Butterflies and Wheels has been established in order to oppose a number of related phenomena. These include:

1. Pseudoscience that is ideologically and politically motivated.
2. Epistemic relativism in the humanities (for example, the idea that statements are only true or false relative to particular cultures, discourses or language-games).
3. Those disciplines or schools of thought whose truth claims are prompted by the political, ideological and moral commitments of their adherents, and the general tendency to judge the veracity of claims about the world in terms of such commitments.

There are two motivations for setting up the web site. The first is the common one having to do with the thought that truth is important, and that to tell the truth about the world it is necessary to put aside whatever preconceptions (ideological, political, moral, etc.) one brings to the endeavour.

The second has to do with the tendency of the political Left (which both editors of this site consider themselves to be part of) to subjugate the rational assessment of truth-claims to the demands of a variety of pre-existing political and moral frameworks. We believe this tendency to be a mistake on practical as well as epistemological and ethical grounds. Alan Sokal expressed this concern well, when talking about his motivation for the Sokal Hoax: ‘My goal isn't to defend science from the barbarian hordes of lit crit (we'll survive just fine, thank you), but to defend the Left from a trendy segment of itself. Like innumerable others from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, I call for the Left to reclaim its Enlightenment roots.’ (Reply to Social Text Editorial)

Who’s your daddy? It is exactly this sort of question that results in slapped faces and restraining orders if the query is made in a bar. When this question was posed to the State School Board of Ohio and framed in the context of human origins it sparked national debates and threats of lawsuits. The board was tasked with making the decision on whether or not students can be presented with an alternative to the theory of evolution. The alternative in question is the theory of intelligent design.

Despite the fact that a number of reputable scientists support this theory with credible scientific evidence, it didn’t stop proponents of evolution to immediately yell that this is a breach of contemporary view of the second amendment that separates church and state.

The shrill call for a constitutional foul came forth because the theory of intelligent design concludes that we are the products of a higher intelligence. This higher intelligence is never named or given bias towards a particular religion. Supporters of intelligent design simply put forth the evidence without making a presumption on what deity is responsible. That is where the problem lies for evolutionists. Any theory that not only suggests that we are the product of a creation but can also back it up in a credible manner is a threat to them.

If we are seeking scientific truth, why would people in the scientific community be afraid of an open dialogue on a theory that can be supported with at least as much evidence as evolution? When you strip away the venire of science the answer becomes clear. By definition evolution is now a religion and any idea that challenges their belief system must be eliminated.

The dictionary defines religion as “A personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices”. This is not really helpful unless you also know how this same dictionary defines the word, religious. Religious is defined by Webster’s as “relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity”. It is in this meaning of the word religious that we find evolutions true self. Evolution manifests the two most important points that qualify it as a religion. These are a devotion to an ultimate reality (as well as a deity, though they wont admit it), and faith.

Those who are dedicated to evolution hide their faith by pretending their belief is deeply rooted in science. When you break down the fossil evidence though, you find some interesting things.

Dr. Leaky started much of the uproar when he found his famous missing link, Lucy. In the end his find turned out to be a mosaic of at least two different species of extinct ape.

Eugene Dubois was a Dutch scientist and devotee of Charles Darwin. During a dig on the island of Java, he discovered the first fossils of a Pithecanthropus erectus. This find was later nicknamed “Java man”.

Dubois became very protective of his find and only allowed access of the bones to a very small circle of people. After several decades of stonewalling and intense pressure to compare his fossils against finds of extinct mammals that had also been unearthed in Java, Dubois finally admitted that his Pithecanthropus erectus was actually the remains of an ancient Gibbon. In the end all Dubois managed to do was conclusively prove that Gibbons exist.

Piltdown man was a complete skull that finally proved the link between man and ape. It had characteristics of both. For fifty years this was the transitional fossil evolutionists threw in the face of anyone who doubted them. Piltdown man was their Rosetta stone.

