Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Right Wing Watchreproduces a conversation between former (thank G*d!) Representative Michele Bachmann and Family Research Council (FRC) president Tony Perkins. Both were in Israel for an FRC tour. Click on the screenshot below to hear the brief, four-minute segment in which Bachmann
“We recognize the shortness of the hour,” she said, “and that’s why we as a remnant want to be faithful in these days and do what it is that the Holy Spirit is speaking to each one of us, to be faithful in the Kingdom and to help bring in as many as we can — even among the Jews — share Jesus Christ with everyone that we possibly can because, again, He’s coming soon.”
I wonder how soon? And why is she so sure, given the abysmal record of predictions about Jesus’s return. Remember, Jesus himself predicted that he’d return before his contemporaries were dead:
Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom. (Matthew 16:28).
I’m not sure how theologians have explained that one away, but informed readers should tell us. At any rate, a 2010 Pew Poll found this:
By the year 2050, 41% of Americans believe that Jesus Christ definitely (23%) or probably (18%) will have returned to earth. However, a 46%-plurality of the public does not believe Christ will return during the next 40 years. Fully 58% of white evangelical Christians say Christ will return to earth in this period, by far the highest percentage in any religious group.
Why do they think that? What’s the evidence? Don’t these people realize that such predictions of Jesus’s imminent return have been made for centuries? Why now?
Such a belief is, of course, disasterious for environmentalism and conservation, for why bother to take care of the planet if the End Times are coming within four decades?
How about some nice music this morning? For your delectation I’ve chosen something mellow, something not likely to jar you awake: “I Can’t Tell You Why“, written by The Eagles band members Timothy B. Schmit (lead singer here), Glenn Frey, and Don Henley, and appearing on their 1979 Album The Long Run. Here it’s performed live, but you can hear the recorded version, with a marginally better guitar solo, here. Unlike, say, Crosby, Stills and Nash, the Eagles’ live performances were superb, often nearly matching the quality of their recordings. This is one of those performances.
The older I get, the more I appreciate the Eagles, though I still think “Hotel California” is one of the worst rock songs that ever became a hit.
It’s Sunday Seabirds! Today’s photos are from reader Bruce Lyon, whose notes are indented. (And readers: keep those photos coming in.)
A couple of weeks ago I sent you some photos of cormorants, birds that swim under water using their feet for propulsion. Here are some photos of Pigeon Guillemots (Cepphus columba), diving birds that use their wings for propulsion under water. Guillemots are common along the coast in and around Santa Cruz, California and they nest right in town along Westcliff Drive.
The photos below were taken near Davenport, a few miles north of Santa Cruz. I took these photos as a test of new full frame sensor camera body I purchased (Canon 6D). I decided to try a full-frame sensor body because they seem to yield better images (less noise or grain) at low light situations that demand high sensitivity (high ISO settings). The first four images were shot at 2000 ISO. For comparison, when I used to shoot film I used Kodachrome 64 (e.g. ISO 64)—the new technology enables images that would have been simply impossible with film!
Each spring before nesting season, the guillemots start to hang out in little groups on shelfs below their nesting cliffs. There is lots of chasing, courting and copulation in these groups. The sexes are similar and both have lovely bright red feet and mouth linings. Despite many hours spent watching these birds, I have still not figured out whether the foot and mouth colors are used in mate choice, competition for resources (nest cavities), or both. Guillemots nests in small holes and crevices in the cliff faces and there seems to be a lot of competition for high-quality nest sets. Perhaps pairs of birds with particularly colorful feet are superior competitors.
Below: A guillemot comes in for a landing, showing off its wonderful red booties.
Below: A bird chased off the rock shelf got tangled in an algal strand in the process of fleeing.
More red booties:
A chase. Note how the mouth lining matches the feet.
Below: a closeup of the mouth lining:
A small group interacts over possession of a nest cavity. The bird in the lower left of the photo is at the entrance of the nest cavity:
Before copulating, guillemots do a little dance where they walk around in a tight little circle several times:
A copulating pair:
Since guillemots spend most of their time on the water, it only seems fair to show one photo of a swimming bird:
Guillemots, like the rest of their auk relatives, face a trade-off. They use their wings to fly through the air, but they also use them to “fly” under the water. It seems that optimal wing size for flight through air differs from the optimal wing size for swimming because the auks all have small wings for their body sizes compared to other birds. This matters because birds fly by countering gravity with lift, and all else equal, lift is proportional to wing area. In technical terms, auks have extreme ‘wing-loading’— they have to lift a high mass per unit area of wing. They can compensate for this by flying fast, since lift increases exponentially with flight speed.
