The Washington Post's Master Plan Unfolds...

Yesterday we saw the opening act of the Washington Post's master plan to discredit the right by giving airspace to Ben Domenech. Today we see the second act begin, as P.Z. Myers outs Domenech as somebody who (a) lies about the work and views of Stephen Jay Gould, and (b) is an out-and-out creationist who "take[s] Genesis literally" and believes that the "theory of evolution is a total crock":

Pharyngula: Ben Domenech: creationist: [W]e could just assume he's uninformed, and doesn't know what he's talking about--but he goes beyond that to egregious dishonesty, with a fraudulent quote-mine.

Will Saletan['s]... offhand dismissal of the reasons for teaching Intelligent Design in public schools is full of holes.... [N]o less prominent an evolutionist than Stephen Jay Gould has lent weight to the theories of Michael Behe and his brethren....

You read that, and it sounds as if Gould had endorsed Intelligent Design creationism--Mr Domenech is slinging around Gould's credibility and authority to rebut Saletan's dismissal of ID. Follow that link, though, and you won't find Gould saying supportive things about Behe or the work of the Discovery Institute: instead, it's a diatribe by one Robert Wright, against Gould, accusing him of doing such poor science that he is providing aid and comfort to creationists. Wright's article is a rather hacky hit piece, but... there's nothing there to suggest that Gould had anything good to say about [creationists], either. Domenech is blatantly misrepresenting the story.

The rest--the implication that evolution is weak because it "remains a theory", that you cannot see the evidence for evolution, and that ID somehow meets a standard sufficient to be taught in public school--is just traditional creationist stupidity. Falling back on the argument from popularity is a theme common to this guy. Like here, where he also confesses to being a creationist:

Nearly twice as many Americans believe in creationism as in evolution.... I don't necessarily subscribe to all Creationist theories, but I do take Genesis literally. And I believe the commonly taught theory of evolution is a total crock.

It's time to demand that Domenech give answers to the most pressing question of our day: Were there rainbows before Noah's flood?

Comments

[christofay]

Kowtowing to the right, the WaPoo has really stepped into it this time.

Now "I admit no mistakes" Howell has to step up to defend this disaster.

The Marx Brothers movie that is the inside the beltway clusterrapture writes itself.

[mrjauk]

"The rest--the implication that evolution is weak because it "remains a theory", that you cannot see the evidence for evolution..."

You know, come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen gravity either. Must be another of those 'remains a theory' things. To paraphrase the Rolling Stones, "Thank you Ben Domenech, thank you Washington Post".

[Frank]

Brad:

What do you mean by your last comment, concerning rainbows, the Flood and Genesis?

I actually got in an argument with a Creationsit recently, about your old comment about how dinosaurs got on the Ark. The Creationist argument was that they were all babies. Go figure hunrdeds of babies-paired by sex-could live without the aid of their natural parents for 40 days and 40 nights on a wooden boat...

Wasting Time Arguing with Creationists,

Frank

[sglover]

Y'know, I might be falling prey to a selection bias, but it sure does seem to me that right-wingers have a problem with this here internet thingy. In particular, they often don't seem to grasp that when you link to something, it's usually a good idea to make sure that it *bolsters* your case, because every now and then some inquisitive prick in your audience might actually click on it, and READ the damn thing.

[Francis]

"I do prefer [creationists] to those who sneer at them".

a CLASSIC tacitus post -- it has all the elements:

insulting the host -- check!
insinuating his superiority -- check!
substantively moronic -- check!

Who's the bigger fool, Josh, someone who has contempt for stupidity, or someone who prefers the comfort of having the support of those who elevate faith over reason?

if, for example, someone you knew appeared to suffer from clinical depression, Josh, would you recommend zoloft or counseling from christian scientists? or would you recommend he go to church for the companionship, but take meds on the side? after all, what's a little hypocrisy when there's political power at stake?

[marky]

Bwahahah.. is that really Tacitus?
Funny if true.
To rational, educated people, pointing out that Ben is a Creationist is a very substantive criticism.
Of course, Brad also charged Ben with lying. I guess that sort of thing just slips under the radar for redders--- "Yeah, so what?" being the usual response.

