One of my students picked up this flyer in Minneapolis this weekend. It looks like the creationists are visiting the University of Minnesota this Wednesday and Friday!
They do love to book that auditorium in the Physics building — don't be fooled, though. None of the science departments on campus endorse this nonsense, and I know from talking to some of them that the faculty cringe at this use of their facilities…and you know the creationists do this for the faux-sciencey illusion that they're actually presenting their work in the heart of academia.
This talk is being presented by Dave Nutting of the Alpha Omega Institute, which, despite the grandiose name, is two wackaloons operating out of a small rental office next to a storage unit and behind the pet clinic in a Grand Junction, Colorado. They're doing a tour through central Minnesota, and are being promoted by our local collection of kooks, the Twin Cities Creation Science Association. I have no idea why it says Coca Cola at the bottom of the flyer; I hope they aren't sponsoring this silliness.
Unfortunately, I'm going to be in Washington D.C. this weekend, so I have to miss the circus. If you are in the neighborhood, please do show up, laugh, and report back.
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"I hope [Coca Cola] isn't sponsoring this silliness"
Pepsi is better anyway...
Sponsored by Coca Cola??
Alright, no Coke products in my shops.
No 7-up either (personal reasons).
I wish I could get up there.
I assume you'll stop by PZed?
Uh Oh! Coke Boycott!!!!
Just kidding ;)
This bunch of wackaloons headed by Mr. Nuthead!
(http://www.dawgsays.com/funtext/)
Apologies... had to mess up a really silly thing.. just like what this guys try to pass for science!
¡pɐǝɥʇnu ˙ɹɯ ʎq pǝpɐǝɥ suooןɐʞɔɐʍ ɟo ɥɔunq sıɥʇ
I'll be there for sure! Thanks for the notification!
*Omitting cheap joke about a creationist called Nutting *
Why on earth would that Physics Dept.let the deluded fundie morons into their building to talk rubbish?
Should have read the whole post.
PZed's gone!! Anybody else here that can go and raise some "hell"?
First year students should do...or high school dropouts.
Doesn't take much.
You know how you see those Coke and Pepsi signs at mom-and-pop stores, where it says "Bob's Grocery" on half the sign, "Pepsi Cola" on the other half? It's an advertising deal where the corporation pays for some or all of the cost of the sign, to get the permanent advertising.
It may be that Coke has a deal that pays for the printing of posters for events on college campuses, in return for the ad space.
Gotta love "the worldview" bs, where they show quite obviously this is about ideology.
Whatcha doing in DC this weekend?
I'm gonna boycott coke!
...sure, I don't drink the stuff anyway, but you know...
weird, I grew up in Grand Junction, CO and never even heard of the AOI. Of course when i looked at their map I saw what part of town it is in. The bad (retail wise, its hard for a small town to have a true bad part) part where many shops repeatedly open and close and they'll let anyone open up there in hopes of stability.
At least they're correct about battling "worldviews"--too bad they don't 'fess up and note that it's the evidence-based worldview (which our justice system depends upon, as much as science does) against the deny-everything-that-goes-against-ancient-lies worldview.
Still, a good word to use on college campuses, where some of the departments are too close to suggesting that all views are equally sound. If we're lucky, anti-science philosophies will be squashed along with the "design hypothesis."
Anyway, as usual for MN events, I'm sorry to find out about some entertainment that I can't hope to experience, it being over a thousand miles from where I live.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Note that in addition to "Coca Cola" at the bottom of the poster, it also says "Hosted by Maranatha Christian Fellowship" (as well as "http://www.discovercreation.org" which is the Alpha Omega Institute wackaloons' website).
The Maranatha Christian Fellowship has a website ( http://www.tc.umn.edu/~mcf/ ) whereon is a link to their "Evolution and Creation" website - which is a dead link! We should be able to do something with that.
Anyone want to go dressed as Flintstones characters? That would be worth a laugh or two.
#16
"You is talking loco and I like it! "
That 'discovercreation' website lists the '10 best evidences for creation', basically a summary of the most popular ID/creationist arguments. Many of them are worded quite humorously, worth a quick read.
The last statement from that particular page *almost* makes the whole thing look like a satire:
"Thus, if we follow that teaching [evolution] to its logical conclusion, we would recognize that it implies the Bible is not true, and simply a collection of stories and myths; and if that is true about the Bible, then God does not exist, and we have no need of a Savior."
Strange that after all the pseudoscience nonsense, it all comes down to 'the bible must be true, therefore evolution is false'.
