creationism
pharyngula | December 31, 2007That friend to the Discovery Institute and creationist advisor to the Vatican, Cardinal Schönborn, has a new book out, titled Chance or Purpose?. I haven't read it, but Michael Behe has, and Zeno finds a particularly delicious Behe blurb:
Science cannot speak of ultimate purpose, and scientists who do so are outside of their authority. In Chance or Purpose? Cardinal Schöborn shows that the data of biology, when properly examined by reason and philosophy, strongly point to a purposeful world.
Why should science be incapable of addressing the questions of an ultimate purpose? I hear this all…
evolvingthoughts | December 29, 2007
Henry Gee reviews the Golden Compass, and comes up with largely the same conclusions I would have had I been as insightful as he. A quote:
It’s a long time since I read the book, The Northern Lights, on which the film is based, so perhaps it’s a problem with the script. The bottom line is this – the whole Good vs Evil schtick is unconvincing because the baddies (the Authority and the Magisterium – that’s God and the Church, geddit? No? Oh, go back to sleep) are so unrelentingly monolithic.
And not only that, we learn so little about them. Why are they so hellbent on doing in their…
gregladen | December 28, 2007Visitors to the Institute for Creation Research Web page can quickly deduce that the organization, founded in California and recently transplanted to Dallas, is a Christian group dedicated to spreading the doctrine of divine creation of the world and challenging the teaching of evolution as fact in public schools.
An advisory committee to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board recommends that the group be allowed to confer master's degrees in science education for teacher candidates. This indefensible action would be the equivalent of allowing an institute of faith-healers to issue…
pharyngula | December 28, 2007From Cectic:
Quote of the week: "Either the theory is wrong, or I'm just incredibly stupid." -Todd Friel on Evolution, from The Way of the Master Radio for 24 Dec. The first true utterance I've heard on that show since I started listening to the podcast.
pharyngula | December 27, 2007Denyse O'Leary is a very silly person, but you all knew that. One of her latest entries on her silly Design of Life blog, which purports to be promoting Dembski's silly book of the same name, is treading old ground. She's claiming that convergence is common, and that marsupial lions and wolves and squirrels are evidence of some kind of natural destiny. She's getting all of this from Michael Denton, but the similarities are in ecological niches (sometimes, not even that) and in the names, and contrary to Denton, the similarities are only superficial.
Laelaps has the details on those convergent…
evolvingthoughts | December 27, 2007
Just to demonstrate that it is not only the Christians who have their religious fundamentalists opposing science, here's a piece that claims that the Vedas are the source of all true scientific knowledge. OK, guys, inventing zero was cool, but what have the Vedas done for us lately (apart from sectarian violence)?
pharyngula | December 27, 2007Scarcely do I mention Ann Coulter and my challenge to her fans, than one such fan shows up in the comments. You will not be surprised that this person didn't even try to meet the challenge, which is to cite some specific paragraph in Coulter's drecky book, Godless, that they considered to be making a solid scientific point. Here's all he could cough up.
For all of you that buy into the evolution answer for where we come from, I have the following question; How is it that science cannot demonstrate or replicate species change yet we have so many species. Please dont mention finches either.…
mikethemadbiologist | December 27, 2007One of the lesser known microbiology facts is that the pathogen Shigella is actually E. coli. Since I'll be writing more about this cool bug soon, from the archives, here's an explanation (with a little modification).
As I mentioned in a previous post, Orac has two very good posts on MDs and creationism. In one of the posts, he links to a creationist medical student who writes the following:
Has anyone ever documented a plateful of Strep pneumo mutating into E coli? Or even into Strep pyogenes? I didn't think so. They mutate, and they exchange information. But they remain separate species…
pharyngula | December 26, 2007Peter Irons has again been having way too much fun with creationist shenanigans. Irons, you may recall, is a hot shot west coast lawyer who had a grand time with the Pivar situation, and has lately been nudging Dembski on the case of his misuse of the Harvard/XVIVO animation. Would you believe that Bill Dembski went crying to his lawyer because Irons was making him miserable?
The email exchange is below the fold. John Gilmore is the St Paul lawyer who defended Dembski in the recent Baylor flap, and he does seem to have rather more sense than his client.
