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.)
What does the Canadian National Exhibition have to do with this discussion?
I hesitate to say this, but isn’t
obviously satirical, without need to delve into its background?
This entire discussion has gotten far too religion vs atheist for me. But, to my American friends, where do you stand on the pledge of allegiance in schools? As a Canadian, I can say that many of us see this as indoctrination. Could this not, at its extreme, also be seen as child abuse?
I’m American (naturalized, but originally Australian). And I agree that it is indoctrination (even if you remove that “under god” part).
Coerced patriotism is no patriotism at all.
I agree. Canadians and Aussies (and Kiwis) are very patriotic. But we have never had to have it pushed down our throats.
But don’t get me wrong. I think that the world is a much better place with the US in it. But does it need the forced pledge? I don’t think so.
FWIW, I think the pledge is incredibly stupid. Does a pledge last just one day? Why isn’t the one they made yesterday still good? And if they’re really time-limited, why not make them pledge once each minute?
Don’t Catholic schools do something like that? Make the kids pray every hour? Who says that’s enough?
So stupid.
On the topic of this thread, I think what Sal is doing is silly and possibly abusive, but, as everybody here except patrick knows, the term “child abuse” has a particular connotation that is entirely unconnected with the stupid stuff Sal is doing with and to 6-year old kids.
So, in a word, Sal should stop and patrick should apologize.
Will either of them do what they should do? No. Of course not.
That’s what Opus Dei schools are for. They have all the bases covered
They are children. They need a constant reminder. 🙂
I’m interested to hear what Vincent has to say.
Is the “indoctrination” (abuse) that Sal is being accused of any worse than the fact that American kids must “pledge allegiance to the flag” every morning? Personally, I think that both are forced indoctrination.
But, I am interested to hear. Does VJT think that teaching kids about evolution at an early age (3 and 4 year olds) is wrong? But taking them to Sunday School to learn about Adam and Eve, Noah and a 6000 year old earth is OK?
Reciting the pledge is just a patriotic exercise. And it isn’t mandatory.
I came at the invitation of the parents and continued invitation of the kids. The eldest is already 10 years old, in a few more years eligible to drive.
The parents were concerned the kids were not getting to hear both sides of the origins story since the kids (at the time) were being sent to public schools.
The kids drink milk. I can point them to the word “Pasteurized” on the milk cartons. The Catholic church financed Pasteur’s experiments which has bearing on the questions I’m trying to get the kids to explore.
The mother and father said to me they are concerned about the eldest kid’s doubt. I told them, skepticism and questioning is good, the child must be valued for being skeptical not discouraged from it. He can find even stronger faith if he asks pointed questions and finds answers for himself. No amount talking on my part will be able to ultimately persuade him, he, like everyone must find his own way. I can only tell the child my point of view and what I have learned and believed.
It’s been a year since I gave them any lessons. The eldest boy ran up to me in church recently and asked his Mom to show me the video of the Rube Goldberg machine he built. The six year old (now age seven) did the same a few weeks ago. They want to build more Rube Goldberg machines, and I expect they will be eager to show me videos of those machines as well.
The sister, when I visit her parents, occasionally wants to see me do the card tricks of inference (the theory of which were the basis for my old card counting days). She’s amused when I can figure out which card she is holding after I’ve looked through the other 51 cards in the deck. A process of elimination. An inference. And then she is eager to show she can also do the same inference trick on her own.
Are you serious? Are you really suggesting that Pasteur’s short duration experiments are relevant to the origin of life research? Only a complete moron would try to make the link.
Well yeah. Once something is killed, the longer time it stays in the dead state, the more unlikely it will be it will reassemble. Short time frames help the case, long time frames hurt the case.
That’s why when someone drowns and is “dead” it’s better to get him restarted and back to life. If you wait too long, he’ll be dead for good.
Several chemical reactions are involved which naturally degrade the quality of materials to form life over time.
The fact you think that is evidence of how pervasive an errant view that “more time and chance” help the OOL case. The reason it doesn’t is that more time allows more chances for fragile chemical systems to break apart.
