{"id":458,"date":"2007-04-08T23:50:39","date_gmt":"2007-04-08T23:50:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/taomph\/?p=458"},"modified":"2011-07-20T15:23:00","modified_gmt":"2011-07-20T20:23:00","slug":"test-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/2007\/04\/08\/test-101\/","title":{"rendered":"Witless: A Critique of Coulter&#8217;s &#8220;Godless&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last year, right-wing pundit and flapping head Ann Coulter published a book entitled &#8220;Godless&#8221;. In it, she raised yet again the tired accusations that all Democrats are godless politicians, hell-bent (is that the right phrase?) on creating a society that crushes religion out of every private life. Sigh. Of course, she takes the obligatory pot-shot at evolution, to somehow justify that people on the left of the moral and political spectrum infuse godlessness in both thought and deed.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, I hadn&#8217;t the energy to do more than skim through this sad waste of ink and paper &#8211; I was still tired from Santorum&#8217;s &#8220;It Takes a Family&#8221; rant on science education. Tonight, I stumbled upon a scathing criticism of Coulter&#8217;s anti-evolution regurgitation on a site affiliated with &#8220;Skeptic&#8221; magazine. Have a look:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.livescience.com\/othernews\/070407_coulter_hoax.html\">http:\/\/www.livescience.com\/othernews\/070407_coulter_hoax.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a bit long, but worth it. My favorite passage is this one:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>First, the validity of a<br \/>\nscientific theory does not hinge upon how it has been interpreted by<br \/>\nGerman dictators. And second, a scientific theory is not an ideology;<br \/>\nit aims at explaining nature, not telling us what to do. Evolutionary<br \/>\nbiology did not oblige Hitler to kill Jews any more than nuclear<br \/>\nphysics mandates Kim Jong-Il to acquire the atomic bomb. And the theory<br \/>\nof gravity does not require that you go jump off a bridge.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Amen to that. Science is not a holy scripture. It is a method. By that method, we learn about the world as it is, not as we want it to be.<\/p>\n<p class=\"poweredbyperformancing\">Powered by <a href=\"http:\/\/scribefire.com\/\">ScribeFire<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last year, right-wing pundit and flapping head Ann Coulter published a book entitled &#8220;Godless&#8221;. In it, she raised yet again the tired accusations that all Democrats are godless politicians, hell-bent (is that the right phrase?) on creating a society that crushes religion out of every private life. Sigh. Of course, she takes the obligatory pot-shot [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[79,80,30,110],"class_list":{"0":"post-458","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-politics","7":"tag-badreligion","8":"tag-badscience","9":"tag-evolution","10":"tag-idiocracy","11":"czr-hentry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1863,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions\/1863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}