Culture Wars
tfk | December 12, 2006In the Discovery Institute's ongoing war on logic and truth, they claim that:
Someone should ask Judge Jones why he is suddenly so reticent to talk about his ruling. During the past year, he has traversed the country to speak at public events and talk about his ruling at length, usually before friendly audiences.
In actual fact, Judge Jones made it a condition of his talk at KU and elsewhere that the talk not be about the details of the Dover case. His talk at KU was entitled "Judicial Independence and Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District," and you can watch it here.
Judge Jones begins…
tfk | December 12, 2006All the cool kids are doing this quiz:
1.
Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2.
Liberal Quakers (98%)
3.
Secular Humanism (96%)
4.
Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (93%)
5.
Theravada Buddhism (82%)
6.
Neo-Pagan (81%)
7.
New Age (73%)
8.
Baha'i Faith (70%)
9.
Taoism (66%)
10.
Mahayana Buddhism (64%)
11.
Reform Judaism (62%)
12.
Orthodox Quaker (61%)
13.
Nontheist (60%)
There are actually a number of non-theistic religious systems that ranked above nontheism, which makes the distinction a bit confusing.
omnibrain | December 11, 2006Hmm... I know plenty of funny women.... so don't whine to me ;)
"What makes the female so much deadlier than the male? With assists from Fran Lebowitz, Nora Ephron, and a recent Stanford-medical-school study, the author investigates the reasons for the humor gap."
The article also goes on to say how men are more stupid than women...
And this...
If I am correct about this, which I am, then the explanation for the superior funniness of men is much the same as for the inferior funniness of women. Men have to pretend, to themselves as well as to women, that they are not the servants and…
tfk | November 25, 2006The whole "who is dividing the pro-science camp" debate has jumped the shark. Dr. Myers made the following comment at Pat Hayes' blog:
The only ones who are advocating openly sticking the knife in any subset of the evolution side are these resentful middle-of-the-roaders who want to get rid of the people who openly disbelieve in religion.
This in response to Hayes writing:
Those, like Moran, who want to divide the movement to defend science education—and in the process hand ultra-right fundamentalists an undeserved victory—"simply are not on the same team and are not working [toward, RSR]…
tfk | November 24, 2006I haven't weighed in on the Larry Moran/Ed Brayton/etc. squabble over the different motives people have in the creationism wars. My feelings are well known, I'm in Ed's camp, and I frankly don't see why the Moran camp cares so much about what people believe. And I'm glad that I haven't written anything, because Stranger Fruit said what I would have said:
to set the record straight, I am not a Theistic Evolutionist and never have been. I am an agnostic ... due to intellectual humility as much as anything else. I was an atheist for a good period, and earned my stripes baiting the believers,…
tfk | November 20, 2006Brad Delong has some excellent nominees, but Casey Luskin takes the cake.
Casey culminates a three part critique of an article about evolution in a popular magazine by asking:
Was the Ford Pinto, with all its imperfections revealed in crash tests, not designed?
Apparently, the vertebrate eye is backwards because God decided it was cheaper to settle the lawsuits than make the cheap fix earlier implemented for the cephalopods.
tfk | November 20, 2006The IDosphere (IDome?) is oddly enthusiastic about an article in the Christian Post about Paul Nelson's attempts to defend ID. The problem is, the title of the piece refutes itself: Intelligent Design Defended by Unsolved Genetic Puzzle.
Set aside (at least momentarily) the issue of whether the author intended to refer to Nelson as an unsolved genetic puzzle (we have a pretty good idea of where his genes came from, after all).
The problem is, an unsolved problem cannot be an argument for some theory positive statement about the world. If the problem is unsolved, it suggests that IDC doesn'…
tfk | November 17, 2006Chris of Mixing Memory points out this paper by Lombrozo, Shtulman and Weisberg: "The Intelligent Design controversy: lessons from psychology and education."
The findings are not surprising to me, but I think they raise some essential points about the nature of the fight.
Numerous studies have shown that students hold highly systematic misconceptions about evolution. … In particular, most people construe evolution as the simultaneous adaptation of individuals rather than the collective adaptation of a population. On this view, populations evolve because the environment increases the…
tfk | November 16, 2006Pim van Meurs asks:
Is there anything redeeming to Intelligent Design?
No.
This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.
tfk | November 15, 2006Mark, over at Cosmic Variance, surveys The Perils of Poor Science Journalism, dismantling an article about climate change by Chris Monckton (not George Monbiot). Mark asks:
Could it really be the fact that an important ingredient in the frightening implications of climate models is that scientists from many institutions are deliberately violating the laws of physics to arrive at the conclusions they desire?
This is essentially what Monckton had argued, but no sensible person would really think that that's how science moves forward. The advantage of science as a way of asking questions about…
tfk | November 14, 2006Ed Brayton points out the Thomas More Law Center's silliness:
The pledge [of allegiance] written by a socialist to inculcate socialist values is now being promoted by conservatives who are outraged that a socialist would object to saying it. Yet another irony meter down the drain.
