Sandwalk: Fahrenheit 451 in 2007

Friday, January 05, 2007

Fahrenheit 451 in 2007

Fahrenheit 451 is a movie about a future society where books are banned. The main protagonist is a fireman who burns books. (Apparently, books catch fire at 233°C, which translates to 451°F using the quaint, old-fashioned, way of measuring temperature that was common back in 1966.)

A new version of the movie is scheduled for 2007. Don't wait for it. If you haven't seen the Truffaut version, rush out to your video store right now and rent it. You won't regret it.

On a completely unrelated issue, (

) there is a movement to ban the sale of some books at the Grand Canyon National Park.

Read the full story on the NCSE website [Renewed concern about creationism at Grand Canyon National Park]. It looks like lots of people have their knickers in a knot over the sale of a creationist book that promotes Young Earth Creationism. Since the American National Park Service is a government agency, the sale of creationist books on government land is a major threat to the union.

A group called the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) wants the National Park Service to ban the creationist book; Grand Canyon: A Different View. The issue is complicated because it's tied up with the claim that park rangers are being muzzled by the Bush administration. There's a suggestion that rangers aren't allowed to tell visitors the real age of the Grand Canyon for fear it will insult YEC's. Wesley Elsberry does a pretty good job of getting to the truth over on The Panda's Thumb.

Of course, park rangers should promote the truth about science and the formation of the Grand Canyon. If this offends YEC's then let them go somewhere else for their vacation. (Las Vegas isn't far away.)

However, I'm troubled by book banning. I'm against it. Not only does it not make sense (have the book banners been in any other bookstore recently?), but it sends the wrong message. As a scientist, I don't fear anyone who wants to challenge science. We have truth and rationality on our side and that should be the tools we use to defeat the anti-science forces. Exposing their stupidity is part of the objective and for that we need to make their books available.

Using the law to suppress our opponents is not the best strategy. It won't achieve the objective we seek, which is to win the hearts and minds of the people. It's time to put aside the legal wranglings and concentrate on promoting rational thinking.

1 comment :

Anonymous said...: PEER's press release stating that park rangers can't use science in discussing the age of the canyon is absolutely false. Read my blog for more details. I totally agree that banning books and supressing other views is not the way to go here. It is very Fahrenheit 451. Great post!; Friday, January 05, 2007 2:36:00 PM

Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)

Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Peter Atkins

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake. Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory. Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat. Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True

I once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000

It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma

One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick

There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins

Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod

The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.

Richard Lewontin

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Friday, January 05, 2007

Fahrenheit 451 in 2007

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