June 13

Staying Smart in Dumbed-Down Times

In 1963, when I was graduating from college, a book was published entitled Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, by the noted historian Richard Hofstadter.

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In exploring anti-intellectualism as a major current of American culture, Hofstadter examined various facets of our nation’s history over time. He described how those living in rural areas grew suspicious of urban life. He analyzed how utilitarianism and practicality, associated with the world of business, were accompanied by a certain contempt for the life of the mind. He devoted special attention to evangelicalism, although we should perhaps more specifically define his target as fundamentalism, a literal-minded approach to the Bible that involved hostility to all forms of knowledge that contradicted scripture or sought to interpret it as a set of historical documents reflecting the context of its production. He noted how all of this combined to make the term “elite” a dirty word.

This exploration of American national character, which was very much a product of his times, notably the atmosphere of fear and distrust that characterized the Cold War, is still quite timely today. Which is why I felt compelled to re-read Hofstadter’s book last summer. And why I was particularly interested in reading an update and homage to Hofstadter by Susan Jacoby, whose book The Age of American Unreason was published just this year.

Jacoby brings Hofstadter’s arguments into the present, illustrating them with examples from the times in which we live today. She talks about the powerful role played by fundamentalist forms of religion in current America; about the abysmal level of public education; about the widespread inability to distinguish between science and pseudoscience; about the dumbing-down of the media and politics; about the consequences of a culture of serious reading being replaced by a rapid-fire, short-attention-span-provoking, over-stimulating, largely visual, information-spewing environment.

She, like Hofstadter, invites us to consider how all of this has affected the great venture that is American democracy? So, let us do so.

Once upon a time, the leaders of our country were the kind of men — and, let’s face it, it was a men’s club at the time — who were learned, who valued scholarship and science. The American Philosophical Society, founded in 1743 at the instigation of Benjamin Franklin, counted also among its early members presidents George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.

In adopting as its mission the promotion of “useful knowledge”, the American Philosophical Society reflected a time in which the sciences and the humanities were not divided from one another, and in which there was no opposition between what we might now call pure and applied science. What it did reflect was an opposition between Enlightenment values of reason and empirical research, on the one hand, and what we might call “faith based” beliefs, on the other. There were clergymen among the early members of the APS, but they were those who felt that their religious convictions did not stand in their way of their desire to be among the most educated members of their society.

That was then. This is now: We have a president who believes that “creation science” should be taught in our schools. As Jacoby points out, we should understand “how truly extraordinary it [is] that any American president would place himself in direct opposition to contemporary scientific thinking.”

But let’s not just pin the tail on the elephant here and pick only on the Republicans — or, to be more precise, on the extreme right wing of the Republican party, since there are, after all (though they may be increasingly hard to locate), moderate, thoughtful — one might even say, liberal — Republicans.

Let’s look at the Democrats, at the nomination fight we all followed – followed, it seems, since the early Pleistocene. Here we had two candidates vying to run for President who had been educated at institutions that are among the most distinguished in our country: Wellesley, Yale, Columbia and Harvard. Both candidates were obviously highly intelligent and knowledgeable. Yet both felt the need to play down their claims to intellectuality — and the winner may still feel that need in the general election. Hillary Clinton chugalugged beer and sought to attach the dread label of “elitist” to her rival. And Barack Obama felt compelled to follow one of the most honest and sophisticated political speeches in recent memory with strenuous displays of folksiness.

And who are we to blame them? If anyone is going to serve as president, the first step is to get elected. What level of intellectual interest and background can political candidates presuppose on the part of our nation’s citizenry? What level of interest in the most important challenges facing us in the years ahead? What level of public demand that assertions be backed up with sound reasoning and actual facts?

To take just one example: citing data from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, released in 2005, Jacoby notes that two-thirds of Americans believe that both evolution and creationism should be taught in our public schools. Who would have thought that, all these years after the United States became the laughing stock of the civilized world through international newspaper coverage of the Scopes trial, we would still see the fight we have recently seen in the state of Pennsylvania over teaching creationism in our public schools?

Nor is this simply a matter of religious belief. Many who advocate teaching creationism do so in the name of providing a “fair and balanced” curriculum. This misplaced pluralism, which draws no distinction between the results of scientific inquiry and the content of folk beliefs, is in line with the loose way in which the word “theory” is used, such that Einstein’s “theory” of relativity or Darwin’s “theory” of evolution is on a par with the loose way we use “theory” to describe any kind of wild guess. In this latter sense, “theory” is used as the opposite of “fact”, rather than as a systematic set of hypotheses to explain a variety of facts. Moreover, simply changing the label from “creationism” to “creation science” or “intelligent design” gives this set of untestable and unfalsifiable assertions the veneer of science, which is quite enough for a lot of people who have little or no sense of what real science is.

But let us not let the scientists and scholars themselves off the hook. Jacoby devotes some interesting passages in her book to forms of pseudo-science that were at various times in our history embraced by members of the most educated classes. Back in the 19th and early 20th centuries, we had social Darwinism, which sought to justify differences between rich and poor as a reflection of “survival of the fittest” (which, by the way, was not an expression coined by Darwin). And lest we look upon those benighted forebears too complacently, let us keep in mind that, much more recently, we have had sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, which share many of the same faults, though in more sophisticated trappings, as befits the trajectory of the natural and social sciences since the 19th century unilinear evolutionism of Herbert Spencer and others.

Returning to the world of politics, the first presidential candidate I campaigned for myself — I was 10 years old at the time and we were having a mock convention in my elementary school (those were the days when candidates actually got chosen at the party’s national convention) — that first presidential candidate was the quintessential, unelectable intellectual Adlai Stevenson, who ran against Dwight Eisenhower. One of the well-known anecdotes about him is the time a woman went up to him after a speech and said, “Mr. Stevenson, every thinking American will be voting for you.” To which he replied, “Madam, that is not enough. I need a majority.”

In her chapter on “Public Life”, which is subtitled “Defining Dumbness Downward”, Jacoby opens by talking about the extemporaneous speech given by Robert Kennedy on April 4th, 1968, when he had just learned, before taking the stage in Indianapolis, that the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. had just been assassinated in Memphis. Kennedy began by invoking from memory the following lines from Aeschylus:

Even in our sleep, pain which we cannot forget
Falls drop by drop upon the heart,
Until, in our own despair,
Against our will,
Comes wisdom
Through the awful grace of God.

Jacoby notes how inconceivable it is today that a major political figure, an aspirant to the highest office in the land, would use such a quote, given the pervasive fear nowadays of seeming to be an “elitist.” Yet Robert Kennedy was not showing off to his audience or condescending to them. He just assumed that he could address them in this way, whether or not they themselves were familiar with these lines, much less could quote them from memory.

Jacoby’s discussion of the dumbing down of our public, political culture follows a chapter on what she calls “The Culture of Distraction”. She worries over the consequences of our being constantly bombarded by noisy stimuli, by invitations to multitask in a way that fosters superficiality as opposed to depth. The major casualties of our current media-saturated life are three things essential to the vocation of an intellectual: silence, solitary thinking, and social conversation.

She delves into a problem I have recurrently nagged Barnard students about: the isolating effects of new technologies. Many a time and oft, I have urged students to get off their cellphones so that, as they walk along, they can engage in reflection, contemplate surroundings, and talk to those with whom they are actually sharing your physical space.

