Introduction
In the Culture Wars, people on the Left often like to assert that they are on the side of Science, while those on the Right are backwards hicks living in the Dark Ages. But when we compare the claims routinely made by the Left to the actual facts of science, does this assertion really hold up?
Let’s find out.
Global Warming and Al Gore
In 2006, former Vice President, Al Gore released an award winning documentary film to educate the public about the urgency of Global Warming and the need to address this cataclysmic threat to our planet.
The problem is that the documentary was a propaganda film riddled with errors. A British High Court ruled that this film had no less than nine misleading scientific errors, and that it could not be shown in UK Schools without properly addressing these factually incorrect claims. (The article from Grigg lists 11 errors, as opposed to the 9 listed by the BBC.)
I have two links that I am including for readers. One is from the BBC, and the other is written by Russell M. Grigg who holds a Master’s in Chemistry.
Despite the factual misrepresentations, this documentary received praise and a standing ovation from the Left. As an agnostic on the topic of Global Warming (now dubbed with the meaningless phrase “Climate Change”) I have no problem with people arguing for their position, however it concerns me when I see people like Al Gore using factually inaccurate claims in order to convince people of their cause.
Personally, I would have preferred a talk like this given by an actual scientist, rather than by some dogmatic politician who misrepresented the facts.
Science VS Religion
We are constantly told in pop culture, and even in schools that the history of science and Christianity is a history of conflict. We are told that the Church ran around persecuting science, and stifling the Scientific Revolution. This view of history has been dubbed “The Warfare Hypothesis.”
Yet it is doubtful that any historian takes The Warfare Hypothesis seriously.
Christians in the Middle Ages, far from suppressing science, were the ones who laid the foundations that made modern science possible. Nearly all of the founders of Modern Science were devout Christians, and they arguably enjoyed more academic freedom than scientists do today in modern universities.
Despite the rumors we have all heard, the claim that Christians taught that the Earth was flat are completely false. Every educated person in the Middle Ages knew that the Earth was round, and this fact was never widely questioned. Those who thought otherwise were an exceedingly rare exception.
In fact, probably everything you’ve heard about the Church suppressing science is a work of fiction — and any historian of the Middle Ages will tell you the same.
As Cambridge historian of science, Dr. James Hannam point out:
So what were the Christian Middle Ages like in regards to science?
Science was not born in spite of Christian philosophy, science was born as a direct result of the Christian belief that God created the World in a way to be rational, and understandable. They believed that the Creation was founded on natural laws that were understandable, consistent, and unchanging.
Christian philosophy gave birth to science. The claims that Christians suppressed modern science are based on a false misrepresentation of history.
Sadly, most people get their history from cartoons, rather than from historians.
There is a lot more that I could say on this topic, but in the spirit of keeping this article short, I am going to link to articles and resources for readers to learn more.
Environmentalist Fundamentalism
The lack of critical thinking here is nothing short of amazing. I often wonder how this level of herd mentality, and lack of basic common sense and skepticism is even possible.
Take for example, the issue of plastic straws, which are being banned in several parts of the United States.
As one article states:
But a ban may be a bit of a straw man in the discussions about plastics pollution. Straws make up about 4 percent of the plastic trash by piece, but far less by weight.
Straws on average weigh so little — about one sixty-seventh of an ounce or .42 grams — that all those billions of straws add up to only about 2,000 tons of the nearly 9 million tons of plastic waste that yearly hits the waters.
“Bans can play a role,” says oceanographer Kara Lavendar Law, a co-author with Jambeck of the 2015 Science study. “We are not going to solve the problem by banning straws.”
Scientists say that unless you are disabled or a small child, plastic straws are generally unnecessary and a ban is start and good symbol. These items that people use for a few minutes but “are sticking round for our lifetime and longer,” Lippiatt says.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-04-science-amount-straws-plastic-pollution.html#jCp
Notice the myriad of problems with this statement. First off, they call the idea of banning straws “a straw man” and then they turn around to say that it is a good idea. Plastic straws represent next to nothing of the plastic waste in our oceans (just over 0.02% by weight when we crunch the article’s numbers), and yet the article advocates banning them as a “good symbol.”
Perhaps this “good symbol” is merely a symbol of the Left controlling everyone else’s lives.
According to at least one source, most of the plastic in the world’s oceans comes from certain countries in East Asia. However people in Hong Kong, the World’s freest economy, are making efforts to use reusable, environmentally friendly bamboo materials for cutlery etc.
According to another source “Even at our worst the U.S. only makes up 1.4% of the plastic waste in the ocean.” Assuming that plastic straws from the U.S. are proportional to the overall ratio, this means that just over 0.00031% of the plastic in the oceans, by weight, is from U.S. plastic straws.
Is this really the biggest issue we are facing that is going to end the World right now?
