Background

This spring, the blogosphere (and eventually the mainstream media) erupted in outrage over reports that one Dr. Eric Pianka, an "evolutionary ecologist and lizard specialist", gave a speech at the Texas Academy of Science in which spoke with apparent glee about the prospect of 90% of the population dying of an airborn form of ebola.

What some found particularly disturbing was not only the core idea, nor the macbre manner in which it his ideas were allegedly presented...

Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will not survive without drastic measures... he asserted that the only feasible solution to saving the Earth is to reduce the population to 10 percent of the present number.

He then showed solutions for reducing the world's population in the form of a slide depicting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. War and famine would not do, he explained. Instead, disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be solved.

Pianka then displayed a slide showing rows of human skulls, one of which had red lights flashing from its eye sockets...

... but also, and particularly, the alleged response from the audience:

When Pianka finished his remarks, the audience applauded. It wasn't merely a smattering of polite clapping that audiences diplomatically reserve for poor or boring speakers. It was a loud, vigorous and enthusiastic applause.

Eventually Drudge and others covered the story.

Follow-Up: The Debunking

Tonight, after I stumbled across an old report, I decided to find out how the story turned out. Was it true? I usually find people's reactions far more interesting than the story itself, and this story was no exception.

The case against the story -- and I have read far too much on it now -- comes down to: (1) One man who reported the story, Forrest Mims, is a 'creationist'. (2) A partial transcript of Pianka's speech reveals small differences between what he said and Mims' reports; and doesn't support the key allegations. (3) In an interview, Dr. Pianka denied the allegations.

Thus, the general conclusion in the evolutionist crowd was that Mims simply made this up, and this just demonstrates that you should never listen to a creationist.

Like I said, you can learn a lot from watching peoples' reactions carefully.

For example, consider the previously-linked "debunking":

I smelled a rat from the beginning, and now I have been proved right. KXAN News36 in Austin, TX, has just debunked the whole thing, and for good measure has posted a 20-minute unedited interview with Pianka which everyone must watch to realize the full depravity of what the wingnuts have done here.

Yet, I followed the supplied link, and found it was not quite the "debunking" the man above identifies it as. The reporter says Pianka wouldn't advocate such views, but Pianka neatly skates around the question with implications:

"I don't bear any ill will towards anybody," Pianka said....

Pianka says he would never advocate genocide or extermination like some suggest he does. "I've got two granddaughters, man. I'm putting money in a college fund for my granddaughters. I'm worried about them," Pianka said.

Of course, if he loves his grandchildren, then he couldn't possibly advocate such a thing, right? Think again! The following are excerpts from an essay Pianka posted on his own web site:

I have two grandchildren and I want them to inherit a stable Earth. But I fear for them. Humans have overpopulated the Earth... I do not bear any ill will toward humanity. However, I am convinced that the world WOULD clearly be much better off without so many of us.

Furthermore, when read carefully, even the aforementioned interview confirms, not refutes, the idea that Pianka thinks humanity needs to killed off, and that microbes will be the likely culprits. The only difference -- even if we believe Pianka -- is the says he's 'advocating' it. But Mims never said he advocated it, per se, just that he was gleeful at the idea.

"If we don't control our population, microbes will. Why do we have these lethal microbes that kill us in the first place? The answer is, there's too many of us," .... "We're taking over this Earth and not leaving anything for anything else on this Earth," Pianka said.

Too many humans. We need less of us. Microbes will do it if we won't. We need to drastically reduce our population -- exactly the view alleged.

It really says something that the aforementioned evolutionist thought this was a "debunking": "Wow, this guy said he'd never advocate 'extermination'. That proves he never said such a thing!" -- right next to statements advocating a drastic reduction in our numbers!

The only thing different is the alleged tone: Where Mims alleged the statements were said with relish and glee, the Pianka tone is now: "Oh well, I love my grandchildren, but if we died, the world would be better off..."

I fear for the state of the sciences if this represents an ardent evolutionist's 'critical thinking' skills. But then again, it's my observations that many scientists and academics are inept at anything outside their field, particularly regarding social interactions and judgements. (Need I mention Theodore Kaczynski?)

Debunking the Debunking

For a while, the matter seemed intractable to me: There was no complete transcript to prove what was really said, and no other eyewitnesses were being consulted. But I guess that was because I was mostly reading from Pianka's many defenders in the scientific community.

Then I had a jaw-dropping discovery: A gold mine (fossil dig?) of evidence, gathered by Shawn Carlson Ph.D. which indicating that, in fact, Pianka was being deceptive when he implied he'd never root for massive human depopulation via microbes.

