creationism
pharyngula | July 12, 2006Creationists are liars, and the current Intelligent Design campaign in Kansas shows that there seem to be few exceptions. Their latest effort down there is to claim all supporters of evolution are atheists, which is obviously false, and is simply a ploy to generate knee-jerk opposition to good science. Jack Krebs has been fighting the lies, which is good. Unfortunately, he's also perpetuating the problem.
John Calvert has been instrumental in developing and promoting your science standards. Therefore, I want to go on public record here, in front of you, in asking that Calvert quit making…
razib | July 11, 2006I don't speak that much about the Evolution-Creation debate in comparison to other Science Bloggers. Fundamentally, it is because I find the elucidation of the fact of evolution far more fascinating at this point in my life than an analysis of the meta-scientific and cultural issues revolving around the Creationist response to evolutionary science. But today I checked the genetics & evolution query on google news as is my habit, and I stumbled upon this blog entry, Mathematicians and Evolution by Casey Luskin. Most of you probably know him, and I'll leave it to others to appraise this…
pharyngula | July 11, 2006Jeffrey Shallit scorches poor Pamela Winnick, an anti-science, pro-creationism writer who came out with a book titled A Jealous God: Science's Crusade Against Religion. Would you be surprised to learn she's guilty of sloppy scholarship, misleading quote-mining, and outright lies? Just like the rest of 'em.
mikethemadbiologist | July 10, 2006
Tara and Revere are both confronting the creationist anti-mutation 'argument.' I've faced this before regarding antibiotic resistance. I find it ironic that Mike Martin argues against evolution by mutation, when other creationists argue that small mutations happen, but 'kinds' are immutable. I wish these guys would figure out which idiocy they plan to adopt.
pharyngula | July 10, 2006Revere and Tara make fun of a silly guest commentary from a very silly man who thinks them evilutionists are cheating by using the term "mutation"—that changes in the virulence of a disease are examples of a "population shift," which has nothing to do with evolution.
Just a note to any journalists or newspaper editors who might read this: the Panda's Thumb has a useful list of scientists and other defenders of evolution who are willing—no, overjoyed—to vet these kinds of strange anti-scientific tirades. We're also willing to help with any pro-science articles you might be moved to write. It's…
pharyngula | July 10, 2006The guilty party has stepped forward and confessed: Carl Zimmer was the inspiration for Coulter's Giant Flatulent Raccoon.
Of course, he uses that little factlet to drive home another nail in Coulter's coffin. It seems she completely mangled a Zimmer story in the NY Times, and it was her ignorant misunderstanding that triggered her invention of the Giant Flatulent Raccoon. Are you surprised?
We all know the phrase "Garbage In, Garbage Out"…creationists are instances of "Information In, Garbage Out."
pharyngula | July 9, 2006I'm not a fan of Adam Corolla by any means, but he just had best interview with Coulter ever. This is a great tactic, and I hope more talk show people follow his example.
stcynic | July 8, 2006Space.com reports on new satellite data showing that Noah's Ark might be on Ararat itself, hundreds of miles from the spot in Iran where Bob Cornuke says he found Noah's Ark. Maybe Noah wasn't the only one with that "build a big boat" idea?
evolvingthoughts | July 7, 2006Media Matters has a wonderful bow by blow debuning of Ann Coulter's "Flatulent Raccoon Theory", better known as Godless: The Church of Liberalism. While I don't read the rabid blonde's droolings, it looks pretty good to me (apart from dating Kitzmiller a year too early.
What I hope is that this book will show people how intellectually bankrupt her bullshit really is.
mikethemadbiologist | July 7, 2006Sounds dirty, don't it? It's always nice to see sites that usually deal with politics discuss science. Or in this case, the opposite, also known as Ann Coulter. Robert Savillo, of Media Matters, demolishes the creationist arguments found in Ann Coulter's latest book Why I Think All Liberals Should Be Brutally Murdered Godless: The Church of Liberalism. Before I get to Savillo's summary, he discusses a part of the book where Coulter refers to the 'Flatulent Racoon.' Now, a farting racoon is sort of funny in a five year-old kind of way, but we all know that this just means she is…
pharyngula | July 7, 2006OK, many people seem to be picking up on Coulter's plagiarism, Karl Mogel picks up on the overt sexism of Coulter's remarks*, but there's far too little discussion of the fact that Coulter's book is a tissue thin collection of lies. Her understanding of science is negligible, and she's simply parroting old creationist nonsense, but almost no one is pointing out that fact. Is science just too hard for the media? Shouldn't the fact that she plagiarizes be a lesser sin than the fact that she is making stuff up?
