Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
…and this is a pharyngula stage embryo.
• a longer profile of yours truly
• my calendar
• Nature Network
• RichardDawkins Network
• facebook
• MySpace
• Twitter
• Atheist Nexus
• the Pharyngula chat room
(#pharyngula on irc.synirc.net)
No man ever knew Providence to interpose when his neighbor's hens are scratching up his garden.
[Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays]
Why are flounder funny-looking?
No genes were lost in the making of this whale
Evolution of Hormone Signaling
Stay abreast of your favorite bloggers' latest and greatest via e-mail, via a daily digest.
« Roy Varghese and the exploitation of Antony Flew | Main | The nadir of Howie Mandel's career? »
Category: Godlessness
Posted on: November 4, 2007 4:02 PM, by PZ Myers
If he isn't already on it, that is. Here he is interviewing Antony Flew.
Flew gives the impression of being a nice old man in a muddle. Strobel is a badger for Christ.
Find more posts in: 
Politics
(TrackBack URL for this entry: )
Comments
This is just painful. After a while (about 2 minutes) I just couldn't watch any more.
Posted by: noncarborundum | November 4, 2007 4:17 PM
So instead of being terrorized into belief, he is now being badgered by Strobel. What a snake!
Posted by: The Science Pundit | November 4, 2007 4:43 PM
If the Christian god exists, what would it have to do to convince people of that?
The question of course implies that if it couldn't convince anyone 100% for sure, then it shouldn't even bother trying all that hard. Hmm, what a stupid freakin question, and a stupid freakin god. :D
Posted by: 386sx | November 4, 2007 4:47 PM
Fuck that bastard.
http://thestubborncurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2007/09/lee-will.html
Posted by: John Danley | November 4, 2007 4:50 PM
Yeah, I could only watch a little of this travesty. It was sad & painful. I read the N Y Times article earlier today.
What a bunch of intellectually dishonest creeps the religiots are!
Posted by: Richard Harris | November 4, 2007 4:55 PM
Dear PZ Myers,
As you are probably aware Lee Strobel is a creationist.
I would also remind you that you have multiple essays on Conservapedia which you have chosen to not defend in regards to reasonable criticism directed against those essays (For readers not familiar with PZ Myers essays against Conservapedia I suggest using the search function at this blog and doing a search on "Conservapedia"). Given Conservapedia's article critical of theory of evolution it is not surprising that you would offer so many essays against Conservapedia. However, I do have a suggestion. Instead of writing so many essays against Conservapedia which you cannot or not willing to defend against reasonable criticism perhaps it would behoove you to focus more on addressing the central issue which is Conservapedia's theory of evolution article located here: http://www.conservapedia.com/Theory_of_evolution If you could kindly point out a single factual error in Conservapedia's theory of evolution article it would certainly be welcome as constructive criticism is certainly welcome. However, given that the article has been reviewed by many evolutionists already I am guessing that you will be unable to find a single factual error.
Posted by: peter moore | November 4, 2007 5:01 PM
I found it interesting, that even with all the badgering, Flew didn't sound at all interested in heaven or the coercion that christianity attempts to use with the threat of hell.
Posted by: Steve_C | November 4, 2007 5:02 PM
Pete.
Bring your evidence and your argument. No one is going to the joke that is your site.
Lee Strobel is an ass.
Posted by: Steve_C | November 4, 2007 5:04 PM
Addendum:
Dear PZ Myers,
I do try to be fair. It occured to me that perhaps you are still not yet aware of the criticisms that have been directed against your articles on Conservapedia. If you could comment on those criticisms of your essays on Conservapedia it would certainly be appreciated.
Posted by: peter moore | November 4, 2007 5:09 PM
Badgering senile skeptics is not a new trick for Strobel. In the Case for Faith, he got octogenerian Alzheimer's sufferer Charles Templeton to sob and admit that he "missed" Jesus.
Posted by: Vinny | November 4, 2007 5:09 PM
I am glad we have the likes of Scott Hatfield here as evidence that not every American Christian is a piece of work like Strobel or Varghese or D'Souza.
As for Anthony Flew, for God's sake leave the man alone!
Posted by: Ian H Spedding FCD | November 4, 2007 5:10 PM
Dear Peter Moore,
For the last time, cease your tedious, content-free whining. I am not interested in your collection of lies at conservapædia, and I'm not going to waste time with it. If you've got some specific argument you'd like to make, go ahead…but until then, you can stop yammering.