I also share with Jacoby great concern about the fact that more information is not at all the same thing as more knowledge. We are living in an age when we have GPS and Google maps at our fingertips, but most Americans are unable to locate Iraq on a map, even though we have been at war there for years. Nor do most people feel any interest in doing so. On the other hand, when President Franklin Roosevelt was needing to reassure citizens in the early days of World War II, when things were going very badly in the Pacific, he asked people to go out and buy maps so that they could follow his fireside chat on the radio and understand the geographical challenges facing the military.

Can we ever get back to something like that? To a more educated citizenry, since there can be no true democracy without it?

If there is any chance of achieving such a goal, those of us who have chosen the academic vocation must do our part. In addition to addressing one another, we must address wider publics. And we must make use of new modes of communication as they become available. That means, for example, using cyber channels not just for blogging the like-minded (the Internet fails to achieve its liberating potential insofar as it is composed of myriad gated communities), but for opening new doors. It means learning from and working with journalists who are seeking to achieve the highest ideals of their own profession. And being active citizens ourselves, so that we can help elect the women and men who share our goals.

Judith Shapiro this month ends a 14-year tenure as president of Barnard College. This essay is adapted from her keynote address at this year’s Phi Beta Kappa ceremony at the college.

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Comments

Do — not be

There is an old saying, “the best dissertation is a finished dissertation.” There is the med-school saying, “to research, then to act.”

A helpful suggestion for the Ivy crowd: explaining is one thing. Hands-on, authentic action and involvement with a feedback loop is quite different. So are standards of performance and conduct — for both political parties.

It is appalling than only 7% of U.S. 5th graders can explain the details surrounding Dec. 7, 1941.

http://www.bradleyproject.org/

Are facts and details no longer important? Well — would you like your plane’s pilot to “Google” every answer? Without the knowledge-base and flight experience to make safe landings?

“Elitism” is many things to many people. In the military — that far-off organization with a far-better record on affirmative action record involving race than academia — there is a great deal of ribbing between military academy graduates and ROTC graduates. Not unlike the Ivies and the Morrill Act land-grant crowd.

Deeds, not words. Standards. Authentic feedback. Not bureaucracy and academic double-speak.

E.T. Bass, at 7:10 am EDT on June 13, 2008

Distraction

Neal Postman Amusing Ourselves to DeathNew York: Penguin Books, 1985, Foreword

We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another—slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacity to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was there there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.

Will Fitzhugh, founder at The Concord Review, at 8:50 am EDT on June 13, 2008

This comment just reeks of contempt for the average citizen in our democracy. Had Abe Lincoln read it, he might have thrown himself under a paddlewheeler. Which deep thinkers are we supposed to emulate, Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger, apologists for Communism too numerous to mention? Ayn Rand? On what grounds does one choose among those graphomaniacs? Intellectual support for Stalin, Mao, or Hitler did a lot more harm than the view that the world was created a few thousand years ago. The life of the mind can be fun, but in the end our beliefs guide how we apply what we read and experience and there is no evidence that intellectuals are any better than the hoi polloi in doing that.

Great Unwashed, at 9:35 am EDT on June 13, 2008

Elitism and Pseudo 2-Party System

First, most people believe, rightly, that elite intellectualism is indeed, often, a mask for less than stellar intelligence. The reason Stevenson couldn’t get a “majority” of “thinking” Americans is because people would have would have thought he meant by “thinking” thinking like Stevenson. After all, Eisenhauer had just defeated the great Nazi war machine. Must be a pretty smart guy and an able administrator. Of course, few of the military and economic elites cared for Eisenhauer’s later warnings about the military industrial complex.

I admire Prof. Shapiro’s article, but would also point out that the liberal faction of the corporate elites may not offer the analysis average citizens are seeking any more than the conservative faction of the ruling class.

There are intellectuals and scholars and journalists whose views seem to fall outside the Stevenson/Kennedy range of thought (which was arguably imperialist, by the way): Amy Goodman, Robert McChesney, John Pilger, Bill Moyers, Edward Hermann, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Tim Wise and many other public intellectuals who can speak a language the vast majority of people could understand and appreciate if only they encountered it on a consistent basis.

Unfortunately, increasing media consolidation, including the internet, is able to shut out alternative analyses almost completely from a mass audience. What the vast majority of people get is a Clinton/Obama-Bush range of discourse, made to look like a wide range of debate, but which is actually a very narrow range indeed. Such a limited discourse is itself anti-intellectual, and it’s propagated by liberal economic elites as much as by conservative economic elites.

In other words, what the Right Wing Think Tanks and their propaganda system has mastered in the last 30-40 years is the discrediting as “elite” the liberal side, and not without a certain grain of truth. It is not to shut up the liberal side (they need it as their straw man), but rather to make sure that alternatives beyond what is acceptable to liberal elites are foreclosed. In this, I fear, the liberal elites themselves are complicit.

Jerry Thompson, at 9:40 am EDT on June 13, 2008

good article, but...

Good article on a timely topic; Just a few minor quibbles:

“...It means learning from and working with journalists who are seeking to achieve the highest ideals of their own profession.”

Like Diogenes, I think you’re in for an awful long search to even find such a person. More than one Professor of Media Studies, including the late Neil Postman, would be among the first to point out the shortcomings of American news media, which is part of the problem.

Michael Berube has written interesting commentary on professorial “outreach” work, and how it should be valued more in tenure considerations. Biologist PZ Myers is, at least in the blogosphere, something close to what the Europeans would call “a public intellectual". So is Noam Chomsky, though like most Prophets, he’s never as popular in his native land as he is on the world stage.

One of the chilling appeals of Nazism and Fascism...as stated by leading Nazis themselves, is being relieved of the “burden” of thinking.

Neil Postman’s provocative thesis, that Huxley’s vision, rather than Orwell’s, is the dysopian vision we’ve most to fear has been eclipsed in a post-Patriot Act, Gitmoized World. Eric Blair’s former London flat is surrounded by CCTV; Photographers worldwide are harrassed as “potential terrorists". The horrifying truth is that Huxley and Orwell were BOTH right; these are not mutually exclusive nightmares become reality.

Alexis De Tocqueville commented that he suspected many of the wealthy classes in the America of his time secretly despised Democracy. Most still do. Keeping the great mass of the people stultified and ignorant has long been an instrument for exercising power. But the financial elite (not always contiguous with the intellectual elite) do need just-educated-enough administrators, so some of the people must be cultivated and educated. Most remain loyal conformists, in service to their masters, but the danger of education is that some will begin to think for themselves and try to “infect” others with critical thought.The reaction against such individuals is usally swift and decisive, just look at Plato (though personally I view Plato himself as a proto-Fascist).

Fashionable Postmodern identity politics and aesthetics have seemingly replaced real, substantive politics, or at least neutered any real oppositional politics. The Right-Left(in reality, Center-Right passing for “Left") struggle in the American political theatre is at best a cartoonish approximation of the real struggle, which has always been Top versus Bottom.

My only comfort is knowing that eventually the American Empire will crumble and fall into ruin, as all Empires have since time immemorial. Hubris will get the best of us yet.

JJR, at 10:00 am EDT on June 13, 2008

Actually...

@Great Unwashed, it is a redundancy to say ‘the’ hoi polloi as hoi means the (nominative masculine plural). Not that you need an intellectual to point that out.

