creationism
pharyngula | January 12, 2008You've got a real winner running for mayor down there. Bill Foster is another ignorant creationist running for political office.
"Evolution gives our kids an excuse to believe in natural selection and survival of the fittest, which leads to a belief that they are superior over the weak," Bill Foster wrote board members in a letter received this week. "This is a slippery slope."
He continued: "One of the Columbine shooters wrote on his Web site, 'You know what I love? Natural selection! It's the best thing that ever happened to the Earth. Getting rid of all the stupid and weak organisms.'"…
pharyngula | January 11, 2008OK, you can all stop trying to win a copy of the Atlas of Creation now — the owner has decided who is to be afflicted with punished with tormented with given the copy. Scott Hatfield, I've passed your email address along. Look for a message. Get ready, it might take a month's worth of a public school teacher's salary to cover the shipping.
By the way, if anyone else wants to dispose of their copy, browse that thread — I can connect you up with recipients.
gregladen | January 11, 2008The latest on the Florida fight over the use of the actual word "evolution" in the classroom. (Or, more specifically, in the science standards)
A panel of education experts just wrapped up three days of meetings at the state Department of Education to hammer out new standards. The state Board of Education will have the final say next month.
The way science is taught in Florida public school classrooms could soon change. Right now, the state science curriculum uses the words "biological changes over time" instead of "evolution".
Biology teacher Nicholas Daigle believes the current standards…
gregladen | January 11, 2008Sure, the Taylor County school board was apparently the first to pass a resolution complaining about evolution, but they're not the only one.
Two more counties passed resolutions, too: Baker County and Holmes County.
Florida Citizens for Science and Dispatches from the Culture Wars are covering this.
pharyngula | January 11, 2008Texas has been considering this application from the Institute for Creation Science for approval to offer a degree in "science" "education" (a double misnomer!). Now there's an excellent idea afloat by the Texas commissioner of higher education — go ahead, give 'em a degree, only call it "creation studies". Perfect! It removes the problem of false labeling, and allowing people who aren't actually qualified to teach science get jobs in the public school system. And it actually gives the graduates of programs in creation studies an edge in acquiring high paying jobs in the Baptist Sunday School…
mikethemadbiologist | January 11, 2008Dave Neiwert, of Orcinus, reviews conservative propagandist Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism. This part jumped out at me (italics mine):
Liberal Fascism is like a number of other recent attempts at historical revisionism by popular right-wing pundits -- including, notably, Michelle Malkin's attempt to justify the Japanese-American internment in her book In Defense of Internment, and Ann Coulter's attempt to rehabilitate McCarthy's reputation in her book Treason -- in that it employs the same historical methodology used by Holocaust deniers and other right-wing revanchists: namely, it selects…
clock | January 11, 2008From an e-mail from the Science Communicators of North Carolina:
At noon on Friday, January 18, the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) in Durham will host a seminar by Josh Rosenau, the Public Information Project Director at the National Center for Science Education. Rosenau, who is in town for the Science blogging conference, will opine on the subject of "Talking to the Media about Evolution and Creationism." The discussion is sure to be lively.
gregladen | January 11, 2008Here's a novel idea for creationists: Be honest!
As you know, the Institute for Creation Research is trying to get an online Masters Degree in "science education" approved in Texas. A faux committee comprised of nincompoops and creationists has approved the degree at the first stage, and it is now being considered by the Texas higher education commission. (Details here)
A recent report indicates that the Texas Commissioner of Higher Education has chimed in on the suggestion that this degree simply be called a "degree in creation studies." Interesting solution.
Apparently, one of the…
pharyngula | January 11, 2008Jason Wiles delivers a lovely smackdown of Huckabee's position on evolution. First, he hits him hard on his record as governor of Arkansas.
During Huckabee's tenure as Governor, evolution education in Arkansas languished in an environment of general hostility and insufficiency. Two anti-evolution bills were introduced in the state's House of Representatives; textbooks in the Beebe, Arkansas public high school carried disclaimer stickers denigrating evolution; the state's science curriculum earned a grade of "D" overall and an abysmal "zero" for its treatment of evolution; a creationist "…
pharyngula | January 10, 2008This is getting weirder all the time: the Miami Herald claims that 12 Florida counties have passed anti-evolution resolutions in their school boards. They all sound awfully similar, too, as if…
…as if there is intelligent design behind this campaign.
…as if there is some money backing this effort.
…as if someone has specifically targeted Florida as a good venue for the next evolution-creation trial, and is sowing the seeds.
