creationism
evolvingthoughts | March 7, 2007
Once upon a time, there was a village that lived on the side of a large mountain. Just above them was a cloud cover that never moved, obscuring what lay above. Below them were dotted many other villages all the way down to the bottom of the valley.
The villagers did not know where they came from. Well, that is not quite right, for there were two opposing schools of thought, both of whom said they knew. One group, the Ascenders, said they came from the villages below, or trekked past them from the valley, where there were many other groups, some quite similar in their languages, dress and…
evolvingthoughts | March 4, 2007
The following is a series of reasons why in a democracy, one should not elect Christians as leaders or representatives.
1. They are exclusive, and will favour their own over the welfare of all. Minorities like Jews, Muslims, Hindus and other religions, as well as those who lack any religion, will be marginalised.
2. They have no moral sense, and will do whatever anyone in their faith community tells them they should do. They are religious relativists.
3. They try to impose their own views on others by law. They will try to make religious dogma binding on those who don't share their…
pharyngula | March 4, 2007Youtube has spawned a few copycats, and now there's one called GodTube.com—I think you can figure out what it's about. I'd be willing to let it be, just as I don't bother much with XTube (yes, there's one just for porn!)—if they want to masturbate quietly in private, I'm not going to bother the little wankers. Unfortunately, as you ought to expect, it's also a haven for creationists, right now largely consisting of some of the dumbest videos ever in a series called "Chatting with Charlie". Charlie is very confused and not very bright; he's a kind of Kent Hovind on quaaludes. For example, take…
pharyngula | March 2, 2007A while back, I wrote a response to Coulter's piss-poor excuse for a book, Godless. It's actually fairly long and substantial; since there was absolutely no accurate statement of either fact or theory on the subject of evolution in the entire book, and since there was nothing specific to address, I took the time to make a link-rich collection of sources where anyone could look up the evidence for evolution, with suggestions of places where one could look up the basics of the theory. Writing a line-by-line rebuttal would have been a massive task, and one that Coulter fans would have ignored…
pharyngula | March 1, 2007The IDists love to quote me, because I am rather militant in my opposition to their lies. They are particularly fond of one particular quote* that they've even used in their fund-raising literature. They think it's damning; some of my fellow anti-creationists swoon and protest when they hear the words, but they tend to be faint-hearted anyway. But here's what's really amusing.
I get fan mail from people all the time who are overjoyed that someone out there on the evolution side isn't an apologetic ditherer.
Even better, one ID-friendly conservative tried to rouse his audience with the horror…
pharyngula | March 1, 2007This one has been around for almost a year now, but if you're getting tired of Conservapedia, take a stroll through the CreationWiki. It doesn't generally have that tone of having been written by a gang of third-graders, but there's plenty of stupid on display.
(via Unscrewing The Inscrutable)
pharyngula | March 1, 2007Many will argue with the conclusion of my title, but there are so many examples of outright intellectual vacuity from people who anoint themselves with the title "conservative" that it is fast becoming a synonym for "ignoramus". We've lately been laughing ourselves silly at the absurdity called Conservapædia, but here's another flabby, nutritionally empty scrap of junk food to chew over: a site called The Intellectual Conservative. In particular, I call your attention to yet another right wing rejection of a valid, well-established science by someone completely oblivious to either the…
mikethemadbiologist | February 27, 2007
Beta test version of Conservapedia graphical interface. Isn't he reassuring?
What happens when you take Science Blogs "basic concepts" and add it to Conservapedia, the information website for fucking morons? You get more fun than a barrel of monkeys (which, of course, are not related to humans...). Here's what the Stupid People have to say about genes (this is the entire definition):
A section of DNA that codes for the production of a protein or a portion of a protein. The gene is the fundamental unit of heredity. Although the gene is the fundamental unit of heredity, changes in genes (so…
pharyngula | February 27, 2007State senatory Raymond Finney of Tennessee (a retired physician—hey, we've been making Orac squirm uncomfortably a lot lately) has just filed a resolution that asks a few questions. Actually, he's demanding that the Tennessee Department of Education answer these questions within a year or … well, I don't know what. He might stamp his foot and have a snit.