Here’s the species’ range map, taken from the Cornell site:
It’s Sunday, I had two pieces of pie (raspberry and triple cherry) last night, and will consume two more today (chocolate peanut butter and lemon chess). But I’m getting ahead of myself; photos and report later. There are only 36 more shopping days until Christmas and 41 shopping days until Professor Ceiling Cat Emeritus’s birthday; on this day in 1960, John Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon for the Presidency; and in 1917 the People’s Commissar gave authority to Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin. On Nov. 8, 1308, the theologian Duns Scotus died, and if you haven’t read him then, according to Terry Eagleton, you haven’t read The Best Arguments for God. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has found a car seat that fits her perfectly, just as Douglas Adams’s puddle fits its hole:
Hili: Look what I’ve found.
A: What’s that?
Hili: An Intelligent Design.
In Polish:
Hili: Popatrz co znalazłam.
Ja: Co?
Hili: Inteligentny Projekt.
This was reported on the BBC in June, but I have well over 900 draft posts that I’ve never put up, and I found this one which is still timely. It’s a report of a unique method of conserving animals that are endangered because they have one desirable feature: deface that feature. In this case it’s the angonaka tortoise, also known as the ploughshare tortoise (Astrochelys yniphora), a tortoise endemic to Madagascar which is long-lived and has a beautiful shell:
Photo from Wikipedia
They’re poached and smuggled not because the shell has curative properties, but because they are beautiful pets. As the BBC reports:
Ploughshare tortoises are highly prized for their distinctive gold and black shells and fetch exceptionally high prices on the international black market. [JAC: the story notes later that “One site listed a ploughshare tortoise over 30 years old with a price tag of $37,900. A young adult that was 10 years old was priced at $14,200 and a baby of 8 months at $1400.” That’s a lot of dosh!]
Efforts to steal the animals from their native Madagascar are so relentless that there may only be fewer than 500 left.
So the tortoises are now having their shells permanently engraved with a large serial number together with the initials “MG” for Madagascar.
The hope is that deliberately making the animals less attractive will reduce or even eliminate demand for them.
. . . The only habitat where the ploughshare tortoises live in the wild – a remote and arid stretch of sand, rock and bamboo at Baly Bay in northwest Madagascar – has been turned into a national park to offer protection.
Here’s its habitat, from Wikipeda. Squint hard!:
Here’s a video about the project:
People have objected to this, but it’s been heard that dealers claim that an etched tortoise has no value, so I do support this scheme, which is analogous to cutting the horns of of endangered rhinos. I’m not sure, though, how much this will stem the poaching, since the animals are kept as illegal pets, and an etched pet is still a live pet. And identifying it as illegal doesn’t require etching since the animals are so distinctive.
For some reason, over the past few months there have been fewer attempts to post by the angry faithful, creationists, and sundry other rude or misguided people. I’m glad, for in the past some of those comments were a bit distressing to me—even though my skin has grown palpably thicker over my past 5.5 years on this site.
Ergo, today I have but two readers with serious beefs, readers who won’t be seen here again. First, reader “feelsbe4reals” (what a name!) wanted to put up this comment on my post “Black Caturday: Hili dialogue”. And what a place to put this comment!:
the following are required for a meaningful life:
(1) Eternal life
(2) Absolute infinite qualitative goodness
In this life, we have neither eternal life nor absolute infinite qualitative goodness. This is why laymen correctly identity the existence of God as something necessary for life to have meaning, because God is absolute infinite qualitative goodness.
In order for a meaningful system of morality, the following are required:
(1) Free will
(2) Infinite value of moral agents
No matter how good an atheist is, he can never guarantee the existence of (2), because this requires the existence of God. Immanuel Kant is the one who closest came to a totally descriptive but absolute system of morality, but it fell short of the morality of Jesus Christ because he had no way to guarantee the infinite moral worth of human beings.
