creationism
mikethemadbiologist | March 25, 2008
If you missed my talk, then you missed this slide
I leave to give a talk for a few hours, and suddenly all hell breaks lose on ScienceBlogs over the whole PZ Myers getting expelled from the movie Expelled incident, you damn kids! So I thought I would peeplay too.
First, I'm not sure the charge that this helps the movie is true: since the Great Expulsion, there have been cancellations of some pre-release showings. But this incident, and various ScienceBloglings' reactions to it, to me, appears to be functioning as a Rorschach blot for a whole host of larger issues.
One of the things that…
gregladen | March 25, 2008You've probably already seen this: it is a bunch of crazy home schooling creationists demonstrating that they are utter, incurable morons. In this video, they are seen committing child abuse. Again and again and again.
I stole it from Pharangula, he stole it from Sandwalk.
DO YOU REALLY WANT TO APPEASE THESE PEOPLE, PEOPLE??????
Chris and Matt do.
pharyngula | March 25, 2008The volume of email coming into my mailbox is a bit overwhelming right now — that silly story about getting expelled from Expelled was funny enough that it got picked up all over the world, an opportunity that you'd think some communications experts would use advantageously … but that's another argument. There has been an uptick in nasty "I-will-pray-for-you-and-laugh-when-you-roast-in-hell" messages, but the majority have been positive, with a lot saying they like the site and are going to be return readers. This is not going to be an all-Expelled-all-the-time blog, however, despite the fact…
evolvingthoughts | March 24, 2008
I once sat across the table from Alex Rosenberg, a well known philosopher, who argued persuasively that one cannot be both a Christian and accept natural selection. I think Alex intended this as a reductio for Christianity, as natural selection is both true by definition and also observed in the real world. Is it correct?
The recent Frame Wars (which followed the Clone Wars) suggest this is really what's at issue in the Expelled case (Yes, I said I wouldn't post on it, but this is broader than that kerfuffle). Is accepting evolution going to make nasty atheists of us all?
Let's think of…
evolvingthoughts | March 24, 2008
This is a nice review in New Scientist, obviously "framed" more in sorrow and confusion than in anger, which ends with
Throughout the entire experience, Maggie and I couldn't help feeling that the polarised audience in the theater was a sort of microcosm of America, and let me tell you - it's a scary place. I also couldn't help thinking that the intelligent design folks aren't being silenced, so much as they're being silent. Because when it comes to actually explaining anything, they've got nothing to say.
clock | March 24, 2008My SciBling Mike the Mad Biologist will speak tonight at the Boston Skeptics meeting. The title of the talk is "Defending Evolution the Right Way: As a Fundamental Part of Biology and Biomedicine, Not as a Cultural Icon." so it is bound to be interesting. If you are in Boston tonight at 7pm, go and see it at The Asgard.
pharyngula | March 24, 2008Watch this appalling video of homeschoolers misusing the Denver museum to promote creationism. Aside from the general pattern of lies from the tour guides, two things jumped out at me.
The really awful pedagogy. Over and over again, the creationist says some stock phrase and then pauses, waiting for his kids to fill in the missing word. This is simply demanding rote learning. Similarly, he leads the kids in asking a good question — "how do you know?" — while training them to ignore any answers. Right there on the wall is a description of radiometric dating methods, for instance, and they…
gregladen | March 24, 2008Here is an updated set of links to postings on the critique of Myers and Dawkins' response to Myers-Dawkins-Expelled!-Gate. The point of these links is to provide quick access to the critiques coming from The Intersection and Framing Science blogs, and responses to them. I'm not going to keep updating this entry, so if you have any links please add them in the comments.
If your comment gets moderated it is probably because links with comments get tossed automatically in the dungeon, sometimes. I'll be checking the dungeon now and then and freeing such links.
It all started here:
EXPELLED!…
mikethemadbiologist | March 24, 2008...then they wouldn't have to keep secrets. The remarkable thing about ID creationists (and young earthers too) is that they can't be honest. Because ID creationism has no predictive power (except for the parts where 'standard' evolutionary theory is operative), they are forced to fall back on slogans such as "teach the controversy." Granted, most don't care about science at all, but, instead, want to use ID as a battering ram to further a social and theological agenda. Amanda summarizes this very nicely:
...it's not unusual to hear a story about creationists keeping a shroud of…
gregladen | March 24, 2008Myers? Myers? .... Myers? ..... Myers? (He's not here, Ben ... Your producer threw him out.)You know about the incredibly ironic dust up, whereby Expelled! producers kicked PZ myers out of line at a pre-release showing, but failed to notice that Richard Dawkins was standing right next to him. The evidence suggests that this major bit of bad publicity for Expelled! may have led to the movie being pulled from some pre-release showings. It it too early to be sure of this, and there may be several factors other than the utter embarrassment of this incident at play here. For instance, it is…
pharyngula | March 24, 2008My account of the affair at the Mall of America has been confirmed by none other than the movie producer, who wrote to Denyse O'Leary:
You should know that I invited Michael shermer to a screening at NRB in Nashville. He came and is writing a review for scientific American. I banned pz because I want him to pay to see it. Nothing more.
