In popular parlance, “child abuser” is just about the worst thing you can call anyone. So you can imagine my shock when I read the latest comments on one of my own recent threads and found one commenter accusing another of child abuse – a charge he repeated in the Moderation thread. My astonishment grew when I read of a proposal in Moderation to ban child abusers from The Skeptical Zone, on the grounds that people who post porn are already banned, and child abuse is much, much worse.
And what was the alleged offense? Here it is: “admitting to using strawman arguments, fallacious reasoning, and false claims to destroy childrens’ ability to think rationally about certain scientific topics. That’s child abuse.” Except that the person accused made no such admission. Regardless of whether the arguments were fallacious or not, no deceit was involved. It was the accuser who attacked the arguments as fallacious and illogical, not the person he accused.
And what were the arguments about? In a nutshell, abiogenesis. The arguments were presented to a group of six-year-old children and their parents, in an attempt to make them see that the origin of life from non-living matter is astronomically improbable, that macroevolution (e.g. fish to bird) is also vanishingly improbable, and that Intelligent Design is the only rational inference. A detailed description of the presentation can be found here.
I’d like to make a couple of very brief points. First, the term “child abuse” can be defined in three ways. First, could be defined very broadly to mean behavior which actually causes severe and/or life-long physical or psychological damage to children. Second, it could be defined more narrowly to mean behavior which is intended to cause severe and/or life-long physical or psychological damage to children. Third, it could be defined as behavior which the vast majority of responsible people, at the present time, would agree causes severe and/or life-long physical or psychological damage to children.
The first definition is clearly ridiculous, as it would make all of our parents or grandparents child abusers. Think of passive smoking. Or think of spanking: fifty years ago, it was quite common for naughty children to get their little bottoms hit with a belt and sent to bed without supper. The second definition is also unsatisfactory, as it would exonerate parents who refused to take their dying child to a doctor, but took her to a quack faith healer instead: here, the parents didn’t mean to harm their child, but any sensible person would say that they should have known better. That leaves us with the third definition.
So the question that concerns us is: does teaching a child a fallacious argument – assuming that it was fallacious – designed to prove that abiogenesis is well-nigh impossible constitute behavior which the vast majority of responsible would agree causes severe and/or life-long physical or psychological damage to a child? The response to that question should be bleeding obvious: you’ve got to be kidding me. Clearly the person making the ridiculous accusation needs to grow up.
I’d also point out that the person in question actually not only accused a TSZ commenter of child abuse, but also accused him of admitting to it:
Mung,
You seem very, very, upset that I am pointing out that [name redacted]’s real life behavior constitutes child abuse. A good example of him admitting to this is in the thread starting here.
I have to say that’s libelous. The accused person merely admitted to using certain arguments to persuade children. He made no admission of committing child abuse. As I showed above, the only reasonable definition of child abuse is: behavior which the vast majority of responsible people, at the present time, would agree causes severe and/or life-long physical or psychological damage to children. The accused person did not admit to engaging in such behavior; on the contrary, he emphatically denied it.
I think a retraction is in order. And I might add: the accuser is very lucky that the person he accused belongs to a religion that enjoins its followers to “forgive other people when they sin against you” (Matthew 6:14), turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:40) and “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44). Very lucky indeed.
And how fallacious were the arguments, anyway? I’ll let readers judge. There was an everyday observation that “dead dogs stay dead dogs,” used to support the conclusion that “life does not come from non-life except by a miracle.” Pasteurization was also cited as evidence against abiogenesis. My response: those are valid points. They don’t demonstrate abiogenesis to be impossible, but the person accused was not trying to establish that. The argument he was making was a rhetorical one, not a rigorously deductive one which you might expect to hear in a college classroom.
There was another argument to the effect that fish don’t evolve into birds because fish give birth to fish. A little simplistic, perhaps, but it’s certainly strong prima facie evidence against macroevolution. Fortunately for evolutionists, there is good fossil evidence for the evolution of fish into tetrapods, some of which later evolved into birds. Scientists therefore have good reason to believe that it happened, but they still can’t demonstrate a mechanism for how it happened, and they still don’t know why it happened. What they have instead are some promising hypotheses which (unfortunately) have not yet been quantified in order to establish that the transition could have taken place over the timescale involved. And I hardly think most parents would consider it “child abuse” to omit to mention the existence of Archaeopteryx in a presentation aimed at six-year-olds, especially when there is an ongoing debate over that fossil’s place in evolution: some scientists argue that it was neither a bird nor an ancestor of modern birds (or even a close relative of that ancestor).