[anonymous]

"You could actually take Domenech on with substantive points, Brad."

Why do you coddle the ignorant? They have no business debating anyone. Their job is to stfu and go read a book.

[Lee A. Arnold]

This means that we can get absolutely EVERYONE in the country to agree that in Ben Domenech, we do not see evidence of evolution.

[MobiusKlein]

Rainbows? Yes.
Did people see them? No. The unicorns always blocked the view.

[chris]

"I'm no creationist, but I do prefer them to those who sneer at them."

And I prefer the large majority who believe that if they go on buying lottery tickets every week, their number is bound to come up eventually. But then, I run a casino.

And if you regard Genesis as a source of information about anything other than early iron age poetry, there were certainly no rainbows before the flood. The question to ask is, how did light behave when refracted by water?

[Arun Khanna]

Re: "Nearly twice as many Americans believe in creationism as in evolution.... I don't necessarily subscribe to all Creationist theories, but I do take Genesis literally."
There are responses on a survey and then there are credible responses. In the hospital emergency rooms nationwide, creationists have been known to ‘have found science’.
If one is criticizing evolution for being ‘just a theory’ then shouldn't one stay away from the term Creationist theories?
Finally, why don't people who ‘think’ Creationism explains the origin of species point to themselves and proclaim: Do you think I am evolved? Well do you punk? (Dirty Harry style)

[ilsm]

How come God talks to them and not me?

[Carlos]

Josh, if that's actually you, why on Earth should Brad listen to you, a committed Republican partisan who thus does not have the best interests of the country at heart?

[Carlos]

(Or Brad's interests, either.)

[christofay]

What about Ben? Is he working for union rates or close to free lance Arlington rates or is he subsidised?

[Matt]

This looks like a real 'oopsie' from the WaPo. Note that the Washington area has a major concentration of bioscientists (NIH and local companies), so one can expect that this foolishness will generate a sharp local response.

[Barry]

"Josh, if that's actually you, why on Earth should Brad listen to you, a committed Republican partisan who thus does not have the best interests of the country at heart?"

Posted by: Carlos

And somebody who has just admitted to preferring liars over people speaking the truth? Which is something I believe about Tacitus, but which he's usually been smart enough not to brag about.

[a_liberal]

"Josh, if that's actually you, why on Earth should Brad listen to you, a committed Republican partisan who thus does not have the best interests of the country at heart?"

That's it precisely. Josh and his ilk hate Librulz more than they love America.

[Karlsfini]

What's happening at the WaPo is, well, exciting. Like Bush, it seems to be going through some kind of crack-up -- self-destructing right before our eyes.

Now I don't believe for a minute that Josh is really Tacitus. He's suddenly turned up a other blogs too, but unlike Tacitus -- the old Tacitus anyway -- he never has anything more to say than "your mama."

If he's Tacitus then we're seeing yet a third self-destructive crack-up.

All passengers please return to your seats. No one is flying the plane and the right wing is coming apart.

[WatchfulBabbler]

Let me just repeat what I posted at PZ's:

WaPo decides to hire a conservative blogger to "balance" Dan Froomkin, who some people see as being tilted to the left.

Froomkin writes a summary of daily news. Domenech writes his personal opinion.

Froomkin is the previous politics producer for washingtonpost.com and served as its editor for three years. He worked as a beat reporter for ten years, has taught at American University and the Poynter Institute, is a former Knight-Wallace fellow at University of Michigan, and is a deputy editor for the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

Domenech is a twentysomething political hack.

There is no consilience between the two classes here. They could have hired someone like Callimachus (from "Done With Mirrors," vernondent.blogspot.com) -- a conservative who actually works for a newspaper -- but instead they appear to be going for the bottom of the blogroll.

Perhaps it's a strategy of "the worse, the better?"

[johne]

"...previous politics producer for washingtonpost.com and served as its editor for three years. He worked as a beat reporter for ten years, has taught at American University and the Poynter Institute, is a former Knight-Wallace fellow at University of Michigan, and is a deputy editor for the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard."
Watchful, don't you realize that as far as the right is concerned, these are all counts in an indictment?

