creationism
razib | January 26, 2006All of the other science bloggers are talking about the finding that the British might be more Creation-friendly than we'd have thought. My first thought is that we need to be careful about the survey. But my second thought is to remind myself that a 1988 survey (page 8 of the PDF) found that "...one-third of British adults understood that the Earth rotates around the Sun once a year...." vs. "...half of US adults know that the Earth rotates around the Sun once a year...." (year 2000 for the American survey). The difference in anti-evolutionary activism in the two nations is, I suspect, a…
pharyngula | January 26, 2006A survey of British beliefs about the origin and development of life had the following results:
22% chose creationism
17% opted for intelligent design
48% selected evolution theory
the rest did not know.
Or how about this result? Here's what the people in the land of David Attenborough would like to see taught in school:
44% said creationism should be included
41% intelligent design
69% wanted evolution as part of the science curriculum.
Depressing, isn't it? I've got some Guinness in the refrigerator, maybe I should just knock off work early and go home and start drinking.
Chris has…
pharyngula | January 25, 2006
[When I started this weblog, one of the hot topics in the Creationist Wars was Jonathan Wells, a Moonie who had trained as a developmental biologist and written a screed against evolutionary biology titled Icons of Evolution. This book purported to document serious flaws in some of the major examples of evolutionary biology, although what it actually did was parrot old creationist arguments and get much of the science wrong. One of the subjects he focused on was the pharyngula—the embryonic stage that exhibits a common morphology across all vertebrates. This fascinating developmental period…
pharyngula | January 24, 2006Conservative religious groups are once again making grade school textbooks the battleground. In California, supremacists and revisionists are trying to make radical changes to kids' textbooks, inserting propaganda and absurd assertions that are not supported in any way by legitimate scholars. The primary effort is to mangle history, but they're also trying to make ridiculous claims about scientific issues.
Such as that civilization started 111.5 trillion years ago, and that people flew to the moon and set off atomic bombs thousands of years ago.
(OK, everyone, let's all do our best imitation…
pharyngula | January 24, 2006Minnesotans are pretty smart, too. Read the letter to the Minnesota Daily by Alex Galaitsis; he gets it. It's written in response to a budding young he-said-she-said journalist who wrote a truly insipid article a few days ago.
pharyngula | January 24, 2006Some good news first: Dembski gave a talk in Kansas. Kansas! You'd think they'd love him there, but his audience was better informed than you might expect, from the example of their elected Board of Education officials.
Dembski, who may have been led to expect a warmer reception for his ideas—he was in Kansas, after all—seemed to grow testy as questioner after questioner expressed doubt about his assertion that evolution is a failed theory and that patterns in nature are best explained as a result of intelligence.
I know there is a solid body of intelligent, well-informed people in Kansas,…
pharyngula | January 23, 2006A few months ago, after learning that Bill Gates was giving money to the Cascadia branch of the Discovery Institute (which studies transportation issues in the Pacific Northwest), I wondered if the DI was as incompetent and delusional about transportation as evolution. Here's one answer—not surprisingly, they may again be tools of interests opposed to real advances. I am not by any means an informed expert on these issues, but I do know the Seattle area desperately needs better mass transit—I have seen rush hour on I5, and do not know how people can stand it—yet what the DI offers is a…
pharyngula | January 23, 2006Alas, my daughter and I are big fans of Vonnegut's writing, but he's showing signs of losing it. He sounds terribly unhealthy on the radio, and his performance on the Daily Show a while back was depressing. This morning, Vonnegut was on NPR, and said scientists were defending evolution because of "tribalism", and that "my body and your body are miracles of design", and that "natural selection couldn't possibly have produced such machines." Please, please remind me to stop blogging when my mind deteriorates that far, OK?
To call the body a "miracle of design" is begging the question, while…
pharyngula | January 22, 2006It's true—Ken Ham has a whole team of expert fabricators working for him. We knew that all along, of course.
pharyngula | January 21, 2006
Orson Scott Card has written a long essay defending Intelligent Design.
Oy, but it is depressing.
