creationism
gregladen | December 13, 2007The rock formation depicted here is believed to have been built by the giant Fin McCool (a.k.a. Fionn Mac Cumhaill) as a causeway to Scotland allowing the giant Benandonner to cross over so the two could engage in a competition of strength. However, a newly formed group called the "Causeway Creation Committee" now asserts that the rock formation is the result of the Noachian Flood.
From the Causeway Creation Committee's web site:
In the interests of the truth and equality the Causeway Creation Committee desires that any new visitor centre at the Giant's Causeway should include a display and…
pharyngula | December 13, 2007Hector Avalos sent me his response to the Discovery Institute's 'shocking' revelation that people had been discussing Guillermo Gonzalez's affiliation with Intelligent Design creationism before they denied him tenure. It's a classic pointless objection: of course they were, and of course his openly expressed, unscientific beliefs which were stated as a representative of ISU were a serious consideration. It does not speak well of the Discovery Institute that they had to cobble together quote-mines from the email to try and make a non-case for a non-issue.
THE DI AND THE SMOKING GUN THAT WASN'…
pharyngula | December 12, 2007
All right, this comic convinces me that the tactics of godless rationalism and saintly religion are indistinguishable.
(I'll also be curious to see how many creationists overlook the sarcasm and accuse me of wanting to torture them on the rack…)
pharyngula | December 12, 2007This exercise in false equivalence, Duelity, is beautifully animated but promotes a poor idea. It's basically two videos, one telling the Christian creation myth inaccurately and in the style of a scientific explanation, and another that inaccurately summarizes the evolution story as if it were holy writ. There's a pretense that these are equally valid descriptions of the history of the world that is completely wrong, and that amplifies the errors throughout the individual stories from mere irritations to dishonest propaganda.
The comments there are largely positive. All I can assume from…
gregladen | December 12, 2007 want us to believe that their "theory" is part of science, but of course, it is really a form of creationism, and has no place in Texas schools. This position is shared by more than 100 professors in Texas, who have weighted in on this debate:
"Intelligent design is a religious idea that deserves no place in the science classroom," said assistant professor Daniel Bolnick from his lab on the University of Texas campus. "I really just want to communicate to the state board that we're keeping an eye on the quality of evolution education, and that there's no justification for watering it down…
gregladen | December 12, 2007The Florida Citizens for Science asks:
Since the holiday season is upon us, why not spread an educational message along with your Christmas cheer?
A Call to Action
gregladen | December 12, 2007This from the National Center for Science Education:
As Florida continues to consider the draft of a new set of state science standards, there are reports about mounting creationist lobbying against the inclusion of evolution and for the inclusion of creationism. Writing in the Miami Herald (December 9, 2007), Fred Grimm summarized: "For the past 11 years, the biology curriculum in Florida schools has ignored the one great organizing principle of biological science. Darwin's theory was blackballed, never mind that his work has been bolstered by 148 years of scientific inquiry. ... Or so it…
gregladen | December 12, 2007This is an amazing story, and unfortunately, it is probably being repeated again and again across the country. It begins with a parent who does not want his daugther exposed to science, which is pretty common, but leads to a startling revelation about the local school board. Startling, but I'm afraid, probably not at all uncommon either.
In Pymatuning Valley Local School District, in Andover, Ohio, a "concerned" parent, Frank Piper, questioned the school board about the teaching of science in the middle school, where his daughter is enrolled.
Specifically, he is
concerned because the…
pharyngula | December 11, 2007All right, who's in charge of pool predicting the location of the next big creationist trial? The odds on Florida have just gone up: another Board of Education member has said something stupid.
I would support teaching evolution, but with all its warts. I think that some of the facts have been questioned by evolutionists themselves. I would want them taught as theories. That's important. They could be challenged by others and the kids could then be taught critical thinking and they can make their own choices.
Thank you, Linda Taylor. Warts: name two. Theory: define the term. Answer the…
gregladen | December 11, 2007... From conservative Mac Johnson, on Intelligent Design; Student-Run Anchor of Rhode Island College Executive Editor Jessica Albaum on Huckabee the Hate-able ; and the Star Telegram's OpEd by Alan Leshner on science standards in Texas....
Intelligent Design, and Other Dumb Ideas
A few short years ago, nobody had ever heard of "Intelligent Design" (ID). Today it is alleged to be one of the hot button issues of our times, the latest front in the culture wars. The sudden prominence of ID is traceable, in my opinion, to two factors.
