Anti-Creationism
jrosenhouse | June 2, 2009Looks like Richard Dawkins has a new book coming out. It's called The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence For Evolution. I can't wait to read it!
But wait a sec? Didn't Jerry Coyne just write that book? Yes, I believe he did. It was called Why Evolution is True. No subtitle needed; the title pretty much says it all.
BOOK FIGHT!
Dawkins certainly wins round one: Better title. Why Evolution is True sounds like the start of a philosophical discussion. The evidence Coyne meticulously documented is not the reason why evolution is true. It is merely the reason we are confident that…
jrosenhouse | March 20, 2009You've heard of those parasites that can invade other creatures and turn them into zombies, mindlessly doing the parasite's bidding? Well, if Ken Ham is is to be believed, that's pretty much what has happened to our own P.Z. Myers:
As you watch this intriguing video exchange, please note that Dr. Purdom circles back from time to time to engage [Michael Shermer] in some of the more urgent aspects of the creation/evolution question, including how the gospel message is connected to Genesis. This video, by the way, has become somewhat popular on the web. It's been picked up by other…
jrosenhouse | February 27, 2009Writing at Christian Today Tony Campolo has unleashed a stunningly stupid barrage of attacks against Charles Darwin.
Campolo is a bit of a celebrity among the evangelical left. He can thump his Bible with the best of them, but also defends progressive political positions. That he is usually a rare voice of political moderation in an ocean of evangelical narrow-mindedness makes this essay especially disappointing. We consider his essay in full.
Campolo begins:
Many supporters of the principle of separation of church and state say that the Intelligent Design Theory of creation ought not…
jrosenhouse | February 20, 2009The general blog drought around here lately will, regrettably, continue a while longer as I dig out from under a big pile of work that isn't getting done on its own. But I just had to poke my head up for a minute to comment on this bit of silliness from the lunatics over at Uncommon Descent.
By now I'm sure you've seen the New York Post cartoon, in which a policeman, having just shot and killed a chimpanzee, remarks, “They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” This was a play off the recent story about the pet chimpanzee who went crazy and mauled a woman. The…
jrosenhouse | January 30, 2009We close the week's blogging by savoring an amusing example of just how bad things have gotten for the creationists.
For as long as there have been creationists there has been the argument from complex structures. You know the one I mean. Some erstwhile evolution critic points to some complex structure and says, as smugly as possible, “Surely something that complex could not have evolved by natural means.” Then they slink on back to their hidey hole perfectly secure in the belief that they have just said something clever.
The annals of creationism record many such examples. For a time…
jrosenhouse | January 16, 2009And let us conclude the week's blogging with some wise words from the Financial Times:
Yet at the beginning of the 21st century, evolution is under sustained attack from creationist theories inspired by fundamentalist religion -- sometimes dressed in scientific clothing as “intelligent design”. Opinion polls show that more Americans believe in Biblical creation than evolution, and even in Europe's relatively secular societies a growing minority rejects Darwin.
Many scientists and liberal politicians regard the rising creationist tide as a side-show that they can safely ignore. They are wrong…
jrosenhouse | January 3, 2009As a companion piece to the last post, I recommend the sledgehammer vs. the fly exchange between Ken Miller and Casey Luskin. Miller is a biologist at Brown University, and is the author of Finding Darwin's God and Only a Theory, two of the most important popular-level evolution books of recent memory. Luskin is the Discovery Institute's lead blog hack. He has a law degree. Luskin tried to argue biology (blood clotting, to be exact) with Miller. Miller ate him.
Luskin served up three posts: Part One, Part Two and Part Three.
Miller has replied to Part One here, and to Part Two here.…
jrosenhouse | December 21, 2008As you have probably noticed, I haven't been blogging lately. This is because ever since the semester ended I've been gradually slogging through all of the annoying little work-related tasks that have been put on the back-burner for the last six weeks or so. And since many of these tasks entail many hours spent in front of the computer, I haven't been in the mood to spend still more time in that position by blogging.
I have, however, found time to get some reading done, so how about I start unloading some book reviews? We shall begin with light fare. I just finished reading an amusing…
jrosenhouse | December 9, 2008I've been a bit derelict in my blog reading lately, so I overlooked this post by Wesley Elsberry. His subject is a comment left by William Dembski at his (Dembski's) blog, in response to this post.
Dembski, it seems, now admits that he has been wasting everyone's time for quite a while.
Dembski's comment comes in a series of numbered points. Here's the first:
(1) I've pretty much dispensed with the EF. It suggests that chance, necessity, and design are mutually exclusive. They are not. Straight CSI is clearer as a criterion for design detection.
