Ben Carson: Ignorance and Arrogance

The idiocy and arrogance of Ban Carson continues to be on display as even the right wing Wall Street Journal called out Carson for his wrongly claiming the Founding Fathers "had no elected office experience" even though many had held elected positions in colonial assemblies and other offices.  What is perhaps most disturbing about Carson is his arrogance when caught in a lie of false statement that even political neophytes understand to be untrue.  A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at the disturbing phenomenon.  Here are excerpts:

It's one of those things you learn when you first get a feel for politics: the things that count, that get stuck in people's minds and affect real outcomes are not necessarily or even often the most important ones. They're ones that resonate with basic, familiar or humorous parts of our common experience - like pyramids. I doubt very many people remember that Ben Carson also said that he believed that Satan encouraged Charles Darwin to write The Origin of Species, a claim that is at least as nuts as the pyramids comment and frankly, quite a bit more evil. But pyramids is different, even though it's completely irrelevant to basically anything. Everybody knows about the pyramids. . . . . you don't need to be a genius to know that of all the places you might try to store grain, inside a rock would be one of the most challenging. 

But there's something else that I think is important about the pyramids flareup for understanding Carson and his candidacy. For his supporters, one of Carson's greatest attributes is his soft-spoken humility. Yet what we really see in Carson is a compounding mix of ignorance and arrogance. Some of Carson's views are rooted in his religious subculture. They may seem odd or even crazy to people outside of that subculture. But they're different beliefs, not ignorance per se. But that's not the case with imagining that pyramids are hollow and used for grain storage.

It's not the case with claiming that none of the country's founders had experience in elected office - a demonstrably ridiculous claim. It's not the case with claiming that half of Medicare spending goes to fraud. The exception that proves the rule came earlier this week when Carson conceded he really wasn't familiar with US-Cuba immigration policy - a very striking gap in knowledge for a contender for the GOP presidential nomination.

When you watch Carson navigating the public square you see someone who is remarkably ignorant about huge swathes of human knowledge and particularly information about US government and public policy. But you also see someone who's quite confident he's very knowledgable. So he's both remarkably ignorant and either stunningly unaware of his ignorance or totally indifferent to it. You might even say he is militantly ignorant. In all aspects of life, that is a dangerous combination. And the combination is almost always rooted in arrogance.

The key is having some realistic grasp of what you do know and what you don't know. 
That not only helps you avoid big mistakes and embarrassing gaffes, it also helps you learn. Because you can't learn about things you think you already know.

One of the things that stood out to me about the pyramid debacle was "secular progressives" are welcome to ridicule his theory about the pyramids. But Carson really has no 'theory'. He says that the ancient Egyptians stored grain inside solid rock. That makes no sense. . . . the issue here is less ignorance than arrogance, something which, paradoxically, many of Carson's supporters believe is a bad trait he lacks.

To me it is not surprising that the Christofasicts love Carson.  The reason is simple.  They embrace ignorance daily and more or less celebrate the fact that they do so as they utter nonsense  about the Bible being "inerrant" or the "devine word of god" even though its was first written by ignorant herders and many of its claims have been proven untrue by science.  Both Carson and his supporters are very, very scary.

Republican Party of Virginia Civil War?

Apparently the national Republican Party is not the only area of the party where power struggles have been unleashed. The Virginian Pilot is reporting that Many ranking Virginia Republicans are seeking to oust embattled Del. Jeff Frederick, R-Prince William (at left), as chairman of the state GOP. A petition containing a list of grievances was delivered to the state party headquarters in Richmond on Wednesday said several Republican state party officials, who did not want to be identified. Here are some highlights:

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Frederick, who publicly pledged not to seek reelection to the legislature during the just concluded General Assembly session, indicated in a written state this afternoon that he doesn't wish to step down as party chairman. I have every intention of continuing as Chairman and completing my term in May 2012," Frederick said in the statement. " I have the commitments necessary to win the vote on April 4th, and will fulfill my term and the commitment to the people who entrusted me to lead our Party back to victory.

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Former attorney general Bob McDonnell, the state Republican Party standard-bearer as the presumptive gubernatorial nominee, endorsed the effort to remove Frederick in a statement Thursday.

