Let's scrutinize Adventist Today articles

Back in February I addressed the scientific incompetence of an article on Adventist Today.  My article began with this:

 “Adventist Today once again enters the world of pseudo science with their article Hermetically Sealed: Conspiracy Theories and Special Knowledge. Sadly this article is written by David Geelan an Associate Professor of Science Education at Griffith University on the Gold Coast, Australia. I say sadly because in the Big Ag section it is completely wrong. But it does not start out that well either!”

The same author has continued on with some of the same poor reasoning practices in his most recent article.  R.E.S.P.E.C.T.: What Respect Is Owed to Ideas and Beliefs? It is interesting that the title is about others' ideas and beliefs which are the reasons I chose to rebut his fallacies. As you might recall one of his beliefs from his previous article is that:

   “Big Ag and GMOsThe same applies to genetically modified organisms, particularly plants used in food crops. While the genetic modifications themselves are shown to be benign in terms of human health effects, there are real issues. One is that the corporations that make the seeds want to earn higher profits. One way to do this is to engineer the plants so that the seeds they bear are infertile. Instead of saving some seed from last year’s crop to plant next year’s crop, poor farmers must buy seed anew each year. Another is that plants can be genetically modified, for example, to be tolerant to RoundUp (glyphosate) pesticides, but this can mean excessive application of pesticides to fields, with attendant risks to both farm workers and consumers.”

As I pointed out there are no seed companies that are engineering seeds to be infertile. His earlier article about conspiracies included this conspiracy and due to the politics over at Adventist Today no one ever corrected David Geelan’s statement or even questioned as to where he got that idea. Since Adventist Today censors and removes people who disagree with their articles it appears to mainly leave people who will simply agree with those articles. After all, with their rules, anything they disagree with can be labeled as not civil conversation. So it just is not done, to correct an Adventist Today author on their Facebook comments page. If one wants to know more about this purposed technology check out the Wikipedia page. Here is how it begins:

Genetic use restriction technology (GURT), also known as terminator technology or suicide seeds, is the name given to proposed methods for restricting the use of genetically modified plants by activating some genes only in response to certain stimuli, especially to cause second generation seeds to be infertile.^[2][3] The technology was originally developed under a cooperative research and development agreement between the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture and Delta and Pine Land company in the 1990s and is not yet commercially available.^[4]

In David Geelan’s most recent article about respect he states:

“I seek to subject the ideas I hold to the most rigorous scrutiny I can. I want to believe things that are true, and I want to hold ideas and beliefs that make the world a better place. That is the two-fold test: is it true, and does it make the world better? (There are complex questions about ‘better for whom?’ and ‘better judged by what standards?’ but those are for another time.) I very much like Rotary International’s ‘Four-way Test’: Is it the truth?Is it fair to all concerned?Will it build goodwill and better friendships?Will it be beneficial to all concerned?”

I think that list is pretty good with the exception of the last one. I don’t think Geelan follows it at all, however. Obviously, his rigorous scrutiny into seed companies using GURT to force farmers to not hold over seeds they have grown to be used for the next planting would have been quickly revealed to be a myth should he have applied any scrutiny to the question. Likewise, it fails the is it truth test; the is it fair to all concerned test;  the will it build good will and friendship test and is it beneficial to all concerned test.

Nothing will ever be beneficial to all concerned. Some students of David Geelan will likely at some point search his name on the internet and come upon one of my articles pointing out the false information that he is writing and David Geelan will not think that this is a benefit to him. It is not a benefit to Adventist Today because they are propagators of false information. Now it could be beneficial should he or they learn from their mistakes, but you can’t depend on people looking critically at themselves and thus benefiting from correction.

