The Curiously Dissappeared [mysteriously reappeared] Primary Evidence And Why It Really Does Matter In Real Life

Update:  I don't know if it has anything to do with me posting this, but within an hour after I did, the link I mentioned started working.  Spooky?  Or something else?  Synchronicity?   But I will leave up the introductory passage.

This morning I went looking for the previously available online images and transcripts of letters to and from Charles Davenport which I consulted in preparing my posts on the topic of eugenics and, oddly, none of them seem to be available anymore. Not from the Dolan DNA Learning Center at Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory, not from various British sources where such things could be found as recently as two years ago.   Not on my computer, not on the computer of one of my siblings which I also tried.

If you google "Charles Davenport Francis Galton letter" you can see some barely legible images of them (as of this morning)  but I can't get links to the legible ones I used to work with. Since beginning this research I've noticed I wasn't the only one who was finding those links, a number of mainstream authors were exposing the record that previously had only been of interest to fundamentalists opposed to the teaching of evolution.  If that has anything to do with why I can't present you with a link to the image of the letters which you could read for yourself,  I can't say.  I can say that the letters exist, they have been read, they do constitute absolute proof of the direct link from the first generation of eugenicists to the American, Canadian and other eugenics programs, including racists such as Davenport who were involved with Nazi eugenics, they aren't going away and their existence and their content isn't deniable except by lying or lying about them.  They shouldn't be disappeared online.   Neither are such published sources as the autobiography of Francis Galton, the biography of him by his student, the eminent geneticist and cold blooded eugenicist Karl Pearson, etc.  While those were ignored or unread, they lay out the same lines of connection that the letters prove.

Whether or not it is liked by those who propped up the post-war misinformation campaign that Michael Shermer was spouting in the interview I linked to yesterday morning,  the links from the Holocaust to Darwin's inner circle are clear and obvious and fully documented by the men, almost all of them scientists, who comprised those multiple and very short chains, going back from Nazis such as Ploetz through those such as Leonard Darwin and Charles Davenport, to the generation of Ernst Haeckel and Francis Galton who provides the link to Charles Darwin as his inspiration, publishing the letter Charles Darwin wrote to him expressing his enthusiasm for Galton's first book developing eugenics, Hereditary Genius, a book Charles Darwin cited, as reliable science many times in his second major work on the topic of evolution, The Descent of Man.

The post-war iron curtain erected to separate the Holocaust from the fictional Charles Darwin which was also created at that time, can only be sustained by lies disproved by his words and the words of people who knew him as intimately as his own children and his closest scientific colleagues.  Those words are out, the Darwin Industry should try to live with that and not attempt to continue with the lie.

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In my second post I put up yesterday, I noted that the American biologist Charles Davenport was a direct link between American eugenics and the Nazi eugenics program, which is inseparable from the mass murders of the Holocaust.
That link is undeniable because Davenport left the damning evidence in abundance, as did a large number of other American, British, etc. scientists who were involved in or enthusiastic about eugenics.   I have noted before that in correspondence between Davenport and Leonard Darwin, the son of Charles Darwin and the head of the British Eugenics Society discuss their attempts to promote eugenics in Germany at a time it was widely opposed - in the 1920s - Leonard Darwin doubting they'd succeed because of the "conservatism" of the German scientists.

If that were not enough to prove the case, Davenport provides a direct link directly into Darwin's inner circle through his correspondence with Francis Galton.

My dear Galton:  Your postcard of Oct. 14, just received I thank you for for taking the trouble to reply - You must think me a nuisance to add thus even a letter to your correspondence. But I must tell you of recent events here.

As the enclosed printed matter will show in some detail there has been started here a Record Office in Eugenics. - So you see the seed sown by you is still sprouting in distant countries.   And there is great interest in Eugenics in America,  I can assure you.   We have a plot of ground of 80 acres, near New York City, a house with a fire proof addition for our records.  We have a superintendent, a stenographer and two helpers besides to train field workers.  These are all associated with the Station for Experimental Evolution, which supplies Experimental Evidence of the methods of heredity. We have a satisfactory income for a beginning and have established very cordial relations with institutions.

I want to tell you how much I have enjoyed reading your autobiography.  You have quite put yourself into it;  and that makes it much more valuable than any "Life" by another hand.  It would please you to realize how universal is the recognition in this Country, of your position as the founder of the science of Eugenics.   And, I think, as the years go by, humanity will more and more appreciate its debt to you.   In this country we run "Charity" mad.  Now, a revulsion of feeling is coming about, and people are turning to your teaching.  With best wishes for continued strength and health & expression of my professional esteem,  Yours faithfully,  Chas B. Davenport  (Eugenics Records Office, #2094)

Just as Francis Crick in 1970 was finding eugenic inspiration from Karl Pearson's biography of Galton, the founder of eugenic, Charles Davenport was finding inspiration from Galton's autobiography as he was beginning the campaign of eugenics in America, sixty years earlier.   And Charles Davenport was, actually, a participant in Nazi eugenics, during the Nazi regime.   He was on the editorial board of two German magazines founded during those years to promote the Nazi's eugenics practices, Zeitschrift für Rassenkunde und ihre Nachbargebiete and the Zeitschrift für menschliche Vererbungs- und Konstitutionslehre.  The name of the second one is especially chilling in its English translation,  The Journal for Human Heredity and Constitutional Doctrine.  He had, before the Nazis took power, promoted eugenics in Germany as elsewhere.   I found that information in the book  Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism by Stefan Kühl.   the passage dealing with that is, I think, too willing to still allow the distinction between science and politics that Davenport used to mask his support for the Nazis.

With the topic of eugenics, which was from the beginning a call by scientists to apply their theories to the human population using the force of law, that distinction is a convenient but utterly transparent lie.  As early as 1873 George Darwin*, with the support of his father, wrote  "On Benefical Restriction to Liberty of Marriage," calling for the legal dissolution of marriages on the basis of mental illness, involuntarily, obviously, as his modest proposal included making it impossible for those who regained their mental health to resume those marriages.  Not to mention other pretty horrible ideas.  He noted other eugenicists, such as Greg asserted the "necessity of coercion" even earlier than that.  Again, this was already eugenics, ten years before Galton gave his new science its name.   Eugenics, from the beginning was scientists (even those such as George Darwin, an astronomer not arguably professionally competent in that area) insisting on becoming part of the political and legal processes in order to coerce people to have children only as they approved, insisting their right to determine who should and who should not have children.   As natural selection, the foundation and motivation for eugenics, is founded on the political-economic theories of Malthus, it is ridiculous to pretend that it and its derivations are separable from politics.  That alone makes its casual acceptance as a basis for activity in human life ripe for disaster.

*  George Darwin had read Galtons' Hereditary Genius before his father and in his congratulatory letter to Galton, Charles Darwin noted his son's enthusiasm for it.   As I noted in one of my posts, Francis Darwin, in his early biography- letter collection his and George's father, Charles Darwin, noted that George Darwin's articles were "eugenics".

Update:  While I am entirely opposed to teaching creationism in public schools as science, it's a pathetically poor excuse to pretend this evidence doesn't exist if creationists were the ones who first noticed what it means.   If we're supposed to favor teaching evolution BECAUSE IT'S TRUE, BECAUSE IT'S WHAT REALLY HAPPENED,  then the same standard makes exposing the documentary and historical record of these scientists just as much of a virtue for the very same reason.   Lying about that record is as much a denial of reality as insisting that the diversity of life came about on the first six days of a little over six thousand years.   See my posts mentioning Paul Feyerabend several days ago about low standards of scholarship acceptably practiced among those who wrap themselves in the mantle of "the enlightenment".

Update to This Morning's Post

Someone is quibbling about the textbook used by the class taught by the famous John Scopes of the "monkey trial" mentioned in the post below, A Civic 
Biology.   Passing by the temptation to go in depth into implications of the title "Civic," it is impossible to not see the author and publisher thought they were providing high school students with information that should inform their activities as citizens, especially in regard to their role as voters in a republic.   The author made that purpose explicit in the introduction.

With this end in view the following pages have been written. This book shows boys and girls living in an urban community how they may best live within their own environment and how they may coöperate with the civic authorities for the betterment of their environment. A logical course is built up around the topics which appeal to the average normal boy or girl, topics given in a logical sequence so as to work out the solution of problems bearing on the ultimate problem of the entire course, that of preparation for citizenship in the largest sense.

