creationism
pharyngula | January 8, 2012The news a few weeks ago was that hybrid sharks had been found off the coast of Australia. They looked like tropical Australian black-tip sharks, but genetic testing revealed that they'd hybridized with the common black-tip, which has a wider range; these hybrid black-tips were similarly extending their range and living in colder waters.
This is an excellent example of evolution: it's a population shifting its range, correlated with an observation of novel genetic attributes. This is exactly the kind of gradual transition that we'd expect to be compatible with evolutionary theory.
Unless you'…
gregladen | January 8, 2012Mike Haubrich, of Tangled Up in Blue Guy blog, has documented a discussion between a biologist, a commenter, and the Discovery Institute (a creationist "think" tank). No apes were harmed during this incident, but one of them may be rather embarrassed. It's quite intresting, have a look: Cornelius Godsplains Science to a Scientist
pharyngula | January 6, 2012It took me a moment to figure out what the heck Answers in Genesis was banging on about. In this bizarre article, AiG says the Galileo wondered why pumps could only move water upwards about 32 feet in 1630, meanders through random technological innovations, and ends up with Alexander Graham Bell inventing the telephone, and then they do some higher math and figure out that 1875 - 1630 = 245 years.
Are you as baffled as I am yet?
Then they say that in their imaginary Biblical chronology, there was 1600 years between Adam and Eve and the Flood. 1600 > 245, therefore the Ark is plausible.…
pharyngula | January 6, 2012Or maybe it's just guilty of bad journalism. Look at this story they ran: it's about a creationist who claims that Arizona sandstones are proof of Noah's flood. It's a remarkable piece of crap. The creationist, Greg Morgan, is a nuclear safety engineer, not a geologist, and his argument consists entirely of pointing at some swirly sandstone formations and saying they look flowy, like they'd been formed in water. That's it. It got published in Answers in Genesis magazine, though!
They gave this nonsense 35 paragraphs. The surprising thing is that nowhere in it did they consult an actual…
pharyngula | January 1, 2012You found an odd-shaped rock? You think it looks like a fossilized organ? Don't send a picture to me: go get some basic education in biology and geology, because I think you look like an idiot.
Yeah, some demented guy just sent me a bunch of photos of a "mineralized brain". Judge for yourself.
That's a subset. He also sent me these photos in much higher resolution. Why? Because he's an ignorant nudnik. These things look nothing like the brain of any creature that has ever existed, unless maybe it's the lopsided lumpy non-functional excrescence found inside the crania of creationists.
(Also…
pharyngula | December 30, 2011It's a question from Israel, so it was right-aligned. Too bad it wasn't written from right to left or it would have been more interesting.
sorry for my bad english.
someone gave me a strong evidence for a design
a)we know that all robots need a designer
b)from a material prespective, the human is an organic self replicator robot
a+b=the human need a designer
what you think?
yours...
Ooooh, logic is fun!
a) We know that all robots use batteries or plug into an electrical outlet.
b)from a material prespective, the human is an organic self replicator robot
a+b=the human need a battery or…
pharyngula | December 29, 2011Geoffrey Pearce sent me this argument he uses with creationists, and I thought others might find it useful, too.
I am regularly approached by young Earth creationists (yes, even in the bedlam of sin that is Montreal...) both on the street and at home. If I have the time I try to engage them on the age of Earth, since Earth is something whose existence them and I agree upon. They will tell me that Earth is somewhere between 6,000 - 10,000 years old, and, when prompted, that the rest of the universe is the same age as well. I have taken the approach of responding to this assertion by pulling…
pharyngula | December 29, 2011I hope some of the New Hampshire readers are paying attention: you have two creationist bills working through the legislature, and some real dingbats backing them.
Bergevin told the Monitor, "I want the full portrait of evolution and the people who came up with the ideas to be presented. It's a worldview and it's godless." He reportedly blamed the acceptance of evolution for the atrocities of Nazi Germany and the 1999 Columbine shooting.
I know NH has extremely diverse representation…tell me these clowns are going to get laughed down as soon as their bills come up for a vote.
(Also on FtB)
gregladen | December 29, 2011I mention the New Hampshire anti-evolution bills at The X Blog. Here's an update from the NCSE:
The two antievolution bills in the New Hampshire legislature attracted the attention of the Concord Monitor (December 29, 2011). As NCSE previously reported, House Bill 1148, introduced by Jerry Bergevin (R-District 17), would charge the state board of education to "[r]equire evolution to be taught in the public schools of this state as a theory, including the theorists' political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism," while House Bill 1457, introduced by Gary…
pharyngula | December 21, 2011Ken Ham has been planning to build this colossal boondoogle in Kentucky, a life-sized replica of Noah's Ark. Except they've hit one little snag.