Oh, the certainty of this person’s judgment! And how sad for the rest of us to finally see that our lives are meaningless. I wonder what the difference is between “absolute infinite qualitative goodness” and “absolute infinite quantitative goodness”? After all, infinite is infinite, and can you really measure anything that is “qualitative”?
Stop perpetuating myths you moron. Like with “The dark side of Buddhism” moron atheist mainstream science cultists are always siding with and flirting with Buddhism, not Christians and yet you pretend it’s anti evolution/atheism? Even the Dalai Lama moron claims Christianity is not a religion and you’re pretending it’s antiatheism? Stupid idiot you are more proof atheism is moronic. There is no evidence for “NO GOD” stupid, living fossils cancel out any possibility of evolution and there are so many of them it’s obvious they aren’t millions or billions of years old and ooparts are extremely strong evidence against evolution and on and on and on. You are a backwards delusion idiot. As you morons say: ignorance is bliss (but really it’s not, because it gets you humiliation and leads to Hell), although it’s a vague statement so in some cases it’s good not to know certain things like all the stupid information cluttering the minds of so many morons like yourself.
I’d say this would be a troll except his website is for real. In the above I count six uses of “moron” or “moronic”, with a couple of “idiot”s thrown in for good measure. The funny bit is that on his own site, referring to his commenting policy on the “about me” page, Knight says this:
Further: when you start a sentence off with an insult, or type long rants or make repeated posts using a fake name and especially email: I consider that harassment, just like you hypocritical morons would if that were done to you.
So isn’t this harassment? At least he didn’t use a fake name (I think).
But that wasn’t enough for Knight. Here’s his comment #2:
Oh and on entanglement, how can you even dare to bring this up since it refutes Einstein’s Big Bang (Big Flop) nonsense? Losers., you perpetuate new age science and try and sound informed by mentioning opposing contradictory views. Doesn’t work on me.
Of course, I couldn’t care less what works on him. His first step should be to step away from the keyboard and move out of his parents’ basement.
As I’ve always said, the best way to counter offensive speech is with counter-speech, not by trying to ban or punish people for what they said—unless what they say constitutes an imminent call to violence or creates an illegal atmosphere of racial or sexual harassment. That is basically the principle of free speech endorsed by the government and the courts.
But free speech off campus is different from what happens in American colleges and universities, where anything that offends students is construed as “hate speech”, even if there’s no hatred involved but merely a divergence in views. I’ve written about this enough, so will briefly recount an episode at Yale University that’s reported at length at the FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) Site.
In short, on October 28 a dean at Yale sent an email about Halloween costumes to the student body, an email signed by 13 members of the Intercultural Affairs Committee, a group of administrators from various units of the university. Here’s an excerpt from that email:
However, Halloween is also unfortunately a time when the normal thoughtfulness and sensitivity of most Yale students can sometimes be forgotten and some poor decisions can be made including wearing feathered headdresses, turbans, wearing ‘war paint’ or modifying skin tone or wearing blackface or redface. These same issues and examples of cultural appropriation and/or misrepresentation are increasingly surfacing with representations of Asians and Latinos.
Yale is a community that values free expression as well as inclusivity. And while students, undergraduate and graduate, definitely have a right to express themselves, we would hope that people would actively avoid those circumstances that threaten our sense of community or disrespects, alienates or ridicules segments of our population based on race, nationality, religious belief or gender expression.
The culturally unaware or insensitive choices made by some members of our community in the past, have not just been directed toward a cultural group, but have impacted religious beliefs, Native American/Indigenous people, Socio-economic strata, Asians, Hispanic/Latino, Women, Muslims, etc. In many cases the student wearing the costume has not intended to offend, but their actions or lack of forethought have sent a far greater message than any apology could after the fact…
There is growing national concern on campuses everywhere about these issues, and we encourage Yale students to take the time to consider their costumes and the impact it may have. So, if you are planning to dress-up for Halloween, or will be attending any social gatherings planned for the weekend, please ask yourself these questions before deciding upon your costume choice:
• Wearing a funny costume? Is the humor based on “making fun” of real people, human traits or cultures?