Third, there was an argument relating to a large cup of coins, in which the presenter asked the children to guess whether they would all turn up heads when shaken (answer: “NO.”) The accuser objected that it would have been fairer to ask a child to put all the coins that came up tails back in her cup and shake it again, and repeat the process again and again. But in this case, it it the accuser’s understanding of evolution which is faulty: it is a process that lacks foresight, so it cannot select for a distant, long-term result. Score a point to the presenter.
Fourth, the presenter showed the children videos of Rube Goldberg machines made by man, and then showed them videos of living things, telling the children that they are Rube Goldberg machines, too. That’s arguably true, as far as it goes. Consider the following sentence, taken from a textbook titled, Cell and Molecular Biology: Concepts and Experiments by Gerald Karp (John Wiley and Sons, Sixth edition, 2009): “Cellular activities are often analogous to this ‘Rube Goldberg’ machine, in which one event automatically triggers the next event in a reaction sequence” (p. 7). There are also scholarly papers discussing how such biological Rube Goldberg machines might have evolved – but once again, without any quantification of the degree of difficulty or the time that would have been involved. Is it “child abuse” to neglect to mention these plausible but speculative papers to a class of six-year-olds? No: it’s what lawyers call advocacy.
Finally, the presenter invoked Pascal’s Wager, when giving talks to college students (not six-year-olds):
I then teach them Pascal’s wager and point out, they have less to lose by being wrong about ID and God’s creation than their Christ-hating professors, therefore it’s worth stepping out in a little faith if that’s what they want to do.
I suggest that if they worry the professors are right, I suggest they ask them these sorts of questions. When they see their professors can’t answer, they often say, “then why do they teach evolution is true, they have no proof.” My point exactly.
The accuser’s sharp retort to this exposition was: “I suspect you neglect to mention the god that gets very annoyed with people who try to game it.”
Look. I have a Ph.D. in philosophy, and I’m quite familiar with the many objections that have been leveled against Pascal’s wager. But I’m also well aware that the “many gods” objection which the accuser cites (alluding to the “professor’s god“) is far from decisive, and continues to be the subject of vigorous debate. [Defenders of the argument point out, for instance, that since Pascal’s God is an absolutely perfect being, Pascal’s hypothesis is simpler and hence more probable than the highly ad hoc hypothesis of a professor’s god.] And I might add that since college students are not children, there can be no question of “child abuse” in this context. These students are perfectly capable of Googling “Pascal’s wager,” as I just did.
After having examined the arguments, I can find none that constitutes “child abuse” on any reasonable definition of the term. The accuser whom I mentioned also accused the presenter of “attempting to indoctrinate children.” However, the term “indoctrinate” is a highly loaded word. Attempting to persuade children of the truth of a certain worldview, using arguments that a scholarly pedant might take exception to, cannot be fairly described as “indoctrination,” whatever one might happen to think of the arguments themselves.
To sum up: I find the accused not guilty. And I would hope that the majority of readers would agree with my verdict, which is nothing more and nothing less than a victory for common sense.
Before I conclude this post, I’d like to comment on the suggestion made by one commenter that child abusers be banned from TSZ. As we’ve seen, the term “child abuse” has been variously defined by people on this Website, so before such a rule is proposed, we need to agree on which definition of “child abuse” we’re talking about. Now, the notion of clear and present danger is well-established in American constitutional law. If you’re going to actually ban someone from a site encouraging the free discussion of ideas, then I would suggest that your reason for doing so should be a compelling one. If, on the other hand, the suggestion is simply that contributors with a criminal history of child abuse be banned from TSZ, then that sounds much more reasonable. As for the banning of porn: irrespective of how much harm someone may think it does, the practical rationale for banning it should be obvious. Most people think it’s an annoying nuisance. The same goes for spam.
I shall lay down my pen here, and invite readers to contribute their thoughts. I’ve said my piece.
(Image at the top courtesy of all-free-download.com and BSGStudio.)
Porn? What porn?
Pornography (often abbreviated to porn or porno in informal language) is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purpose of sexual arousal.
