Factchecking Sarah Palin's record

Franklin,

Not patronizing at all. Very thoughtful response, and thank you.

I hadn't jumped back in here until now because I thought the thread got a little off-track talking about irreducible complexity, YEC and the rest of it. That wasn't really my interest, and I find it all beside the point.

To my mind, and admittedly I am on very thin ice here having only begun my own intellectual exploration of these topics a few years ago, the anthropic principle (and I realize it is not *the* accepted theory) renders the rest of these earth-bound debates moot (just as, in many ways, the kalam cosmological argument does).

I find the possibilities of the anthropic principle, as well as attendant ideas such as rare earth (propounded by secular scientists) both logically compelling and thrilling. Others may not, but these ideas a very far cry from believing our ancestors rode around pet dinosaurs. Nor are they creationist nonsense cloaked in a sort of learned patina.

For example, check out this blog, which seems to have some association with Cornell: http://arxivblog.com/?p=568 (As Thommes and friends put it: “All of this leads us to predict that within the diverse ensemble of planetary systems, ones resembling our own are the exception rather than the rule.”)

It's not exactly the province of people arguing that the earth was created in six literal days - nor is it the scientific territory of "stealth creationists." This is why Richard Dawkins' case, for example, is weakest at this point. He does fine when he's confined to earth-bound biology, but gets way out of his depth when it comes to cosmological physics.

This stuff is, in fact, on the cutting edge of scientific discussion. I believe the new video game "Spore" even took some of its inspiration from books about the anthropic principle (interestingly, though part of the intent of "Spore" seems to be to reemphasize evolutionary biology from an educational standpoint, I can attest from having played the free "creature creator" version with my daughter, the unscripted, unprompted impression children probably walk away with is of "designing" life).

But please do not take my mention of these things to mean I am advocating they be taught to 8th graders, or something along those lines. I have had to stumble on this information by myself as an adult.

I do have to say that I have had the strange sensation over the past decade of finding heretofore locked rooms full of knowledge and crying out, "Why didn't anyone ever teach me this?" Reading about the trial and death of Socrates was the first of these experiences. As a ten-year-old boy, when it first aired on PBS I watched Carl Sagan's "Cosmos," well, religiously. Sagan seemed supremely confident in the high probability of intelligent life elsewhere and rather close by.

Scientists are now beginning to doubt his confidence, to say the least. Obviously, this is an ongoing conversation, but it is by no means one that can be caricatured as "creationist" nonsense.

One need not believe in a Christian God under the paradigm of arguments like kalam and the anthropic principle. I think this is why Antony Flew decided in essence to become a Deist. Under pressure, Flew has seemed to "recant" from this "heresy" in recent years, yet I know (from my own experiential standpoint) that his initial intuitive inclination to believe in a God was correct.

Perhaps, or perhaps not, tomorrow's Large Hadron Collider experiment will reveal something worth considering. Or a black hole may swallow us all! Cheers and good evening.

Houghton,

Thank you for a thoughtful and thought-provoking exchange.

While only you can confirm if this applies to you personally, I've found your plaintive "Why didn't anyone ever teach me this?" a common refrain any more. Modern US education, with rare exceptions, fails completely at teaching what I (and many) consider the primary topics: logic, critical reasoning (logic applied to ideas), and semantics (logic applied to language and expression). Anyone with these skills can learn anything. All they have to do is be introduced to it. That's oversimplified, to be sure, but at 0130 I'm not about to start yet another lecture-length post.

However, to bring this back to topic, we should expect to see those skills in our leaders, and leaders who fail to apply those skills effectively should expect to be replaced. Whatever the checkable "facts" about Palin might be, I expect her to demonstrate those skills, or be deemed unfit for office. Statements like those she is quoted as making concerning, for example, teaching creationism or ID in our K-12 schools will only hurt her fitness.

Be well.

ergh, I meant to say, "What is the story behind "librarian continued in her job through most of Palin's first term?" mean?"

no more posting 'till coffee.