Although, actually, I do feel that the fact that she dismisses over half the…
pharyngula | July 6, 2006I posted a little sample of my creationist junkmail yesterday, and I've finally figured something out. The first mailing said, "Original Theory By Perry Marshall, Edited in part by D. Donohew"—what that meant was that D. Donohew had found this crap by Perry Marshall on the web, and was simply doing a copy&paste and sending it to me. How did I figure this out? Because Mr Donohew is now regularly sending me crap that he has written himself. You may be surprised to learn, given that that first email was a pile of spluttering nonsense, that Mr Marshall is a paragon of lucidity and insight…
mikethemadbiologist | July 6, 2006Matt Stoller at MyDD.com comments on Andrew Sullivan's and Robert Samuelson's apologetics for global warming:
This is rich. The rush to war was premised on the assumption that the judgment of the Bush administration (and Sullivan) was superior to that of professional weapons inspectors like Hans Blix. This turned out to be false. Now, the foot-dragging on global warming is premised on the assumption that the judgment of the Bush administration (and Sullivan) is superior to that of the global scientific community.
As usual, this is an issue of judgment and trust. Put Sullivan and Samuelson…
pharyngula | July 6, 2006
I knew someone would eventually be brave enough to try and support Coulter's "science" in Godless…wouldn't you know, though, that it would be a columnist on the disturbingly unhinged RenewAmerica site, Wes Vernon, the fellow whose disturbingly asymmetric visage you see here. It doesn't quite do the job, I'm afraid.
About a third of the book deals with well-researched material that punches many holes in the theory of evolution, or Darwinism. But do the liberal media mention any of that? No way.
This is a good point, actually. The media has dealt with the outrageous factual errors in her…
pharyngula | July 6, 2006Dave Thomas explains Genetic Algorithms and demonstrates that, as usual, the Intelligent Design bigwigs don't have any idea what they're talking about.
mikethemadbiologist | July 5, 2006
I might have more to say about the Delaware mini-pogrom later, but by way of Bartholomew's Notes on Religion, I found this bit of abject idiocy:
Just two hours prior, while executive session was held, Bennett led nearly 100 spectators in song as they waited patiently for the news.
..."If these kids are taught evolution -- that they came from apes -- and they're not given the basis of faith, what's to stop them from acting like animals?" he said.
"What's to stop them from acting like animals?" I dunno. How about doing your fucking job as a parent, and setting a good example? Not running…
stcynic | July 5, 2006A young earth creationist, Tas Walker, has posted the first of what I expect will be many articles by creationists debunking the new claimed Noah's Ark site. What they have found is so obviously a natural rock formation that even creationist geologists can recognize it as such. As Walker notes, all of the pictures that Cornuke and his team brought back from the mountain in Iran are entirely consistent with a standard rock formation that has undergone deformation and metamorphosis:
From my perusal of the photos, (and I can only go from the pictures, not having visited the site), the object…
pharyngula | July 5, 2006One more piece of creationist email for you: this one was addressed to me and all of my fraternity of Godless Atheists, which I think means you readers here. Never mind protesting that some of you are Christian—get used to it, to these guys you will never be truly Christian.
Anyway, it's not a very entertaining letter. It was, as usual, amusingly formatted (Outlook Express is evil software), but I've stripped all that gunky Microsoft html out of it to simplify posting it. It's your usual argument from poorly understood physics: the Big Bang is evidence of Jesus, really tiny numbers prove…
stcynic | July 4, 2006Email? Yeah, I get email. Some of it is even as funny as this one from someone named Ken Mayfield:
Creationist nonsense? You find it easier to believe that the perfect order around you is a culmination of chance, amoeba, and some ethereal intelligence called evolution.
Unbelievable
I think we may have found our Robert O'Brien Trophy winner for the month.
pharyngula | July 4, 2006I'm going to go fire up the grill in a little while, so here's something for those of you not yet doing the traditional Fourth of July thing to chew on…a tasty scrap of the kind of email I get.
EVOLUTION IS ENTIRELY
FALLACIOUS.
MEIOSIS CASTRATES
EVOLUTION.KARYOTYPES DISPROVE
EVOLUTION. THE
BASIC MECHANISMS SAID TO BE DRIVING EVOLUTION ARE ENTIRELY INADEQUATE,UTTERLY
INCAPABLE OF PRODUCING NOVEL KARYOTYPES,NOVEL FEATURES,NOVEL
FUNCTIONS.
1)EVOLUTION'S
PHYLOGENIES ARE TOTALLY INCOMPATIBLE WITH
KARYOTYPES;
2)THERE IS NO MECHANISM TO GENERATE NOVEL
KARYOTYPES THAT ARE FERTILE(meiosis,homology,…