Because of that, the passages promoting racism, class prejudice, etc. are especially worth considering in regard to the topic of this morning's post.   For many of the students who would have used the textbook in one of the few science courses they are likely to have taken, what it said was certainly what science meant to them.   The same is true for everyone, scientists included, everyone's "science" is limited to what is presented to them as representing science.  Science only exists in the minds of people, it doesn't have any independent existence.

Eugenics.—When people marry there are certain things that the individual as well as the race should demand. The most important of these is freedom from germ diseases which might be handed down to the offspring. Tuberculosis, syphilis, that dread disease which cripples and kills hundreds of thousands of innocent children, epilepsy, and feeble-mindedness are handicaps which it is not only unfair but criminal to hand down to posterity. The science of being well born is called eugenics.

The Jukes.[*]—Studies have been made on a number of different families in this country, in which mental and moral defects were present in one or both of the original parents. The "Jukes" family is a notorious example. The first mother is known as "Margaret, the mother of criminals." In seventy-five years the progeny of the original generation has cost the state of New York over a million and a quarter of dollars, besides giving over to the care of prisons and asylums considerably over a hundred feeble-minded, alcoholic, immoral, or criminal persons. Another case recently studied is the "Kallikak" family.[35] This family has been traced back to the War of the Revolution, when a young soldier named Martin Kallikak seduced a feeble-minded girl. She had a feeble-minded son from whom there have been to the present time 480 descendants. Of these 33 were sexually immoral, 24 confirmed drunkards, 3 epileptics, and 143 feeble-minded. The man who started this terrible line of immorality and feeble-mindedness later married a normal Quaker girl. From this couple a line of 496 descendants have come, with no cases of feeble-mindedness. The evidence and the moral speak for themselves!

Parasitism and its Cost to Society.—Hundreds of families such as those described above exist to-day, spreading disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites.

The Remedy.—If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with success in this country.

Blood Tells.—Eugenics show us, on the other hand, in a study of the families in which are brilliant men and women, the fact that the descendants have received the good inheritance from their ancestors. The following, taken from Davenport's Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, illustrates how one family has been famous in American History.

Davenport is, of course, Charles Davenport, biologist, professor of Zoology, the first director of the Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory, a major figure in American and world eugenics, scientific racism, a promoter of eugenics, including in Germany during the period when it was not government policy and after it was made law by the Nazis.  He had extensive ties with German organizations and the government in the Nazi period, well into its eugenics program, even after the start of the war when the genocide was underway.

If you wanted to force me to continue to produce evidence that eugenics, even in its most homicidal forms was part of mainstream science you couldn't have found a better way to do it.  I will write more on this tomorrow because it is the perfect example of why it is absolutely necessary to admit and to always keep in mind what the limits of science are and the consequences of mistaking ideological materialism for an aspect of scientific method.

*  The stories of the "Jukes" and the "Kallikak" families are examples of inventing evidence and passing it off successfully as science.  More recent research has pretty well debunked it, though it is still cited as if it were actual fact.  The creation of fictional science by scientists, which becomes an actual AND EFFECTIVE part of science as it really exists in the world is notably not prevented by either the methods nor the practices of scientists.  The claim that scientists don't do that kind of thing is both false and dangerous to the acceptance of valid science.

"The Nazis gave it a bad name and I think it is time something was done to make it respectable again." Blatant and Dangerous Lies

In researching one of my short posts the other day, I came across a very good example of the ongoing dishonesty that has become habitual in the popular culture, a result of the concerted PR campaign of the "skeptics" who are identical with the "new atheists".  This short interview with Michael Shermer on the occasion of his latest book is full to the brim with that kind of stuff, and with such a superficial series of soft-ball questions, the "World Science Festival" does little more than set him up to say what is entirely predictable. 

The book Shermer was peddling was most ironically named "The Moral Arc". That irony can be seen in the lack of honesty he exercised as he was pushing it. One of the most serious of the lies Shermer told was in this exchange, on a topic I've become very interested in over the past decade.  

WSF: What about instances where scientists have behaved badly—like the Tuskegee experiment?

Shermer: I wouldn’t even put things like that down as science screwing up.

In the case of, say, eugenics as employed by the Nazis, that wasn’t science, that was pseudoscience. First of all, the Nazi regime was not a scientific regime; it was really a throwback to Romanticism. It was a rejection of Enlightenment secular values and science and reason. It said that blood and soil and race are the dominant things, and our race is the dominant one, and they used and abused science to that end. So you can’t lay the blame on science. I think science is neutral in that regard and can be misused, but the application of scientific process to solving social problems gives you better governments.

The status of eugenics in the 1920s-1940s as science,  in fact it's status as science for the entire period of its development and even till today, couldn't be clearer. The attempt to deny that mainstream scientists invented eugenics, developed it, instituted its racist, even genocidal application and its semi-covert promotion after the Second World War is a massive lie.  

But in order to understand that you have to look at science as it really exists in the real world instead of in self-serving and special definitions in service to an, ironically, romantic view of science of the kind promoted by commercial "skepticism".    

That eugenics was the invention of a scientist whose status as a scientist working in science when he did it can't possibly be clearer.   Francis Galton, the inventor of eugenics was one of the major scientific polymaths of his generation in Britain, his acceptance as a scientist and his work as science couldn't be clearer. Many of his discoveries are widely used in science, today, he hasn't been demoted to the status of a non-scientist.  I would guess, though I haven't really done the calculation, that more of his science is in current use than that of another 19th century polymath I mentioned the other day, Hermann von Helmholtz.   

That he based his eugenics on accepted science, natural selection, is obvious both by his testimony, the testimony of Charles Darwin,  other scientists of his day and up till today is also incontestable.   For anyone who isn't familiar with my blog, I have gone into that question exhaustively, twice and have continued looking into it and the case proving that is massive, based on primary documentation and directly proven, is absolute in the way that historical documentation can achieve.  It is not merely presumable on the basis of circumstantial evidence.   And I do assert that the case is proven because the definitive information required to prove that case is provided in the words of Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, those scientific contemporaries and colleagues of both men and the people who knew Charles Darwin better than anyone else in the next generation, his children.   You can read those in the post indexed at that last link. 

The link of that British eugenics to German eugenics is, as well, proven and unambiguous in the person of Darwin and Galton's closest German colleague and collaborator, Ernst Haeckel.   Through Haeckel and the generation of students of science he and his German associates taught, you get directly to those such as Alfred Ploetz who were directly involved with Nazi eugenics.   His ideas were heavily influenced by his membership in the ironically named "Freie wissenschaftliche Vereinigung"  "Free Scientific Society" whose activities centered on the study of the scientific writings of Charles Darwin and Ernst Haeckel.   And Ploetz was only one figure in German science relevant to the identification of German eugenics as, at that time, accepted as mainstream science.  Everyone I've mentioned, so far, was undeniably held to be a scientist by other scientists in that period and today.  Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, Ernst Haeckel, Alfred Ploetz, and I could go on to list an enormous number of mainstream scientists of that period in the development of eugenics, university science programs and departments which produced research explicitly identified as eugenics and even science textbooks, produced by teachers and professors with science degrees, teaching even explicitly racist eugenics as reliable science. 

I would, if I had more time, go into the extremely important issue of American eugenics' direct contribution to Nazi eugenics, which is also incontrovertible except through lies and the omission of primary source evidence but the direct German line is also indesputable and  both primarily a matter of scientists asserting that eugenics was reliable and established science.  For an example, the high school biology textbook which John Scopes was using at the time of his trial, A Civic Biology, was written by George William Hunter, who, among other things, was enough of a scientist to have taught Zoology at The University of Chicago and a writer of science textbooks which were among the more widely used ones to teach science in the United States.   That is only one of many, many documents identifying eugenics as mainstream science which are available, complete, online. 

The direct line continuing from Alfred Ploetz into Mein Kampf runs through the science textbook Grundriss der Menschlichen Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene,  Priniciples of Human Heredity and Racial Hygiene  by Eugene Fischer, Fritz Lenz and Erwin Baur.   Hitler had been supplied with their textbook while he was in Landesberg prison, during the time he was writing Mein Kampf.   He read lots of books there and credited his reading during that time to providing his "free education at the public expense".   It is only reasonable to acknowledge that his science education was largely dependent on that book by three mainstream scientists. 

