creationism
pharyngula | February 24, 2007The other day, the Time magazine blog strongly criticized the DI's list of irrelevant, unqualified scientists who "dissent from Darwin", and singled out a surgeon, Michael Egnor, as an example of the foolishness of the people who support the DI. I took apart some of Egnor's claims, that evolutionary processes can't generate new information. In particular, I showed that there are lots of publications that show new information emerging in organisms.
Egnor replied in a comment. He's still completely wrong. The Discovery Institute has posted his vapid comment, too, as if it says something, so let…
pharyngula | February 23, 2007Greg Laden reminds me that today's Science Friday will feature Ed Humes and Randy Olson talking about educating people about evolution—tune in!
clock | February 23, 2007Evolution works according to a very small set of simple rules. If a) there is variation in a trait in a population and b) that variation is heritable and c) one variant is better adapted to the current local environment, then d) the best adapted trait will increase in the proportion within the population in the next generation. Once you understand this simple algorithm (perhaps, for fuller understanding, learn some basics of the ways genotype maps onto phenotype via development), everything about the living world is explainable without magic.
John McCain works according to a very small set…
evolvingthoughts | February 23, 2007
When one is starting in a field for the first time, the choice of textbook is crucial, as it will often set the tone for the rest of one's study. Last year and the year before I helped teach Philosophy of the Life Sciences here, and we used, respectively, one textbook and no textbook. Right now I'm reading a rather marvellous book, that would have set me up years in advance of where I am now, so this got me thinking (it's the job description, you know): what are the textbooks on Philosophy of Biology, and what are their respective merits?
I'm going to ignore the various present and…
pharyngula | February 22, 2007John McCain is going to be addressing the Discovery Institute in a panderiffic event tomorrow. DefCon Blog has a petition urging him to cancel his appearance, on the perfectly reasonable grounds that no candidate should be giving moral support to such a contemptible organization.
I have mixed feelings about it. I'm no fan of McCain, and I like watching the far Right embed themselves ever deeper into Christian lunacy—I have this hope that someday everyone will wake up and see the whole Christian/Republican edifice as purest poison. So I can't quite bring myself to sign the petition, not that…
pharyngula | February 22, 2007I guess Phillip Johnson stepped down from on high to deliver a thunderbolt of a defense of Intelligent Design creationism. At least that's the impression you get from the IDists.
Ho hum. To me, it sounds more like an old man farted.
You can get an assessment from the rational people on the side of evolution, like Shalini, John Pieret, and Joe Meert. I think Larry Moran summarized it most succinctly.
Like most IDiot arguments, this one relies on two main points: (1) evolution is wrong, (2) the bad guys are picking on us. There isn't one single scientific argument in favor of intelligent design…
mikethemadbiologist | February 22, 2007Some of my fellow ScienceBloglings have written about Conservapedia's treatment of evolution. What has always puzzled me about creationists is the rather frequent denial of mutation. For example, in the section on macroevolution, titled "Is the theory of macroevolution true?"*--which should tell you what's to come right away, the entry reads:
2. Differences between organisms can be explained by known mechanisms of genetic mutation.
* Counter: There has not been enough time for mutation to generate existing biological diversity.
* Counter: There has been enough time enough…
pharyngula | February 21, 2007Take a look at this interesting discussion of a recent PLoS article in which publications in medical journals are reluctant to use the word "evolution":
According to a report released last week in PLoS Biology, when medical journals publish studies about things like antibiotic resistance, they avoid using the "E-word." Instead, antimicrobial resistance is (euphemistically, I suppose) said to "emerge," "arise," or "spread" rather than "evolve."
This decision has consequences, too—popular press descriptions of the work then tend to avoid using the word "evolution", too. This is exactly the…
pharyngula | February 21, 2007A reader pointed me to this German documentary (with English subtitles) on evolution and creationism—it has a nice 10 minute primer on mechanisms and evidence for evolution (with evo-devo, especially of fruit flies and zebrafish, prominently mentioned, appropriately enough for the country of Christiane Nusslein-Volhard).
There's also a segment on creationism that is a bit lacking in nuance—they are all lumped together as young earth creationists—which is the kind of opening creationists use to disavow association with those other kooks, while glossing over the foolishness they do believe.…
pharyngula | February 21, 2007At least, I hope so. The "conservapedia" is supposed to be an alternative to Wikipedia that removes the biases—although one would think the creators would be clever enough to realize that even the name announces that Conservapedia is planning to openly embrace a particular political bias. Unfortunately, that bias seems to be more towards stupidity than anything else.
