Lewis Black on Creationism

Lewis Black explains why Christians get the “Old Testament” wrong. I explain how Black gets George W. Bush wrong—to some degree.

Here is another comedy clip, from Red, White, and Screwed, a video of Lewis Black in performance in Washington, D.C., in 2006. Once again, I have provided a transcript, so that those who like to remind themselves of the best bits, as I do, can have the words in print before them. And as in my previous posting of a clip of a comic in performance, of course, I advise all readers to watch the video before reading the transcript.

This performance took place during that dark age of recent American history known as the presidency of George W. Bush. The clip begins at a somewhat awkward point, in mid-sentence, omitting context that would allow the viewer to understand immediately what Black is talking about. I have therefore supplied, in the transcript that follows, the sentence and a half preceding the words with which the clip begins. (The complete version can be heard at 3:50 in this clip.)

I should have known earlier about President Bush, but I gave him some rope—a lot of rope, and then—he hung all of us with it. I should have known it when I heard him say, “When it comes to evolution, the jury is still out.” What jury, where? The Scopes trial is over.

I never thought that during the course of my life, a president would be elected who didn’t believe in evolution, or at least kind of in the ball park of it, or thought m-m-m-maybe it’s got some MERIT! But NO! He believes that the earth was created in seven days. Whew! Takes my breath away. And why does he believe that? Because he read it in the Old Testament, which is the book of my people—the Jewish people. And that book wasn’t good enough for you Christians, was it? You went, “No, we’ve got a better book, with a better character, you’re going to LOVE him!” And you called your book NEW, and said our book was OLD!

And yet every Sunday I turn on the television set, and there’s a priest or a pastor reading from my book, and interpreting it, and their interpretations, I have to tell you, are usually wrong. It’s not their fault, because it’s not their book. You never see a rabbi on the TV interpreting the New Testament, do you? If you want to truly understand the Old Testament, if there is something you don’t quite get, there are Jews who walk among you, and THEY—I promise you this—will take TIME out of their VERY JEWY, JEWY DAY, and interpret for you anything that you’re having trouble understanding. And we will do that, if, of course, the price is right.

Was the earth created in seven days? No. For those of you who believe it was, for you Christians, let me tell you that you do not understand the Jewish people. We Jews understand that it did not take place in seven days, and that’s because we know what we’re good at; and what we’re really good at is bullshit. This is a wonderful story that was told to the people in the desert in order to distract them from the fact that they did not have air conditioning. I would LOVE to have the FAITH to believe that it took place in seven days, but—I have thoughts. And that can really fuck up the faith thing. Just ask any Catholic priest.

And then, there are fossils. Whenever anybody tries to tell me that they believe it took place in seven days, I reach for a fossil and go, “Fossil!” And if they keep talking I throw it just over their head.

There are people who believe that dinosaurs and men lived together, that they roamed the earth at the same time. There are museums that children go to in which they build dioramas to show them this. And what this is, purely and simply, is a clinical psychotic reaction. They are crazy. They are stone cold fuck nuts. I can’t be kind about this, because these people are watching The Flintstones as if it were a documentary.

For me, the last paragraph, especially its last sentence, makes the whole speech worthwhile. But if the words preceding that line contain a serious error, does the worth of the speech as humor excuse it? I think not. Lewis Black is one of those comics whose performances largely owe their power to their truth. Of course, he often employs overstatement and fantasy, as around the middle of this excerpt; but he never, so far as I know, tries to pass them off as fact. So, as much as I relish making fun of the follies of Christian Biblical literalists and of former President Bush, I feel bound to correct Black’s lumping of the latter with the former.