• Wearing a historical costume? If this costume is meant to be historical, does it further misinformation or historical and cultural inaccuracies?
• Wearing a ‘cultural’ costume? Does this costume reduce cultural differences to jokes or stereotypes?
• Wearing a ‘religious’ costume? Does this costume mock or belittle someone’s deeply held faith tradition?
• Could someone take offense with your costume and why?
Well, I don’t see a big problem with that, except that some of these costumes could simply reflect admiration for another culture, or make political points (I’m thinking about religion-themed costumes). Further, the notion of “someone taking offense” means that costumes are verboten if only a single person takes offense. As I’ve said, while things like blackface, because of their historical connotations and use, are offensive to everyone, other costumes, including ethnic dress like Japanese geishas or Mexican garb, aren’t so clear. One person’s admiration for a culture’s dress is another person’s offensive “cultural appropriation.”
What happened then is chilling, but predictable. Some students expressed concern about the University’s email to Erika Christakis, associate master of Silliman College, a residential part of Yale. (Her husband Nicholas is master of Silliman). Christakis sent an email to the “Sillimanders” giving her thoughts on the costume issue. Here’s part of it, but you can read the whole thing at the link. Note the first sentence and the first paragraph, which I’ve put in bold:
I don’t wish to trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation, and other challenges to our lived experience in a plural community. I know that many decent people have proposed guidelines on Halloween costumes from a spirit of avoiding hurt and offense. I laud those goals, in theory, as most of us do. But in practice, I wonder if we should reflect more transparently, as a community, on the consequences of an institutional (which is to say: bureaucratic and administrative) exercise of implied control over college students.
It seems to me that we can have this discussion of costumes on many levels: we can talk about complex issues of identify, free speech, cultural appropriation, and virtue “signalling.” But I wanted to share my thoughts with you from a totally different angle, as an educator concerned with the developmental stages of childhood and young adulthood.
As a former preschool teacher, for example, it is hard for me to give credence to a claim that there is something objectionably “appropriative” about a blondehaired child’s wanting to be Mulan [a legendary Chinese woman warrior] for a day. Pretend play is the foundation of most cognitive tasks, and it seems to me that we want to be in the business of encouraging the exercise of imagination, not constraining it. I suppose we could agree that there is a difference between fantasizing about an individual character vs. appropriating a culture, wholesale, the latter of which could be seen as (tacky)(offensive)(jejeune)(hurtful), take your pick. But, then, I wonder what is the statute of limitations on dreaming of dressing as Tiana the Frog Princess [a black character in a Disney animation] if you aren’t a black girl from New Orleans? Is it okay if you are eight, but not 18? I don’t know the answer to these questions; they seem unanswerable. Or at the least, they put us on slippery terrain that I, for one, prefer not to cross.
. . . . When I lived in Bangladesh, I bought a sari because it was beautiful, even though I looked stupid in it and never wore it once. Am I fetishizing and appropriating others’ cultural experiences? Probably. But I really, really like them too.
Even if we could agree on how to avoid offense – and I’ll note that no one around campus seems overly concerned about the offense taken by religiously conservative folks to skinrevealing costumes – I wonder, and I am not trying to be provocative: Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious… a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive? American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition.
. . . But – again, speaking as a child development specialist – I think there might be something missing in our discourse about the exercise of free speech (including how we dress ourselves) on campus, and it is this: What does this debate about Halloween costumes say about our view of young adults, of their strength and judgment?
In other words: Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people? It’s not mine, I know that.
What Christakis is doing here is, as I did, groping for standards that allow free expression and enjoyment of the good aspects of other people’s cultures while not being gratuitously offensive. And she’s expressing concern about who should control or police what is considered an “inoffensive” costume.
Unfortunately, this rather tame letter set off an explosion. 740 Yale students, alumni, faculty and staff signed an open letter to Christakis, accusing her of “invalidating the existences” of marginalized students and disrespecting their cultures and livelihoods. Her husband, the college’s master, met with the protestors, who demanded that he apologize for the email (he wouldn’t). As the Washington Post reports, some Silliman students say they can’t bear to live in the college any more, and others are drafting a letter calling for the resignation of both Nicholas and Erika Christakis.
