Another interesting article in the paper today was Leslie Kaufman’s “Darwin foes target warming for debate”:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/science/earth/04climate.html

It is an article combines two logical fallacies into an argument. It goes something like this:

Creationists are dummies. Many Creationists deny global warming. Global Warming Deniers are dummies (and are often Creationists). The Creationist/Global Warming Deniers are both dummies and Creationists (quite often). They are working together and might be the same thing—Creationist Global Warming Deniers. And they are not that smart. And they like pollution.

I guess it should not surprise me that the New York Times ran this article. It is a pile of Red Herrings with a few Ad homenims mixed in. I, however, have a few of these particular herrings in my pocket and I sort of like them. So, here, from my easy chair I fire back at the Times.

1. Creationists (and Global Warming Deniers), Ms. Kaufman claims, are simpletons who are committed to dogmas rather than science. While this might be true, it seems evident from this article that Naturalists are just as dogma driven. I lost count of the times simple, bald appeals to authority take the place of argument. Here is my favorite: “For mainstream scientists, there is no credible challenge to evolutionary theory.” Well, golly, if mainstream scientists say it then it must be true. This secular priest craft is the last papering over of a theory that is crumbling. Life is too complex to have come out of nothing.
2. Also, one has to wonder why secular people are so committed to control of textbooks. The rush to end debate is frightening…and sort of hilarious.
3. Global warming is an interesting theory. I am not sure it is wrong. I have dug around enough to be sure that I cannot be certain it is right. Read Michael Creighton’s State of Fear.
4. Finally, I just love Ms. Kaufman’s analysis of the Christian faith. She in feigned magnanimity attempts to throw some Evangelicals a bone, saying, “Not all evangelical Christians reject the notion of climate change, of course. There is a budding green evangelical movement in the country driven partly by a belief that because God created the Earth, humans are obligated to take care of it." So we see that Creationism leads both to the denial and affirmation of global warming. This would be an obvious problem to most writers. Ms. Kaufman, however, is not deterred. Her smears continue for about another 1000 words. The truth is, of course, that it is not just noble, recently minted “green evangelicals” that believe that humans should care for the Earth. Genesis 1 says that this is one of man’s great tasks. Genesis 1, of course, is what Ms. Kaufman is assiduously (and ironically) denying.