If Leftists are so concerned about this issue, then a more obvious solution would be non-toxic biodegradable straws on the free market. When a self-proclaimed social justice warrior walks into a Starbucks, he/she/ze/it or they can ask for a green biodegradable straw, and maybe have a 10 cent upcharge with their $7 cup of privileged coffee.
Personally, I would think that would be great! It might mean that I get hired in a laboratory researching more eco-friendly materials, which I would really enjoy.
(As of the writing of this article, I am in the market for a lab job, and I come with a lot of experience. Hire me.)
Clearly, banning plastic straws in the United States isn’t going to do much of anything. I would rather there be zero trash in our oceans. I want to live on a planet that is clean, and healthy, and I don’t think that we have to choose between a healthy planet and human well being.
But turning our brains off every time someone preaches passionately about the next green devil isn’t going to do anyone any good. Not all environmental problems carry equal weight, not all are going to end the world. Some of the “problems” we face may not even be problems, as I show in the section of this article with cows.
If we do not use our brains, and critically examine scientific issues when it comes to the environment, our environmental “activism” may be the thing that destroys the planet, all while we applaud ourselves for our good intentions. Carbon capture technology may be one prime example of a bad idea with good intentions — but I digress on that for now.
Some people reading this article may be too young to remember, but when I was a kid I used to hear this phrase all the time:
“The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”
Perhaps it’s time we start using that phrase again, before our environmentalist fundamentalism leads our world down exactly that road.
“Just a clump of cells”
I often hear people use the argument that a baby developing in the womb is not a human being, but merely a “clump of cells.” That claim, that the developing organism is merely a clump of cells, is what I will address here.
For the purposes of this article, I am not going to debate the morality of abortion. What I will say is that our ethics should be a reflection of objective reality. Without getting too far off into the philosophical weeds, most people are generally fine with the morality of dissolving a rock with a wash of acid but would say that it is not okay to do the same to a human being who is walking down the street. The ethics of a question, almost by definition depend on the identity of the objects in play, and the situation involved.
To be fair, one might argue that the earliest stages of a human embryo are physically a group of cells, albeit cells in a structure that very quickly becomes exceedingly complex. (I would object to the use of the word “clump” as a descriptor.)
This complex group of cells then develops at an incredible speed into a form with features and organs that are recognizably human.
Estimates vary, but according to at least one source “At the end of the 4th week of gestation, the heartbeats of the embryo begin.” (See NIH link below) Keep in mind that the 4th week — that’s one month. We are not even halfway through the first trimester.
Leftists are free to describe the earliest stages of human development as being a group of cells, but after a short time, this claim, as a physical descriptor, is no longer valid.
This fact becomes particularly relevant, given that in New York State abortion up until birth has recently become legalized. This is way past any period when an abortion would be necessary for health reasons.
When we are talking about a pregnancy at 6, 7, 8, or 9 months we are way past any stage of development that could be described as a mere group of cells. We are now talking about a point where we have a viable human being who might be able to survive outside of the mother’s womb.
If someone wants to argue for abortion, that is their prerogative. But if we are to be scientifically accurate, and intellectually honest, then at some point we are no longer talking about a group of cells and we are no longer talking about the health of the mother. We are talking about the killing of a viable human being, because they are inconvenient. Does that require moral justification? Does a woman have the right to kill another person?
Our morals, ethics, and laws should reflect objective reality. So why is it necessary for those who argue for abortion to misrepresent the physical reality of what is actually going on?
The video below is from Dr. Anthony Levatino, a former abortion doctor, describing how abortions are performed at each stage of development.
Humans go through A Fish, Salamander, and Monkey state in the womb, retracing their evolutionary history
Not even close. This myth comes from a series of drawings from the 19th Century made by Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel set forth to show that vertebrate embryos, such as fish, humans, chickens, and turtles are all very similar in the earliest stages of embryonic development, and that differences only arise later on.
Haeckel’s drawings have been used as one of the primary examples of evidence for Evolution. In fact they were one of the strongest arguments that convinced me of the truth of Darwin’s theory when I was in school.
Haeckel’s drawings were used in biology textbooks until at least the year 1997, when Richardson et al. took actual photos of embryos at these stages, and showed that Haeckel’s drawings, which were widespread in biology textbooks, were false. (While I was middle school and high school, in the 2000’s, teachers still used slides with images of these drawings.)
To put it simply, Haeckel’s drawings were a hoax, one of the biggest hoaxes in the history of science.
The below image and its caption were taken from the article by Calvin Smith, which I link at the end of this section.
Bottom row: Richardson’s photographs of how the embryos really look at the same stage of development.
Embryologist, Dr. Jonathan Wells addressed Haeckel’s Embryos in his famous book, Icons of Evolution. Dr. Wells explains this interesting feature of scientific history here:
Amazingly, this blatant falsehood was widely reported as fact in high school biology textbooks, and in at least a few college and graduate textbooks, as Dr. Wells and others have demonstrated. On my YouTube channel, I have several videos addressing this topic.
