creationism
gregladen | April 8, 2008In a move that now sends the deceptively named "academic freedom" bill to the Florida Senate floor, the Senate judiciary committee voted 6-3 to approve it. It looks like some Democrats can see the potential (almost guaranteed) lawsuit pitfalls to come, but the bill marches on nonetheless. I'll have more later ...
What's wrong with you people? Do we not ridicule you enough? Do you not feel stoopid enough? Are your jaws not slack enough and your chromosomes not homogeneous enough?
Get out there and De-Elect these Senators!
Florida Citizens for Science may have more soon. Here.
gregladen | April 8, 2008Florida Senate Bill S2692 is up for discussion and a decision to pass to the floor by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
BELOW YOU WILL FIND LINKS TO EMAIL EACH MEMBER OF THE COMMITTEE (except one, for whom I provide a phone number).
I'd say you don't need to be a Florida resident to let them know what you think. In fact, let them know that the whole world is watching!
I've got to say that this is one of the scariest bills I've seen in a while. Have a look:
The Teaching of Chemical and Biological Evolution [SPCC]; Cites act as the "Evolution Academic Freedom Act." Provides public school…
pharyngula | April 8, 2008On Saturday, 19 April, I'm supposed to be in a debate on campus. It's with Angus Menuge of Concordia University and the Discovery Institute, a fellow who did not impress Josh Rosenau, and who professes to have been converted by C.S. Lewis, which bodes ill right there. The organization has been a low-level, simmering clusterkluge ever since a few students asked me to do this months ago, exemplified now by the signs that have gone up all over campus that misspell my name (of course), and by this amazing announcement of the topic on the campus Lutheran ministry web page.
SPRING RETREAT: The…
pharyngula | April 8, 2008The Florida Senate Judiciary committee is meeting just a few hours from now to conder the fate of SB2692, the bill that would promote the teaching of creationism in science classes in that state. Call the members of the committee and tell them that you strongly oppose SB2692!
gregladen | April 7, 2008Oh, no, wait, I read that wrong...
.... "Creationist Book Pops Up .... In Scotland..."
Remember Harun Yahya's Atlas of Creation, the lavishly illustrated Islamic creationist book that first turned up in Turkey, then France and other European countries and prompted a disapproving resolution by the Council of Europe? It's now being mailed to universities in Scotland
The mysterious Istanbul writer Harun Yahya (actually Adnan Oktar) is clearly spending large amounts of money sending this unwelcome book around Europe. Where does he get it from?
[source]
Have you seen this book? I got my copy a…
gregladen | April 7, 2008Louisiana now has an Academic Freedom Act in the works. Academic Freedom Acts are right wing ploys to force specific issues ... or more commonly, specific politically or religiously motivated version of issues ... into the classroom at various levels. Academic Freedom Acts also typically are designed to silence faculty who teach things that conservatives, evangelicals, global warming deniers, and so on do not want to hear.
From a commentary in The Daily Advertiser:
Gov. Bobby Jindal's first regular-session legislative plan is designed to help Louisiana schools train a better work-force. So…
pharyngula | April 7, 2008The new generation of creationists has been doing something rather remarkable. Flaming anti-scientific religious nutcases like Wells and Dembski have been diligently going to real universities, not the usual hokey bible colleges, and working hard to get legitimate degrees in actual fields of science and math to get themselves a superficial veneer of credibility. It's basically nothing but collecting paper credentials, though, since they don't actually learn anything and never do anything with the knowledge they should have acquired, other than use it to razzle-dazzle the rubes.
One other…
pharyngula | April 7, 2008
One of the serious shortcomings of Intelligent Design is that it does nothing to provide any new or productive insights into the workings of biology. ID proponents seem to be at least vaguely aware of this failure, in that they do frequently claim to be thinking about working on a preliminary, tentative approach towards the beginnings of a potential research program (my paraphrase), but most of the effort has been directed towards political and legal enforcement of their ideas, rather than actually testing those ideas. One advantage of pursuing only legalisms is that they don't give…
evolvingthoughts | April 6, 2008
While it's always nice to see a scientists step up to argue that intelligent design or creationism ought not to be taught as science because they aren't science, this worries me somewhat:
Scientists have failed to explain the limits of science, Peshkin said. Science deals in what can be observed and measured through experimentation. Assertions or beliefs are not part of it. A theory, he said, is a hunch about how the world works that is then subjected to experimental observation.
Religion, on the other hand, accepts revealed knowledge. The two, therefore, take different approaches to…
mikethemadbiologist | April 6, 2008...maybe it's time for Martin Luther King's promised land. Maha explains what I mean:
Much of white America was still simmering with resentment over court-ordered school desegregation. Also, Lyndon Johnson had initiated New Deal-style programs aimed primarily at relieving poverty among African Americans. Suddenly, whites who had had no problem with "entitlements" before - when benefits went mostly to whites -- discovered the virtues of "self-reliance."