Many times people think that their knowledge is sufficient in itself and they assume that they are simply correct. This is what Geelan does as he continues in his article to tell us how a belief may be harmful. He writes:

“…The idea that hydroxychloroquine is a safe treatment for COVID-19, for example, is not supported by good evidence, and there are cases of people with severe liver damage from participating in clinical trials… and of people who have died taking related chemicals without medical supervision… “

In fact there is practically no safe drug for any treatment. Penicillin, aspirin, ibuprofen, etc. Drugs are cost-benefit analysis. To disregard something by saying it is not safe it very disingenuous. It actually reflects a political viewpoint disguised as being honest.  Opponents of President Trump frequently deride it and ignore the French study that brought world attention to it. The drug is still being tested in trials however some with good results such as this:

A nursing home medical director in Texas said he has used hydroxychloroquine sulfate to treat 39 coronavirus patients, and all of them are doing well after five days, WFAA-TV reported. The Blaze

And a retrospective review, also referenced in the above French study link:

A study of the effectiveness of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine on veterans hospitalized with COVID-19 showed that the drug had no positive impact on those who took it when compared to patients who did not, Politico reported The Blaze

As trials continue it is very unscientific to reach a conclusion before the facts are in. Any new disease takes a while for therapies to be determined as the most effective. Equally concerning is Geelan’s attempt to attach what appears to be a murder attempt of someone to the drug because it has some similar ingredients as fish tank cleaner.

Gary Lenius, a 68-year-old Arizona man, tragically died March 22 after ingesting fish tank cleaner. Lenius's wife, Wanda, told police that she and her husband mixed the toxic cleaner, which contained chloroquine phosphate, with soda to make a cocktail they thought would stave off the coronavirus. The Blaze

  

It is a very interesting case and hard to not suspect murder. That the woman who was a Democrat who disliked president Trump quickly jumped on the chemical to be used prophylactically is equally suspicious. But the motives are often difficult to ascertain. 

But when something comes up and it is not really related to the previous conversation or article you can often tell that there is a political reason for it to be conveyed.  These kinds of subtle propaganda pieces tend to fool a lot of people who may not understand the political manipulation techniques that are being used. But in any case you can’t simply declare a drug therapy unsafe when trials are not complete or because a drug that you can get from veterinarian prescription is used by people who don’t even have the disease in question. That is simply faulty logic or propaganda. In this case, it may, in fact, be both.

Geelan’s conclusion:

We owe respect – of at least one kind and up to three kinds – to other human beings. But the appropriate kind of respect to apply to ideas is not to accept them uncritically, but to scrutinise them rigorously in terms of (a) whether they are the truth and (b) whether they cause benefit or harm in the world if acted upon. And applying this scrutiny to the ideas someone holds and actively promotes is not showing disrespect to that person.

I completely agree. It would be nice if Adventist media could feel that they could afford to allow rigorous scrutiny.

Misquoting Voltaire

The internet is an amazing thing. Why don't Adventist leaders use it? It is not hard to use if you pay attention you can easily tell who has substantiated facts from the drivel. Take the following column from AToday.com:

A Tale—or Two—For Our Time Aug 27, 2012 by Cindy Tutsch. She writes after asserting that a particular sermon she gave was all true she just might not have expressed herself better she writes:

Maybe the skeptic Voltaire is the “stones crying out” to us today when he wrote, “I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

A brief internet search would have shown that the quote as she expressed it within the quotation marks is not from Voltaire and not even from the person who recorded her interpretation of what Voltaire believed. The following is from http://www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/www_vf/about_voltaire/didnt_say.pdf

A column in the Daily Telegraph of February 2006 on freedom of speech referred
to ‘Voltaire’s famous maxim – “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to
the death your right to say it.” ’

In De l’esprit [‘On the Mind’], published in 1758, the French philosopher
Helvétius put forward the view that human motivation derives from sensation:
a course of action is chosen because of the pleasure or pain which will result.
The book was seen by many as an attack on religion and morality, and was
condemned by the French parliament to be publicly burned. Voltaire is supposed
to have supported Helvétius with these words. In fact, they are a later summary
of Voltaire’s attitude to the affair, as given in S. G. Tallentyre’s The Friends of
Voltaire (1907). What Tallentyre wrote was:

What the book could never have done for itself, or for its author, persecution did for
them both. ‘On the Mind’ became not the success of a season, but one of the most
famous books of the century. The men who had hated it, and had not particularly loved
Helvétius, flocked round him now. Voltaire forgave him all injuries, intentional or
unintentional. ‘What a fuss about an omelette!’ he had exclaimed when he heard of the
burning. How abominably unjust to persecute a man for such an airy trifle as that! ‘I
disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,’ was his
attitude now.