[Ginger Yellow]

Between the LA Times hiring Jonah Goldberg and thi, I'm beginning to agree that the press's blogger hiring policy is further evidence of liberal bias. They could scarcely chosen two people better suited to make the right (and the righty blogosphere) look like total jackasses. It's not as though there aren't sensible conservative bloggers (Drezner, for example), or at least sane ones (the Volokh lot) to choose from. But two of the biggest newspapers in the country pick two of the most inane conservatives around. If it weren't for the fact that the righty blogosphere holds them (and equally deranged blogs like Powerline) up as exemplars, it would be completely baffling.

[Davis X. Machina]

Just like Jonah Goldberg, except Domenech's father isn't as famous as Goldberg's mother.

Surely there was a better arm in the bullpen of nepotism?

[Davis X. Machina]

Isn't it about time for a remake of 'Inherit the Wind'?

Yeah, but The Corner's gonna have a snit unless the ending has fighter planes blast Clarence Darrow off the top of the Empire State Building.

[Ken Muldrew]

Robert Wright makes a similar argument in his book _Nonzero_. It's basically the argument that evolution proceeds towards greater complexity and greater robustness (to external perturbations, to parasitic strategies, and to novel energy sources/life cycles (usually through symbiotic relationships)). This shouldn't be a controversial argument as it is obviously true, but Gould often took the extreme position of insisting historical contingency ruled over all and therefore evolution has no direction. His error was to focus on the microstate rather than the macrostate (to give a trivial example, there are uncountable ways for a container of gas to have a given temperature; sure, they're all different microscopically, but if all you care about is temperature, then each state is identical). The exact phenotypes of the organisms that inhabit the biosphere are intimately dependent upon historical contingencies, but the broader characteristics of the biota (such as complexity) are completely independent of those details. (Domenech's mischaracterization of Gould and misuse of Wright is contemptible and I hope readers will forgive me for bringing up the more interesting arguments that lie beneath Domenech's nonsense rather than discussing the nonsense itself).

The amusing part of Wright's book comes in part 3 where he tries to find a force that causes the direction of evolution. It's amusing because at the end of part 2 he heaps scorn on William Paley for his premature conclusion that a blind watchmaker could not make a functional watch (and hence that species are created by god). Wright then goes on to make exactly the same error when he hypothesizes that a blind programmer could not create a functional computational system (though to be fair, he does it with more humility than Paley). Wright doesn't realize that all dynamical systems perform computation and that there are nonlinear dynamical systems that perform remarkably interesting and complex computational tasks (with feedback, homeostasis, etc.). The blind programmer is as ubiquitous as the blind watchmaker.

[theCoach]

Ken,
As someone who thought that Nonzero was an outstanding book up until about the last chapter, I thought the argument against Gould was a little different - but I could be confusing the argument with Dennett's.
My memory tells me it was about Gould overstating how drastically puctuated equillibrium changed natural selection, and using phrases that were easily picked up by anti-evolutionists. Funny that Wright's article is then being used in the same way, although the origin of responsibility by that point is awfully murky.
My memory is often wrong, though.

[wood turtle]

"Were there rainbows before Noah's flood?"

According to the Bible the answer to that is no, since the rainbow was a sign of God's covenant between him and all mortal beings, that there would never again be a flood to devastate the earth.

Another possible reason for having a rainbow would be to restore genetic diversity, but that is not in the Bible.

[Bruce Webb]

The argument from popularity thing is kind of interesting. Because in the two issues I care most about: the War on Iraq and the War on Social Security one side had overwhelming majorities in support of the central arguments "Iraq has WMDs" and "Social Security is going broke". I don't have polling numbers on Social Security but I think I am safe to say that three years ago 90% plus of Americans would have bet serious money on both propositions. Well on the WMD case they have been proven wrong, and that still strong majority that believes Social Security faces some long term challenge is just about to get a rude awakening.

The whole political and journalistic narrative over the last twenty years has revolved around the notion that there really are not any right and wrong answers. Well except there are. Every American has a right to his or her opinion. They just don't have their right to mine. If you are a creationist I can grant you the possibility that you are a loving father, a hard worker, a straight shooter, even a scratch golfer, but you are a scientific illiterate. And a waste of my time.