This is what I've been saying all along; I was not "unruly", nor was I "gatecrashing"; Mathis saw me there, and on a petty, arbitrary, vindictive whim decided to have me thrown out without legitimate cause. It really is that simple. That is how creationists…
evolvingthoughts | March 23, 2008
So here's a neo-Thomist talking about species, and not getting it due to (i) prior metaphysical commitments, and (ii) not understanding Aristotle - dude, he never called anything a species, not in the biological sense. Eidos and genos were just ordinary words he coopted for the Metaphysics and Posterior Analytics. He used them interchangeably in the Liber Animalia, and sometimes didn't use either words for living kinds. Rule Number One: You can't do science by definitions.
Here's a furore (is that pronounced "few-roar" or "few-ror-ay"?) about whether to respond to the Expelled gaff. Nisbet…
pharyngula | March 23, 2008I was wrong — it's not the Harvard multimedia video. It's an independently generated copy. I grabbed a few images from the DVD I got at my truncated visit to the Expelled screening, and here, for instance, is the segment that shows that striking kinesin motor protein towing a vesicle down a microtubule. This is the version in the Expelled movie:
Now here's an equivalent frame from the actual Harvard video.
Now I'm embarrassed to have mistaken one for the other, since the Expelled version is of much lower resolution and quality. However, do notice that they both have roughly the same layout…
pharyngula | March 23, 2008Hmmm. I should have thought the powerful voices of communications experts shrieking at Richard Dawkins to hide under his bed would have had some effect, but no…he's gone ahead and written his review of Expelled. And lo, in the camp of the Framers, there was much wailing and weeping and grinding of teeth, and rending of garments, and epic despair, because surely this will cause the destruction of Science.
gregladen | March 22, 2008This little video, very nicely done, should be shown in all social studies classes in America, discussed at length, and it should be on the exam. From now on.
Source: Richarddawkins.net
Lord Privy Seals All The Way Down ... arf arf.
See also:
PZ Myers Expelled, Gains Sainthood
Expelled! The Movie To Be Pulled From Theaters Following Myers/Dawkins-Gate Screwup
gregladen | March 22, 2008More links have been added to the ever growing sampling of commentary on the Myers-Dawkins Expelled-Gate Event.
As e we move ever closer to the self destruction of the Intelligent Design Movement, I note that the Expelled Gate Even now is now competing for space in the Wikipedia Entry on Irony (but some help may be needed ... there seems to be some creationists there erasing themselves whenever the evolutionists add them in).
pharyngula | March 21, 2008The New York Times has weighed in, and they contacted the producers of Expelled…and what do you know, they're still scrambling to find a credible story. They haven't succeeded yet.
Mark Mathis, a producer of the film who attended the screening, said that "of course" he had recognized Dr. Dawkins, but allowed him to attend because "he has handled himself fairly honorably, he is a guest in our country and I had to presume he had flown a long way to see the film."
Unbelievable. So basically it's a baseless implication that I would be a troublemaker, and the arrogant and absurd assumption that…
gregladen | March 21, 2008There once was a librarian who was an absolute horror, a bitch, a true shit of a person. Her name was Nancy. No one liked her, she liked no one else. Her employees suffered greatly, and the only people who could work with her for more than a few months were Morris and Igor (assumed names) because they were like her. One day an employee who was receiving chemotherapy once a week informed Nancy that she had to start taking chemo twice a week. Nancy fired her on the spot. That was what it was like every day working for her, but because she kept the library running very nicely, her…
gregladen | March 21, 2008From the National Center for Science Education
The antievolution bills recently introduced in the Florida legislature continue to elicit opposition. The bills closely resemble a string of similar bills in Alabama -- HB 391 and SB 336 in 2004; HB 352, SB 240, and HB 716 in 2005; HB 106 and SB 45 in 2006 -- as well as a model bill that the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, the institutional home of "intelligent design" creationism, recently began to promote. Asked by the Miami Herald (March 13, 2008) whether "intelligent design" constituted "scientific information" in the…
pharyngula | March 21, 2008I'm still busy at this conference, so I have to be quick — and here it is looking like this will be my all-time high traffic day, all thanks the hypocrisy and incompetence of the silly goofballs at Expelled. Anyway, Greg is collecting links, and here's another eyewitness account.
Skatje reviews the movie.