JO, at 10:20 am EDT on June 13, 2008

Ave Caesar

Will Fitzhugh’s comment made me think of the 1935 poem by Robinson Jeffers:

No bitterness: our ancestors did it. They were only ignorant and hopeful, they wanted freedom but wealth too. Their children will learn to hope for a Caesar. Or rather—for we are not aquiline Romans but soft mixed colonists— Some kindly Sicilian tyrant who’ll keep Poverty and Carthage off until the Romans arrive, We are easy to manage, a gregarious people,Full of sentiment, clever at mechanics, and we love our luxuries.

—

Further, the point is well-made by some that while there are many roots of anti-intellectualism in American society—some of them unfortunate consequences of an otherwise admirable kind of egalitarianism—the problem isn’t the “ignorant masses” so much as the information merchants who would facilitate that ignorance in the name of material gain.

Nice essay, Judith.

JS Clark, at 10:20 am EDT on June 13, 2008

Eisenhower & “elitism”

” .. Of course, few of the military and economic elites cared for Eisenhauer’s (sic) later warnings about the military industrial complex ..”

Eisenhower and “the military-industrial complex” is one of the most over-used inaccuracies in media, right after “the 47 million uninsured.”

Recall the speech date (Jan. 17, 1961) and the young, incoming Democrat President who claimed during his campaign of a Republican-caused “missile gap” with the Russians. A thrifty rural Kansan, career military officer and former Columbia University president, Eisenhower had decades of practical experience over the young new president and clearly exhibited it in his farewell speech to the nation.

As for Messrs. Moyers and Chomsky — both have become multi-millionaires, railing against the “arguably imperialist” USA. Nice work, if you can get it. And I don’t see anyone, being physically restrained from hearing them. Actually, many reasonable persons note it is the far-left crowd who physically threatens free speech.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=NRy74-8mtr8

E.T. Bass, at 10:20 am EDT on June 13, 2008

Bravo! Dr. Shapiro’s comments make me proud to be a Barnard alumni.

A T McCarthy, at 12:45 pm EDT on June 13, 2008

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

First Mencken (“no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public”), then Hofstadter, then Jacoby; and now Schapiro enters the fray to attack those with whom she disagrees, demonstrating why “elite” is a dirty word to many. Where, but in the Manhattan salons of the heirs of Pauline Kael is the noted “atmosphere of fear and distrust”? One would expect the outgoing president of Barnard not to demonstrate “the consequences of a culture of serious reading being replaced by a rapid-fire, short-attention-span-provoking, over-stimulating, largely visual, information-spewing environment”, but in calling another out-going President an advocate of “creation science” she belies her own ignorance and sound-bite thinking, failing to differentiate between the Creation Science Society types who seek empirical proof for Genesis, and Intelligent Design advocates who question Darwinists’ epistemology and call for a debate, which she labels “misplaced pluralism” while slandering the religious and ID advocates as being confused by the distinction between “scientific inquiry” and “folk beliefs.” Has she read Philip Johnson, William A. Dembski, Michael Behe and others before discounting their work as folk beliefs? She reads Jacoby and rereads Hofstadter, but does she read writers other than those who still lament intellectual Stevenson’s defeat by the then President of Columbia University!

Then there’s the folklore of the Kennedy quote. Perhaps it was extemporaneous; perhaps it was slipped to him by a speech writer. . . If it was remembered, it was by a man who had been educated with a type of schooling currently unacceptable to Schapiro’s circle, the memorization of a dead white male’s poetry! Would such pedagogy be broached in the circles of one who has spent decades in gender-restricted colleges? She laments the decline in intellectualism of the contemporary academy, of which she has spent three decades as an acclaimed leader?

As for today’s culture of distraction, I share her disdain for my students’ plugging into their i-phones to the detriment of what’s going on in my classes, but recently when I called up the Lord Byron website in a community college British Literature tutorial, one student used her i-phone to determine where the Albania of Byron’s “Albanian dress” was, and we then spent at least 20 minutes on Byron’s _Oriental Tales_ and talked about “Grand Tours” by young Europeans of Byron’s time—tangential to my lesson plan, but hardly evidence of these “Dumbed-Down Times. My student’s interest in the fashion seen in a web site photo of a dead white poet facilitated by the distracting phone in her ear led to increased knowledge for all present. The technology enabled so-called “tuned-out” students to quickly “tune into” vistas of information not readily available before this generation. Most of my and Ms. Schapiro’s generation probably cannot locate Iraq on a map, just as the “Greatest Generation” had to be prompted by FDR to buy maps to follow the Pacific Campaign. But with TV news and their graphics, or personal GPS devices, do we need to follow FDR-type requests to Barnes and Noble to buy a map?

Schapiro has had a lucrative career, but her call to stay smart both belies her own vista limitations and underestimates the intelligence and resourcefulness of those not like her and her Barnard students. Is not the “decline” of intellectualism in America a Eurocentric anti-American trope? Is it not partially her and our generation of educators’ fault? First Chicago, then Bryn Mawr and then Barnard: upper echelon addresses since 1970, and forty-five years after reading Hofstadter, what have her policies wrought? Does her call for “learning from and working with journalists who are seeking to achieve the highest ideals of their own profession” include Barnard graduate Judith Miller’s practices?

Schapiro should heed her own advice, as advocated in her last paragraph: Go to the Discovery Institute web site, or elsewhere, and learn the difference between the proponents of “Creation Science” and of Intelligent Design. Further, she concludes with a call to “elect men and women who share our goals” Does that mean to elect a Columbia graduate to replace the ivy-league graduate she erroneously labels an advocate of “creation science”? And what are those goals? More of the policies she’s advocated for thirty years that have produced such a “dumbed-down” populace?

Lynn Fauth, Professor of English at Oxnard College, at 12:45 pm EDT on June 13, 2008

The Devil – and Lynn Fauth – Made Me Do It

We are well aware of the fact that there is no relationship between smoking and lung cancer ... or between dipping snuff and tongue cancer ... or between cigarette smoking and nicotine addiction. At least we were aware of those “facts” as long as the tobacco industry went to great pains and even greater expense to employ “scientists” who confirmed them.

We are well aware of the fact that global warming is a natural cyclical phenomena that is only marginally affected by human behavior; in particular, by humans contributing massive amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses to our environment. At least we were aware of that “fact” as long as both the automobile and oil industries went to great pains and even greater expense to employ “scientists” who eagerly confirmed them.

Indeed, when it comes to evidence – either empirical or scientific – we are always able to find a tiny number of “scientists” who present and defend theories consistent with what some of us wish to believe, even if their perspectives are inconsistent with those of the overwhelming majority of scientists.

For example, according to a 1987 Newsweek survey just 700 of 480,000 life and earth scientists (0.14%) assign any credence at all to so-called creation-science, yet 87 million adult Americans (47%) support that perspective.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publi.htm

What has caused me to be concerned about these statistics is the extent to which religious belief plays essentially the same role as business-sponsored bogus science in the United States today ... not to mention the very negative impact it has on science education at almost every level. For example, here in America ...

* 64% of all adults believe human beings were created directly by God.

* 55% of adults believe God created humans in their present form within the past 10,000 years; 73% of Evangelical Protestants believe that.

* 61% of adults believe God created the universe in six “twenty-four-hour” days.