Posted by: PZ Myers | November 4, 2007 5:10 PM
Peter Moore,
I haven't combed through the article to look for specific errors yet, but a huge problem I noticed off the bat is lying by ommission. You simply only discuss what people think of as problems. You give zero evidence to support evolution at all, and only list negative ideas. It's a total misrepresentation of what the evidence for evolution consists of.
Posted by: DamnYankees | November 4, 2007 5:12 PM
Peter Moore said:
Okay, stating the obvious, but at least it's relevant.
Sharp right turn into the totally irrelevant issue that he wanted to talk about in the first place and couldn't even link to the topic at hand. Follow up with a condescending remark suggesting that the average reader cannot is not aware of the proper use of the search function. Beautifully done, Peter. Beautifully done.
Posted by: j | November 4, 2007 5:19 PM
Hmmm.... I've got one that would convince me.
Dear Jesus,
Please turn Lee Strobel and Peter Moore into frogs.
Amen
Posted by: Dustin | November 4, 2007 5:20 PM
If there is a Christian God why did he create Lee Strobel?
Posted by: sailor | November 4, 2007 5:21 PM
About the only stupid creationist claim missing from that Conservapædia article was Salvador Cordova's attempt to smear Darwin as a puppy-killer. Can somebody put that in — it doesn't matter where, since the organization of the article is so bad — so we can laugh with full derisiveness?
Posted by: Blake Stacey | November 4, 2007 5:22 PM
Oh, and I was going to start reading The Case for Christ this week. But I doubt I'll be able to make it through the book if I can't even make it through this video.
Posted by: j | November 4, 2007 5:22 PM
This settled it for me. Flew didn't convet to theism, he converted to Alzheimerism.
And any fundagelical rushing to exploit it is really a ghoul - an undead monster feeding on corpses. This time they feast on a really tasty intellectual corpse - a senile philosopher.
Posted by: T_U_T | November 4, 2007 5:25 PM
To top all this off, I posted a clip the other day of Sean Hannity referring to Flew's book during a recent interview with Dinesh D'Souza. Methinks there is a concerted push from the apologists surrounding the latest version of Flew's book.
And yes, it is disgusting. That's propaganda for you.
Posted by: HeathenTV | November 4, 2007 5:25 PM
Hm. What a troll. It seems a lot like leading some poor Alzheimer's grandmother away with candy and a promise of knowing where your family is.
Posted by: Tatarize | November 4, 2007 5:28 PM
peter moore wrote:
I am not a scientist but I have read that article and find it contains the same cherry-picked quotations, equivocations, strawmen, appeals to unqualified authorities and lies by ommission as other creationist screeds.It would be interesting to know, however, not just which "evolutionists" have reviewed the article but also which have reviewed it favourably.
Posted by: Ian H Spedding FCD | November 4, 2007 5:29 PM
I thought the pictures of Darwin, Gould, Hitler, and Stalin were a nice touch though. Broke up thre quote-mining a bit.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | November 4, 2007 5:34 PM
Posted by: Stanton | November 4, 2007 5:35 PM
Peter is a creo troll spamming his lies all over the net under a variety of names. He spammed this blog last night and PT last night among others. His conservapedia article is a collection of lies constructed by quote mining.
I think they are spamming BS to try to increase their hit rates. Some people think laughing at lie collections are funny, I guess.
Posted by: raven | November 4, 2007 5:37 PM
"If the Christian god exists, what would He have to do to convince you of that?"
And, after a long pause, Flew answers "I don't know. After all, I've never thought about this at all ... and I'm not eager to start. He would presumably know."
Never thought about this at all???
Yes he has. I'm not going to comb through any of his books or essays right now, but there's no way he hasn't ever "thought about this AT ALL." For crying out loud, he's done professional debates. How many of us here who are atheists have never, ever heard or considered "what would make you believe?"
Flew is a philosopher: he wrote on epistemology. That pause and admission are not coming from a mind which is drawing upon years of scholarship and reflection. He's surprised by the question. In fact, he seems surprised by all the questions. Who did you say you are again, young man?
Sad, sad, sad. And the point is to drag this poor failing mind out and use it to say "see, the science convinced even an atheist!" When Flew himself knows science is not his area of expertise, and once wrote eloquently about not going beyond one's area of expertise in drawing conclusions.
Shame, shame, shame...
Posted by: Sastra | November 4, 2007 5:41 PM
Peter Moore lying some more. Pete no one is buying your lies. Try something different. At your age telling the truth is probably beyond your capabilities. How about finding someone very old with full blown Alzheimers to convert. And while your at it, have them donate all their money to you.