...The Right-Wing Narrative says that Democrats lost power because George McGovern opposed the Vietnam War, and the Dem Party was overrun by…
pharyngula | April 5, 2008Oh, but I do rankle Mark Armitage. He has taken to cc'ing me his email to others, all in this bluff, indignant, "me am too a scientist" pose, and it is hilarious. This is probably the last one I'll post here, but I do hope he keeps sending me this stuff — it provides a moment of levity.
Hello there,
How've you been lately? Things have been busy on my end. I'm enjoying my internship though.
Anyhow, I thought you might be interested to see this, if you already haven't. I've long been a reader of PZ Myers' blog (for reasons that I like to call "opponent research") and, although I'm not…
evolvingthoughts | April 4, 2008
Evilunderthesun is a German language blog that recently did two things: totally demolished the "Nazism was caused by Darwin" trope, with generous quoting of mich, and educated me that the word for April fool in German is Aprilschmerz, which I really like.
Tometheus (Prometheus' and Epimetheus' little brother, responsible for bringing egotism from the gods, I think) quotes my list as one of its favourite Aprilschmerzen.
It's good to be appreciated...
pharyngula | April 3, 2008Look at this: the Expellers are lying again. In this case, they're screening people who've asked to attend showings, and then, instead of just telling them that they are not invited, they're being cowardly and telling them that the screening has been cancelled. It's so pointless — they could just state the truth, that they are only allowing friendly reviewers into the early screenings, but instead they seem compelled to make up pathetic, transparent excuses. I guess once they started lying, they can't stop anymore.
(By the way, if you're expecting me to annoy Ben Stein for yet another weekend…
pontiff | April 3, 2008Oh no: do the Christian creationists know that by taking down Darwin they might inadvertently aid Eastern religions? Witness: the Bhaktivedanta Institute Newsletter. Personally I want a grunge match between the Discovery Institute and the Bhaktivedanta Institute to see who can out pseudoscience each other. "No my psychogenetic fallacy definitely trumps your silly fallacy of division!"
Among many gems in this newsletter, I particularly like their statement of purpose:
Modern science has generally been directed toward investigating the material world, excluding consideration of the conscious…
pharyngula | April 3, 2008Did you know that it is assumed that if you are a Christian and a teacher, that you oppose the teaching of evolution and want to introduce creationism into the classroom?
Did you know that people purporting to represent you will be going before state legislatures and telling your representatives that creationism is the Christian perspective?
Did you know that people are collecting stories about getting slapped down for teaching nonsense in science class, and are telling politicians that it's because they are Christian?
You know, I think Christianity is awfully foolish anyway, but I'm a…
pharyngula | April 2, 2008It's my afternoon for getting lots of whiny right-wing Christianist email, I guess. This one is notable, not for its content (which is predictable, humorless, and indignant, and just like most of the complaints I get), but for the fact that it was also sent to my chancellor and every member of the biology faculty. Nice work, spammer.
"Man-whore" - PZ Myers
"He (Professor Michael Behe of Lehigh University) is such a man-whore for creationism..." - PZ Myershttp://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/"Man-whore." Do you use such language in your department meetings at the University of Minnesota? How…
pharyngula | April 2, 2008My criticism of Mark Armitage's "research" published in the ICR "journal" seems to have struck a nerve — he just sent me (and his colleagues at the ICR) an angry letter in which I think he is attempting sarcasm, he just isn't very good at at it. Poor baby. Here it is:
I am SO THANKFUL and indebted to Paul Myers for the carefully crafted and dispassionate published critique (above) of my work on the complexity of certain trematodes. I especially appreciate the way it was pubished in a peer-reviewed journal such as Parasitology Research or the Journal of Parasitology (oops - I got that wrong…
pharyngula | April 2, 2008Mike Dunford has a series of articles on a recent California court decision — in brief, Christian homeschoolers tried to sue California universities to force them to accept courses taught with Christianist literalist creationist textbooks as legitimate, college-level science credit, and they lost. They lost hard.
But the really funny part is that the creationists brought in Mike Behe as a friendly witness. Behe was asked to review the creationist textbooks that they used, bad books that anyone can see are misleading, unrepresentative, and ridiculous, and he approved them. The man has no…
laelaps | April 2, 2008The release of the horrid film Expelled slithers ever closer, and it seems that the people behind the film are trying to surround the film with a sense of patriotism to get their target audience (fundamentalist Christians) to go see the film in droves. Indeed, they want everyone to start saying that the film will come out on "Freedom Friday" and start hounding local theaters to carry Ben Stein's box-office bomb. There's no indication yet whether any theaters near me are going to carry it, but even if they do I suspect that the propaganda piece is going to have a short, pitiful run.
pharyngula | April 2, 2008The Institute for Creation Research is a treasure trove of sloppy pseudoscience. I mentioned one "research" article that they put out that was nothing but a flurry of bible verses wrapped around an argument from incredulity; now a reader has pointed me to another article that tries very hard to ape the form of a real scientific paper, and fails horribly.
It's titled "COMPLEX LIFE CYCLES IN HETEROPHYID TREMATODES: STRUCTURAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL DESIGN IN THE ASCOCOTYLE COMPLEX OF SPECIES", by Mark Armitage. Oooh. Sounds so sciencey. And then you read further, and you see that it almost follows…