From the
Washington Post , a report about Dr. Norma Pereze, the physician in charge of the post-traumatic stress disorder program at a Texas VA facility. Perez told staff members that with so many veterans seeking PTSD-related disability, staff members should diagnose PTSD as the less expensive “adjustment disorder” instead.

“Given that we are having more and more compensation seeking veterans, I’d like to suggest that you refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out,” Dr. Perez wrote in a March 20 e-mail.

It’s bad enough when our government shortchanges veterans on the treatment they need. To have a medical professional do it is unconscionable.

So is the fact Perez still has her job with the VA.

“By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom … The Iraq war has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced.”

When did I hear a prediction like this before? Oh yeah, George W. Bush, a few years back, when he was announcing mission accomplished (though without the 2013 deadline, of course). And pretty much ever since, when he and his sock-puppets in Congress are explaining that if we just hang tough and never question the war effort or the (Republican) president, victory is assured.

In fairness, McCain did detail his strategy a couple of years back: Put the Sunnis and Shiites together in one room and tell them “Stop the BS.” Yes, I’m sure that will work.

Log cartoonist Dill Beaty has an exhibit up in Destin Library (along with his wife’s and daughters’ works) that includes a painting inspired by Robert Ingersoll, the “great agnostic” and champion of secularism in the 19th century. That prompted me to post this quote from Ingersoll:

“Secularism teaches us to be good here and now. I know nothing better than goodness. Secularism teaches us to be just here and now. It is impossible to be juster than just. Secularism has no ‘castles in Spain.’ It has no glorified fog. It depends upon realities, upon demonstrations; and its end is to make this world better every day — to do away with poverty and crime, and to cover the world with happy and contented homes.”

A writer in the Daily News this morning, explaining why it is perfectly, perfectly safe to allow off-shore drilling, asserts that “The last offshore oil spill was at Santa Barbara, Calif., in the 1960s.”

Exxon Valdez, anyone?

Letter writers keep discussing how we need to wean ourselves off foreign energy sources by drilling and attain energy independence. I wonder if they’d go for cartoonist Dan Perkins’ proposal: Before we drill, commit, in law, to a ceiling on how much foreign oil we import, based on how much we take out of the ANW (or the Gulf). If we hit the ceiling, we conserve.

Makes sense to me.

In tomorrow’s paper: “Evolutionists should welcome creation science … If creation is proven wrong like the article says, let’s put the two side by side and compare.”
Been there, done that. Creationism lost.

“If we take your position to the fullest extent, we must conclude your ideas are not the product of intelligent design.”
Since intelligent design is a myth, it’s safe to say that nothing on Earth results from ID. So we’re in agreement.

“I hope there are none of you corrupted with the doctrine taught by wicked men for the worst purposes, and received by the malignant credulity of envy and ignorance, which is, that the men who act upon the public stage are all alike; all equally corrupt; all influenced by no other views than the sordid lure of salary and pension. The thing I know by experience to be false.
Never expecting to find perfection in men, and not looking for divine attributes in created beings, in my commerce with my contemporaries, I have found much human virtue. I have seen not a little public spirit; a real subordination of interest to duty; and a decent and regulated sensibility to honest fame and reputation. The age unquestionably produces (whether in a greater or less number than former times, I know not) daring profligates, and insidious hypocrites. What then? Am I not to avail myself of whatever good is to be found in the world, because of the mixture of evil that will always be in it? The smallness of the quantity in currency only heightens the value.
They who raise suspicions on the good on account of the behaviour of ill men, are of the party of the latter. The common cant is no justification for taking this party. I have been deceived, say they, by Titius and Maevius; I have been the dupe of this pretender or of that mountebank; and I can trust appearances no longer. But my credulity and want of discernment cannot, as I conceive, amount to a fair presumption against any man’s integrity.
A conscientious person would rather doubt his own judgment, than condemn his species. He would say, I have observed without attention, or judged upon erroneous maxims; I trusted to profession, when I ought to have attended to conduct. Such a man will grow wise, not malignant, by his acquaintance with the world. But he that accuses all mankind of corruption, ought to remember that he is sure to convict only one.
In truth I should much rather admit those, whom at any time I have disrelished the most, to be patterns of perfection, than seek a consolation to my own unworthiness, in a general communion of depravity with all about me.”—Edmund Burke

“Fairness is not weakness. The extraordinary fairness of these hearings is an attribute of our strength … Let me emphasize one cardinal point. The United States has no interest which would be advanced by the conviction of any defendant if we have not proved him guilty on at least one of the counts charged against him in the indictment. Any result that the calm and critical judgment of posterity would pronounce unjust would not be a victory for any of the countries associated in this prosecution.”—Robert Jackson, Chief U.S. Counsel at the Nuremberg Trials

According to the article, Pearcey believes ID vs. evolution should be viewed as philosophy vs. philosophy, rather than religion against science.