Here’s a video of students confronting Nicholas Christakis (remember, it was his wife, not he, who sent the email). Apparently he patiently faced the students for hours, but some of them got quite exercised (transcript from FIRE, which filmed this) below:
“As your position as master, it is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students that live in Silliman. You have not done that. By sending out that email, that goes against your position as master. Do you understand that?”
When Christakis replied that he didn’t agree, the student thundered back, “Then why the fuck did you accept the position! Who the fuck hired you?”
Christakis began to say that he had a different view of his role at the college, but the student cut him off, saying:
“Then step down! If that is what you think about being a [inaudible] master, then you should step down. It is not about creating an intellectual space! It is not! Do you understand that? It’s about creating a home here! You are not doing that. You’re going against that.”
On the other hand, this isn’t exactly a reasoned discussion; the student tells Christakis to “Be quiet!”. She doesn’t want to listen; she wants to harangue. Then she stomps off.
Asking for resignations is going too far. Criticizing the Christakises is one thing, demanding that they be punished for their views is another. Erika Christakis’s letter is thoughtful and certainly an expression of free speech. Students are free to criticize it, of course, but if Yale takes any action against her or her husband, I would be both saddened and surprised. The letter to the Yale students about the issue written by Yale’s Dean of the College Jonathan Holloway is mealy-mouthed, taking no real stand on the issue.
Yale should, like all American universities, adopt the exemplary freedom-of-speech principles that recently became policy at the University of Chicago. I quote from that document (my emphasis):
In a word, the University’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed. It is for the individual members of the University community, not for the University as an institution, to make those judgments for themselves, and to act on those judgments not by seeking to suppress speech, but by openly and vigorously contesting the ideas that they oppose. Indeed, fostering the ability of members of the University community to engage in such debate and deliberation in an effective and responsible manner is an essential part of the University’s educational mission.
The students, by trying to intimidate and even end the jobs of the Christakises, are indeed trying to suppress speech. And if Yale caves in to them, acting “as an institution”, it will be a dark day for American education.
I can’t help going after Ben Carson; I suppose it’s a combination of his ignorance, his repeated and stupid attacks on evolution, and the fact that right now he’s the Republican front-runner. Readers have speculated that Carson really knows better about evolution, and he’s just lying for Jesus and his constituency, but I’m not so sure. After all, the human mind, particularly when marinated in faith, is eminently capable of deceiving itself.
Now, however, Carson has been caught in more gaffes and at least two lies. Will this hurt him? I doubt it: to Republicans, who have a seemingly infinite tolerance for incompetence and dissimulation, he’s golden.
Note two things in the third paragraph. First, his claim that “Every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience.” Even those with only a cursory knowledge of American history knows that’s wrong; the Post notes that of the five members of the Declaration’s drafting committee, four—John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and Roger Sherman—had held elective office. Among the 51 other signers of the Declaration, the Post counts 27 as having held elective office. That’s more than half.
The second gaffe, or rather lie, wasn’t taken up by the Post—Carson’s statement about the signers that “What they had was a deep belief that freedom is a gift from God. They had a determination to rise up against a tyrannical King.” That’s also bogus. Although the Declaration does state this—
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
—everyone knows that people like Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson, were either atheists, agnostics, or at best deists, and their belief in creating a country based on freedom came from the Enlightenment, not from God. Indeed, the U.S. Constitution—the actual underpinning of our government drafted in 1787—doesn’t mention God once. Note, too, that even in the statement above, governments are said to obtain their powers from the “consent of the governed.” That doesn’t mean “from the consent of God,” but from the people.
The most famous Founders, including George Washington, could hardly be said to have been religious, and at any rate what religion they did believe they kept to themselves, unlike every Republican candidate. I suspect that people like Jefferson, Franklin, and Washington didn’t believe in any of the tenets of Christianity—save, perhaps, in a deistic God. I’m pretty sure Franklin was an outright atheist, but of course you couldn’t admit such things back then.
And now to the lies. Carson has now been caught embroidering his resume. Here he is on Charlie Rose this October, saying what Carson’s been saying for years—he was offered a full scholarship to West Point:
As I said, this isn’t the first time he’s said that, as Politico (which broke the story) noted:
Ben Carson has repeatedly claimed he was offered a full scholarship from West Point. He conveys the story in at least two other books, “You Have a Brain” and “Take the Risk.” Carson repeated his West Point claim as recently as Aug. 13, when he fielded questions from supporters on Facebook.