Let us be clear that Black’s mention of the then-president at the beginning of the excerpt is mainly a transitional device, reflecting what he was saying just beforehand. He was talking about politics; now he wants to talk about the interpretation of Jewish scriptures by Christians, especially by those Christians who are Biblical literalists. Nonetheless, the excerpt begins with a misrepresentation of what President Bush, or rather, as he was at the time of uttering the words, presidential candidate Bush, said and meant. The utterance that Lewis Black approximately quotes was reported as follows in an article in The New York Times in October of 2000:

“From Scripture you can gain a lot of strength and solace and learn life’s lessons. That’s what I believe, and I don’t necessarily believe every single word is literally true. I think that, for example, on the issue of evolution, the verdict is still out on how God created the earth. . . . I don’t use the Bible as necessarily a way to predict the findings of science.” ¹

Black’s version incorporates a correction, probably made unwittingly, of the future president’s characteristic confusion of idiom. Bush seems to have conflated the idiomatic phrases “the jury is still out” and “a verdict has not yet been reached” into the mixed-up phrase “the verdict is still out.” This detail does not, however, affect the substance of the words quoted.

What does affect the substance is the remainder of the quotation, which makes Bush out to be less clearly on the side of Biblical literalism than Black would put him. In fact, it puts him on the other side entirely. Then-candidate Bush says explicitly that he does not take the Bible to be literally true in every particular, especially as an anticipation of “the findings of science.” He praises the Bible as a source of “strength and solace” and instruction in “life’s lessons,” and contrasts this with regarding it as a source of scientific knowledge.

One might go further in trying to separate Bush from Biblical literalists and creationists. For Bush does not exactly say that the jury (or the “verdict”) is still out on evolution itself but on “how God created the earth.” One might suggest that the “verdict” that he means is a theological conclusion on how God makes things happen from behind the scenes rather than a scientific one on how the earth and the living things on it came into being.

This, however, is exceedingly unlikely. Creationists have a notorious tendency to conflate questions of the origin of species with questions of the origin of the life, of the earth, and of the universe as a whole: “theory of evolution,” in their usage, often stands for all of these things. The construction of the quoted sentence shows the same confusion, or at least indicates that Bush is only concerned with the theory of evolution so far as it conflicts with the Biblical account of how the earth and what lives on it came into being. It is plainly on this conflict that he takes the jury to be “still out.” Finally, his words to a group of reporters five years later leave no room for doubt as to where he thought that there was room for doubt:

During a press conference with a group of Texas reporters on August 1, 2005, President George W. Bush responded to a question about teaching “intelligent design” in the public schools. The reporter referred to “what seems to be a growing debate over evolution versus ‘intelligent design’” and asked, “What are your personal views on that, and do you think both should be taught in public schools?” In response, Bush referred to his days as governor of Texas, when “I said that, first of all, that decision should be made to local school districts, but I felt like both sides ought to be properly taught . . . so people can understand what the debate is about.” . . . Pressing the issue, the reporter asked, “So the answer accepts the validity of ‘intelligent design’ as an alternative to evolution?” Bush avoided a direct answer, construing the question instead as a fairness issue: “You’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes.”²

President Bush makes clear on this occasion that in his view the supposed “debate” concerning the theory of evolution and the so-called theory of intelligent design belongs within the curricula of public schools. It has to be presumed that he means that it belongs within the curricula of science classes, and therefore that he considers it to be a debate within science rather than a debate about science.

In sum, what George W. Bush said publicly does not indicate that he believes, following the Bible, that the earth was created in six days. In fact, it indicates clearly that he is not a Biblical literalist at all, and that he does not think that the Bible should be used as a basis for drawing conclusions in matters of science. However, his utterances also make clear that he considers the theory of evolution—meaning, in this instance, the whole enterprise of explaining speciation by reference to natural causes—to be a matter on which no scientific verdict has been reached.

REFERENCES

¹ Laurie Goodman, “The 2000 Campaign: Matters of Faith; Bush Uses Religion as Personal and Political Guide,” New York Times, October 22, 2000. Bold type added. A scan of the pertinent passage as it appeared in print can be seen here.

