Re: [asa] Coulter on the peppered moth

Nothing so far in Janice's 'usual empty reply' helps
to explain Coulter's horrible job at describing the
peppered moth research. In fact, while Ann can
complain that evolution is perhaps poorly defined, she
has chosen a strawman definition, has shown a
miserable understanding of the concepts of evolution,
even though she supposedly had the helping hand of ID
activists like Dembski.

Surely it will be hard for Ann to blame her ignorance
on confusing definitions. In fact, she seems to be
familiar enough with the various definitions that a
confusion on her part is insufficient to explain her
poor job.

If Ann is talking about the kind of evolution that
disproves religious faith then she is obviously
talking about the misguided beliefs by some/many
creationists that science, and in this case
evolutionary science, somehow disproves a God.
And yet she somehow has to blame the liberals for this
well documented lack of scientific understanding found
amongst many creationists. Seems that the liberals can
be blamed for everything, even the failings of
creationists... What a wonderful amount of power does
Ann grant to the liberals... In some way, she seems to
have raised them to a status of an omnipotent
entity...

Coulter should not blame the liberals for these flawed
understandings of science by some/many creationists.
Ann Coulter could have made a difference here by
educating her public about their mistakes, instead she
adds to the confusion by her poor treatment of the
topic of evolution. That's too bad.

I thank Janice from additional 'quotes' from her book
which show the vacuity of Ann Coulter's understanding
of these scientific topics. That she is pandering to
an ultra-conservative audience seems clear to me. What
is too bad is that the audience seems to be satisfied
by the poor treatment of science. A more skeptical or
discerning audience would have insisted on a refund.

As far as Larry Arnhart's excellent comment, it hits
the nail straight on the head.

<quote>"Coulter worries about atheism, because she
believes that morality is impossible without belief in
God's commands as the source of morality. "If God is
dead, everything is permitted" (277). This completely
ignores Darwin's account of the "moral sense" as
rooted in the evolved nature of the human animal,
which would support a morality of natural law.
Apparently, Coulter would reject this natural morality
because it is not based on divine command. By
contrast, she declares, "religious people have certain
rules based on a book about faith with lots of
witnesses to that faith" (281). ..."

posted by Larry Arnhart @ Saturday, June 10, 2006
</quote>
The idea that morality requires a God is just simply
one of her forgivable misunderstanding of science.
If Coulter were confused about which evolution she was
discussing, then why is her treatment of the topic so
obviously wrong?

I am curious how Janice believes this can be
explained? How does Janice explain Coulter's treatment
of the peppered moth?

--- Janice Matchett <janmatch@earthlink.net> wrote:

> At 06:47 PM 6/18/2006, Pim van Meurs wrote:
>
> >Just when I finished the posting Ian Musgrave
> >posted on Coulter's extremely poor treatment of
> >the peppered moth Count the errors in just one
> >topic she discusses: The peppered
> >moth. <quote>As usual with Creationist writing,
> >it requires far more space to explain why
> >Coulter is wrong than it took her to make the
> >creationist arguments in her original
> >manuscript. To give you a flavour of how she
> >handles evolution in general, I’ll look at her
> >treatment of natural selection and peppered
> >moths.</quote>
>
>http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/06/ann_coulter_no_evidence_for_ev.php
>
> @ The confusion of non-scientists is partially
> the result of the confusion of scientists, faulty
> dictionary definitions - including "science"
> dictionaries, etc. Read on. ~ Janice
>

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Received on Mon Jun 19 00:14:29 2006