Posted by: raven | November 4, 2007 5:41 PM
No surprises there. Lee Strobel has been milking his Christian apologetics schtik very successfully for years. I had the decidedly creepy experience of reading most of The Case for Christ, a copy of which was pressed upon me by an exceedingly religious acquaintance. No one here is likely to be surprised to hear it is unmitigated trip. I wrote about it here last year, in case anyone is a glutton for more punishment.
Posted by: Zeno | November 4, 2007 5:42 PM
I very much dislike Strobel and his strident, self righteous, predatory mannerism. Strobel really grates on my nerves; maybe its because he's so popular, and unfortunately, admired by theists, even some non Christian theists. But it was nice to see that Flew, despite his age and obvious difficulties, didn't succumb to Strobel's incessant yammering.
If it had been me there instead of Flew, I'd have gone into a flurry about all of the many reasons why I wouldn't accept Christianity. I guess Flew wasn't interested in really challenging Strobel, but rather dismissing him. Flew just didn't care much at all about Christianity in the first place. Its obvious Strobel wanted an uncertain sounding sound bite, so he could use it strategically or slip it into some future documentary of his.
As if a conversion to deism was anything at all like this great mind swallowing the Christian religion. Ah well, thanks for sharing that, one more reason for me to think less of L.S.
Posted by: ias | November 4, 2007 5:46 PM
Peter Ken DeMoore is only posting here so he can insert links to his own pet articles at
VitriolpediaConservapedia in an aim to drive up their Google rankings. It's pathetic. As an administrator there he often resets the counts for more popular pages so that his own pages appear near the top in the statistics pages. The guy is obsessed with homosexuality - this is a list of articles that he largely "owns":Homosexual Agenda
Homosexual Couples and Domestic Violence
Homosexuality
Homosexuality and Genetics
Homosexuality and Gonorrhea
Homosexuality and Hepatitis
Homosexuality and Homicide
Homosexuality and Marriage
Homosexuality and Mental Health
Homosexuality and Parasites
Homosexuality and Promiscuity
Homosexuality and Syphilis
Homosexuality in Animals Myth
Sometimes it appears that those who shout the loudest have something to hide.
Posted by: No Moore | November 4, 2007 5:49 PM
Peter Moore, what I think that PZ and everyone here is trying to say is this. It has been posted here before but yet it still comes in handy due to reality never seeming to sink in with you conservative types. Just because you are a conservative, even if you are only a Fox Brand TM conservative and not a real one, it doesn't mean that you have to keep repeating the same tired arguments that never made any sense. You are allowed to learn something.
Posted by: Mena | November 4, 2007 5:50 PM
Dustin wrote: "Please turn Lee Strobel and Peter Moore into frogs."
No! I LIKE frogs. Turn them into P. falciparum, or something!
Posted by: jorg | November 4, 2007 5:52 PM
If that's all he's after, he can stop now. SB automatically adds the 'rel=nofollow' tag to links in comments.
Posted by: MartinM | November 4, 2007 5:52 PM
An atheist late in life says that he now thinks that, perhaps, there is some kind of deity. Yet when asked by fundy christians, says he cannot buy into any form of an afterlife. In other words, Flew still does not buy into one of the bedrocks of their believes. Yet they still crow about him being on their side now?
Posted by: Janine | November 4, 2007 5:53 PM
Martin,
That's awesome.
Posted by: Steve_C | November 4, 2007 5:54 PM
He ven goes as far as saying he has no interest in praising some deity for eternity...
does sound like slavery and torture.
Posted by: Steve_C | November 4, 2007 5:56 PM
Dear Peter Moore,
Your first sentence on evolution begins with this clause:
Errors:
1. Evolution is not a "naturalistic" theory as you define naturalism; evolution says nothing at all about the supernatural, and assumes nothing at all about the supernatural.
2. Evolution is not a theory of the history of life on Earth.
Not past the first clause in the first sentence, and you've made two errors, assuming or stating things that simply are not true. You cite the Merriam Webster on-line dictionary definition of evolution in support of the point, but it addresses nether of the assumptions you make here.
Quit wasting time. Get a clue. Conservapedia is an embarrassment to thinking people of faith everywhere, most of whom probably would think it a sin to prevaricate on the wholesale basis Conservapedia does. Heck, Conservapedia is an embarrassment to unthinking people of faith. It's insulting to conservatives, to think they'd be affiliated with such a brainless, senseless, amoral excercise.
Go away kid. You're bothered.
Posted by: Ed Darrell | November 4, 2007 5:59 PM
I tried to post/contribute on Conservapedia ages ago, but I got blocked for mentioning homosexuality without condemning it in the same breath on a talk page.
