Doug Groothuis Demonstrates His Intellect Again

Everybody laughed when creationist Ray Comfort thought "bibliophile" was an insult. But it was hardly the stupidest thing said by a creationist this week. I nominate this gem from "Douglas Groothuis, Ph. D.".

I'm not sure which is funnier: that he thinks that a scientific theory could possibly be disproved by a "moral argument", or that he thinks that biologists believe that "various races of humans may be more evolved than other races".

The Mind of Doug Groothuis

If you want to see a prime example of the crazed, inchoate rage that Obama seems to induce in the Religious Right, you can do no better than to visit the blog of Doug Groothuis, professor at Denver Seminary.

According to Groothuis, Obama is "anti-American" and "a shameless con man". He "wants to preside over America's decline". He is the "quintessence of leftism, statism, and the destruction of our founding ideals". Electing him will be "The End of America".

This kind of unhinged rhetoric has no truth in it all: Obama is actually a timid centrist who continued most of George Bush's authoritarian policies, such as the Patriot Act and Guantanamo Bay. He can be justly criticized for his repeated failures to end right-wing foolishness.

Perhaps Groothuis is secretly worried that Obamacare will do for Obama and the Democrats what socialized medical care did for the reputation of Baptist minister Tommy Douglas and the NDP in Canada. But I guess that would require that he know something about other countries, which doesn't seem very likely.

The Bible is Inerrant!

At least according to Doug Groothuis.

No need to even glance at all those lists of biblical contradictions, Doug. You've proved it with logic!

Doug Groothuis endorses Bachmann

Let's see: she's

- a pathological liar
- dumber than a bag of nails
- a nasty bigot

Despite those wonderful qualities, Michele Bachmann is still the ideal Presidential candidate in the opinion of Doug Groothuis.

(He doesn't allow any comments on that post - no wonder.)

Doug Groothuis's "Six Enemies of Apologetic Engagement"

Over at the creationist "Leadership University" site, Doug Groothuis has a piece called "Six Enemies of Apologetic Engagement", where he lists some ways that evangelical Christians fail to carry out their mission effectively.

It's a real hoot. "Ignorance" is one of the enemies, but Groothuis also makes the bogus claim that "macro-evolution is false, and good arguments have been raised against it from both nature and Scripture". He actually cites the vastly-ignorant Phillip Johnson -- a lawyer with no training in biology -- as someone who has made good arguments with "intellectual integrity" against evolution. (Groothuis also misspells Johnson's first name.)

I remember the time that Phillip Johnson arrived at the Usenet newsgroup talk.origins, back in 1993. He arrogantly rode in on his evangelical high horse to do battle with the godless evolutionists, confident that his rhetorical skills would hide his lack of biological knowledge. The result was not pretty at all. Johnson had to leave in a cowardly huff because he couldn't handle the criticism from people who actually knew something about the subject.

"Cowardice" and "arrogance", however, are two of Groothuis's problems with evangelicals. He says that evangelicals should "cultivate real dialogue with unbelievers". Is that the very same Doug Groothuis who routinely bans commenters at his blog who disagree with his claims? Why, I believe it is.

Doug -- you're a first-class hypocrite.

Doug Groothuis Bans Me

Wow, Doug Groothuis has banned me from his blog for writing the following, which he refused to publish:

I think this excerpt shows why, for non-Christians, C. S. Lewis's philosophy is regarded as deficient.

Lewis didn't know anything about evolution. He didn't understand that what he called "morality" is a fact about human evolution; that we are programmed by evolution and culture to regard certain behaviors of others as acceptable and other behaviors as less so. Once this is understood, Lewis's confusion simply vanishes.


He calls this "pugilistic, pugnacious, and pernicious propositions."

Students of Groothuis should be aware: he does not tolerate any kind of dissent. If I were you, I'd look for another teacher, one that respects the give-and-take necessary to acquire knowledge.

Letter to Doug Groothuis

I occasionally visit the blog of Doug Groothuis, a Christian philosopher and intelligent design apologist. I find it a puzzle, because while many of his posts seem to be about the intellectual failings of others, he rarely bothers to provide a coherent argument himself. Instead, his blog seems to be a forum where he can enumerate his prejudices in one or two lines.

This is a typical example: Groothuis describes a presidential proclamation that "Nurturing families come in many forms, and children may be raised by a father and mother, a single father, two fathers, a step-father, a grandfather, or caring guardian" as "against all reason". But he refuses to explain why, and he also refused to publish my comment pointing this out.

Like many Christian bloggers, Groothuis routinely censors comments. About half of the things I've submitted have been rejected, with no explanations.

So I was particularly amused to see this post, which expressed Groothuis' "despair" over the "dearth of discourse". Well, if you routinely censor comments, then of course there's going to be a dearth of discourse.

So I wrote to Groothuis, as follows:

Dear Prof. Groothuis:

I'm sending you this comment via e-mail because - ironically - you do not permit comments to your posting of July 11 about comments.

In that posting you express your despair over the "dearth of discourse". I think you're wrong, and here's why:

1. Blogs typically aren't viewed in the same way as academic articles or formal debates. They're typically more like a conversation in your home. In a conversation in your home, people don't expect every utterance to be a formal presentation, and they'd probably leave rather quickly if you insisted on it. If you want a more formal setting, there are lots of opportunities, such as academic journals.

2. I'm not sure you meant "dearth", because later you say "death". But assuming "dearth" is what you meant, I see no "dearth of discourse" in blogs. On the contrary, more people are discussing more ideas than ever before, because the opportunities for discussion are greater. Just look at a newspaper site like the the NYT: in print, the NYT publishes perhaps at most 15 letters from readers a day. But on their website a single article can, and often does, result in hundreds of reader comments.

3. Your implication that discourse is worse off now than in the past is - ironically - not supported by any evidence you have presented. I'd suggest reading /American Aurora/ to see that public discourse 200 years ago suffered from many of the same problems you have pointed out.

4. Your claim that "People do not study the art of argument or the forms of fallacies" is - ironically - unsupported by any actual data. Why not present some?

5. How is a posting where you say "This is a severe attack on freedom of religion and freedom of speech", but without giving any rationale for why you think so, contributing to "discourse"? Another example is "Against all Reason - Obama endorses homosexual parenting on Father's Day." You offer no explanation why you think this is "against all reason". What kind of "discourse" is that? If you don't have time to do so, that's understandable, but then you can scarcely rail against the dearth (or death) of discourse.

The other point I'd like to make is that it's a bit rich to decry the "dearth of discourse" on the one hand and randomly shut off comments on your posts and censor commenters. If you want people to read and react to your blog, then let them. I have, on several occasions, spent half an hour or more composing what I thought was a carefully-reasoned response to your blog, only to have it not appear because it apparently violated some internal rule of yours. This is not conducive to "discourse".


No response from him.