Abnormal Interests

The aide [to a senior Whitehouse spokesman] said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

But the problem extends well beyond the Administration, the Intelligent Design Creationists lie every time they claim that God or, more to the point, their god is not necessarily what they have in mind when they speak of a "designer." As I've noted before, Mark Hartwig even makes a humorless joke by referring to the "intelligent designers." He also said a most ridicules thing about results in science,

Of course, what’s important here is not what we conclude about the flagellum or the cell, but how we study it. Calling design theorists religious is just a cheap way to dodge the issues. The public — and our students — deserve better than that.

Here is another case where the truth of the matter doesn't matter, it is "how we study it" that matters.

Then there's the strange set of beliefs about common decent in the ID Creationists community. Ed Brayton addressed it Saturday. It has been clear for sometime that the icons of ID have radically different views on this subject. Behe has long indicated that he believes in common decent, William Dembski has said,

Well, what are we talking about? If we’re talking about common descent, universal common ancestry, I think there’s good evidence for that.

While Jonathan Wells either sidesteps the issue or says something like what he told Lou Dobbs,

I think that students need to know that the evidence for this common ancestry thesis and for the mechanism of evolution, the evidence is serious wanting.

My problem is not that these people have different opinions. That's normal enough. My problem is that they want to claim that science is wrong, have no theory of what is wrong with it and can't agree among themselves what the evidence points too and yet they want to make truth claims about these matters. And want to claim that they are open-minded. Well, open-minded and confused by an underlying dogmatic position are not the same thing.

And we have the Kansas city school board wanting to redefine science. This from the Washington Post (via Eschaton )

The Kansas school board's hearings on evolution weren't limited to how the theory should be taught in public schools. The board is considering redefining science itself. Advocates of "intelligent design" are pushing the board to reject a definition limiting science to natural explanations for what's observed in the world.

If you are uncomfortable with the truths of science then change the definition of science. Make your own truth or redo reality to make your truth fit in. The next thing we'll hear is that they are complaining about moral relativism. Science relativism is somehow OK.

Back to the makers of truth in the Administration: Today we hear this from Whitehouse spokesman, Scott McClellan referring to the Newsweek confusion over the use of the Koran in interrogations:

The report has had serious consequences. People have lost their lives. The image of the United States abroad has been damaged. I just find it puzzling.

I find it puzzling that he forgot to note that US policy in general has done the same thing. In fact, it does not appear that the truth of the Newsweek article is very important. What is important is that the press did it rather than the Administration.

And then we have Rumsfeld being unhappy about being criticized by the Overseas Basing Commission accusing them of disclosing classified information and being "unhelpful."

". . . some of the information may have been classified."

"Some of the information, we already know, that was posted on their Web site, has given concern to some of the countries we've been negotiating with, because it revealed our negotiating position in a way that we hadn't previously discussed with the other countries, which is notably unhelpful," Rumsfeld said."

The problem with all this is that everything in the report was public before the publication of the report. It may or may not have been "unhelpful." But that is different than "classified." But this is true only if you force reality to match your position rather than the other way around.

And then there is the on going lie about social security but let's not go there today.

Perhaps they believe as Mark Twain said in a 1879 speech,

I don't mind what the opposition say of me so long as they don't tell the truth about me. But when they descend to telling the truth about me I consider that this is taking an unfair advantage.