- Fischer was a doctor, an anthropologist and a eugenicist, holding academic positions in science at the University of Berlin and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. From what I read, online, after the fall of Nazism he tried to deny the role of his science in the genocidal program of the Nazis.   Essentially what the statement I'm criticizing does for all of the scientists involved with eugenics. 

- Lenz was a student of Alfred Ploetz, a geneticist working as well at the Kaiser Wilhelm Instutute and AFTER THE WAR, despite his role in the Nazi's genocidal regime, as Professor of Genetics at the University of Goettingen.

- Baur was a biologist and a geneticist,  listed several places as doing groundbreaking work in plant virology while he, as well, worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.   He died in 1933 so, alone of those three he can not be said to have had direct knowledge of the applied use of his science by the Nazis.

Their book directly cites science, from Darwin and Galton right up to the time they were writing it, it was, by any honest definition taken as science in the 1920s through the 1930s, its authors still called scientists, today.  It was a book of science, written by scientists which directly informed the Nazis eugenic program, which included mass murder, beginning with the "hygenic" murder of the disabled, continuing in the mass shootings of the Einsatzgruppen, the gas vans and the gas chambers of the death camps.  All of those inspired by the science of eugenics, all of them with the participation of scientists and doctors trained in science. 

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One of the 186 signers of the Humanist fatwa against the evil of newspaper horoscope columns was the famous geneticist and Nobel laureate, Francis Crick*.  In the post-war period and up till today, there is no more emblematic figure constituting a scientist than Crick, half of the famous Watson and Crick, credited with discovering the structure of DNA.   Less well known is that up till his death, Francis Crick believed that eugenics was science, he championed both eugenics and its application on the basis of race, he mounted a campaign of support among elite scientists for the scientific racist, Arthur Jensen.  

For anyone who has read a lot of the primary source material written by scientists on the topic of eugenics from before the Nazis made it all too temporarily disreputable, this letter by Crick to his fellow scientist, Bernard D. Davis, can seem like deja vu. 

22 April 1970

Dear Bernie

I have just read your paper "Threat and Promise in Genetic Engineering" and I feel I must write and tell you how good I think it is. I have thought a little about these problems, but I have never sorted things out as clearly as you have done. I particularly like your point (end of page 1, start of page 2) whether we should deliberately intervene. I also thought your remarks on polygenes were very much to the point and certainly lead one in the direction of eugenics. By a coincidence I have just started to read Karl Pearson's life of Francis Galton but I have not yet got as far as eugenic ideas. I am also very much in sympathy with your remarks (pages 5 and 6) on psychogenetics. But, in fact, I have found myself in agreement with almost everything you have said. The above points I have simply singled out for special mention.

I have a few small comments to make. Your comments at the top of page 14 reveal what I have always known, that you are a much more enthusiastic father than I am! Although I agree to some extent about what you say in a father's pride in his own offspring, I would point out to you that adoption is quite a common practice and the effects of this on the father can be studied experimentally without too much difficulty. Your remarks just before this about the problem of securing agreement on the traits to be selected, I don't think is really a difficult one. The target to aim for, as you imply, is high achievement, although many different types. What is to be avoided is one narrow criterion for selection.

The only positive ideas I have had on these problems myself are the following: Firstly, I think people who have twins, and especially identical twins, should be strongly encouraged, possibly by a financial inducement, to let one of them be adopted. Proper records of both children should be kept. The information which could be accumulated in this way would be invaluable. The cost would not be very great and I think people could easily be persuaded that what they were doing was for the greater good of society. In fact, I can imagine an advertising campaign to this end along the lines of 'donate a twin'. My other suggestion is in an attempt to solve the problem of irresponsible people and especially those who are poorly endowed genetically having large numbers of unnecessary children. Because of their irresponsibility, it seems to me that for them, sterilization is the only answer and I would do this by bribery. It would probably pay society to offer such individuals something like l,000 [British pounds] down and a pension of 5 [British pounds} a week over the age of 60. As you probably know, the bribe in India is a transistor radio and apparently there are plenty of takers.

Finally, let me say that although I agree with you that these are basically long term problems, I also agree that they will be upon us sooner than we realize and as soon as intelligent discussion is started on them the better.

With all good wishes

Yours sincerely

F. H. C. Crick

There is all the difference in the world between people choosing to limit the number of children they have and this kind of targeted - and racist - form of eugenics lite.  It doesn't sound all that dangerous until you consider what scientists trained and acculturated into this view of people as a herd to manage will do when their "voluntary" program fails to produce the result they identify as the goal.   If you read the original writings of the American and Canadian eugenicists before AND AFTER the Second World War, they can couch even the most obvious programs of genocide in the most rational sounding patter, even presenting their intentions of wiping out entire ethnic groups through sterilization as a benefit for those they are cutting off from the future and the surviving lines and society they claimed to be working on behalf of.  The need to put an English face on scientific genocide is something that really has to be done because pretending it's a "German problem" is dangerous.  As I pointed out above, there is nothing more obvious than that the Nazis explicitly cited the existing American eugenics programs, which preceded theirs by decades, as a precedent and justification of their first stage program and developed rapidly into the genocide. 

My point that eugenics, from its inception, through the years before the Nazis applied eugenics in their massive genocide programs and during that moral atrocity and in the post-war period was indisputably the work of  mainstream scientists of the highest repute and fame, even those held up as idols and heroes. If you want more and definitive evidence of what the sainted Crick had in mind, he pointed it out in this 1971 letter to Dr. John T. Edsall at the Department of Health Education and Welfare. 

... I don't think the small amount of money which is needed to start eugenics research will be in way compete with this.  The main difficulty is that people have to start thinking out eugenics in a different way.  The Nazis gave it a bad name and I think it is time something was done to make it respectable again.

As far as I can see, we are in agreement on all this, except perhaps for a slight difference of emphasis.

If that doesn't disturb you I hope it is out of ignorance of one of the major disasters in the history of the human species because the alternative can't but reveal your moral character as someone who would risk that history repeating itself.  Francis Crick and the scientists in the post-war period, certainly those old enough to be familiar with the crimes of the Nazis who envision repeating it don't get the benefit of the doubt on that matter. 

*  Crick is only one of the signatories of the Humanist "skeptics" document who was enthusiastic for eugenics in the post-war period.  As Crick is the one I've looked most at, I'll withhold other names of others for a later date.   Though another, Konrad Lorenz, was certainly aware of Nazi eugenics as it was happening because he was not only a participant, he was a scientific theorist of it.

These [papers relevant to the topic] were "Die angeborenen Formen moglicher Erfahrungen (1943) and "Durch Domestikation Verursachte Storungen" (1940).   In them Lorenz justifies the Nazi efforts to prevent interbreeding of persons of different so-called races (it must be noted that the German concept of race bore little relation to what most anthropologists, and certainly biologists, understand by the term).  Basically, Lorenz's argument was that since displays of waterfowl are species-specific, hybridiation destroys the integrity of the releasor mechanism andn leads to the destruction of the species.   By analogy, humans are believed to possess relasors for ethical and esthetic values which are lost through "hybridization."  

Yet Lorenz was held up in 1976 as an eminent figure in science, one qualified to participate with all those other scientists in the first major ideological campaign of Shermer's "skeptics" movement.   

Pavlov's Blogs: If They Want To Prove My Point About Atheists Not Reading Things Before Blathering I'm Powerless to Stop Them

But I Can Get Them To Do It

Why would I care about what people who can't navigate the complexity of an argument we might have gotten the first week of our Frosh Rhetoric class in our first semester think they think about something?   

As to what you've said, if people want to misrepresent what I said in a way that validates the point that blog atheists don't even bother to read what they comment on, demonstrating one of the points in the post they didn't read, I'm powerless to stop them. 

Update:  Open Post:   And sometimes they prove they can't tell the difference between one and two.   Thanks for the heads up, I did actually chuckle when I read it.

Roger Sessions: Symphony No.4 (1958)

Columbus Symphony Orchestra
Christian Badea, director

Session's 4th is one of his best.

More Fun With Feyerabend

Thinking more about Paul Feyerabend's fascinating short essay, The Strange Case of Astrology, from his book, Science in a Free Society, and especially considering what he said early in the developing sTARBABY scandal, before he could have known about it, it is remarkably prescient of not only that event which proved Feyerabends' contentions, more about it should be said.  The reason for that is that as early as 1978, the ongoing practices of "skepticism" and neo-atheism were set out in clear detail in it.