And in October, Carson shared the story with Charlie Rose: “I had a goal of achieving the office of city executive officer [in JROTC]. Well, no one had ever done that in that amount of time … Long story short, it worked, I did it. I was offered full scholarship to West Point, got to meet General Westmoreland, go to Congressional Medal dinners, but decided really my pathway would be medicine.”
Anybody who’s acquainted with the U.S. military academies, including the Naval Academy and West Point, knows that there are no “full scholarships”: you apply, need a nomination from your congressman (or a few other sources), and then become part of a rigorous selection process, with the vast majority of candidates failing to secure a spot. (I was once urged to go to West Point by my father, an Army officer, and did investigate the process.) If you do get in, your tuition and all expenses are free. As Greg Mayer (who sent me the link) told me—and he has a daughter who went to the Naval Academy—”Anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with the US military academies knows that there is no tuition for any cadet/midshipman. Not only is he lying, it’s a lie that couldn’t possibly be true.”
One more “embroidery”: the part about meeting General Westmoreland appears to be false as well. As the Detroit News reports:
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson’s published account of having dinner with a top commander in the Vietnam War after marching in a Memorial Day parade in 1969 as a high school ROTC cadet in Detroit does not match historical records.
In Carson’s 1990 best-selling autobiography, “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story,” the neurosurgeon tells of being offered a scholarship to West Point as a high school senior sometime after having dinner with the U.S. Army’s chief of staff, Gen. William Westmoreland, on Memorial Day 1969.
But Westmoreland’s personal schedule shows the general was not in Detroit on Memorial Day or during the days preceding and following the holiday. His schedule says he was in and around Washington, D.C., that weekend, according to Army archives The Detroit News reviewed Friday.
As with the West Point gaffe, Carson’s campaign is doing damage control, and Carson is even blaming the media for scrutinizing him more closely than it scrutinized Obama. It’s said to be a “media witch hunt,” something Republicans will increasingly maintain because they hate the media, which they see as a bastion of liberal politics.
But wait—there’s more! Carson has made a big deal of his supposedly violent past, but none of those incidents can be verified by the press, either. As CNN reports (see the video on that CNN page as well):
In his 1990 autobiography, “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story,” Carson describes those acts as flowing from an uncontrollable “pathological temper.” The violent episodes he has detailed in his book, in public statements and in interviews, include punching a classmate in the face with his hand wrapped around a lock, leaving a bloody three-inch gash in the boy’s forehead; attempting to attack his own mother with a hammer following an argument over clothes; hurling a large rock at a boy, which broke the youth’s glasses and smashed his nose; and, finally, thrusting a knife at the belly of his friend with such force that the blade snapped when it luckily struck a belt buckle covered by the boy’s clothes.
“I was trying to kill somebody,” Carson said, describing the incident — which he has said occurred at age 14 in ninth grade — during a September forum at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.
But nine friends, classmates and neighbors who grew up with Carson told CNN they have no memory of the anger or violence the candidate has described.
. . . All of the people interviewed expressed surprise about the incidents Carson has described. No one challenged the stories directly. Some of those interviewed expressed skepticism, but noted that they could not know what had happened behind closed doors.
Gerald Ware, a classmate at Southwestern High School said he was “shocked” to read about the violence in Carson’s book.
“I don’t know nothing about that,” said Ware, who still lives in southwestern Detroit. “It would have been all over the whole school.”
CNN was unable to independently confirm any of the incidents, which Carson said occurred when he was a juvenile.
The reason this “violence” narrative is important is because Carson used it to show how his life was changed by God. After a particularly violent episode in which he tried to kill someone, he wrote, Carson went into the bathroom of his Detroit home and picked up a Bible. Turning to a passage in Proverbs—an experience comparable to Francis Collins seeing his frozen waterfall—Carson’s life was suddenly transformed, he came to God, and was instantly turned into the mild-mannered and anodyne person he is today.
That’s a good story, and plays into the Republican penchant for religion, but it doesn’t seem to be true.
