creationism
razib | February 18, 2008Half Sigma is mining the GSS to try and understand the correlates of acceptance of the fact of evolution. He notes:
Of course it's not surprising that smarter people are more likely to believe in evolution, but the difference is pretty extraordinary. Only 15% of people with Wordsum 10 disbelieve in evolution (although it's a pretty small sample size), while a whopping 57% of people with Wordum 6 (which is the average score) disbelieve in evolution.
You can see the full data over at his place. So does this mean that acceptance of evolution is due to close examination of the issues on the…
evolvingthoughts | February 18, 2008
Back when Darwin was a student at Cambridge, he read, and almost memorised the Rev William Paley's Natural Theology, and thereafter remained impressed by the obvious adaptiveness of the parts of organisms and their interrelations. As is well known, he gave an explanation differently to Paley's external intelligence that designs all these facets of life - instead he claimed that natural selection, a process like Adam Smith's "hidden hand" explanation for the functioning of economies, was enough to explain adaptation.
I have long thought that Darwin was too much in thrall to the traditions…
pharyngula | February 18, 2008The producers of Expelled aren't exactly the brightest bunch. Their latest blog entry is a silly whine about me.
Paul is one of the stars in the film EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed. He's probably remembering all of the things that he said on camera, when we interviewed him and faithfully recorded it all. That couldn't be making him feel very good.
Their movie is doomed if they're relying on my star power to draw in the audiences … and I've noticed that all the early reviews found my performance so unmemorable that they failed to remember what I said. (Trust me, it's the only thing I'm…
pharyngula | February 18, 2008I'm sorry to say that I didn't make it to the Twin Cities Creation Science fair this weekend, and Greg Laden didn't either, which must explain why the TCCSA wasn't afraid to post photos of the 2008 Creation Science Fair this time around. One UM professor did stop by, though, and we have his personal account.
As a perfect example of ID inanity, one student demonstrated irreducible complexity by taking a motor apart and showing that it didn't work any more. Thank you, Michael Behe, for trying to make your feeble "insight" a part of the science curriculum.
It was the usual mixed mess we get even…
evolvingthoughts | February 17, 2008
In particular, see the final panel...
Cf. also here on Private Languages in philosophy
gregladen | February 17, 2008The fair was this weekend. I was in the vicinity of Har Mar, but only briefly, and I did not have time to stop in this weekend. But The Lorax did, and he has blogged about it here.
Here are a couple of my earlier posts on this event, including last years:
Twin Cities Home Schooling Creationist Science Fair Photos
Some Sick Atheist Demeans Kids ... Photographic Evidence Destroyed
If you are eating or driking something now, don't read this.
gregladen | February 16, 2008Two fun things to do on Sunday:
1) Listen to Atheist Talk at 9: AM on KTNF, with Minnesota Atheists.
Then, when you are done with that, stop over at Har Mar Mall in Roseville Minnesota for the Twin Cities Creation Science Association Home school Science Fair. Details here.
I'm not sure if I can make it, so if you go and get a photograph or two (and don't have your own blog), send them on to me and I'll put them up. I'm sure people would love to see them.
Here's the photos from last year. Sort of.
gregladen | February 16, 2008Yet another group of slack jawed yokels in some backwater school district want to force their religious beliefs on children in their local school district. This time it's Nassau County.
"The theory of evolution falls short here since it cannot be observed, hasn't been repeated and cannot be tested," Marjorie Ramseur told School Board members. "I applaud you for taking a stand on this issue. If you're going to teach evolution, please teach all of it."
[source]
gregladen | February 16, 2008Certain Bloggers have been giving Floridians a hard time because of the opposition to teaching science in public science classrooms. Shame on those bloggers. (See here and here for examples). There are some local school districts in Florida that insist that excellent science, and not creationism or religion of any kind, be taught in public schools.
The Volusia School Board supports teaching of evolution. Here i what some of the school board members say about this issue:
School Board Chairwoman Judy Conte: "The home is a good place to teach religion, I think." .. don't "confuse the two…
pharyngula | February 16, 2008Ben Stein, Walt Ruloff, and Mark Mathis have been rattily scurrying about the country, doing press conferences and radio interviews in an attempt to boost attendance at their upcoming schlockfest, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Their schtick is to claim that academia prohibits free speech, and doesn't allow people to pursue the truth and ask questions.
There's a problem, though. In order to have a media interview, they have to let media representatives into the room. They try to deal with this problem by making them sign a non-disclosure agreement (wait…they're holding a press conference…
pharyngula | February 16, 2008What is it with creationists and fruit? I hope you've had your coffee already, because this is an unpleasant way to wake up. The clip below is from a public hearing in Orlando, Florida, in which citizens had a chance to stand up and state their opinions of evolution. Are you braced to handle a little smug and stupid this morning?