Well it was until somebody took a close look at it and discovered it was the skull of a modern human with an ape’s jaw attached to it. The pranksters had also stained it to make it look old. The crime here is not the prank but the failure of evolutionists to put their discoveries under the standards of scrutiny that they demand from any competing theory. It took fifty years to discover their ultimate evidence was a clumsy fraud.

The entire theory was eventually dealt a sharp blow when the Neandertal man, the only fossil of an ape/human ancestor that was recent enough to extract DNA from came back as not even remotely human.

Once the Neandertal was conclusively and scientifically proved to be a species other then human in 1997, the theory of evolution had to be adjusted. The Neandertal’s were a branch from a common ancestor we have. Just like monkeys. Who is this common ancestor? Nobody knows. Where is the fossil? There isn’t one. How do they know there is a common ancestor then? Because they believe that someday someone will find the evidence they are looking for.

Evolution, by definition, is a religion. In science fraud is common and hoaxes are just an unfortunate part of the territory.

I read your blog and found it quite funny. You praise science for discovering the wood stain on Piltdown mans, despite the fact it took decades. I have a handy man that could have spotted that in 30 seconds. As far as the rest, just because your progaganda and faith dont support the truth of Dubois and the rest of the evidence doesnt make your version true. Of course like any other religion you are hoping the more often you say things the truer they become.

Your "Transitional fossils" are only evidence if you work backwards from the belief of evolution. No soft tissue samples and no DNA. By your methods you would take the innards of a pig (which are the closest to human in all of the animal world) and declare it a human ancestor before seeing the skelaton or any other part of the pig. Also under your methods the Thylacine would be classified as a dog, if all we had was the skelaton. You start at the conclusion and make the evidence fit your pre determined notion. In other words, everything you wrote was self serving and all your evidence is open to multiple interpretations. You simply choose to call your interpretation a fact.

My article was not written for you and thankfully it has reached its target audience. You are the defender of your religious belief so I dont expect an open mind out of you. Had you actually done your research on ID with an open mind, and put your evidence to the same standard you demand from any other theory you would have more questions about evolution then beligerant rhetoric. Im sure your closed mind and inability to question what your teachers have told you will serve you well in whatever micro managed cubicle or factory line your life takes you. Those who emply such positions hate people with probbing minds. You will fit right in.

A joint U.S.-Turkish team of 10 explorers plans to make the arduous trek up Turkey’s tallest mountain, at 17,820 feet (5,430 meters), from July 15 to Aug. 15, subject to the approval of the Turkish government, said Daniel P. McGivern, president of Shamrock—The Trinity Corp. of Honolulu, Hawaii.

The goal: to enter what they believe to be a mammoth structure some 45 feet high, 75 feet wide and up to 450 feet long (14 by 23 by 138 meters) that was exposed in part by last summer’s heat wave in Europe.

“We are not excavating it. We are not taking any artifacts. We’re going to photograph it and, God willing, you’re all going to see it,” McGivern said.

The only function such a document would serve is to pray to Antichrist for relief...

What the Church is really struggling over is authority. We want to have a standing in Christ. We don't want a standing recognized by the world, for what communion has the Kingdom of Light with the Kingdom of Darkness?

The officials of the Church will come into authority because they are acting in His name, in a righteous manner. Everyone will notice who the real Authority is. The real question is, "Who sits on the highest throne?"

We, as Christians, have been given the highest Authority, and we need to act in a Christian manner as we carry out His commands. We must joyfully accept the plundering of our property and meekly suffer, rather than retaliate...

The unbelievers need to take the initiative in making a place for God's elect, lest they be destroyed in their way. We are not called to "plea bargain" with the unbelievers, but to rule the earth and make them His footstool.

They cannot overcome the fact that we are not using the highways in their state. We are using the highways in the Kingdom of Heaven. Most people do not realize that the same stretch of concrete has multiple jurisdictions. State of Washington claims certain highways as their highways. But the Kingdom of Heaven claims these same highways for their purposes. And no one can deny that claim...