Even as he was writing the essay, the instigator of Objections to Astrology:
A Statement by 186 Leading Scientists, Paul Kurtz, and one of its signatories, George Abell, joined by the statistician Marvin Zelen were doing just what could be expected of people who held the view of science, scholarship and standards of integrity that the essay exposed.

For my own purposes, it is a good example of something I recently said about neo-atheists, even the scientists among them but, just as much so, the non-scientists, science journalist, bloggers, etc.  That they shared all of the sins of medieval scholastic scholars and none of their virtues.

Here's a passage from Feyerabend's provocative and rather brilliant essay:

Now what surprises the reader [of the Humanist anti-astrology statement] whose image of science has been formed by the customary eulogies which emphasize rationality, objectivity, impartiality and so on is the religious tone of the document, the illiteracy of the "arguments" and the authoritarian manner in which the arguments are being presented.  The learned gentlemen have strong convictions, they use their authority to spread these convictions (why 186 signatures if one has arguments?), they know a few phrases which sound like arguments, but they certainly do not know what they are talking about.(1) 

Take the first sentence of the "Statement."  It reads:  "Scientists in a variety of fields have become concerned with the increased acceptance of astrology in many parts of the world."

In 1484 the Roman Catholic Church published the Malleus Maleficarum, the oustanding textbook on witchcraft.  The Malleus is a very interesting book.  It has four parts:  phenomena, aetiology, legal aspects, theological aspects o witchcraft.   The description of phenomena is sufficiently detailed to enable us to identify the mental disturbances that accompanied some cases.  The aetiology is pluralistic, there is not just the official explanation, there are other explanations as well, purely materialistic explanations included.  Of course, in the end only one of the offered explanations is accepted, but the alternatives are discussed and so one can judge the arguments that lead to their elimination.   This feature makes the Malleus superior to almost every physics, biology, chemistry textbook of today.   Even the theology is pluralistic, heretical views are not passed over in silence, nor are they ridiculed;  they are described, examined, and removed by argument.   The authors know the subject, they know their opponents, they give a correct account of the positions of their opponents, they argue against these positions and they use the best knowledge available at the time of their arguments.

The book has an introduction, a bull by Pope Innocent VIII, issued in 1484.   The bull reads:  "It has indeed come to our ears, not without afflicting us with bitter sorrow, that in ...."  - and now comes a long list of countries and counties - "many persons of both sexes unmindful of their own salvation have strayed from the Catholic Faith and have abandoned themselves to devils ..." and so on.  The words are almost the same as the words in the beginning of the "Statement,"  and so are the sentiments expressed.  Both the Pope and the "186 leading scientists"  deplore the increasing popularity of what they think are disreputable views.  But what a difference in literacy and scholarship!

Comparing the Malleus with accounts of contemporary knowledge the reader can easily verify that the Pope and his learned authors knew what they were talking about.  This cannot be said of our scientists.  they neither know the subject they attack, astrology, nor those parts of their own science that undermine the attack.

It is a poor account of the superiority of materialistic "science" - or, rather as I'd call it, scientism - that they practice an inferior, though otherwise identical form of argument from authority with a late medieval Pope, placing ideas and practices they don't like on a modern Index Prohibitorum.   And that their scholarship is generally of a uniformly worse variety than that practiced by the authors of a witch-hunters manual.  And even as the atheists assert their superiority to even modern religious scholarship, which is conducted at such a superior level to that practiced by the pseudo-skeptics that its dismissal can only be out of the total ignorance or inability to make that comparison

That is the real practice of the pseudo-skeptics.  And, it has come to my attention, again, that, not infrequently, the pseudo-skeptics do them better by misrepresenting research and simply lying about the existence of even published, reviewed, rigorously conducted scientific research when it doesn't serve their ideological purposes.   And, as it pretty obvious from the people involved and their developing activities, as well as their polemics, that the "skeptics" were only a cover for the promoters of ideological atheism.   Their practices merely the extension of those which date back to the 19th century with the sleazy, dishonest Joseph McCabe and many others.

About twelve years after his critique of the statement of the 186 authorities,  Feyerabend also said in Three Dialogues on Knowledge:

I have no special love of astrology and much that is written in this area bores me to tears.  But astrology is an excellent example of the way scientists deal with phenomena outside of their area of competence.  They dont' study them, they simply curse them, insinuating that their curses are based on strong and straightforward arguments

If he had lived about fifteen or more years, he would have seen even more evidence of that in the early books of neo-atheism.   The frequently named "four horsemen" of neo-atheism aren't the heralds of the end of religion, they are the heralds of the new dark age we are in, one made all the darker for falsely taking the name "science" for its trade mark and label, even as the medieval variety took the name of Jesus in vain as they violated everything he taught.   They will likely do more damage to the reputation of science than they will religion.   It is noteworthy that almost forty years after the efforts of the 186 that the public understanding of science is not notably healthier and that its reputation is not what it was even as they issued their fatwa.

Update:  I decided that I should include Feyerabend's first footnote as it supported his assertion about the ignorance of the signatories.

1. This is quite literally true.  When a representative of the BBC wanted to interview some of the Nobel Prize Winners they declined with the remark that they had never studied astrology and had no idea of its details.  Which did not prevent them from cursing it in public.  In the case Velikowski the situation was exactly the same.  Many of the scientists who tried to prevent the publication of Velikowski's first book or who wrote against it once it had been published never read a page of it but relied on gossip or newspaper accounts.  This is a matter of record. Cf. de Grazia.  The Velikowski Affair,  New York 1966, as well as the essays in Velikowski Reconsidered, New York 1976.  As usual the greatest assurance goes hand in hand with the greatest ignorance. 

Roger Sessions: Symphony No.3 (1957)

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Igor Buketoff, director

More Hate Mail: I've Given Scandal

If anything I said wasn't true, point it out.   This place has the name it does for a reason, I say the forbidden, frequently and flagrantly.  

Hate Mail: The Point I Was Making Isn't The One The "Skeptics" Are Hoping For I'm Not Pro Astrology I'm Pro Honesty

My post last night mentioning CSICOP's sTARBABY scandal wasn't about astrology, it was about skeptics lying about their expertise and their low level of integrity and total lack of honesty.   It was also about incompetence, once proven, passed off as fact by scientists who knew it wasn't true,  in the interest of their promotion of materialist ideology.

For an ideological cult which disclaims such things as argument from authority, idol worship and blind credulity, they are notably reliant on all three to maintain a following in a large group of people whose "skepticism" consists of all three of those.   It has to because most of the self proclaimed "skeptics" are entirely lacking in the knowledge to even understand the issues involved in scientific research.

As the three major participants in the sTARBABY scandal, Paul Kurtz, George Abell and Marvin Zelen prove, even some people whose professional and academic fields require that knowledge failed to understand the issues involved.  George Abell was a rather prominent astronomer at UCLA and Marvin Zelen was a statistician who taught at Harvard, yet they were the ones whose incompetence led to, first the incompetently framed challenge made against the claims of the neo-astrologers Michel and Françoise Gauquelin, and then the ever worsening incompetence in handling it and then the wider cover up by them, Paul Kurtz,  the head of CSICOP and numerous other atheist-"skeptical" organizations, the central figure in American pseudo-skepticism.  And by all of the members of CSICOP who were aware of the scandal, competent to understand it and who, yet, did nothing and remained with an organization they knew were publishing fraudulent claims about science and the conduct of the Gauquelins.  

That group of CSICOP "Fellows" includes Carl Sagan, who as an astrophysicist and astronomer specializing in the solar system certainly understood the issues and Ray Hyman, whose grasp of statistics certainly was enough to have understood that aspect of the problem his colleagues made for themselves, though he may not have understood the physics of it.   I would add Martin Gardiner to that group of CSICOP superstars whose professional and media PR should have meant he understood the botch that Kurtz, Abell and Zelen made of the thing and the depth of dishonesty in the cover up.  If he's going to be held up as a mathematical genius, it's only fair to hold him responsible in this scandal.

And here, today, we find that such luminaries of the "skeptical" movement as James Randi and Michael Shermer are teaching young "skeptics" to misrepresent themselves as "experts" in "Communicating Skepticism to the Public".   Joined by such organizers as Susan Gerbic, whose intention is to turn popular online authorities as Wikipedia into tools of "skepticism".  And, since they are all conjoined, you can safely substitute any of the the words "materialism" or "scientism" or "atheism" for "skepticism" and you'll never be far off.