So, is Nutting "Alpha" or "Omega"?
""I hope [Coca Cola] isn't sponsoring this silliness"
Pepsi is better anyway..."
Burn the heretic!
No 7-up either (personal reasons).
Same as for the seven dwarfs when they saw Snow White naked?
I don't think these people have any idea just what improbable means. Let's say we have a body of water with one billion microscopic thingies living in it; every hour the entire population is replaced by the next generation. In effect every day we have what amounts to 24 billion individuals living in that body of water. Now if the rate of favorable mutations is one per billion individuals, this means, including the generation produced by yesterday's last generation, a total of 24 favorable mutations. Multiply this by 365.25 and see what you get. Then multiply that result by 1 million. Four billion plus years isn't long enough?
Now expand our sample to world able to support a population of billions of billions of billions of microscopic thingies and you're going to see a shit load of evolving. Even if you restrict it to a 100 billion macroscopic thingies, inside a million years you'll still get a lot of evolving.
That's what the YECcies refuse to see, just how much has gone on over the course of some 4+ billion years. It's not just a matter of how much time has passed, but of how much has gone on during that time. Even if a species is limited to one favorable mutation every millennium, you still get 1,000 favorable mutations every million years. With the right favorable mutations you can get some serious changes over the course of a million years.
That is the great failure of the creationist, the refusal or inability to see the full scope of what has occurred. It is not just a matter of how much time has passed by, but how many lives there have been, how often new lives have arisen from old.
That's a dress up affair if I ever saw one. All the FSM pirate wench's should turn out in full sultriness. Leaflet the place too. A nice coven of witches dressed like Elvira is another idea.
Dang, wish I could go!
If this weren't so early (i.e. whilst I am working) I would definitely go to this and record it.
Ooh, these goobers are from my hometown. I know them well- typical creationist nonsense. Nothing new to offer, even for entertainment value.
indeed, what ARE you doin in DC this weekend? (inquires an interested local resident)
So... They are talking at the U on Wednesday and Friday, and you're gonna miss it because you'll be gone on the weekend? What did I miss?
Well, his partner seems to be his wife, and the bible ain't none too wishy-washy when it comes to a men's and women's respective places in the relationship.
Given the general integrity of godbotherers who feel the 'call' so strongly as to dedicate their lives to being annoying dinks to curriculum setters everywhere, I'm more curious as to under exactly which conditions I'm going to be seeing Dave's face on thesmokinggun.com in the next year or two. Outed by his meth-dealing prostitute lover? Dead of auto-erotic asphyxiation wearing two wetsuits and a large dildo? Caught stealing kidneys from orphans on the black market? Gosh, there are just so many crazy headlines to envision, and religious wackaloons never seem to disappoint in this regard.
Somebody should call and complain to Coca-Cola about this. I doubt that they would be amused by this linkage.
Wednesday is a teaching day, and I can't get away; Friday afternoon I'll be on a plane to DC.
Quote from the page 10 Best Evidences for Creation:
"and God Said It!
It is really hard to argue with the only One who claims to have been there when the universe and life began. He said He created everything to reproduce "after its own kind" -- not one kind changing into another."
A friend of mine who is a psychiatric nurse has met quite a number of people whom make this claim.
I can just see the title of their next news bulletin.
"Alpha and Omega Institute come to Myers home town. Instead of debate, he flees town."
Its all in the careful crafting of information. I had the Jehovahs Witness' at my door on Sunday. He was trying to botch a quote from Watson when I laid into him. I told him that lying was a sure way to make sure he never gets to heaven. Left him just sputtering, good fun.
Maybe they got a deal on used Coca cola letterhead?
I don't think Coke is sponsoring this silliness directly. My guess is that they gave a heap of money to UM in exchange for having their logo slipped into campus activities and the like.
Hello Pharynguloids. I've been on a Facebook group hosted by an infamous South African fundie named Johan Breytenbach. He has a few other names, but that is his common one. What do you think is the best way to respond to this common refrain of his...
"The medium used to store information has nothing to do with the information it contains,the same information can be stored using different mediums, there is nothing in the properties of the medium that can account for the origin of that information.
You cannot reduce life to chemistry or physics, for the reason that life is specified information. The source of the information transcends the medium like the source for the information of a printed page transcends the chemistry of the page."
well apparently some things don't go better with coke.
