Religion:
It would seem that Mike Behe has, once again, managed to shoot an own goal in the courtroom.
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Posted on April 1, 2008 3:50 PM • 179 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
After so much time spent working on behalf of creationist groups, it probably shouldn't be surprising that Judge Otero spotted many of the same argument tactics in the Christian schools' legal filings that we see when we look at the day to day output of anti-evolution groups such as the Discovery Institute.
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Posted on April 1, 2008 2:56 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
On Friday, Judge James Otero of the Central District of California issued a ruling granting the University of California's request for partial summary judgment in the California Creationist Lawsuit. I've written about this case several times before now, but...
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Posted on April 1, 2008 10:30 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Someone once pointed out that when a dog pisses on a fire hydrant, it's not committing an act of vandalism. It's just being a dog. It's possible to use that analogy to excuse a creationist who takes a quote...
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Posted on March 12, 2008 3:47 PM • 58 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
First, the Discovery Institute didn't seem to know about the anti-evolution bill introduced in Florida last week. Now, they don't seem to actually understand what the bill does. Both of these things are quite strange, considering that the Discovery...
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Posted on March 6, 2008 1:37 AM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The bill in question provides "academic freedom" only to K-12th grade teachers and students who want to question evolution. It provides absolutely no protections for anyone who wants to question whether or not energy really does equal mass multiplied by the square of the speed of light. It gives no safe harbor to those who disbelieve the relationship between the pressure and volume of a gas. And if you dare to suggest that the mathematical establishment is dogmatically indoctrinating their unsubstantiated belief that the square of the length of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the remaining two sides, you're not going to get any help from the Florida legislature.
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Posted on March 3, 2008 12:14 AM • 29 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I'm not sure that King and Nisbet are wrong about the "New Atheism". I'm not sure that they're right, either. What I am sure of is this: Nisbet should not have set up this panel without including at least a token "New Atheist". His decision to exclude them was not collegial, it was not respectful, and it certainly was not nice.
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Posted on February 11, 2008 8:59 PM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
We're now into the third day of the brouhaha that was sparked by Casey Luskin's misuse of the "Blogging About Peer-Reviewed Research" icon. Casey posted a few responses to criticisms in the discussion thread over at the BPR3 blog,...
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Posted on February 6, 2008 11:03 PM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
It looks like there's definitely going to be a little bit of good political news for everyone tonight - a statement released by leading theocon James Dobson:...
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Posted on February 5, 2008 5:45 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Casey Luskin has a post up over at the Discovery Institute's website that discusses an article that was recently published in PLoS Biology. The post itself is nothing particularly remarkable - Casey takes a paper that says that current...
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Posted on February 4, 2008 2:50 PM • 35 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Over at the Discovery Institute's blog, Rob Crowther is playing up the "Dissent from Darwinism" list. Again. The list is nothing new. They've been working on it for several years now, and have managed to accumulate "over 700" signatures...
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Posted on January 23, 2008 3:00 PM • 117 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
When Richard Dawkins and Bill O'Reilly are on the same side of an issue, it's a surprise. When it's an issue that involves religion in the public sphere, it's quite possibly a sign that the apocalypse is drawing nigh....
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Posted on December 16, 2007 2:56 PM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated eleven years, four months, and one day before I was born, but I miss him. There are issues today where his voice is needed even more than it was needed in 1960. But Kennedy...
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Posted on December 7, 2007 1:01 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Poor Rob Crowther seems to be having a bad week. First, his big Iowa press conference turned out to be a total non-event. Then, it turned out that some of the people who did mention the press conference didn't...
Posted on December 6, 2007 10:52 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The Discovery Institute is currently making hay (again) over Iowa State's decision to deny tenure to Discovery Institute Fellow Guillermo Gonzalez. They've held a press conference and issued a press release claiming to have proof that Intelligent Design was...
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Posted on December 3, 2007 4:23 PM • 60 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
One of the joys of procrastination is that sometimes if you wait long enough, someone else really will take care of things. I mention that because Ed Brayton just did a good job dismantling Casey Luskin's latest whine about...
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Posted on November 26, 2007 10:44 AM • 26 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Verse one of Chapter 11 of the Letter of Paul to the Hebrews reads (in the King James translation of the Bible): "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." I mention...
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Posted on November 25, 2007 1:40 PM • 24 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The fine folks at the Discovery Institute aren't happy with tomorrow's PBS documentary on the Dover Intelligent Design case, and they're doing their best to make sure that everyone knows just how unhappy they are. They've been frantically tossing...
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Posted on November 12, 2007 2:37 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
It's not often that I start a post with an apology (that usually comes later) but I think I have to this time. Dr. Watson, I'm sorry that I've got your name in the same title as Westboro Baptist....
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Posted on November 1, 2007 10:52 AM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
It's hard to believe, but there was once a time when I had some respect - even admiration - for John McCain. Now, all I have is pity. The guy sold his soul to the Christian Right, but they...
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Posted on September 30, 2007 8:04 AM • 8 Comments •
Those tricky Culture Warriors - they've gone and launched the latest assault in the War on Christmas early this year, denying the Evil Secularist Conspiracy the chance to properly prepare for battle. They didn't wait until Thanksgiving this year,...
Posted on September 29, 2007 10:19 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A couple of weeks ago, I posted two ridiculous quotes that are found in the Bob Jones textbook that's involved in the California Creationism lawsuit. I'm still wading through these texts and Behe's report explaining why it's really a...
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Posted on September 29, 2007 12:06 PM • 78 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Today's New York Times has a story up on the upcoming Ben Stein "documentary" on the alleged persecution that ID proponents face in the academic world. The NYT article quotes a number of scientists who were interviewed for the...
Posted on September 27, 2007 11:59 AM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Most of the readers of this blog are intelligent, interested, scientifically literate individuals, but I'm guessing that at least a few of you aren't familiar with one of the nouns in the title. Those of you who do know...
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Posted on September 25, 2007 12:10 PM • 23 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
If you love predictability, you've got to love the Discovery Institute. Whenever someone publishes a paper about human evolution, it's a pretty safe bet that someone there will soon take the time to explain how having learned something new...
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Posted on September 24, 2007 9:16 AM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
When a soldier enlists in the Army, he or she takes an oath: "I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that...
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Posted on September 19, 2007 9:28 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I've been continuing to put some time into criticizing Michael Behe's expert report on the creationist texts involved in the California Creationism Case. This is a slow process, partly because I'm also working on other projects and partly because...
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Posted on September 16, 2007 11:21 PM • 66 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Yet another round of the unholy wars has broken out again here at Scienceblogs. Matt Nisbet and PZ Myers are at each others' throats. Again. If you read the other blogs here, you know that this isn't anything that's...
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Posted on September 15, 2007 7:59 PM • 63 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
From an article in the Baptist Press, linked from the Uncommon Descent homepage: "You have to understand, in the current academic climate, Intelligent Design is like leprosy or heresy in times past," [Dembski] said. "To be tagged as an...
Posted on September 5, 2007 11:39 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Last week, I reposted four old articles that I wrote back in 2005, when a group representing a number of Christian schools in California filed a lawsuit against the University of California claiming that UC's rejection of several of...
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Posted on September 5, 2007 8:07 PM • 38 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Mike Dunford is a graduate student in the Department of Zoology at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, where he studies evolution. He's also a contributer to The Pandas Thumb. As is the case with everyone else here, his opinions are his own, and do not necessarily represent those of any organization he is affiliated with. 