I have little in common with Dennis Rawlins, the ultra-skeptic, old line materialist and obnoxious atheist except a respect for the standards of science, a requirement to be honest and the need to correct mistakes in public statements about science.   We also share a skepticism in astrology, neo or old fashioned.   And if you doubt my characterization of him, look at his thoughts on Atheism and Religion  at his website, complete with many false statements and accusations.  Rawlins, in common with many of his ideology, doesn't care much for history when it doesn't say what they want it to, which is especially odd for someone with his CV.

I am skeptical of astrology or any other form of determinism, I'm not an absolutist on the issue, as Rawlins is. His pretty old fashioned materialism precludes one of the purported requirements of science, that all questions remain permanently open, that any claim of even long standing science can be subjected to new information and even overturned*.  Not being a dogmatic or ideological materialist, I prefer to take the claim of scientists that all questions are open to account for new information.  There are interesting critiques that can be made, even while maintaining my skepticism.   You don't get to break the rules of science based on whether or not you like what's being talked about, not while claiming that those rules are inviolable and required of everyone else.

The Strange Case of Astrology, the philosopher of science  Paul Feyerabend's  critique of Paul Kurtz's well known petition against astrology, the origins of both CSICOP and the challenge made against Gauquelin,  was interesting in pointing out how scientists both wanted to have extremely subtle effects of the sun and planets on organisms and each other recognized while denying any possible effects that they didn't like.  He also pointed out that few, if any, of the famous people who signed onto Kurtz's call for forbidding the topic of astrology in public life had studied it. Their objections to it were based, firmly in not knowing anything about its claims.  It's well worth reading in full as he makes some unusual and entirely rational and important points.**

The conclusion I drew from reading all of these things isn't that astrology is established or valid, it is that scientism and self-announced "skepticism" are just as liable to be wishful thinking and to lead to error and open dishonesty as any other area of human folly.   As the sTARBABY scandal proves, even a high degree scientific competence (Abell, Zelen, Sagan, Hyman) isn't a guarantee of avoiding folly and dishonesty when it's a question of protecting your ideological preferences.    Those whose scientific knowledge is very low, often consisting of what is more accurately termed urban myth and folk lore, are even more likely to be at the mercy of their cherished beliefs, in the case of scientism, one that I think is probably more difficult to question than Biblical Fundamentalism frequently is. You see, they have the oracle of "science" to guarantee it.

I read through Patrick Curry's analysis of the sTARBABY scandal  last night. It is very hard going because the years long mess they made of it added layer after layer of complication.  I would have to go through it for many hours to really understand all of the issues.   His conclusions are the easiest part of it to understand.

I don't think I need to stress how badly the Committee has handled the investigation of the Mars effect; the facts above speak for themselves.  Their work could now best function as a model and a warning of how not to conduct such investigations.   Given the ample internal (Rawlins) and external (Gauquelin) warnings that went suppressed or ignored, it is even difficult to accept protestations of "good faith" and "naivete" (Abell, 1981c).   Rawlins and Gauquelin are in fact, the only two major figures to emerge with scientific credibility intact.  It seems to me that this situation must call into question any further (unrefereed, at least)  CSICOP involvement in research on the Mars effect, and possible other "paranormal" areas.

I earlier mentioned that there are occasions in the history of science when a "sociological" explanation seems called for.  This seems to be one.  It would have to take into account such considerations as:  the nature of claims being investigated; undue involvement of scientists with media and publicity, or perhaps conversely, unique (especially  in America?) pressures of public-relations on science; considerations of where power resides in such an organization; and how it is exercised (financially?  publishing rights?);  and lastly, how information circulates, or fails to circulate.  (of SI [Skeptical Inquiry, the official publication of CSICOP, now CSI] policy, we are now aware; readers of SI alone are not so lucky. [Skeptical Inquiry was the major organ of the botch and the cover up.]  Also, there are a number of "big name" figureheads on the masthead;  are they aware of CSICOP behavior, which they presumably support?)

Of course, it could be argued - and has been (e.g. by Abell, 1981c) - that the entire testing of Gauquelin's work was a purely "personal experiment," and nothing to do with CSICOP.  This would involve believing that these experiments "just happened" to be run by the Chairman and Fellows of the CSICOP,  and be published in its official organ.  It would also overlook the fact that Rawlins was paid (starting Oct. 20, 1977) with CSICOP checks for his calculations; and contradict Abell's earlier (1978b) description of "the subcommittee that agreed to look into the Mars  effect on behalf of the Committee."  Finally, such backpedaling is unflattering to CSICOP; if true, it implies that an organization whose much-publicized raison d'etre is ".... Scientific Investigation..."  The scientific quality of its work, if we refuse disownment, is something that thankfully needs no further comment.

But, as mentioned, none of the major figures or the minor accomplices in the scandal ever suffered any serious loss of public credulity of professional consequences, some of the worst continued, in the intervening decades and today to be presented in the media as entirely reliable and even some of those, such as Paul Kurtz,  who proved their total incompetence, as experts.   James Randi, totally incompetent to understand science and a proven liar, deceiver and fraud, is held up as even a figure of science and promoted, by scientists as an ally and practically as a colleague. Prominent scientists associate with him and add luster to his PR events such as his Amazing Meetings.   Science journalism, when it comes to the pseudo-skeptics and the materialists practice the same standards as the journalists in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."   Apparently that's a standard of truth that can get you far in the world of "science," these days.

*  He shares that closed minded attitude with a lot of scientists, even some who will both share his dogmatic view of things while mouthing the claims that all scientific holdings are contingent and open to testing with new information.  It's a very old and illogical holding, one that isn't compatible with the very foundations of science in empirical observation.   A particularly bad case of it was from the 19th century scientific polymath, Hermann von Helmholtz.

"I cannot believe it.  Neither the testimony of all of the Fellows of the Royal Society, nor even the evidence of my own senses, would lead me to believe in the transmission of thoughts from one person to another independently of the recognized channels of sensation.  It is clearly impossible."

If he distrusted the evidence of his own senses on that question,  that would mean that his senses were unreliable, something that is frequently asserted by pseudo-skeptics but only when what is observed isn't to their liking.  That only impeaches the reliability of observation, one of the absolute requirements of science.  If he rejected the unanimous judgement of the Fellows of The Royal Society,  that would impeach the very substance of science which consists of the judgement of the majority of scientists working and publishing science at any given date.   Without those two things science as it's asserted to be, wouldn't exist.   But I've never found the materialists to be especially good at reflecting on things like that, they take so much as a given without understanding what it is they are taking as given.

As I've pointed out many times, materialism, at its most rigorous assertion, would invalidate not only all of science but the possibilities of objective observations or analysis and even the possibility of people discerning anything that had the transcendent property of being true.

**  It's also worth reading this paper which includes a long analysis of what Feyerabend said and why he may of said it.

It is unsurprising that Feyerabend was familiar with the Humanist
statement. He was well informed and widely read, with a keen sense for the wider cultural and intellectual scene. It is equally unsurprising that he disliked it, partly for its reliance on a crudely triumphalist account of the historical development of science, and partly because it evinced a range of intellectual attitudes to which he was starkly opposed.  Feyerabend offered three specific objections first, the "religious tone of the document; second, the weakness--or, in his preferred term, "illiteracy"--of the arguments; and, third, the authoritarian tone and style of the statement.  Rather than summarise each objection in turn, which Feyerabend does clearly enough anyway, Iwill focus only on those aspects germane to the theme of epistemic integrity. The core of Feyerabend's objections is that the authors and signatories of the  Humanist  statement criticise astrology by an appeal to their authority rather than by offering a carefully informed procedurally impeccable critical analysis and rebuttal of astrology.  With characteristically imaginative flair, this objection is presented byunfavourably comparing the statement with the Catholic Church's witch hunters manual, the  Malleus Maleficarum , also known as the Hexenhammer, or "The hammer of the witches"... 

Pseudo-Experts Peddling Pseudo-Expertise Online

It is something I'd noticed before but the practice of "skeptics" and other materialist ideologues to pretend that they have "math degrees" "science degrees" and, now, I suspect, "MDs" is rampant on comment threads.   Several times when I knew what the "expert" was saying was bosh I asked them some questions and found out that the person claiming that didn't even have a grasp of high school algebra.   I suspect this is something that is being encouraged by one or more of the pseudo-skeptical groups such as those that "edit" Wikipedia or ratfuck (sorry, no better word for it) such online resources as "Web of Trust".

