creationism
pharyngula | April 23, 2006Some clown at one of the ID blogs is making an incredibly stupid argument. She is claiming that my statement that I would not vote to give tenure to someone incompetent enough to support Intelligent Design creationism as a science is a violation of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1991 because, as Judge Jones has ruled, ID is founded on a specific religious view. She seems to think that demanding some standards in the review process is equivalent to excluding all religious people…which has some interesting implications. She must assume that the level of idiocy we see in the creationist crowd…
pharyngula | April 22, 2006The kooks at Answers in Genesis never disappoint—they always come through with their own daffy interpretations of things. It didn't take them long to scrape up a few excuses for Najash rionegrina, the newly discovered fossil snake with legs.
They have a couple of incoherent and in some cases mutually contradictory arguments against Najash as evidence for evolution.
One argument is that there are competing hypotheses for the origin of snakes within the evolutionary community: some think they had aquatic ancestors, others that they were burrowers. This is a non sequitur. We don't pretend to…
pharyngula | April 19, 2006You really must take a look at the Republican Party of Minnesota Permanent Platform. It's full of interesting goodies.
There are 19 items in the section on civil rights: ten of them are various permutations of "NO ABORTION!"; two are against gun control; one is to protect people from being forced to join labor unions; one promotes the public display of the Ten Commandments; and one is a commendable condemnation of torture and slavery, but with an annoying qualifier.
Condemning religious, political and ethnic persecution in any country, specifically the
oppression, slave labor, torture and…
pharyngula | April 19, 2006Spot is quoting Kevin Phillips and his new book, American Theocracy(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). He's describing the stagnation of scientific progress in the West when religion set its heavy hand on learning.
Symptom number two [referring to attributes regimes that become increasingly theocratic], related to the first, involves the interplay of faith and science. What might be called the Roman disenlightenment has been well dissected in Charles Freeman's The Closing of the Western Mind (2002). He dwells on how Rome's fourth- and fifth-century Christian regimes closed famous libraries like the one…
stcynic | April 18, 2006Holy cow, someone posted a link to this video in a comment and you just have to see it. It's Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort "debunking" evolution in the most hilariously ridiculous thing you may have ever seen. Funniest of all is that they start it out by saying that they're going to be interviewing people about evolution and you're supposed to notice how they use words like "possibly" and "we think" and then finally "I'm not an expert". Why is that funny? Because the people they're interviewing aren't experts, they're just random people they found somewhere, most of whom are as ignorant of…
razib | April 18, 2006I just found out that a 19th century geologist, John Phillips, was so struck by discontinuities in the stratigraphy of fossil depositions that he believed there had been multiple Creations. What Phillips was seeing were the mass extinctions, like the Permian event, which resulted in an elimination of most genera and a subsequent radiation of new forms. I wonder how Gottfried Leibniz would reconcile this evidence of god's caprice with his assertion that we lived in the best of all worlds. In reference to a previous post where I made a distinction between what people say they believe vs.…
pharyngula | April 15, 2006Word is just in from a fellow doing some interesting work that the Royal Society lecture by Steve Jones, "Why Creationism is wrong and Evolution is right" is available for your viewing pleasure.
stcynic | April 14, 2006We've already documented the profoundly silly response of the Discovery Institute and ID advocates to the recent announcement of the finding of Tiktaalik roseae; now let's look at the response of more traditional creationists. Two creationist groups, the young earth Answers in Genesis and the old earth Reasons to Believe, have put out press releases (what is it with creationists and press releases?) claiming to have debunked the finding and shown that it poses no problem for creationism. As we will see, this is wishful thinking to the point of delusion on the part of both organizations.
Let'…
pharyngula | April 14, 2006Science fairs usually have a few pleasant surprises, a lot of ho-hum projects done by rote with little thought (sometimes clearly done the night before), and a few stinkers that reveal nothing but the student's ignorance. The science teachers are supposed to screen the project proposals to prevent that from happening, though, so the really bad projects usually don't get through. There's also a hierarchy: local to county or regional to state, and only the best are supposed to progress. State science fairs usually have some very impressive work and some that might be naive, but at least the…
pharyngula | April 13, 2006Connie Morris is the lead creationist kook on the Kansas state board of education. She recently took a tour of a middle school and was horrified at the depravity on display:
State Board of Education member Connie Morris took exception Wednesday to a picture of a made-up creature that satirizes the state's new science standards hanging on a Stucky Middle School teacher's door.
Fellow board member Sue Gamble told The Eagle that Morris asked for the picture to be removed.
