Anti-Creationism
jrosenhouse | May 12, 2007P.Z. Myers does not agree with my take on Mitt Romney's statement regarding evolution.
Now, I agree with P.Z. on about 99% of everything in life. But on this one, and on theistic evolution generally, he is way off.
Let's start with his title: “Mitt Romney, theistic evolutionist...and this is supposed to be a good thing?”
My answer: Yes! This is an unambiguously good thing.
Not the best thing, certainly. The best thing would be for him to denounce God belief as silly and to affirm that scientists have no need of that hypothesis. But this is one of those times where we shouldn't make the…
jrosenhouse | May 11, 2007According to Michael Luo at The New York Times blog, Mitt Romney has clarified his views on evolution. Here's the set-up:
Mitt Romney expanded on his belief in evolution in an interview earlier this week, staking out a position that could put him at odds with some conservative Christians, a key voting bloc he is courting.
Mr. Romney, a devout Mormon, surprised some observers when he was not among those Republican candidates who raised their hands last week when asked at the Republican presidential debate if they did not believe in evolution. (Senator Sam Brownback, former Gov. Mike Huckabee…
jrosenhouse | May 3, 2007Ed Brayton, Orac, and the Hoofnagles have already covered this story (click here, here, and here, respectively.) But why should they have all the fun?
Over at Uncommon Descent, Salvador Cordova discusses the MacCallum essay, Now, I've seen several of Salvador's public presentations. So I am well aware of his rather imaginative use of quotations. He almost seems to prefer quoting people inaccurately to giving his audience an accurate view of what was said.
But this one is low, even for him. MacCallum opens her essay with the following paragraph:
It is curious that Charles Darwin,…
jrosenhouse | April 24, 2007Ooblog presents a fascinating exchange that he had with Discovery Institute blogger Michael Egnor.
The exchange centers on Egnor's oft repeated challenge to Darwinists to explain how it is possible for naturalistic processes to explain the growth of information during evolution. This nonsensical argument is a frequent guest in creationist and ID literature.
Ooblog quite reasonably asked Egnor to explain what he meant by information in this context. The subsequent exchange of e-mails makes for interesting reading.
Here is the first exchange. First Ooblog:
Dear Dr. Egnor,
A while back, I…
jrosenhouse | April 23, 2007For my Virginia based readers, Nikhil Rao, founder of the group Conservatives Against Intelligent Design, will be speaking to the Alliance for Science tomorrow, April 24. The talk will be held at the Arlington Central Library, 1015 N. Quincy Street in Arlington, VA. More information is available here.
Conservatives Against Intelligent Design? Sounds like an oxymoron to me! Guess I better go check it out...
jrosenhouse | April 22, 2007Over at William Dembski's blog, GilDodgen asks the following:
Even the most vociferous and vehement ID opponents (e.g., Richard Dawkins) admit that design in nature appears to be self-evident. Why then, the heroic efforts to explain design away, with such silliness as random variation and natural selection providing the engine that produced highly sophisticated biological software and information-processing systems?
I remain completely bewildered by the fact that intelligent, educated people cannot recognize this obvious act of denial and desperation. On the other hand, perhaps they don't…
jrosenhouse | April 22, 2007With everything else that has been going on lately, I never got around to discussing Pope Benedict's latest statements on evolution.
Here's what Reuters had to say on the subject:
Pope Benedict, elaborating his views on evolution for the first time as Pontiff, says science has narrowed the way life's origins are understood and Christians should take a broader approach to the question.
The Pope also says the Darwinist theory of evolution is not completely provable because mutations over hundreds of thousands of years cannot be reproduced in a laboratory.
But Benedict, whose remarks were…
jrosenhouse | April 2, 2007Two weeks ago I joined the chorus of Science Bloggers bashing Michael Egnor for his posts at the Discovery Institute's blog. I pointed out a fairly straightforward error in one of his posts. At that time I mentioned that I hadn't jumped in earlier because Egnor's arguments revolved around medical practice, which is a subject I know little about. I also wrote this:
I figured I would weigh in when he started parroting those insipid probability arguments creationists find so appealing.
At the time I was being facetious. I didn't think he would really go there. I mean, really, no one with…
jrosenhouse | April 2, 2007The folks over at Uncommon Descent have unveiled a new blogger: mathematician Granville Sewell. He's the latest know-nothing to convert a comically simplistic version of the second law of thermodynamics into an anti-evolution argument.
Of course, this is one of those shark-jumping, litmus-test arguments that tell you immediately you are dealing with a crank. The second law of thermodynamics and modern evolutionary theory are not in conflict. That is a fact, not an opinion. Anyone claiming they are in conflict is confused about at least one of them, and probably both.
I have previously…
jrosenhouse | March 30, 2007Read: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four.
I walked back to the convention center with the sixteen year old. The rest of the posse went a different direction. He seemed keen to persuade me of the absurdity of attributing consciousness to the purely physical properties of the brain. The most interesting part of this conversation was his complete confidence that animals, not even chimpanzees, are not conscious. “That's what it means to say we are created in God's image,” he informed me.