First, here's the email from Dembski to…
laelaps | December 26, 2007When the issue of creationism raises its ugly head (either in the form of young earth creationism, intelligent design, or another variant) it usually involves the first chapters of the book of Genesis, specifically the special creation of humans and the Noachian Deluge. There's much more in Genesis than stories involving forbidden fruit and boat construction, however, and one story in particular is interesting when considered in the light of the history of the "evolution idea." Most of you will be familiar with the idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, most famously championed…
pharyngula | December 26, 2007I gave a Nelson laugh to England a while back, for the creationist theme park that was going to be built there. I may have to take it back. It looks like the backers are a gang of confused prevaricators with no concrete plans, just a lot of wishful thinking on their part.
I propose that they crawl into their churches and pray real hard. That's probably as viable a business plan as what they've got right now.
pharyngula | December 26, 2007It's all a bit too convoluted to make for snappy copy, but Dembski had been using Harvard/XVIVO's animation in his lectures without permission…and now it's clear from his Design of Life book that he did so in full awareness that he had no right to do so.
Hey, I thought these Christian folk were supposed to be the morally upstanding ones. That's what they've always told me, anyway — have they been lying about that, too?
mikethemadbiologist | December 26, 2007From the archives comes this post about movie critic Roger Ebert and the email he sent me.
A little while back, Roger Ebert wrote a column assailing Imax theaters for pulling movies that were about the origin of life, the origin of the universe, and evolution. I suggested that we should send him email and thank him for supporting science. Well, I did just that, and in my email In Box today was a reply from Ebert. Pretty damn cool.To sum up, he says that he's received a lot of ('countless') emails from creationists who use ridiculous arguments. The criticism he's received the most is what he (…
pharyngula | December 26, 2007Ann Coulter is unhappy with Huckabee, but not for his many failings that rational people see as an obstacle—but because he is insufficently critical of evolution. She really wants a presidential candidate to not just deny modern science, but to advocate a platform that proposes to take action in the schools against it.
Asked on CNN's "Larry King Live" Monday night about his beliefs on evolution, Huckabee rushed to assure King that he has no interest in altering textbooks that foist this fraud on innocent schoolchildren.
It's very strange. We've recently seen big-mouthed conservative…
gregladen | December 26, 2007You already know about the controversy in South Carolina. Now is your opportunity to put in your two cents.
Kansas City dot Com, which is NOT a South Carolina newspaper, has a short article on the story:
The debate over how to teach the origin of species in public high schools could resurface in January, when the South Carolina Board of Education meets.
The divided state panel withheld its endorsement of two biology textbooks this month when board member Charles W. McKinney pointed to dozens of questions raised in critiques by Horace D. Skipper, a retired Clemson University professor.
And,…
evolvingthoughts | December 25, 2007
It is the default opinion of those who accept evolution and those who deny it, that before Darwin, or Lamarck at any rate, everyone was a special creationist. Even Darwin implies in the Origin that if one is not a transformist with regards to species, one is a special creationist. Is it true, and what work does "special" do when affixed to "creation"?
It's important to know if only because of those interminable canards creationists of today in which science is supposed to be based on the work of creationists like Newton because they Christians, and didn't believe in evolution. As if one…
pharyngula | December 23, 2007And when you hear the grand announcement
That their wings are made of tin.
Then you will know the Junior Birdmen
Have sent their box tops in.
Human beings cannot fly.
It's simply impossible, and we've known it for centuries; there is, however, a conspiracy of committed, dogmatic aerodynamicists who have a vested interest in preserving the myth of Wilbur and Orville Wright, and despite the obvious impossibility of flight which is readily apparent to anyone with common sense, they persist in promoting their "theory."
There are honest engineers who can lay out in detail for you the…
gregladen | December 22, 2007Two years ago, the S.C. state school board introduced creationist-friendly language into its science standards, mainly on the urging of Republican State Senator Mike Fair. This was part of the Wedge Strategy, and involved including language to "critically analyze" evolutionary theory. They were highly criticised at the time.
In January, the board will consider the use of two textbooks in sate schools. Board Member Charles McKinney is brining into the discussion criticisms brought up by Clemson Universtiy Professor Horace Skipper. One of the books is by Kenneth Miller and Joseph Levine.…
evolvingthoughts | December 22, 2007
Okay, so the Eighth Day Inventism calendar as rolled around to coincide our Holy day with one of yours. We Inventists are open minded people and often try to reach out to you heathen irreligious puppy grinding moral monsters. Because that's what you are, you know, if you don't exactly believe and do what we Inventists do.
So to try to save you from your moral malaise of happy lives and families, meaningless rituals that you perform on turkeys several times a year, and other abominations that you make more or less simultaneous with the summer solstice (did I mention that Inventists use God'…