creationism
pharyngula | November 28, 2011Aww, poor Intelligent Design creationism is feeling unloved. Or perhaps it's jealousy. David Klinghoffer, that clueless ideologue at the Discovery Institute, is whimpering that blogging scientists aren't paying enough attention to his brand of creationism.
Darwinian scientists who blog -- in other words, those whose comments are most readily accessible to us -- may indeed not pay attention to ID arguments, but that's certainly not because of any lack of "rigorous and persuasive ideas" on ID's part. The proof is that Darwin defenders are typically very busy indeed picking on other arguments…
tfk | November 21, 2011The Discovery Institute is celebrating the 20th anniversary of Darwin on Trial, the mediocre book that inspired their movement. As part of the celebration, David Berlinski pounded out one of his typical droning missives from his recliner in Paris. As happens so often with the Disco. 'tute, there's little novelty to the argument, but along the way he managed to stick a thumb in the eye of anyone living with a disability:
In Darwin on Trial, â¦[i]t was the great case of Darwin et al v. the Western Religious Tradition that occupied his attention. The issue had been joined long before Johnson…
pharyngula | November 18, 2011I'm in Springfield, Missouri, and today at noon I'll be joining a mob of skeptics and atheists at the Gillioz Theater to prepare to hit the Creation Ministries of the Ozarks. We shall descend upon them as a horde and sweep through their "museum", documenting the foolishness and mocking the silly. You're all welcome to join, but if you do show up, there are a few rules to follow:
Be polite and nondisruptive. This is their property and you are a visitor.
Remember: the Christians running this show, and the Christian attendees, are the delusional victims here. Feel some pity for them.
Do not…
sa smith | November 16, 2011I love junk DNA.
Well, thats an understatement-- I mean I love is SO MUCH I created a blog dedicated to a particular form of junk DNA, endogenous retroviruses.
I love how we can learn fantastic things about organisms (and their diseases) from, basically, dumpster-diving though millions and millions of years of mistakes and accidents and chance and evolution.
So its hard not to take it a touch personally that Creationists HATE junk DNA. They spend a lot of effort trying to make it not exist anymore (seems like a silly waste of time considering the fact epigenetic control of ERVs and…
tfk | November 10, 2011Disco. 'tute president Bruce Chapman is upset. There are ladies with their bloomers in a twist over something or other that they claim Herman Cain said. Let's read Chapman and see if we can guess what Cain is supposed to have done:
A number of significant insights are emerging from the charges of sex harassment lodged against Herman Cain. It may be wise to withhold judgement [sic] about the particulars so far. There are a number of groups operating behind the scenes to drive the story one way or another.
Aha! Charges of sexual harassment were filed, but we should be dubious because shadowy…
tfk | November 9, 2011A month ago, I posted a link to an op-ed in the LA Times which referred to as-yet unpublished research which purported to show no difference in science literacy between people who don't take part in religion and evangelical Christians. Then I did my own analysis of the data, which found significant differences between evangelicals and the nonreligious.
Now, in a special issue of Social Science Quarterly,Darren Sherkat again shows that evangelicals are less science literate than other groups. The analysis I reported in my previous blog post is actually a bit more sophisticated, and Sherkat's…
pharyngula | November 3, 2011Did someone rattle the monkey cage recently? I have been getting a sudden wave of email from defenders of Kent Hovind, which is not good. Of all the creationists, Hovind spawns the most illiterate, incomprehensible mess; I think you have to be of very low intelligence to find anything at all appealing in that guy.
Anyway, here are two examples. I'd kind of like to be game-fully employed — does that mean I just sit around all day playing games? Because I suppose that could be fun.
Your assessment of Kent Hovind
You are an arrogant jackass. Your pompousness is only exceeded by your stupendous…
pharyngula | November 1, 2011I cringed reading this woman's lament that evolutionary biology is responsible for the oppression of women, starting with Darwin. It's one long colossal failure of logic.
The argument has some genuinely true facts embedded in it, which then get spun out into a series of false conclusions. It is true that the Victorian gentlemen who formulated and expanded upon the theory of evolution tended to be 19th century chauvinists who made up stories about the inferiority of the feminine mind, and Darwin was right among them. It is also true that there are contemporary biologists who still make up…
tfk | October 28, 2011After Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Faye Flam took the Discovery Institute to task for their Hitler obsession and constant violations of Godwin's law, Disco. 'tute fellow Richard Weikart struck back, insisting, "I have spoken with intelligent Darwinists who admit point-blank that they do not have any grounds to condemn Hitler." This is patent bullcrap, but that's nothing new for the Seattle-based belief tank. Weikart didn't, of course, say which scientists he'd heard say this, so there's no way to independently verify his claim.
