creationism
evolvingthoughts | February 21, 2008
One of the more curious episodes in recent cultural history is the adoption, word for word, by Islamists particularly in Turkey of the American Christian fundamentalist antievolution schtick. Nobody knows more about this than Taner Edis, whose book An Illusion of Harmony: Science And Religion in Islam outlines how this came about and the relation between science and Islam (overall: not good).
Here's a nice short article by Edis, from the History of Science newsletter.
pharyngula | February 21, 2008Just when you think these guys can't get any more dishonest, here comes Darwin's Plantation: Evolution's Racist Roots. The tag line on the book is a quote from Ham: "Although racism did not begin with Darwinism, Darwin did more than any person to popularize it."
Wow. More than Martin Luther, who helped make anti-semitism a favorite German pastime? More than Nathan Bedford Forrest, who helped the Ku Klux Klan grow to half a million members? More than Hitler? More than our Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision? More than Richard Butler, founder of the Aryan Nations? More than Lester Maddox…
laelaps | February 21, 2008
Nebraska Man as restored in the Illustrated London News.
As I made my way around the lab table during my last human osteology practical, examining the yellowed and cracked teeth in the hopes that I'd be able to tell an upper molar from a lower one, I came across a particularly strange tooth. I had been told by the professor that 3rd molars ("wisdom teeth") can be strange and don't always conform to the rules that makes identifying other molars comparatively easy, but this specimen was simply bizarre. The arrangement of cusps and folds on the crown of the tooth didn't correspond to any of…
pharyngula | February 21, 2008Some of you may be reluctant to delve into the fiery melee that are the Pharyngula comments, but you're missing a very entertaining battle. We had a creationist named Steven pop by last night to offer his, um, opinions. Here's a brief summary of some of his sillier claims.
Darwin was a racist.
Christianity never supported slavery.
The 15th and 16th century slave trade was driven by the Dutch and Portugese, who were not Christian.
Scientists were responsible for the slave trade, not Christians.
Robert E. Lee converted to Christianity late in life — he was an atheist! He became an…
pharyngula | February 21, 2008Florida approved science standards that actually use the word 'evolution', but as I noted at the time, the creationist compromise was that it had to be referred to as "the scientific theory of evolution". It was weird: it is the scientific theory of evolution, as opposed to the non-scientific guesswork of creationism, so what was the advantage to the creationists? All I could imagine is that they somehow thought this enthroned their misunderstanding of the word "theory" as official policy.
Well, the word is out that the creationists screwed up big time, and their own ignorance has turned…
gregladen | February 21, 2008Plan B is, of course, inserting Christian Creationism into the Social Studies curriculum. This is disconcerting. Many otherwise perfectly rational and intelligent people think this is a good idea. It is not.
This sort of proposal is becoming more common now (this week) in editorials and other opinion outlets, with the defeat of the Wedge Strategy to water down the science standards in Florida. (This rebound effect occurs every time creationists are defeated.)
So, why is this not a good idea?
Social studies is a broad field of investigation that has many important goals. Like modern…
gregladen | February 21, 2008"The Wedge Strategy" refers to a document (the Wedge Document) developed by the Discovery Institute in 1998 and leaked by Tim Rhodes in 1999. It outlines a strategy to insinuate a specific subset of Christian Fundamentalism into the public education system. Although Wedge Proponents have denied this, the Wedge Strategy is still very much in use (more or less), so it is important for people interested in protecting our system of education from religious freaks to know about it. You can download a copy of it here (large PDF, 0.5 megabytes).
pharyngula | February 20, 2008A reader sent me two links to video clips. The contrast is fascinating.
Here's the first. It's a nice illustration of the evidence behind our understanding of the evolution of whales, all in 7 minutes.
Now watch a creationist explain whale evolution.
Ouch. He complains that those wicked scientists are trying to turn the bible into a great big joke…but I think this clown does an even better job of that. Try counting the misconceptions — he goes on and on with this story about an animal crawling out of the primordial ooze onto the land and not liking it, and then wishing it could go back…
mikethemadbiologist | February 20, 2008
Tristero came up with a list of thirteen things that the rightwing media does to craft its message. I've 'repurposed' and changed them for creationists. Here's the list with some commentary:
1. Highlight a quote from the opponent out of context from a speech or interview. (unchanged from original)
Do I even need to comment?
