After journalist Virginia Hefferman wrote a ludicrous column at Yahoo News asserting that she was a creationist, the reaction was swift and negative, as was appropriate. When a fairly well-known tech writer endorses superstition because “it makes a better story,” one can expect some pushback. Have a look at her column “Why I’m a creationist,” if you haven’t seen it. I went after her, too, but perhaps the most famous reaction was her Big Twitter War with Carl Zimmer.
After her deeply embarrassing piece, which surely put a dent in her career, there was some suggestion that she was only joking—pulling a Sokal-style hoax. I found that unlikely, and certainly Heffernan hasn’t suggested since that she was just pulling our leg.
But it’s pretty clear, now that Heffernan has given a 20-minute interview to Jian Ghomeshi at the CBC (audio is here), that she is indeed a creationist. Heffernan’s “explanation” involves a lot of back-pedaling, denialism, and is, on the whole, a semi-incoherent exercise in damage control. (It’s hard to be a respected technology writer if you take Genesis literally.)
Basically, she claims that she’s not really espousing creationism but only “the mildest form of theism.” Oh, she adds, what she was really objecting to was evolutionary psychology and its claim that human males are evolutionarily more promiscuous and less choosy than females (a claim, by the way, that I find quite credible). She notes, “Maybe it’s time to retire the whole approach of evolutionary psychology” (where have we heard that before?) and “I don’t know that I denied the truth of Darwin.”
She adds that she doesn’t like the “materialist and atheist world view of evolution”, and says that the field is unable to answer the two biggest questions: the origin of the cosmos (not, Virginia, the purview of biology!) and the origin of consciousness.
Ghomeshi asks her some hard questions, and her answers are evasive, loopy, and unsatisfactory. But she never denies her creationism. And as for her disclaimers in the radio interview, just go back and see what she wrote originally:
Also, at heart, I am a creationist. There, I said it. At least you, dear readers, won’t now storm out of a restaurant like the last person I admitted that to. In New York City saying you’re a creationist is like confessing you think Ahmadinejad has a couple of good points. Maybe I’m the only creationist I know.
This is how I came to it. Like many people, I heard no end of Bible stories as a kid, but in the 1970s in New England they always came with the caveat that they were metaphors. So I read the metaphors of Genesis and Exodus and was amused and bugged and uplifted and moved by them. And then I guess I wanted to know the truth of how the world began, so I was handed the Big Bang. That wasn’t a metaphor, but it wasn’t fact either. It was something called a hypothesis. And it was only a sentence. I was amused and moved, but considerably less amused and moved by the character-free Big Bang story (“something exploded”) than by the twisted and picturesque misadventures of Eve and Adam and Cain and Abel and Abraham.
Later I read Thomas Malthus’ “Essay on the Principle of Population” and “The Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin, as well as probably a dozen books about evolution and atheism, from Stephen Jay Gould to Sam Harris.
The Darwin, with good reason, stuck with me. Though it’s sometimes poetic, “The Origin of Species” has an enchantingly arid English tone to it; this somber tone was part of a deliberate effort to mark it as science and not science fiction—the “Star Trek” of its time. The book also alights on a tautology that, like all tautologies, is gloriously unimpeachable: Whatever survives survives.
But I still wasn’t sure why a book that never directly touches on human evolution, much less the idea of God, was seen as having unseated the story of creation. In short, “The Origin of Species” is not its own creation story. And while the fact that it stints on metaphor—so as to avoid being like H.G. Wells—neither is it bedrock fact. It’s another hypothesis.
The tautology argument for natural selection is, of course, right out of the creationist playbook. There’s no suggestion here that Heffernan has any truck with evolution.
Perhaps it would be good for Heffernan’s waning career if she pretended that she just made the whole piece up (that, after all, is what Henry Gee seems to be doing). But it’s too late for that, and her post facto special pleading isn’t convincing.
Jerry please stop this, you are still hounding Dr Gee and you are verging on the side of a personal vendetta now, enough is enough.
On aesthetic grounds, I’m sure that Prof. C would prefer to space out these rebuttals. But whaddya gonna do? Sometimes, the weirdness comes in bunches. 😉
The Hounding of Dr. Gee — that sounds like some penny dreadful!
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It sounds like a poem.
Very Robert Service.
Ha ha that is exactly what I had in mind. The Cremation of Sam McGee is what I was thinking of.
What is this comment doing here?
This post is about Virginia Heffernan.
And “hounding”? Two posts is “hounding”?
Even if it is “hounding”, so what? What’s wrong with debate? Are we not supposed to speak up when we see bad ideas, for fear of hurting someone’s feelings? That’s a recipe for disaster.
The last thing I would ever do if my ideas were being criticized would be to resort to a silencing tactic like “you’re hurting my feelings” or “stop hounding me”. I’d simply mount the best defense I could. Or maybe, just maybe, reassess and change my mind.
Sub
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Another classic!
So she decides between them on grounds of emotional preference?
Exactly ..
So much for:
“And then I guess I wanted to know the truth of how the world began”
Unless she redefines ‘truth’ (as she seems to do) as ‘most moving, amusing and pittoresque story’.
