creationism
pharyngula | October 4, 2006You may recall that I reviewed Flock of Dodos last week—it's good, you should all see it if you can. The movie now has a distributor, so maybe you can. Unfortunately, this isn't a release for private use yet, so what you need to do is get an institution to fork over $345. Yeah, that's steep, but it includes public performance rights. Maybe you could convince your local university to get it for a Darwin Day showing…? Recoup the cost by selling tickets?
tfk | October 4, 2006In response to a candidate for Michigan governor endorsing ID, someone or other writes to the Detroit News Evolution theory relies on faith, too. Which means we don't even get past the title before the first error. But it gets worse:
Both creationists and evolutionists have logically derived hypotheses for the origin of our world and its inhabitants. Creationists believe in an Intelligent Designer who set nature in motion, and evolutionists believe that nature itself is the infinite being and the source of all we know.
No. Whatever "evolutionists" might be, the theory of evolution simply…
pharyngula | October 4, 2006Via Thoughts in a Haystack, here's an article on A Smart Battle Against Intelligent Design that almost gets the right answer, but then falls into the real trap, the conventional wisdom. First, here are the parts I think it gets right.
For the last 100 years, scientists, teachers and parents have been relying mostly on lawyers to keep religion out of public school science classes in this country. So far, the lawyers have been doing a pretty good job.
But the burden is shifting to the scientists themselves, say experts involved in recent cases defending public school science curricula from…
pharyngula | October 4, 2006Creationists don't lie all the time, and sometimes the truth can slip out. For instance, Ken Ham has recently admitted that they engage in fabrication, and have even shown pictures illustrating how good they are at fabricating "biblical truths."
(Yes, this is an example of quote mining.)
evolvingthoughts | October 3, 2006On the one hand, we have the father of a student killed at Columbine blaming evolution for moral decay. On the other the killer in the Amish shooting was a home schooled Christian with sexual abuse issues. On the gripping hand, America has more murders per head than Japan, Australia, and the other nations that teach science to their kids (many of them actual democracies unlike the United States, which is a republic that, like ancient Rome, is turning into a tyranny) but which are less religious. So, what causes what? You decide...
pharyngula | October 3, 2006
Deja vu, man, deja vu. I remember this magazine cover—I even bought the magazine, not because I was worried about the dog, but because I always read the National Lampoon. This is supposed to be a joke, though.
So now Goosing the Antithesis leads me to the
Answers in Genesis page, and what do I see?
You have got to be kidding me. This is no joke: AiG has a a new campaign going that one-ups NatLamp and suggests that if you don't buy in to Jesus, you will get shot.
If we evolved from lower life forms, then the Bible isn't true and we are no more than animals. So why should we listen when it…
pharyngula | October 3, 2006So…Intelligent Design creationists have a research program? It's just super-secret, because those real scientists might criticize it, lower its self-esteem, and make it wither away under our skeptical eye.
I've heard the same argument from astrologers, homeopaths, and reflexologists.
pharyngula | October 2, 2006Since John Wilkins has already commented on Paul Hanle's article on the declining competitiveness of Americans in science, I'll focus my opinion on a narrower point. I think Hanle is precisely correct when he points out that ID and creationism are shackles that handicap science education in our country.
By teaching intelligent design or other variants of creationism in science classes at public schools — or by undercutting the credibility of evolution — we are greatly diminishing our chances for future scientific breakthroughs and technological innovations, and are endangering our health,…
razib | October 1, 2006I received this comment and thought I might tap into the community here:
Ok I'm really sorry but this has nothing to do with the above post. I'm truly desperate to get my hands on a good pro-evolution film or something that explains clearly what its all about. All I seem to get locally is a bunch of bullshit about evolution vs. creationism. I've gotten a few good books mainly Dawkins, Steve Gould and Steve Jones but I'd love to see a good evolution film for once any reccomendations?
The only things I can think of are the PBS series Evolution and God, Darwin and Dinosaurs.
pharyngula | September 29, 2006Earlier this week, I had a chance to talk with Randy Olson about this business of communication good science to the public. I've had some disagreements with his strategies before; I think we resolved them a bit. What I had interpreted as a call to dumb down science to get it to the people is really a request that we develop clear narratives, good stories, and sharp, comprehensible slogans backing evolution and science teaching. I agree completely. We are experts at efficient discourse within the community of science, but when it comes to talking to middle America, we suck. There is a good…
evolvingthoughts | September 29, 2006
The Washington Post has an opinion editorial by Paul Hanle, the president of the Biotechnology Institute in Washington.
I recently addressed a group of French engineering graduate students who were visiting Washington from the prestigious School of Mines in Paris. After encouraging them to teach biotechnology in French high schools, I expected the standard queries on teaching methods or training. Instead, a bright young student asked bluntly: "How can you teach biotechnology in this country when you don't even accept evolution?"
I wanted to disagree, but the kid had a point. Proponents of…
pharyngula | September 27, 2006There are days when I simply cannot believe how dishonest the scoundrels at the Discovery Institute can be. This is one of them. I just read an essay by Jonathan Wells that is an appalling piece of anti-scientific propaganda, an extremely squirrely twisting of some science news. It's called "Why Darwinism is doomed", and trust me, if you read it, your opinion of Wells will drop another notch. And here you thought it was already in the gutter!
First, here's the science news that was published in Nature back in August, and which has set Wells off. The research is the result of the ability to…
pharyngula | September 26, 2006A reader sent along a few notes on Paul Nelson's grand tour of Norway—I've got to say that his strategy and his talk sounds awfully familiar, right down to the vacuous thought-experiments and god-praising screen-saver that conveniently kicked in during the Q&A. Most significantly, the Norwegian audience of scientists had little patience for his nonsensical arguments, just like our audience of students.
I really wonder how Nelson gets these travel invitations. Did the Scandinavian creationist groups pay his expenses, or is the Discovery Institute funding his missionary work? I think I need…
pharyngula | September 25, 2006The Pagan Prattle has an article about the infection of the UK with a rather American sounding version of creationism/ID. It sounds as if the response has ranged from dismissal to dithering avoidance, so it doesn't seem to be a big threat (yet—these nasty little strains can expand into chronic virulence fairly easily), so the most interesting thing, I thought, was some terminology.
There is an air of superficial plausibility about this, which is apparent in four lesson plans on Irreducible Complexity (Intelligent Design's catchphrase), the Fossil Record, Homology and Natural Selection. As a…
clock | September 24, 2006When you are hungry for news about mammoths, you go and visit Archy, of course. But this time, he moves sideways to take a look at mastodons, hippos and Ken Hamm. And the tail, or whatever that is....
pharyngula | September 24, 2006I'm going to be a bit distracted for a while, with some upcoming travel and various other bits of busy work, but I was listening to this lecture by Ken Miller (in which Carl Zimmer was in attendance, too) as I was puttering away on a lecture of my own . It's pretty much the same talk he gave in Kansas, sans talk of shooting at new targets and other obnoxious language, but I still find myself disagreeing with his conclusions. I had to take just a minute to bring up my objections.
He wants to argue that evolution is compatible with, even strengthens his faith, but his god is remarkably aloof…
mikethemadbiologist | September 24, 2006I stumbled across this site by People for the American Way designed to help citizens keep creationism out of the science classroom. The evolution FAQ is pretty good too.
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=22398