Dr. Stephen Jay Gould went so far as to call Haeckel’s Embryos, and their widespread use, the “academic equivalent of murder”
On the other hand, the so-called “National Center for Science Education” denied that Haeckel’s embryos were ever used in modern textbooks, a claim I refuted by ordering the textbooks for myself, and opening them on camera.
So why does this matter so much? Who cares if inaccurate drawings were used in high school and college biology textbooks?
This is disturbing for a number of reasons. For one thing, I would expect that textbook authors would actually know enough about their subject material to recognize such a blatant falsehood. If someone is writing a high school biology textbook, or even a college or graduate level textbook, and talking about comparative embryology, I would expect them to actually know something about comparative embryology. What we see in the case of Haeckel’s Embryos, being used so widely, in so many textbooks, represents gross incompetence.
Furthermore, this misrepresentation of comparative embryology and human development has culturally been key in the acceptance of abortion. If you have ever heard of someone talking about a human in the womb looking like a fish, or having gills, this is what is being referred to. (Humans never have gills at any point in their development.)
My background is in the life sciences. My Bachelor of Science is in Biotechnology and Molecular Bioscience. As someone with a career in science, I find this disturbing for another reason. Millions of people have been presented this information as if it were fact in order to persuade them of the truth of Darwin’s theory. If people want to argue for Evolution, then they should do so. But I object to using blatant falsehoods in a scientific argument, and I object to using government-funded schools to lie to kids.
Do I want people to understand the arguments for Evolution? Yes! Absolutely. But science is very vulnerable, and lying to people about scientific data is inexcusable.
Here is the original article by Richardson
According to the NCSE article “The important question is whether textbooks, and more importantly developmental biologists, still rely on Haeckel’s work. The answer is no, but that doesn’t stop Wells from acting as if they do.”
This claim put forth by the NCSE is incredible, given the fact that anyone with eyes can look at the relevant biology textbooks, and see that Haeckel’s embryos are there, clear as day.
Contrary to NCSE’s claims, Haeckel’s embryos were used in textbooks in recent modern history, and this is an historical fact. You can see photographs of the relevant textbook pages in the link below, and I also have a video where you can see them as well. I tested this claim for myself by opening the textbooks. I suggest others do the same.
Cows are bad for the Environment
I will never forget the time I was talking with a scientist in a lab who insisted that cows are bad for the environment. He made this argument very passionately, but when I offered to show him a TED Talk with scientific evidence showing the exact opposite, he did not want to see it. I was amazed to see him protect his line of thought, and fight against the notion of even being exposed to contrary data and arguments that might challenge his way of thinking.
(For the record, the scientist I was talking to was doing research that had nothing to do with cows. He was merely repeating what he had heard on the TV.)
Here is the TED Talk
Pharmaceutical companies should not be allowed to make billions of dollars in profit
A few years ago, I remember watching Bernie Sanders complain about Pharmaceutical companies making billions of dollars in profit. (I will try to find the clip as soon as possible.) To me this was incredible. It typically costs around a billion dollars just to bring one drug to market.
The high cost is actually part of the reason antibiotic resistance in bacteria is so concerning. The cost of creating new antibiotics is virtually prohibitive.
If a company is going to invest billions of dollars into a product, then it is reasonable that they be allowed to make billions of dollars in profit. They should receive a return on their investment. For Bernie Sanders to complain about this shows an incredible ignorance of basic economics.
I often see both politicians and private citizens complaining about the high cost of healthcare. But people don’t seem to realize the irony and the insanity of what’s going on.
If we want to bring down the high cost of healthcare, the solution is obvious. Stop taxing and over regulating those companies that are creating new drugs and medical technologies.
If a company is trying to create a cure for cancer, why are we slowing them down with taxation, and over regulation?
As you will see in the link I provide, special tax breaks are already being provided to Pharma and Biotech companies, and that is fine. My background is in science, and while I also enjoy reading about economics, I am no tax expert. Fair disclaimer.
But I think that we should go much, much further.
So what do I propose?
Quite simply, I think that all taxes and virtually all regulation should be removed from businesses. Businesses create most of the jobs and products that fuel out economy, and private industry creates much of the scientific research that makes our lives better.
If we want to have a strong economy with plenty of jobs, economic freedom, and scientific research, then we should stop holding the breaks down.
As a key example, I can’t help but thinking of a couple years ago when a life saving medical device went up in price. The public was outraged, and people wanted the government to do something about it.
The entire thing was like a scene out of the novel Atlas Shrugged. Big government created over regulations to favor certain companies, and people blamed Capitalism. Politicians then turned around pretending to be the hero trying to solve the very problem that they created.
But Capitalism was not the problem, big government Corporatism was.
Capitalism is just another term for “free markets.” If people had been allowed to be free to start a company, without government interference, then multiple competing devices would probably have already been widely available in the free market. Instead of having only one viable option, there would have been multiple competitors making similar devices to choose from — as we have with cell phones.
