GEORGE ZIMMERMAN WILL BE ACQUITTED

June 29, 2013. When commentators discuss the case of George Zimmerman, who is accused of murdering Trayvon Martin, they lose sight of the legal standard in the case. The prosecution has a heavy burden, and the evidence produced so far indicates that the jury will have to acquit Mr. Zimmerman.

Both White and Black commentators discuss whether Mr. Martin or Mr. Zimmerman was on top in the struggle. The issue of who was on top is simply not clear. For that reason, the prosecution does not have proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman was the aggressor and that he did not fear for his life. There is too much evidence to the contrary. Zimmerman was quite banged-up with wounds and blood on his face and head. One witness (for the prosecution!!) said that Martin was on top and was raining blows down on Zimmerman. While such evidence is not decisive, it is more than enough to create a reasonable doubt about Zimmerman's guilt.

Like the O.J. Simpson case, there is a wide difference between the views of White people and those of Black people. Most Black people want Zimmerman to be convicted no matter what the facts are. This is because Zimmerman was obviously profiling Martin on account of his race. Even after he was told by the police not to follow Martin, he went ahead and followed him. Most likely, Zimmerman suspected that because Martin was a black kid he was there to burglarize a condominium. Martin probably became enraged that he was being stalked by a security guard in a gated community where he had every right to be. He probably confronted Zimmerman and wound-up beating him.

Most White people want Zimmerman to be acquitted. This is because they assume that a black kid in a gated community is up to no good. They assume that George Zimmerman was simply doing his job in following Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman probably assumed that Black kids are responsible for a disproportionate amount of property crime. There had been a number of break-ins in the community, and Zimmerman supposed that they were carried-out by someone like Trayvon Martin. It is possible that Zimmerman was right. Martin may have been looking for a condo to break into, but we have no evidence to support that speculation.

Thus, the issues transcend the actual facts of the case. The real issues are Black versus White. Black people are angry that security guards and police in gated or other communities are suspicious of any Black people they see there. White people feel that Black kids do not belong in gated and other communities, and support the right of security guards and police to keep such kids under surveillance.

In the Zimmerman case, the jury may not consider these broader cultural issues. They have to decide whether George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin in self defense or whether there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he shot Martin without any justification. Because the actual facts of the case are in dispute, the all-white jury is likely to acquit.

           

ARE MEMBERS OF THE TEA PARTY INTELLIGENT?

Tea Party people are very conservative. They also claim to be very religious. The question I have is whether they are very intelligent. It seems from all the studies that have been done of the relative intelligence of conservatives and liberals, and of religious believers and atheists, that on the average liberals are more intelligent than conservatives, and atheists are more intelligent than religious believers. Aside from the overwhelming weight of intelligence studies, the difference in intelligence between these groups is encountered on a daily basis. Have you ever noticed that the most educated people you know and meet are usually liberal and non-religious? The corollary of this is that the most conservative and religious people you know and meet are usually less well uneducated. One need only look at the high percentage of liberals and atheists among scientists, collage professors, and members of other educated professions.

I will not waste a lot of time defining the terms liberal, conservative, and atheist. But when I speak of somebody being “religious,” I am not talking about being spiritual, holy, or pious. By the term “religious” I mean the Tea Party type of people such as “Born-Again” Christians, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and outspoken bible-thumping members of the so-called Religious Right who claim to be religious.

There have been a number of studies looking at whether liberals and atheists are more intelligent than conservatives and religious types. One is the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (or Add Health). The other is the General Social Survey (GSS). Both studies demonstrated that liberals are more intelligent than conservatives. The Add Health study shows that the mean IQ of adolescents who identify themselves as "very liberal" is 106, compared with a mean IQ of 95 for those calling themselves "very conservative." The Add Health study also found that there was a correlation between religion and intelligence. Non-religious people tended to be more intelligent than religious believers. The Add Health study is statistically significant because more than 20,000 young people were surveyed.