(The comment ‘What a fuss about an omelette!’ had been recorded earlier, in
James Parton’s 1881 Life of Voltaire.)

Reprinted from What they Didn’t Say – A Book of Misquotations,
edited by Elizabeth Knowles (Oxford University Press, 2006), p.55.
By permission of Oxford University Press (www.oup.com)

Now I am used to journalists being lazy today and just asserting things that aren't true but at least the Daily Telegraph got the actual words of the book for the quotation right. Though not necessarily a provable statement by Voltaire, it is not even written as a quote of Voltaire but of his attitude.

Why does this matter. I think it reflects a common religious narrowness where people don't really analyze what they are saying. They don't check their sources and they are certain they are right even when wrong. Then they assume the truth of what they deliver in sermons as all true. I having read many of the above AToday's authors columns, am pretty sure that she has never given even one sermon that is all true.

Religion in general and  Adventism really needs to re-examine itself and its writers and leaders. You won't see the comments on the column pointing out this error because errors have become so common that the readers only look at the general tone or position and agree or disagree but rarely get involved in the details. This allows poor research and reasoning to continue and that ultimately harms us all.

Without Objectivity, What is There?

What makes you respect someone; Honesty, thoughtfulness, compassion, wisdom, knowledge? Do your respect someone who gives a sermon which you know is factually incorrect? Perhaps you can always say he/she just did not know the facts. What happens when you talk to that person and point out the error and they say no, I stand by my statement completely? I can tell you what happens to me I lose all respect for their positions.

In life there are a vast array of opinions and feeling and speculations, more than enough to constantly stimulate our minds. Which is why when someone tells you something untrue and then when pointed out that it is untrue they refuse to acknowledge the error or change their position what does one have left to listen to in that person. They have taken the position that fact and truth are unimportant to them. There is no point in discussion with them because for whatever reason they have lost their objectivity. The strange thing is this so often happens in the area of religion and politics. It seems to not even matter what end of the spectrum one falls on either, liberal or conservative. Some of the most precious ideas are held without any regard for the truth, the facts or reality and reason.

This was brought home to me this last week on the Spectrum blog, which is frequently Progressive Adventist and liberal politically oriented. In a comment under the article entitled A Horrendous Betrayal of the Gospel By Charles Scriven. The article is titled rather like the National Enquirer as the article is really just a criticism of singing the National Anthem during a church service on the 4^th of July. The reason being that Christianity is for everyone not any one country or people. He might have a point if he were referring to the singing of the The Star-Spangled Banner in Canada or China. But it does not make a lot of sense in a church where the majority if not all the people at the church are actually citizens of the United States or Permanent Residents. But that is not the problem.

The problem comes when Chris Blake who is apparently a minister someplace wrote this comment, here is the first two paragraphs:

Last year I preached a sermon in College View Church about the virtue of non-combatancy: our great need for creativity and imagination and resilience when fighting evil; our tendency to believe in the myth of redemptive violence; the penchant when you own the biggest hammer in the world to see everything as a nail; the odd presence of the American flag in front of the sanctuary; and the non-violent model of Jesus. Normally CVC sermons are televised the following week. Mine was not. (Smile.)

The myth of redemptive violence is easily swallowed in a culture that force-feeds the myth every second with every dollar. Thankfully, some still do not buy it, will never buy it.

To which I responded:

By myth I take it you mean fiction, what is the myth of redemptive violence?