There are many jurisdictions claiming authority over the same highways. For instance, the United States Army has military highways for purposes of defense. The United States Postal Service has post roads for purposes of delivering mail. The state has "highways in this state" for purposes of regulating its drivers, and the Embassy of Heaven has "highways in the Kingdom of Heaven" for purposes of proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom to all nations. All these authorities have "concurrent jurisdiction" over the same physical highways. But those of us claiming the Kingdom of Heaven highways have the paramount claim to the highways because our Father created them and His son commanded us to use them. (See Matthew 28:18-20)

The state and its political subdivisions are stewards for the maintenance of the highways. That does not mean they own the highways. Specific government entities are charged with the maintenance and construction of the highways. To identify the custodian of these highways, they are designated State Highway 22 or County Road 208. It may appear that the state or county owns the highways, but they are merely stewards.

There is one form of stewardship we do not recognize. That is when the state takes dominion over the highways, treating them as their own. They start regulating who can and who cannot use the highways through their licensing programs. They not only regulate their own people, but they regulate anybody who uses "their" highways. When these stewards claim the highways as their own, they have become wicked husbandmen. (See Matthew 21:33-46)

When the sheriff in Washington wondered where the designations were for the Kingdom of Heaven highways, he was expecting that we would have markers on the side of the road. We don't need road signs. Our highways have already been published in the Bible under the Great Commission. Christ said, "Go to all nations." And His command to "Go to all nations," means that all the highways and byways and paths leading up to everybody's doorstep are designated as Kingdom of Heaven highways. Wherever we go, we are on the Kingdom highways.

If we faithfully stay off the highways in the state and remain on the highways in the Kingdom, there is no way we can trespass upon the state. We cannot commit traffic crimes against the state because we are not using their highways. Some jurisdictions are beginning to understand this and are dismissing charges against our ambassadors.

State motor vehicle statutes mean absolutely nothing to us because they only apply to those using highways in the state. They do not write statutes for those using highways in the Kingdom of Heaven. That is outside their jurisdiction. State law enforcement must come onto the highways in the Kingdom of Heaven in order to stop us. And if they cite us with violations of their statutes, they are trespassing. They do not supervise the Kingdom of Heaven highways.

"Cute little wetback girl. I wonder if she'll grow up to do donkey shows like her whore mother."

"Probably not, Mark. She's not your sister.

Further note to the folks who wish to display their flagrant and abject racist stupidity: Try to have a little more creativity about it, please? If you're going to be a flagrant racist asshole, you need to stand out from all the other flagrant racist assholes out there. Try to exhibit a little style. I know, it'll be difficult, given the general inability of your neurons to fire on a regular pattern. But do make the effort, why don't you."

"Sorry. Didn't realize she was your daughter. My apologies.

I'm outta here! Best wishes!"

4:28: You know how every fantasy draft gets ruined by the cell-phone guy babbling with his partner who didn't show up? And you're rooting for him to choke to death on a Cheeto by Round 8? Well, in our league, Anthony is Cheeto Choker and Joe House is Cell Phone Buddy. Somehow, they won last year's title, although they lost money in the long run (because the winnings were less than Anthony's phone bill for the draft).

Here's my point: This year, House showed up in person. On the bright side, we don't have to endure their annoying cell phone calls. On the flip side, we have to listen to them bitch at one another in person. They're like an old married couple. They just took Jermaine O'Neal eighth (as a forward). And neither seems happy about it.

"Somebody's sleeping on the sofa tonight," I joke. Everyone in the room hates me, and we're not even out of Round 1 yet...

4:33: Kicking off the second round, the Petes take Gilbert Arenas, launching a barrage of "Is this the fourth round already?" jokes. Those never get old...

5:04: I'm starting to like our team. Pining for Michael Redd, we catch a break when Jason Richardson and GP go in front of us. Suddenly I find myself saying, "You know, if Vince comes through this year, we might be in the running." Of course, Lenny Wilkens said these same words last year, and he's mowing his lawn right now...