So, you know, if the conservapedia nutjobs want to debate things, they might stop being fascists, first.
Posted by: Dan | November 4, 2007 6:08 PM
What did frogs ever do to you, Dustin, to deserve that?
May I suggest trypanosomes, instead?
Posted by: thalarctos | November 4, 2007 6:08 PM
So all those Assembly of God churches finally got him built, and they've moved on to building a case for Christ? I hope they're using a nice grade of hardwood.
Posted by: Epikt | November 4, 2007 6:09 PM
Since Ken or the other fascists at CP will ban anyone that says a wrong word and I am not sure how much pollution Dr. Myers would want randomly strewn across his blog I offer up a neutral location for anyone wanting to engage Ken (aka "peter"):
He has a talk page at RationalWiki as long as he is not afraid to discuss things where he can't ban the dissent.
Posted by: tmtoulouse | November 4, 2007 6:11 PM
Hey Peter, here's a free tip: When it's impossible to tell a "serious" article apart from a satirical article that means there is something seriously screwed up with the "serious" article. If you notice, this seems to apply to about 99% of conservapedia. :-)
Why do you think people were falling down with uncontrollable laughter when conservapedia first came out?
Posted by: Boosterz | November 4, 2007 6:17 PM
Dear PZ Myers,
You wrote:
Dear Peter Moore,
"For the last time, cease your tedious, content-free whining. I am not interested in your collection of lies at conservapædia, and I'm not going to waste time with it. If you've got some specific argument you'd like to make, go ahead...but until then, you can stop yammering."
I am not aware of a first time you responded to me. Needlessly to say, I am puzzled by your "for the last time" comment. Perhaps, you can show your readers a first time but I do have my doubts.
Secondly, given that the burden of proof is upon the claimant I do think it is reasonable for you to have pointed how my post at your blog were allegedly content free and I would certainly encourage your readers to examine the criticisms leveled against your articles on your blog concerning conservapedia which you have yet to respond to.
Thirdly, I have asked you to point out one factual error in regards to the article on the theory of evolution at Conservapedia. If Conservapedia is a collection of lies as you contend surely you would should be able to find multiple lies in Conservapedia's theory of evolution article if your contention has any merit and Conservapedia's theory of evolution article is located here: http://www.conservapedia.com/Theory_of_evolution Your failure to take me up on my offer to find a single factual error in the conservapedia article on the theory of evolution is surely an indication that your essays on Conservapedia that I critiqued are rather spurious and that your contention that Conservapedia is a collection of lies is equally spurious. After all, why would you bother creating multiple essays on Conservapedia but fail to show a single factual error in Conservapedia's theory of evolution article when asked?
Posted by: peter moore | November 4, 2007 6:20 PM
This badgering of a senescent sage by religiots is reminiscent of the spectacle of the former pope, in his dotage, being called out by Mel Gibson sycophants to endorse his snuff film. The victims are vastly different, but the predators are cut from the same cloth.
Posted by: John Ponder | November 4, 2007 6:28 PM
That would be here, you illiterate mountebank.
Posted by: Skemono | November 4, 2007 6:33 PM
Dear Peter Moore,
You have tried my patience sufficiently with your spamming on several threads, and you've just made an admission that you are throwing out these "challenges" and then ignoring subsequent comments replying to you. Since all you seem to care to do is to spam your idiotic conservapædia site, I've add the URL to your wiki for morons to the spam list.
You're free to actually offer a specific request to address something in your misunderstandings of evolution, but don't bother to refer to conservapædia when you do so.
Posted by: PZ Myers | November 4, 2007 6:33 PM
Maybe because reading lies from conservalie-apedia isn't a good use of his time. Maybe he has to eat dinner and is afraid it will spoil his appetite. Maybe he has to feed the cat. There are a zillion more worthwhile things to do than laugh at internet trolls.
BTW, these clowns are operating under the Bad PR is really good PR principle. Just spamming, writing nonsense, and being annoying trolls to try to get their hit rate up. Don't fall for it.
Too funny. The fact that lightening bolts haven't struck either of them is bad news for the god is real crowd.
Frogs is much too generous a fate. Rats maybe. But how would anyone be able to tell the difference?
Posted by: raven | November 4, 2007 6:35 PM
Conservapedia is a collection of lies.
Here's one:
"Although Darwin is most well known regarding the beginnings of the evolutionary position, evolutionary ideas were taught by the ancient Greeks as early as the 7th century B.C."
