creationism
pharyngula | February 21, 2006Some Pennsylvania private schools have a new advertising campaign:
The billboard ads say "Intelligence … by Design" and show a Bible Baptist teacher and students.
The Harrisburg Christian radio ad features the voice of science teacher Stephanie Morris. She describes weaknesses in the theory of evolution and says, "The foundation of my biology course is a personal God and creator."
Harrisburg Christian has 302 students and costs up to $6,600 per year. Bible Baptist, with 475 students, costs up to $4,400 a year.
That's 777 students getting a sub-standard education in the sciences, and $4,083,…
pharyngula | February 21, 2006Whoa. This is amazing. A NY Times reporter got a Discovery Institute press release, and he didn't just accept it on their say-so—he actually went digging to find out how accurate it was. I have to give Kenneth Chang his due for going below the surface and investigating a claim.
The Discovery Institute has been circulating a petition since 2001, trying to get people to sign on to a statement of dissent from Darwin. They've now got over 500 signatures on it, but as the article shows, the majority are not biologists, and in interviews with some of the signers, many seem to have signed because of…
pharyngula | February 20, 2006This article by Catherine Tsai on ghastly creationist museum tours is getting syndicated all over the place, so I'm getting lots of mail from people complaining about this dreck appearing in the local paper. Basically, there is a group, Biblically Correct Tours, that is parasitizing museums, leeching money off people and leading them on tours through the museums while coughing up idiotic religious interpretations of their contents. It's not just lying about the age of the earth, either; it's accusing scientists of deep evil.
The tours are not all fun and games, with the guides claiming that…
pharyngula | February 17, 2006I'm going to back up John Lynch on this one. The Flock of Dodos guy, Randy Olson, has a list of "TEN THINGS EVOLUTIONISTS CAN DO TO IMPROVE COMMUNICATION", and I have to say I'm not excited about them. While they're well-intentioned and would be good things to do, it's too glib and unrealistic. I've got a couple of comments over there, but I'll just repeat one here to summarize my complaint.
I think another twist on this is to point out that maybe one reason you found it so easy to list problems is that you've picked the obvious, including some problems that we're already well aware of. It's…
pharyngula | February 17, 2006I must immediately urge the Social Affairs Unit to consider confining their essays to social matters, or affairs, or units, because dang, when they start chattering about science, it's like watching monkeys do philosopy—they really aren't suited to it, and it all boils down to a comic-opera poop-frolic no matter what.
The latest effort is by one Myles Harris…the same Myles Harris who invented bogus criticisms of evolution a while back. Now he's written a little misbegotten parable about a medieval kingdom where a strange artifact is dug up: a "box made of an unknown, shiny metal" with "an…
pharyngula | February 16, 2006
Michael Behe's reputation is spiraling down the drain a little more. He denies the ongoing research on his favorite scientific examples, the flagellum and the immune system, and I think Les Lane has the right idea—his favorite icon, Mt Rushmore, needs a little more undermining, too.
That first link above includes an excellent quote from the prescient and thorough Charles Darwin; he had the Behes pegged over a century ago.
[I]gnorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that…
pharyngula | February 16, 2006You can always trust Francis Beckwith to get it all wrong. He's arguing against the Dover decision on false premises.
Should religious motivations of a theory's proponents disqualify that theory from receiving a hearing in the public square? It's a point that has become a central issue in the Intelligent Design-evolution debate.
Francis J. Beckwith, associate director of the J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies and associate professor of church-state studies at Baylor University, told a New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary forum that the striking down of a policy based solely on…
pharyngula | February 14, 2006
Carl Zimmer reviews A Flock of Dodos, and also brings up that worrisome issue, the image of scientists in this country. Cosmic Variance is talking about image, too. Scientists get called "inarticulate", "high-handed", "stiff" and "arrogant". "Arrogant" is terribly unfair as a criticism—a bit of arrogance is a virtue, and is exactly what you need in someone who is going to stick his neck out…and the creationists from Gish to Behe have possessed a superabundance of arrogance themselves.
As for inarticulate, that's not quite right either. Listen to a talk by a scientist, and while there are…
pharyngula | February 14, 2006There could be some new developments. They are reviewing the Intelligent Design creationism nonsense that was inoculated into their curricula a few years ago, and all signs indicate that they are planning to cut the infection out.
A majority of members on the Board of Education of Ohio, the first state to single out evolution for "critical analysis" in science classes more than three years ago, are expected on Tuesday to challenge a model biology lesson plan they consider an excuse to teach the tenets of the disputed theory of intelligent design.
