stcynic
Posts by this author
April 11, 2006
My buddy Jeff just emailed me a link to a wikipedia article about the REM song "It's the end of the world as we know it". It says:
The lyrics chronicle a scenario for the end of the world as well as listing various pop icons and politicians at a rapid pace. The chorus ends with the famous…
April 11, 2006
Jon Rowe has a post linking to this article by Dave Daubenmire, a guy whose sole credentials are that he once coached high school football. Now, I remember taking classes from the coaches in high school. I remember having to explain econometric formulas to the baseball coach who taught economics,…
April 11, 2006
For a nation just recovering from the mass stupidity of the "War on Christmas", now we've got the War on Easter. Only this time, it's not just an empty catchphrase invented by demagogues to whip up a fake frenzy, it's a catchphrase invented by a mediocre filmmaker to sell his bad documentary. The…
April 11, 2006
The IDers aren't the only ones sounding foolish trying to dismiss Tiktaalik roseae as a transitional fossil, the old fashioned young earth creationists are too. Lancelet has two posts on the subject, one on Answers in Genesis and one on the Institute for Creation Research. The one on the ICR…
April 11, 2006
There has been a minor brouhaha going on over a new paper published in Science that details precisely how a protein binding site that fits Michael Behe's definition of irreducible complexity (IC) evolved through mutation and selection. The paper prompted an immediate response from Behe that struck…
April 10, 2006
Whenever you see a religious right apologist claiming that America was founded as a "Christian nation", you inevitably find them defining the nation not from the point it was founded - the time of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution - but from the time of the colonies that were…
April 10, 2006
Steve Reuland has a post at his own blog following up on my discussion of Jonathan Witt's terrible argumens on Tiktaalik roseae. He includes a quote from Henry Gee, who was quoted in a misleading manner by Witt in his post, slamming the DI for continually taking his words out of context.
April 10, 2006
The LA Times has a horribly shallow article with the headline "Chrisitans sue for right not to tolerate policies". The article discusses a suit against Georgia Tech's hate speech code and then lumps in a vast range of policies, some private and some public, from hate speech codes to anti-…
April 10, 2006
The Washington Post had an article today about the shrinking influence, membership and budget of the Christian Coalition, Pat Robertson's political wing that at one point controlled more than half of the state Republican party committees in the nation.
The once-mighty Christian Coalition, founded…
April 10, 2006
Jonathan Witt, one of the many DI shills, has posted one of the many ID responses to the find of Tiktaalik roseae. The most fascinating thing about the ID response to this find is how scatterbrained it's been. An organization famous for being able to stay "on message" can't seem to settle on a…
April 10, 2006
William Dembski is changing jobs. For a year, he's been teaching in Louisville (while commuting from Waco) at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; now he's going to be closer to home with a position at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth:
Dembski will become research…
April 10, 2006
Elizabeth Castelli, a religious historian, has an article at The Revealer analyzing the recent War on Christians conference in Washington DC.