Now when I say I want a free market, I am not saying I want complete anarchy. Business still has to be done in an honest, and lawful way. There should be regulations preventing snake oil salesmen from lying to their customers, and laws protecting intellectual property, but that’s about it. No price controls, no minimum wage, no requirements to have a business license. There should be a few regulations in terms of honesty, health, and safety, but that’s about it.
I plan to write a more extensive article on this in the future. That will allow me to elaborate more thoroughly on thoughts that I have in this area. But for now, I recommend reading the book Atlas Shrugged by philosopher Ayn Rand, and anything written by the economist, Thomas Sowell.
Bill Nye — He’s a scientist you guys! See he wears a labcoat!
Bill Nye is not a scientist, and is not qualified to give an expert opinion on the things that he makes confident assertions about. In fact, he gets a lot of basic scientific facts completely wrong, as I have documented in my articles and videos responding to him. But that does not stop CNN from bringing him on to sit across from a career atmospheric physicist, as if they were on an equal level. (I include the video to this interview in the article I link.)
A lot of people are surprised to learn that Bill Nye isn’t a scientist, he’s just an actor who played a scientist on a kids’ show in the early 90’s. He does have an engineering degree from Cornell, where he would have taken some tough courses, but his scientific qualifications end there.
I have one relative who insists that Bill Nye’s six honorary PhDs qualify him as a scientist. Said relative does not understand that an honorary PhD does not mean anything, and insists that an honorary PhD is better than an earned PhD.
Most of these honorary PhDs are in pedagogy, and were only given as a thank you for being a guest speaker at various universities, and for his TV show. None of the university websites list any scientific achievements as the basis for awarding Bill Nye these honorary “degrees.”
Amazingly Bill Nye still gets on TV and chooses to talk down to actual experts with actual qualifications, and gullible Liberals still fall for it.
If Bill Nye wants to put together an argument or an opinion, that is fine — we all do it. But it is dishonest to present Bill Nye as if he were an expert authority in these matters, when he clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about. (I talk a lot about economics, but that does not make me an economist.)
One example would be the fact that Bill Nye cites the rising sea levels in Venice as evidence for Global Warming, but seems to be completely unaware of the fact that Venice is actually sinking — which makes it the worst city to use as a comparison. This makes one wonder: Do he and his team not have Google?
Bill Nye has even gone so far as to suggest that scientists be jailed for disagreeing with him on Climate Change.
I talk about Bill Nye more on my YouTube channel, and in the article I link below. I highly recommend this to readers who want to know more.
Overpopulation
“Eat your dinner little Johnny, there are starving children in (China/India/Africa) who would LOVE to have that.” — Every mom in America in 1996
Growing up as a kid in the 90’s I was constantly bombarded with messages about how the Earth was overpopulated, and that this was causing environmental problems, and the massive poverty and starvation we were seeing on TV.
But was this really true?
The claim that poverty in these parts of the world were caused by “overpopulation” has proven false.
Since 1970, the percentage of people around the world living in starvation-level poverty has fallen by 80%. (See the video below)
The reality is that despite increasing populations, China and India are far better off economically than they were just a generation ago. This same trend is occuring in places all around the world (including parts of Africa). The reason these regions are rising out of poverty is not so much because of international charity, but because of international trade and free markets. Once China and India started relaxing their government controls in favor of more Free Market Capitalism, both nations began to see a night and day difference in their economies.
Compare these to places like Hong Kong and South Korea, which have incredible levels of economic freedom (i.e. Capitalism), and are surpassing their Communist and Socialist counterparts by leaps and bounds.
I talk about this more in the following article:
So the problem never was overpopulation, the problem was (and is) underdeveloped economies and government overregulation. Thomas Sowell seems to suggest in one of his books that in parts of Africa there seems to be poverty due to underpopulation. (As an avid reader of Sowell’s books, I am having trouble finding the exact quote, but welcome any comments on where to find it.)
Amazingly, there is an actor who plays a scientist on TV, named Bill Nye the something or other, who decided to resurrect this old nonsense and talk about it on his Netflix TV show.
Take a minute and step back. Think of the overpopulation narrative that has been pushed so hard in the West, and the consequences it had under China’s One-child policy. How much suffering could have been prevented with a little knowledge?
Yet people like Bill Nye could not be bothered to do a little research after 20+ years to see if they have their facts straight.
As for claims that overpopulation is harming the environment, most of this could be prevented simply by allowing the construction of more nuclear power plants. Yet historically there have been many environmental activists who chose to spread lies about this amazing technology, and what it actually entails. (See my section in this article on nuclear energy.)
I highly recommend this video from Prager U. It explains a lot of the numbers and explains how people are rising out of poverty in many places all around the world.
Even the far from impartial Politifact had to acknowledge the numbers, while pointing out some other points of consideration.
