There's a list of common propaganda techniques at [Propaganda and Debating Techniques]. It's well worth reading in order to familiarize yourself with common fallacies that we all commit from time-to-time.Some of the tricks are quite subtle. For example, there's The Appeal to Stupidity.
Appeal To StupidityThe IDiots are really, really good at this kind of trick although, in fairness, it may not be a debating trick in their case. Maybe they really are stupid.
Flaunt an anti-intellectual attitude, and belittle knowledge, wisdom, intelligence and education.
This technique is closely related to "Common Folks" -- "There ain't nobody here but us stupid common folks. I'm just a regular ignorant Joe, just another man of the people."
Here's an example from a recent posting on Uncommon Descent where someone named Granville Sewell describes his view of Michael Behe's latest book [Trench warfare, not an arms race]. Apparently this person wrote an email message to Behe where he said,
I still insist you don’t need to know any biology at all to have predicted your main conclusions, all you need to know is the second law of thermodynamics: natural forces don’t build bridges, they just destroy them*. But no one will listen to you unless you do know some biology, so I’m glad there are people like you who look at the details and arrive at the same obvious conclusions.Hmmm, I wonder why nobody will listen to you just because you don't know anything about biology?
Granville Sewell then goes on to make his point even more clearly.
Progress in the battle between Darwinism and ID is judged, by both sides, by who has the most Nobel prize winners and National Academy of Science members (they do!), but for me the whole issue has always been extremely simple. It’s not too complicated for the layman to understand, it’s too simple for the scientist.Yes siree Bob! Them smart scientists are just too smart for their own good. You have to be a regular ignorant Joe to appreciate why Darwinism is wrong and the IDiots are right. A classic appeal to stupidity.
Boy, you just can't make this stuff up, can you?
Granville Sewell is a Professor of Mathematics at the Un. of Texas, el Paso. He has written several papers,none published in a peer reviewed journal of course, claiming that the 2nd law of thermodynamics is violated by evolution. Prof. Sewells' ignorance of biology is exceeded only by his ignorance of physics.
ReplyDeleteSewell's ideas have been thoroughly eviscerated by Jason Rosenhouse. Sorry, I can't supply a link.
ReplyDeleteBob
Paley didn't need thermodynamics. And most scientists would NOT agree that thermodynamics impedes evolution.Certainly not the physicists.
ReplyDeleteArguments of "mechanistic impossibility" like those made by Behe for some evolutionary transitions, have a long history of mistakes when confronting well- documented facts of our natural history, the true history of life on earth. In each case they have revelaed more about the incomprehension of the actual mechanisms.
Lord Kelvin said an old earth was physically impossible. Continental drift was rejected because plate tectonics was not yet understood. Evolutionary mechanisms would not allow a dinosaur to have given origin to a bird. An so forth.
So now, some evolutionary steps are being argued to be mechanistically impossible by Behe (and, oh surprise, then argue for intelligent intervention, of course)
Sure, haha. Behe simply does not have a good understanding of evolutionary mechanisms. I think Behe is a cheap "experimentalist" who poses like the lab-coat modern scientist but knows nothing about natural history. He would be more enthusisatic about evolution if he would just take an honest look at it.
Sanders wrote He [Behe] would be more enthusisatic about evolution if he would just take an honest look at it.
ReplyDeleteNot a chance in Hell. Behe is now too invested in the anti-evolution movement to think of changing his position.
Boy, you just can't make this stuff up, can you?
ReplyDeleteWell, you could try. But nobody would believe it. :-)
He has written several papers,none published in a peer reviewed journal of course, claiming that the 2nd law of thermodynamics is violated by evolution.
ReplyDeleteWorse is that Sewell has a math textbook (published by John Wiley and Sons) where an appendix reformulates the creationist argument.
Prof. Sewells' ignorance of biology is exceeded only by his ignorance of physics.
FWIW, Sewell have been debunked several times. Besides some actual math errors he ignores the physics to use exact differentials for quantities that aren't state functions and to invent 'entropies' that aren't mappable to microstates. It's a mess.
Oh dear, how did he get tenure without peer reviewed publications?
ReplyDeleteBy his reasoning, The Second Law of Thermodynamics would be violated every time a living thing eats something.
"By [Sewell's] reasoning, The Second Law of Thermodynamics would be violated every time a living thing eats something."
ReplyDeleteYou mean like when the TRUTH fish eats the Darwin fish on the bumper stickers?
It's amazing the number of professors of science or math who'd be horrified if you blundered into their subjects with no background spouting nonsense who think nothing of doing so regarding the subjects of others' expertise (e.g., a computer science professor at the University of North Carolina who purports to prove that radioactive dating doesn't work in support of his "literal reading" of Genesis).
Yes siree Bob! Them smart scientists are just too smart for their own good. You have to be a regular ignorant Joe to appreciate why Darwinism is wrong and the IDiots are right. A classic appeal to stupidity.
ReplyDeleteJust amazing.
A short quote from A Fish Called Wanda seems appropriate for Sewell et al - "To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people everywhere!"
Hey Jud, not all math professors would blunder into someone else's area and tell them that they are wrong to support the established facts of that area. :-)
ReplyDelete(I for one, wouldn't).
But I have taken something away from this: I usually teach a section of calculus based probability and statistics to undergraduates each year, and by reading up on evoution, I've learned some cool applications of the negative binomial distribution and will be presenting these to my class.
(brief background: the negative binomial distibution is usually presented as the sum of a finite number of independent random variables with a geometric distribution and can therefore be used in cases where mutations which are fixed in a population can be thought of as indepenent events with a geometric distribution with probability P.
But in evoution, the negative binomial distribution is often used to generalize the Poisson distribution where one is interested in the number of events that occur in a fixed period of time where the probability of occurance is NOT constant across the genome.
One funny thing about the ID-creationism propaganda gang at the Discovery Institute is that they don’t like Freud (normally his name is accompanied by the names of Marx and Darwin in the same sentence). Modern public relations was developed by Edward Bernays who was influenced by his uncle Sigmund.
ReplyDeleteThere's a saying back home: Dance with him what brung ya.
ReplyDeleteStupid is all Granville Sewell has to offer. Stupid is all Casey Luskin has to offer. Why would they try to offer soemthing else, which they don't have?
Bozo scares me.
ReplyDeleteThe appeal to stupidity was thoroughly squashed as far back as Socrates ....
ReplyDelete"Oh, so I'm incompetent to judge, and you are?
Right, then perhaps you'll let this stupid old man (Socrates) ask a few questions of the "Expert" then?"
Followed by collapse of "Expert" ...
And yes, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics only applies to CLOSED systems.
The Earth is not a closed system, since there is an external energy-input .....