creationism
pharyngula | August 23, 2006Don't let the first paragraph stop you—it's awful. Once the reporter gets out of the way and lets Shermer get going, though, it's a good interview.
Here's the bad part of the opening:
Some of Shermer's ivory towerish science pals, like Richard Dawkins and the late Stephen Jay Gould, told him not to bother with the I.D. boosters, that acknowledging them meant going along for their political ride, where the integrity of science was being run into the ground.
Gould and Dawkins have both said we shouldn't debate creationists—we shouldn't elevate them to the same status that science holds. But…
pharyngula | August 23, 2006Since several have asked me to post these strange emails prompted by the WingNut Daily article, here's a couple of the cleaner, more coherent ones.
Batboy satanistI believe that you are a satanist.Pukehead.W.M.
It is a shame that such a learned individual can be so afraid of opposing viewpoints. How can one explain maintaining a point of view about something (evolution) that most scientists secretly admit is bunk. Despite the years of research and billions in funding spent on this idiotic "theory", never has anyone been able to produce ANY hard evidence to support this theory. In fact,…
pharyngula | August 22, 2006The Anti-Defamation League has condemned Kennedy and Darwin's Deadly Legacy, and Francis Collins has announced that he is "appalled," calling the program "misguided and inflammatory." Whew. It looks like this bit of propaganda has blown up in their faces.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today blasted a television documentary produced by Christian broadcaster Dr. D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries that attempts to link Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to Adolf Hitler and the atrocities of the Holocaust. ADL also denounced Coral Ridge Ministries for misleading Dr. Francis Collins,…
pharyngula | August 22, 2006I'm hearing lots about this CHE story that documents an omitted category in a list of subjects eligible for a class of grants…and the omission conveniently knocks out evolutionary biology. I'm suspicious, and everyone is suspicious, and for good reason—this is an administration that elevates incompetent ideologues to positions of unwarranted power in the halls of science, so seeing that kind of selective deletion isn't too surprising.
However, Matt Brauer at the Panda's Thumb finds two other deletions: exercise physiology, and…Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning Technology? Unless there'…
tfk | August 22, 2006Catholic World News : Controversial Jesuit astronomer replaced at Vatican observatory:
Pope Benedict XVI has named a new director for the Vatican Observatory. Father José Gabriel Funes will succeed a controversial American, Father George Coyne.
Father Funes, an Argentine Jesuit, is already a member of the Vatican Observatory team. The outgoing Father Coyne, also a Jesuit, has been director of the Observatory for more than 25 years, and now steps down at the age of 73.
Last year Father Coyne drew worldwide attention for his public comments on the topics of evolution and the theory of…
evolvingthoughts | August 21, 2006This, from LifeSite:
The Jesuit priest-astronomer who vocally opposed the Catholic understanding of God-directed creation, has been removed from his post as head of the Vatican observatory.
Fr. George Coyne has been head of the Vatican observatory for 25 years is an expert in astrophysics with an interest in the interstellar medium, stars with extended atmospheres and Seyfert galaxies. He also appointed himself as an expert in evolutionary biology and theology last summer in an article for the UK's liberal Catholic magazine, The Tablet.
Fr. Coyne was writing against Christoph Cardinal…
pharyngula | August 21, 2006The June/July issue of Creation Matters, the house organ of the Creation Research Society, has an article about…ME. Guess what?
They don't like me. Not one bit.
I'm so crushed that I'm going to post the entire article below the fold, and I think I may have to have a party tonight. It's always such an honor to be hated by people who believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old, was conjured into existence in six days, and that not believing their god appeared on Earth, like Zeus before Leda, means your non-existent soul will burn in hell forever.
Nature Gives Top Blog Honors to
Radical…
pharyngula | August 21, 2006Orac has another tale of the Hitler Zombie—the unstoppable corpse has met Coulter, Weikert, Kennedy, Behe, Johnson, Strobel, and Taylor and eaten their BRAAAAAAAAINS. Sad to say, that was an awfully thin diet—kinda like getting served California cuisine, a few sprigs of something weedy artfully arranged on a plate, when you're hoping for a more midwestern meal consisting of large lumps of starch and fat—and the Hitler Zombie is going to be ravenous. He will strike again.
pharyngula | August 21, 2006Over at the Raving Atheist's forum, contributors have compiled a list of 50 evolution myths. It's actually at 51 right now—I could have told them there are a lot more than 50—but it's entertaining. Now they just have to get cracking on 51 rebuttals to the myths. A lot of them are in the Index to Creationist Claims already.