5:15: Wow, I'm liking our team more and more by the minute. I am now convinced that Vince could average 30 a game. Time to mess with Jon, who has the terrified look of a guy who can't stop himself from picking Lamar Odom. I run through all the standard lines, including "Jon, Lamar Odom's on the phone ... he says he really wants to be on your team," and "Jon, it's Lamar Odom again ... he says he hasn't smoked pot in almost four months, and he just wants another chance."

Finally, Jon whines, "Don't do this to me!"

5:15: Jon takes Odom. Huge laughs. Dad pats me on the shoulder. He's like a proud father. Literally.

5:15: A giggling Lee asks everyone who has ever had Lamar Odom to raise their hands. Six of us oblige. Then he asks how many of us would do it again. None of us raise our hands. Somebody else mentions how Odom is one puff away from his third strike (and a one-year suspension). And somebody else mentions, "Is there an easier place in the country to buy drugs than Miami?"

Needless to say, Jon looks like he's trying to swallow his own tongue...

5:40: Well, it's time. Eighth round ... we need a forward ... we need a token Celtic ... and I need a good plot twist for this column. Dad and I look at each other. After two decades of drafting together, we could practically do this telepathically.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" I ask him.

Dad suppresses a smile. "It's the right round for him."

"We'll take Vin Baker," I tell the crowd.

For about 1.2 seconds, it's one of the most heartwarming stories in the history of fantasy sports. Nobody was a bigger Baker critic than me. I wrote entire columns about the guy. He drove me insane. He was the centerpiece of the worst trade in Boston sports history. When I was debating whether or not to move to Los Angeles last year, the thought of watching Baker at the Fleet Center actually made the "Reasons to Leave" section of my "Pro-Con" list (no joke).

As it turned out, Vin says he was drunk every night. Not just some nights ... every night. Now he's sober. And skinny. His legs have some hop again. His deadly fadeaway has magically reappeared from thin air. He isn't just a different guy, he's another guy. The Boston crowd cheers his every move. You can't possibly not root for the guy. Anyway, he needed to be on our team, for the purposes of closure more than anything. And for 1.2 seconds, it feels really good.

And just as Dad and I are slapping hands ...

"Vin and Tonic is off the board!" a delighted George screams.

"Just think," Dave adds, "when he falls off the wagon, it will be like a Double Whammy for you."

"Yeah," House chimes in. "You'll have your NBA season and your fantasy season ruined at the same time!"

100: Every Dikembe Mutombo interview ... Ozzy Osbourne performing household tasks ... Rickey Henderson's Hall Of Fame induction speech (when it happens) ... David from "Real World New Orleans" singing "Come On Be My Baby Tonight" ... Corey Feldman's performance in "Blown Away" ... Corey Haim's "E! True Hollywood Story" ... the wedding video of Liza Minnelli and David Getz ... Dontae Jones high-fiving Henry Louis Gates during pregame warmups of a Celtics home game.

When Larry Bird joined the Celtics in 1979, I was just nine years old, dreaming about playing for the hometown team some day. My Dad and I attended just about every game at the Boston Garden. The place was dead. Bird came in and transformed everything, like Swayze waltzing into the Double Deuce and cleaning house in "Road House." He wasn't just great, he changed the way his teammates played. He brought everyone to a higher place. Of the 50 happiest moments of my life, Bird and the Garden were involved in at least a dozen of them...

Ever since I was little, I loved basketball more than just about anything. Randomly, inexplicably, coincidentally, the greatest team basketball player of my lifetime landed on my team, in my formative years, and I had the privilege of watching him, day in and day out, for 13 years. His work ethic and his competitiveness rubbed off on his teammates. He always rose to the occasion when it mattered. His passing was contagious. When you watched him long enough, you started to see the angles he was seeing; instead of reacting to what just happened, you reacted to the play as it was happening. There's McHale cutting to the basket, I see him, get him the ball, there it is ... LAYUP! Bird gave that to us.