* 52% believe early man and dinosaurs coexisted on the Earth.

* 37 % of Republicans reject the possibility of simultaneously believing in both evolution and God.

* 31 % of adults believe there is a scientific basis for astrology.

* 34% of adults believe evolution should not be taught in public schools.

* 65% of adults believe creationism should be taught alongside evolution in the public schools.

* 64% of adults believe Moses actually parted the Red Sea.

* 61% of adults believe the Devil exists.

See http://www.pollingreport.com/science.htm

While I doubt the existence of scientific evidence that will repudiate Moses parting the Red Sea while somewhere between 20,000 and 2 million (if any) Israelites made the crossing or disprove the existence of the Devil, that even a tiny fraction of Americans believe any of the other nonsense in the above list – and well over a hundred million of us do — is an evidential, scientific, and logical catastrophe of the first order. It is nothing less than embarrassing in a country that pays as much lip service as we do to mathematics and science education.

In the Republican presidential debate in May, three of the ten candidates quickly raised their hands when asked “I’m curious, is there anyone on the stage who does not believe in evolution?” Sam Brownback seemed to have the most difficulty with the question, writing an op-ed explanation in the New York Times the next day – no doubt based upon research by his staff – that supposedly outlined what was flashing through his mind when he heard the question ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/31...1brownback.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Later, in the third Republican debate in June, Mike Huckabee, one of the three non-believers in May, made the quite bizarre statement, “the basic question was an unfair question because it simply asked in a simplistic manner whether or not we believe, in my view, there is a God or not.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-BFEhkIujA

Ordinarily I would think “do you believe in God?” is a very strange interpretation of “do you believe in evolution?” but John McCain seemed to have the same problem. While he quickly affirmed his belief in evolution, he could hardly wait to add “I also believe when I hike the Grand Canyon and see a sunset, that the hand of God is there also.

I am inclined to ask “who are these guys?” But much more important is “Who were their K-12 and college science teachers?” ... and perhaps even more important than that, “What is the scientific background of the electorate to which these guys feel compelled to pander?” About the latter, we at least know that only 40% believe in evolution.

http://www.data360.org/graph_group.aspx?Graph_Group_Id=286

In the June debate, Senator and Rev Huckabee went even further, stating “It is interesting that that question would even be asked of someone running for president. I’m not trying to write the curriculum for an eighth grade science book ...” When asked if he believed God created the Earth in six days and completed the job 6,000 years ago, the senator emphatically admitted “I don’t know ... I wasn’t there.” On the other hand, his not being there seems to have virtually no impact on his belief that God created the “heavens” and the Earth. He knows that is true beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Perhaps organized religions in the United States are so disparate it is out of the question to expect them to do anything cooperatively, but it strikes me as being way past time for a collection of influential church leaders to sit down with scientists representing a consortium of respected scientific organizations for the purpose of reaching general agreement on various matters of scientific fact. Apparently a great many young people in the U.S. believe mastery of physics, chemistry, biology, the earth sciences, and mathematics, the queen of the sciences, is remarkably difficult ... and that perception stands in the way of our being a scientifically literate nation. Religious dogma, however, much of which could not possibly be literally true, is widely preached and accepted by millions of Americans and also constitutes a barrier to our being a scientifically literate nation..

To give just one example, in 2007 it is nothing less than foolish to imagine patching together all of the Biblical “begats” for the purpose of proving the earth is less than 10,000 years old. In 1650, James Ussher used such an analysis to put the date of creation at noon on Sunday October 23, 4004 B.C. Apparently Sir Isaac Newton was convinced by that argument, although, in his defense, it was at a time when we knew very little about earth science and the “church” was quite willing and able to make it very uncomfortable for scholars to believe otherwise. Not to worry, a 2007 Gallup poll ascertained that more than 140 million Americans believe the Earth is approximately 6,000 years old.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism

As a consequence of the young earth “fact,” creation scientists, who are generally willing to accept what we know about the speed of light, are forced to explain how we can see distant stars that are millions of light years away. Some have suggested that the speed of light was much faster when God created the earth just 6,000 years ago. Others have postulated that light has “traveled” here through worm holes in the cosmos through which light (and everything else) can travel much faster than 186,282.397 miles per second. Others have suggested that God, being all powerful, simply created the universe essentially with light in its present state ... and apparently for no other purpose than our amusement.

In any event, anyone who is willing to believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old is stretching scientific knowledge and reason way beyond the breaking point. Anyone who has had a decent life science course and still does not understand and believe Darwinian evolution has been academically shortchanged. While it is apparently true of more than 110 million of us, there is no possibility anyone should believe man and the dinosaurs coexisted on this earth. A scientific basis for astrology? Teaching creationism alongside scientific principle? So-called intelligent design?

If organized religions in the United States are the slightest bit interested in the intellectual integrity of their various dogmas, it is time for them to cooperate with scientists in setting these issues straight.

I am haunted by Sen. Huckabee’s defensive “I’m not trying to write the curriculum for an eighth grade science book.” Yet he is a would-be presidential candidate of a political party that in recent elections – and with more than a few truly important issues that should have defined the national debate – spent millions of dollars to make the salient issues abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research, and the teaching of creation-science alongside Darwinian evolution in public schools. I am certainly not denigrating the brilliance of Republican strategists; I am merely wondering about the logical capabilities of the American electorate. Perhaps it would not be such a bad idea after all to elect a president in 2008 who is at least capable of writing an eighth-grade science book.

It is noteworthy that a recent Pew Research Center survey of 18-25 year-olds — they are called Generation N or the Gen Nexters — revealed that (1) approximately 20% either have no religious affiliation, are agnostic, or are atheist (that is double the number who responded thusly in PRC’s 1980 poll) and (2) the Nexters are much more likely to vote than were the 18-25 year-olds in the 1980 poll. It is also interesting that barely 4% of Gen Nexters checked off “becoming more spiritual” as their most important goal in life.

http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=300

So we have all of these 18-25 year-olds moving away from the concept of a personal God ... 63% happen to believe humans evolved over time, 89% see no problems with interracial marriage, 71% say school boards should not be allowed to fire gays, 58% believe homosexuality is a way of life that should be accepted, almost half favor legalizing gay marriage.

Maybe there’s hope for us after all ... but I doubt it.

R.W. Hoyer, at 1:25 pm EDT on June 13, 2008

JO there is a nice discussion of the use of hoi polloi in Websters Dictionary of English Usage 1989:506-507. They point out that whatever its meaning in Greek ‘hoi’ does not mean ‘the’ in English and most writers precede it with ‘the’; Webster’s prefers this idiomatic use as did (say Webster’s) writers such as Dryden and Byron who had been educated in Greek. You are right about one thing; no intellectual needed to solve the case. When something like this troubles you in the future follow the simple advice of someone smarter than either of us, Wittgenstein, and look to the everyday use of words.

Great Unwashed, at 1:25 pm EDT on June 13, 2008

A Note From An Unapologetic Elitist

Lucky for you, this essay catches me at a bad time. I don’t have sufficient time to respond.

But I do wish President Shapiro would provide us with an annotated, Oprah Winfrey-like reading list that would enable us to pursue and discuss this topic in greater depth ... and please, no silly pap like Tom Friedman’s “The World Is Flat.”