The only place more time works to make life is in the imagination of OOL researchers, not anything based on well-accepted chemical theory.
Just ask James Tour.
Quite reasonable, I’m sure. So reasonable, in fact, that the idea of having bathroom monitors checking birth certificates of everyone that goes in to ensure they aren’t some nefarious hidden and forbidden gender is equally reasonable. Of course all potential members of TSZ should be subject to a criminal background check, before they’re allowed their anonymity.
So, who’s the lucky guy that gets to search all the applications?
Good thread.
Creationists have been accused of chjild abuse by a few big mouth evolutionists. I remember Bill Nye. so it gets around and it becomes common ammunition.
Indeed we have a social contract about accusation of important things. wE have a social contract of what constitutes child abuse.
It means abuse and intentional or with malice.
Accusing people of abusing children when the intent is clearly not to abuse is just foolish or evil accusation.
The world has been hurt by false accusations of important.
It hjappens all the time.
so how does one deal with false accusations?
I’ve been accused of everything but handle it, where power is equal, by demanding that the greater the importance of the accusation the greater the evidence made to justify making the accusation. otherwise no defence is needed and just a quick FALSE ACCUSER accusation right back.
Society has the problem of what happens in courts.
most people arer reasonable and good and will demand the accuser justify themselves or retract it or its held against them.
Losing credibility loses for them progress in their cause.
I really want to first thank you for taking the time to write the above essay. I’m sorry these exchanges even have to exist as there are much more substantive things to talk about….
As you know, I was an evolutionist, but no longer, partly because the intuition of types or immutable forms seems right to me.
The fossil record shows a hierarchical pattern that may or may not indicate a progression, but the problem is that since well-preserved soft tissue is rarely available to paleontologists, it is rather easy to say something is transitional when it isn’t.
At the college level when I teach creationism to biology students, I make appeal to what we know about physiology. The supposed ancestral fish (sarcopterygii) is like a coelacanth or a lung fish. Btw, coelecanths and lungfish are “living fossils”. I pointed out the troublesome fact that of the 3 lines proceeding from sarcopterygii we have one line of ancient (300 million year or so) colecanths evolving to modern coelecanths that are virtually identical. Same for the lungfish lineage. Horrifying to me is the unspecified, undescribed 3rd line of Sarcopterigii that has no ancestor in the fossil record that gave rise to:
frogs
turtles
elephants
birds
kangaroos
cows
whales
dolphins
snakes
and 20,000 other creatures. Why is evolution so prolific in one lineage (with no defined ancestor) and totally un-moving in the lines where we do have a defined ancestor (coelacanth and lung fish).
When the soft tissues are studied, particularly for life critical organs, versus the bones alone, problems arise. I have posted this problem to college biology students, and never have they ever said their professors could give them a plausible transitional. The physiology professors especially avoid the problem and defer to the evolutionary biologists! The evolutionary biologists will then in turn just appeal maybe to some phylogenetic reconstructions without addressing the anatomical of physiological barriers to evolution. One physical therapy student came back beaming to me a weak later and said, “you were right, the professor could describe any of the transitionals. He promised me we would be tested on it [the description of the transitional].”
Assume one of the heart architectures below is the ancestor of the other four. Let me highlight the problems from this encyclopedia britanica diagram:
How did that right atrium evolve from one side to the other along with changes in its connection to the pulmonary artery? In the crocodile and snake the right atrium is on the right ventricle but in the lizard and turtle they are on the left ventricle.
Look at the aortas. In the lizard they are all on left ventricle, in the snake on the right ventricle, and then split for the turtles and crocodiles. How did those aortas migrate from on ventricle to the other without the transitionals being lethal?
Study the picture more and you’ll see, the Intelligent Designer seems almost to have a sense of humor in exploring the various implementations.
I enjoy pointing this out to biology students taking anatomy and physiology classes. Paleontology often has limited access to soft tissue aspects of fossils, but that’s where some of the issues of transitionals lie.