One is that, even ten years ago, ID had enough confidence…
pharyngula | December 11, 2007I'm feeling left out. The mathematicians — Mark, Blake, and Tyler — are having so much fun bullseyeing a certain womp rat over there in Creationist Canyon. Yeah, Slimy Sal Cordova has poked his pointy head up and claimed that, somehow, Intelligent Design and Advanced Creation Science (whatever the heck that is) are built on Fourier transforms and Schrödinger's equation. It's a pathetic spectacle — Cordova simply throws up a formula with some Greek symbols in it, waves his hand with a flourish, and says, "A-ha!" After a time of his readers staring blankly at him, he says, "A-ha!" again,…
pharyngula | December 10, 2007The inimitable Peter Irons has been hot on the trail of the Nathaniel Abraham case, the ditzy creationist who is upset because he got fired from an evolutionary biology lab. There are some interesting tidbits below, specifically the fact that Abraham claims the job ad did not make reference to acceptance of the theory of evolution as fact, yet when Irons dug up the job posting, it does say that this is work on evolutionary relationships.
It's a bad sign when you've got to misrepresent the facts in your court complaint.
Those who have been following the Nathaniel Abraham case might find the…
pharyngula | December 10, 2007OK, astronomers and physicists, get to work. This movie is supposed to be a refutation of modern science, but it's full of bogus claims like, 'Since 98% of the sun is hydrogen and helium, the earth ought to be 98% hydrogen and helium.' There is a lot of similar trivially idiotic nonsense, all marshaled to support the false contention that if science can't explain it, then god must have done it, but here's the thing: almost none of it is in the Index to Creationist Claims. We need an update!
laelaps | December 10, 2007If you fail at everything else in life, you could always try to work for a scientific organization, reveal that you're a creationist, and then land a job as a professor at Liberty University. That's just what Nathaniel Abraham did, and now he's suing the prestigious Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute because as they didn't want a creationist working on a project that directly involved evolutionary concepts. PZ already covered this story when it initially came out, but now it seems to have emerged in wider media circles (it was on the Yahoo! front page when I logged on a few minutes ago). The…
pharyngula | December 10, 2007But you haven't, have you?
He's still around, and still occasionally trying to get comments past my filters here. He has a blog — Evolution Is Finished, with one article with no real content, and a few comments, mostly by John A. Davison. He's still whining repetitively at ISCID. He was going on and on at a site called OneBlogADay, but that site seems to have disappeared; I hope it didn't implode in disgust at the way it was hijacked by the preening duo of the obtuse JAD and his talking hemorrhoid, VMartin. But just in case you've missed him, he has discovered a brand new outlet, the…
pharyngula | December 10, 2007There are some rational people in Florida, as Robyn Blumner's column makes clear. Not only does she mock Texas for their foolish harrassment of Christine Comer, but she goes on to point out the disastrous consequences of Republican religious meddling, and that Huckabee is going to be more of the same.
Here is something scary-ignorant. Last week, the Web site ChristiaNet.com, which bills itself as "the world's largest Christian portal," cheered the results of a survey it took finding that half of its 1,400 Christian respondents said that dinosaurs and man roamed the Earth at the same time.…
gregladen | December 10, 2007Chistians, especially Catholics, continue "tizzy" regarding The Golden Compass, based on books by atheist Philip Pullman. I heard a woman from the Catholic League, spitting and furming on MSNBC about how this movie was really really bad because it would ...
Lead to children to reading the books..
Read the books? Hey, read the books! Next thing you know, the children will be cannibalizing each other when we are not looking....
From a column in the Times Record New, Wichita:
C'mon, people. "The Golden Compass" is a fantasy film - a fantasy film - which generally means it's not real.
You can…
evolvingthoughts | December 9, 2007
For those who wish a copy of Gosse's famous Omphalos, I have uploaded it to Internet Archive. It's still only a PDF, but I hope that the IA folks will do an OCR.
Many thanks to Noelie Alito for buying me the copy. Now that it's scanned, I'll have it rebound, one day.
pharyngula | December 8, 2007There are a few novelties in this one: a) it's in Florida, not Texas; b) it's a creationist in the department advocating creationism; and c) she didn't get fired for writing it. You can read the whole thing at Florida Citizens for Science, but here's the stupid part.
The science standards that are in place now do not include the word Evolution anywhere. In fact, they are ambiguous enough that the districts and schools in Florida have been able to teach evolution as a theory along With other theories. In addition to that, if these new standards are adopted, the new instructional materials…
gregladen | December 8, 2007From this blog at harpers.org, yesterday:
I'm not sure if Secretary of the Commerce Carlos Gutierrez is cheap or cuckoo, but it comes as something of a shock to learn that the controversial book The Atlas of Creation is prominently displayed in the waiting room to his office. Written by the Turkish writer Adnan Oktar (under the pen name of Harun Yahya), the Atlas offers an Islamic version of creationism and blames Charles Darwin for modern terrorism-including the 9/11 attacks.
And today, from the same source:
Richard Mills, an agency spokesman, said in an email: "Apparently like thousands of…