Coincidentally, last evening I saw Rick Shenkman (Associate Professor, History, George Mason University) discuss his book “Just How Stupid Are We?” on tv. In the book — and I’m overstating his case just a bit — he essentially argues that Americans are too stupid to function effectively in a democracy. Educationally, we owe the system more than we’re apparently willing to invest.

In my opinion, it is ironic that the vast majority of up-front “interviews” of authors of books that discuss the American condition intelligently are on The Daily Show and the Colbert Report. What’s that about?

Note: You’ve got to appreciate an interviewer (Jon Stewart) who asks an author, “Do you think you’ve shot yourself in the foot by writing a BOOK about how stupid we are?” (the interview is around 14:30 on the following video)

http://www.thedailyshow.com/episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=173062

By the way, I would like to add that while we ARE probably too stupid, on the average, to function effectively in a democracy, it is not because we are uninformed. While the “ignorance” of primitive peoples may stem from their being geographically or culturally isolated (lack of information), our collective ignorance is a consequence of the intellectually mediocre content of information we receive in great abundance. We are wonderfully informed in terms of volume and abysmally informed in terms of content ... and I don’t care whether you get your information from the right, the left, from Republicans, Democrats, the religious or non-religious, academics, Internet bloggers, MTV ... wherever. The American man or woman in the street – the individuals Rick Shenkman would argue are not capable of intelligently fulfilling their responsibilities as citizens – would do well to remove their shoes when they come in from a leisurely stroll along the Information Highway in this country.

Note: Have you heard that the Surgeon General recommends taking a long shower using an anti-septic soap if you watch Fox News more than three hours a day?

Anyway, if it really paid to be ignorant – and I don’t mean uneducated – we would be the wealthiest nation on the face of the Earth. Oops, we ARE the wealthiest nation on the face of the Earth. Hmmmm ...

Send more, Judith Shapiro!

Frizbane Manley, at 1:25 pm EDT on June 13, 2008

Nothing new, but still relevant

I agree entirely with Dr. Shapiro. My only problem with all of these arguments is that they’re not new. This is not a new problem: Only the contexts have changed.

We can write all day about how trash television and religious fundamentalism dumbs down our culture, but those are simply contextual changes framing the critical central issue. In the United States, it’s “cool to be dumb.” It’s been that way since the age of Jackson. When Federalism died, so did our culture’s aspirations for self reflection.

In that sense, read Howe’s magnificent new history, WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT rather than wasting your time with Jacoby.

Jon L Albee, Graduate Student at Rice University, at 1:25 pm EDT on June 13, 2008

JFK’s Missile Gap

Precisely, E.T. Bass.

Both parties have a history of foisting military expenditures on U.S. citizens and for imperialistic reasons. The Democrats in Congress and the “liberal” media went along with the illegal and immoral U.S. invasion of Iraq because they bought into Bush/Rumsfeld’s assurance that it would be quick and cheap.

The Democrats thought that sounded about right and it would turn out to be a popular move, and neither they nor the “liberal” media wanted to be on the wrong side since the invasion was likely to go so well. When Bush/Rumsfeld botched the occupation, then, and only then, did the liberals flip-flop and try to make political hay out it. No concern for international law or war crimes. Many a corporation thought it could move in, take advantage of Paul Bremer’s Saddam Hussein-like, anti-union edicts (which an Iraqui government would not be able to overturn) and take 100% of their profits out of Iraq (this from Naomi Klein and other journalists and scholars).

On the Robinson Jeffers quote: In the Roman Republic you had something like U.S. history: Plebeians given no alternative but to line up behind and serve the interests of the liberal or conservative factions of the PATRICIAN class, i.e. Caesar (the J.F.K.-like liberal) and Crassus the Reagan-like conservative. What’s excluded is any authentic voice of the Plebeians in solidarity with working people in the rest of the world, the kind of globalization we really need.

On physical restraint: In the 80s I asked a noted linguistics professor what he thought of Chomsky. He was in awe of Chomsky as a linguist but had no inkling that Chomsky had a dual career as a U.S. dissident. No, the professor was not physically restrained from hearing Chomsky’s dissent. He just hadn’t come across it in the major media and had no idea there was any responsible alternative analysis (Juan Gonzales and Amy Goodman, etc. presenting it.)

I’m sorry if Chomsky is so popular elsewhere and in the “underground” that it’s added big bucks to his M.I.T. salary all these years. But there are people a lot poorer and completely unknown who have arrived, independently, at many of his conclusions. If Chomsky’s views are disqualified by his personal wealth then listen instead to the unknowns, if you prefer. Or will you suggest their views don’t count because their nobodies? Look, if you disagree with the ideas themselves, just say so.

It’s interesting that in _Manufacturing Consent_ Chomsky argues that it is not the consent of the Plebeians that is being manufactured. Rather it’s the consent of the upper 20% of the population, the college educated. Their consent is crucial. They have to be the most indoctrinated of all. The role of the remaining 80% is to be distracted by tabloids and sports, to follow orders and not think. And they are the ones who pay most of the cost of the policies imposed by the upper 1%.

That’s the genius of today’s propaganda system. The Plebeians (the real people) either have no voice or any way, authentically, to develop one. Because most teachers and professors in the education system are “indoctrinated” by the liberal/conservative dichotomy, they likewise perform much the same function as the “liberal” media. The Sunday talk shows are aimed at the educated 20%. The tabloid dimension serves as a distraction.

Shapiro’s article laments the distraction part without considering that, for those students who are tuned in to the classroom, a high degree of merely “liberal,” “missile-gap” indoctrination may be going on.

Jerry Thompson, at 1:50 pm EDT on June 13, 2008

Eisenhower Quote I Forgot To Include in Response to E.T. Bass

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

Jerry Thompson, at 1:55 pm EDT on June 13, 2008

Hofstadter’s neglected chapter

I scrolled through the comments to make sure no on else had made my point first. I guess it’s no surprise that in a publication like this, no one did.

It’s simply this. Hofstadter was a fair-minded and non-partisan attacker of anti-intellectualism. He included a damning chapter on the National Education Association and the anti-intellectualism, visible even then, of many of our leading organizations of primary and secondary school teachers.

Whatever you think of too-easy-target President Bush and his attitudes toward science or evolution, it’s beyond argument that the attitudes and training of our teachers (or lack of it) have vastly more influence on the public than anything the U.S. President does or doesn’t do. More damage has been done to our nation’s intellectual life by misguided educational fads and enthusiasms than by any government policy.

But then, recognizing that instead of pointing the ritual finger at Bush would require taking responsibility.

David Murray, Dr., at 2:20 pm EDT on June 13, 2008

Evolution

I have made this point before, but it bears repeating. To ally Evolution to atheism is to damage science. My field is the philosophy of science and hence it pains me when people attack creationism because it threatens experimental science. I consider evolution a marvelous explanatory theory and I “believe” in it although I have never seen it happen.It is not an experimental science, but an explanatory theory with all sorts of confirmatory evidence. But I can think of no experiment that would weaken it or strengthen it. My real complaint is how, in medicine, agriculture, nutrition and other fields we ignore evolution, e.g. in the belief that it is perfectly safe, for the child and for the human genome ( not causing inheritable defects)to effect conception outside the fallopian tubes possibly tens of thousands of times a year and have no follow up on the outcomes, as if millions of years of evolution did not bestow any significant advantage on the new human in fallopian way, as opposed to the petri dish!The “elite” is as ready to ignore science when it suits them as any group in this country.