To test your definition: If it is really a fiction (myth) then we should be able to demonstrate that no one has ever been saved from the hands of threatening or evil or violent people by the acts of violence by people trying to save the threatened people.

I won't ask you to support the statement about the culture that force feeds the myth every second with every dollar because I am sure even you realize that that statement is a gross exaggeration.

The funny thing is that even after pointing out that the statement is a gross exaggeration in the next comment he said he stood by the comment completely.

He writes:

Redemptive means deliverance or rescue from whatever ails or threatens us. So if we're threatened by violence, we should be able to redeem that threat by, for example:

Overthrowing the democratically elected head of Iran in 1951.
Forcing Ho Chi Minh to retreat from 1955-1975.
Arming Saddam Hussein in his fight against Iran.
Arming Osama bin Laden in his fight against the USSR.
Training Timothy McVeigh to kill.
Creating terms like "collateral damage" to minimize war horrors
Arming the world with military weapons; in fact, making more in weapon sales than we give in foreign aid.

Here I could list 500 more examples of how redemptive violence "pays off" ultimately in more violence and mayhem. (You could counter with Adolph Hitler and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but that's the exception.)

The first thing you will notice is that he puts World War II as an exception. Which means he is saying that Redemptive violence is a myth (a fiction that violence saves anyone except in certain exceptions) Which of course means it is not a myth, that at least some of time it is a reality. The second thing you note is that his list of examples does not include the Gulf war, fought to free Kuwait, The Grenada war etc. In other words ignoring the times when people were freed by violence. You would also note he references where the US is involved, ignoring where doing nothing has resulting in horrible consequences such as Darfur and Rwanda. In the case of Vietnam War where communist North Vietnam attacked South Vietnam when we ended our support of South Vietnam (“Forcing Ho Chi Minh to retreat from 1955-1975”) When we left millions were killed and nearly a million fled the country, hundreds of thousands in boats (boat people). Hopefully the best one can say is that if the US ever gets into a war it may not be best to end with a stalemate.

In the above Chris Blake is just selectively choosing his examples, it is an example of subjective reasoning, choosing what is important and listing that while ignoring what goes against your theory. It is merely an attempt at being persuasive by hoping that others don’t know history enough to doubt your rendition of the facts. The real violation of logic comes when he acknowledges the exception to his thesis that redemptive violence is a myth. When someone acknowledges in their own words that their thesis is wrong because it has exceptions how can they continue to stand by that thesis. Something then is very wrong.

But there was still the very gross exaggeration comment made. Most people realize that words like all, and every are often indicators that a logical fallacy is being used. So when Chris Blake says: “every second with every dollar” most of us would think there is an exaggeration here. I would hope most of us would see through such statements but as you will see that is not the case. Chris Blake then tries to use some statistics from “Stockholm International Peace Research Institute” to back up his statement. I could go into the numbers statistics but even here Chris Blake in his own words shows that his assertion is false. He writes:

More than half of all discretionary spending of the U.S. government goes toward military expenditures.

He has falsified his own statement that every dollar is used to forced feed the myth of redemptive violence. (Again most should realize that our culture spends lots on other things also, healthcare, education, entertainment, food etc)

What bothers me most is that Charles Scriven commented on Chris Blake’s posts:

Chris Blake:

You are gift to us all. Thanks for the Sassoon and Owens poetry. Thanks for the history and numbers you cite. Your passion is seismic.

That sounds like it is meant as praise, praise for history and numbers which are inaccurate and used to defend a thesis of redemptive violence that Chris Blake’s own words show is untrue. But yet Chris Blake concluded:

And you think I'm exaggerating?

I stand sadly by every word of the previous post.

The question then becomes why do some lose all objectivity when certain of their cherished beliefs are shown to be incorrect; Going so far as ignoring their irrationality and the irrationality of others. Being wrong is understandable standing by your error when it is revealed is irrational. I don’t really know the reason but I am sure that it damages us all and is not something that we should ignore when it occurs.