Researcher, Satoshi Kanazawa, of the London School of Economics and Political Science, has written a paper in which he quotes from the Add Health Survey along with other sources. He finds that more-intelligent people are more likely to describe themselves as liberal and non-religious.  In another study, a British team found that young people with higher intelligence scores were more likely to grow into adults who vote for Liberal Democrats. In 2008, intelligence researcher Helmuth Nyborg examined whether IQ relates to religion, using representative data from the Add Health and other studies. His results, published in the scientific journal Intelligence demonstrated that on average, Atheists scored 5.89 IQ points higher than religious types.

These findings are supported by many other studies including the study by Lazar Stankova of the National Institute of Education in Singapore, the 1975 study by Norman Poythress, using SAT scores as a measure of intelligence, and others.

You need only look at the levels of education for media conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity, and compare them with those for liberals like Anderson Cooper, Bill Maher, and Rachel Maddow. Whereas Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity never graduated from college (Limbaugh flunked-out), Anderson Cooper graduated from Yale, Bill Maher graduated from Cornell, and Rachel Maddow obtained a doctoral degree from Oxford University in England.

The question is: Does this make any difference? I say yes. We obviously want our political leaders to be highly intelligent and well-educated. We have a president who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. He is surrounded by some of the most brilliant and highly educated people ever to work in the White House. Some of his Republican Tea Party opponents, however, seem to occupy the opposite end of the educational spectrum. Look at the educational credentials of Sarah Palin, the Right-Wing’s poster girl for dimwittedness. She thought that being able to see Russia from her home in Alaska gave her credibility in foreign affairs. Michele Bachmann, who graduated from that distinguished center of learning, Winona State University, and got a Law degree at Oral Roberts University, displays her lack of knowledge with repeated and sometimes hilarious gaffs. Rick Perry of Texas, who graduated from Texas A&M with a 2.22 GPA in Animal Science, has been described as “intellectually challenged.” One Republican strategist says that Perry “benefits from an uncluttered mind.”

Liberals tend to be far more accepting of the findings of science than Tea Party types. Liberals accept the firmly established Darwinian theory of evolution, the science of global warming, and the burgeoning developments of stem cell research. Tea Party people embrace the pseudo-science of Creationism, deny the overwhelming evidence of global warming, and would stop stem-cell research in its tracks.

But even if liberals and atheists are smarter, are they any better people than Tea Party conservatives and religious believers? I say yes. Despite their claim for patriotism, piety, and purity, Tea Party types are often narrow, bigoted, hypocritical, and mean-spirited. They tend to despise minorities, poor people, gays, immigrants, non-Christians, and others. Liberals and Atheists tend to be more open-minded about the differences between people, and more accepting.

Theoretically, religion is supposed to make people better, kinder toward their fellow man, full of love and generosity. This is just not the case with Tea Party types. They tend to be small-minded, envious, and angry. While Christ spoke of charity toward the poor, Tea Party people deeply resent the aid that government gives poor and minority people. They are very judgmental toward poor people, asserting that such people are lazy parasites on the state. Instead of Christian charity, they seem to have a repugnance toward the less fortunate.

I believe that when all things are added up, liberals and atheists are not only smarter than Tea Party types, but also better, more decent people. In many ways, they follow the teachings of Jesus better than the Tea Party people.

CREATIONISM

           It has been reported that the Springboro Ohio school board is considering including the theory of Creationism in the teaching of controversial issues to public school students. They would attempt to get around the court's ban on such teaching by saying they were merely including it in the discussion of controversial ideas, and not promulgating it as accepted science. It is an underhanded way to try to introduce religious teaching into the schools. Creationism is a purely religious theory. It has nothing to do with science.

           Creationism, and its offshoot, "Intelligent Design" (ID), are theories that attempt to refute Darwin’s doctrine of evolution by natural selection. Natural selection is a scientific fact that has been proven and accepted by established science. It has become the central organizing principle of modern biology. ID advocates claim that modern species, including humans, did not result from evolution as described in Darwin’s theory. Rather,they were created from the design of an “intelligent” designer (namely God).

