Florida Citizens for Science is asking for your contributions to a rebuttal they're working on. The organization got an op-ed published decrying the recent ID BS at the Sundome, and the local newspapers have published a series of replies that are stupefying in their ignorance. This should be easy.
One writer simply lies:
The scientific evidence for intelligent design would fill several editions of this newspaper. The scientific evidence for macroevolution, the formation of a new species by random mutation and natural selection (Darwinism), would not fill the period at the end of this sentence. The missing links are still missing.
Wow. Simultaneously claiming that there is no evidence for evolution while Intelligent Design creationism has lots is absurd: ID is not science, and the body of ID literature is negligible. There isn't any published research on ID; these people tend to publish extended tracts, lacking any evidence.
That was the high mark of this series of letters. Here's one that drools out one of the oldest canards in the book:
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is exactly what the name implies - a theory that has yet to be proven and will never be proven.
The writer doesn't know what the word theory means, and has no glimmering of the volume of
evidence for evolution.
Finally, the newspaper published a whole column on the subject from someone named Guy Fisher, who doesn't have a clue and merely parrots a list of scientists endorsing the existence of a controversy about evolution. It's rank quote mining. For instance, he quotes fragments from SJ Gould, Colin Patterson, and Eugenie Scott to give the impression that they have or had serious disagreements with evolution, tosses in some crackpottery from Fred Hoyle, and then scrapes the bottom of the barrel with some guy named Louis Boundoure, the wingnut economist Paul Craig Roberts, and the Discovery Institute. It's all common dishonesty.
Leave a comment at Florida Citizens for Science if you want to give them more ideas. It looks to me, though, that Florida creationists are a particularly stupid breed.
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Even more idiocy from Florida:
Nelson doesn't act like Christian, Harris says
Thank you very much for the mention, PZ. We at Florida Citizens for Science appreciate it. We almost have a response ready to go. There's a lot of ground to cover! We've also reached out to Dr. Scott and she might respond directly to the newspaper to correct the gross misuse of her quote.
It looks to me, though, that Florida creationists are a particularly stupid breed.
Believe me, they are. I deal with them on a daily basis.
Don't even have to be a Creationist to not get it.
Deepak Chopra
The Trouble With Genes
Florida Citizens for Science is asking for your contributions to a rebuttal they're working on. The organization got an op-ed published decrying the recent ID BS at the Sundome, and the local newspapers have published a series of replies that are stupefying in their ignorance. This should be easy.
Ummm. . .if this is so easy, why do they need contributions? Money is needed to write rebuttals? Is this being published in a vanity press?
Is every single word in American English now conflated with "money"? "Contribution" has a more obvious meaning in this context I think.
Hoody:
They were not asking for monetary contributions, but ideas and text.
Remember, reading is fundamental.
Money is needed to write rebuttals?
!!!
No, brains are need to write rebuttals. Also to contribute (as in write) comments. So, go away.
This Time article might help.
What Makes us Different?
Not very much, when you look at our DNA. But those few tiny changes made all the difference in the world
If they haven't already, they need to talk to Jim Strayer and Larry Mundinger at at Northeast Florida Humanists.
The scientific evidence for intelligent design would fill several editions of this newspaper. . . .
. . . using 1600-point type.
1) Lie.
2) Evolution cannot explain #1.
Conclusion: God did it.
1) Stray fact.
2) False claim that evolution cannot explain #1.
Conclusion: God did it.
These are the two main creationists arguments. Identify which you are dealing with. Point. Laugh.
hoody, appeals to ignorance do not constitute evidence, so if you're arguing for ID, you're a moron not using logic. Course, I for one already knew you were an idiot, but why do you troll here?
1) Lie.
2) Evolution cannot explain #1.
Conclusion: God dit it.
You mean evolution can't explain why God lied? (insert knee-slap here).
@Steve_C :
Oh My... This Deepak Chopra piece is quite the thing. Never seen someone use his overwhelming ignorance as an argument with such quiet confidence. Don't follow the link if you don't have time for rubish...
"--The ability of DNA to replicate has never been explained. "
Well, I guess not in primary school, but I definitely remember having to understand the data in favor of semiconservative replication in what would be 11th grade...
"--We don't know why over 90% of genes are inactive at any given time."
Nope. No Idea at all. Nevers heard of promoters enhancers, silencers, or iRNA. The latter never got the nobel prize to Fire and Craig.
And what are the credentials of the author uttering such BS? Oh, he wrote "Ten steps to reverse aging". *That*'s real good science.
First and last time I read the Huffington post!
If there's no scientific evidence for evolution, what do the IDers propose as scientific evidence for ID? Just saying it's so isn't evidence.
I've about given up. When I flip through the cable channels, I usually encounter two or three versions of the same quacks explaining that all human miseries are caused by a dirty colon. Now I would have thought that if any place on the planet had a right to be dirty, it would be my colon; but I'm obviously naive. Anybody know where I can buy a economy-sized package of superduper sized pipe cleaners?
Well, I wrote my own take on the anti-evolution columns. Basically, I ended up mostly explaining the difference between good science and bad science, giving evo-devo as an example of a serious critique of neo-Darwinism and contrasting it with the crackpot theory that is ID.
Orac knows more about colon cleansing than anyone. Any question you have, about your colon, Orac will know the answer.
Someone should print out every paper published in the last ten years on the evolution of, say, the fruit fly, and just truck it down to the local Capitol building. Then come back the next day with a bigger stack on the evolution of cats and dogs, and then PZ's collected works on squid, and so on and so forth. Then challenge the ID'ists to provide a similar stack.
A question that has always bothered me: If homo sapiens is the result of Intelligent Design, why are some members of that species capable of believing the staggering dreck that is Intelligent Design?
It seems so stupid its very popularity is evidence against Intelligent Design.
See On The Political Effects of Building a Schoolhouse Out of Peer-reviewed Papers on Evolution, Adams, Gould, and Dawkins, Annals of Improbable Research, 2019
A similar article was published in the Detroit News on Wednesday, which I used as fodder for my first attempt at a post on the subject. Just more of the usual. So I left it in a comment over at FCS.
Hmmm. Maybe it is a good idea for newspapers to employ panels of scientific experts like the courts do now so that they can vet out the numbskulls?
Will it be too much to ask, to allow as much time to teaching the gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster as to "Intelligent Design Theory"? After all, without invoking the Bible or Koran, there is no way to tell that the alleged designer is anyone but the Flying Spaghetti Monster...
llewelly: LOL! Were you thinking Douglas Adams?
It looks to me, though, that Florida creationists are a particularly stupid breed.
They are. I've lived among them for so long, though, that it hardly seems unusual anymore.