The citation supporting it is, get this, from Answers in Genesis. Having read the article and the citation, I'm afraid the article and citation are both lies. The Answers in Genesis article is particularly funny, as it tries to equate ancient creation myths and obscure (mostly lost) philosophy about combining animal parts with evolution as a scientific theory.
This is not even from the body of the article. The rest of the header is technically true, but full of quote mines, nonsequitors, and without meaningful context. I'm not going to dig for more blatant errors, as it's just not worth the trouble. That I have to make this commentary here instead of on Conservapedia, where I'd be blocked, is a simple testament to the level of falsity you're peddling.
Posted by: Dan | November 4, 2007 6:38 PM
"Your failure to take me up on my offer to find a single factual error in the conservapedia article on the theory of evolution is surely an indication that blah blah blah..."
It's an indication that you're an ass and you're being ignored in the hope that you'll shut up and go away. Apparently you're too much of an ass to take the hint.
Posted by: Everybody in the World | November 4, 2007 6:43 PM
God, I didn't even notice that the AiG site claims Aristotle's great chain of being is a form of evolution. Aristotle was the main piece of scholarly (and Christian) canon for centuries, you'd suspect biology would have had a meaningful presence before Darwin if he were teaching evolution. Even better, Mayan and other totemic religions are based in evolution. Who knew that men who thought they were "of the spirit of the turtle" were actually endorsing universal common descent with modification as the mode of speciation? I sure didn't, and totemism is one of my primary interests.
Posted by: Dan | November 4, 2007 6:46 PM
The video was painful because it reminded me of what a couple of christo-fascist cousins did to my Dad in his last six weeks of life. A noncombatant skeptic all his life they took advantage of his decline to save another soul for their christ thingey. Thanks to a good lawyer, they couldn't get to his estate, but they tried.
Posted by: Bert Chadick | November 4, 2007 6:47 PM
What!? Peter dude, fuck you. Now I can't link to my humorous conservapædia articles. What a typical asshole: ruin it for everyone else.
Posted by: Dustin | November 4, 2007 6:52 PM
I am not aware of a first time you responded to me. Needlessly to say, I am puzzled by your "for the last time" comment.
Simple. If you are not aware of something, that does not mean that the something of which you are not aware... is not something! Sometimes you have to search for the answers when you are puzzled by something of which you are not aware. Then you will become aware, my friend. :D
Anywhoo, you're probably lying about that anyway. :P
Posted by: 386sx :P | November 4, 2007 6:57 PM
Dear No Moore,
A big part of search engine ranking is relevance. I think your post above partly explains why RationalWiki has such abysmal web traffic.
For example, you contend that I "own" the article "Homosexuality and Marriage" at Conservapedia. I recall only making few edits to that article and there being multiple edits to that article. That is exactly what the case is and the edit log shows this matter and I encourage people to examine this matter for themselves.
Secondly, you contend that I am acting here to merely raise Google rankings for the homosexuality articles I "own". Well for the fun of it, I just looked up 4 of those articles and it appears as if they already are #1 ranked by Google (for example, homosexuality and homicide; homosexuality and hepatitus). Why would I be obssessed for getting higher Google rankings for the "pet" articles you listed when it appears many of the article are already ranked #1! Needless to say, your contention above is lacking in reasonableness. Perhaps, it is your own desperation to get top Google rankings that you are projecting on me. :)
Next, I have created about 40 articles on Conservapedia and made edits to 50 or more articles. You contention that I am obsessed with subject of homosexuality isn't much better than your other contentions to say the least. I would argue that some RationalWikians (though certainly not all) are obsessed with the notion that I am obsessed with homosexuality. It is my personal opinion that this obsession of yours is largely driven by the recent spate of web traffic that Conservapedia article on homosexuality has experienced.
Lastly, you asserted the following: "As an administrator there he often resets the counts for more popular pages so that his own pages appear near the top in the statistics pages." I don't believe you demonstrated this contention nor do I believe you can.
Posted by: peter moore | November 4, 2007 7:02 PM
Dustin... frogs? Frogs? Frogs? Frogs? Frogs?
Bad choice.
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | November 4, 2007 7:04 PM
My two cents:
Strobel's a nasty badger trying to lead and force an interview. Flew is old, gentle, and exceedingly and excrutiatingly *nice*. But he's not as muddled and/or senile as PZ and the New York Time's article make him out to be. He has *not* turned to Christianity; merely to a belief in a higher power. (I know as hard-core atheists we are opposed to beliefs in "higher powers" but we have to admit that there's a huge step between believing there is an external consciousness and that said consciousness is the YAWEH of the bible and Christ was his manifestation on this 6,000 year old earth and belief in him is the only way to salvation.) He doesn't believe in an afterlife and doesn't *want* there to be an afterlife, not even heaven.