In fact, reading through it leads me to wonder if it isn't actually a parody site. Some people are getting the same impression of Overwhelming Evidence, the Intelligent Design site that was set up to cater to the teen crowd, but…
evolvingthoughts | February 20, 2007
James Randerson, at the GrauniadGuardian blog site makes an interesting point about the new bionic eye. It's only a 4x4 grid of monochrome pixels, but it's revolutionised the life of a blind man. Of what use is 1/2^n of an eye? Well it's enough to navigate. Randerson points out that this totally demolishes the ID argument. So it's not only a cool invention, but a great rebuttal.
evolvingthoughts | February 20, 2007Tom Hayden, who is some guy from some state in some country, writes a rather courageous thing, addressed to Christian clergy. Read on for the money quote:
When I chaired the Natural Resources Committee in the California senate, I noticed that the clergy never testified against the destruction of species, forests, clean air and water, the wellsprings of life itself. Even today, the California Fish and Game Code refers to fish and wildlife as "the property of the people" and says they provide a contribution to the state economy. The forest practices law mandates "maximum sustained production of…
clock | February 20, 2007Archy gives a detailed explanation of the way Creationists explain away all the problems of the Noah's Ark story.
pharyngula | February 20, 2007Larry Moran takes apart the Marcus Ross case in some detail. Ross is the young earth creationist who recently received his Ph.D. from the University of Rhode Island.
In this situation we have an example of someone who carefully hid his true belief from the thesis committee, or at least went out of his way to give them an excuse to avoid facing up to the main problem. This is deceptive and antithetical to how science is supposed to operate. It opens a whole other can of worms. While most of us would agree that openly advocating a young Earth in your thesis would be grounds for failure, we…
pharyngula | February 19, 2007Edward Humes, the author of Monkey Girl, has an excellent op-ed in the Lawrence Journal-World.
The talk-radio version had a packed town hall up in arms at the "Why Evolution Is Stupid" lecture. In this version of the theory, scientists supposedly believe that all life is accidental, a random crash of molecules that magically produced flowers, horses and humans — a scenario as unlikely as a tornado in a junkyard assembling a 747. Humans come from monkeys in this theory, just popping into existence one day. The evidence against Darwin is overwhelming, the purveyors of talk-radio evolution rail…
evolvingthoughts | February 19, 2007
A recent report noted that studies that rely on evolutionary processesto explain, say, antibiotic resistance among pathogens, tend not to use the "E-word" in medical journals, instead using terms like "emerging", "spreading" and "increasing". The reason appears to be the bad connotations "evolution" has in American contexts.
There is much misunderstanding of this term, and people often pack a lot of differing concepts under it. Consider this rant by a creationist in The American Spectator: there are "six types of evolution" according to him. They are cosmic evolution, chemical evolution,…
pharyngula | February 19, 2007As I might have guessed, it seems to have been rather unimpressive. No genuinely outré exhibits, just more average work with bible verses slapped on. He does observe that quote-mining the bible means these kiddies are going to burn in hell someday, which does add a little frisson of horror to the exhibit, but since it's just as much an unsympathetic fantasy as the Christian belief that we godless people are hellbound, I'm afraid it's still not enough reason to have compelled me to drive across the state to see it.
evolvingthoughts | February 18, 2007
I get notifications of the incredibly bigoted and stupid comments at Town Hall.Com via Google. I usually ignore them - that's PZ's domain. But this has to be commented on.
Some idiotic ignoramus named Mary Grabar attacks Sam Harris, who most likely knows three orders of magnitude more than she about the history of both science and religion, thus, in a column nicely titled "Letter to a Stupid Atheist":
You have a degree in philosophy, I see, but were you aware that science as a mode of thought came about through monotheism? You see, the idea of a single creator made it possible for human…
pharyngula | February 18, 2007Here's an excellent and useful summary of the appendix from a surgeon's perspective. Creationists dislike the idea that we bear useless organs, remnants of past function that are non-functional or even hazardous to our health; they make up stories about the importance of these vestiges. Sid Schwab has cut out a lot of appendices, and backs up its non-utility with evidence.
The study I cited most often to my patients when asked about adverse consequences of appendectomy is one done by the Mayo Clinic: they studied records of thousands of patients who'd had appendectomy, and compared them with…
pharyngula | February 18, 2007Time magazine has a science blog, Eye on Science, and the writer, Michael Lemonick, doesn't hesitate to take on the Intelligent Design creationists. A recent entry criticizes the Discovery Institute's silly list of dissenters from 'Darwinism'. Not only is the number that they cite pathetically small, but they rely on getting scientists whose expertise isn't relevant.
The Discovery Institute is at it again. "Ranks of Scientists Doubting Darwin's Theory On the Rise," proclaims the latest press release from this organization that pretends to be interested in science. Read on and you'll find…