden of proof).

Even if we accept the deductive reasoning of ID (as most people living in the Middle Ages certainly would have), it fails as science, which has a few basic rules, including: 1) knowledge comes through induction; data originating from the 5 senses must lead to conclusions 2) these conclusions must be arrived at through the scientific method 3) conclusions must be verifiable, or as philosopher Karl Popper said, must be "falsifiable."

If ID bases it's conclusions on deduction, reasoning from the general to the specific, it's not scientific. If it doesn't use the scientific method, to draw it's conclusions, it's not scientific. If you can't prove or disprove the conclusions, it's not scientific. So why teach it in high school biology?

How is ID another form of FBR? It rejects evolution, which albeit a theory, is scientifically--not to mention objectively--based. As stealth creationists, IDers want to reject the objective world here and replace it with a creator, who isn't necessarily God, but looks a lot like him and, if you think about it, made a few mistakes (the appendix, anyone?)

I'm not arguing against the existence of God, spiritual experience, or metaphysical reality. It's this fundamentalist idea that we have to confuse Him with science that is bogus, faith-based reality. Karen Armstrong, one of my favorite writers, explains the history of fundamentalism in The Battle for God. Pre-modern peoples never had the problem, according to Armstrong, of confusing the rational, scientific (logos) with the spiritual and arational (mythos).

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Faith-Based Reality: Absolutism Goes Relative

As Faith-Based Realists go, the former Cardinal Ratzinger is my hero. Intelligent, educated, he's written widely and learnedly. I know people are inclined to say nasty things about theology, but don't begrudge him his successes. The Pope knows his stuff. Unlike the sputtering Rush, who settles for denying reality, Benedict XVI ties it in knots.

Here's his best known quote in the MSM:

"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires."
--Pope Benedict XVI

Given his education, he probably knows that he's speaking, not just with a forked tongue, but one with twisted tines: relativism, which, by definition, embraces multiple points of view, is one point of view. You know, black is white and white is black. What's wrong with the world? Benedict's answer: relativism. What's wrong with relativism? It's dictatorial, i.e it's absolutist. Derrida may be persona non grata in many of the halls of Catholic academy, but who needs him when the Pope deconstructs himself? A FBRealist to the core, it's what Benedict believes that counts, especially as Pope, the last dictator of the Western world. It takes one to know one.

As far as people whose highest goal is their own ego and desires, Fox News proves the rule. Remember all those bishops telling Bill O'Reilly he shouldn't receive communion?

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