If I walk into a feed store and insist that there are four bushels in a peck or walk into a lumberyard and complain that the 2 x 4 I just bought doesn't actually measure 2" by 4" the proprietor is going to look at me and conclude "clueless fuckwit" and would be perfectly correct. Instead there are four pecks in a bushel and fully dimensioned lumber is a thing of the distant past.

Yet somehow when it comes to things like economics, politics, and religion anyone is allowed to be a player. Well sorry in at least the first two, and largely the third there are indeed right and wrong answers and it is time to stop maintaining we need to kow-tow to the ignorami.

[Matt]

The colors in rainbows are due to a minute frequency-dependent variation in the index of refraction of water-- well within the capabilities of an omnipotent deity.

[Pithlord]

Wright's piece was not a "hit piece." You could hardly find a more reasonable guy in the world of punditry. (In fact, I doubt you would *want* a more reasonable guy in the world of punditry.) Wright's point was pretty similar to one made by Paul Krugman, IIRC, albeit Krugman was a lot harder on old Gould.

[Ginger Yellow]

"My memory tells me it was about Gould overstating how drastically puctuated equillibrium changed natural selection, and using phrases that were easily picked up by anti-evolutionists."

That's certainly the bone Dennett picks in Darwin's Dangerous Idea (although his focus is more on Gould's ego than creationism, I think) but that doesn't necessarily mean Wright doesn't use it as well. And of course an extreme angle on punctuated equilibrium doesn't sit well with Dennett's "algorithmic design" concept of evolution, so he needs to minimise the discrepancy between PE and gradualism.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/17/books/review/17RIDLEYT.html?ex=1142398800&en=79652a0b3a981a70&ei=5070

March 17, 2002

The Evolution Revolution
By MARK RIDLEY

THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
By Stephen Jay Gould.

DARWINISTS have divided opinions about the fossil record. Darwin himself, and many of his followers, were skeptical. For them, it is so fragmentary and corrupt that we cannot rely on what it seems to tell us. That view is most likely to be expressed today by a molecular biologist. For others, it is mainly trustworthy, and we should face up to what it tells us about evolution. Fossil evidence may even damage some of the deep foundations of Darwinism. The best-known champion of this view, for at least 30 years, is Stephen Jay Gould.

Gould's trust in the fossil record has been unambiguously good for science. He has inspired research and raised the status of paleontology. But his campaign to challenge the Darwinian theory of evolution has a more ambiguous status. He has certainly stimulated people to think about some big questions, and that is a plus. However, he has failed to persuade many of his colleagues, and I am among those who think that his attempts to revise Darwinism are flawed.

The centerpiece of Gould's system is the theory of punctuated equilibrium, published in 1972 by him and Niles Eldredge. In the history of life, new species often appear suddenly and then persist with little change until they go extinct. The sudden origin of species may reflect the incompleteness of the fossil record, but Gould suggests the pattern is real -- evolution is fast while new species originate, and then slows down. He may be right, and his vast new book, ''The Structure of Evolutionary Theory,'' includes a chapter on this matter that is as long as most books, and it has an extensive, if selective, review of the evidence.

The real controversy begins at the next stage, when we come to the wider implications of the theory. Gould argues that the alternating fast-slow pattern of evolution implies that species are, in a philosophical sense, ''individuals'' rather than classes. This matters to Gould because, he argues, it means that natural selection can operate on whole species, in a process called species selection. He contrasts this with the orthodox Darwinian view, that natural selection works only on organisms. He wants to expand the theory of evolution to include the higher-level process of species selection, which drives large-scale evolutionary processes and is irreducible to natural selection on organisms.

What does it mean, to call a species an individual? In ordinary language, ''individual'' refers to an organism or a person, but Gould is using it in the sense of a particular entity rather than a class of entities. Classes can be defined by a set of defining conditions: gold is the class of atoms with atomic number 79; chairs are the class of objects shaped for one person to sit on. If an entity meets the defining conditions, it is a member of that class. Contrast this with an individual. John Smith may be recognizable by a set of attributes at one time. He may be the person at Gate 8, wearing gray trousers and carrying a blue bag. But if he changes his clothes, he'll still be John Smith. He is not defined by any observable attributes. The individual John Smith is a unique stream of cells, from conception to death.