He is muddled and seems to be unaware of (or too darn nice or maybe just too damned old and tired to resist) how he's being manipulated but he still saying what he believes and not saying what stobel wants him to say.
A pity how he was manipulated into that book though. His initial view that God was too vague a definition to have any meaning, switching to another view that God is still too vague a definition for "the creator" of the creationists but a belief in a vague higher power, is a far cry from the "conversion" the book is heralding.
Still, I admire the man still even in his muddled 84-year old state.
Posted by: woozy | November 4, 2007 7:06 PM
Hm. I just made a post with five links to Scienceblogs articles, and it's being held for approval... not intelligently designed, that spam filter... The post is an attempt to teach Dustin something about frogs. :-)
I hope you actually spelled that hepatitis...
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | November 4, 2007 7:08 PM
Badger for Christ?
Badgers? We don't need no stinking badgers!
I do not understand how this thread got this far without somebody saying it before now.
Posted by: Ken Cope | November 4, 2007 7:10 PM
Way to focus on wiki-drama instead of arguing any kind of scientific point. At this rate, conservapedia editors will be solving the world's problems with science in no time flat. Their rare straight lies, prevalent lies of omission, and sweeping bannings cannot be defeated, for the barrier against meaningful discussion they erect is strong.
Posted by: Dan | November 4, 2007 7:11 PM
Strobel is a snake. In his Case for... books he claims he is doing investigative journalism. What he actually does is he has one fundie nutcase present the fundie nutcase side of an issue then they have another fundie nutcase present what they think the opposing side would say. He never interviews anyone who has an opinion different from him and the rest of the fundie nutcases. Somewhere I read something about bearing false witness, but what do I know?
Posted by: wrpd | November 4, 2007 7:15 PM
Dear site owner,
I just thought you might want to know a few things... first of all, the "Peter Moore" with whom you're dealing is actually Ken DeMyer, aka...
- Ousted (l)user KDbuffalo from Conservapedia
- Conservative, on Conservapedia,
- Creationist, on CreationWiki, and,
- Newton, on RationalWiki.
He's a quote miner par excellence, and you can learn more about him (http://www.conservapedia.com/User:Conservative) here. I wouldn't bother, though: all you need to know you have probably already gathered from his above posts.
Also, I'd like to let you know about our little site, RationalWiki. You might like it?
Posted by: Ames | November 4, 2007 7:17 PM
Dear PZ Myers,
Given that I was addressing your essays on Conservapedia it was perfectly reasonable to cite Conservapedia and ask you to attempt to refute various conservative articles on Conservapedia. That you chose not to take me up on my offer is regrettable but not unexpected given the quality of the articles on Conservapedia you wrote which you are not willing to defend.
Secondly, I do have a request of you. Please explain why the fraudulant work of Haeckel was allowed to be perpetuated for so long?
I am referring to this matter:
Stephen Gould wrote the following regarding Ernst Haeckel's work in a March 2000 issue of Natural History:
"Haeckel's forceful, eminently comprehensible, if not always accurate, books appeared in all major languages and surely exerted more influence than the works of any other scientist, including Darwin...in convincing people throughout the world about the validity of evolution... Haeckel had exaggerated the similarities [between embryos of different species] by idealizations and omissions. He also, in some cases -- in a procedure that can only be called fraudulent -- simply copied the same figure over and over again....Haeckel's drawings never fooled expert embryologists, who recognized his fudgings right from the start. Haeckel's drawings, despite their noted inaccuracies, entered into the most impenetrable and permanent of all quasi-scientific literatures: standard student textbooks of biology... Once ensconced in textbooks, misinformation becomes cocooned and effectively permanent, because...textbooks copy from previous texts.... [W]e do, I think, have the right to be both astonished and ashamed by the century of mindless recycling that has led to the persistence of these drawings in a large number, if not a majority, of modern textbooks!" (see: http://www.creationism.org/caesar/haeckel.htm ).
PZ Myers, are you ashamed the evolutionary community perpetuated this fraud for a century even though expert embryologist knew it was a fraud from this start? I do think this is a reasonable question and a lack of reasonable response on your part will certainly speak volumes.
Posted by: peter moore | November 4, 2007 7:20 PM
For more on the exploitation of Antony Flew:
http://richarddawkins.net/article,1831,n,n
Sickening...