Wrong. Evolution is science, and ID is religiously based (as I noted in my Wednesday column) so science vs. religion pretty much sums it up.

Then come the usual arguments that if behavior is based on evolution, immoral acts are not immoral they’re hardwired into us, and with “true Darwinism there can be no room for free will, love or human dignity.” (this is phrasing from the article and may not be a direct quote from Pearcey).

Tommy rot. In the first place, while there are evolutionary theories for much of human behavior, many of them are also hotly contested. Pearcey mentions, for instance, the idea men rape because it’s an efficient way to spread their genes, but that’s always struck me as a feeble argument since it ignores the many nonreproductive rapes: Anal, oral, rape with blunt instruments, homosexual rape, rape of children, rape of post-menopausal women, spousal rape, rape-murder. That’s not much of a reproductive strategy (it does serve conservatives who want to imagine that rape is caused by women dressing too sexy, going out to bars and generally stimulating the male’s uncontrollable lust, but that’s a topic for another day).

And even if we were biologically programmed for rape, that wouldn’t mean the impulse was uncontrollable. It is controllable: That’s why rapists wait until their victim is alone. That’s why most men don’t rape at all. We have a choice about rape, just as we have a choice about where we urinate and whether we steal food when we’re hungry, and if we can choose, we can make moral choices. There is nothing about evolution that negates free will or morality.

And if we’re going to go with a “by their fruits you will know them” argument — evolution has to be wrong because the implications are unpleasant — I could just as easily argue that Christianity has to be wrong because it condemns virtuous non-Christians to eternal damnation. Or because it has led to Christians committing discrimination, pogroms, holy wars, genocide and other abominations, and has had more blood on its hands than any other belief system. I wouldn’t make that argument — the truth of Jesus’ words doesn’t depend on whether his followers actually paid attention to “love thy neighbor” and “turn the other cheek” — but it’s certainly comparable with Pearcey’s line of reasoning.

Perhaps it’s unfair to judge Nancy Pearcey’s Thursday-night presentation on intelligent design by an article in the Daily News, but I’m going for it anyway:
•Will creationists/IDers ever get it through their heads that evolutionary theory is not “Darwinism?” I presume their choice of the word is to make it sound more like the religion they claim it is (comparable to Christianity or “Mohammedanism”) but the term makes no more sense than calling relativity “Einsteinism” or quantum mechanics “Bohrism.” Plus, of course, the theory we have today differs a lot from Darwin’s original concept, since Charles D. had no knowledge of genetics (if a creationist ever points out that many scientists don’t believe Darwin’s theories can explain all of life, that’s the reason—it would be several decades before even basic genetic theory became well known).
•Pearcey argues that since we can look at Mt. Rushmore and know for certain it’s the product of design, we can do the same with living things—in other words, if something looks like it’s been designed, it has been.
The flaw in this argument is that people see designs that don’t exist: Remember the claims that the image on Mars resembling a giant face was, in fact, a carved giant face? Or the countless times an image of Jesus or the Virgin Mary has appeared in some odd place? Either Pearcey believes every one of these examples is true, or we can’t spot design as well as she thinks.
For that matter, conspiracy theory is a form of design: People look at the supposedly random events of 9/11, for instance, and conclude that our government engineered the entire thing. Is Pearcey signing off on that theory?
Even if we stick to biology, Pearcey’s argument is disprovable. Biochemist Michael Behe listed several had-to-be-designed biological features in his book “Darwin’s Black Box.” Scientists subsequently found random, simple genetic shifts and mutations that could explain all of them.

A writer from the National Center for Science Education says my column on evolution –posted online last week, in the paper Wednesday, would win me a “reporter of the week” award if they gave one out.
(edited to correct when the article ran).