creationism
pharyngula | September 24, 2006In case you haven't been following the vivisections of Wells' horrid book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, I thought I'd mention that there's more online at the Panda's Thumb. Wells' book is a collection of anti-science propaganda, brought to us by those friendly frauds at the Discovery Institute and Regnery Publishing, and the crew at The Panda's Thumb are slowly working their way through it, documenting the falsehoods, the distortions, the poor scholarship, and the generally atrocious crapitude of the book. It's great fun!
The critiques of Chapter 3 (…
tfk | September 22, 2006Thanks to the Angry Astronomer for pointing out Captain Occam, a webcomic that treats creationism with the respect it deserves.
pharyngula | September 21, 2006The Christian group that spread the initial rumor that Steve Irwin had been "born again" shortly before his death has retracted the claim.
But as encouraging as it might be for Christians to know they
may share heaven with Irwin, the group now concedes there is reason
to doubt the conversion. The unverified story was sent out by an
exuberant staff member, said the group's managing director, Carl
Wieland. "Though we are able to substantiate our suggestion that
Steve's wife, Terri, was a church-going Christian, the stories of
Steve coming forward can, at this stage, not be substantiated," he…
mikethemadbiologist | September 21, 2006Ed Brayton describes the support of intelligent design creationism by the Republican candidate for governor of Michigan. Says the hopeful candidate:
I would like to see the ideas of intelligent design -- that many scientists are now suggesting is a very viable alternative theory -- that that theory and others that would be considered credible would expose our students to more ideas, not less.
If by "credible", he means utterly unsubstantiated and without a single testable hypothesis, then, yes, intelligent design creationism is "credible."
Moron.
pharyngula | September 21, 2006ID advocates are prone to brag about their self-professed expertise, which all too often relies on some respectable knowledge of engineering or other fields irrelevant to biology. DaveScot, the raving mad anti-scientist at Uncommon Descent, is a perfect example…but even in their own domains of knowledge they too often prove to be incompetent. Case in point: their blog has somehow become delisted from Google, and now DaveScot is flailing about, trying to find someone to blame. His answer? Wesley Elsberry did it. It's all because other sites mirror their content, which he thinks Google finds…
pharyngula | September 21, 2006It is so predictable that Michigan candidate for governor Dick DeVos is a Republican and a Christian.
"Lots of intelligent people can disagree about the origins of life. In the end, I believe in our system of local control," he said in a news release Wednesday afternoon. "Local school boards should have the opportunity to offer evolution and intelligent design in their curriculums."
What is intelligent design?
Intelligent design is the belief that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection cannot explain some life forms, and that an unseen, intelligent force created them…
pharyngula | September 21, 2006This is what I like to see: high school science teachers blogging. Particularly when, in this new blog, Beautiful Biology, the teacher stands up for good science.
That's exactly how it should work. Biology teachers should teach evolution unapologetically, and when clueless parents protest, they should be politely told that they are wrong. Repeat that every day in every school district, and creationism will slink back into the shadows.
pharyngula | September 20, 2006Whoa…faux-Seussian poetry, fairly nice animation, all in the service of a dumb, dead idea: The Watchmaker. It's a rather elaborate setup for Paley's watchmaker argument that starts with an imaginary animated analogy of glass and metal condensing to spontaneously form a watch, and then compares the absurdity of that argument with cells, which contain "assembly lines, robots, electrical cable", and argues that it's silly to claim that cells could just happen from dirt and warm water…as if anyone has argued such a thing.
Isn't it enough to simply point out that watches need watchmakers because…
pharyngula | September 19, 2006Pat Hayes wonders about the sensibilities of Minnesotans:
What is it about Minnesota -- the cold winter weather, perhaps -- that seemingly helps our northern neighbors see this issue more clearly than others?
You might also note that Canadians aren't mired in a bloody mess in Iraq, either, suggesting that there is some bracing quality to the Northlands.
I'll tell you the secret. Superconducting silicaceous brains.
pharyngula | September 19, 2006How odd. That little crank site that Bill Dembski runs has intentionally removed itself from the Google indexes: no search is going to turn up a link to Uncommon Descent. Elsberry speculates that it's to remove the possibility of their penchant for revisionism being discovered.
I applaud this move. I suggest that the next step is to voluntarily remove their url and ip address from the DNS registry. We shall all be simultaneously dazzled by their technical prowess and absolutely confounded by our inability to point to the stupidity of the Dembskiites. That'll teach us.
pharyngula | September 19, 2006
The Give Up Blog has a post outlining a general problem: denialists. The author is putting together a list of common tactics used by denialists of all stripes, whether they're trying to pretend global warming isn't happening, Hitler didn't kill all those Jews, or evolution is a hoax, and they represent a snapshot of the hallmarks of crank anti-science. Most of the examples he's using are from climate change, but they also fit quite well with the creation-evolution debates.