Posted by: Chris R. | November 4, 2007 7:25 PM
I have NOT called Flew senile, nor have I suggested he has Alzheimer's. He is an old man whose memory and abilities are failing, and that's all we can tell at this point.
Posted by: PZ Myers | November 4, 2007 7:27 PM
You're not even reading any responses. You're just posting links you want to show off and stupid arguments in a long string, devoid of regard for where you're putting them, and then abandoning them and ignoring the obvious errors that are pointed out.
Posted by: Dan | November 4, 2007 7:32 PM
Quick note:
If anyone wants to verify a claim I made above I did want to give them the courtesy of knowing that I apparently typed in the word "hepatitis" incorrectly.
Posted by: peter moore | November 4, 2007 7:32 PM
Dear Peter Moore,
The lie there is the claim that the "evolutionary community perpetuated this fraud." They did not. Your clue is right there in the Gould quote, where he plainly states that expert embryologists were not fooled by the omissions and errors in Haeckel's drawings...they were evolutionary biologists too, you know, not creationists for the most part. I've actually written a fair amount on the Haeckel affair — the major source of fraud right now is the lying creationists who claim recapitulation theory was a major element in the foundation of evolutionary biology.
Posted by: PZ Myers | November 4, 2007 7:33 PM
Yes, I've thought about it but truth to tell, I don't know that there is anything God can do to convince me. It isn't that I'm pig-headed and stubborn, it's just that I think any definition or concept of God is too vague for me to honestly say "I believe in God". If I looked into a telescope and saw his eyeball staring back and he dropped his blueprints of the creation on stone tablets into my yard, I'd classify and right it up into my repository of knowledge and then I'd wonder about things such as his blood pressure, his parents, did he ever experiment with chickens as a kid. But I couldn't say "I believe in God" because god with his blueprints is now the creator next door and not God with a capital G. (So far, no-one has found the creator next door and I doubt they will.)
If on the other hand I were to go hiking and stumble across a sublimely beautiful frozen waterfall and become utterly convinced there's a higher power in the universe and it is intimately aware of me and everything in creation and it cares about me and active in my life, I *still* wouldn't say "I believe in God" because what I've found myself believing in is too vague and intangible and subjective to have such meaning. (By the way, I have never had such an experience. I might but I hope not. I tend to go for the hippy-dippy touchy-feeley pop-psych bullshit but grounded in a very strong sense of subjective existentialism.)
If it were more concrete enough to be objective rather than subjective, it'd be "the creator next door". If it were more spiritual it'd be the vague personal "life is just .... too too". It's *always* either "the creator next door" or "life is just .... too too"
Actually "he would presumably know" is a good answer. If God wanted me to believe in him, he'd know what would convince me and do it.
Posted by: woozy | November 4, 2007 7:34 PM
Yes, it says that PZ is way too nice to ban lying trolls. And he is smart enough not to take troll bait.
Don't you have some desperately ill senile old man to convert somewhere? Don't forget to get him to change the will to you and your buddies. How are the MD assassination, family planning clinic bombings, and gay bashing going? Killed anyone? Lately, I mean.
Posted by: raven | November 4, 2007 7:34 PM
I'm not the first to point out that Peter can't read. I mean, he loves Google so much that I'm sure he tried it, so clearly he just couldn't read the results...
Posted by: Dustin | November 4, 2007 7:37 PM
PZ wrote:
"I have NOT called Flew senile, nor have I suggested he has Alzheimer's. He is an old man whose memory and abilities are failing, and that's all we can tell at this point."
I don't think anyone is claiming you had. I take all mentions of "senility" and "alzheimer's" as the posters' own.
He is an old man whose memory and abilities are failing but I think he still has a spark. I'd still listen to what he may have to say now (when not being manipulated by scrupeless leading interviewers) even though it probably isn't as forceful or cogent as his work fifty years ago.
That he was manipulated into putting his name on that book is nothing short of tragic though.
Posted by: woozy | November 4, 2007 7:43 PM
Dear Peter Moore,
Why should Prof. Myers respond to Conservapedia? Conservapedia has no credibility as a source of facts, so why bother?
Posted by: Unstable Isotope | November 4, 2007 7:51 PM
Dear Dan,
Re: evolutionary ideas going back to at least the Greeks
I don't think that proof by mere assertion is valid. You don't quote the article in question nor do you demonstrate your contentions.
I have no interest in your throw a bunch of spaghetti against the wall in hopes something will stick modus operandi.
Posted by: peter moore | November 4, 2007 7:52 PM
Peter Moore - maybe you'd get better results from your request to Prof. Meyers if you would just wait, and approach him very nicely in, say, 40+ years.