So I will agree there are some things that suggest a hierarchical pattern that evolutionists claim can be solve via descent with modification, but on the other hand there are things like the issues depicted in the diagram below which I believe God designed to make it difficult to make an evolutionary inference. I think God is giving us enough clues to reconstruct what happened in the past. I respect that you believe in common descent, but it is something I can no longer find personally believable.
Thanks again VJ. God bless you.
We did say a pledge of allegiance to the the cross after the flag, Beyond that not much praying going on
Sal:
The kids (probaby) don’t know that you’re feeding them bullshit. Young kids are vulnerable to indoctrination and misinformation.
How does that excuse your actions?
Are the parents insisting that the kids be taught “both sides” of the flat earth controversy?
That’s inane, Sal.
Or he can — and hopefully will — end up ditching the faith when he realizes how ridiculous it is. It happened to me.
The “lessons” you’ve been giving them are PRATTs that you cannot defend. Why not get your shit together before presuming to pass your “wisdom” on to impressionable minds?
Sal, I tend to defend you around here. But when you come out with something this blatantly stupid, it makes it very difficult.
If it involves body cavity searches, I’m sure that Frankie would volunteer.
Keiths: “That’s inane, Sal.”
Not to be picky, but “insane” is spelled with an “s”.
stcordova,
Don’t look for the OoL in milk, then. That’s one to knock off the list. Helps focus effort.
stcordova,
We can look forward to meeting him on the internet soon, then. And being introduced to such novelties as …
Bad analogies for chemical process.
The reptile/mammal heart problem.
The flagellum.
The avian lung problem.
C14 in coal
The ‘problem’ of incongrous phylogeny for phylogeny.
Darwin and Puppies.
Again.
And “Life does not originate in peanutbutter, or pasteurized milk. Checkmate, Darwinists!”.
From having read your arguments against evolution now for a few years, I’m starting to seriously doubt the truth of that statement. Your thinking is so thoroughly creationist, so absolutist, so black-and-white, all-or-nothing, I have a hard time entertaining the idea that you once upon a time had some inkling of understanding of how evolutionary change proceeds.
You make the same fundamental error with all your terrible appeals to personal lack of understanding. It’s not even incredulity, I could actually respect some level of skepticism as a matter of principle. Not being instantly convinced and needing to believe something “just because” is a viewpoint I have some sympathy for.
But I meant the phrase “lack of understanding” quite literally. It’s almost like you’re actively trying not to understand. You’ve made many arguments surrounding so-called molecular machines (or macroscopic things like organs, circulatory systems and so on), against their gradual evolution. But these arguments all stand and fall on the same basic mistake. You keep imagining things were always the way they are now. So you pick some extant functional entity, imagine it evolved by picking away a few pieces at a time as-if-that-is-what-evolution-suggests, and what is left, you imagine, are the same pieces we now see today, just fewer of them. That’s the problem with literally all your arguments. And the solution (which, by the way, is provably the case) is that the remaining pieces used to be different. Different in a way that compensates for the lack of the pieces that later got added to the system.
Somebody who once understood evolution would know this and not keep making your mistake. Someone who understands it now would stop making this mistake and come up with different arguments. When this is pointed out to you, yes, you change your argument in that particular instance. But 2 weeks later, you’re back with a new example of some complex molecular function, making the same basic mistake again.
Why doesn’t it sink in, Sal? Why are you back to making the same fallacious argument week after week? Can you at least show some level progress in your thinking?
When you know what the answers are before you start everything you subsequently learn has to be cast into that context.
That, or some other process was at work. Out of interest, Sal, what does the “Intelligent Designer” gain from “exploring various implementations”? By the nature of your deity presumably it already knows the outcome of any implementation without having to actually implement it.
Strange how you switch seamlessly from “Intelligent Designer” to “God”. When the designer is “exploring” it’s the Intelligent Designer, when it’s doing deity type things it’s God.
Why?
Ahh you see, God made so many different things because he’s like an artist.
And then he made sure they were amenable to arrangement into an objective nesting hierarchical pattern because he’s also a bit of a prankster.
There isn’t any concievable observation you couldn’t hand-wave away with this kind of outright question-begging and ad-hoc nonsense.