.. another one who “can’t handle the truth”.
None of that compares to DRAMA and EXCITEMENT of the Lord of The Rings series. Therefore, Middle Earth is a real place and I can ride griffins one day. QED.
No, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is way more picturesque. So it’s gotta be true. In my reality, at least.
(Cue pitched battle between Tolkienians and Pratchettians…)
But I will admit to a certain fondness for the subversive tagline, “In the beginning was nothing, which exploded”
I would rather spend the rest of my life facing the worst evils in Tolkien’s universe than to have Granny Weatherwax pissed off at me for five minutes!
Agreed 🙂
Dune….Dune is way cooler than evolution. Nah, I’m kidding, nothing’s cooler than evolution but Dune is a close second! 😀
The ignorance of Virginia Hefferman is astounding. I wonder if it is willfully malicious or not. Her words twist around to avoid facts. In a couple of paragraphs she gets several things beyond wrong.
The trouble with this story is not about Ms Hefferman and her doubt and confusion. The trouble is the impact that a respected technology writer, admitting such an uncritical view of the world, will have on those seeking an answer to the origins question. Kind of like “If she believes it, it must be OK, she is high tech, and must be smart.” Think no further.
A science journalist who rejects science, and a science editor who rejects scientists. What’s (or who’s)next, I wonder?
Jerry, please stop highlighting people of this ilk. You’re ruining my weekend.
What–you want all kittens all the time? You don’t have to read the critiques, you know. . .
no no please, enough with the kitty stories! I would much rather reading about the pope, dr. gee or hefferman, then boo boo kitty. plus Ceiling kitty gets my Rottweiler Heidi all wound up. we try to maintain a kitty free zone here… lifes much smoother that way, trust me… 🙂
“…so I was handed the Big Bang. That wasn’t a metaphor, but it wasn’t fact either. It was something called a hypothesis.”
And that’s why it’s referred to as The Big Bang Theory.
This is surprising. Normally we have creationists being confused about the difference theory and hypothesis (i.e. Evolution is only a theory!). And yet here we have one going the other way: The Big Bang Theory is only a hypothesis! Interesting.
She’s practically got epic fail in every sentence.
For example:
Uplifted about a story of biowarfare whose punchline is the mass slaughter of children at the hand of an all-powerful being?
The world began a dozen billion years after the Big Bang. But what’s millions of millennia amongst friends?
So, she’s complaining that somebody told her about the beginnings of the universe instead of the beginnings of the world?
Oh…she really is that clueless. Doesn’t know the difference between the world and the universe, doesn’t know the difference between an hypothesis and a theory, and thinks that it’s all just guesswork.
My dear Virginia, if you think that the Big Bang Theory can be accurately and thoroughly detailed in a single sentence, either you believe in ludicrously long run-on sentences or you haven’t the foggiest clue what the Big Bang Theory is.
With that degree of ignorance and muddled thinking on display, it’s no wonder she’s a cretinist.
Cheers,
b&
I agree. I tried to read the OT and the NT over and over as a kid and beside being written in King James English (which is awful) I thought it was dull and weird. My science books though – I couldn’t get enough of those! I read about anthropology and palaeontology and Mendel’s pea experiments! That was the awesome stuff because it was real and so fascinating! I’m glad the coolest thing ended up being the most true. 🙂
Reminds me…when I finally get the garden in going, I’ll have to re-create some of Mendel’s experiments….
b&
You probably won’t get as “good” results as Mendel did, though.
(Somebody needs to do the experiments properly, and if anyone can, you can. 😉
Really? You mean Mendel cheated?
Curious. Didn’t know that. Guess I might have to do it rigorously enough for publication, rather than just as a lark….
b&
I want to do something similar. In my case with purple and yellow corn. I think is also mendelian inheritance.
if you think that the Big Bang Theory can be accurately and thoroughly detailed in a single sentence, either you believe in ludicrously long run-on sentences
Reminds me of the joke I heard while working on my math degree: “This is a one-line proof, if you start far enough to the left.”
Seeing how Heffernan isn’t even wrong on either cosmology and biology, it is obvious she hasn’t cared to understand either.
The near to worst possible idea of cosmology is that “something exploded”. Its implications are all backwards, suggesting that spacetime is eternal and non-relativistic and that the universe is non-homogeneous and non-isotropic.
[The worst idea is that “something was created”, since that would imply no laws at all.
Or if supplemented with “and it contained laws” it would imply that it wasn’t a universe. We don’t know how to make Friedmann universes if it isn’t fully non-magic spontaneous.]
That is a creationist funny.
As I understand it basic biology _is_ nearly as much bedrock fact as geology is, the ancestor-descendant process recorded in multitudinous fossils.
Also, the current cosmology is neither a hypothesis nor fitting in “a sentence”.
It is the Lambda-CDM _theory_, it contains 5 parameters and 4 eras. (E.g. inflation domination, radiation domination, matter domination, vacuum domination respectively, of the internal free energy.)