April 10, 2006
And I don't mean the rape controversy on campus, I mean the basketball team for next year. They're already losing JJ Redick, Shelden Williams, Lee Melchionni and Sean Dockery to graduation, but now they're likely going to lose the only two big men they had returning next year. Eric Boateng, a…
April 9, 2006
Even finishing with a losing record at the national tournament can't slow down the publicity train that the Liberty University debate team is riding. The AP now has an article about it, picked up by, of all outlets, the Detroit News. I just sent a letter to the editor of the News taking them to…
April 9, 2006
MikeGene has publicly retracted his support for Forrest Mims' hysterical accusation that Eric Pianka is encouraging bioterrorism at Telic Thoughts. That should be applauded. The transcript of his speech, being played up hugely by Mims and Dembski's crew, simply doesn't support that charge. Yes,…
April 8, 2006
After Wes Elsberry found this article containing "cosmo theorist" Raj Baldev's take on the new fish-amphibian transitional fossil find, I have to confess to being a bit disappointed that the crew over at Dembski's home for wayward sycophants has apparently learned their lesson about citing Baldev.…
April 8, 2006
Nick Matzke has a brilliant post up at the Panda's Thumb about the DI and their fumbling reaction to Tiktaalik roseae and on the general issue of transitional forms. This isn't just a fisking, it's a royal beatdown. It's the DI crowd playing the role of the Washington Generals. And it's well worth…
April 8, 2006
Guess who's back? Back again. lamming's back...tell a friend. You have to see this amusing bit of stupidity from dlamming, the little brain pimple who got so obsessed with calling me an elitist a few weeks ago:
Last but not least, what weekend wouldn't be complete without another ridiculous post…
April 8, 2006
GG of Shiny Ideas has written a reply to my post on atheism and churchgoing. Unfortunately, I think he seriously misunderstands my position and thinks I'm making a much stronger argument than I am. He writes:
This goes back to my previous post about the numinous feelings induced by drug use. If you…
April 8, 2006
Larry Fafarman has posted a long comment on a thread below and I'm moving it up here to answer it because it raises a really important point on this trumped up controversy over why the Dover school board didn't rescind the ID policy on Dec. 5, 2005 at the first meeting they were sworn in at. He…
April 7, 2006
I mentioned a couple days ago the new fossil of a species dubbed Tiktaalik roseae, which beautifully fills a gap in the fossil record for the fish-amphibian transition. The response to this find from the ID creationists has been quite amusing. The DI media complaints division promptly posted a…
April 7, 2006
I want to thank everyone who was kind enough to send me banners to choose from. Several people did and they were all good. As someone who is completely clueless when it comes to the use of photo editing software, I am just amazed at what people can do with them and how quickly they can do it when I…
April 7, 2006
On the other side of the aisle from the last story, we have the spectacle of Cynthia McKinney and her ridiculous performance over the last week concerning her incident with the Capitol Police. After more than a week of trying to deflect responsibility and change the subject to racial profiling, she…
April 7, 2006
Yesterday's release of court documents from the special prosecutor in the Scooter Libby case, which say that Libby has testified that he was expressly told that President Bush himself had signed off on the release of classified information, could be the bombshell that brings down Bush. My father, a…
April 7, 2006
Jon Buell, the head of the Foundation for Thought and Ethics and publisher of the book Of Pandas and People (Pandas), has written a long essay criticizing Judge Jones' ruling in the Dover case. That's hardly a surprise, of course. The judge ruled against his position, how could he do anything but…
April 7, 2006
Christopher O'Brien, an anthropologist from Cal State-Chico, picks up on my fisking of George Sim Johnston's very bad article about the Darwin exhibit at the AMNH and adds a bit more detail specifically concerning Johnston's claims about human evolution. I also came across an old post of his that…
April 7, 2006
Mark Olson has an interesting post, responded to in part by Jason Kuznicki here, at least partly as a reply to things I and others have written lately about atheism and morality. It's worth a serious response, but first there are a couple of misconceptions to clear up. He writes:
Atheism is…
April 6, 2006
Eugene Volokh has a post about this suit, likely prompted by me bringing it up on his religion law listserv this morning, and he argues that it probably isn't unconstitutional but still troublesome. First amendment law is his specialty, so he's probably got a pretty firm grasp on it. I'm gonna take…
April 6, 2006
So I'm flipping the channels and I come across the 700 Club and Pat Robertson is talking about how there's too much sex on television and saying this is why our teenagers are having sex (right, because we never would have thought about sex as teenagers without watching Melrose Place). He referred…
April 6, 2006
There is an update at the bottom
Another commenter at UD made the following argument:
Under open meetings laws in most states, school boards can only consider items placed on the agenda IN ADVANCE. The old board decided not to put the ID policy on the December agenda. Yes, the new board was sworn…