Stanislaus Dundon, Emeritus at California State University, Sacramento, at 3:40 pm EDT on June 13, 2008

ID is the same as Creationism

Intelligent Design is Creationism without the overt mention of G-d. By removing G-d from the discussion, the Intelligent Design crowd backed by the Seattle-based group attempt to pull an end-round the U.S. constitution.

You may believe intelligent design is not the same as creationism, but you would be wrong.

NOVA has a terrific documentary about the Dover, Pa., case available on line:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/

I recommend it to anyone who A) believes intelligent design is not the same as creationism or B) believes intelligent design is the intellectual equivalent of crab grass.

Finally, to the commenter who wondered if we should all head to Barnes and Noble to buy map, you have missed the point. Even with a GPS locator or a Barnes and Noble purchased map, the vast majority of Americans cannot locate Iraq on the map.

Put another way, it is not enough for our 8-year-old child to have seperate American and world maps hanging on his walls. We teach and encourage him to use them.

michael, at 4:45 pm EDT on June 13, 2008

Interesting Response

Interesting article. However, I’m afraid the problems in our educational system are much more systemic and embedded than simply a weak attempt to revive the Creationism and Intelligent Design (not the same thing) within the halls of academe.Although Stopes lost his case, religion was gradually expunged from public education after about 1927 with the help of the ACLU and others; the removal of prayer from the public schools the essential death knell of any religious underpinnings to public education. It may even run deeper than the very successful effort to expunge, in the name of multiculturalism, many elements of our glorious Western Culture, which had been the framework for the liberal (not the political form) education which was once highly prized in America: the dumping of the Great Books curriculum; the growing movement to make all cultures equally important; the diminution and deconstruction of American History, which has taken many of our nation’s heroes and made them appear to be mean-spirited slave holders, self-serving politicians with a personal agenda; ignoring their ingenuity, courage, and self-sacrifice, emphasizing and embellishing instead their human weaknesses. There has never been a nation like America in human history: its emphasis on freedom and opportunity for all, and for many years its leaders’ reverence for the God who helped it become a “Shining City on a Hill". As in Greece and Rome, the transition of our government from that of a Republic to a democracy, followed by the loss of the very entity maligned by the author as one of the elements reducing the quality of our schools and universities, our religious beliefs, America, too, appears to be moving on a collision course with the trash bin of History. It is not because of religion that our educational system is failing, but rather its disappearance.

Carol Whitney, Gifted Education Specialist, at 8:25 am EDT on June 14, 2008

intellectuals

As one of my friends reminds me occasionally, intellectuals are people who cannot disassemble, clean and reassemble a simple drain trap, yet look down their noses at plumbers.

We could not survive with a society composed entirely of intellectuals, nor could we survive with a society composed entirely of plumbers.

Rusty Rustbelt, at 8:25 am EDT on June 14, 2008

This just in!

Overhead in Hyde Park Starbucks —

Hmm, yes, it works in reality.

But will it work in theory?

Hmm .. let’s think this over ..

L.L., at 1:20 pm EDT on June 14, 2008

Myth of American Exceptionalism?

“. . . which has taken many of our nation’s heroes and made them appear to be mean-spirited slave holders. . .”

Not all slave holders were mean spirited, perhaps. But history must needs be de-constructed, contradicted, complicated to the extent that it’s narrated also from slaves’ points of view. Also those of women, indigenous populations, immigrants, non property holders, workers. Many were the heroes among these folks, too. And the country is better for their having contradicted the ruling elites all along. Once the subaltern heroes have brought about some true progress, we notice, the traditional narrative strives to co-opt it and make it out that the Founding (often slave-holding or coercive Federalist bankers in symbiosis with slavery) Fathers deserve all the credit for U.S. exceptionalism.

8765432@verizon.net, at 10:55 pm EDT on June 14, 2008

Plebes really, really smart

” .. What’s excluded is any authentic voice of the Plebeians in solidarity with working people in the rest of the world, the kind of globalization we really need ..”

Excuse me — try telling that to working-class college students forced out of student housing because 20 illegal immigrants will pay $125 more/month. You’ll get an earful about “globalization” that you’ll never forget, sir.

” .. He just hadn’t come across it in the major media and had no idea there was any responsible alternative analysis (Juan Gonzales and Amy Goodman, etc. presenting it.) ..”

Well .. probably 98% of U.S. college students have never read IHE, even though it is “free.” You would require/force them to read IHE?

” .. I’m sorry if Chomsky is so popular elsewhere and in the “underground” that it’s added big bucks to his M.I.T. salary ..”

IMO, what is most amusing are the Chomsky-Moyers-Kennedys-Michael Moores of the world, telling the proles how terrible they have it. Then they check their multi-million-dollar Cayman Island bank account balances. How Janus-like?

” .. And they are the ones who pay most of the cost of the policies imposed by the upper 1% ..”

Gee. Look at this —

http://www.ntu.org/main/page.php?PageID=6

Says 39% of income taxes are paid by top 1% of wage-earners. My lying, no-good eyes just will not stop lying to me.

” .. The tabloid dimension serves as a distraction ..”

Try turning off ESPN in the dorms and cafeterias. Be sure to have next-of-kin listed in your wallet — just in case.

E.T. Bass, at 8:55 pm EDT on June 15, 2008

Genesis & Science

You can expect skepticism from atheists, and evolutionists, concerning historical accuracy of early Genesis, where it describes seven (24-hr) days in Earth’s prehistoric past. It’s not all their fault. The fossil record of death, preserved for us by “mother Earth”, is an undeniable testament of several eras of life forms living and dying in the past. It is scientific reality.

But when creationists and theologians try to convey to us what they think is written in Genesis, they give ammunition to the opposing side. Those that preach “young Earth” doctrines misrepresent Genesis, and are actually teaching foolishness, giving us incorrect literal interpretation of scripture. Those that teach “long days” and theistic evolution are infidels, calling God a liar, and compromising with the opposing side. After defining the work week, God specifically told Israel that He had created the universe, the Earth, and all that is in it in six days…., the same six days that Israel was to do it’s work, and to rest on the seventh day. When God told Joshua to march around Jericho for seven days, did God mean something other than 168 hours?

God created all science. God co-authored the book of Genesis. Therefore, Genesis is a book of “advanced” science. It is the only book given to humanity that tells us of events that took place on Earth before the advent of modern mankind, namely Adam and Eve, which did not arrive until about 7200 BC. Genesis specifically states that humanity existed on Earth, in God’s image, before Adam and Eve were made. But the worlds of creationism and theology fail to realize this.

But the truth of Genesis will be known, no matter how hard those of religious persuasion try to deny it, and try to keep it hid from mankind. For it is they that are to blame for giving us false teachings, and trying to keep their ignorance of the truth from being exposed.

How many times have you heard someone say “ Genesis is not a book of science”? They were not an expert on Genesis. They seem to think that the writers of the Bible looked to their own understanding and wrote the scriptures, creating myths of our origins from legends that they had heard or learned from others. But it is the opposite that is true. Surrounding nations had bits and pieces of ancient stories told to them by their fore-fathers, who had gotten them from the sons of Noah.

