ADVERTISEMENT



Google       

Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Religion & Law Blogs -> Thoughts in a Haystack

OR PHONE (866) 635-1838 for Bankruptcy Help, (866) 635-6190 for Divorce,
(866) 635-2689 for Personal Injury or (866) 635-9402 for Criminal Defense

Find a Local Lawyer

Bankruptcy (866) 635-1838
Divorce (866) 635-6190
Personal Injury (866) 635-2689
Criminal Defense (866) 635-9402

Bookmark

Religion & Law

: Thoughts in a Haystack

In the Land of the Inane

By John Pieret

ADVERTISEMENTS

Can David Klinghoffer become any more intellectual inane?

Given his starting point, that is a close question, but there is no doubt that he's in there giving it the good ol' college try.

His latest attempt is contained in a post at his blog, Kingdom of Priests, entitled "Charles Manson, Evolutionist." The entire basis for that characterization is a quote from "talent scout Gregg Jakobson, who spent many hours, over the course of a year and a half (1968-69), talking with Manson about his philosophy." In Jakobson's secondhand account of Manson's ravings (calling them a "philosophy" is inanity number one):

... Charlie "believed there were different levels when it came to race, and the white man occupied a higher level than the black." This was why Charlie was so strongly opposed to black-white sex; "you would be interfering with the path of evolution, you would be mixing up nervous systems, less evolved with more evolved."

Amazingly, Klinghoffer, no doubt because he knows his commetariat, who are quite good at refuting his nonsense, will bring it up if he doesn't, has the gall to say this with a straight face:

Manson also claimed to find justification in the book of Revelation and the Beatles' White Album, though any genuine link with those sources was purely a product of his twisted imagination. By contrast, in The Descent of Man and elsewhere, Charles Darwin wrote of degrees of racial superiority and of racial conflict and genocide as inevitable features of biological evolution.

Of course, modern evolutionary theory (which it is inane to expect someone with a twisted imagination to understand) holds that "race" is nothing more than a group of minor variations in local populations of a single species species, H. sapiens ... exactly the sort of evolution that the Discovery Institute keeps telling us that Intelligent Design Creationism fully accepts. To the extent that Darwin was wrong about the "superiority" of one human group over another (which bore a lot in common with the American exceptionalism that many evolution deniers still proclaim and certainly was no worse than the Biblical defense of slavery and discrimination common both before and after the Civil War), modern science has rejected those notions. Darwin, unlike the author of Revelation, was and is no prophet and no scientist has proclaimed his writings to be "inerrant." In fact, since modern science and ID share the same attitude toward race, Manson is no more an "evolutionist" than he is an IDer.

Besides the blatant try at guilt by association (notwithstanding a feeble disclaimer) and the special pleading that exuses past errors of Bible believers but not scientists, the whole of Klinghoffer's screed is based on a fallacious Argument from Consequences. According to Klinghoffer, "Ideas have consequences" and the fact that he thinks the consequences are bad is, to him, "more than a good reason to take a second look at the science behind it." While he makes noises to the effect that he understands that the supposed consequences do not "mean that the Darwinian idea is false as a scientific description of how life developed," he fails utterly to then explain why it is any grounds to take any second look at the science.

He does, however, probably unwittingly, reveal exactly what ID is: an attempt to come up with any excuse at all, no matter how lame or bereft of logic, why evolution is not true solely because he and the other IDers do not like what it means for their narrow sectarian beliefs.
.

Full post as published by Thoughts in a Haystack on August 10, 2009 (boomark / email).

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.
Lawsuits and Settlements

Related Searches

























































































































US Law
#1 Online Legal Resource













Your Blog Subscriptions
Subscribe to blogs

10,000+ Law Job Listings
Lawyer . Police . Paralegal . Etc
Earn a law-related degree
Are you the author of this blog? Adding USLaw.com to your Blogroll increases relevance. You qualify to display a USLaw Network badge.
Suggest changes to this blog's description or nominate another for inclusion. Register for updates.


Practice Area
Zip Code:

Contact a Lawyer Now!






0.0022 secs (from cache 11/03/26 10:09:35)