I'm sure this guy thought he was rhetorically brilliant, with a knock-'em dead argument against evolution. Why, nobody with any common sense could possibly believe that people (or their pets) could be related to an orange! Just pointing out the obvious to everyone…
pharyngula | February 15, 2008Would you believe there is actually an award called the Award for Liberty and Truth? You just know in this Orwellian country of ours that it couldn't possibly be given in recognition of actual liberty or truth … but it's even worse than that. It is the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth, and it's handed out by the Bible University of Los Angeles, better known as Biola; named after a prissy old fraud, given out by a bible college with delusions of grandeur, and guess who the winner is this year?
Ben Stein.
I like it.
It's a fake award by a fake college named after an infamous…
gregladen | February 15, 2008A survey conducted by the St. Petersburg Times shows that half of the respondents want "only faith-based theories such as creationism or intelligent design" taught in public school classrooms, and only 22 percent want evolution-only life science curriculum.
The Florida State Board of Education will decide next Tuesday to adopt ... or not ... new standards that would make a subtle but important change in the wording of life science standards. The change would place evolutionary biology (also known as "evolutionary theory") clearly at the center of the life science curriculum.
The survey…
pharyngula | February 15, 2008A poll by the St Petersburg Times reveals that the people in Florida are ignorant. 21% want creationism only taught in the schools, and 29% want both evolution and creationism taught. It's a horrendous result, and it's also strikingly different from the results we've see in similar polls, which usually aren't quite so lop-sided.
Wesley makes a good point, that one reason is the form of the questions asked, which set up an adversarial relationship between religion and science and lead people to make a choice between the two, increasing the likelihood that people will break to support their…
mikethemadbiologist | February 14, 2008Slate has the goods on the style manual for Answers Research Journal, which is "a professional, peer-reviewed technical journal for the publication of interdisciplinary scientific and other relevant research from the perspective of the recent Creation and the global Flood within a biblical framework." One problem with the Slate commentary: many peer-reviewed journals allow authors to suggest reviewers, provided there are no conflicts of interest. It's still pretty funny though:
As an extra incentive to participate, those with "a reason for not wanting their biographical details publicized…
tfk | February 14, 2008Ken Ham squeals:
It is so sad that millions of dollars are being spent on researching the universe, but the underlying philosophy is often that scientists want to find answers to how life arose, and in this case, “from where diseases come from.” They are “willingly ignorant” that the God of the universe has already given us the answers as to how life arose (Genesis 1:1) and also as to why there are diseases—because of sin.
Ham seems to think that all that money is just pork-barrel spending, and that scientific budgets are larded with needless expenditures. Alas, his concept of science is…
gregladen | February 14, 2008On Wednesday the Bay District School Board voted to sign a resolution saying it does not agree with the proposed science standards as they are currently written.
The new proposed standards adjust language for life science that would move Florida schools into modern, 21st century thinking regarding the role of evolution (as central) in life science. The Bay District School Board has rejected this modernization, opting instead to allow the teaching of creationism along side evolution in public schools. This decision, if enacted, would be a violation of well established case law. If the Bay…
razib | February 13, 2008I stumbled upon Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity at the bookstore. I don't have time to read it right now, but I thought I'd point to it since I'm sure some readers would be interested. Accuse me of being excessively Whiggish if you must, but it just reiterates that Creationism doesn't belong in a science class; the basic disputes are a rehash of philosophical & religious clashes which are timeless, or at least date from the rise of philosophy in the ancient world. Creationism is ahistorical; I believe it is rooted in psychological intuitions about ontology which rebel against…
pharyngula | February 13, 2008I've been overestimating creationists. Every time I look at what they're saying about evolution, my estimation drops yet further … you'd think that after years of tracking this stuff, they'd bottom out, but no. The latest examples are some snippets from a presentation by Caroline Crocker. Crocker is one of the martyrs of ID — she was released from a temporary teaching position at George Mason University, and claims it was because she is a creationist, when the real explanation is that she's an incompetent kook.
Her powerpoint slides have to be seen to be believed. Here's one example. Can you…
laelaps | February 13, 2008It just so happens that at the end of next month David Mention of Answers in Genesis is going to be presenting a multi-day creation seminar in Bucks County, PA (which puts the event within driving range). I haven't decided whether I'm going to subject myself to Menton's rendition of crusty, old arguments that I've heard elsewhere, but I'm considering it just to see what goes on at such gatherings. As it happens, I was just perusing a list of quotes I had compiled in search of something else and came across this passage from Francis Bacon's Novum Organum which I felt was quite appropriate;
The…