After God made Adam, it is reasonable to assume that sometime later, he asked God how everything came into being. God may had shown Adam the same thing that He showed Moses, but it wasn’t written down and was carried by word of mouth from generation to generation, being distorted every time it was re-told.

But God reset the record, and revealed to Moses what happened in past eras on Earth, which modern science is only in the last 200 years beginning to discover, proving that Genesis is divinely inspired, and a book of advanced science.

Herman Cummings PO Box 1735 Fortson GA, 318-8ephraim7@aol.com

Herman Cummings, at 5:00 am EDT on June 16, 2008

E.T. Phone Home

Sorry but I just absolutely, ABSOLUTELY would not include the Kennedys in the company of Zinn and Chomsky or Jameson or Ehrenreich or even Klein. The liberal conqueror, bread-and-circuses Julius Caesar, maybe. That you would put those Democrat(ic?)-liberal-wing-of-the-ruling-class-imperialists into the company of the above shows that you haven’t been in touch at all with the very alternative discourses to which I’m referring. Not that you would be converted to those alternatives. You would just know better than to mis-label either the Kennedys or the Gonzales’s or Goodmans’ by so carelessly lumping them together.

On the “official” 39% paid by the upper 1% I suppose it’s good that Chomsky, et. al. pay a their fare share of taxes. They also donate large segments of their moneys to their causes, if you would feel any better.

Nor is “soaking the rich” the answer put forth by the alternatives (again, if you knew the alternative analysis going on you would know that). Your responses betray, to me, that you’ve looked at the alternative arguments as pre-digested and fed back to you in the form of a right-wing bird feeding puke to its young. (Sorry, I get that impression.) Go “dwell in” in the actually analysis on its own terms for a while in order to lift your own argument to a higher and more productive level, devoid of all the usual misconceptions. It probably won’t, and shouldn’t, make you give up your basic orientation. And that is good. It will enable you instead to carry on a more productive conversation.

A conversation, perhaps, like the one that developed the alternative economic model known as Parecon (Participatory Economics). It derives from a certain hybrid mindset of both conservative (capitalist) and progressive (socialist) values. But rather than a meet-somewhere-in-the-middle, as in a liberal, Kennedy-like “mixed economy” as in Europe, it results in a system that promotes individual initiative, ambition and achievement (universal self-management) at the same time as solidarity with producers everywhere else, such that everyone is well aware of and able to approve with a clear conscience, the social and labor conditions of everything bought and sold.

I would just say be careful with knee-jerk reactions that can close the mind to interesting alternatives and opportunities.

Jerry Thompson, at 9:05 am EDT on June 16, 2008

Proles lot smarter than theory

” .. you haven’t been in touch at all with the very alternative discourses to which I’m referring ..”

As the poet B. Dylan notes, “money doesn’t talk, it swears.” Cut any way possible — they all bank their millions in the Grand Caymans. Or Switzerland. Unless you’re suggesting that Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn use mattresses for a bank.

” .. They also donate large segments of their moneys (sic) to their causes ..”

Inconvenient fact: Republicans donate more of their income and time than non-Republicans. The data from Brooks of Syracuse U. (not that it matters to those who decline to allow facts get in the way) —

http://books.google.com/books?id=...a&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0

” .. A conversation, perhaps, like the one that developed the alternative economic model known as Parecon (Participatory Economics) ..”

Hmm .. yes .. works in theory .. just waiting for reality to surrender ..

” .. I would just say be careful with knee-jerk reactions ..”

Glad to see, you’re taking your advice. Good luck.

E.T. Bass, at 10:20 am EDT on June 16, 2008

I’m a proud elitist

Lynn Fauth, Professor of English, wrote

...but in calling another out-going President an advocate of “creation science” she belies her own ignorance and sound-bite thinking, failing to differentiate between the Creation Science Society types who seek empirical proof for Genesis, and Intelligent Design advocates who question Darwinists’ epistemology and call for a debate, which she labels “misplaced pluralism” while slandering the religious and ID advocates as being confused by the distinction between “scientific inquiry” and “folk beliefs.” Has she read Philip Johnson, William A. Dembski, Michael Behe and others before discounting their work as folk beliefs?

I have read them all — Johnson, Behe, Dembski, Paul Nelson (a young earth creationist), and other ID proponents from the Disco ‘Tute, along with old fashioned creationists like Gish, Morris, Slusher, and others. ID proponents do nothing more than present the folk beliefs of old fashioned creationism dressed up in new information theoretic and biochemical language. It’s not for nothing that Philip Kitcher (in Living With Darwin) calls ID “dead science” and calls its proponents “resurrection men.”

Fauth goes on

Better, look not at what they say but at what they do. In Ohio, they attempted to cram Intelligent Design Creationism into the public school science curriculum by parroting critiques of evolutionary theory that have direct roots in young earth creationism. See Forrest and Gross (Creationism’s Trojan Horse) for the history of Intelligent Design Creationism. And consider what they don’t do: science. Find a body of research addressing the testable hypotheses that ID provides. It’s a vain quest: you’ll find none because ID provides no testable hypotheses.

I’m an elitist and proud of it. As part of my elitism, I think English professors should learn a dab about science (and pseudoscience) before pontificating about it.

Stanislaus Dundon wrote,

I consider evolution a marvelous explanatory theory and I “believe” in it although I have never seen it happen. It is not an experimental science, but an explanatory theory with all sorts of confirmatory evidence. But I can think of no experiment that would weaken it or strengthen it.

I can think of any number of observations that could weaken it, starting with J.B.S. Haldane’s remark about rabbit fossils in the Precambrian. Fortunately, every time we look, experimentally or in field studies, we don’t find any that weaken it. And any number of experiments have shown evolution to happen. See Blount, et al., in the most recent PNAS (http://tinyurl.com/4xxeek) for a lovely recent example.

Richard B. HoppeKenyon College

Richard B. Hoppe, at 6:35 pm EDT on June 16, 2008

Hmmm, Let’s see ...

President Shapiro invites us to consider how dumbing down America “has affected the great venture that is American democracy?”

Then R.W. Hoyer tells us that Judeo and Christians cultures in America (those that put a great deal of stock in various parts of the Holy Bible) contribute to dumbing down America (at least from a logical point of view)

Then, in an earlier post (see above), I described how historian Rick Shenkman tells us that Americans are just too dumb – and don’t particularly feel bad about the fact (we tend to boast about our anti-intellectualism) – to make effective use of democracy.

Good old Rusty Rustbelt – probably reacting to his own cultural hang-ups more than those of any of the previous posters – tells us that talk of dumbing down Americans is an affront to plumbers (which I assume is a place holder for “uneducated” hard-working men and women).

And finally, Herman Cummings tells us that God, the creator of all science and the co-author of the book of Genesis (and I wonder who his co-author(s) might be) put it all together himself ... and I presume we are dumb precisely to the extent that God wants us to be dumb. Mr. Cummings tells us “God reset the record, and revealed to Moses what happened in past eras on Earth, which modern science is only in the last 200 years beginning to discover, proving that Genesis is divinely inspired, and a book of advanced science.”

Two things:

Rusty, I conjecture that the distribution of intelligence (or whatever IQ measures) is about the same for plumbers and electricians as it is for college and university faculty. The higher educated professoriate just appear to be more “intelligent” because they have invested so much time and energy becoming “educated” (and that’s the easy part), but when it comes to real-world smarts, academics-as-intellects are grossly overrated.

