creationism
pharyngula | August 25, 2007Whoa, this one is a doozy. I dare you — I double-dog dare you — to stay awake through the whole thing.
an open letter biology professor P. Z. Myers
Dear Professor Paul Myers,
I remain absolutely willing to be convinced of the scientific adequacy of the theory of evolution to explain the phenomenon of speciation.
But as a non-scientist (and someone who always felt he was in a foreign land when studying science in high school) I have never considered myself competent to judge the arguments on both sides of the controversy: evolution versus intelligent design. I mean by this, that I would never…
pharyngula | August 24, 2007I've been trying to recollect what horrible thing I said in that interview with that film crew … what juicy, ghastly, evil comment I might have made that will be plucked out and impaled on a stick and waved to the audience to inflame them. It's a waste of time, of course — I tend to be far too mellow in person, despite occasional brief declamations that religion is crap, and they're going to have to strain a bit to find anything sufficiently inciteful.
And then I remembered — the interviewer was mildly obsessed with one thing that he brought up several times. It was a quote from this…
pharyngula | August 24, 2007Last year, Answers in Genesis ran an essay contest for young creationists — the prize was a $50,000 scholarship to Liberty University (second prize must have been a $100,000 scholarship). Well, they ran it again this year, and the 'winners' have been announced, and a sorry lot of recitations of bogus creationist talking points they are. Evolution turns people into immoral killers! Darwinism leads people to abortion and Hitler! Cells are full of little machines created by Jesus! It's really sad to see young people led down the path of stupidity like that.
If you really must read them, you can…
pharyngula | August 22, 2007Last April, I received this nice letter from Mark Mathis.
Hello Mr. Myers,
My name is Mark Mathis. I am a Producer for Rampant Films. We are
currently in production of the documentary film, "Crossroads: The
Intersection of Science and Religion."
At your convenience I would like to discuss our project with you and to see
if we might be able to schedule an interview with you for the film. The
interview would take no more than 90 minutes total, including set up and
break down of our equipment.
We are interested in asking you a number of questions about the
disconnect/controversy that exists in…
evolvingthoughts | August 22, 2007
The National Geographic and the news services are touting a new ape fossil found in Ethiopia as "forcing a rethink on human evolution". As usual, the headlines are hyperbolic. This ape is fragmentary, and so far only teeth and a jaw bone have been found, and the teeth are similar to gorilla teeth. Gorillas are thought on molecular grounds to have split off from the chimp-human clade about 7 million years ago, but this specimen is 10 million years old. What gives?
I can think of a couple of options. One is that, as I have reported previously, teeth are not great diagnostic material for…
pharyngula | August 22, 2007Come February, we are going to be privileged to see a brand new movie that stars Ben Stein and portrays Intelligent Design creationism as the cool rebel oppressed by the stodgy old Darwinist bullies. Did you know that "scientists are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator"? I didn't either. I think a lot of scientists have thought about it and noticed that there is no evidence for such a hypothesis, and have therefore rejected it.
This movie fits with the intelligent design strategy of declaring itself the victim of an unfair exclusion (which isn't true, of…
pharyngula | August 21, 2007There is this fellow, Robert Bowie Johnson Jr., who claims that the tales of the Bible are verified by ancient Greek art — ho-hum, the usual confirmation bias and failure to recognize that the existence of common motifs in Western mythology does not imply the reality of a supernatural interpretation — who has gone further and urges the use of shaming insults against "Darwinists":
To shock the Darwinists out of their denial of the overwhelming evidence in Greek art for the reality of Genesis events, the author urges Creationists to refer to evolutionists as what they imagine they are--"Slime-…
pharyngula | August 20, 2007Here's some exciting news: Artificial life likely in 3 to 10 years. It is exciting but not surprising at all — but of course we're going to be able to assemble entirely artificial life forms soon. It's just a particularly complicated kind of chemistry, and it's more of a deep technical problem than anything else. I wouldn't be quite so specific about the date — there are also all kinds of surprises that could pop up — but I'm optimistic, and I think the overall assertion is supported by the increasing rate of accomplishment in the field.
But of course, in addition to the usual suggestions…
pharyngula | August 20, 2007Unbelievable. Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya, the Turkish crackpot creationist, didn't like the fact that his critics wrote mean things about him … so he applied to a Turkish court to have all Wordpress blogs blocked. And the court accepted his argument, and no one in Turkey has been able to access anything from Wordpress.com for a day or two now.
Man, I was once mooned on the freeway by a guy in a Chevy. Does this mean I can get Chevrolet to recall all of their cars in the state of Minnesota now? That would sure teach him.