I’m sure the person making the allegation had no idea of the connotations nor of just how nasty and mean-spirited the comment could appear.
Meanwhile, in an alternate universe, he apologized and all was forgiven.
Your shorter than average appeal to a coherent code of morality from ‘skeptics’ is cute, vjtorley, given you acknowledge holding a PhD in philosophy. There is likewise no code for having ‘grown up’ from being children taught practical atheism. Nor from outgrowing IDism or figuring out how badly distorted one’s theology can become through it’s ‘strictly scientific’ allure.
Have you found yet some of those other sites you were looking for better than TSZ-nemesis Uncommon Descent that you would share them, vjtorley? Immorality among skeptics?! ; )
I also find the accused not guilty.
And I think the accuser should be compelled to watch coin-tossing videos.
Vincent,
As noted here, I have made my case in a number of comments, including here, here, and here. What Sal has admitted to doing constitutes intellectual and emotional child abuse.
He knows that what he presents are strawman arguments, he knows that he is making false claims, and he knows he’s leaving out a considerable amount of evidence. There is no defense for his behavior.
There’s a mormon church near my house. I’ve seen what the indoctrination does to those kids: it’s much worse than psychological child abuse, those kids are intellectual zombies
If teaching children to think poorly and ignore evidence that conflicts with their biases is ‘child abuse’, then the entire system of public education in the United States is guilty of child abuse.
Vincent. I’ll to ask you the same think I asked Mung. He didn’t have the balls to answer.
You are not a YEC, you know there’s plenty evidence in support of an old Earth, and UCD. Therefore you must agree Sal is teaching lies to those kids and also to ignore the evidence, if that’s not indoctrination I don’t know what is
What, are you saying that the entire public education in the US spits out the appalling nonsense that Sal does routinely?
Perhaps not. But if not, why even suggest such an equation?
Glen Davidson
The accused, Sal, has been told countless times to not misrepresent evolution. At this point the fact that he doesn’t acknowledge the fact that he’s teaching fallacious misrepresentations and illogical crap to those kids only makes things worse for him.
If he had never been told about it all, it could be an honest mistake. At this point he’s obviously deliberately misleading those kids
VJ Torley,
I’m an Ex-catholic. Patrick called my Dad a child abuser for him taking me to Catholic Church and Catholic Sunday school.
Patrick will insist my Dad is a child abuser of me no matter how many times I will declare (and willing to do so under oath) that my Dad was an upstanding citizen, father, and husband, and that him taking me to Roman Catholic Mass and Sunday School was not child abuse in my book.
But Patrick presents himself as knowing better, even though he’s never even met my Dad personally.
What? Are you kidding me Vincent? If you’re going to teach 6 years old kids about evolution, you are going to need to simplify things a bit. A point to the presenter? How can you possibly say that? How is tossing all the coins once even remotely like evolution?
My verdict: not child abuse. I thought it was hyperbolic when Dawkins used it, and do now too. Indoctrination covers it IMO, obviously without the added venom.
Vincent said : the presenter showed the children videos of Rube Goldberg machines made by man, and then showed them videos of living things, telling the children that they are Rube Goldberg machines, too. That’s arguably true
SMFH, so Vincent endorses teaching of fallacious arguments from analogy… I didn’t expect that from you
That isn’t the question at all, and you should know better.
The question involves continual and blatantly false presentations of what science is, what evolution is, and what sort of “evidence” YECism and the ID scam have going for them. It involves Sal’s extremely unchristian behavior against anyone he hates, including obviously false libels that he repeats incessantly, rather than backing up with honest argumentation (also establishing his tendency to be abusive).
Was it abuse when Cuba’s communists had religious kids pray for food, and nothing appeared, then ask for food from the government representatives, then to get food? That’s not even necessarily dishonest in a literal sense, but I’d at least call it abusive. How is it not abuse to tell kids a bunch of nonsense about evolution and creation, complete with the extreme distortions that Sal uses to ignore all of the evidence against his claims, while clinging tightly to a bit of “noise” that in some contorted manner supposedly supports his beliefs?
Of course I think it’s questionable to call what Sal does “child abuse,” considering how that term is perceived today. But that’s actually the point, I think, that it can be questioned and/or discussed. What can’t properly be done is to take each and every bit of Sal’s egregious PRATTs separately and ask if it can be considered to be “child abuse” while ignoring the overwhelming pattern of Sal’s egregious disregard for any kind of honest inquiry or honest depiction of good science methods.