Thanks to the long line at Subway, we arrived back at the convention center more than halfway…
jrosenhouse | March 29, 2007Read: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
So I'm standing on line at Subway, contemplating the very long wait between me and my turkey on wheat, when I happen to overhear part of the conversation going on among the people immediately in front of me. There were four people, an older woman and three teenagers. At this point I thought the woman was the mother of the three teens, but later I would learn they were not related.
The woman was talking animatedly to the kids. “Did you see those people with the Happy Atheist shirts?” she said. “They were handing out leaflets.”
I perked up.…
jrosenhouse | March 28, 2007Read Part One and Part Two.
Stephen Meyer was next up. Strobel and Richards played their parts well, but, let's face it, the conference thus far had mostly been amateur hour. Strobel stepped in it every time he mentioned something vaguely scientific, but he's not exactly thrust forward as one of the major intellects of the ID movement. Richards presented his goofy argument with sufficient eloquence, but there was too little of substance in his presentation to make him worth too much emotional energy.
But with Meyer we hit the ID big time. Meyer, you will recall, is the one who managed to…
jrosenhouse | March 27, 2007Read Part One of this series here.
At this point Strobel and Meyer left the stage. The room grew dark, and a video came on the large screen to my left. It was an excerpt from the The Privileged Planet, based on the book of the same title. The book was written by astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez and theologian Jay Richards, and represented yet another gloss on the fine-tuning argument.
Richards was the next speaker. I had not read The Privileged Planet when it was published, and therefore was only vaguely familiar with its arguments. After hearing Richards speak, I'm not inclined to buy…
jrosenhouse | March 26, 2007The ID folks put on one of their dog and pony shows in Knoxville, TN this weekend. My curiosity piqued, I decided to check it out.
So I left big bowls of food and water for the cats, piled into the Jason-mobile, pointed it South, and wound up in Knoxville six hours later. Things got off to an inauspicious start when I discovered that the highway exit recommended by MapQuest was closed for construction. Resourceful guy that I am, I overcame this difficulty and found my hotel. Killed the rest of Friday walking around the University of Tennessee campus and engaging in a fruitless effort to…
jrosenhouse | March 22, 2007Over at Red State Rabble, Pat Hayes has some further thoughts on the Darwin quote I discussed yesterday. Turns out Dembski's even more vile than I thought. After reproducing the quote in question, Hayes writes:
And Dembski, of course, drives home the point that these sorts of views, while once popular, are now beyond the pale by adding: "What a great mind, indeed. What a wonderful human being. What a marvelous vision of the human family."
Is this what Darwin really believed? Is it true that Darwin's theory of evolution, as the comments to Dembski's post attest, is the basis for racism,…
jrosenhouse | March 21, 2007While I was slumming over at Dembski's blog I cam across a link to this article, by right-wing superhack David Horowitz. Apparently Dembski's crew thought this little essay was helpful to the cause.
Horowitz is discussing the horrors perpetrated by Women's Studies Departments in the name of “Social Constructivism:”
A year ago the biggest issue in education after budgets was whether “Intelligent Design” should be taught in the nation's schools. Opponents called it a form of “creationism” and the press dubbed the ensuing legal battle as the biggest clash between faith and science since the…
jrosenhouse | March 21, 2007In yesterday's post I remarked that people seem to lose their minds upon deciding to become anti-evolution advocates. There is no better case in point than William Dembski. Ten years ago he was the star of the ID movement. A well-credentialed scholar with shiny new ideas holding down an actual academic position and publishing books with credible publishers.
Those days are long gone. Nowadays he only seems to find time to post brief missives at one of the most cartoonishly ignorant blogs on the Web: Uncommon Descent. I stopped paying attention to the blog a while back, figuring Dembski…
jrosenhouse | March 13, 2007I've just finished rereading Ed Larson's book Summer for the Gods. I first read this book in graduate school, before I had developed any serious interest in evolutionary biology.
The book is about the Scopes' trial and its aftermath. As an account of the trial itself, it pales in comparison to L. Sprague de Camp's much better book, The Great Monkey Trial. But Larson does provide more historical context than Sprague de Camp.
It is striking how many of the themes of the Scopes trial still have resonance today. Local control of school curricula vs. the establishment clause of the first…
jrosenhouse | March 7, 2007According to this news brief, the Idaho Science Teacher's Association has come out against teaching ID in science classes:
Science teachers in Idaho are officially against teaching intelligent design in the state's public schools.
The Idaho Science Teachers Association has approved the official position, saying teachers in public schools are charged with teaching methodology that's been approved by the scientific community.
Intelligent design contends that complex living organisms must have been created by a higher being.
The Association's president says the teacher's group isn't taking a…
jrosenhouse | March 7, 2007Have a look at this brief account of a recently unearthed fossil dinosaur. As reported by the International Herald Tribune, it provides yet another example of those transitional forms creationists say do not exist:
Ryan named the new dinosaur Albertaceratops nesmoi, after the region and Cecil Nesmo, a rancher near Manyberries, Alberta, who has helped fossil hunters.
The creature was about 20 feet (6 meters) long and lived 78 million years ago.
The oldest known horned dinosaur in North America is called Zuniceratops. It lived 12 million years before Ryan's find, and also had large horns.…