Make sure not to resume this discussion then in the presence of his daughter - for your own safety.
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | November 4, 2007 7:55 PM
Dear Pete,
I think the word "yawn" should more than adequately describe the feelings of those here to your silly scribblings and even-sillier demands that we all pay attention to you.
In other news, earlier today, my niece gave me one of those wind up monkeys who bobs his head and slaps a pair of cymbals together. The only thing keeping that little toy from reminding me of you, Pete, is the fact that the monkey isn't wearing a snappy pink cardigan.
Posted by: Dan | November 4, 2007 7:56 PM
I agree. So stop merely asserting that your lying collection of nonsense has serious objections to evolution: State some. Or bugger off.
Posted by: PZ Myers | November 4, 2007 7:58 PM
I had the [mis]fortune of seeing Stroble live, for 30 minutes, at the Louisville Six Flags Over Jesus (just a short jaunt from Jesusland) the Saturday before Halloween. The guy is a certifiable fruitcake. He's at the very least a fraud and at the very worst.... I'll let you all decide. His whole premise is just laughable. He starts straight in the bible and he claims the gospels are "the biography of Jesus." Yeah, he was an "Atheist" until he began looking at "the biography of Jesus." Shit, anyone who starts with the premise as the gospels being true can't help but become a xian. What a twit.
He also claims he was a raving alcoholic that thrashed his apartment and alluded to doing the same to his wife. It wasn't until he found religion that he got better. Curious, he also gave up the sauce at the time he found religion. I'm sure being sober had nothing to do with him being a nice guy. And I'm sure AA had nothing to do with him finding religion.
Oh, I could go on and on about his lies, deceit, slander, libel, etc. I could almost write a book about his 30 minute talk peddling his fraudulent book. I was writing in a little notepad almost non-stop through the whole talk. He mentioned Dawkins once and referenced him as, "a famous Atheist once ______" at LEAST three times with the 4th maybe being Harris. It was a horrible train wreck: I wanted to look away but just couldn't. This video was worse than that.
Posted by: DeWraith | November 4, 2007 7:59 PM
No one is taking your troll bait either. Peter Moore is a classic Death Cultist. Part of the lie and murder branch of Xianity. Hey Peter, who is on your To Hate and To Kill lists? For ideas here are some from the leaders of the Death Cults.
The Death Cultists and their leaders frequently publish lists of groups they want to kill. They occasionally kill them.
Pat Robertson: wikipedia
Hugo Chávez" I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war, and I don't think any oil shipments will stop.
We will find you, we will try you, and we will execute you. I mean every word of it.
[Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, at the Aug 8, 1995 U.S. Taxpayers Alliance Banquet in Washington DC, talking about doctors who perform abortions and volunteer escorts My note. Terry's sympathizers have, in fact, murdered more than a few health care workers.
"Pastor Jerry Gibson spoke at Doug Whites New Day Covenant Church in Boulder.
He said that every true Christian should be ready and willing to take up arms to kill the enemies of Christian society.
bcseweb.org Rushdooney:
Our list may not be perfect but it seems to cover those "crimes" against the family that are inferred by Rushdoony's statement to Moyers. The real frightening side of it is the interpretation of heresy, apostasy and idolatry. Rushdoony's position seems to suggest that he would have anyone killed who disagreed with his religious opinions. That represents all but a tiny minority of people. Add to that death penalties for what is quite legal, blasphemy, not getting on with parents and working on a Sunday means that it the fantasy ideal world of Rushdoony and his pals, there will be an awful lot of mass murderers and amongst a tiny population.
We have done figures for the UK which suggest that around 99% of the population would end up dead and the remainder would have each, on average, killed 500 fellow citizens.
Chalcedon foundation bsceweb.org. Stoning disobedient children to death.Contempt for Parental Authority: Those who consider death as a horrible punishment here must realise that in such a case as
....cut for length
Rev. William Einwechter, "Modern Issues in Biblical Perspective: Stoning Disobedient Children", The Chalcedon Report, January 1999
When The Hate Comes From 'Churches'
ASHLAND, Ore. - A recent spate of crimes points up a growing connection between hateful actions and organizations calling themselves churches.
Two brothers from northern California reportedly linked to such a group were charged this week with the killing of two gay men near Redding. Benjamin Matthew Williams and James Tyler Williams also are suspects in the firebombing of three synagogues in the Sacramento area last month.
According to personal acquaintances as well as law enforcement officials, the Williams brothers were involved in Christian Identity, a religion that holds Jews and nonwhites to be subhuman and is closely tied to the Aryan Nations white-s