So that's what I grew up watching -- basketball played the right way. People looking for the open man. People making the extra pass. People giving their best and rising to the occasion in big moments. Even years later, I can rattle off the classic Bird moments like I'm rattling off moments of my own life. Like the time he sprung for 60 against Atlanta, when the Hawks were high-fiving on the bench. Or the time he dropped 42 on Doctor J in two-and-half quarters, frustrating Doc to the point that they swapped punches at midcourt. Or the famous shootout with Dominique in the '88 playoffs, when they combined for 34 points in the final quarter. I have a hundred of them.

1. No PDA. If you're allowed to watch with your boyfriend and his buddies, don't rub his head, don't kiss his neck, don't scratch his back, don't cuddle ... don't do any of that stuff...

2. There isn't a single acceptable situation for the question "Is this game almost over yet?" Not one...

6. Don't belittle our gambling or fantasy football. Comments like "You have a bookie?," or "I can't believe you guys pick players and pretend you're the coach," or, my personal favorite, "You guys need to get a life" are all guaranteed to make us hate you.

7. We're easily bribable, so bring something ... even if it's a bag of chips. If you cook something, even better (Rice Krispies Treats are always a winner)...

9. Know your stuff. The moment you say something like, "Wait, I thought Drew Bledsoe was on the Patriots," you might as well pull a bag over your head. If you're clueless, keep it to rudimentary observations like "That was an unbelievable catch" or "This announcer is annoying." Never say, "Jon Gruden's so cute. He looks just like my old high school boyfriend!" Save that for the next "American Idol."

A lower federal court threw out Newdow's suit because he does not have custody of his daughter. The Supreme Court could follow suit, or the justices could decide, once and for all, if the words "under God" are enough to change the meaning of the Pledge of Allegiance from a patriotic oath into a prayer.

Before going insane, Friedrich Nietzsche declared, "God is dead." Atheists want the Supreme Court to make it official.

The Supreme Court in 1962 banned prayer from public schools, and now schools are awash in drugs, sex, and violence.

The courageous Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore was even removed from office for displaying the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the Alabama State Courthouse.

Or maybe the court will duck the dilemma by declaring that "under God" has no religious meaning, a ruling that would outrage Americans who are quite sure that God is alive and well.

God is not so easily defeated in America.

"I don’t really know since I’m not a defender of ID theory but a defender of the idea that the theory should be given a chance. If it doesn’t work, then fine, we’ll move on."

design-theoretic research has been hijacked as part of a larger cultural and political movement. In particular, the theory has been prematurely drawn into discussions of public science education where it has no business making an appearance without broad recognition from the scientific community that it is making a worthwhile contribution to our understanding of the natural world...

We definitely arent looking for some legislation to support our views, or anything like that. What our adversaries would like to say is - these people want to impose their views through the law - No, that's what they do. We're against that in principle and we dont need that.

Instead of pressing their case by lobbying for fair treatment acts in state legislatures (i.e., acts that oblige public schools in a given state to teach both creation and evolution in their science curricula), design theorists are much more concerned with bringing about an intellectual revolution starting from the top down. Their method is debate and persuasion. They aim to convince the intellectual elite and let the school curricula take care of themselves.

Lam Nguyen's job is to sit for hours in a chilly, quiet room devoid of any color but gray and look at pornography. This job, which Nguyen does earnestly from 9 to 5, surrounded by a half-dozen other "computer forensic specialists" like him, has become the focal point of the Justice Department's operation to rid the world of porn.

Nguyen, father of a 2-year-old girl, and his co-workers spend their days scouring the Internet for the most obscene material, following leads sent in by citizens and tracking pornographers operating under different names. The job wears on them all, day after day, so much so that the obscenity division has recently set up in-house counseling for them to talk about what they're seeing and how it is affecting them.