Those things burn out fast.
tfk | November 10, 2006I know, I know, why would anyone bother? Well, I just finished reading Fred Clark's excellent discussion of how Jim Wallis went wrong, a broad defense of the principle that "whoever is not against us is for us." John Derbyshire is against a lot of good things, but when IDolators attack, I feel obliged to stand up for truth. Wesley Smith, a DI fellow, took issue with Derbyshire's comments on his loss of religious faith, writing:
What I think Derbyshire lost along with his faith is the realization that human beings are much more than the mere sum of our parts and functions. We, unlike any…
tfk | November 10, 2006Billy D. writes of The Flat Earth Myth:
Anyone who writes “Is your Earth still flat?” is trading on an anti-Christian myth promoted by late-nineteenth century Darwinists.
I'm not terribly interested in the historical arguments about when flat earth arguments originated. The Flat Earth Society, as amply documented by the Wikipedia and Talk Origins, originated in the work of Samuel Rowbotham: Zetetic Astronomy. Rowbotham dismissed Newton and Copernicus for their obsession with "theory," and insisted on using only "facts." Sounds a little like creationists already, doesn't it?
Billy Dembski…
tfk | November 10, 2006Jim Wallis, author of God's Politics, argues that:
In this election, both the Religious Right and the secular Left were defeated, and the voice of the moral center was heard. A significant number of candidates elected are social conservatives on issues of life and family, economic populists, and committed to a new direction in Iraq.
He presents no actual evidence for this claim, which is frustrating. I wasn't aware that the secular and religious left were at odds in this election, so I don't know how he could say one lost to the other. I do agree that the religious right got beaten badly,…
tfk | November 9, 2006The Interfaith Alliance put Phill Kline's memo laying out his strategy to use churches as his campaign bank at the top of their list of the worst abuses of religion in politics for 2006. The group, which works to preserve separation of church and state, wrote "Attorney General Phill Kline often talks about his Christian faith. But a leaked memo shows how Kline has mixed religion and money as part of an aggressive strategy to raise campaign funds and win re-election."
The Kansas Republican Party, smarting from the whupping they received on Tuesday, reacted angrily:
GOP State Chairman Tim…
tfk | November 2, 2006I've been fairly negative about the way that Richard Dawkins approaches the relationship between science, atheism and theism. Rather than just being negative, I'd like to offer a positive defense of my view on the issue.
Two years ago, when Thoughts from Kansas was an unknown hovel by the side of the information superhighway, we dedicated a lot of time to Kris Kobach. Kobach was running against Dennis Moore in the Kansas 3rd District. He was then employed by an anti-immigration outfit that was suing the state of Kansas on behalf of people from out of state who felt that they deserved in-…
tfk | November 2, 2006I've said before that I don't care for Gregg Easterbrook, and my views on Richard Dawkins' latest book are amply documented as well. So what do you get when a very silly person reviews a flawed book about complex issues? Easterbrook's review hits a few points that everyone seems to agree on – Dawkins is right that religion shouldn't be treated as a genetic trait, Dawkins reduces the actual diversity of religious thought to a straw man, he ignores the good that has come from religion while excoriating it for all the ills its followers have wrought.
Along the way he mangles what Dawkins says…
tfk | November 1, 2006Dr. Myers, after noting that a mere 1% of Americans things God is a chick (compared to 36% who think he's a dude), writes about Muriel Gray's idea to rebrand what once were called freethinkers (or Brights, or …) as Enlightenists:
Enlightenists believe in the awe-inspiring, wonder, beauty and complexity of the universe, and aspire to unpick its mysteries by reason, constant questioning, observation, experiment, and analysis of evidence. The bedrock of our morality is empathy, from which logically springs love, forgiveness, tolerance and a profound desire to make a just, egalitarian society and…
tfk | October 27, 2006Rob Crowther complains about a story in the New York Times:
First, Dean mistakenly refers to intelligent design as the “ideological cousin of creationism.” It is not.
No indeed. It is exactly the same thing. The rest of what Crowther writes is so astoundingly wrong that I'll just let his words speak for themselves.
As for whether or not evolution is the foundation for modern biology, like Dean I will turn to the National Academy of Science--specifically to Dr. Phillip Skell of the NAS, who has written on this subject extensively. [Skell's unsourced claims that scientists don't use evolution…
tfk | October 22, 2006"I don't believe that it's the role of government or the role of schools to settle controversial issues."
That's what doctor, state legislator, and losing gubernatorial candidate Jim Barnett says about his views on teaching evolution. He also thinks that there are two "sides of the issue" to be presented in science class.
Barnett, of course, thinks that government policy should be based on the controversial position that human life begins at the moment of conception. One only hopes that he thinks it's OK to address only one side of the controversial issue of the earth's motion around the…