Glen Davidson
VJ post is on a topic more general than just my case. Take for example the issue of Patrick calling my Dad a child abuser merely because my Dad raised me in the Catholic church. I’m no longer Catholic, but I don’t view my Dad taking me to Catholic Church and making me attend Catholic Sunday school as child abuse.
Do you think he has the moral warrant to make such assertions about my Dad, especially when all 3 children of my Dad will not say my Dad abused them by taking them to Catholic Church? Not to mention, this is really kind of classless on Patrick’s part to be trash talking an innocent by stander in the person of my Dad, imho.
These issues are obviously relevant to my case when parents in my church invite me to teach their children about creation.
One problem is that “abuse” has different connotations when written as “child abuse” than when written “abuse.” Sal is abusive of science, of humans, of truth, more or less on a routine basis, but most here wouldn’t call it “child abuse” when it’s in a textbook written by him.
It’s not enough to show that he’s abusive in order to demonstrate that he’s a “child abuser.”
Glen Davidson
I found the reference to your father over the top, but I also find what you teach those kids is disgusting.
strong prima facie evidence
This (almost) sounds like an oxymoron
Do you see a difference between that and teaching about your view of creation in a secular setting?
Really? Is the fact that language is relatively stable during the average person’s life strong prima facie evidence against the claim that English evolved from the Proto-Indo-European language?
Of course it isn’t, because the evolution of language is believed to be barely noticeable during the lifetime of most people (slang terms may arise quickly, but tend to disappear from use almost as quickly).
It’s the kind of “argument” that distorts the issues. Not unusual for creationists/IDists, but no excuse for such misrepresentation, especially for Sal who should know better.
Glen Davidson
If Patrick is so sure I’m guilty of child abuse, and if he really cares about those kids, why isn’t he calling the local authorities? My identity is known on the net, he can figure out which police department to call if he really cared about those kids and if he really thought he has a case.
So why isn’t Patrick doing this? Oh, maybe he didn’t think about it. Ok, now you have a chance to think about it now that I mentioned it. Are you going to report me to the police Patrick? Why or why not?
Do any credible scientists believe that Archaeopteryx does not represent one line of adaptive radiation for flight that occurred in dinosaurs and ended up with one line extant in birds?
If not, why would anyone omit such an important representative of the evolution of flight?
Glen Davidson
No, that’s not what I wrote.
Do you think that indoctrination can become sufficiently intellectually and emotionally damaging as to constitute child abuse?
Again, not what I wrote.
Wow, what deep thought. There are no degrees or levels of abuse, it either is or it isn’t, yes or no, black or white. There is absolutely no difference between an excellent but imperfect education, and childhood indoctrination with superstitious nonsense. I suppose this is what studying philosophy in the US does to students. Abuse indeed.
As I pointed out to Mung, not everything that is unethical is illegal (and vice versa). The fact that you can’t go to jail for what you do doesn’t make it any less reprehensible.
That’s what you inferred from here:
So Patrick is asserting I was abused. It’s seems clear you were making a not so subtle swipe at my parents.
What’s written in Noyau, stays in Noyau. If you’re still upset about being flamed there, respond to me there.
This seems right to me.
Evidence please- your bullshit accusations are meaningless.
Here we are over 150 years after Darwin’s book was published and the “evidence” for the evolution of vision systems remains the same- namely that different degrees of complexity for vision systems exist. That isn’t even evidence for evolution let alone evolution by means of natural selection, drift and CNE.
Evolutionism being passed off as science when it makes untestable claims like that is pure indoctrination of children. But then again it doesn’t appear that you know what science entails.
I have the same question for you then, Neil. Can indoctrination get to the point of causing sufficient intellectual and emotional damage that it can be classified as abuse?
Kantian Naturalist,
The joy of a rational voice 🙂
Not Neil, yes it can. The question is did Sal get anywhere near that point?
I agree that the term “child abuse” is somewhat inflammatory. As an aside, the proposal to ban child abusers from TSZ was Mung’s; I am fairly confident that he was attempting satire. Are you claiming that he was supporting Patrick?
vjt writes:
I am disappointed.