Biological species are a test case for the distinction between individual and class. They look like classes. We can define human beings as apes with relatively big brains and relatively few hairs. However, a species can change gradually during evolution and still be the same species. Humans will be humans in the future even if they have become hairy or small-brained. In evolutionary theory, species do not have defining attributes and are not classes. They are particular individuals, forming a series of ancestor-descendant populations over time. A species exists between its origin and its extinction, in much the way a person exists between birth and death.

According to Gould, the theory of punctuated equilibrium implies that species are individuals, not classes. But I do not see the logical connection. Evolution in general, not punctuated evolution in particular, is the reason species do not form classes. If anything, the relative constancy of species after their sudden origin would make them more like a class. Individual people lack defining attributes because they change as they develop and decay. If people were born fully formed and remained identical until death, it would be easier to define them by attributes in much the way we do for chemical elements.

Then we have the theory of species selection....

[anne]

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE3D91731F937A25756C0A963958260

May 14, 1995

Natural Selections
By DAVID PAPINEAU

REINVENTING DARWIN
The Great Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory.
By Niles Eldredge.

RIVER OUT OF EDEN
A Darwinian View of Life.
By Richard Dawkins.

DARWIN'S DANGEROUS IDEA
Evolution and the Meanings of Life.
By Daniel C. Dennett.

CHARLES DARWIN has been in the headlines for well over a century. Ever since his theory of evolution by natural selection was first published in 1859, scientific discussion of its validity has spilled over into heated public debate. The details under dispute have varied, but the underlying question has remained the same: Can natural selection fully account for the architecture of living forms, or are there biological phenomena beyond its scope?

It is not hard to see why the question should cause so much ferment. Darwin's theory ascribes purposes, in a sense, to our bodily parts. It explains our eyes in terms of the contribution eyes have made to the survival of humans. But when it comes to the purpose of humans themselves, or of the mechanism of natural selection that made them, the theory says nothing.

If Darwin is right, we have been sired by blind chance out of the laws of physics. We testify to nothing but the fact that matter will arrange itself into strange configurations if left alone for long enough. So it is scarcely surprising that Darwin's theory should have been so closely scrutinized. If only we can find something in the biological world that Darwin cannot explain, perhaps life will have a meaning after all.

The desire to escape Darwin is a common theme in contemporary thought. Its spreads far beyond creationist circles into the strongholds of secular rationalism. Stephen Jay Gould, a professor of geology and zoology at Harvard University, has long argued that many aspects of the biological world cannot be understood in terms of natural selection. Noam Chomsky, down the road at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is skeptical of any Darwinian explanation for language, despite his long campaign to establish that our linguistic faculty is biologically innate. The philosopher Jerry Fodor, for many years Mr. Chomsky's colleague, is a leading proponent of the materialist approach to the mind; yet he resists any attempt to understand our cognitive workings in terms of natural selection.

To official Darwinians this kind of secular skepticism is almost worse than creationism. It is bad enough that people who believe the Bible literally should dismiss Darwin. But members of the scientific community ought to know better. Darwinians admit that theorists like Mr. Gould raise serious scientific points, but they feel it only raises false hopes to present these as undermining Darwinism. To do so suggests that life has more meaning than Darwin allows, when in fact the skeptics know that their own arguments show nothing of the sort.

Two decades ago Niles Eldredge wrote a famous article with Stephen Jay Gould, entitled "Punctuated Equilibria," which challenged various aspects of Darwinian orthodoxy. In "Reinventing Darwin" he now aims to bring the general reader up to date with the ensuing debate between those he calls the "ultra-Darwinians," like the British biologist Richard Dawkins, and the "naturalists," like Mr. Gould and himself....