1) Evolution gives you what you need
2) We popped out of monkeys one day
3) The theory of evolution is tied to the big bang theory
4) The theory of evolution says random chemicals mysteriously made the first cell
5) Darwin took back his theory of evolution on his death bed…
razib | August 20, 2006WorldNut Daily has a story up about a new "documentary" which will try to show how Darwin's theory led to the abomination that was the Holocaust.
First, there is a truth which right-wing religious fundamentalists leverage in these sort of claims: during the early 20th century "progressives" of all stripes, Left and Right, promoted the science of eugenics, which was explicitly Darwinian. Books like Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity illuminate this "lost history." Karl Pearson, the father of biometrics and a major…
mikethemadbiologist | August 20, 2006Over at Orcinus, guest blogger Sara Robinson has a series of posts (I, II, & III) about the psychology of the authoritarian mindset, and how this affects communication with many religious conservatives. The posts are definitely worth a read in and of themselves, but I want to throw open for discussion what these ideas mean (if anything) for the evolution political controversy.
Is there anything from these posts we can learn about how to communicate, about what should be and should not be communicated, and about who the best communicators would be?
pharyngula | August 20, 2006A reader wrote to Francis Collins about the use of his name to promote D. James Kennedy's upcoming ahistorical anti-evolution program, and Collins wrote right back. He's doing exactly the right thing.
(Oops, no — Collins doesn't want to be quoted on this, so I've removed the email. He's unambiguous in stating that he was interviewed about his book, and that was then inserted into the video without his knowledge.)
Good for him, and that'll teach me: just when you think there are no further depths to which a creationist will sink, there they go, plumbing ever deeper. Kennedy and his crew are…
pharyngula | August 19, 2006The Raw Story reveals that D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries will be a hosting a program that blames Darwin for Hitler. Orac has going to have to resurrect an entire zombie Wehrmacht to handle this one: look at the unholy corps of creationists he has assembled to defend this outrageous claim:
The one-hour program features Ann Coulter, author of Godless; Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler; Lee Strobel, author of The Case for a Creator; Jonathan Wells, author of Icons of Evolution; Phillip Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial; Michael Behe, author of Darwin’s Black Box; Ian…
pharyngula | August 19, 2006This poem from the EvC Forum, "Another Reply To Bishop Wilberforce," tickled my fancy, so here it is. All credit goes to the author, who goes by the name Dr Adequate.
Another Reply To Bishop Wilberforce
"I asserted — and I repeat — that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man — a man of restless and versatile intellect — who, not content with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only…
clock | August 18, 2006Allen McNeill's Cornell course on Evolution and Design is now over and the student papers have been posted online.
Dan comments on some of them.
mikethemadbiologist | August 18, 2006...I might as well too. By some weird transcendental quirk of fate, I was planning on moving to this blog ">my skewering of Sally Jenkins' now-infamous column about ID next week. Afarensis has just reposted a very nice takedown of the silliness. Below are my thoughts at the time on Jenkins' idiocy.
I usually like Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post, but today's column can only be described as sheer idiocy. Thankfully, the News Blog has dealt with most of the obvious criticisms, so I don't have to (it gets really old after a while). Before I address just how poorly Jenkins…
pharyngula | August 17, 2006Remember that ranking of countries by their accommodation to the reality of evolution? Take a look at an economist's take on the problem: he gets it right.
It turns out that the United States had the second-highest percentage of adults who said the statement was false — and the second-lowest percentage who said the statement was true, researchers reported in the current issue of Science. (Only adults in Turkey expressed more doubts on evolution).
What is the penalty for this belief system? Well, you probably won't get a Science-based job — but that's about it.
The acceptance of evolution is…
pharyngula | August 17, 2006He's planning to debate Jonathan Wells…on Fox radio. I guess we can only hope the host, Alan Colmes, is a little less passive than Flatow was in the Mooney/Bethell debate, but we can guarantee that Wells is as ignorant and foolish as Bethell.
I am going to have to turn my attention soon to Wells' new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), but for two things: 1) The New Semester! Is! Flying! into my Face! for the next few weeks, and 2) Wells is a tawdry slug of a writer, who just thumps out lie after lie about the state of modern…
pharyngula | August 16, 2006Trust me on this, I'm no fan of D. James Kennedy, the pompous airhead who runs Coral Ridge Ministries, so I'm happy to report that Kevin Beck also thinks he is a "lying asshat".