Where in DC will you be? Open to the general public? Can we buy you a beer? :)
I like their website: "top 10 EVIDENCES for creation." I could be wrong hear, but I don't think there is a plural noun form of the word evidence. They could say top ten pieces of evidence, or something like that. But there it is, bold as can be on top of the page. Hehe
Excuse me, "10 Best Evidences for Creation" which is actually even worse grammar.
I wonder if the hat lady will be there. I know I will.
It's bafflegab and Johan Swart is a kook.
Information cannot exist without being encoded in something, mass/energy. It is an attribute of matter or energy and has no independent existence of its own.
The claim that the source for information about life encoded in DNA exists apart from DNA and was created by supernatural being(s) reduces to the old fallacy, Fallacy from Ignorance and Personal Incredulity. "I can't see how my foot evolved, therefore god exists."
These are standard and very old creo fallacies, dressed up in complicated sounded bafflegab because Swart doesn't know any biology and is crazy.
Emerson,
As a physicist, I can tell you that it's complete hogwash. If Turing, von Neumann, Shannon, and others hadn't quantified "information" in a useful way, and Hofstadter made the argument of "figure and ground", Breytenbach would never have come up with his arguments.
Arguing that information is the same no matter where it's stored is ridiculous. If so, the phrase "in context" would have no meaning. Certainly, the concept of "immortal soul" would go right out the window, since one could easily write *that* information on a CD, which concept I doubt a fundie would like much. There are some very firm limits on what information can be produced/stored in the universe
"Life is specified information" has very little informational content of its own, and sounds like utter woo. He needs to clarify that in a way that is useful and predictive, which I'll be he can't do.
Apologies for the paragraph which ended abruptly. It should have read:
" [...] There are some very firm limits on what information can be produced/stored in the universe, based on such fundamental principles as E=mc^2, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and the entropy of black holes. I'd love to see Breytenbach's take on that."
Right on, man!
#9: It may be that Coke has a deal that pays for the printing of posters for events on college campuses, in return for the ad space.
I wouldn't be surprised. My alma mater has a Coca-Cola Refreshment Center.
Brownian, OM, #28:
Nit: In the last case of a godbotherer dieing of auto-erotic asphyxiation wearing two wetsuits, the man wasn't wearing the dildo - the dildo was wearing the man. Nonetheless...
Nit: In the last case of a godbotherer dieing of auto-erotic asphyxiation wearing two wetsuits, the man wasn't wearing the dildo - the dildo was wearing the man. Nonetheless...
pedant ;)
I think i might have woken the wife up laughing that that one
Now that's old hat!
*ba-dum-pum*
Anyone?
Someone?
Try the veal?
This has nothing to do with your post, but it does have to do with you, PZ. It's old, but I don't remember seeing it on your blog.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=69524
Is Coca Cola really sponsoring this rubbish?
Please, PZ, I have looked all over this site trying to find your speaking schedule. I am in Maryland a reasonable drive from either DC or Philly and would like to hear you speak. How do I do this?
If the medium on which information is stored really doesn't matter, then does that mean if I write down the entire genome of a bird onto a piece of paper, should not the paper spontaneously fold itself a pair of wings and fly away?
What is this world coming to?
When I was a student, way back in 1984, the "Walker Brothers" came to UCSC and gave a presentation outlining their backpacking trip from Alaska to the Mexico-US Border. Fantastic.
Later, a group of students invited me to "Leviticus", in which they read the entire book from beginning to end, along with a slide show. I went home afterward, and without blinking an eye, without a tinge of emotion, I left the church. I have never looked back. Zero regrets.
I day hike as much as I can now.
You can do the math yourselves.
Ya gotta love the Yeccers, they are certainly the most special of all the creationists.
I love the website, it looks like an elementary school class project.
my favorite is the kid's page, print out coloring book pages. Bottom right drawing is so precious.
http://discovercreation.org/kidpage/Printouts.htm
Vote! Today is your last chance.
I could use a good laugh before class... maybe I'll stop by.
My prediction:
Willfully ignorant windbags will attempt to discredit the ideas of Darwin (which were great, but are now much refined and built upon) by asking questions which are not only easily answered, but are usually questions Darwin himself presented as possible objections to his theory before offering possible explanations. They won't even get to the interesting ones about bees.
Pelt them with copies of Origen, and let them read it themselves instead of wasting everyone's time (they can skip the chapter about pigeon breeding, everyone I know did).
I don't know...this one worries me. It looks like they're planning to discuss fossils, strata, and worldviews.
All three!!!!!
My family has owns stock in the Coca-Cola Bottling Corporation. As a share holder this actually bothers me. Is the company I have stock in actually sponsoring creationist talks? Is this just a group using the company trademark without license to do so?