(1) Is the Universe and all that is within it, including human beings, created through purposeful, intelligent design by a Supreme Being, that is a Creator?
Understand that this question does not ask that the Creator be given a name. To…
pharyngula | February 26, 2007This fellow Mike up around Toronto asked me for assistance a while back—he was planning to attend the Bible Skeptics Conference, an event put on by the Institute for Creation Research. I couldn't say much, but I did suggest he get in touch with Larry Moran at the U Toronto.
Well, he attended and survived. It's a good summary of the usual combination of drivel and lunacy that comes out of these events. He also attended a second talk by Bruce Malone. Malone, by the way, was the fellow who was speaking in the Twin Cities last week, to whose talk on Mt St Helens as evidence for a young earth I…
mikethemadbiologist | February 26, 2007When I heard that Republican Senator and presidential candidate John McCain spoke at the Discovery Institute, I was disappointed but not surprised. In March, there's going to be a report released about antibiotic resistance in bacteria. A major finding of the report: roughly 40,000 people die every year from hospital-acquired antibiotic resistant bacterial infections.
The problem of antibiotic resistance is, fundamentally, a problem of evolutionary biology. Species of bacteria which had very few resistant strains (or none at all) now contain high frequencies of resistance strains (e.g…
pharyngula | February 26, 2007Let this be a lesson to you: being a moderate will not spare you from the reactionary criticisms of the lunatic right. Chris Mooney is an unbeliever, but he's also one of those softies who thinks atheists ought to be less vigorous in their assault on the public sphere (I recall arguing with him a few times about that). I confess to feeling a little schadenfreude that now the Discovery Institute pillories him for daring to be a secular humanist. The DI doesn't like theistic evolutionists either, though, so it's not like it's a big surprise that they'd have the vapors over a secular humanist.…
pharyngula | February 25, 2007He's baaaack. That creationist surgeon, Michael Egnor, keeps flaunting his ignorance — and his verbosity — in the comments.
Your assertion that you answered my challenge 'perfectly' is, well, not perfect. I asked for a measurement of new information, not anecdotes about new functions. You and Nick have managed to generate molecular 'just-so' stories, anecdotes without actual quantitative measurement, for your central hypothesis that Darwinism can account for biological complexity. I guess 'just-so' stories are in your genes.
Egnor is trying to make the argument that evolution cannot increase…
pharyngula | February 25, 2007It seems to be a theme here lately: people with serious credentials in science and medicine who then profess their belief in gods and magic and make public asses of themselves. Next up: Brad Harrub.
Dr Harrub has a Ph.D. in neurobiology and anatomy from the College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee. He is a member of the Church of Christ, director and founder of Focus Press, Inc., co-editor of 'Think' magazine, and a featured writer in various Christian journals. Books he has co-authored include 'Diamonds in the Rough: Nuggets of Truth from God's Word', 'Investigating Christian…
evolvingthoughts | February 24, 2007
In another interesting piece about demarcation of science from nonscience (see my previous items about this here, here and here), Janet Stemwedel has a nice series of hand-drawn flowcharts that make the difference between creationist arguments and real science clear.
Janet, I would have done nice neat computer-drawn flowcharts for you, if you'd asked...
mikethemadbiologist | February 24, 2007And it's free! Bob Altemeyer, whose work on the authoritarian mind significantly influenced John Dean'sConservatives Without Conscience, has released a free online book, The Authoritarians, which is about, well, authoritarians. Here's an interesting bit from the book about evolution from Ch. 4:
For the record, Darwin never said humans evolved from monkeys, even though many other people besides fundamentalists think he did. Even with the limited knowledge available to him 150 years ago, Darwin realized that humanity's ancestors had long separated from the evolutionary path that led to…