The Gay Gene — Gay People are “Born This Way” and Cannot Change
While there may be genetic factors involved in the development of sexual orientation, I would be surprised if any geneticist in the world were ever to come out in favor of a “gay gene.” The reason is that genetics and development, especially with regards to social behavior are extremely complex.
For the sake of argument, if sexual orientation were genetically predetermined, we would expect that if one identical twin has a homosexual preference, the other would have the same preference, at or near 100% of the time.
In other words, the orientation should be the same. But that is not what we find.
According to a 1991 study, among homosexual males, 11% of adoptive brothers were homosexual, while only 9.2% of non-twin biological siblings (presumably brothers) were homosexual. With regards to identical twins, if one twin was homosexual, there was a 52% chance that the other twin would be as well. With fraternal twins, this rate dropped to 22%. [See NCBI link.]
As one letter to the journal Science explained:
“The biological brothers and adoptive brothers showed approximately the same rates. This latter observation suggests that there is no genetic component, but rather an environmental component shared in families” [See my comment in the links below.]
That was a lot to chew on. What do these numbers indicate?
Basically, if you have a homosexual male, there is a roughly 10% chance that his brother is also a homosexual male-regardless of whether they are genetically related or adopted. The rates were slightly higher with adopted brothers in this study.
As the quote points out, this means that homosexuality in males looks to be an environmental phenomenon and not a genetic one. (More on that in a bit.)
The 52% figure with identical twins tells us some information, but not as much as I would like. If these are twins that have the same genetics, and grew up in the same environment, being treated the same, then it doesn’t distinguish between genetic and environmental factors. (Including incomplete penetrance etc.)
But if homosexuality were genetically predetermined, this figure should be around 100%, not 52%.
If I may be forgiven for giving my personal opinion on this matter, I want to offer a brief moment of speculation. For the sake of argument, if it were ever established that genetics made one person or another more likely to experience a homosexual orientation, that might not mean what most people think. From what I have seen and read, it seems that certain personality types are more likely to develop a homosexual orientation. It is not unreasonable that some of these personality traits are influenced by genetics.
A more sensitive, less aggressive male might be called “gay” or “sissy” by other boys in our time, but if he were born 100 years ago, this may not have been the case. I am told by people much older than myself that before the Gay Revolution in the 1970’s, homosexuality was regarded as something so rare you would only ever read about it in a psychology textbook. For the most part, people were just not thinking about it.
At that time, a boy could have close friendships with other boys, and no one ever questioned the nature of his sexual identity. Bobby would never ask himself if he had some ulterior motive for wanting to hang out with Jimmy. So the confusion questions around “Am I gay?” or “What will other people think if I hug my friend?” were not the things running through a young boy’s mind. Surely people had other issues, but they were not questioning their sexuality to the extent that people do today.
So the same boy in 2019 has to face the power of suggestion, which he may not have faced in 1919.
Dr. Julie Hamilton explains more:
I want to point out at this point that readers are free to disagree with any opinions I may have. And I encourage all of my readers to challenge my facts. But I want to emphasize the importance of distinguishing between fact and opinion. For the purposes of this article, I have not argued about the morality of homosexual behavior, or about the legal status of Gay Marriage. What I have done is point to scientific data, and discuss what the facts indicate.
As for the idea that sexual orientation is fixed, and unchangeable, this completely contradicts the medical data and common experience. It’s been reported in the medical literature that most males who experience homosexual attraction as teenagers grow out of it by the time they are adults. The same can be said of those who experience feelings of transgenderism.
The incredible irony here is that the so-called “ex gay” experience is the norm, rather than the exception, despite the mockery from the Left.
As a disclaimer, from a purely scientific standpoint, this does not necessarily mean that everyone’s orientation is equally malleable. But it does show that the blanket claim that people’s orientations can never change is completely false.
We can conclude two overall facts based on the data mentioned here. One is that there is no gay gene, and sexual orientation is not predetermined by human genetics alone (if at all). The other is that sexual orientation is not (necessarily) fixed. In fact the majority of males who experience homosexual attractions during adolescence no longer do so as adults.
None of the data I have pointed out here is a statement on the morality of human sexuality. Scientific data can and should influence our moral and ethical decisions, but data by itself is not a moral statement.
Leftists have used these supposedly scientific claims to push the narrative that homosexuality is equal to a person’s identity — i.e. being “gay” is who you are. But their basis for this argument comes from a gross misrepresentation of what the science has actually shown.
Just as a disclaimer, I am well aware, and want readers to be aware that numbers and conclusions like those I cite here can be overturned with further study. There is a lot to be discussed on the dynamics of the interaction between nature, nurture, and human sexuality. Perhaps I can go into that in future articles and videos. But based on the data we have, and what we know about genetics, the claim that sexual orientation is predetermined does not line up with the facts. Beyond that, the idea of a “gay gene” is an absurd and meaningless phrase, because that is not how genetics works.
Note: The two studies I wanted to look at the most were behind a paywall. This meant that in one case I was able to read a quote and an abstract, and in another only the abstract was available. Researchers are often very willing to share their publications for free when asked, however these are very famous studies, and a response may or may not be available.