For those not fluent in crankspeak, EF…
jrosenhouse | November 10, 2008One of the great frustrations in responding to creationist literature is their penchant for using technical sounding jargon in ways no scientist would recognize. A good example is their use of the word “information.” This word has a variety of meanings within mathematics, but creationists usually do not intend any of them when they say, “Natural selection can not lead to information increase in the genome.” Instead they mean something like, “I find it hard to believe that evolution can lead to organisms becoming more complex over time.” That is why they are generally unmoved when you ask…
jrosenhouse | November 6, 2008Now that the big election is over, it's time to get away from political blogging for a while and return to what this blog was created to do: bash creationists. So have a look at this article from The New Scientist:
“You cannot overestimate,” thundered psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, “how threatened the scientific establishment is by the fact that it now looks like the materialist paradigm is genuinely breaking down. You're gonna hear a lot in the next calendar year about... how Darwin's explanation of how human intelligence arose is the only scientific way of doing it... I'm asking us as a…
jrosenhouse | October 30, 2008Not really, of course. But I like his zombie analogy:
When the distinguished philosopher Philip Kitcher recently addressed the creationist movement in his Living With Darwin, he judiciously assessed creationism in its latest incarnation as historically respectable but currently bankrupt, and proposed to describe it as “dead” science. “In light of its shambling tenacity,” I replied, “'zombie science' is perhaps a preferable label.” (I was writing in a scholarly journal, so I resisted the temptation to add a reference to “Romero 1968” or “Wright 2004”.)
I guess that Halloween came early to…
jrosenhouse | August 30, 2008Time to wrap this up. So here are a few more interesting moments from the conference.
The one genuinely interesting talk I attended had nothing to do with science at all. It was entitled “A Critique of the Precreation Chaos Gap Theory,” and was delivered by John Zoschke, a pastor from Kansas. Zoschke was keen to refute one particular form of the Gap Theory, which, in an attempt to reconcile Genesis with the long ages revealed by geology, inserts a long gap of time between two of the early verses in Genesis. (Which two depends on the particular version of the Gap Theory under consideration…
jrosenhouse | August 29, 2008This article, from Mother Jones, has some smirk-worthy quotable bits. It's subject is the recent convention of the Fellowship of Christian Magicians:
To demonstrate one of his favorite bits of legerdemain, Laflin selects a boy named Drake and asks him to mark a quarter. "This quarter represents Drake's life," announces Laflin, delivering a stream of well-rehearsed patter. "Now, it's a treasure, isn't it?" He places the coin in a small box, and retrieves a silver cube, which, he says, represents God's will for Drake's life. "Would you like to know what's in the cube?" Laflin asks. Drake nods…
jrosenhouse | August 26, 2008Here are a few more vignettes from the big conference.
A fellow named Mark Matthews gave a presentation arguing that the Earth was located at or near the center of the universe. Most of the talk was given over to a discussion of the so-called “Fingers of God.”
According to the ever-useful Wikipedia:
Fingers of God is an effect in observational cosmology that causes clusters of galaxies to be elongated in redshift space, with an axis of elongation pointed toward the observer.[2] It is caused by a Doppler shift associated with the peculiar velocities of galaxies in a cluster. The large…
jrosenhouse | August 24, 2008An interesting exchange took place during the Q and A of a talk entitled “Georgia Public School Board Members' Beliefs Concerning the Inclusion of Creationism in the Science Curriculum.” The speaker was Kathie Morgan of LIberty University.
The talk itself was unremarkable, even by the crushingly low standards of creationist scholarship. The premise was that there are ways of bringing creationism into the classroom, in the form of supplementary materials beyond what the state requirements mandate, that do not run afoul of any Supreme Court rulings. Morgan and her colleagues decided to…
jrosenhouse | August 21, 2008Only time for quick blogging today, so go have a look at Peter Buckland's interesting post in response to my reports of the big creationism confab. Here's a taste:
That stereotype exists, but it's not nearly complete as I have surely learned by attending local Science and Religion forums at a local church. Most people are interested and thoughtful. There's a lot of thought.
It's just bad thought.
Well said!
jrosenhouse | August 20, 2008Some of the comments to my posts on the creationism conference reminded me of a scene from the movie Heat, released in 1995. Al Pacino played Vincent Hannah, a detective for the LAPD investigating a crew of professional bank robbers. Robert DeNiro played Neil McCauley, the leader of the crew. (Short review: Pretty good movie, but marred somewhat by being too long and by Pacino's occasionally cartoonish overacting. Better the second time through, since you know when you have to pay attention.)
Roughly two-thirds of the way through the film Hannah knows everything about McCauley, but does…
jrosenhouse | August 18, 2008Here's a picture to warm your heart:
It comes from the closing presentation of the conference, entitled “The Creation Model: It's Past, Present and Necessary Future,” by Andrew Snelling. Here's another one:
Guess I should stop worrying. Actually, the best moment in Snelling's talk came later. Ever wondered where to locate the real problem with modern creationism?
What if there was absolutely no evidence that the universe was young? No scientific evidence the universe was young. Would you still believe that it was young? Why? Because God's word teaches it. That's the only reason…
jrosenhouse | August 17, 2008
Usually I write these accounts in strict chronological order. I will break from that tradition this time since one of my most interesting experiences at the conference came right near the end. I had made a pest of myself during several of the Q and A's after the talks, meaning that by the third day of the conference I had a bit of a reputation. Late in the day a pleasant enough fellow approached me in the bookstore, and we had a conversation.
I asked him flat out why he was a creationist. He replied with a brief biography about how he came to Christ when he was twelve, but didn't really…