A reversal in Ohio would be the most…
pharyngula | February 13, 2006Michael Behe wasn't too happy yesterday.
One man who says he isn't planning to join in the fun on Darwin Day is Michael Behe, the 54-year-old author of "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution," a critique whose 10th anniversary edition will be published in March by Simon & Schuster's Free Press division. Molecular biology is "irreducibly complex," confounding Darwinism, according to the author.
Of course, the author is wrong. IC is no problem for evolution at all.
"I probably won't attend" any Darwin Day event anywhere, says Behe, a biochemistry professor at Lehigh…
pharyngula | February 13, 2006Chris Clarke brought this strangely twisted article to my attention. It starts out just fine, pointing out that the Intelligent Design assault on science is based on nothing but incredulity, and has the sweeping goal of destroying naturalism—not just one theory in biology, but the whole scientific shebang. The author is against all that, which is good…thanks, Cynthia, we appreciate your support. Now if only she'd just ended it there at the two-thirds mark.
The last third is peculiar. She seems to be less interested in strong science than in strengthening religion, and the reason she's arguing…
pharyngula | February 12, 2006Niles Eldredge has a fine essay online on what it means to be a Darwinist (not the term as caricatured by creationists, but merely as someone who respects the work of Darwin while acknowledging the vast increase in understanding evolution since his time). It's also useful for explaining how creationists distort the concept of punctuated equilibrium.
The creationists of the day got into the act as well. In a clear demonstration of how thoroughly political the creationist movement has always been in the United States, Ronald Reagan told reporters, after addressing a throng of Christian…
pharyngula | February 11, 2006…and that's exactly why he is a slimy ass-pimple, a child-abusing freak.
Evangelist Ken Ham smiled at the 2,300 elementary students packed into pews, their faces rapt. With dinosaur puppets and silly cartoons, he was training them to reject much of geology, paleontology and evolutionary biology as a sinister tangle of lies.
"Boys and girls," Ham said. If a teacher so much as mentions evolution, or the Big Bang, or an era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, "you put your hand up and you say, 'Excuse me, were you there?' Can you remember that?"
2300 children. 2300 young minds poisoned. Nothing new…
razib | February 10, 2006Science & Spirit has a long piece that reports on the outreach toward some churches on the part of anti-Creationist activists.
pharyngula | February 9, 2006Eaton was the Minnetonka school board member and advocate of Intelligent Design creationism who abruptly resigned, shortly after his attempts to weaken his school district's science standards were quashed. You wouldn't know anything about that bit of backstory from this puff piece on Eaton, which has little but praise for the man and explains his departure by quoting him as saying he is "not leaving for any health, family or career reasons."
C'mon, Strib. Come clean and say it. We know why he left: it's because his brand of creationism was decisively crushed in Minnetonka, and he knew he was…
pharyngula | February 9, 2006Oklahoma is having an outbreak of creationist idiocy in their legislature. If you're one of the sensible, intelligent residents of that state, sign the petition to support excellence in Oklahoma science education.
pharyngula | February 9, 2006Take the geocentrism challenge from Catholic Apologetics International! They're offering $1000 to the first person who can prove that the earth revolves around the sun. They claim that good Catholics really do have to believe that the earth is the center of the universe.
Scripture is very clear
that the earth is stationary and that the sun, moon and stars
revolve around it. (By the way, in case you're wondering, "flat-earthers"
are not accepted here, since Scripture does not teach a flat earth,
nor did the Fathers teach it). If…
pharyngula | February 9, 2006I am not a fan of Gregg Easterbrook. He's a pretentious twit who lectures Hawking on physics, calling him "kooky", yet thinks Townes is wonderful and believes in an "invisible plane of existence: the spirit". He makes ill-informed rants against atheists and Richard Dawkins, and has gone off on evolution before —he likes Intelligent Design.
His qualifications for these tirades on science? He's a sports writer.
In the past, he's been clear on finding this whole business of natural selection inadequate, preferring to preach that there is a loving god who has directed evolution.
The latter…
pharyngula | February 8, 2006I haven't mentioned the Clergy Letter Project or Evolution Sunday events before. They're nice ideas—it's an effort to get clergy to acknowledge good science, and encourage discussions about the subject on Darwin's birthday, this Sunday—but I have to admit it's rather orthogonal to my point of view. While I appreciate the sentiment and think it's a positive step on the road to reason, I prefer to cut to the chase and jettison all the old religious baggage altogether.
I may have to take a more positive view towards it, though, since I ran across this weird wingnut site (well, maybe not too…