² Glenn Branch, “President Bush Addresses ‘Intelligent Design,’” Reports of the National Center for Science Education, 25 (2005): 13–14. For equivalent reportage see Peter Baker and Peter Slevin, “Bush Remarks On ‘Intelligent Design’ Theory Fuel Debate,” Washington Post, August 3, 2005, or Elisabeth Bumiller, “Bush Remarks Roil Debate on Teaching of Evolution,” New York Times, August 3, 2005.

How Many Forms of BS Can You Spot in This Utterance?

Newt Gingrich on his dark past: “There’s no question that at times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard, and that things happened in my life that were not appropriate.”

Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich recently gave an interview to David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network. The first of the three clips posted by Brody at CBN.com (March 8, 2011) begins with him asking Gingrich the following rather elliptical question (the transcriptions that follow are my own):

You know the question, and I’m not going to ask it the way everybody else will ask it, but as it relates to the past, and some of those personal issues that you’ve had. You’ve talked about how God is a forgiving God, and I’d like you to expand upon that: as you went through some of those difficulties, how you saw God’s forgiving nature in all of that.

Such is Brody’s delicacy that he never actually says what “the question” is. Perhaps he is presuming that his viewers will know that Gingrich is now on his third marriage; that his relationship with the woman who became wife no. 2 started while he was married to wife no. 1; that he initiated a divorce from wife no. 1 when she was recovering from surgery for uterine cancer; that his relationship with the woman who became wife no. 3 started while he was married to wife no. 2; that he initiated a divorce from wife no. 2 on the day when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis; and that he has a history of further marital infidelities. (For Gingrich’s marital history, see the pages at About.com on Gingrich’s first and second marriages; for his other infidelities, see this article at Frontline.) These matters are presumably the “personal issues” to which Brody vaguely refers. Gingrich replies:

Well, I mean, first of all, there’s no question that at times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard, and that things happened in my life that were not appropriate. And what I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn’t trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet—I was doing them. I found that I felt compelled to seek God’s forgiveness—not God’s understanding, but God’s forgiveness—and that I do believe in a forgiving God. And I think most people, deep down in their hearts, hope there’s a forgiving God.

Now, to be fair, Brody did not ask Gingrich to confess his misdeeds, but only to tell how he understood God’s forgiveness in relation to those misdeeds, whatever they were. Nonetheless, to speak intelligibly of being forgiven, one must at lest acknowledge misconduct. And Gingrich does indeed get around to saying that he “was doing things that were wrong.” It is interesting, though, to see how much evasion and obfuscation he commits before he gets there. Consider his first sentence: At times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, I worked far too hard, and things happened in my life that were not appropriate. There are so many forms of dishonesty and cowardice packed into this fairly short utterance that it is instructive to try to identify them individually.

(1) Let us start with the most obvious one: “partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country.” One is reminded of Samuel Johnson’s remark upon the resort to patriotism by scoundrels. Here Gingrich suggests that the ultimate motive of his marital misconduct was love of country—or, as the headline of an article by Jack Stuef at Wonkette more satirically puts the claim, that “Newt Gingrich committed adultery because America made him horny.” By trying to attribute his bad conduct to a good motive, Gingrich follows the most commonly practiced strategy of reply to the bullshit interview question “What do you consider your greatest weakness?”, namely to admit to a weakness that is really a strength. In fact, he virtually repeats the best-known bullshit answer: “I sometimes care about my work too much!”

(2) To be sure, Gingrich includes the qualifier “partially,” as if sensing that, without it, his assertion might be a more blatant absurdity than even people who consider him a credible political figure would be able to accept. But that merely compounds the disingenuousness of his statement. The absurdity is not the idea that love of country can be the sole motive to betraying one’s marriage partner, but that it can be such a motive at all. The addition of the word “partially” is a sop thrown to those credulous or dull-minded enough to miss this point.

(3) Perhaps what Gingrich means to attribute to his love of his country is not his marital infidelities but only his working “far too hard,” with the implication that this in turn created the conditions leading to such misconduct. But how so? We have only the bare conjunction of the phrases “I worked far too hard” and “things happened in my life that were not appropriate.” There is no indication of how those two facts are supposed to be related. The attempt to draw blame from his conduct off into the forgivable or even laudable habit of “working too hard” is lost in vagueness.

