creationism
pharyngula | March 14, 2008Uh-oh…Casey Luskin made a significant gaffe. He claimed that Florida's "academic freedom" bill would specifically allow public school teachers to offer instruction in Intelligent Design, and he said it with the microphones on where newspaper reporters could catch it. As Wesley says, it's obvious that the DI is recruiting "lawsuit fodder" from the ranks of deluded schoolteachers. The DI won't have any liability, so they can sit and provoke and let poor school districts eat the expenses of any legal cases. (Maybe the next big creationism court case ought to somehow assign blame so these…
pharyngula | March 14, 2008I complained before that Florida lawmakers were being treated to creationist propaganda at a facility of Florida State University. Perhaps I should have had more confidence in the people of Florida. The movie was shown, and…
But the evening at downtown's IMAX Theater, which was rented out to Mr. Stein's group for $940, was a bust, with only about 100 people attending the movie.
They paid to have people attend for free, and they still couldn't get a decent crowd.
pharyngula | March 13, 2008They couldn't even get the title right: A Meeting of Minds. It's more like a meeting of the mindless. Ben Stein has had a friendly meeting with that old fraud, Ken Ham, and apparently they were perfect for each other. The sexual tension is palpable in the accompanying photo; the mutual praise flowed like champagne between the two of them, although Ham finally won the prize for high sycophancy.
Expelled is hosted by the brilliant Ben Stein, actor/economist/lawyer/presidential speechwriter/science observer—a 21st-century Einsteinian figure.
Einstein? They're comparing a 3rd rate actor best…
laelaps | March 13, 2008According to Lewis Black's hypothesis of the cause of cerebral aneurysms, when someone hears something incredibly stupid or irrational (i.e. "If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college.") the mind fixates upon it, becoming more and more stressed until a cerebral aneurysm occurs. If I should suffer an aneurysm in the next 24 hours, then, don't be surprised; I just read one of the most vapid statements I have ever come across. If you value your own health you won't proceed, but the comment from the Answers in Genesis article "A Meeting of Minds" (*snicker*) about the…
pharyngula | March 13, 2008Religion can be a force for peace, love, and understanding — at least when it provides an opportunity to beat up on those evil secularists. Turkey is an excellent example of where the creationists want to take us: it's the one country in the world that beats the US in its level of ignorance about biology, and the Christians and Muslims are happily collaborating to promote theocracy there.
Read the account — that's our future if the Discovery Institute has its way.
pharyngula | March 13, 2008That venerable institution among internet atheists, Reggie Finley, will be interviewing me tonight for Infidel Guy radio. We're going to talk about this strange propaganda film, Expelled, that's supposed to come out next month, and I suppose we'll also discuss creationism in a more generic context as well, and maybe we'll even talk about real science. Tune in at 8ET.
razib | March 12, 2008A new story highlighting the waxing of Creationism within modern Turkey. A depressing tidbit:
Education Minister Huseyin Celik, an AKP member, said he has an open mind over the debate about evolution, but in 2005, the Ministry reportedly suspended five teachers for advocating evolution too strongly.
...
"In my school three out of five science teachers only teach creationism and I face pressure from them everyday. They also try to turn the children against us in their classes, saying we are atheists," a teacher told ISN Security Watch on the condition of anonymity.
The AKP is a moderate…
tfk | March 12, 2008Michael Heller, this year's Templeton Prize winner, may be more willing to merge science and religion than many scientists are, but he's no pal of ID. In a statement at the press conference announcing the award, he explained:
Adherents of the so-called intelligent design ideology commit a grave theological error. They claim that scientific theories, that ascribe the great role to chance and random events in the evolutionary processes, should be replaced, or supplemented, by theories acknowledging the thread of intelligent design in the universe. Such views are theologically erroneous. They…
pharyngula | March 12, 2008People, I know it's really hard sometimes to tell the parodies from the sincerely held beliefs of the faith-heads. That last post was humor; sure, there are people out there who think they can spot atheists by their degenerate, evil ways, but that was clearly a spoof of such attitudes. This, on the other hand, is the real thing, a loving work of ignorant inanity by a couple of liars for Jesus:
See the difference? That little video makes assertions of fact that are entirely false, but really aren't at all funny. When someone accuses atheists of wearing comfortable footwear because it "…
pharyngula | March 11, 2008Florida also has an "academic freedom" bill in the works, and they're using Ben Stein's sillly movie to promote it … and if you want to find legislators with cobwebs in their cranium, Florida is the place to go.
Neither Hays nor his co-sponsor, Brandon Republican Sen. Ronda Storms, could name any teachers in Florida who have been disciplined for being critical of evolution in the science classroom. Better known for his ''Win Ben Stein's Money'' game show, Stein made the documentary to document how evolution critics have supposedly run afoul of mainstream science in higher academics.
