creationism
pharyngula | September 26, 2011We've got another chittering weasel of a creationist raving in the comments, a fellow going by the name YesYouNeedJesus. He's also sending me email.
PZ, I first heard about you on Bob Enyart's radio show about the fact that you turned down an offer to debate Bob. I must say that my first impression of you is that you are smarter than most evolutionists. Smarter because the evolutionists that debate Bob get absolutely destroyed every time. Every evolutionist that I spoke to who was at the debate between Bob Enyart and Reasons to Believe willfully admitted that their side (evolution) lost. Bob'…
pharyngula | September 25, 2011This is some unbelievably obtuse commentary on creationism from Andrew Brown. After noting that the proportion of creationists in the population is very large, and that many people will assent to the proposition that the earth is around 10,000 years old, he proceeds to place the blame.
This is quite clearly not a problem caused by religious belief. Even if we assume that all Muslims are creationists, and all Baptists, they would only be one in 10 of the self-reported creationists or young Earthers. What we have here is essentially a failure, on a quite staggering scale, of science and maths…
gregladen | September 23, 2011Sir David Attenborough:
"Evolution is an extremely powerful idea that lies at the heart of biology. At the same time, it's a sufficiently simple concept that there's no good reason why it should be left out of the primary curriculum. If creationism is discussed, it should be made clear to pupils that it is not accepted by the scientific community."
Details here.
Don't forget about Sir David's new project.
tfk | September 21, 2011Elaine Howard Ecklund has a new paper out, building on her survey of scientists' views on religion, research she reported in a book last year, and in a series of papers over the last few years. In this paper (press release for those of you who haven't got access to the journal), she looks specifically at how scientists perceive the relationship between science and religion.
As she reported in the book, 15% of scientists she and her colleagues interviewed reported seeing an inherent conflict between science and religion. Another 15% saw no conflict at all, while the remaining 70% saw some…
tfk | September 21, 2011A couple weeks ago, Fox News released a new poll asking about evolution and creationism. It didn't strike me as especially noteworthy, though it does show a statistically significant rise in acceptance of evolution (21% think "the theory of evolution as outlined by Darwin and other scientist" is "more likely to be the explanation for the origin of human life on earth") since they last asked the same question in 1999 (when it was just 15%).
That matches the small but statistically significant rise in support for unguided evolution seen in the nearly 30 years that Gallup has been polling on…
sa smith | September 19, 2011What do you get when you combine "GO AWAY. NO ONE LIKES YOU. Part I" with "GO AWAY. NO ONE LIKES YOU. Part II"?
Dear Sally Kern and Discovery Institute--
GO AWAY. NO ONE LIKES YOU.
Yours in Christ--
--ERV
The DI is going to be showing their perverted Creationism pornographic film tonight at the Sam Nobel Natural History Museum. Meanwhile, in what Im sure is a crazy random happenstance, Sally Kern *was* going to introduce a pro-Creationism bill today in the OK legislature. But now shes doing it next week (too busy with the DI 'fellows' giving each other political hand jobs today, Im assuming…
pharyngula | September 19, 2011Creationism is not quite as pervasive a problem in the UK as it is in the US, but it's still rising…so it's good to see that British scientists are being aggressive in confronting bad educational policies. A number of prominent scientists, including Richard Dawkins and David Attenborough, have stepped forward to demand that evolution, not creationism, be taught in the classroom. Here is their position statement, with the signatories and organizations backing it:
Creationism and 'intelligent design'
Creationism and 'intelligent design' are not scientific theories, but they are portrayed as…
pharyngula | September 15, 2011I just had to share. Look at this sample: at least 5 different fonts, 6 different colors, shadowed text, and all superimposed on an irrelevant and elaborate background.
And then there's the content: It's a creation museum! It's a taxidermy collection! And it's run by some antique tools!
Savor the Creation Museum and Taxidermy Hall of Fame of North Carolina; I don't think it will change any time in the near future, so there's no hurry. It's so nice of creationists to erect these monuments to stupidity and tastelessness on the web.
(Also on FtB)
tfk | September 14, 2011The problems with the latest reply from Disco. 'tute's David Klinghoffer begin in the title. He claims: "National Center for Science Education Defends Its Association with James Fetzer, Peddler of Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories." NCSE did not address Klinghoffer's specious and slanderous claims; I wrote a blog post on my personal blog. The blog clearly states in the sidebar:
The opinions expressed here are [my] own, do not reflect the official position of the NCSE.
Lest that leave some ambiguity, I added in the post Klinghoffer is responding to:
On this blog, I don't speak in my capacity…
tfk | September 14, 2011Martin Cothran asks: Are there really 15.1 million poor people in the United States?
Short answer: Yes. Cothran doesn't actually answer, but strongly implies that he thinks the answer is: no. To justify this, he claims:
A multi-millionaire who owns several houses (with servants' quarters), matching his and hers Bentleys, a luxury yacht, and a private jet could find himself listed as "in poverty" in the United States.â¦
the United State Census--where all those statistics are coming from telling us that 15.1 percent of Americans are living in poverty--takes account only of income for the year…
tfk | September 12, 2011Shorter David Klinghoffer: Strange Bedfellows at the National Center for Science Education:
Has NCSE stopped beating its wife?
