Bad news for climate change activists: you are now on the same side as Osama Bin Laden.
While this has absolutely nothing to do with the science of climate change at all, it will probably have a moderate-major effect on the political will to deal with it.
So, how long do you think will it take the right right to begin using reductio ad Bin Ladenum on climate science? My bet’s the next time the issue comes up, some rightie will use it within days.
William
As I’m sure you all have heard by now, Google is leaving China for a multitude of reasons, including Chinese cyberattacks and Chinese censorship of searches. However, to the great amusement of Chinese bloggers, Google has given a final “Fuck You” to the Chinese government in the form of its recommended search terms. Below are some pictures of the results:
If you type in the first half of the word “China”, in Chinese, you get a recommended list of search terms. But since yesterday, the first of these search terms has changed from “China”, to what you currently see. To those of you who can’t read Chinese, the first recommended search term is now “Destruction of the Chinese Communist Party”.
The fun doesn’t stop there:
This one has been removed by now, but yesterday, if you typed in the letter “f” into Google search, the first recommended search term is “free Tibet”. The free Tibet movement has been a pain to the Chinese government for many years, and so it’s no surprise that Google has chosen to do this.
And finally, there’s this:
Look at the second result. I’m sure I don’t need to explain this one. Immature and rascist? A little, yeah. Funny? Definitely.
William
Understanding the Times
Indoctrination
Bias
Misquoting
Straw Men
Hypocrisy
Our school is currently using this book for lack of a better one. It was either this or Chuck Colson, who bored me to tears. Even though it’s the Bible curriculum for a Christian school, it has an unbelievable amount of bias. First off, it presents the fundamentalist Christian worldview as the only rational one, and essentially likens anyone else to heinous criminals. Supporters of gay marriage are made out to commit beastiality, incest, pedophilia, and so on. Anyone who doesn’t think abortion should be illegal in all cases is instantly a murderer. Theistic evolutionists are instantly copouts to atheism. Media is lying to us about stem cells. And so on, and so forth.
The misquoting comes from its citations. One of my larger complaints about Chuck Colson was that he did not cite his sources. If you can’t tell, I use Wikipedia a lot and support their stance of verifiability over truth. However, this book cites incorrectly and cites poor sources. There are several hundred pages in the book, but leafing through the first dozen pages or so, I found a citation to Jonathan Wells’ “Icons of Evolution,” which actually makes up a large part of the “biology” section. To give you an idea of the quality of this source, a single google search of “Icons of Evolution rebuttal” turned up a web site whose sole purpose was linking to multiple pages, each carrying a point-by-point dissection of the paper, revealing that Wells didn’t actually know what he was talking about. I found another error, where they seemed to have incorrectly attributed the author of a source, but I didn’t look into that too deeply. The worst part about it is that since they actually provide sources, though they may be incorrect, I can’t take the hilarious route and bring a sign with “citation needed” printed in giant font.
As for the hypocrisy, this book also carries a section on identifying logical fallacies. A number of their examples were vague and incorrect, but that’s tangential to the point I’m making. The main problem is that the authors of this book resort to numerous logical fallacies, mainly the straw man. I have noticed that they have rarely, if ever, provided a fair analysis of more than one side of an argument. Of course, this is to be expected, as this book is, after all, intended for a Christian audience.
Now, if you skim my writing, you’ll find plenty of bias and fallacies in various places, since I am a sub-par writer who can apparently imitate the style of a professional pundit, as well as the fact that I am simply too lazy to go back through my articles to hone my arguments to perfection. The biggest difference here is that while the book and I both commit fallacies, I acknowledge mine, while the book preaches against fallacies as they are commiting them. This is hypocrisy, and Jesus does not like hypocrisy.
This book is not without its uses, however. In an extensive course with willing students, this book could be easily paired with an opposite source, say, anything by Dawkins, to fuel debates. However, in my class, about a quarter of the students either pay no attention or sleep through class, and some of them lack basic knowledge of the subjects involved - one did not know that the Koran came centuries after the New Testament. Additionally, the class follows the curriculum of the book, so that any time that could go toward debate is instead allocated toward showing lectures delivered from the book’s accompanying DVD. Combine these with the fact that I attend a Christian school, so that the proverbial choir being targeted by the preaching (both figurative and literal) consists of about three-quarters of the class, and the result is that this book is nothing more than a pile of indoctrination with no place for a dissenting opinion.