Let’s face it, to the uninitiated, education hides a great many intellectual deficiencies.

To Mr. Cummings, I can only say if you combine a healthy dose of scientifically unconfirmed and unconfirmable statements with a gallon or two of faith you get a wonderfully irrefutable brew. So you’ve got it man ... and far be it from any of “us” to try prove you wrong. Faith – and especially blind faith — trumps everything else.

About your statement suggesting Moses set the record straight, I can only tell you that here at The Church of What’s Happening Now, we have a different perspective on the interaction of Moses and the Almighty.

Some may call us cafeteria Judeo-Christians, because we don’t believe everything embraced by THEIR particular religious dogma. For example, we support gay and lesbian marriage, we have no problem with taking God’s name in vain, we’re all for graven images and have, for example, worshiped those in the Sistine Chapel on more than a few occasions, we approve of abortion even when the fetus coming to term is not hazardous to the health of the woman, etc.

You see, we’re not buying into the infallibility of the Holy Scripture ... and for two reasons. First (at least for most of us), it’s a translation of a translation, virtually all of it “translated” from the “original” waaay after the fact. Second – and this is discussed much too infrequently — who’s to say God gets it right every time and on the first try.

For example, at The Church of What’s Happening Now, we think those stories about Moses trekking up Mount Sinai for a little R&R, and then returning with as many commandments as he had fingers on his hands or toes on his feet is just too coincidental.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPWMtKwsNt0

In our view, he got up there, ruminated for three days, decided murder was bad (except when you’re doing it for God or your country or are trying African-Americans in Texas) and stealing was bad most of the time, and then got stuck (don’t forget, he was over 80 years old at the time and climbing Mount Sinai is no small peanuts even for a much younger man).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:MountSinaiView.jpg

Anyway, we think he quickly wrote down the other eight commandments (faulty translation) and his carelessness has wreaked havoc in the Judea-Christian world ever since.

So, if you ever discover a member of The Church of What’s Happening Now admiring the stained glass windows at St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague, or going trout fishing on Mills River on the Sabbath, or admitting that his father was an anti-Semitic racist, or engaging in a bit of plagiarism (stealing), or wishing his azaleas were as beautiful as his neighbor’s (all violations of the Ten Commandments) ... well you’ve got my point. Either Moses was overworking his not inconsequential imagination (he had a habit of doing that) or else the god who happened to be hanging out in Egypt and looking out for the Israelites back in the 13th century BCE has to be one of the most insecure, self-centered fellows ever (Zeus, for example, had those personal characteristics himself ... I think it comes from spending too much time “being God”).

Frizbane Manley, at 1:35 pm EDT on June 17, 2008

Surm und Drang?

Goodness, what a lot of impassioned responses to a rather unsurprising — if heartfelt — plea for academics to encourage their fellow citizens to value learning despite a culture which often and in many ways appears to devalue knolwedge and cognitive skills.

Americans anti-intellectual? Well, many Americans are anti-intellectual, aren’t they/we? Mocking educated people is accepted as ‘funny’ and appropriate — as mocking ignorant people would not be — in our culture. In fact, a retiring college president cannot repeat a hackneyed concern about the happy ignorance of many of our citizens without being accused of showing disrespect for anyone lacking an advanced degree (particularly plumbers, oddly enough)and/or pushing a left/liberal political agenda.

Do only liberals and leftists value knowledge and reason? Are all plumbers ignorant fools who mistake astrology for a science? Is our citizenry divisible into stupid, lumpkin ‘workers’ and ineffectual, elitist ‘intellectuals’? No, and the real insults, here, are these presumptions.

By the way, I am a professor of philosophy. In addition to teaching and writing about philosophy, I prune trees, build stonewalls, rewire lamps, clean the house, and refinish furniture, and — yes -I know how to change drill bits.

CTS, at 5:25 pm EDT on June 17, 2008

OOOPS: Sturm

Please forgive the typo.

CTS, at 3:20 pm EDT on June 18, 2008

It’s a shame that the tenor of most of the above comments and some of the elements of Judith Shapiro’s address involve tired, polarizing political partisanship, religious/anti-religious sentiments etc.. In all cases it’s what is valued within each context that is important.

I have problems with a Christian if she/he prefers the fear-mongering banter of Jerry Falwell to the writings of someone like Aquinas. I have problems with Atheists who don’t believe in God because Penn from Penn & Teller “thinks you’re an idiot if you do,” as opposed to reading Dawkins. I have problems with a Conservative if he/she prefers to listen to the opinion-based propaganda of Bill O’ Reilly than to thinkers like George Will. I have problems with people who fashion their Liberal thinking based on the Daily Show instead of reading someone like Zinn.

Every era laments the lack of intelligence in the general public. However, I totally agree that our over-stimulated, media saturated, “quick results” demanding environment is truly challenging our disposition to thoughtfulness. Value is established in the work one does to achieve a goal. The quick fix of “Googling” does not foster inquiry, it fosters data processing. We are in danger of becoming simple information storage units. Information IS NOT the same as knowledge.

Our lack of respect for patient, devoted learning (learning for benefits “as yet unseen” as opposed to “instant results”) is a problem no matter what you believe, no matter for whom you vote, no matter whether you think some one who quotes Aeschylus is an asshole or a stud.

Russell, at 4:05 pm EDT on June 18, 2008

book recommendation

For those interested in this subject, I highly recommend two books:

Dumbing Us Down, and The Underground History of American Education, both by former New York State Teacher of the Year, John Taylor Gatto. The second book is available online, at no cost (see website link).

Jennifer, at 4:05 pm EDT on June 20, 2008

Thank You!

My daughter Alexandria Wright graduated Barnard in 2005. I thank you and the entire Barnard community for all she received there. I too have been a Hofstadter fan since my days at University of Illinois in the 60’s. I will buy Jacoby’s book tomorrow. Thanks, Dr. Shapiro for all your years of service to young women. Keep the wonderful essays and ideas coming. We are so thirsty for them.

Cornelia Hall, at 5:20 am EDT on June 26, 2008

Prejudice against intellectuals in Indiana

I grew up in near-rural Indiana, but my mother is a Barnard grad who met my father at Columbia Engineering. My parents told me over and over how great I was in comparison to other kids just because I was part of an intellectual family that thought beyond the borders of Indiana. This actually caused problems for me when, after graduating Barnard in 1995, I entered the workforce back in Indiana with the expectation that any employer would be lucky to have me just because of my background. It took me getting fired more than once for me to learn the value of working alongside people regardless of how intellectual they seemed.

Balance in all things should be our goal, and that includes valuing the intellectuals alongside the plumbers equally. Dr. Shapiro is eloquently promoting the idea that we are not in balance at present, and the intellectuals are lowest in number and value.

I was actually devalued in Indiana as an employee because my education came from a place with an elite-like reputation — even after I matured into an effective program manager. That kind of prejudice is rampant in America, today, and it will not change until open minds outnumber those who wallow in their comfort zones and resist change.

How can you get defensive in this issue and still support the end goal? Breaking down barriers fueled by fear is how to fight the problem Dr. Shapiro is highlighting. Go deal with your own fears, then come back and criticize her.

—Lara Coutinho BC ‘95

Lara Coutinho, 1995 Alumna at Barnard College, at 8:05 pm EDT on July 17, 2008

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