For example, there this letter from another biology professor who attended Pianka's speech, which corroborates Mims' reports:

My overall impression of Dr. Pianka’s presentation was a “doomsday” message that life on earth is about to end, and the sooner the human population crashes the better. I hope he was joking or being sarcastic when he stated that a pandemic of ebola virus would be great for the earth -- no sane person would really believe that.

Forrest Mims did not misrepresent anything regarding the presentation. I heard these statements myself, and would be willing to bet that most of the audience attending the presentation got the same impression that I did.

More troublingly, there's this creepy 'defense' of Pianka from one of his own students (emphases mine, as usual):

Dr. Pianka's talk at the TAS meeting was mostly of the problems humans are causing as we rapidly proliferate around the globe. While what he had to say is way too vast to remember it all, moreover to relay it here in this blog, the bulk of his talk was that he's waiting for the virus that will eventually arise and kill off 90% of human population. In fact, his hope, if you can call it that, is that the ebola virus which attacks humans currently (but only through blood transmission) will mutate with the ebola virus that attacks monkeys airborne to create an airborne ebola virus that attacks humans. He's a radical thinker, that one! I mean, he's basically advocating for the death of all but 10% of the current population! And at the risk of sounding just as radical, I think he's right.

Carlson noted:

The student went on to question whether her own grandparents should be allowed to live considering the amount of the resources it took to keep them alive. At this point, Forrest realized the tremendous danger of the Piankian worldview...

Even creepier, you can see his on-line student evaluations (which he himself posted!), some of which are worshipful, and some which mention his apparent desire for microbially-motivated human extermination (see especially those from 2004, long before this controversy erupted):

:: Pianka is so weird. I counldn't stand him at first. I thought he was arrogant and racist but then I learned that he's just upset at us Homo sapiens and he's equally predjudiced to all classes of people.

:: Eric [Pianka], you really changed my way of thinking about ecology. It's great to have an evolutionary perspective! And, of course, you increased my knowledge of lizards! Thanks a TON!

:: Your class has opened my mind and made me aware of the evil that is anthropocentrism.

:: I don't root for ebola, but maybe a ban on having more than one child. I agree . . . too many people ruining this planet.

:: Though I agree that convervation [sic] biology is of utmost importance to the world, I do not think that preaching that 90% of the human population should die of ebola is the most effective means of encouraging conservation awareness.

So it seems there's quite a lot of evidence that Mims was being honest, that Pianka does want much of humanity eliminated and that -- most disturblingly -- that he seems to be extremely effective in inculcating genocidal thinking into his students.

A Few Thoughts

Evolution may or may not be the correct explanation for how we got here. But, regardless of its truth or falsity, it makes a terrible philosophy.

How could that be so -- especially if it were true?

Consider entropy. It's a non-controversial fact that, on average, everything in the universe moves from more to less useful, from more ordered to more chaotic. That's one of the three basic laws of physics.

But should it be a guiding philosophy?

Imagine someone who tried to turn the law of entropy into a life-philosophy: "Well, since everything moves from useful to useless, there's really no point in trying to do anything useful." Worse, they might decide to go on a destructive binge -- after all, if decay is a law of the universe, aren't we being closer to "nature" by breaking windows, burning cars, and assaulting people?

Nature is not our mother. We are not required to defend her when people say bad things about her. We do not need to grow up to be like her: bloody, cruel, capricous, and abitrary. She is not our moral example, nor our behavioral model. As G.K. Chesterton said, when we try to make Nature our mother, we find she is, instead, a cruel stepmother.

Always remember Hitler incesssantly wrote about Nature, with a capital N. If you want to know his true religion, regardless of how he couched it that day, it was always supremacy of the "iron law of Nature". He was not a Christian, and he was not an atheist. He was, first and foremost, someone who wanted society to conform to his vision of Nature.

We should be very hesitant to teach that type of philosophy again in our schools. Even angry, atheistic evolutionists like Dawkins know better (despite the fact his statements have no rational basis in his own life philosophy).

"Nature really is red in tooth and claw. Much as we might like to believe otherwise, natural selection, working within each species, does not favour long-term stewardship. It favours short-term gain. Loggers, whalers, and other profiteers who squander the future for present greed, are only doing what all wild creatures have done for three billion years."

"It may sound paradoxical, but if we want to sustain the planet into the future, the first thing we must do is stop taking advice from nature. Nature is a short-term Darwinian profiteer."

Richard Dawkins

But Pianka's many defenders and acolytes do not.