One of the frustrations I have is that I have heard complaints on one hand about the ignorance of the public with regards to science, but on the other, a lot of key famous studies that people want to read are often buried behind a paywall. Those of us in science can’t honestly have it both ways.
Also, I am well aware that some of the data that I cite is a few decades old. If anyone knows of more recent research that confirms or contrasts previous results, I welcome the feedback!
Transgenderism, One can choose to “identify” as male, female, or another gender
What has to be the most incredible denial of reality in the history of the world is playing out right in front of our eyes in the later half of the 2010’s. We hear everyday about how one can choose their gender, gender is just a social construct, gender and biological sex have nothing to do with one another etc.
Yet, we are also told that the taxpayers and the military should be forced to pay for “gender reassignment surgery” and hormone treatments designed to mimic the opposite biological sex.
If we define gender as the social expression of biological sex, as my sociology class in college did, then the two very much are intertwined, and clearly are not merely a social construct. The tendency of males to be more physically aggressive as the direct result of testosterone (in both humans and many animals), is just one example of how “gender” is based in biological reality, and not merely some “social construct.”
Granted, some things are arbitrary social constructs, such as blue vs pink, but as far as I am aware, no one is going into the doctor to have surgery because they prefer one color t-shirt to the other. They are taking hormones and having surgery because they are dissatisfied with their biological sex.
I talk about this more in an article I wrote fairly recently.
Fracking is Bad, Josh Fox said so in GasLand
A lot of people are vehemently opposed to “fracking” because of the 2010 documentary film GasLand. The movie made numerous claims about the negative environmental impacts of fracking, and featured people who claimed to be experiencing health problems as the result of fracking being done by energy companies.
As a result of the film, millions of people are now opposed to fracking, without necessarily knowing what it is, and fracking has even been banned in several places around the world.
In the spirit of keeping each section of this article short, I won’t go into detail about each claim, however I will link to a longer to a longer article I wrote on the topic.
One thing I will say is that the claims made by Fox have been investigated by numerous governmental agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The results did not supports the claims made in Fox’s documentary.
While I will not go into great detail here, I want to address the core and most dramatic argument made by Fox in this documentary. Fox interviewed people who claimed that fracking caused methane to leach into the drinking water in Dimock, Pennsylvania.
What Fox intentionally left out of the documentary, is that wells in this town had methane in them long before fracking started. Fox essentially admits to lying to his audience in the clip below.
If Fox wants to argue that fracking has caused environmental problems, then he is free to do so, but I would ask that he not lie about it.
Ultimately, the questions being debated here are scientific questions, and they should be assessed in a scientific way. If someone says that they feel that fracking has caused X, then that is not good enough. In this case they need to actually test the water, and see what the data indicates. If Fox wants to bring in a reputable, independent company or organization to test people’s water, he is free to do so, as are the people he interviewed. But so far the evidence has not supported their overall claims.
Nuclear Power is Bad and Dangerous
To be fair, this is not just an issue on the Left, and many on the Left are seeking to educate people about nuclear energy.
The reality is that nuclear power is both the greenest and the cheapest form of energy in the world, but a lot of bad information has been given to the public.
People are afraid of getting radiation poisoning from living near a nuclear power plant, but you actually get more radiation from flying in an airplane than walking through a nuclear power plant.
There is a lot of talk about wind, solar, and other forms of alternative energy, and on a certain scale, these forms of energy can provide a lot of good. But on a large scale, the scale of civilizations, there are only two energy sources that are currently able to meet our needs, coal and nuclear.
Those are the two options.
While there is a lot of fear and misconceptions surrounding nuclear energy, if more people understood how nuclear energy works, I think there would be a lot more widespread support for it, on both the Right and the Left.
Climate Change is a Fact — 97% of Scientists Agree!!!
The 97% figure is something that is hotly debated on the Internet. Various sources will argue for or against the figure. I am including both views in the links below.
What these surveys claim to indicate is that 97% of “climate scientists” agree that human activity is causing “climate change.” But what does that even mean?
The problem here is that these claims seem to be a wet noodle. What we have here are surveys asking “climate scientists” if they think that humans are causing climate change, and reviews of the scientific literature saying that 97% of published papers that take a stance on the issue support the claim that humans are causing climate change — yet acknowledging that large percentages don’t take a stance one way or the other.
There are a lot of problems with this logic. For one thing, who are these “climate scientists” that they are referring to? Instead of interviewing atmospheric physicists, these studies seem to interview any scientist who’s papers are talking about “climate change,” and who are receiving funding in that regard.
Please don’t misunderstand me, because I don’t want to be “that guy” but there is a difference in funding revenue if you are researching silk worms, as opposed to researching the impact of climate change on silk worms.
