When Matzke met Snow... : Pharyngula

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PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
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« Friday Cephalopod: Sepioteuthis lessoniana | Main | Department of not getting it »

When Matzke met Snow...

Category: Creationism
Posted on: April 28, 2006 2:22 PM, by PZ Myers

There's no doubt that Tony Snow is a creationist, especially not after Nick Matzke's interview.

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Comments

Posted by: redstripe | April 28, 2006 3:34 PM

Hey! I figured out TypeKey! (*sheesh*)

Anyway, the Matzke-Snow-Meyer interview was pretty funny. I would be surprised if Snow was anything less than a full-blown creationist, but I didn't see anything in the interview that would prove that . . . did I miss something?

Posted by: Zeno | April 28, 2006 4:24 PM

Thank goodness that Tony will fit comfortably into the atmosphere of scientific ignorance and contrariness that is the Bush administration. Do you think they could find a nice White House job for Sean Hannity, whose two-word dismissal of global warming is "doesn't exist"?

Posted by: CanuckRob | April 28, 2006 7:03 PM

I am assuming this is part of plan by our cephalopod overlords (acting through PZ and others) to use Bushco to flush out all the wingnuts in your country so that they can all be removed at the same time (hopefully before 2008). Please tell me I am right, I hate to think of the alternative, that these are really the people running the last superpower which also happens to be my heavily armed neighbour to the south. Please tell me the craies are not really in charge. Please.

Posted by: Jay Denari | April 28, 2006 7:49 PM

I thought this was an interesting line (quoted in one of the comments), a Darwinian slip if Snow's ever had one: "...hypotheses are only as durable as the evidence that supports them."

Tony, that EXACTLY why evolution has been successful: it has evidence.

If mere longevity proved the durability of a hypothesis, I guess the Egyptian creation myth is more valid than the Xian one -- it's been on this planet 3500 years or so. Nobody FOLLOWS it anymore, but it's still here.

Hopefully, it'll take much less time before nobody's following the bible myth, and it will become a curiosity of history like the Egyptian tales.

Posted by: Nick (Matzke) | April 29, 2006 12:44 AM

Anyway, the Matzke-Snow-Meyer interview was pretty funny. I would be surprised if Snow was anything less than a full-blown creationist, but I didn't see anything in the interview that would prove that . . . did I miss something?

Check out his editorial which I linked to:

Today, evolutionary theorists find themselves at wits' end because the fossil record provides no evidence of any species ever turning into another. We know species adjust to environmental conditions -- ever notice how tall kids are these days? -- and that natural selection does occur. But there's nothing to vindicate the notion of an evolutionary leap.

He puts in some qualifiers elsewhere in the article and doesn't quite come out and say God poofed things into existence, but the above is really a quite dumb thing to say and a classic creationist claim.

Posted by: FrancestheMagnificent | April 29, 2006 12:53 AM

I love it how, on FOX News, whenever a liberal or a scientist is about to make a really good point, the host immediately interjects: "Woah-Woah-Woah-Woah-Woah" and effectively prevents the guest from making the great point. It's an effective way to make the opposition look bad - refusing to let them complete a sentence, let alone a thought.

Posted by: plucky punk | April 29, 2006 1:44 AM

We know species adjust to environmental conditions -- ever notice how tall kids are these days?

Umm...how are taller children responding to environmental conditions? Are shelves higher up than they used to be?