It's a graceless hash, a cluttered and confusing mish-mash of poorly organized complaints about those darned wicked "Darwinists". He lists 7 arguments. Then he repeats his list, expanding on them. Then he goes on and on, hectoring scientists about how they should behave. For a professional writer, it's just plain bad writing—I'm struggling with how to address his arguments, but he's written such a gluey mass of tangled ranty irrationality that it's hard to get a handle on it. Ugly, ugly, ugly……
razib | January 21, 2006I have a post on the importance of understanding human psychology in relation to evolution and Intelligent Design/Creationism on my other weblog.
Related: Ed Brayton has the nitty gritty on what's going on in Utah.
pharyngula | January 20, 2006This is fun—it's a proposal for remaking Inherit the Wind with the Dover case as its centerpiece. It's also a good overview of the events of the trial.
(via Red State Rabble)
pharyngula | January 20, 2006
We learn something about the designer below the fold…
Read the whole thing, though, for the sad conclusion—the "big tent" of Intelligent Design has some limits.
pharyngula | January 19, 2006
There's a lovely article in this week's Nature documenting a transitional stage in tetrapod evolution (you know, those forms the creationists like to say don't exist), and a) Nature provides a publicly accessible review of the finding, and b) the primary author is already a weblogger! Perhaps there will come a day when I'm obsolete and willl just have to turn my hand to blogging about what I had for lunch.
For an extra super-duper dose of delicious comeuppance, though, take a look at this thread on the Panda's Thumb. I wrote about Panderichthys, and a creationist ("Ghost of Paley") comes…
pharyngula | January 18, 2006Open Thread
I'm doing some traveling and touristy things with grrlscientist today, on top of somehow coping with the first week of classes (physiology and our freshman seminar in biological principles), and attending Drinking Liberally at the 331 Club tonight. I also have to get tickets to the Prairie Home Companion show that will be taped here at UMM on 11 February…it all adds up to me being a little scattered and distracted and otherwise occupied for much of today. You all are just going to have to fend for yourselves for a bit.
Here is a short list of things I should write about, but won't…
pharyngula | January 17, 2006That school in California that tried to teach a creationist "philosophy" course was chewed out by Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute. Luskin's statement consisted of the usual folderol, but the outright fraud of several statements leapt out at me.
My name is Casey Luskin and I am an attorney representing the Discovery Institute. The Discovery Institute is a think tank based out of Seattle, Washington that represents a large number of scientists who do scientific research into intelligent design.
A "large number of scientists"? How many?
Scientists "who do scientific research into…
pharyngula | January 17, 2006A while back, a reader mentioned that my name (or some permutation thereof) was being taken in vain in the letters pages of the Durango Herald. Nothing new there, it's just the usual half-truths of the Discovery Institute being disseminated.
Challenges to evolution met with scorn
I find that some of the brightest people in the world today (as with some of the brightest people throughout history) disbelieve the theory of evolution.
As Paul Bynum correctly noted in his letter (Herald, Nov. 20), it is true that folks who dare to challenge some of evolution's claims are, indeed, often ridiculed…
pharyngula | January 14, 2006William Dembski doesn't think the way you or I do. When we encounter a problem in biological science, we try to think of experiments and observations that would help us resolve the question: Dembski thinks of public relations and commercial opportunities. Thoughts from Kansas catches him admitting that ID has experienced a setback, and what does he think of? Broadcasting infomercials, and a commercial venture to sell ID-themed toys. (Those are Josh's comments in brackets below.)
For some time now I've been wanting to complement Darwinalia, Inc. [apparently to be stupid plush toys or something…
pharyngula | January 13, 2006A reader sent in this little question:
Possible answers:
Well, what if McNuggets have souls, huh? What do you think of that, smart guy?
Neither have souls!
"Good" and "McNuggets" in the same sentence?
Let's have a taste test and find out.
pharyngula | January 12, 2006Ohio State Board of Education has an ID lesson plan on the books. Ohio Citizens for Science has been fighting it, but at a recent meeting, the Board voted to maintain it's anti-science position.
A friend sent this scan from the Columbus Dispatch. It does show the ignorance, the contempt, and the arrogance of the creationists.
Richard E. Baker, a member of the State Board of Education, displays his apparent lack of interest in arguments for changing the state's science standards being put forth by fellow board member Martha W. Wise. Baker, who later voted to maintain the current standards,…