I'll have to see who to contact to find out.
So, like, are they EVER going to give up the 'evolution is all blind chance' thing?
I don't think Coca Cola really cares where their logo shows up. Even YEC and IDiots drink softdrink (sodas to you Americans).
Will there be quotemining? That would be nice. I like reading quotes.
Though I hear that quotemines are dangerous and maim a lot of children every year. There should be a campaign about that. There's so much creationist literature with so much quotemining lying around... if a child picks it up he's likely to suffer for years to come.
I like the "former evolutionist" title. It seems like the guy was an evolutionary biologist, but at one point he preferred to change job. Or do you think it's something else... ?
And Nutting is a great name, and a very appropriate one. It could be a new word, as in "oh, please! stop your nutting!".
As for the relationship with Coca-Cola, I think it's just a mistake. Those guys use coke, not Coke. They just took the wrong logo.
don't be fooled, though. None of the science departments on campus endorse this nonsense, and I know from talking to some of them that the faculty cringe at this use of their facilities.
It's funny how one has to put a disclaimer. I must have missed that claim in the ad, where it said the science departments on campus endorsed their position...lol...Don't be fooled, there was no such claim.
It's sad that the faculty cringes on the public using their facilities. In fact, it's not just theirs, but taxpayers as well...Don't ya love America! YEA!
Those who can vote legally in America, DON'T FORGET TO VOTE!
For a minute I thought that said 'Fossils, *Santa*, and Worldviews.
Of course, that would probably also have been more accurate coming from an I.D. proponent.
#35--I guess one response to this could be that when you
open a bible, or a copy of The Iliad, the information
encoded there has appeared in many different forms--
starting as memorized recitations, then put in writing,
then translated into many other languages in many
different media. In the case of genetic information,
there has only been one medium--complex molecules made
of CHON with a little additional P & S. The two
examples look fundamentally different.
I just sent Coke a quick message regarding the poster at http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/contactus/cokefeedback/index.html .
However, I do agree with #9,#34 and #45. I don`t think they did it on purpose.
"Both of you gentlemen are equally handsome and masculine, so that begs the question... who's the alpha and who's the omega?" *winkwink*
PZ: Forgive me if I missed it, but will you be meeting with your public in D.C.?
Pretty please??
Since you're going to be in D.C., make sure to eat at Pasta Mia in Adams Morgan. Best Italian on the planet. And when I say "best Italian on the planet", I am mindful of Chicago- and Italy.
PZ, the suspense is killing me. You must tell us more about your plans while you are in D.C. Like where will you be consuming beer and can I consume beer with you there?
Vote today folks. It's important.
I'm meeting with AU people. I will be giving a talk on Saturday evening -- I'll post more details as soon as I have them.
"Daved Nutting"?
Now if there ever was name for a creationist.
Coca-cola does a lot of sponsoring stuff at UMN. I was on the planning committee for a lit conference in Minneapoils some years ago and we managed to rustle up some money from coke. Actually, I think they'll sponsor just about anything that goes on at the university. Or let me correct: now I know they will sponsor just about anything that goes on at the university.
I'm in St. Cloud now and I saw these fliers (minus the coke logo) around. Depressing.
Tom is right on the money. Coca-cola offers grants to UMN clubs. They fill out some forms and presto, they can get a couple of grand to sponsor any student event, including ones advocating against Coke. As long as the forms are filled out correctly, no one cares what the event really is.
I've had several of these flyers handed to me... Often accompanied by anti-homosexual flyers or ones saying that we shouldn't be asking what Earth was like a million years ago, but "was there really a million years ago?" Is anyone going to this event to raise hell? I'd imagine there will be some, especially because it's in the physics building. I'd love to see a good show.
Maranatha Christian Fellowship is a wretched hive of scum and Dominionism. Dogemperor on DailyKos and Dark Christianity has written quite a bit about them.
"Blind chance or intelligent design"
Not the false dichotomy logical fallacy again!!!! How many times do we have to say it- Natural selection isn't blind chance! Hence the word "selection". For f*** sake it isn't that difficult to understand.
Unfortunately I have a real biology class that day at the time in the Molecular and Cellular biology building and so I guess I'll have to settle for the sort of instruction that actually earns me a useful degree. I suppose i'll have to go along with the Darwinist conspiracy a little while longer.
BTW are there any UMN east bank pharyngulites out there? I'd be interested in meeting up sometime.
Gah! I have biology at that time friday too!