creationism
pharyngula | June 25, 2011Yeah, that's me. Ken Ham has noticed a certain article I wrote, and describes it for his blinkered followers.
Apparently, in this instance with Emma, a well known atheist wrote (very typical for him) an anti-Christian blog attacking me/AiG. Apparently some of his followers decided to send this on etc. I don't read these vile blogs, but it is typical of these extremely intolerant people who in the anger, shake their fist at God.
I am amused at the characterization of the article in question. Emma's mother is quite irate, too:
I had to tell you that my friend wrote on Ken's Facebook page…
pharyngula | June 25, 2011As I've already mentioned, the makers of the Expelled movie have gone bankrupt, and the movie itself is on the auction block…and a few people on the side of goodness, light, and knowledge are making a bid to buy it. There's some reasonable interest there: the Expelled crew did a lot of interviews, and only a small portion of them actually made it to the screen. Personally, I can tell you that they spent about three hours with me one afternoon, and maybe a minute of that total made it to the movie. I was actually surprised that that one bit was all that made the cut, and even it was absurdly…
pharyngula | June 25, 2011It's like talking to a brick wall: MacLatchie is appallingly obtuse. When last I argued with him, I pointed out that the major failing of his entire developmental argument against evolution was that it was built on a false premise. As I said then,
I can summarize it with one standard template: "Since Darwinian evolution predicts that development will conserve the evolutionary history of an organism, how do you account for feature X which doesn't fit that model?" To which I can simply reply, "Evolution does not predict that development will conserve the evolutionary history of an organism,…
gregladen | June 25, 2011Apparently, when you make a movie, there's this box of stuff left over that someone has to own. It can include things like the original unedited film/video, from which the director and editors selected/cherry picked what they wanted to include, as well as various correspondences and documents and stuff.
The company that produced that horrid piece of drek known as "Expelled! No Intelligence Allowed" has gone out of business (a little Darwinian process at work, may we assume?) and the box of stuff that resulted from that film is now on the auction block. The auctioneer's gavel will strike this…
pharyngula | June 24, 2011The Talk Origins Archive Foundation is bidding to buy the movie Expelled from its bankrupt owner. They're looking for donations to use in bidding in the auction (note: donations will be used for this purpose, but they obviously can't guarantee they'll win; if they don't, the money will be used to support the foundation in other ways). I think it would be wonderful and ironic if the most heavily promoted creationist propaganda film of the decade and its unused footage became the property of a science education organization, so help them out if you can.
pharyngula | June 23, 2011Ken Ham is crowing over fooling a child. A young girl visited a moon rock display from NASA, and bravely went up to the docent and asked the standard question Ham coaches kids to ask — and she's quite proud of herself.
I went to a NASA display of a moon rock and a lady said, "This Moon-rock is 3.75 billion years old!" Guess what I asked for the first time ever?
"Um, may I ask a question?"
And she said, "Of course."
I said, in my most polite voice, "Were you there?"
Love, Emma B
Ken Ham is also quite proud of himself. He's also pleased with the fact that many people will be…
pharyngula | June 23, 2011It takes decades, though. When did you last hear anyone seriously advocate a flat earth? How many Republican presidential candidates would raise their hands if asked if they believed the earth was flat? Sure, you can find a few far out fringe cranks who babble about it, just as there are a few geocentrists around, but it's a dead idea — not even Ken Ham pushes it, although I am wondering, since the Bible does support it literally, whether he doesn't secretly suspect the astronomers have been lying to him for all these years.
But there used to be more noisy flat-earthers around. A complete…
gregladen | June 22, 2011There's been a fair amount of talk about the Miss USA interview question "should evolution be taught in schools," and a fair amount of attention given to the answers provided by the contestants. For the most part, people have gotten mad at these women because they are both beautiful in a classic patriarchal-normative-way and are handmaidens or hobgoblins or whatever of the sexist system in which we live, and because they are all wrong about evolution and whether or not it should be taught in schools.
But, it is not so simple.
I've actually seen it written that all but two, or all but one,…
pharyngula | June 21, 2011I actually had a creationist try to stump me by pointing to this page at chick.com, reiterating Kent Hovind's arguments. I was stunned at their stupidity. The first is that strange numbers game that argues that starting with 8 people 4400 years ago and multiplying by some arbitrary rate produces exactly the number of people we have nowadays (nobody ever dies prematurely!); the second is that the planets are cooling and would have lost all their internal heat if they were millions of years old (as if there were no internal heat sources); you get the idea. Tired, dumb, old. Have fun with them…
pharyngula | June 20, 2011I am not a fan of beauty pageants, especially after hearing about the preliminary questions in the Miss USA contest. The women were asked if evolution should be taught in US schools. Only two of the 51 contestants could bring themselves to answer yes.