Here are the key features:
Conspiracy. Accuse the mainstream scientists of all being in it to defraud the government of…
pharyngula | September 19, 2006Of course! They're lurking everywhere, scheming to get onto school boards and wreak havoc. I recently heard from a few people at the University of Hawaii who were shocked to see some of the responses of school board candidates there to the question, "Should public schools teach intelligent design?"—they gave answers like this:
Henry W. Hoeft, Jr. says Intelligent Design creationism "Should be taught side-by-side with Darwin's Theory of Evolution and students can decide which view to accept".
Brian Kessler says "Voters should decide by referendum".
There's a simple answer to this problem…
razib | September 18, 2006Interesting article about the teaching of evolution in a United Methodist affiliated college, and Creationism in a Baptist one. From the Creationist:
"At the time of the Big Bang, evolutionists believe there was all this matter out there, where did that matter come from? At the time of the Big Bang, how did the Earth end up getting all of the water and the air and the life-forms? Everything from as simple as bacteria to as complicated as people -- no life-forms have ever been found anywhere else," Wilbanks said. "We hear that all life-forms are progressing from one life-form to another, but…
pharyngula | September 18, 2006This weekend, I read a couple of stories about people teaching about evolution. As you might expect, these generally aren't articles that fill me with joy.
The first is an article from Jacksonville, Texas that explicitly compares two local junior colleges, both associated with religious groups.
Lon Morris junior college is affiliated with the Methodists, and the chair of the department is Linda Allen.
“I teach evolution. Science is looking for natural causes to natural phenomena, it isn’t in the business of looking for supernatural reasons for things occurring,” said Assistant Professor Linda…
pharyngula | September 16, 2006An old pal of mine, the splendiferously morphogenetical Don Kane, has brought to my attention a curious juxtaposition. It's two articles from the old, old days, both published in Nature in 1981, both relevant to my current interests, but each reflecting different outcomes. One is on zebrafish, the other on creationism.
1981 was a breakthrough year for zebrafish; I think it's safe to say that if one paper put them on the map, it was Streisinger et al.'s "Production of clones of homozygous diploid zebra fish (Brachydanio rerio)"1. George Streisinger was the father of zebrafish as a model system…
pharyngula | September 15, 2006Chris Mooney gave a talk in Seattle, and you know who else is up there in my home town: the Discovery Institute. They tried to go on the offensive and sic their version of an attack dog on him…which was, amusingly enough, Casey Luskin. This is the kind of attack dog that goes "yap-yap-yap-yap-yap-yap-yap," though, and annoys you by peeing on your shoes. His initial volley was this:
Why do so many people eagerly listen to a journalist with neither scientific nor legal training discuss a complex scientific and legal issue like intelligent design?
It is awkwardly ironic for an unqualified…
pharyngula | September 15, 2006
I mentioned before that IDEA clubs insist that expertise is optional; well, it's clear that that is definitely true. Casey Luskin, the IDEA club coordinator and president, has written an utterly awful article "rebutting" part of Ken Miller's testimony in the Dover trial. It is embarrassingly bad, a piece of dreck written by a lawyer that demonstrates that he knows nothing at all about genetics, evolution, biology, or basic logic. I'll explain a few of his misconceptions about genetics, errors in the reproductive consequences of individuals with Robertsonian fusions, and how he has completely…
pharyngula | September 13, 2006Red State Rabble declares that we must stand united against the common enemy, creationism and such anti-scientific forces of unreason that threaten our secular institutions. That's a nice, fuzzy statement, which I personally suspect is unrealistic and unworkable, but let's give it a try.
Our first test: the Pope has made an interesting statement.
Pope Benedict XVI on Monday issued his strongest criticism yet of evolutionary theory, calling it "unreasonable".
Speaking to a 300,000-strong crowd in this German city, the former theological watchdog said that, according to such theories derived…
pharyngula | September 13, 2006Wilkins is keeping us busy lately: he also has a a whole series on why creationists are creationists. The short answer to the problem he gives is to teach them the process of science, not the rote solutions, and to catch them early—I agree, college is too late. I think he missed one other corrective though. He has a diagram illustrating the forces on a growing mind that drive people towards science, or towards pro-tradition, strongly anti-science attitudes. I can't help but notice that all the "folk-based heuristics" are driving attitudes towards the anti-science position.
There must be…