"This stuff isn't the easiest to deal with," Nguyen said recently while at his computer. "But I think we're going after the bad guys and we're making a difference, and that's what makes it worthwhile."

In a speech in 2002, Ashcroft made it clear that the Justice Department intends to try. He said pornography "invades our homes persistently though the mail, phone, VCR, cable TV and the Internet," and has "strewn its victims from coast to coast."

For a legal scholar and professor of philosophy, Brian Leiter has a remarkably poor grasp of basic logic. For the past week Leiter has been bashing a defender of Intelligent Design theory using his typical rhetorical style of bullying and bluster. Instead of thinking up creative new ad hominem attacks, though, he should be paying closer attention to his reasoning.

The difficulty, however, is that science did not "a priori pick a naturalistic methodology"; it adopted, based on evidence and experience (i.e., a posteriori), the methods that worked: it turns out that if you make predictions, test the predictions against experience, refine the hypotheses on which the predictions are based, test them again, and so on, you figure out how to predict and control the world around you. This is what the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and a few other ancient events apparently not covered in Mr. VanDyke's education, were about: the a posteriori discovery of the most effective ways to predict and control the world. This, of course, distinguishes the naturalistic worldview of science from the supernatural view of religion, which is genuinely a priori.

There are numerous problems with Leiter’s reasoning but I will point out just three. The first is that his methodology would lead to conclusions that Leiter himself woudl presumably reject. Take for example the “anthropic principle.” We could predict, post hoc, what type of universe would be required to produce human life, but we'd be unable to test the theory (we aren't able to repeat the Big Bang).

We could, however, determine the likelihood that the event could have occurred by pure chance. Since the probability of such a series of events occurring by coincidence would be close to zero, we would be lead, by evidence and experience, to the conclusion that the universe was “designed.” (To conclude otherwise would require taking an a priori prejudice against supernaturalism.)

Go outside and pick up a small rock. The probability of that rock being on that spot on the earth *by chance alone* is roughly the area of the stone divided by the surface area of the earth, or about one chance in 10 to the 18th power (one followed by 18 zeros). If picking up the stone took one second, the probability of such an event occurring at this precise moment over the lifetime of the universe is now even smaller by another factor 10 to the 18th power! This simple event is so incredibly unlikely (essentially zero probability) that one wonders how it could be accomplished!

The second reason is that the “what works” approach gives us no reason to believe that our conclusions are true. I may believe, for example, that my dryer contains a black hole that causes socks to disappear. Every time I put a load of clothes in the machine I find that I'm missing a sock. The more I repeat this experiment the more socks I lose, thereby providing sufficient evidence to confirm my theory.

Leiter, of course, would claim that we should use Occam’s razor and exclude the necessity of the black hole to explain the missing socks. But this would require us to take an a priori position in favor of the principle of parsimony in order to preserve methodological naturalism. My theory would work well enough that I would have no reason to test it further and while it might not be "true", the a posteriori examination of the evidence makes it a plausible explanation. After all, naturalistic methodology doesn’t require us to take a priori assumptions about truth.

The third reason Leiter's argument fails is that he has no justification for excluding other theories or methods that don’t rely on methodological naturalism. Just because a method works doesn’t mean it is infallible. The method provided us with Newtonian physics, a hypothesis that “worked” well enough…until it didn’t. Do we regard the theory as having always been an implausible scientific hypothesis just because it was replaced by another? Of course not. The same applies to methods. Just because methodological naturalism “works” (at least sometimes) does not mean that it is the only valid method or that it cannot be replaced. Besides, you can’t (without resorting to an a priori assumption) exclude other methods as invalid without allowing them to be tested.

Leiter’s reasoning shows that his bias against intelligent design theory is not rooted in science but in prejudice. By acknowledging that science does not require an a priori submission to naturalism he inadvertenly undercuts his own argument. He can’t claim that methodological naturalism is the “most effective ways to predict and control the world” while refusing to allow other methods to be tested.