How Stupid is Bush, Really?

[Dardedar]

Rationally Speaking: How Stupid is Bush, Really?

COLUMN By MASSIMO PIGLIUCCI
From Rationally Speaking
July 19, 2006

I'm talking about the so-called Leader of the Freest Nation in the World, stubbornly refusing to sign a bill that will be sent his way that authorizes stem cell research conducted on cells extracted from embryos discarded from artificial fertilization procedures.

Massimo Pigliucci, Ph.D.The key word here is "discarded." Bushy Boy insists that the bill would require tax payers to subsidize research that intentionally destroys human life. Again I ask: how stupid is he, really? What exactly does he not understand about the fact that such embryos would otherwise be discarded?

That means destroyed, annihilated, disintegrated and not used for research. These embryos are byproducts of the (if not immoral, certainly ethically questionable, in a planet of six billion) attempt to produce more human beings by artificial means (which, by the way, I don't recall being sanctioned in the Bible either).

To the stupidity of our leader, of course, we have to add the idiocy of our elected representatives, who are also passing (in the House, notoriously more idiotic than the Senate on most matters) two additional and completely useless bills. One encourages scientists to look for alternative ways to obtain stem cells. As if scientists actually needed such encouragement to begin with (they've been looking long and hard for years). The third bill comes closest to pure insanity: it actually prohibits a practice known (to fear-mongering Republicans) as "fetus harvesting," the implantation of human fetuses for the sole purpose of harvesting stem cells. The problem is that such a practice doesn't exist, has never existed, and has not been proposed by any scientist whatsoever.

One more time, folks, how stupid are these people, really?

***
Massimo Pigliucci, Ph.D., is a professor of evolutionary biology at SUNY-Stony Brook. He is the author of the IHS Continuum for Humanist Education course, Evolution, Creationism, and the Nature of Science. He is also the author of two books, Denying Evolution: Creation, Scientism, and the Nature of Science and Tales of the Rational: Skeptical Essays About Nature and Science. "Rationally Speaking" began as an online column in August 2000, and was syndicated by HNN since 2003. For more information, visit Rationally Speaking.

LINK

[Savonarola]

Pigliucci's book Denying Evolution: Creation, Scientism, and the Nature of Science is a great read and exposes many of the basic flaws in ID "theory." I highly recommend it to any non-scientists who would like to know more about the entire creationism vs. science issue.
Pigliucci may also be responsible for making Michael Behe retreat so far into the darkness regarding the evolutionary pathway of the bacterial flagellum. According to Pigliucci, Behe acknowledged that once the pathway has been elucidated, he will drop his support for ID. As information has been gained, Behe now insists that no less than a mutation-by-mutation account will do, which is, of course, utterly ridiculous.


This column reminds me of an episode of Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher that I saw some years ago. Jerry Falwell was on and was arguing vehemently against cloning "because it requires taking the life of a human." What he meant, of course, is that it requires destroying an embryo. But he was still wrong. Everyone else on the show was familiar enough with the basics of cloning to try to explain to him that cloning does not require destroying an embryo, but he insisted that he was correct, and that his reasoning was therefore valid.
My brother immediately made the obvious observation: Propose a "hypothetical" in which cloning could occur without destroying an embryo. While my brother, I, Maher, and the other panelists knew that such a situation is in fact not hypothetical, Falwell obviously did not. Using his ignorance against him to trap him into committing to that specific reasoning would have been brilliant.

This is a similar situation. Using Bush's ignorance against him would be no daunting task, as his ignorance is of a magnitude the likes of which we've never seen before.

The set-up:
"Can we presume, based on the presence of these 'snowflake children,' that you approve of scientific methods that produce embryos for couples who can't have children?"

And the pitch:
"Would it be accurate to say that your moral disagreement with the stem cell research is due mainly to the destruction of viable embryos?"

Undoubtedly, Bush is stupid enough to answer affirmatively to both questions. Then the press can have a field day-- nay, field week.

But, because he's too stupid to know what kind of shit he'll be getting himself into, one could go for the unambiguous home run:
"If there were ways to gain access to embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos, would you approve of it?"
Again, he'd probably say yes.

To the stupidity of our leader, of course, we have to add the idiocy of our elected representatives, who are also passing (in the House, notoriously more idiotic than the Senate on most matters) two additional and completely useless bills.

And I thought Republicans were against meaningless laws. I love hypocrisy.