(4) Compare the following two phrases:

(a) I worked hard.
(b) Things happened.

Notice that the speaker of (a) identifies himself as an agent, while the speaker of (b) does not identify any agent at all, but only uses the vague grammatical subject “things.” When Gingrich is speaking of conduct that may be reckoned to his credit, he identifies himself as an agent: “I worked far too hard.” When he is speaking of his misconduct—perhaps to describe him as “speaking of it” gives him too much credit; “obliquely alluding to it” seems nearer the mark—he disappears in a puff of evasion: “things happened in my life.” This is, of course, a variant of that watchword of the inveterately irresponsible, “Mistakes were made.”

(5) “Not appropriate.” I have saved the worst for last. I know of no phrase whose use so concisely manifests the collapse of moral intelligence as does this one. But that collapse is not at all peculiar to Gingrich; it can be observed wherever English is spoken. An epidemic of stultification seems to have robbed people of the command of intelligent moral vocabulary. Having apparently lost command of terms like “outrageous” (now more commonly used, idiotically, as a term of praise), “unconscionable,” “irresponsible,” “cruel,” “selfish,” “base,” “dishonest,” and so forth, to say nothing of simple and obvious ones like “bad” and “wrong,” people wishing to speak of misconduct find nothing at their disposal but a puffed-up term of etiquette.

Surely we all know what “appropriate” means. A fur hat is not appropriate to wear with a linen suit; “fuck” is an inappropriate word to use in polite company; a Phillips-head screwdriver is not appropriate for driving slotted-head screws. The word “appropriate” is what logicians call a two-place predicate, one that indicates a relation between two things: paradigmatically, a is appropriate to b. What is not appropriate to one thing is typically appropriate to some other. To describe acts of marital infidelity as “things that were not appropriate” implies that their only fault is that they were done at the wrong time, on the wrong occasion, or with the wrong person, in some sense of “wrong” not yet specified—as, for instance, a plaid tie is wrong (inappropriate) to wear with astriped shirt.

Of course, it is safe to presume that Gingrich, like all other people who use this cretinous and obfuscating jargon, does not intend any of these implications. He surely does not mean that he chose the wrong women with whom to betray his wives, or the wrong occasions for doing so. But what does he mean? An associate with whom I was discussing Gingrich’s interview on Facebook made the comment: “The real mistake here is thinking that Mr. Gingrich attaches any meaning other than dog-whistle meaning to his words.” Setting aside the question whether Gingrich has pitched his whistle correctly for the evangelical Christian audience that he hopes to influence, this seems to me correct. When Gingrich describes his former conduct as “not appropriate,” there is not much to be said about what, if anything, he means by his words, in the sense of intending something capable of being true or false. Yet he surely means to do something by uttering those words. I would say that he means to indicate repentance without actually acknowledging misconduct. He does not admit to having acted selfishly, exploitatively, deceptively, cruelly, or irresponsibly; he does not admit to having acted at all; he simply describes “things that happened” in his life as “not appropriate.”

Well, that’s my attempt to analyze the utterance of this paragon of dishonesty and moral cowardice. Does anyone see anything that I have missed?

Who Needs Science When You’ve Got the Bible?

And what hope is there for secular government when you’ve got Republicans?




Rep. John Shimkus (R., Illinois) is a candidate for the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. In a meeting of the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment on March 25, 2009, he opened a copy of the Bible and read passages from it, declaring them to be “the infallible word of God” and affirming on the basis of them that “the earth will end only when God declares its time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth.” He also said that the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere is a matter of “theological debate.” In the view of Mr. Shimkus, we must look to theology to answer questions of the composition of the earth’s atmosphere, and to the Bible to answer questions of the earth’s future and of environmental policy.