There is evidence of this among the pseudo-skeptics.  At the 2005 James Randi cult's "Amazing Meeting" Randi conducted a workshop with Michael Shermer called "Communicating Skepticism to the Public."  During that session the participants were handed a manual that said, among other things,

“Becoming an expert is a pretty simple procedure; tell people you’re an expert. After you do that, all you have to do is maintain appearances and not give them a reason to believe you’re not.”  *

James Randi has no training as a scientist or, I believe, even a high school diploma.  As one of the more sleazy of the participants in the sTARBABY scandal, CSICOP's one and only "scientific investigation," he has had to confess his total incompetence in mathematics** that would be necessary for him to even read scientific research, never mind evaluate someone's competence.   I believe that Shermer has a degree in science of some kind but couldn't find any evidence that he's conducted research or published.  He's pretty much an opinionator, not a scientist.   It's pretty telling what his approach to science is if he would put his name on that kind of statement.

So, there are good reasons to suspect that the wider pseudo-skeptical-atheist online manifestation are taking up that advice and lying about their "expertise" to dupe the unaware and uninformed.  Which was pretty much the idea of pseudo-skepticism from the start.


*  Skeptics admire Randi’s belligerent style and his tireless activism in the skeptical cause. From 2003, he held an annual gathering of skeptics and atheists in Las Vegas called “The Amazing Meeting,” which was like a revivalist rally. Inspirational speakers included Richard Dawkins, Richard Wiseman and Michael Shermer. Participants were not just motivated but taught the tricks of the trade. For example, in the 2005 meeting, Randi and Shermer gave a seminar entitled “Communicating Skepticism to the Public: A Seminar on Promoting a Scientific View of the World.” Attendees were handed a manual that told them how to be a media skeptic: “Becoming an expert is a pretty simple procedure; tell people you’re an expert. After you do that, all you have to do is maintain appearances and not give them a reason to believe you’re not.”

In real science, becoming an expert requires qualifications and hard work, but as Randi and Shermer pointed out, the rules are different for skeptics. All you need is to form a club with like-minded people: “As head of your local skeptic club, you’re entitled to call yourself an authority. If your other two members agree to it, you can be the spokesperson too.”

Neither Randi nor Shermer are scientists, and their “scientific view of the world” is a fundamentalist belief system rather than science itself. For decades, skeptics have got away with deceit, dishonesty and ignorance by laying claim to the authority of science. Those who disagree with them were portayed as ignorant and irrational. But if skeptics want to be taken seriously, then they should be subject to the same kinds of quality control as genuine science. In the long term, the cause of science and reason will not be advanced by unscientific and irrational behaviour.

** And Randi was hardly the only sciency "skeptic" who proved that among the "skeptics"  "expert' and "authority" used as slogans aren't any guarantee of finding it in the contents.

 At this time Kurtz attempted to persuade Gauquelin to agree to the suppression of even my mild September 18 report. He also tried to dissuade Gauquelin from visiting me during the latter's April trip to San Diego. 
    He never told me any of this. Instead he pretended (as he had the previous year) that he might be willing to publish my report if KZA got to sum it all up afterward. And this is roughly how it was done eventually. 
    However, my challenge to call in outside refereeing (as Abell had promised in September-October 1976 Humanist) to determine the truth did not tempt the Committee. 
    During this period Randi would occasionally phone up for a friendly "just-happened-to-be-thinking-of-you" chat. l suspected he was trying to draw out of me statements of anger or of dissatisfaction. Despite his private rages Randi wished to make no public waves. When I asked him why, he repeated the tired old alibi that the occultist kooks would whoop it up if Kurtz fell. But he claimed that he had dressed down Kurtz (privately) in Washington in December. He stated without qualification that Gardner Hyman and he all supported my scientific position on the sTARBABY mess. (I knew, however, that he was telling all inquiring Fellows that a little old nonstatistician like himself just couldn't understand the problem.)

And Randi wasn't the only "expert" in pseudo-skepticism who was forced to admit their incompetence.   In his examination of the sTARBABY scandal, Richard Kammann said:

- George Abell sensibly wrote Paul Kurtz saying the Gauquelins had won that round, and he suggested getting on with the new test on American athletes. Rawlins used this "smoking gun" letter as proof that the trio knew the true situation right from the start, but the case is not strong. Abell specifically asks in the letter what Zelen saw in the data. Meanwhile, as I described in Part 1, Zelen fancied he saw two anomalies in the data that suggested a biased sample. In my "subjective validation" scenario, Zelen's erroneous statistics became the starting point for the trio's private belief that the Gauquelins had probably cheated. By the time the paper got to print, Zelen's skeptical approach had replaced Abell's; although the trio did not openly accuse the Gauquelins of fraud, they smothered the victory under a blanket of bogus side issues, partly achieved by deleting the favorable Mars results for female champions.

Against an "innocent goofs" theory, the trio was warned before publication that their statistics were wrong, once by Michel Gauquelin and once by Elizabeth Scott, Professor of Statistics at Stanford University. (Rawlins was not consulted.) Even worse, after the paper came out, neither Scott nor Gauquelin could get space in The Humanist for a reply.

- After reading the Rawlins expose in Fate magazine, I was only sure of one thing--if any part of his story were true, I could count on Gardner, Hyman, Randi and Frazier to set the record straight. It was a very long time before I gave up that belief.

CSICOP's first reply was to circulate some photocopied old letters to show (ad hominem) that Rawlins was a habitual troublemaker. Two months later, CSICOP mailed out two privately authored white papers, without taking an official stance.

In "The Status of the Mars Effect," Abell, Kurtz and Zelen simply re-hashed all the statistical errors that Rawlins (Gauquelin, Scott, Hyman, Tarkington) had protested. I did not see this, however, until I had spent hours analyzing four years of published statistics--the errors were even worse than Rawlins had stated, but most Fellows would never learn this.

- The Klass letter started a long and exasperating exchange in which he talked about everything but the statistical errors and the real cover-up. He kept me busy for a while answering irrelevant questions, while periodically attacking my objectivity, intelligence or integrity. From time to time, he threatened to expose my cover-up of scientific evidence he imagined he had uncovered. After he regularly ignored all my serious answers and questions, I nicknamed him T.B. Diago--the best defense is a good offense. He eventually fell back on the traditional Council stance--he didn't understand statistics.

Around March, Zetetic Scholar featured a review of Mars and CSICOP with a lead article by Patrick Curry who not only agreed with Rawlins and me about the Zelen test fiasco, but presented a good case for more bungling in the U.S. champions test. But Council had already adopted the line that ZS editor Marcello Truzzi was on a "vendetta" kick. Ad hominem be thy name.

I will point out that the passages are from Dennis Rawlins, one of the founding members of CSICOP, one of its "Councilors" until his ouster as a result of too much competence in statistics and too much honesty and Richard Kammann, a member of CSICOP who couldn't believe Rawlins' accusations until he went over the evidence and found, if anything, that Rawlins' understated the catastrophe.

None of the "skeptics" involved, who disgraced themselves, not even Abell and Zelen, whose professional competence as scientists didn't keep them from making some rather obvious and absurd errors in statistical analysis IN THEIR OWN FIELD, suffered any loss of "credibility" among the "Skeptics" cult.  Few of the "skeptical" scientists among the CSICOP "Fellows" resigned at the disgraceful behavior of Paul Kurtz and co. including such luminaries as Carl Sagan.   Such is the reliability of the "expertise" peddled by the pseudo-skeptics.

Update:  I found out that all of the numbers of the "Zetetic Scholar" are posted online, including the March issue mentioned above that goes into even more depth over the sTARBABY scandal.   I haven't read it yet, hope to soon, but here it is for anyone who wants to read more about how the "skeptics" conduct science.

Roger Sessions: Symphony No.2 (1946)

New York Philharmonic
Dimitri Mitropolos, director

It has to be significant for the difference in language and mood of Roger Sessions Second Symphony that the Great Depression, followed by the Second World War came between it and the first.  It is, if anything, even more mature than the first one, even more serious and profound.  I believe one other recording of it has been released, there should be at least a half dozen of all of them in the catalog.