It was a picture of…The Flying Spaghetti Monster!
You know, when word gets out that pictures of noodles and meatballs get…
pharyngula | April 12, 2006It warms the cockles of my heart to see this sort of thing, it does. Scientists in Britain are on the attack!
Leading scientists have launched an unprecedented attack on the teaching of creationist theories in Tony Blair's flagship academies.
Britain's most prestigious scientific body, the Royal Society, said children were being confused by the teaching of the Bible's creation story in science lessons.
I think we need more like this. We typically sit back, we're engaged with our own work, our own collection of smart students, and we avoid getting angry at the dirty dealings of the…
pharyngula | April 10, 2006Logic and knowledge are a couple of things creationists are lacking. I'm surprised at the fate of the corpse of that poor cyclopic kitten:
A one-eyed, noseless kitten that stirred debate last year over whether it was a hoax will be the centerpiece of a new museum intended to promote the theory of creationism.
John Adolfi plans to feature Cy's remains at The Lost World Museum when it opens later this year. The Phoenix, N.Y., museum will feature such oddities as giant plants and eggs, deformed animal remains and unique archaeological finds, he said.
Adolfi believes in creationism—a literal…
pharyngula | April 10, 2006Ian Musgrave does a wonderful job explaining the recent Science paper on the evolution of hormone binding sites. This is the work that Behe has called "piddling", and claims that it has no relevance to the evolvability of complex biochemical systems. Ian takes this idea apart with a quick tour of the wandering goalposts of irreducible complexity:
Behe and the Discovery Insitute have reacted quickly and negatively to this paper. But in doing so they display a curious amnesia. Behe says:
I certainly would not classify their system as IC. The IC systems I discussed in Darwin's Black Box contain…
pharyngula | April 10, 2006Creationists are always carping about that darned methodological naturalism and how we don't make room for supernatural explanations. How about if we make a deal: we'll reserve the boring ol' natural explanations for things like Tiktaalik, and the creationists can move on to bring their deep knowledge of the supernatural to bear on more relevant questions, like Divine Evolution? That should keep them occupied for a while.
pharyngula | April 10, 2006There will be a webcast by Steven Jones tomorrow at 1730 GMT, titled "Why Creationism is Wrong and Evolution is Right" (ooo, nice sharp title), for anyone interested. I think that means it's going to be on at 11:30AM CST, unfortunately…I'll be in class. Even though I'm going to have to miss it, it sounds like the Royal Society is gearing up to pound on creationism, which is always a good thing.
pharyngula | April 10, 2006
A proscription on all transitional forms would make it far easier to load the Ark—it would have been empty!
P.S. If you're completely baffled by the title, it refers to Woodmorappe's infamous statistical error: calculating the feasibility of Noah's Ark by estimating average animal size using the median instead of the mean.
razib | April 9, 2006Well...Mitt Romney's stock is starting to rise from what I can sense, not that I'm much of a politics follower. I've expressed why I'm skeptical of Romney's candidacy, in short, I doubt Americans are ready to elect a non-monotheist to our highest office. That being said, here is a revealing quote from the president of the Latter Day Saints:
Although there's nothing in Mormonism and Evolution to suggest any high church official agrees with that accommodation, the next to last document in the book, a quote from current church president Gordon B. Hinckley, is revealing. He told a reporter in…
pharyngula | April 9, 2006Now he's moving again, from the prestigious Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville to the eminent Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.
If you ask me, they've both got "theological" and "seminary" in their name, so who cares? He's moved from one dunghill to another.
pharyngula | April 8, 2006More details are dribbling out about the decision to deny Francis Beckwith tenure. It's a little bit odd, because these things are supposed to be confidential, and I will note that Beckwith, to his credit, is not commenting on the decision while trying to appeal it. I hope his appeal does not succeed, however. I agree completely with this fellow, Dr Jim Patton, who clearly states a legitimate reason for kicking Beckwith out (warning: Free Republic link):
When tenure time approached, the anti-Sloan [Sloan was the former Baylor president who had hired Dembski and Beckwith] interim president,…
pharyngula | April 8, 2006Poor Dr Dino, AKA Kent Hovind, AKA batshit crazy fundy guy, is a notorious tax cheat, and now the law has finally caught up with him. "Dinosaur Adventure Land" has been shut down, and he risks fines and the possibility of buildings being razed.
You know, Al Capone was taken down for tax evasion, too. As long as malicious stupidity isn't criminal in this country, I'll accept this strategy as one way to get Mr Hovind put away where he can stop doing harm.
(via The Panda's Thumb)