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Admittedly, Frederick is a real piece of work and recently attacked Charles Darwin on the anniversary of Darwin's birthday, saying Darwin's theories were "used by atheists to explain away the belief in God." Such ravings certainly do not help Bob McDonnell in his efforts to market himself as a moderate (which he is not). Here is a clip of Federick's denunciation of Darwin:

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While such views are representative of the true GOP party base today in Virginia, particularly among the Kool-Aid drinkers at The Family Foundation, such views are precisely what scared away moderates and independents in the November 2008 elections and set the stage for Virginia to go Democrat in the presidential race for the first time since 1964. Moreover, the GOP lost three seats in the House of Representatives as well thereby setting off a round of recriminations as noted by the Washington Post as follows:

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But while the Virginia Democratic Party emerges from the elections stronger than it has been in decades, Virginia GOP leaders are dogged by finger-pointing and disorganization as they prepare for the 2009 races for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and the state House of Delegates.

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On the day after the election, Virginia Republican Party Chairman Jeffrey M. Frederick blamed the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for the party's poor showing in the state on Election Day. . . . McCain campaign officials, who declined to be identified because they are not authorized to speak for the senator, said they were left with no choice but to marginalize Frederick and the state party.

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"It was just constant drama that surrounded Frederick, and it is quite frankly something the GOP candidates will have to deal with next year," the McCain adviser said.

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Inasmuch as no GOP candidates in Virginia can be categorized as gay friendly by any stretch of the imagination, one can only hope that the party civil war will continue and undermine McDonnell's efforts to win the governorship.

Religion vs. Evolution

In a timely new study in light of the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, the Pew Research Center looks at what religious denominations/faiths accept evolution as the best explanation for the development of human life. What is interesting in my view is that the religions that Christianists view as false religions are the ones most receptive to Darwin's theory while the Kool-Aid drinking, anti-knowledge Christian fundamentalists and Mormons are the least receptive to the theory as shown in the chart below.

Here are some highlights from the Pew article accompanying the graph:
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This view [teaching creationism along side evolution] is not shared by the nation's scientists, most of whom contend that evolution is a well-established scientific theory that convincingly explains the origins and development of life on earth. Moreover, they say, a scientific theory is not a hunch or a guess but is instead an established explanation for a natural phenomenon, like gravity, that has repeatedly been tested through observation and experimentation. Indeed, most scientists argue that, for all practical purposes, evolution through natural selection is a fact. These scientists and others dismiss creation science as religion, not science, and describe intelligent design as little more than creationism dressed up in scientific jargon.

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So if evolution is as established as the theory of gravity, why are people still arguing about it a century and a half after it was first proposed? The answer lies, in part, in the possible theological implications of evolutionary thinking. For many, the Darwinian view of life . . . goes beyond contradicting the biblical creation story and conflicts with the Judeo-Christian concept of an active and loving God who cares for his creation.

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I believe that the battle over evolution is central to the future of the USA and its society. Will science and knowledge prevail, or will the beliefs of the simple minded and fearful who need to put God in a box and read the Bible as literal fact prevail. One can only hope that it is the former and not the latter. Otherwise we can expect a further decline of the USA overtime.

New Find Supports Evolutionary Biology Theories

The Washington Post has a story on a new find of a "missing link" type of creature that adds one more plank in support of the theory of evolution argument - not that facts and data mean anything to the hard core Christianist who could be struck in the head with a 2x4 and still not get the message. For those with some open mindedness to facts and logic, the discovery may have some relevance since the new fossil discovery of this primitive four-legged creature in Earth's history should help evolutionary biologists to better understand the evolution of fish to advanced animals that walk on land. Here are a few highlights:

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The 365 million-year-old fossil skull, shoulders and part of the pelvis of the water-dweller, Ventastega curonica, were found in Latvia, researchers report in a study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. Even though Ventastega is likely an evolutionary dead-end, the finding sheds new details on the evolutionary transition from fish to tetrapods. Tetrapods are animals with four limbs and include such descendants as amphibians, birds and mammals.

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"At the time there were a lot of creatures around of varying degrees of advancement," Ahlberg said. They all seem to have similar characteristics, so Ventastega's find is helpful for evolutionary biologists. Ventastega is the most primitive of these transition animals, but there are older ones that are oddly more advanced, said Neil Shubin, professor of biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago, who was not part of the discovery team but helped find Tiktaalik, the fish that was one step earlier in evolution.

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One question that scientists are trying to figure out is why fish started to develop what would later become legs. Edward Daeschler, associate curator of vertebrate zoology at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, theorizes that the water was so shallow that critters like Ventastega had an evolutionary advantage by walking instead of swimming.