He's writing in reply to my post a couple days ago. I had criticized him for comparing 9/11 "truthers" to scientists who advocate for evolution, when it's easier to find a prominent anti-evolutionist who thinks 9/11 was an inside job.
Anyway, Klinghoffer spent his 9/11 decennial writing about how it's totally the other way because he found this one guy who totally proves his point. James Fetzer, a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, is a…
sa smith | September 12, 2011Dear Discovery Institute--
GO AWAY. NO ONE LIKES YOU.
Yours in Christ--
--ERV
UUUUUUUGH.
The DI is going to be in Oklahoma, AGAIN.
To show a stupid movie, AGAIN.
Gee, I wonder if the 'movie' is going to be a bunch of assholes herp-durping about something pretty with stupid (probably stolen) computer animations with a message of 'GORSH! AINT IT PURDY! Therefore the Universe was Created 6000 years ago by the Christian deity who went on to Specially Create humans via Adam and Eve and then Jesus Christ died on The Cross for your sins and was Resurrected three days later and unicorns got…
tfk | September 8, 2011David Klinghoffer of the Disco. 'tute wants to draw links between evolution and 9/11 conspiracies. In his usual long-winded way, he makes a lot of efforts to link evolution to anything evil, but doesn't offer much beyond hand-waving to back the claim up. This must be the best he can do for the 9/11 memorial week, since I doubt even he can find a way to link al Qaeda to Darwin. After all, Islamic fundamentalism isn't known for its love of Western science!
It'd hardly be worth noting, if not for the fact that the only 9/11 "truther" I've seen pop up on either side of the creationism/…
tfk | September 8, 2011Yesterday's post on Rick Perry's Galileo gaffe has gotten a lot of attention, much supportive, but some critical. On twitter, historians of science Rebekah Higgit and Thony Christie have helped me sort out some of the threads. I don't think this alters any of the basic results, but it's worth teasing out some of the history, both for its own sake, and for whatever relevance it may actually have to contemporary politics.
The contentious lines argued that Perry's "opening passage, like his comments on evolution, seem to forthrightly endorse the legitimacy of letting religious and political…
pharyngula | September 8, 2011I think I like this guy.
Science is the litmus test on the validity of the educational enterprise. If a school teaches real science, it's a pretty safe bet that all other departments are sound. If it teaches bogus science, everything else is suspect.... I want a real college, not one that rejects facts, knowledge, and understanding because they conflict with a narrow religious belief. Any college that lets theology trump fact is not a college; it is an institution of indoctrination. It teaches lies. Colleges do not teach lies. Period.
That's from William Crenshaw, who was an English…
pharyngula | September 8, 2011Fox News carried out a phone survey to find out what people thought of god and science. Here are the results:
Which do you think is more likely to actually be the explanation for the origin of human life on Earth:
The theory of evolution as outlined by Darwin and other scientists
21%
The Biblical account of creation as told in the Bible,
45%
or Are both true?
27%
(Don't know)
7%
It's nothing at all surprising; a little less than half the American population typically answers these sorts of questions with dumb piety. The fact that a quarter are trying to claim compatibility is a little…
tfk | September 7, 2011In the last few weeks, and at tonight's Republican debate, lots of national politicians have been asked their views on evolution, and lots of politicians have answered embarrassingly.
We should bear in mind, as I pointed out before:
Like the Miss USA contestants, most politicians (excluding those on local school boards or state boards of education) will have little opportunity to influence how evolution is taught. In answering questions about evolution during campaigns, their goal is rarely to indicate a clear conception of how science works and why evolution is central to modern biology.…
pharyngula | September 5, 2011I think one thing Razib says is exactly right:
One of the most interesting things to me is the nature of Creationism as an idea which evolves in a rather protean fashion in reaction to the broader cultural selection pressures.
Creationism has evolved significantly, but it's not exactly protean: it's punctuated equilibrium. If we had a time machine and could bring a typical creationist who came to age after Whitcomb and Morris's The Genesis Flood face-to-face with a pre-Scopes trial creationist, there would be a fabulously ferocious fight, because their theology and their basic beliefs would…
pharyngula | September 3, 2011Ann Coulter is back to whining about evolution again, and this week she focuses on fossils. It's boring predictable stuff: there are no transitional fossils, she says.
We also ought to find a colossal number of transitional organisms in the fossil record - for example, a squirrel on its way to becoming a bat, or a bear becoming a whale. (Those are actual Darwinian claims.)
Darwin postulated that whales could have evolved from bears, but he was wrong…as we now know because we found a lot of transitional fossils in whale evolution. Carl Zimmer has a summary of recent discoveries, and I wrote…
pharyngula | September 2, 2011Aww, that's kind of sweet. The creationists are trying to cheer me up while I'm on my sick bed. How else to interpret these wacky assertions from Austin Casey, a 19 year old student?
Science is fundamentally a search for the truth about the universe, and Perry's acknowledgement of the holes in evolution theory manifests a much better understanding of science than Huntsman's faith in scientists.
Cute. No, sorry, Perry doesn't know anything about evolution, and acknowledging "holes" that don't exist and denying the existence of processes well supported by the evidence is the antithesis of good…