That fanatical nitwit wrote in to wordpress to brag about his…
pharyngula | August 17, 2007If you want to take a look at one of the sources of creationist thought, the workshop where the red-hot anvil of pseudoscience and the inflexible hammer of theology are used to forge the balloon animals of creationism, The Journal of Creation (formerly the Creation ex nihilo Technical Journal) is now online … or at least part of it is. They're working on it. For now, it's enough that you can browse through several issues and see how they put up this superficially persuasive façade of analyzing matters objectively and scientifically, while somehow coming to the weirdest and most nonsensical…
mikethemadbiologist | August 17, 2007Maha responds to my previous post about pseudoconservatives. I don't really have much to add to what she said, but I want to make several additional points and clarifications:
1) I agree with maha that it's difficult to figure out what conservatism is, even for conservatives. In large part, this stems from what she correctly describes as antagonism. Being opposed to something is not the same as philosophical coherency--a point I've made about the 'progressive' movement.
2) I think we also agree that the modern conservatives are running the U.S. into the ground. Increasing income…
pharyngula | August 16, 2007If it's been a bit dead here today, it's because I've been on an aeroplane most of the afternoon, and am now holed up in the lovely little village of New York for a few days of urban thrills.
While I was cruising through the skies, Vox Day has responded to my rebuke of his pathetic anti-scientific efforts. He's now claiming that if evolution were capable of rates of 200,000 darwins, then we could turn a mouse into an elephant in 20 years, and since we haven't, then evolution is bogus.
I trust Pharyngula readers are smart enough to see the obvious logical hole. That evolution does not proceed…
pharyngula | August 15, 2007I'm sorry, Scott, but thinking you can engage Vox Day in a serious discussion of evolution is an act of hyper-optimistic lunacy. Hatfield has set the terms, and Day has replied … and his argument against evolution, if not nuts, is dishonest. He doesn't believe evolution could have occurred because he doesn't think theoretical predictions have been met.
Based on the information from Talk Origins, it could theoretically take as little as 20 years to forcibly evolve a species of mouse into a species of elephant given the rate of darwins observed in the laboratory and the number required for…
evolvingthoughts | August 14, 2007
I normally don't respond the to IDiocy of Uncommon Dissent, but John Lynch, may he rot in purgatory for a thousand years, has made me. As usual, I won't dignify it with links. If you are that interested you can find it.
There are two items: one is by DaveScot, who argues (!) that because Popper's falsification hypothesis means that until we find non-white swans, a hypothesis that swans are white stands, we should somehow assume that Intelligent Design stands as a scientific view. This is silly for a couple of reasons. One is that we have got counterinstances to the need for ID to explain…
pharyngula | August 14, 2007I gave two talks this weekend to the Critical Thinking Clubs of St Paul and Stillwater. Herewith a brief account of the events therein.
The Sunday morning session was the most conventional. The title was "Progress and Opportunities in Evolution", and the focus was on the utility of evolutionary theory — not my usual bailiwick. Hey, it helps us understand the pattern of life, isn't that good enough for you? Fortunately, I'd recently read David Mindell's The Evolving World, so I cribbed shamelessly from it (and freely admitted it, and waved the book around at the meeting). This was a…
pharyngula | August 14, 2007Julie Haberle, the born-again who splattered Minnesota billboards with creationist apologetics, has revamped her website. It's prettier and twice as stupid now; it still has the very clumsy bulletin board that was utterly ruled by evolution supporters poking holes in her bad arguments. What the site primarily has, though, are the quote mines — this place is a gold mine of quote mines. For instance, right up front and center they have this:
"To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the…
pharyngula | August 14, 2007Some fellow calling himself "homersimpson123" (who thinks he is doing the world a service) has uploaded all of the Kent Hovind DVDs to bittorrent, as well as the horrendous gemisch he uses in his presentations. Since Hovind is rotting in jail for a good long while, this is your chance to torture yourself with some truly awful nonsense.
(hat tip to DaveX)
evolvingthoughts | August 11, 2007
Laelaps has a very nice essay that ranges from the number of ribs humans have, the book of Genesis, creationism, and the variety of stories told about human evolution from the nineteenth century to now. Go read it. It's one of the few blog posts in which you'll read of petrified testicles...
[HT: Afarensis]
pharyngula | August 10, 2007It's a busy weekend coming up. On Sunday, 12 August, I'll be speaking at the St. Paul Critical Thinking Club, at The Kelly Inn (off I-94 at the Marion St exit) from 10:00 AM to noon. Well, it's scheduled for two hours, but I promise not to babble on for that length of time. There is a $10 fee to cover the buffet breakfast, and you need to rsvp to Lee Salisbury if you want to attend.
Progress and Opportunities in Evolution
Scientists are a pragmatic bunch who typically don't worry too much about the deeper philosophical meanings of their vocation: the important property of a good theory is…
pharyngula | August 9, 2007First Luskin, now Vox Day rushes to say something incredibly stupid (so what else is new?) about the new hominin fossils.
It doesn't matter what the evidence is, evolutionary biologists are happy to change their story to suit.
Errm, what?
There's a problem in principle with his objection: yes, that's what scientists are supposed to do. They're supposed to follow the evidence where it leads, not cling to a story in spite of the evidence. Religious fruitcakes like Day are the ones who think sticking to a falsified story in spite of the evidence is a virtue.
There's also a problem in detail. He…