So here we may have an entomologist (bug scientist), who, for whatever reason thinks that climate change is relevant to his silk worm research, but his colleague across the hall might not agree, so he focuses his silk worm research elsewhere. Both may be competent scientists with competent opinions, but only one would be labelled as a “climate scientist” and be included in these surveys.
Two scientists, two different opinions. But only one will be included in a survey. (Please see my disclaimer about being “Unbiased” below.)
For another thing, these surveys are doing a poor job of distinguishing between the notion that humans contribute somewhat to climate change, as opposed to being the main cause.
One article that I link below tries to point out that in their review of the literature, they categorized published papers in a very “conservative” manner. However, the glaringly obvious problem with this is the highly politicized nature of scientific publishing, where viewpoint discrimination is rampant, despite lip service regarding it as unethical.
The scientist who thinks that Climate Change is not predominantly caused by humans may be less likely to see his paper accepted. So even if he is able to publish, his colleague at the same university might have already published ten more papers, giving an inflated result. This is, of course, if we are looking at published papers, as opposed to surveying the scientists themselves.
In other words, this 97% figure is fluff. It cherry picks who to interview, and asks meaningless questions. The figure ultimately tells us nothing, which means it has no value.
What I would like to see is this: There should be a proper survey open to all PhD atmospheric physicists. This survey should ask the following:
- In your professional opinion, do you think that human activity is the main cause of Global Warming?
- Do you believe that Global Warming is harmful to the health of the planet?
- Do you believe that Global Warming is catastrophic?
It is not enough merely to ask if humans are causing “Climate Change,” it is important to ask whether humans are the primary cause, if human caused Global Warming is harmful, and if that harm is mild, or if that harm is catastrophic.
I want to emphasize. This third point to me is one of the biggest points that is being overlooked. It is one thing to say that Global Warming is happening, or even that it is caused primarily by humans. It is an entirely different thing to say that Global Warming is catastrophic.
The question of whether Global Warming is catastrophic is the most important question, and yet it is being overlooked.
I have seen experts argue that the claims made by Climate Alarmists are not grounded in fact. Some experts argue that increased CO2 and temperatures are actually beneficial to the planet.
I would like to see a proper survey of Atmospheric Physicists done. This might help to clarify this issue, and circumvent the question-begging inherent in many of these highly politicized surveys.
Of course, at the end of the day, the science should be determined by the facts and data, not by who’s the most popular in the literature.
P.S. After initially publishing this article, I came across an amazing gem. Alex Epstein points out the following:
Because the actual 97% claim doesn’t even remotely justify their policies, catastrophists like President Obama and John Kerry take what we could generously call creative liberties in repeating this claim.
On his Twitter account, President Obama tweets: “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.” Not only does Obama sloppily equate “scientists” with “climate scientists,” but more importantly he added “dangerous” to the 97% claim, which is not there in the literature.
Epstein goes on to point out that the scientists who’s were surveyed in at least one of these studies protested, saying that their research was grossly misrepresented.
So this “97%” figure, in at least one study, is completely fraudulent, as the scientists themselves who were surveyed say that they are being misrepresented. As a member of the scientific community, I find this to be extremely disturbing.
Unbiased?
Before I move on, as a disclaimer, and because I don’t want to be misunderstood, I want to make one thing clear. I use a hypothetical example in this article of an entomologist receiving funding that may bias his work, and his stated opinions. That does not mean that his research is not valuable. The media often stereotypes scientists as being perfectly unbiased, dispassionate robots, but the reality is that every scientist in the world is a human being. For many scientists, the passion to research a cure for cancer, or a love of genetics is what drives and motivates them. Also, there is nothing wrong with receiving funds for research from valid avenues.
The fact that a silk worm researcher receives funds connected to Global Warming should not by itself discredit his findings. Rather I take the opposite view, that everyone has a bias, and that there should be research funded by Big Oil, environmental groups, political organizations, and even Churches. The source of the funding should be made clear, but then the merits of the arguments should be judged on their merits. Competing laboratories can then have their results compared, and if someone is caught lying or cheating, it can be dealt with accordingly in the marketplace of ideas and academics.
The question is not how can we find an unbiased opinion, because none exists. The question is how can we make sure that every scientist can be heard, and has a voice, without fear of reprisal based on a genuine difference of opinion?
I still think that objective knowledge is possible. Please don’t misunderstand me. Even though we may have our biases, I think we can still be impartial. We can still look at the data, and make logical conclusions that directly follow. But it is imperative that in our search for truth that dissenting voices are heard, and properly considered.
During the trial of Galileo, we saw a man who was persecuted, but most people are not aware that this persecution was initiated primarily by his fellow scientists. It was his scientific peers who wanted to push to have their ideas enshrined as dogma, and were primarily seeking to silence Galileo. What ensued was a bitter conflict that had a lot to do with science and politics, but very little to do with religion, despite what most people have been told. (If you want to know more about what actually happened with Galileo, I suggest reading the book by Hannam that I cite earlier in this article.)