Here is a transcript of Mr. Shimkus’s words, with my comments interjected (I have made available a transcript without the interruptions here):

The right of free speech is a great right that we have in this country, the very few times that we use it to espouse our theological or religious beliefs.

“The very few times” that we use the right of free speech to espouse our theological or religious beliefs?! I should think that this right is exercised by millions of Americans every day. But perhaps by “we” the Congressman means not “we Americans” but “we members of the US Congress,” or perhaps by “free speech” he means speaking in a session of a subcommittee of that body. Yes, it is a comparatively rare occurrence for members of Congress to argue for policy positions on the basis of Bible tags, and no wonder: the very same Constitutional amendment that guarantees us (the people, not just the members of Congress) the right of free speech forbids the US Congress to make any law respecting an establishment of religion.

But we do have members of the clergy here as members of the panel, so I want to start with Genesis 8, verse 21 and 22.

Members of the clergy are present at a meeting of a congressional subcommittee, so let us read from the Bible: a curious reasoning. Mr. Shimkus seems to have been alluding to the fact that one of the witnesses before the committee on that day was Lutheran Bishop Callon Holloway, appearing on behalf of the National Council of Churches. The Bishop, according to the script of his testimony deposited in the records of the committee (PDF file), after mentioning that “for many people of faith, the conviction to be good stewards of the earth is grounded in God’s command in Genesis to keep and till the earth (Genesis 2:15),” made an argument for taking measures against global warming on purely secular grounds. But let us see how Mr. Shimkus argues:

“Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” I believe that’s the infallible word of God, and that’s the way it’s going to be for His creation.

He is apparently reading from the New International Version. Notice that the second sentence begins with the qualification “As long as the earth endures.” It looks to me as if God left himself an “out” there. If we render our planet uninhabitable, then the earth will have ceased to endure; and God doesn’t say that he won’t prevent that from happening, does he? But the lameness of Shimkus’s biblical exegesis is the least of his absurdities. He continues:

The second verse comes from Matthew 24. “And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.”

In the video, Mr. Shimkus’s manner of utterance makes it difficult to tell at what point he ceases to read and begins to speak in his own person; but one can confirm that the quotation ends here by looking up the passage (Matthew 24:31).

The earth will end only when God declares its time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth. This earth will not be destroyed by a flood.

My first thought when I read this was that destruction by a global flood is not exactly what we are concerned about. But then I reflected that one effect of global warming is a rise in sea levels; so perhaps Shimkus’s observation is not as irrelevant as it appears. If you think that the Bible gives us reliable information about the future of the earth, then this observation is relevant.

And I appreciate having panelists here who are men of faith so that we can get into the theological discourse of that position, but I do believe that God’s word is infallible, unchanging, perfect.

The term “persons of faith” seems to have come into vogue as a device for making the class of religious believers seem comparable to the class of so-called “persons of color,” as if the former were burdened by a comparable history of unfair treatment. I have not known the term to be used to mean “members of the clergy.” In any case, as I noted earlier, the one clergyman in the lineup that day, though he made brief use of what might be termed “theological discourse,” offered it only as an indication of the source of his ethical stance and not as infallible and perfect truth. The good bishop, unlike the bad congressman, understood that arguments from scripture had no rightful place in the deliberations of a committee of the US Congress.

Two other issues, Mr. Chairman. Today we have about 388 parts per million in the atmosphere.

Actually, our atmosphere contains a million parts per million: all its parts are there! But presumably Mr. Shimkus means to speak of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere. His figure of 388 ppm is indeed the scientifically established figure for the moment at which he was speaking, though in the year and a half since that time it has risen above 389 ppm (source).

I think in the age of the dinosaurs where we had most flora and fauna we were probably at 4,000 parts per million.

I don’t know if Mr. Shimkus thinks that “the age of the dinosaurs” was tens of millions of years ago or just a few thousand years ago. If he believes that it was millions of years ago, then it might be interesting to know how he reconciles this with his belief that the Bible is the infallible, unchangeable, and perfect word of God. If he believes that it was only thousands of years ago, it would be interesting to know why he accepts scientific findings that he thinks support his political position but rejects those that do not.