Their groundbreaking was pushed back from spring, to summer, to fall, and the most recent media report was to next spring. Meanwhile, their fundraising goal of $24.5 million appears to have ground to a halt at just over $4 million, where it has been for quite a while. They had reached the $3 million mark all the way back in May.
I don't know what the problem is. $4 million is more than enough to hire one old man with a wooden mallet and a bronze axe…
tfk | December 19, 2011If he does, he might remember that he already wrote this blog post. That was less than a year ago. I responded then, so have little to add.
One thing is worth noting. Coyne's complaint is that the government is funding "accommodationism" because one page on the award-winning and widely loved Understanding Evolution website addresses misconceptions about evolution, including the idea that evolution is at odds with religious belief.
Coyne is hardly the first person to think that this somehow gets the government in trouble ("funding theology" is his phrase). In 2003, creationist Larry…
pharyngula | December 15, 2011A few weeks ago, PLoS One published a paper on the observation of preserved chitin in 34 million year old cuttlebones. Now the Institute for Creation Research has twisted the science to support their belief that the earth is less than ten thousand years old. It was all so predictable. It's a game they play, the same game they played with the soft tissue preserved in T. rex bones. Here's how it works.
Compare the two approaches, science vs. creationism. The creationists basically insert one falsehood, generate a ludicrous conflict, and choose the dumbest of the two alternatives.
The…
tfk | December 13, 2011 Satanism" title="Richard Dawkins -> Satanism" />Richard Dawkins has a new book out â for kids no less â and Casey Luskin is on the case. Luskin, you'll recall is the Disco. 'tute's chief pettifogger (in the classical sense), and his tendency to work himself into uncanny heights of excitement over every new creationist argument has earned him the affectionate nickname "fainting dachshund."
Dawkins's book is about myths, how we tell stories to explain things, but that sometimes those stories aren't true, and how science offers a way to tell stories that are true, and how kids can tell…
pharyngula | December 12, 2011I'm so sorry, Kentucky. How do you end up with such ignorant school superintendents?
Ricky Line is concerned because his school district is teaching the facts of evolution.
"I have a very difficult time believing that we have come to a point ... that we are teaching evolution ... as a factual occurrence, while totally omitting the creation story by a God who is bigger than all of us," he wrote. "My feeling is if the Commonwealth's site-based councils, school board members, superintendents and parents were questioned ... one would find this teaching contradictory to the majority's belief…
pharyngula | December 7, 2011Have fun and go visit the Missing Universe Museum online. You will feel as if you are finally getting close to the bottom of human stupidity.
Every page promotes this argument:
If you don't believe God created all living things, male and female, in 6 days....
How many millions of years was it between the first male and the first female?
It's idiotic when Ray Comfort says it, and it's just as inane when whoever put this website together says it.
I had to stop and close the web page at the sight of this, their argument against vestigial organs. You see, if evolution were actually true, and…
gregladen | December 7, 2011Why we still have to take creationism seriously:
Adventures in Defending Evolution:
tfk | December 4, 2011Just under a year ago, I quoted and endorsed Stephen Post's argument that lack of civility isn't the problem we face in society, that incivility is a symptom, not an end unto itself.
Civility matters, and there are good reasons to urge people to be more civil in their interactions, and to model that behavior ourselves. It's no accident that many uncivil styles of discourse are also informal logical errors. And there's a reason that deliberative venues - like the Senate floor - impose a standard of decorum and civility. Uncivil discourse often replaces substantive exchanges about ideas…
pharyngula | December 1, 2011The last time I saw an appearance of the founder of the Intelligent Design movement, Johnson was looking very frail, recovering from a stroke. It's also been quite some time since I've seen him make an appearance. I hope that his mental faculties are also strong, and that he's alert and aware. The IDists are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the publication of his book, Darwin on Trial, so I'd love to know that he's having a grand time.
Why, you might wonder…after all, that book they're celebrating is dishonest tripe, and the ID movement has been pure poison to science. I make no bones…
pharyngula | December 1, 2011That's what he titles his latest youtube video, anyway. I laughed, just like I laughed when Eric Hovind called to complain about the misinformation on my website. He also claims I "accept defeat"
Myers accepts defeat see below:
Myers changes his stance from Ireland, In Ireland Myers says the 'Quran is Wrong'. After reviewing the iERA Research Paper he now believes its the Quran has ' very little opportunity for disproof, and they can be made to fit just about any reasonable observation.'
I am surprised to learn that I accepted defeat. Doesn't he know I'm indomitable? Anyway, here's the…
pharyngula | November 30, 2011This video has been going around — it's a group of women talking about the importance of evolution to the biological sciences.
I confess to cringing in a few places — there's too much ready equation of evolution with natural selection — but I certainly wouldn't question the competence of these accomplished scientists, even if I might argue with them a bit.
But now the clowns at Uncommon Descent have discovered it and given their assessment.
It shows sixteen female academics or science writers, mostly young, whose enthusiasm for evolution is so overwrought that they turn themselves into…