Flam flew to the fracas again, wondering why creationists…
pharyngula | October 27, 2011If you tuned in to that local debate on Christian radio, you know that one of the points the Christian fool trotted out was the tired old claim that the Nazis were no true Christians — no True Christian™ would ever commit such horrible acts. It's an annoyingly feeble and unsupportable argument, but it has a lot of life in it, unfortunately.
This same argument has come up in Faye Flam's Evolution column for the Philly Inquirer, and has gone on through several articles thanks to that hack from the Discovery Institute, Richard Weikart. It started with an article titled "Severing the link between…
gregladen | October 26, 2011Suppose you are an intelligent, thoughtful person with a thirst for information, a desire to be challenged, and a tendency to not accept received knowledge at face value. You are embedded in a traditional Christian culture where most of your family, your child's teachers and friends and those friends' families, the people where you and your spouse work and most people in your social circles assume that Evolution is "only a theory" and should be taught, if at all, along side alternative theories such as that the earth is 6,000 years old and was created in seven days. But you don't want that…
pharyngula | October 22, 2011According to Ussher, the world was created the evening before 23 October 4004BC, which means that our planet should now be 6015 years old, as of tonight.
She really let herself go, I'm afraid. I swear, she looks about 4½ billion years old. Motherhood is tough, but I didn't know it was that bad.
(Also on FtB)
pharyngula | October 20, 2011The Discovery Institute has me on a mailing list for their newsletter, Nota Bene. That's probably unwise: usually I just glance at it, see another ignorant bit of fluff from Luskin or Nelson or one of the other usual suspects, and I snigger and hit 'delete', but sometimes they brag about how they're really doing science, and I look a little closer. And then I might feel motivated to take a slap at them.
The latest issue contains an article by Ann Gauger, babbling about her recent publication disproving Darwinism, written with her colleague Douglas Axe, published in their tame 'science'…
pharyngula | October 17, 2011Creationists have this idea that history can be nothing but an unremitting decline — their version of the second law of thermodynamics is a weird thing that has everything ratcheting down into chaos equally, with no possibility of local decreases in entropy at the expense of an overall greater increase. They have almost convinced me. I once would have said no one could be dumber than Kent Hovind, but I have seen the works of his son Eric, and it's a forthright demonstration of creationist thermodynamics.
Eric Hovind has disproven the K-T meteor theory of dinosaur extinction.
It's impossible…
tfk | October 15, 2011Earlier this week, I quoted this from an op-ed in the LA Times:
I recently conducted survey research comparing the most conservative of Protestants â those who identify with a conservative Protestant denomination, attend church regularly and take the Bible literally, or about 11% of the population in my analysis â with those who do not participate in any religion. The conservative Protestants are equally likely to understand scientific methods, to know scientific facts and to claim knowledge of science. They are as likely as the nonreligious to have majored in science or to have a scientific…
tfk | October 10, 2011Sociologist John Evans talks about his research on evangelical attitudes toward science. Writing for the LA Times, he says:
I recently conducted survey research comparing the most conservative of Protestants â those who identify with a conservative Protestant denomination, attend church regularly and take the Bible literally, or about 11% of the population in my analysis â with those who do not participate in any religion. The conservative Protestants are equally likely to understand scientific methods, to know scientific facts and to claim knowledge of science. They are as likely as the…
tfk | October 8, 2011Sarah Posner reports from the Values Voters Summit, a gathering of the theocracy-in-waiting. Various GOP presidential candidates spoke, as did Bryan Fischer, of the American Family Association:
Fischer followed Romney's speech with an ugly anti-Muslim, anti-gay, anti-liberal speech. Although he did not mention Mormonism, he did emphasize, repeatedly, that the president of the United States "needs to be a main of sincere, authentic, genuine Christian faith."
In the rest of his laundry list of presidential prerequisites, Fischer veered from there to discuss the "mythical separation of church…
pharyngula | October 4, 2011It's hard to believe, but yes, there are Christians who are even worse than Ken Ham, and even more ignorant. Here's one: Pastor Don Elmore of Union, Kentucky. He's written a revealing screed against Answers in Genesis.
It starts gently enough, chatting about their rapid growth and praising AiG for their work against those wicked evolutionists. And then it goes off the rails.
I am aware of the forces supporting "Answers in Genesis", these being the same powers that are supporting similar multi-cultural anti-Christian organizations such as Alpha, Promise Keepers, The Full Gospel Businessmen's…
pharyngula | October 4, 2011There was one in Indianopolis, and snarky people attended. I would think that at best they'd have a succession of people standing up at a lectern, looking shamefaced and confused before shrugging and sitting down with nothing to say, but apparently it went on for days.
This description of one speaker illuminates the process.
I have to say he did not disappoint. It really seemed to be two halves of non-related speeches spliced together. The first half of the speech was talking about how terrible American Society has become since 1963 when the Supreme Court ruled to take God out of schools. He…
pharyngula | September 28, 2011Brilliant! This will balance the budget…and leave me unemployed.
(Also on FtB)