We can all make up these just-so stories after-the-fact. It’d be a lot more impressive if you could make some quantitative predictions from first principles.
The intelligent designer knows and can do everything. It can manipulate matter at the subatomic scale, and make complete, fully-functioning structures appear from literally nothing simply by thinking about it. It knows your thoughts from every waking and sleeping moment of your life, before you’re even born. But it also enjoys “exploring”. After all, the joy of discovery is a sensible attribute for an all-knowing entity. What, you listened to my ridiculous guff?
Do you have an address I can send money to? Or books I can buy?
Been staring at a glass of milk for hours. No crocoducks have popped out of it yet.
My faith in atheism is weakening * gulp *
God did it!
https://ncse.com/creationism/analysis/mammalian-hearts
I see from this that YOU are unapologetic; and I take from Patrick’s silence that he won’t do the right thing either. As I predicted.
Before the 10-year old starts driving, maybe you could have a couple of sessions with him on how it is God that makes his brakes work, so praying is actually more important than pad maintenance.
Well, I am sorry to be unapologetic as far as you are concerned. I’d like to please most everyone at some level, especially you.
Why do you think compulsive lying helps you achieve that goal?
I’ve made my case that he did. I’m willing to consider arguments otherwise. What do you think?
And even then he can’t conceal his glee at mocking knowlegeable scientists to small children.
He has noted that he continues to interact with these children, providing positive feedback when they parrot the lies and misconceptions he’s taught them.
He has abused the trust that children have for adults to corrupt their understanding of science and to convince them to mistrust real science teachers in the future. He is deliberately destroying their ability to think critically. That’s child abuse, both by intent and result.
I disagree. Intellectual and emotional abuse that is not illegal is still abuse.
I have a certain amount of sympathy for parents who teach their children nonsense because they don’t know any better, especially when those parents were themselves indoctrinated as children.
That does not describe Sal’s situation. He has demonstrated that he is capable of understanding modern evolutionary theory but he hates that it refutes his religious beliefs. He is deliberately lying to children in order to damage their ability to learn science in the future. That is child abuse.
I wasn’t the one who brought up the flaming about Sal’s daddy issues in this thread, he did.
That attempted distraction out of the way, do you have any support for the idea that what Sal has admitted to doing isn’t child abuse?
It’s ridiculous and unAmerican. Who the hell pledges allegiance to a flag? I agree that it is indoctrination.
Sal Cordova has demonstrated that he is capable of understanding modern evolutionary theory. He rejects it because of his religious beliefs and uses distortions and false claims to convince children to similarly reject it.
That’s intentional abuse.
I agree. This is a standard creationist trope, “I once was lost but now am found.” It’s also a common lie. Sal, do you have any evidence to support your claim that you were once an “evolutionist”? Blog posts or comments?
Evolutionists have demonstrated there isn’t a modern scientific theory of evolution.
LoL! Evolutionism is science is a common lie and yet you spew it every day.
I’m not going to defend the pledge in schools, but it does have a history. It was not official until 1942. One might conjecture a reason for it from the date.
The pledge originated in New York in the 1890s, a time and place when immigration was booming.
Patrick,
I disagree with you here. I think Sal has been getting a lot of contrary evidence over the last couple of years. All of us have some cognitive bias. My observation is that evolutionists are shrugging off the conflicting data that is surfacing. In moderation issues.
You state
Yet Jock states:
You claim they corrected him when there is no evidence that the homo chirality is solved. This is not up to your standards of empirical evidence.
It is an exercise in patriotism, not indoctrination, and the flag represents the country.
Interesting points. While I find the idea of pledging to be counter to the individual rights on which the country was based, I would find it less ridiculous if it started “I pledge allegiance to the concepts underlying the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.” It doesn’t really roll off the tongue, though.
Note the “I don’t think it’s much of a problem.” Sal has been raising this for years and getting detailed responses for years which he has been ignoring for years. It’s almost like he thinks he’s found a fatal flaw in modern evolutionary theory that has been completely missed by thousands of scientists working in the field over decades. I’m sure that’s not it, though, because that would be stupid.