Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Keep the Supreme Court from becoming a vehicle of right wing policy.

"The better theory is the one that explains more, that explains with greater precision, and that allows us to make better predictions."
Karl Popper (1902-1994)

The "Real" Gold Price
Now that the gold price has climbed above the $850 high reached back in January 1980, many are proclaiming that the gold price is at a new ?'record'. That's true of course when gold's exchange rate to the dollar is viewed in terms of nominal dollars, but nominal dollars provide a distorted picture.

After all, everyone knows that because of inflation a dollar today purchases much less than it did twenty-eight years ago, so clearly, $850 today does not have the purchasing power it did back then. The question therefore arises, what price does gold have to reach in inflation adjusted dollars to equal the purchasing power of eight hundred fifty 1980-dollars?

The answer to this question depends upon which Consumer Price Index is used to calculate the inflation adjusted gold price. The two alternatives are the US government's CPI or the CPI provided by John Williams of www.ShadowStats.com.

These two different CPI measures provide very different inflation adjusted gold prices. So which CPI should we use?

The ShadowStats CPI eliminates the changes made by the US government since the early 1980s to its own CPI measure. In other words, the ShadowsStats CPI is the same one the US government used to calculate inflation while Jimmy Carter was president.

The changes made by the government to its CPI were clearly introduced to lessen reported CPI inflation. A lower inflation rate reduces the cost-of-living increases the US government makes to welfare and Social Security recipients, thereby reducing its budget deficit. Welfare and Social Security recipients suffer the consequences. Their purchasing power is reduced because the payments they receive do not keep up with the real rate of inflation.

An example will be useful to illustrate this loss of purchasing power. Let's assume that a recipient received $850 per month from the US government in January 1980. Using the US government's CPI, that recipient is today receiving $2,310. However, if the US government had not made any changes to the way it calculates CPI, the recipient would today be receiving $6,255. This difference can be seen in the following chart, which presents the January $850 gold price adjusted for inflation using both CPI's.

There are a couple of important conclusions from the above chart. First, gold at its present price of $900 today is still very cheap. In other words, it is a long way from the purchasing power an ounce of gold achieved in January 1980. Second, both measures on the above chart show that the dollar is losing purchasing power every month. So if gold in the future were to reach a $6,255 gold price, the inflation between now and then would require gold to reach an even higher price to equal the purchasing power it had in January 1980.

Rather than reduce inflation, the US government instead shot the messenger. By fiddling with the CPI, the US government wants us to believe that inflation is not as bad as it really is, which is the same strategy it has pursued with the other important inflation messenger - gold. Government interventions to cap the gold price prevent the gold barometer from alerting everyone that inflation is a growing menace.

To conclude, even though gold is trading at a record high in terms of nominal dollars, the real gold price is far below the old January 1980 record when adjusted for inflation. Gold is still good value, and more importantly, government interventions have kept gold cheap, thus enabling us to buy gold at gold prices far less than would be the case if the government wasn't intervening. Therefore, continue to spend overvalued dollars to accumulate.

Chuck Norris Forgets the Talking Points
(by Ed Brayton, ScienceBlogs.Com, July 9, 2008)

Or perhaps he's just not on the mailing list from the Discovery Institute. In his latest column, Chuck Norris says:
"Flying under the legislative radar this past week was potential McCain running mate and governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindal's signing into law of Senate Bill 733, which allows ?'local school systems to approve the use of supplemental instructional materials for teaching science classes.' What opponents are up in arms about is that, with SB 733, teachers could supplement evolutionary teachings with materials on Creationism or Intelligent Design."

Oops. He went and let the cat out of the bag. Chuck, repeat after me: SB 733 allows teachers to offer objective, scientific critiques of current theories, including evolution. That's bullshit, of course, and we all know it, but you've got to stick to the talking points or other people will find out it's bullshit too. And speaking of bullshit:
"What many might not realize, however, is that our founders were familiar with naturalistic and evolutionary views of the sciences. Evolution has been around a lot longer than Darwin. And criticism for it has also been around a lot longer than Ben Stein's movie 'Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.' The Founding Fathers were well-aware of the arguments for and against naturalism. They were familiar with the sciences and arguments for and against theism and naturalism since well before the time of Christ."

Wow. Just wow. Someone gave this ignoramus a column, for crying out loud. There are people who actually take him seriously. That's frightening.

In office, Blair, who converted to Roman Catholicism last year, didn't much discuss his Christianity ("We don't do God," Alistair Campbell famously decreed, and once privately to me {Lesley White}: "He thinks we're all bloody heathens"), but now he means to talk about little else, having defined religion rather than secular politics as the power axis of the future.

"This is what I want to be involved in for the rest of my life," he says.

Patsy Jindal
(John Derbyshire, National Review Online, July 9, 2008)

What do I have to say about Louisiana Governor Jindal signing the Louisiana Science Education Act? Very little more than I said here back on June 20.

Whether or not the law as signed is unconstitutional per se, I do not know. I do know, though ?- as the creationist Discovery Institute that helped promote the Act also surely knows ?- that the Act will encourage Louisiana local school boards to unconstitutional behavior. That's what it's meant to do.

Some local school board will take the Act as a permit to bring religious instruction into their science classes. That will irk some parents. Those parents will sue. There will be a noisy and expensive federal lawsuit, possibly followed by further noisy and expensive appeals. The school board will inevitably lose. The property owners of that school district will take the financial hit.

Where will the Discovery Institute be when these legal expenses come due? Just where they were in the Dover case ?- nowhere! What, you were thinking that those bold warriors for truth at the Discovery Institute will help to fund the defense in these no-hope lawsuits? Ha ha ha ha ha!

Helping to defend creationist school boards in federal courts is not the Discovery Institute's game. Their game is to (a) make money from those spurious "textbooks" they put out, and (b) keep creationism in the news so that they don't run out of lecture gigs and wealthy funders. So far as those legal bills are concerned, Discovery Institute policy is: Let the dumb rubes fund their own stupid lawsuits.

Or, as the Discovery Institute's John West put it in an interview with a New Orleans news service: "This bill is not a license to propagandize against something they don't like in science," West said. "Someone who uses materials to inject religion into the classroom is not only violating the Constitution, they are violating the bill."

See, the Discovery Instutute does not want any Louisiana school boards bringing religious instruction into science lessons. Heaven forbid! They would never encourage that. Absolutely not! Why, that would be wrong.

All they do is encourage state legislators to pass, and clueless governors to sign, laws that tempt local boards to unconstitutional behavior. The sucker school boards are then on their own, stuck with spending their taxpayers' dollars on the defense of hopeless lawsuits. But, you know, the Discovery Institute had absolutely nothing to do with it. Nothing! Not a thing! All they did was offer some mild support to a perfectly harmless bill. Heck, they didn't even lobby the Governor. From that same news story: "At the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that promotes intelligent design and backed the new education act, senior fellow John West said he and his colleagues did not directly lobby Jindal."

The creationists have pulled off their little stunt once again, and Bobby Jindal has been their patsy. I know there is a pro-Jindal factor among my colleagues here, and I'm not stepping on toes for the fun of it. I must say, though, I can't see voting into national office a guy who is duped as easily as this into acting against his voters' interests. I'd prefer that my President or Vice President not be such an easy mark for a gang of sleazy confidence tricksters.

Helping to defend creationist school boards in federal courts is not the Discovery Institute's game. Their game is to (a) make money from those spurious "textbooks" they put out, and (b) keep creationism in the news so that they don't run out of lecture gigs and wealthy funders. So far as those legal bills are concerned, Discovery Institute policy is: Let the dumb rubes fund their own stupid lawsuits