The shortest description, outside of the millions of observations that fits to those parameters, would be 4 superficial sentences for each era.
Disregarding the theory which describes how the CMB fossil correlates to the rest, but keeping in line with Heffernan’s idea of “explanation”.
A theoretical physics tangent you might appreciate, Torbjörn:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rjbtsX7twc
Before one tries to espouse even the most benign version of ‘theistic evolution’ as a reasonable philosophical middle ground between incompatible scientific and religious claims about the world, one should first understand why this term is an oxymoron in fact. In addition, we see no equivalent evidence for even the most benign version of POOF!ism as a causal agency in the world. This is clue…
“Jerry, please stop highlighting people of this ilk.”
I like to know then “the emperor has no clothes.”
Yes, I agree, but during the week. I like to enjoy the weekend.
Sorry, I don’t space things out so that you get all the warm and fluffy stuff on the weekend. Remember, you don’t have to read the posts you don’t like.
Virginia is just being ironic.
“The Origin of Species” … It’s another hypothesis.
Well the Genesis story is just a tale…
And unlike the Genesis tale which can’t really be right or wrong by itself as an invented tale (it can be wrong if one hypothesizes that it explains how the universe came to be), the Big Band theory is indeed a hypothesis and we would all happily trade it for a better one if we find it.
Jerry’s Big Band theory seems to be Beatles. I’m not sure he is amenable for trade…
[pedant alert]
Technically speaking, the Beatles were never a Big Band. That was a whole different class of music, as different from what teh Beatles did as… Adam and Eve were from Ylem. Well, almost.
I’ve been Ban(g)ed – good catch Torbjörn
In considering the pressures that science reporters like Gee and Heffermen must face to keep from making gross errors
about and misinterpretations of detailed, fact-ridden complex material they try to report on I can see how they can
develop an “existential crisis” that leadsto the more relaxingthinking like “God did it, I believe it and that settles it.” and “All
scientists are cloacaholes.”
I have thought about the books and associated papers that I have read or am reading to keep myself entertained in retirement and keep up with aspects of modern sciencethat interest me like Michael Lynch “The origin of genome architecture”,
Coyne and Orr, “Speciation”, Carroll et al “From DNA to Diversity”, stuff on coalescent theory and currently Doolittle “The Evolution of Vertebrate Blood Clotting”. I have the luxury of dropping parts I don’t understand (i. e. – giving up), taking time to memorize some of the details, and taking a rest from the effort. I could see getting pretty anxious if I had to write about it in public or were teaching an evolution course.
That’s my hypothesis about the “Gee-Heffermen Syndrome”.
NO! F— NO!
Well, yes, that is a tautology, but someone ought to (metaphorically) smack Virginia with a biology textbook. Survival is only half of the equation. More accurately, the reduction should be:
Which is emphatically not a tautology.
I realize that JAC and the vast majority of commenters here already know that, but FFS that crap makes me angry.
Nicely stated.
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I think the reduction also needs to include something about each generation passing on its mutations. You know, the evolution part.
I think Heffernan’s formulation is a reduction of your more elaborate, more informative statement of evolution. A reduction that goes so far that the essence of evolution is lost.
Sorry, I think I misinterpreted your comment.
You say tautology like it’s a bad thing!
To be able to state a theory in such a way that it seems obvious is actually a good thing IMO. It means that an appropriate language has been developed in which the basic elements and their relations can be simmply expressed and their correspondence with the real world phenomena is obiously correct. What’s wrong with that?
What’s wrong is that the particular tautology so often used to denounce evolution doesn’t actually describe evolution.
I used to sometimes use the ‘I was just joking’ defense. Then I hit puberty.
Everytime I read something Virginia Heffernan says I feel embarrassed. I think it’s because she’s a woman, an arts grad and we’re the same age and she gives all of us women of this age a bad rep. Come on smart women – you need to say a lot of stuff so that you counteract Virginia’s bad mojo!
If Gee and Heffernan’s pieces are posted without reference to the publications they appear in, and reader’s are told to choose between Nature, The NYT, or WorldNetDaily as the organ which published these two articles (or op-eds, or whatever they are categorized as), which of the three gets the most votes?
If Gee and Heffernan’s post-article published comments are presented to the same group of readers, does the group vote a) they are reading commentary by professional science journalists, or b) letters to the editor in rural small towns in states that trend heavily Republican?
Hefferman says: “‘The Origin of Species’ … alights on a tautology that, like all tautologies, is gloriously unimpeachable: Whatever survives survives.”
Cleary she did not read ‘The Origin of Species’ by Charles Darwin. Survival is there clearly related to ‘useful’.
I can’t imagine how anyone thinks the dumbed down creation story of Genesis–bowdlerized from the Sumerian account–is better than the saga of origins and migrations given to us by science. She needs to get out more.
The fact that she thinks the mind numbingly simplistic Genesis account–even as compared to other ancient origin myths–is a better story than the fascinating and *true* account revealed by science tells me all I need to know about her.
As soon as I hear someone is a Creationist, my attention to what they’re saying goes right out the window, along with their credibility.