But here's the good news: one of those two was the ultimate winner.
The newly crowned Miss USA, Alyssa Campanella, 21, of Los Angeles, who calls herself "a huge science geek," says evolution should be taught in public schools.
…
Before her victory night, Miss California earned her way into the semi-finals in preliminary judging including…
tfk | June 20, 2011
I taped this back in April, and forgot all about it until I just found it online. Enjoy!
Dr. Kiki and I chatted about science education, controversies in science classrooms, and related issues. It was inspired by this presentation.
pharyngula | June 20, 2011I often pick on Texas — that is one screwed-up, backwards, insane state, you know — but just for a change I thought I'd mention a few good people working there and doing what they can to improve the dump.
Aron Ra, of course, who is one of the best purveyors of scientific information on youtube.
Dr Michael Soto, who is on the Texas State Board of Education and is one of the few people there who promotes teaching kids good science instead of that hackneyed medieval crapola other board members peddle. Keep him on the board, please, and elect more like him.
All the scientists working in…
pharyngula | June 18, 2011Launching from my discussion with Muslim wackjobs in Dublin, this video takes my casual conversation and fleshes it out with details and references. Hey, looks like I was right!
pharyngula | June 17, 2011Jonathan MacLatchie, the creationist who challenged me to answer his questions about development in Glasgow, has posted his account of our encounter and his problems with evolution. It is completely unsurprising — he still doesn't understand any of the points.
Of his 10 questions, 7 were quickly dismissable and were more than thoroughly addressed in my talk. They rest on a deep misconception that is shared with Jonathan Wells and many other pseudoscholarly creationists; I can summarize it with one standard template: "Since Darwinian evolution predicts that development will conserve the…
pharyngula | June 16, 2011Joe Felsenstein has a guest post on the Panda's Thumb in which he dissects a totally bogus statistical game some intelligent design creationist was playing. In a few short paragraphs he shows clearly and plainly how wrong the creationist is, which is why he is Joe Felsenstein, I guess.
Meanwhile, the creationists go on imperturbably, completely failing to recognize that they've been cut off at the knees. It's hilarious.
For further hilarity, Felsenstein quotes an amusing revelation from the gang at Uncommon Descent:
At UD we have many brilliant ID apologists, and they continue to mount what I…
pharyngula | June 16, 2011The Geological Society of America is the major national professional organization for geologists, and they recently had a meeting in Denver where, in addition to the usual scientific meeting stuff, they did what geologists do for fun: they took organized field trips to look at local rocks. Among these trips was a tour of the Garden of the Gods Natural Landmark in Colorado Springs, which sounds quite nice, except for one thing: it was organized by a team of young earth creationists who were attending the meeting, and they didn't tell anyone. They were quite careful to hide their agenda.
Many…
pharyngula | June 15, 2011Gary Bradley, a professor at the Seventh Day Adventist college La Sierra University, has been under fire because he teaches evolutionary biology competently — he doesn't accept the young earth creationism that SDA dogma demands. The battle is over, though, and he and several others have been asked to resign for great crimes.
According to the Spectrum article, Darnell met up afterward with Beach, Bradley, and Kaatz at a private home, where they watched a National Basketball Association playoff game and discussed the meeting. The recorder kept running, unbeknownst to the four men. It captured "…
tfk | June 14, 2011Chris Mooney's Republican War on Science is an important look at a pattern of anti-science policies by Republican politicians. When it came out, my review's main concern was "the only paths available to a Republican party that wants to promote a religious/corporate agenda contrary to the values of the public at large is to attack the details of programs or to attack the policy process. ⦠I wish Mooney dug deeper into that part of the story, but perhaps we can hope for a sequel. Mooney is certainly meticulous in his research, and this study presents the problem starkly. The epilogue, which…
gregladen | June 13, 2011Miss USA contestants have been asked for the upcoming beauty contest if evolution should be taught in US schools. In a seemingly unrelated question, they are also to be asked if they would ever pose nude for photographers. It is not clear what the correct answer to either question is supposed to be.
My understanding is that the questions have already been asked, and the videos of the answers will eventually be posted on the Miss USA web site. Which is a site I only view for the important social issues discussed there.
"The girls are scared to death. They witnessed with Carrie Prejean…
pharyngula | June 10, 2011Hey, it's on youtube already. There may be a few moments where I look a bit strained — that's because the video projector wasn't working well, and we actually had it sitting on the floor kind of crookedly aimed at the screen, and a helpful fellow was maneuvering it to make sure the part I was referring to was on the screen rather than the wall or the ceiling. But fortunately for you, those clever folks who produced the video spliced my slides directly into the video.
It's all about the real history of Haeckelian recapitulation and why evolution doesn't predict the crazy stupid things…