Magic Statistics

A story in this morning's Globe and Mail got just about everything wrong. Here's the whole thing:

Vatican restates support for theory of evolution

Friday, January 20, 2006 Page A14

Paris — The Roman Catholic Church has restated its support for evolution with an article praising a U.S. court decision that rejects the "intelligent-design" theory as non-scientific.

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said yesterday that teaching intelligent design, which argues that life is so complex that it needed a supernatural creator, alongside Darwin's theory of evolution would only cause confusion.

The ID movement sometimes presents Catholicism, the world's largest Christian denomination, as an ally in its campaign. While the church is socially conservative, it has a long theological tradition that rejects fundamentalist creationism. Reuters

L'Osservatore Romano is published in the Vatican, but not everything printed in the newspaper is an official statement by the Vatican. The Globe's headline and opening sentence are, therefore, seriously misleading, at best. In fact, the newspaper reported the views of Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna in Italy, who is not reported as holding any official position in the Roman Catholic Church. So, he's just speaking for himself.

The Globe's implicit equation between intelligent design theory and "fundamentalist creationism" shows that Reuters, the news agency credited as the source, hasn't a clue what it's talking about here. Here, I think, is a key portion of the Catholic News Service summary of the original article:

The article said that, unfortunately, what has helped fuel the intelligent design debate is a tendency among some Darwinian scientists to view evolution in absolute and ideological terms, as if everything — including first causes — can be attributed to chance.

That is putting it mildly. The unscientific statements of atheistic evolutionary scientists have done immense damage to the public view of evolution. (I've discussed this in blog posts here and here and here.) If these learned scientists would only stop making the ridiculous claim that evolution undermines or destroys theistic faith, then evolution would enjoy a more favourable public reception as a scientific theory.

Schonborn Sightings blogged the story in L'Osservatore Romano and reports that the views expressed there "seem to be in harmony with the position staked-out by Cardinal Schonborn's writings". More on Cardinal Schonborn's views is posted here.

via Ignatius Insight Scoop.

Buzz Hargrove, President of the CAW (Canadian Auto Workers Union), caused a ruckus yesterday for encouraging Quebecers to vote Bloc Québécois to prevent Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party from forming a majority government. He said this while campaigning alongside Paul Martin, whose Liberal Party Mr Hargrove endorsed weeks ago. When reporters later questioned PM PM about Hargrove’s remarks, the Prime Minister did not reject Hargrove’s call to vote Bloc instead of Conservative; rather, he said that he doesn’t doubt Mr Harper’s patriotism. That’s not the point: No one had questioned Harper’s patriotism. Stephen Harper isn’t the issue here, Paul, it’s Buzz Hargrove, the man you stood beside beaming while he recommended voting separatist rather than allow some other federalist party to beat the Liberals. Canadians want to know what you think about that.  Paul Martin, however, was silent.

Stephen Harper, quite understandably, criticised Mr Martin for not disavowing Mr Hargrove’s call to vote for the Bloc.

Christie Blatchford of the Globe and Mail found Mr Martin’s non-response disconcerting and offensive.

What he [Stephen Harper] was shocked by — and who wasn't? — was that Mr. Martin hadn't interrupted Mr. Hargrove with a, "There, there, Buzz. I love you madly and all and thanks for the nifty jacket, and I want whatever votes you may bring to me, but you've gone a little far here."

"I wouldn't advocate voting for the Bloc just to stop Mr. Harper. I'm uneasy hearing you say that while you're here, working the crowd on my behalf. The Conservatives are a federalist party, and Quebeckers need a strong federalist option. I'd like to imagine we in the Liberal Party offer that. I'd urge Quebeckers to vote Liberal. But that's up to Quebeckers."

He said nothing of the sort at the time Mr. Hargrove was spouting off. He said nothing of the sort at the news conference. He said nothing of the sort yesterday. It seems pretty clear he doesn't mean anything of the sort; that he doesn't even grasp what it is about his quiet acquiescence to Mr. Hargrove's madness that so offends.

There was some unintentional comic relief late in the day.

Last night, at a huge and boisterous rally here, Mr. Harper was late in his speech warning of the misquotes and misinformation to come spewing in these final days out of "Mr. Martin's office and out of his ads."

In the noisy room, it sounded as though what he'd said was "Mr. Martin's ass," and as the place erupted in gales of laughter, what I thought was that I couldn't have said it better myself.

It may well be that Buzz Hargrove really does want Quebecers to vote for the Bloc Quebecois: the union of which he is president clearly does. The TCA, Quebec branch of the CAW, has its own website. The first link of the page Documents et politiques is styled "Les TCA appuient le Bloc Québécois" ["Canadian auto workers support the Bloc Québécois"], which links to a pdf document listing "10 bonnes raisons pour voter Bloc Québécois" ["10 good reasons to vote Bloc Québécois"].

Now yesterday’s statement by Mr Hargrove becomes clear: His union has supported the Bloc all along. New questions arise, however: Why did Paul Martin accept Hargrove’s endorsement in the first place? Does he too believe that voting Bloc is better than voting Conservative?

TCA reference via Bourque.

Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe campaigned for support in the Assuna Annabawiyah mosque, a Salafi mosque in the Park Extension neighbourhood of Montreal. The French-language Islamic site oumma.com carried a report that came to the attention of Infidel Bloggers Alliance, where I read about it.

Salafi is an adjective which describes Muslims whose creed it is that genuine Muslims are compelled to imitate scrupulously the ways of Mohammed's companions (Salaf) in order to restore the Umma (community of believers) to its former pre-eminence under the unchallenged sovereignty of Allah and the rule of his law (sharia) over all things human. While not all Salafi Muslims espouse violent struggle to achieve their aims, followers of the Muslim Brotherhood and its foremost Jihadi ideologue Sayyid Qutb, Saudia Arabia's Wahhabi sectarians, adherents of Pakistani Islamic revivalist Syed Abul Ala Maududi and all the splinter groups and strains in-between, including al-Qaida, consider themselves to be Salafi.

Canadian intelligence agencies have known this mosque to be a hotbed of Islamic extremism since the 1990s. Ahmed Ressam, recently convicted of trying to bomb the Los Angeles Airport, was recruited by al-Qaeda there. Ressam has admitted that he was also involved in plots to murder Jews in Montreal.

Read the whole thing.