Hate Mail: The Habit Of Jr. High Thinking Dupes Us Into A Dead End Of False Alternatives

The response to my criticism of the detour that the various Marxists, anarchists, etc. took the American left on for much of the past century has been a reminder of how much of that was based on a ruse, itself based in some rather juvenile and obviously false modes of thinking.   The most obvious of those is an inability to analyze and see past various artificially constructed false alternatives.   The simple and liberating fact is you can reject them both for the alternative that is already present in the aspirations of egalitarian democracy.

The assertion that either you have to support communists or you have to support the American right is as absurd as the idea that you either support the Yankees or the Red Sox.  You don't have to support either of them or be sucked into their rivalry, you can oppose both of them with equal vehemence and, in the political choice, with some actual substance to your opposition other than mere local chauvinism.   And with the choice between the crypto-fascism of the American right and the red-fascism of the communists, the articulation of that opposition is far more lucid.   They both are total disasters for human rights, human life, and the foundations of democracy and a decent, peaceful life.

Yet one of the ways in which the Marxists suckered the left was by holding up that choice, "which side are you on" based on the spectacles and show trials and rituals of degradation and unjust prosecutions of the red-scare.   Those were, of course, wrong.   However,  they were a mere shadow of those which happened as a matter of course in the Soviet Union, the occupied countries in Eastern Europe and everywhere else presented as being on the right road by the very same people.   That the communists' heroes were even worse than the vulgar anti-communists who went over the line in the United States by an enormous factor is certainly true.  If the Hollywood Ten had been the Leningrad Ten and they had gone up against Stalin instead of HUAC, they'd have almost certainly been shot, likely without trial, certainly without a fair trial or due process.   The number of artists and writers who were killed by Stalin is far, far  higher than those of his supporters in the United States who were jailed or even found it hard to get work under their own name.   The violations of constitutional rights here, under the despised bourgeois political system (which, by the way, you don't have to champion as it is, either) were insignificant as compared to those in the system championed by the American communists whose rights were violated.

Of course, those victims of the red-scare who had never supported Stalin or Lenin or Mao or even Marxism, are entirely sympathetic victims of the excesses of HUAC, etc.  They were not guilty of the massive hypocrisy that the Stalinists were for the period when his crimes were already known in the West.  The report on the Moscow show trials of the group under John Dewey* wasn't anything like the first credible report of the mass murders, those reports had been coming in from credible sources within months of the Revolution.

But the vulgar, distasteful excesses of the anti-communists here, the political use that Republicans, segregationists and others on the right made of anti-communism to attack people and ideas that had nothing in common with communism, their alliance with racists, segregationists, fascists and fans of Hitler were quite useful to the communists in getting them the one thing they ever got, the unearned and unwise sympathy of many on the left.   Their use of the antics of the anti-communists was similar to that of communism by the Republicans. The Republicans used communism and the fact that the communists here supported dictators as bloody, ruthless and horrible as any to scare voters into supporting them, the communists success was far more modest, they only duped an effective part of the real left into being their stooges, damaging the left as well.   Many of the most unwise choices of those on the left were forced by that dirty dance between the Republicans and the communists and when presented with the choices they had,  Americans knew they didn't want communism, even as they did want health care and a full range of other good things that the Republicans and corporations and the media successfully prevented by associating them with communism.

The one and only thing the Marxists in the United States ever accomplished in politics was the weakening, division and discrediting of the left.   Other than that their only accomplishment is their victimization by American fascists.   They are certainly not a choice that ever was a good one for the real left and many on the left knew that.   It was the day that I realized that the left owed them nothing and could cut them and their phonied up history and legend off it felt like a burden was lifted from me.  The tension of trying to square the support of civil rights, human rights and the morality essential to support them with any kind of sympathy for those whose basic political and intellectual framing would lead to their destruction disappeared.   It felt like I saw things clearly for the first time, even if I did have to give up the misplaced idolatry I'd been taught to practice.  I don't have to like or respect the Marxists who supported some of the biggest murderers, enslavers and oppressors in history just as I don't have to support the American right who championed other murderers, enslavers and oppressors.  If either of those alternatives took power here, they'd both do the same things to people, merely organizing the economy a bit differently.   With the development of Chinese communist-capitalism, you can't even count on that difference.

*  It's a fact that the committee of luminaries assembled under John Dewey was for the goal of rehabilitating Leon Trotsky, someone who, as Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman pointed out, rather convincingly, was no slouch when it came to the advocacy and use of violence, terrorism and the denial of rights and justice that the Dewey Commissioners complained he had been denied.  The fact is, he merely lost the power struggle with Stalin and managed to get away.   In reading more about the various reactions in the 1930s as the crimes of Stalin were being revealed in the West, it's striking how the intellectuals seem to worry, mostly, at times exclusively, for the lives and rights of various sects of Marxists, as compared to the millions of peasants, workers and others murdered.   Which certainly put the last nail in the coffin of my misplaced respect for them.

Update:  I should have added that a "Leningrad Ten" would have almost certainly been tortured into confessing, they and their families, including their children, many of whom would likely, as well, have been killed.   Remember that the next time you read the legend of the persecution of the actual Stalinists here, which wouldn't justify any violation of their rights, it would, though, force you to conclude that they were no heroes, either.

Roger Sessions - Symphony #1

Japan Philharmonic Orchestra
Akeo Watanabe, director

It is grotesque that this is the only recording of this symphony, one of the really great orchestral works by one of America's great composers.

Why Religion Belongs In Public Life And Political Discourse: An Example

Yesterday I reposted a piece I did on two passages in The Bible, the story of Susanna and the Elders in the Book of Daniel and the story of the woman caught in adultery from The Gospel according to John.   In thinking more about it I felt I should point out something about the passage from John because it includes about the strongest anti-capital punishment argument that could be made to a Christian, more than 80% of the population.

In the story, as you'll recall, Jesus challenged the accusers who wanted to stone the woman to death on their qualifications to do so.

“Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

It is unstated in the story but an article of faith for Christians that the only person, there, indeed, anywhere in the world, who met that qualification was Jesus.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.

Hebrews 4:16*

But he, himself, refused to carry out the law.

Then Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

She replied, “No one, sir.” Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, [and] from now on do not sin any more.”

It is certainly worth bringing up to serious Christians who favor the death penalty that they are violating the disqualification made by no less than Jesus, in imposing death on someone.   They pretend that they have a status that they couldn't have if the Epistle to the Hebrews was true, a status that only Jesus had (Catholics would include his mother) and he refused to throw the first stone against someone who had clearly violated a law for which the legal penalty was death.   By doing that they are clearly putting themselves above Jesus.

Who the hell do they think they are?

*  Yes, I know the Epistle to the Hebrews is widely accepted as not being authentic by scholars but it is by most of the large denominations.

What Information and The Only Reason That Is Really Important

It is impossible to disagree with the recycled, seven year old item originally posted at TomDispatch, up at Alternet by Rick Shenkman about the extent to which Americans are dangerously ignorant and how dangerous that is.  I think it's fairly safe to say his approach in reproaching Americans isn't going to do a thing to help fix the problem.  Since the chapter is an excerpt from a book, he might have had some ideas in that but I don't have the book, I only have this excerpt and it's hardly news that Americans know dangerously little about the world, history, etc.

Perhaps I'll go back later today and look at comments to see how self-congratulating they are that the readers of Alternet are so much smarter than the vast majority of people and the group shunning of the ignorant masses, having fact checked and analysed a number of Alternet articles and comments in the past, they don't have nearly as much to brag about as they like to pretend they do.

From looking around for more of what Shenkman said apparently he did have some ideas about how to fix the problem, even mentioning the unmentionable, that television plays an enormous role in that ignorance and disinformation.

Just how stupid are we? Pretty stupid, it would seem, when we come across headlines like this: "Homer Simpson, Yes -- 1st Amendment 'Doh,' Survey Finds" (Associated Press 3/1/06).

"About 1 in 4 Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances.) But more than half of Americans can name at least two members of the fictional cartoon family, according to a survey.

"The study by the new McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that 22 percent of Americans could name all five Simpson family members, compared with just 1 in 1,000 people who could name all five First Amendment freedoms."

Having committed the unpardonable sin of mocking FOX Entertainment's products online, Matt Groening's cutely cynical cartoon, included, I can tell you that the audience he probably hoped to attract and which Alternet is geared to is probably far better versed in The Simpsons and sit-coms than they are in the laundry list of ignorance the post goes through*. And boy do they get touchy when you diss their shows.   Which should inform them that the practice of mocking people for their ignorance and on their taste in entertainment isn't likely to make them want to learn.  It's certain to make them not want to take the advice of those who are mocking them.