[David Mace]

this discussion about Gould misses the point

whatever he may have though about the gradual evolutuion school of thinking it was not becuase he doubted the idea of evolution, merely its mechanism

he was always an ardent apponent of creationism
he was afterall a marxist

[Brad DeLong]

Re: "Were there rainbows before Noah's flood?" According to the Bible the answer to that is no, since the rainbow was a sign of God's covenant between him and all mortal beings, that there would never again be a flood to devastate the earth.

Exactly: a literal reading of Genesis tells us that there were no quantum mechanics before Noah's flood.

[wood turtle]

"Exactly: a literal reading of Genesis tells us that there were no quantum mechanics before Noah's flood."

God didn't mention quantum mechanics specifically, but it is implied in the methods he used to create the universe. And it could be that quantum mechanics was in fact not the vehicle used, but there was something other. Unfortunately, Adam and Eve forgot all about quantum mechanics when they ate from the tree of good and evil, which was also the tree of forgetfulness. I just made that up, but that is just what I call liberal figurative Biblical interpretation.

Don't worry, you can find almost anything in the Bible if you think big and look hard enough. Why limit yourself to literalist readings when you can use figurative readings as well.

[Ken Muldrew]

Brad, I think you meant to say that there were no quantum electrodynamics (theory of light and matter interactions) before Noah's flood. Without quantum mechanics there wouldn't have been any liquid water around.

[Dean Moriarity]

"You could actually take Domenech on with substantive points, Brad."
>>
The problem with this is that creationists just shift their positions slightly enough to have to re-engage them. Their point is not to debate, their point is to get the perception out there that they have a position worth considering in the schools. This position has been dismantled over and over and over again, but despite the licking, they keep on ticking.

I always thought that the point of showing someone the error of their position would be so that they, a lover of reason and rationality, would be ashamed to have held that position. Then, they would change the position. These people are shameless charlatans who are incapable of anything but whining, sophistry, and blaming others for the lack of substance in their position. Ridicule is the only option, since they are impervious to reason.

Tacitus, or whomever you are, while normally you would be right in pointing to the issues you do, but in these circumstances, YOU yourself are the one who sounds like a sanctimonius fool, parroting the self-pitying cries of the intellectually bankrupt drones of ID and creationism.

[Barkley Rosser]

I am sorry that people are giving this goofball Domenech so much attention. It has long been garden variety fare for creationists/ID people to claim that arguments over the details of evolution, such as Sewall Wright's random drift phenomenon and Gould's punctuationism, as somehow discrediting evolution.

Regarding Genesis, the question of the rainbow is no big deal. Here is a bigger one. At the beginning of Genesis there are in fact two distinct versions of the Creation. They are in direct conflict with each other. Now maybe Domenech is a "liberal" fundamentalist, but anyone who believes in the "inerrancy" of the Bible (and its Creation story) had better explain which of these stories is the false one.

BTW, whenever I run into someone who starts quoting Leviticus to me about how gays should be stoned to death, I point out that it also says that married couples who have sex while the wife is menstruating should be stoned to death as should insolent children. Maybe we should have some constitutional amendments passed to these effects...

[christofay]

Bark:

It's not fly-little-wingnut-fly Domenech that is worthy of attention; it's that the WaPo has choosen him to be an on-line columnist. The WaPo's reputation is in tatters as a serious news gathering organization. It's no more than a Bush waterboy, Brady is a waterboy for a cheerleader; that's how low it has become. We're jumping on the wingnut for daily examples of how bad the WaPo is. Jim Brady choose a klanner/creationist to vent, now let Brady defend him.

[christofay]

You know, the WaPoo, where the big names, Woodward, lie to the editors, and they sit there and take it. Then, to work out their frustration, they spread RNC lies.

[wkwillis]

"...previous politics producer for washingtonpost.com and served as its editor for three years. He worked as a beat reporter for ten years, has taught at American University and the Poynter Institute, is a former Knight-Wallace fellow at University of Michigan, and is a deputy editor for the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard."
Watchful, don't you realize that as far as the right is concerned, these are all counts in an indictment?

I don't pay much attention to political pecking orders. What would be the right wing equivalent?
Professor where, deputy editor where, etc.
If you were to choose the worst possible person to be a blogger for the Washington Post, who would it be? Worst from the perspective of, say, Hillary Clinton.