Firstly, I don’t see why the damage has to be “severe and/or life-long”.
“Serious, long-lasting” damage would be sufficient, methinks.
More important, however, that’s quite the false trichotomy you’ve set up there.
There’s plenty of options between behavior which 1) actually damages, 2) is intended to damage, and 3) “behavior which the vast majority [wtf?] of responsible people, at the present time, would agree causes severe” damage.
Nobody has claimed that Sal’s (admitted) behavior is illegal. But you should know that a person can be guilty of FELONY child endangerment without ever intending to harm, or actually harming, a child. DUI, for instance.
If there is a risk of harm, and someone in loco parentis is recklessly disregarding that risk, then that’s child endangerment.
If an parent recklessly disregards the risk posed by passive smoking (i.e. they are aware of the risk) smokes inside their house, that’s child abuse. Likewise, a parent who is aware of the problems with corporal punishment, but still beats his kid. That’s child abuse.
There’s a grey area where the actions are only negligent, not reckless; I’ll cut my parents a break.
Sal seems to be intentionally deceiving children in a potentially debilitating way, in order to further his personal agenda. It’s child endangerment the same way that teaching them that prayer will heal an infection is. And it currently enjoys the same legal protection, so not much point in calling the cops…
I look at Sal’s description. And I keep in mind that Sal might have written that in a self-serving way.
I see what he did as wrong and as grossly dishonest. It does not look like abuse to me, though perhaps it could be if repeated often with the same children.
But I think that misses another point. The expression “child abuse” is usually applied to cases that can be prosecuted under the law. And I don’t see how that could apply here. A court might reprimand such a teacher for dishonest teaching. But I doubt that there would be a conviction for child abuse.
Patrick,
Depends how it’s done, I think. There are cults that are clearly abusive. But I don’t see that in this instance.
I do wonder why someone feels the need to give ‘science education’ to 6 year olds outside of the conventional system. It seems clear that they think the conventional system is indoctrinating, and they want to get to them first, for the good of their own or the child’s immortal soul. I could hardly approve of that as an approach to science education, but I don’t find it abusive.
As someone who had (expired) a state teacher’s licence, and who has worked in a school and as been a parent, I have to agree that schools abuse children. and, to the best of my knowledge, always have.
The specifics of patriotism change form era to era, but children are mostly indoctrinated into tribal doctrines rather than taught how to evaluate evidence.
That’s true. I suspect that I am the only one here who has testified as an expert witness in child abuse cases.
The Dawkins assertion is loose and metaphorical.
The usual legal definition of abuse requires evidence of physical damage due to beating, rape, underfeeding, or something like that. that’s the only kind of abuse that could be presented to a court. Along with severe emotional abuse, which is very difficult to prove.
Oddly enough, I never saw much evidence that children were permanently damaged by physical abuse or neglect. But plenty of evidence that emotional abuse causes permanent impairment.
But personally, I think the world is full of people who live suboptimal or damaged lives because they are not as smart or skillful as they could have been, had they had a decent education. Much of the neglect occurring in the first few years of life, but continuing in schools that do not teach math and critical thinking very well.
Well, moderator JohnnyB, appointed by you all (including Lizzie) presumably teaches creation science to kids. What do think about that? What are you going to do about it?
The same
What makes it abuse, in my opinion, is not the storytelling. There’s nothing wrong with fiction.
What makes it abuse is the threat of punishment for not believing.
Hahaha. Thanks for the laugh. You’re the one who brought flaming accusations out of Noyau, Patrick. Now you want to hide behind Noyau. Priceless.
😀
My attempt to start a witch hunt failed? I was really quite fearful that my proposed new rules would actually pass! Not really. LoL.
Mung,
So we can mark vjt down as one of the irony-impaired.
😉
The anemia of self-righteousness.
Glen Davidson
Exactly
Sure, but it’s not just “storytelling” with threats of punishment IMO. The indoctrination renders them incapable of questioning obvious falsehoods, they will forfeit logic if necessary, pretend they can’t hear anyone with a challenge they can’t address.
Seems to me that, even if deep inside they feel it doesn’t add up, the fear of punishment or the promise of an eternal reward make them bury those thoughts and pretend everything is OK
I’m willing to believe that he hadn’t really had time to cover all the relevant background leading up to my comment. 🙂