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The Real Creationism/Evolution Debate The N4A, Inc. Re: The Evolution of Ken MillerDan F. Umanoff, M.D. President and CEO Brown Alumni Magazine - brownalumnimagazine.com Miller may love teaching and think he's a great communicator but this article about him and what he says shows clearly that he's neither of these. Although he clearly states that science is NOT about belief he never says religion IS ALL about belief. Moreover, science, by definition, does not use anything supernatural. Religion uses anything supernatural. Thus, there can be no evolution/creationism debate. The stances are mutually exclusive. The whole issue is a waste of time and energy and will never end. Anyway, who cares what creationists think and believe? Who cares what anyone thinks and believes? Well, there's one reason and only one reason why we need to care about creationists or religions, and their beliefs, and this is the debate that needs our attention and vociferous and passionate participation. This reason is the political reason, what we as a nation decide what is to be public policy and how this is to be determined, and what is to be kept private. Creationists and religious people want their beliefs to run public policies in this country. That's how the evolution/creationism debate got started. It was about public education, a public policy. The following is a letter to the editor of the NY Times about this mess that explains where we, scientists, need to make a stand: Re: Philosophers Notwithstanding, Kansas School Board Redefines Science http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/science/sciencespecial2/15evol.html The issue for American society is not the definition of science and has nothing to do with philosophy. It's more practical than this. It has to do with what is private and what is public. The reason I say American society is that America, public society, is run by a written constitution and the rule of law. America has rules for governmental imposition of ideas and beliefs on the public. America has already decided to act in a certain way, not to impose beliefs on the public and not to discriminate publicly against individual beliefs. America has long ago decided not to use beliefs as the basis of public policy but instead to use rules of objective and empirical evidence. So, the issue here and everywhere in America is whether an idea that is being considered to be imposed on the public or actually imposed is a belief or is instead backed by objective and empirical evidence, or, is the objective and empirical evidence against the idea. Only after we, as a country, have agreed on this premise of governmental imposition, the first step, do we need to consider how to establish what is a belief and what is valid objective and empirical evidence. Have we made this decision yet? Yes? Well, then this decision must be the premise of this article (public education is public policy) and stated up front for any issue we face on the public level, not just for creationism vs. evolution. The country today is facing the same issue about the initiation of the Iraq war - were the reasons for going to war mere belief or based on valid and objective empirical evidence? Was the evidence true or false? Was the public lied to or not? Well, there's another area of the public domain that involves the same issue and the same rules of the American constitution and law - addiction policy. Whether you're aware of it or not, addiction public policy in America, public laws, is premised on a certain theory of addiction causation, the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH), invented by NIDA in 1997. Read it at: Leshner A.: Addiction is a Brain Disease, and it Matters, Science; 278, 45-70, 10/3/97 Many people argue for or against American addiction policy but when was the last time you heard any debate on whether the HBH was a belief or based on objective and empirical evidence? Never. It turns out that the HBH is no different from creationism yet it is being imposed on the American public. All the objective and empirical data show the HBH to be a belief. [the arguments showing this are in my review of this subject, http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ , and Hiroi's review of this subject in, Genetic susceptibility to substance dependence, Molecular Psychiatry (2005) 10, 336–344, by N Hiroi and S Agatsuma.] Thus, the HBH and American addiction policy is unconstitutional to say the least. It imposes a belief on the American public under the guise of science. It turns out that this "science" is a lie. Moreover, we all "know" it doesn't work. Well, the policy doesn't work for one good reason, it's wrong by any definition of science you want to use. We have an enormous addiction public policy establishment based on a belief and a lie. I call this establishment the PIMMPAL complex defined in my book, Hypoic's Handbook, and in the following article: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/15replacingalanleshneristheonlywaytoendthedrugwar/ Finally, if we're going to argue the public policy of the origins of species and the origins of the Iraq War, then we should also argue the public policy basis (objective and empirical evidence) of our addiction public policies. So far I've written thousands of letters to the editor to your newspaper asking for this public debate over the last ten years and have had none published, zero. In the meantime, a wrong belief has been imposed on this country by the government and has been destroying this country from within in so many ways it's hard to list them all. This is fascism at its worse. And the NY Times is a co-conspirator of this fascism. Ignoring and censoring this letter won't make you less culpable, only more. As long as we waste our time with the evolution/creationism pseudo-debate, really a non-debate, we give credence to creationism, a belief, politically, the big mistake that can only hurt people, religious or not. We need to opt out of this non-debate, stop debating the believers, and take the stand that beliefs, no matter where they are derived, have no place in public policy, the place where belief hurts all of us. "Love is an action not a feeling. Integrity is an action not a thought. Anything less is too little." --- Dan F. Umanoff, M.D.--BS Brown 1967, MMS Brown 1970. Author of Hypoic's Handbook - The Hypoism Paradigm of Addiction. http://www.hypoism.com President and founder of The National Association for the Advancement and Advocacy of Addicts, Inc. (N4A), a not-for-profit 501 (c) (3) organization of addicts for addicts offering free educational and legal services to discriminated against and abused addicts of all varieties, "substances" and "behavioral," and their families. http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/thenationalassociationfortheadvancementandadvocacyofaddicts/ 8779 Misty Creek Dr. Sarasota, FL 34241 941-929-0893 |
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You can take the addiction out of the hypoic, but you can't take the Hypoism out of the addict.