''I want…
gregladen | March 11, 2008Yet another demonstration of creationist's inability to get what they want without resorting to ethically questionable behavior .....
Shortly before he was to attend a screening in January of the documentary "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," ... Roger Moore, a film critic for The Orlando Sentinel, learned that his invitation had been revoked by the film's marketers.
"Well, you already invited me," he recalled thinking at the time. "I'm going to go."
So Mr. Moore traveled to a local megachurch and planted himself among a large group of pastors to watch the movie....
There were nondisclosure…
pharyngula | March 11, 2008The New York Times has taken notice of the promotional tactics being used for the creationist propaganda flick, Expelled. As you all know, they are trying to filter screenings, allowing only ideologically friendly people to see it, and keeping out the serious critics who might actually evaluate it on its merits, rather than as a media echo of what the viewers want to hear.
There were nondisclosure agreements to sign that day, but Mr. Moore did not, and proceeded to write perhaps the harshest review "Expelled" has received thus far. The film will open April 18, but has been screened several…
pharyngula | March 10, 2008I am reminded of the whole host of intellectual failings of creationists: it's not just that they reject modern science, but many of them tend to be brain-damaged peckerwoods who are also incapable of viewing literature and art without squawking in horror, unless maybe it's a tasteless photorealistic airbrushed Aryan Jesus, or perhaps some cookie-cutter landscape from a hack like Kincade. For a truly sickening example, just look at Ray Comfort's latest blog entry. He's reacting to a documentary of Gustav Klimt, which describes his work as "sensuous" and "obsessed with women", which are all…
mikethemadbiologist | March 10, 2008
ScienceBlogling Mike Dunford reminds us that Michael Egnor's creationist stupidity, like Camus' plague, never disappears, but only wanes. Egnor has unleashed his formidable stupidity on the concepts of artificial and natural selection.
So many fucking morons, so little Mad Biologist. Fortunately, I've written about this before:
The difference between artificial selection and natural selection isn't that the selective agent (e.g., pesticides) is a result of human activity. The difference is in what determines what is the 'fittest': a person's decision as to what traits are preferable, or…
gregladen | March 10, 2008You may have noticed that I've been entirely silent about the movie Expelled. This is because of something that I do: Utterly ignore certain aspects of reality because my level of interest does not exceed my level of annoyance. I also ignore entire chunks of reality because I find them too interesting yet don't have the available time or energy to invest at the moment. Like the Maya. I've totally ignored the Maya for this reasn.
But, here's the thing: If you go to my old blog, which is a dormant archive, I've got a few Google ads set up, and they tend to display ads for Ben Stein,…
pharyngula | March 9, 2008This excerpt reveals a surprising fact: it is clearly a Canadian conspiracy. I knew we shouldn't trust those guys.
pharyngula | March 9, 2008A reader brought to my attention this outrageously dishonest mangling of a quote by that creationist, Casey Luskin. He writes:
In January, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences weighed in on this debate, declaring that "[t]here is no scientific controversy about the basic facts of evolution,"1 because neo-Darwinism is "so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter"2 it. As an undergraduate and graduate student taking multiple courses covering evolutionary biology at the University of California San Diego, that is what I was told as well. My science courses rarely, if ever,…
gregladen | March 9, 2008There are two books called "Icons of Evolution." One is by Jonathan Wells. The best way to learn about Well's Icons of Evolution is to watch Randy Olson's Flock of Dodos. It is an anti science piece of dreck.
The other is a more recently published is Icons of Evolution [Two Volumes]: An Encyclopedia of People, Evidence, and Controversies (Greenwood Icons), and it is an entirely different book. I have heard about this book, but not read it. Since it came up in a comment I thought I'd give you a direct link and a little bit of information. Info from the publisher:
Students and the…
gregladen | March 8, 2008Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design is a must read for those interested in the Evolution - Creationism controversy. In particular, this volume is an essential part of the personal library of every science educator, for reasons that I will describe below. If you know a Life Science Teacher, this is a perfect birthday present. If you have a child in the public K-12 education system in the US, or the analog somewhere else, donate a copy of this book to the appropriate life science teacher!
In this important book published by Oxford University Press in 2004, Forrest…
mikethemadbiologist | March 8, 2008...it ultimately leads the Mad Biologist to a very irreverent, but accurate, description of the scientific method. Someone I know recently had said someone's car rear-ended. For reasons not worth going into*, said someone used The Google, and discovered that the person who ran into said someone is an intelligent design creationist (Intelligent Driving?).
This information comes by way of a post responding to a letter that the creationist wrote to the Boston Globe. The post contains this superb description of the scientific method as applied to intelligent design creationism (italics mine…