ID proponents claim that Darwin’s theory of evolution is atheistic. However, Pope John Paul II declared that the theory was compatible with faith. On Darwin’s birthday, ministers at several hundred churches around the country preached against recent efforts to undermine the theory of evolution, asserting that the opposition many Christians say exists between science and faith is false.

Some Creationist proponents have tried to introduce a “Critical Analysis” template for teaching evolution in Ohio schools. This alerted scientists that evangelical and fundamentalist Christians were still trying to sneak “Intelligent Design” into the schools. Because the courts have forbidden the teaching of Creationism, a purely religious theory, Creationist advocates have come up with the tactic called “teach the controversy.” The idea is to get teachers and students to debate and challenge Darwinian Evolution and thereby slip Creationism in the back door. 

The first problem with Creationism and ID is that they are not scientific doctrines. They are not backed-up by any serious scientific research. They do not publish credible scientific papers or submit to the kind of scientific verification employed for every legitimate branch of science. Creationism is a religious theory promoted by Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists.

            The second problem, one that does not get much attention, is that ID and Creationism are blatantly, obviously, palpably false. They are so self-evidently absurd that one wonders how even uneducated Christians can believe them to be true. They are obviously the product of a culture that embraces ignorance..

            Proponents of Creationism cannot accept the idea that human beings evolved from “lower” animals. They insist that humans must have been designed by God. But I ask, if God designed human beings, how does one explain the mistakes of nature? Why do the bones of our back and the musculature of our bellies display the vestiges of quadrupedal life? Why do we have a vermiform appendix which we do not need or use? Why do men have nipples? Why do humans have a shortened tail called the “coccyx”? Why is the human throat designed with the windpipe (trachea) coming off the food pipe (esophagus) so that swallowing impedes breathing (and vice versa) with a constant risk of choking? Why do we have wisdom teeth?

There are thousands of mistakes in nature. These are just a few examples of oddities that can easily be explained by Darwin’s theory of evolution but cannot be explained if God was the designer. All of these peculiarities are vestiges of our earlier existence as and development from “lower” species of animals (they are not really lower, just different).

The structure of all living things is defined by the DNA molecule and the genes. According to ID proponents, the intelligent designer designed those molecules and genes. One has to ask, therefore, whether God designed the genes which cause the genetic diseases and defects with which so many babies are born. Does God design the genetic infirmities of children born deaf, dumb, blind, mentally deficient, or horribly deformed? Does God design babies born without arms and legs and babies born with conjoined heads or bodies? What about the many babies born with spina bifida or congenital heart defects?

Does God design Lesch-Nyhan Syndrome? It is a genetic disease in which children are born with the compulsion to bite their lips, tongues, cheeks, fingers, and any body parts they can eat. They bite off everything in their oral cavities and assume gruesome corpse-like appearances.  They die while very young of kidney failure.

Does God design Tay-Sachs, a genetic disease in which babies gradually lose their abilities to see, hear, and move?  They develop seizures, become completely immobile, and die by age 5. 

These genetic defects can be explained by evolution, but cannot be explained by the design of an “infinitely loving,” “omnipotent,” “omniscient” God.

Creationist advocates argue that certain things are too irreducibly complex to have developed by natural selection. They claim that the human eye could not have developed by pure accident. It had to be designed by God. But if God designed the human eye, how do we explain its opacity, its want of symmetry, its color blindness to parts of the spectrum, its need for glasses and optical instruments? Why are there so many eye defects such as macular degeneration? Scientists know that the inefficient eyes we now have evolved from eyes that were even less efficient. A number of animals, including eagles, falcons, buzzards and octopuses have better eyes than we do.

It would be a strange theory indeed to claim that the creator of the universe designed human beings but made a lot of mistakes. Do Creationist and ID proponents expect us to believe that their “designer” is not an omnipotent, infinitely loving God, but some sloppy, incompetent bumbler, or worse, some cruel and evil demon? Give me a break!