Intelligent Design is Religion — Biblical Creationism Repackaged
Of course, Intelligent Design is complete nonsense. That’s why Darwinists have to make sure that any scientist who expresses sympathy with Intelligent Design is threatened with the loss of their career.
The reality is that Evolution cannot survive any sort of scientific scrutiny. That is why scientists who hold to Intelligent Design, or any sort of Creation have to be coerced into silence. (For the sake of clarity, these are two separate intellectual movements, even though there is some overlap.)
In the 2008 documentary Expelled, Ben Stein interviewed scientists who lost their jobs and were essentially blacklisted for even going as far as to express sympathy with those in the Design movement, even if they themselves were not Design advocates. The inquisition against scientists in the Design movement is nothing short of disturbing.
There is a lot more that I would like to say that I am not able to fully address here. I used to believe in Evolution, and saw the evidence for Evolution as overwhelming. I saw Creationists as backwards people who were very nice, but who were somewhat stupid when it came to science. That was until I started investigating the arguments of scientists with contrary views for myself.
I went on to earn a Bachelor of Science in Biotechnology and Molecular Bioscience.
Sadly, very few scientists and science majors have ever actually heard contrary arguments for themselves. But many they think they have. The strawman argument that is usually given is that Creationists teach that all life on Earth was created exactly as we see it today and has never changed since. But this is not the case. In fact, it was a Creationist by the name of Edward Blyth who first proposed the idea of Natural Selection, not Charles Darwin.
Many of my classmates were open to hearing contrary ideas while I was in college, and many changed their way of thinking. But countless graduates in medicine and the life sciences have been lied to about what Creationists and ID advocates actually teach, and the misrepresentations continue to bounce around the echo chambers. Even my textbooks presented these strawmen to students to show how foolish these “Creationists” are, and neglected to inform students that there are many top scientists all around the world who are Creationists and ID advocates.
As Richard Dawkins puts it “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist” This is why even secular scientists in the Intelligent Design movement have to be silenced. Evolution is the Secular Creation Myth. It is used to banish any notion of God into the realm of personal feelings and superstition. But if the Creation Myth of the Secularist falls apart, he looses power over the minds and will of the masses.
It is my conviction that no scientifically literate person who investigates this issue with an honest and open mind can come back with any other conclusion than to say that the evidence for Design in nature is overwhelming, and the arguments for Evolution, once scrutinized by reading scientists with contrary views, are not only wanting, but are intellectually bankrupt.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
When we compare the claims made by Leftists to the actual scientific data, what we find is that their claims are often groundless, and based on a misrepresentation of the actual scientific evidence, and academic consensus.
In the case of Fracking, actual scientists are being ignored, while Josh Fox runs around knowingly misrepresenting the facts (which he essentially admits). In the case of Bill Nye, we see what is at best incompetence. In the case of Al Gore, we see misrepresentation, which may or may not have been intentional, to push a political agenda.
With the 97% of Scientists figure, we are given a nice-sounding figure that doesn’t really mean anything.
And in the case of embryology, we are given mantras about clumps of cells, as well as fake science from the 1800’s, as if it were fact.
I don’t want the takeaway message of this article to be “Rah Rah Republican!” (After all, I am not a Republican.) What I want people to come away from with this article is a love for truth, and a desire to seek it.
Leftists aren’t the only ones guilty of uncritically accepting ideas that fit their worldview, nor are they the only ones guilty of a backfire effect, where they become hostile to information that does not suit them.
In fact, there are a lot of issues out there where people on both the Left and the Right fall into the same trap. Both the liberal hippie mom, and the homeschool church mom might go to the same organic grocery store, not knowing that some of their products are deceptively labelled, and both might fall for propaganda that unjustly attacks vaccines.
This article comes in guns-blazing, firing at the Left, and I would argue that this is justly so. But I don’t want that to be the end of it. That should not be the end of the conversation.
I also want to be open to correction. Perhaps I misunderstood something about the 97% figures? Perhaps there are more recent figures on the nature of human sexuality? Perhaps cows really are evil, and they are plotting to overthrow us? (Yes, that last one was a joke.)
As someone persuing a career in science, I want to be open to facts and evidence, wherever that might lead.
As a Conservative, I am willing to acknowledge that there may be some very good people on the Left, who are maybe very mislead. Just as there were probably plenty of good people who got caught up in NAZI propaganda in World War II.
But at the end of the day, morality demands that we seek objective truth. It demands that we step outside of our echo chambers, and hear arguments on all sides of an issue. To knowingly refuse to think, and to contend that outsiders must say thus-and-so, is to abdicate our moral duty to ourselves as thinking and rational beings.
This is an area where I have been greatly influenced by the Objectivists, and those over at For The New Chrsitian Intellectual. And for that I am eternally grateful!
There was once a very wise king named Solomon who said the following:
“The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.”
-Proverbs 18:17
And there was another man who said this.
“A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.”
-Charles Darwin