No, on second thought, to learn those things would probably not be very interesting at all.

Anyway, the figure of 4,000 ppm of CO₂ in the earth’s atmosphere is indeed true of a time in the age of dinosaurs; but it does not support Mr. Shimkus’s view that we need not worry about global warming. Quite the contrary. A recently published article confirms the findings to which he is presumably alluding:

The first direct evidence supporting the idea that a recently-discovered period of global warming, one of the hottest in Earth’s history, was caused by CO₂ has been published this week. Before the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum (MECO), which occurred 40 million years ago, temperatures were much higher than today, but steadily falling. . . .

Bijl’s team found clear evidence of MECO warming, and relatively high alkenone levels showed similar temperature and CO₂ profiles, with a matching peak in each. They found that the baseline CO₂ levels in the broader Eocene period [about 40 million years ago] were around 1000 to 2000 parts per million (ppm). During the temperature peaks atmospheric CO₂ levels reached 4000 ppm or higher, backing the theory of the greenhouse gas cause. By comparison, current atmospheric CO₂ concentrations have grown from around 280 parts per million (ppm) before the industrial revolution to almost 390 ppm today. (“Prehistoric CO2 double-up gives warming data,” at Simple Climate, November 6, 2010)

So, yes, the concentration of CO₂ in the earth’s atmosphere was indeed once ten times as high as it is now: and the average temperature was higher by 4°C. That may have been fine for dinosaurs, but it would be dire for us human beings.

Shimkus adds:

There is a theological debate that this is a carbon-starved planet, not too much carbon. And the cost of a cap and trade on the poor is now being discovered.

He goes on to remark on the economic costs of the cap-and-trade legislation. I have no idea if his claims have any merit. Whether they do or not, at least they are arguments from empirical facts rather than from supposed divine promises revealed in scripture. But how on earth (if you’ll pardon the expression) the discipline of theology is supposed to be able to deliver findings on whether the earth has “too much” carbon I have no idea. Does Shimkus even understand that the question pertinent to the deliberations of his committee is not whether there is too much carbon in or on the earth—that is something that, so far as I understand, has changed very little since the planet was formed—but whether there is too much carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere and what should be done about it? Does he have any idea what he is talking about? Does he care at all whether he does or not?

Perhaps it doesn’t make much difference whether people derive their dogmatic idiocies from the Bible or from other sources. But it is peculiarly unsettling to see persons of influence in the US government invoking scripture as a basis—and not just any basis but one that is “infallible, unchanging, [and] perfect”—of beliefs about the natural environment and the effects of our actions upon it.

Related articles:

“Energy Committee Chairman Candidate Says Bible Shows No Catastrophic Climate Change Can Occur,” at Center for Inquiry, November 10, 2010

“‘The planet won’t be destroyed by global warming because God promised Noah,’ says politician bidding to chair U.S. energy committee,” at Mail Online, November 10, 2010

Tom Tomorrow on the BP Oil Disaster

How political conservatism distorts thinking about dangers to the public and the environment.

An addendum to my previous entry, on the absence of prophetic responses to the great oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico: Tom Tomorrow’s satirical reflection on the news (which you can read about in The Wall Street Journal here) that the spill might have been prevented if the Deepwater Horizon had used an emergency shutoff device called an acoustic trigger. “U.S. regulators don't mandate use of the remote-control device on offshore rigs, and the Deepwater Horizon, hired by oil giant BP PLC, didn't have one. . . . An acoustic trigger costs about $500,000, industry officials said.”

Of course, it rather spoils the satirical fun if you also read in the article that “the efficacy of the devices is unclear. Major offshore oil-well blowouts are rare, and it remained unclear Wednesday evening whether acoustic switches have ever been put to the test in a real-world accident.”

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