2. Use loaded terminology to describe evolution.
Describing evolution as 'godless', when, in fact, all scientific disciplines which, by definition, explain physical, not metaphysical, phenomena are 'godless.' They don't seem to have a problem with 'godless' geologists…
gregladen | February 20, 2008A good trick in child psychology is to come to a "compromise" in which the child, not knowing any better, gets what they think they wanted but it really turns out to be cod liver oil after all. Florida creationists got their cod liver oil when the Florida School Board voted, with a worrisome 4-3 count, to accept the proposed science standards that actually use the word "evolution."
The word "evolution," however, is qualified as a "scientific theory." That's the compromise part. Creationists, like young children, can get certain concepts very wrong, and this is one of them. We often hear…
tfk | February 20, 2008This excellent XKCD would go great with this excellent t-shirt. Suggestion: Wear the DS shirt to creationist events! I do.
laelaps | February 20, 2008Last November news broke of at least one Florida school district opposing new education standards that would bring the term "evolution" to the state's students for the very first time. Since that time opponents to the view have attempted to rally but never quite got their act together, and now it has been decided that the phrase "scientific theory of evolution" will be used in Florida public school science standards. This is a compromise (I'm sure we'll still be hearing "It's only a theory!" often), but in a general sense it's a win for better science education.
Some have hinted that the…
pharyngula | February 19, 2008The Florida board of education kept the lunacy to a minimum and actually approved science standards that use the word "evolution". They still had to do a goofy song-and-dance compromise to include the phrase "scientific theory of" before the dreaded "E" word, just so the creationists can go back to their churches and triumphantly crow that it is still just a theory.
It is one small step forward, at least. I'll take it. It's still ludicrous that the creationists think they achieved something by attaching the "theory" dog-whistle to the agreement.
tfk | February 19, 2008The Florida Board of Education passed new science standards on a 4-3 vote. The old standards got an F in a national survey by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, which noted errors like the claim that "a thermometer measures the amount of heat absorbed by an object," that "The classification of simple machines is naive…[e]nergetics of phase change is presented misleadingly; treatment of electricity and magnetism…is minimal… The treatment of chemistry content in K-8 is scanty; but—as one reviewer observed—"Even less is required in 9-12."
They concluded "The superficiality of the treatment of…
mikethemadbiologist | February 19, 2008A lot of my fellow ScienceBloglings have written about the attempts in many Floridian municipalities to weaken biology education, so I won't waste bandwidth revisiting that here. But what amazed when I read this article about Floridian voters' views of evolution was the response to the question "Which of the following comes closest to what you think evolution is?":
How in the Intelligent Designer's green earth do the same number of people define evolution as creationism as do correctly define evolution? Remember, this was not a question about what was the 'correct' version of how life came…
pharyngula | February 19, 2008Kevin Beck tells us that finally, Florida has the right spokesman for the creationist situation down there: Carl Hiaasen has written an editorial. If you don't know Hiaasen, you should — he writes hilarious comic novels that highlight the absurdity of politics and culture and crime in Florida. I'm wondering if he doesn't see the recent creationist shenanigans in his state as an opportunity for more local color and background research.
He is taking an ironic approach though: it's all about "boldly going against the flow, in defiance of reason and all known facts," and you can see that he's in…
tfk | February 19, 2008Florida Citizens for Science is liveblogging the Florida Board of Education meeting on science standards.
pharyngula | February 19, 2008Russell Seitz discovers another review of Expelled. It's by that deluded dolt, Tom Bethell, and it's a positive review.
It is surely the best thing ever done on this issue, in any medium. At moments it brought tears of joy to my eyes. I have written about this controversy for over 30 years and by the movie's end I felt that those of us who have insisted that Darwinism is a sorry mess and that life surely was designed are going to prevail.
Deluded much? If he were at all aware of the science of biology, he'd know that evolution is not going anywhere but deeper into explaining life on earth.…
laelaps | February 19, 2008This morning I was browsing YouTube in an attempt to find some nutty creationist argument no one had seen yet, but instead I came across a few cable TV "debates" between creationists and defenders of evolution. They were painful to watch; the creationists proffered the same nonsense and the various skeptics/scientists often talked right past them and did not do a very good job at refuting the "freedom of inquiry" spin creationists love to use. This clip is a case in point;
Ouch. I don't have warm feelings for Anderson Cooper, either, as asking vague, "objective" questions that create such…