Television and now the internet are the central problem because there are only so many hours in a life and when you spend eight hours a day watching TV, that's what's going to be in your head and how you're going to use it.  Television, not schools, have become our de facto public education system and it is about the worst one imaginable.   Television isn't required to serve the common good, providing  The People with the right to information that they need to cast an informed vote for people who aren't crooks and crackpots and so they don't.  It's in their interest as corporate, profit making entities to entice an audience with what's easy, facile and entertaining and excluding anything that is at all challenging or, especially, what would be disadvantageous to their financial interest and the interest of the owners and the class that they serve, the rich.

There is some irony in the fact that when he posted this piece that Shenkman worked at George Mason University because George Mason is where the problem he decries originated.   As the "father of the Bill of Rights" Mason drafted a much longer set of proposed amendments to the original Constitution. His #16 said:

16. That the People have a right to Freedom of speech, and of writing and publishing their Sentiments; that the Freedom of the Press is one of the great Bulwarks of Liberty, and ought not to be violated.

Expressed in that First Amendment as the briefer catch all:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Which has been interpreted by the branch of government most friendly to the interests of the wealthy and the oligarchs, the Supreme Court, to pretend we are still an 18th century print based world, totally ignoring the danger of mass media to prevent effective self-government and to serve any interest except the one the Constitution claimed to serve, The Peoples' right to self-government.

It also doesn't distinguish between the personal liberty of natural people as opposed to the artificial entities that are "the press."   Especially when "the press" is actually a corporation, that difference becomes crucial as corporations are formed to greatly increase the power and ability of those involved to bend things to their own ends, including corrupting governments and duping The People into acting against their own good.  That, in short, is the problem of why ignorant people can't govern themselves and why they will be at the mercy of demagogues, corporations and a real ruling class, whether called a plutocracy or an oligarchy.

Our Bill of Rights is dangerously vague** in addressing that issue and the corrupt Supreme Court has used that vagary to corrupt elections and the information that people need to rely on to vote in the best interest of themselves, their families, their communities, their country and the world.   The Supreme Court, being chosen in the most undemocratic manner of any part of our government, has proven to be untrustworthy in that and so many ways.   Since they can be counted on the continue in that, we will only be safe if the Amendment is amended to place responsibilities for honesty and truth on electronic mass media.  The environment in which democracy will have to survive and live has changed, absolutely, from the one the 18th century aristocrats who wrote the First Amendment,   The history of the use of mass media as a tool of deceit, cheating, robbing, oppressing, inciting mass murder all through corrupting of the minds of The People with lies appealing to the basest of our weaknesses proves that democracy won't survive under the rules as they are now.

When the history of how The United States lost democracy is written, it will probably be a lie financed by billionaires, under the system the libertarians of the "free speech-free press" industry has promoted.  The real reason will be because of how The First Amendment has been interpreted to allow the mass media to distract and lie to The People through television, radio and other electronic media.

*  No one can know everything, they can't even know everything they're supposed to know or need to know.  Certainly, as a citizen in a democracy, you need to know what you need to cast an informed vote on current issues than you do to know a lot of facts about things that you will never need in your lifetime.  I don't think it's going to be a serious impediment to casting an informed vote if an American doesn't know the date of the Norman Conquest of England.

[Note, yeah, that "Normal Conquest" got past me this morning.  I have to stop using the automatic spelling corrector on my word processor.]

One of the big problems caused by the mass media is that a lot of people believe they know about the past based on historical fiction, the falsified history found in movies and TV shows, costume dramas, falsified historical myth, etc.  The cult of Constitutional Originalism is founded on obviously ideological lies told about the document, its writers, those who voted to accept it and the history of its use.  It was a cult that has clear political and economic goals,  promoted and supported by the same wealthy class that has taken up the pseudo-liberal chant of "free speech" "free press" to use for those ends.  The suckers that so many liberals are, misinformed by their own romantic view of history and civics, don't even seem to notice that operation going on in the open, right before their eyes.

** The one that became the "Second Amendment" is actually, somewhat more specific and, so, less dangerous than the abbreviation in the final version.

 17. That the People have a Right to keep and to bear Arms; that a well regulated Militia, composed of the Body of the People, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe Defence of a free State; that Standing Armies in Time of Peace are dangerous to Liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided as far as the Circumstances and Protection of the Community will admit; and that in all Cases, the military should be under strict Subordination to, and governed by the Civil Power.

Susanna Again

This is an update on a post I did almost a year ago, I'll begin with the update.  I noted that the first reading in the mass that day (yesterday this year) had the story from the Book of Daniel about how the two corrupt elders falsely accused Susanna of adultery, a capital crime and how Daniel, by questioning the two accusers separately, exposed their lies and saved Susanna.  The two elders, by the law of Moses, suffered the same penalty they tried to falsely impose on the innocent Susanna.  I'm an absolute opponent of the death penalty but I've said that if they are going to have it it should be imposed on police, prosecutors, lawyers and judges who were guilty of falsely charging or convicting people of capital crimes.   I said that knowing it's about as likely to happen as a perfect justice system.

In the post last year I mentioned Antonin Scalia, a member of the Supreme Court who has chuckled over the issue of painful botched executions from the bench and who has contended that there is no right of innocent people to not be executed as long as the petty, official procedures of courts are followed.  If I had time today, I'd look up what he said over the issue of executing people when their information exonerating them or mitigating the circumstances under which the death penalty was imposed on them didn't arrive according to the set scheduling of the courts involved, but I doubt it was much less depraved than everything else he and his pro-killing colleagues have to say on the matter.

I also noted his and other Catholic reactionary justices and judges at the "red masses" on the occasion of St. Thomas More's feast day.  I do think it would be interesting to watch his face if the priest at such a mass preached on the text that Daniel cited, from The Law in the book of Exodus 23:7 "Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent or the righteous, for I will not acquit the guilty."   It couldn't be more appropriate to the occasion and if he were any kind of preacher he'd make it relevant to his audience of lawyers and judges, people for whom the temptation to violate those commandments is part of their job.  I doubt that unless the matter were specifically pointed out that someone as inured to judicial murder as Scalia is would get the message.

Here's what I said last year with the great motet by Orlando di Lasso on the text.

Today's Catholic liturgy reads the story from the Book of Daniel, Susanna and the Elders, about how two corrupt judges falsely accused an innocent woman of adultery after she refused to have sex with them despite their blackmail that would lead to her death.   As with the story of Abraham and Issac, the story ended in her exoneration as a young Daniel insisted on asking the two accusers, separately, under what kind of tree they caught her and a young man who they said had gotten away from them.   So they ended up being put to death for perjury in a capital case.  While I'm entirely opposed to the death penalty, I do think if it's going to be done that police, prosecutors, judges, etc. who put people to death by false testimony or withholding of exonerating evidence should have a mandatory death penalty.  I know that will never be done and it shows why the death penalty should be abolished because it is an open opportunity for the state to falsely kill innocent people.

The gospel for today is the famous passage from the gospel according to John in which Jesus goes even farther, getting off a woman who was actually guilty of adultery by shaming her accusers and would-be executioners with their own sins, though there was no accusation that they were lying about her adultery.   The lesson I take from that is that none of us is qualified to kill someone, even someone guilty as charged.  You can see why that lesson might be good news for people without power and why it would be most unwelcomed news for people with the ability to exercise power.  I doubt that any of the conservatives on the Supreme Court who make a show of being religious would welcome having to consider their qualifications to kill people, which they do as certainly as the crowds who waited, no doubt with a similar thrill of power and self-righteousness, eagerly to kill Susanna and the nameless woman who Jesus, acting as defense attorney, got off with a far lighter reprimand than courts give to anyone but the rich and famous under our supposedly enlightened justice system.

I would think that the questionable fashion of Catholic lawyers, judges and Supreme Court judges making a show of piety at a "Red Mass" on the feast day of St. Thomas More (I believe started by the ultra-conservative St. Thomas More society) would be better held on this day when the focus is on the victims of the legal system, both the innocent and falsely accused and the guilty and disproportionately punished and those destroyed by "justice" as meted out by fallible and less than fully qualified human beings.   Seeing the likes of Antonin Scalia preening for a camera as he comes out of the Red Mass turns my stomach.


Update:  Score   Orlando di Lasso, what an incredible genius he was.