So, anyone out there on a Florida school board, or knows someone who is? Have you got any information on the source of the anti-evolution boilerplate that's being…
pharyngula | January 10, 2008Would you believe someone has received a copy of Harun Yahya's epic tome, Atlas of Creation, and doesn't want it? Weird, huh?
Let's imagine, though, that someone for some bizarre reason wants one. Here's your chance: write a comment here that testifies to your deep and unholy desire to possess a copy, and the current possessor of a copy will judge them and decide to whom he will impart this strange book of lunacy. All you have to do is pay the cost of shipping it to where ever you are.
Here's the way it works. Leave a comment here using a valid email address. The current owner will pick one…
pharyngula | January 10, 2008Some states manage to pull their collective heads out of their butts and and do the right thing. There's good news from South Carolina:
Today, in a stunning reversal of votes, the State Board of Education approved the Miller/Levine Biology Textbook that was under scrutiny. The vote went from 9-7 (vote in December) in favor of dropping the Miller/Levine textbook to 10-6 in favor of keeping the textbook on the list. This is a major victory for science education in the palmetto state. Dr. Miller, along with approximately 20 SCSE members were on hand to offer advise, critiques and personal…
pharyngula | January 10, 2008Answers in Genesis, fresh from their success at aping real science with their fake "Museum," has a new dishonest enterprise in the works: they're starting a fake science journal, the Answers Research Journal, which will publish "cutting-edge research that demonstrates the validity of the young-earth model, the global Flood, the non-evolutionary origin of'created kinds,' and other evidences that are consistent with the biblical account of origins." Isn't it sweet how they declare up front exactly which answers they'll accept?
I hope they're planning to have a very tight review process. They're…
pharyngula | January 10, 2008Attempting to infect Spain
America should be ashamed: now our resident idiots are exporting creationism to Spain (Google translation). They're staging a conference, Lo Que Darwin no Sabía (What Darwin Didn't Know).
My apologies to the land of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Miguel Servet, Joan Oró, and José Celestino Bruno Mutis. We aren't all morons over here in the US, I assure you.
pharyngula | January 9, 2008Yep, another Florida county approves a goofy anti-science resolution. From their minutes:
Approval of the Resolution Urging State Board of Education to Direct Florida Department of Education to Revise the New Sunshine State Standards for Science Such That Evolution is Not Presented as Fact.
Texas really has some competition now in the category of most pig-ignorant state in the country.
mikethemadbiologist | January 9, 2008Francisco Ayala in the most recent edition of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science makes a good distinction between religion and science (italics mine):
Science and religion concern different aspects of the human experience. Scientific explanations are based on evidence drawn from examining the natural world and rely exclusively on natural processes to account for natural phenomena. Scientific explanations are subject to empirical tests by means of observation and experimentation and are subject to the possibility of modification and rejection. Religious faith, in contrast, does…
pharyngula | January 8, 2008The Taylor County school board has taken a big step: they've voted to oppose evolution:
Whereas, the Florida Department of Education has drafted and is now proposing new Sunshine State Standards for Science, the Taylor County School Board opposes the implementation of the new standards as currently presented.
Whereas, the new Sunshine State Standards for Science no longer present evolution as theory but as "the fundamental concept underlying all of biology and is supported in multiple forms of scientific evidence," we are requesting that the State Board of Education direct the Florida…
evolvingthoughts | January 7, 2008
Rob Helpy at Big Monkey, Helpy Chalk, has a post on what postmodernism was and why it came about. In it, he says he thinks it is a dying fad. Is this true?
For a start, I doubt that postmodernism was ever a coherent movement, but there were themes that are shared by many distinct schools of thought. One of these is the social influence on knowledge claims. Yes, postmodernists so-called tended to act and talk as if there were only social influences on knowledge claims, but the lesson has been learned that we cannot ignore the social causes of knowledge. Even the most analytical philosopher…
pharyngula | January 7, 2008Mark Mathis, one of the people behind Expelled, must be doing the radio tour again. I heard he was on the Minneapolis Christian talk radio station today (I missed it, unfortunately—anyone else catch it?), and you can also hear him lying on the Coral Ridge Ministries podcast. Apparently, you can't question neo-Darwinism in the classroom or in science; Mathis doesn't know much about the arguments going on right now, does he? (He probably doesn't care, since the alternatives being debated don't involve Jesus). The rest of the show has some clueless git repeating the claim that Darwin led…
gregladen | January 6, 2008I don't like the definition of macro vs. micro evolution. But I do enjoy the way this video makes fun of creation science proponents.