creationism
tfk | June 9, 2011Just a reminder, Haeckel's embryo drawing were not fraudulent. He did the best he could with the resources available.
pharyngula | June 8, 2011There's a new musical production to be put on at Yale.
The Profit of Creation, featuring music by Tim Rosser, with book and lyrics by Charlie Sohne, will be directed by Evan Yionoulis, and music directed by Chris Fenwick. The musical concerns a liberal scientist who takes a bribe from a right-wing organization to head up the "Creation Museum" in Kentucky.
It's already earned complaints from Ken Ham, so I think it may strike a little close to home for him. But what I really want to mention is the comment left at the link: isn't this amazing?
I felt bad, so I decided to comment. Mainly since…
pharyngula | June 8, 2011Let's see…Darwin revealed the theory of evolution in 1859, and the United States declared their independence from Britain in 1776 — but our founding fathers were such magical geniuses that they foresaw the whole thing and debated the subject there in Philadelphia and resolved that evolution was a bunch of hooey. Right.
the founding fathers…already had the entire debate on creation/evolution…and you've got Thomas Paine, the least religious of the founding fathers, saying you got to teach creation science in the public school classroom, the scientific method demands it!
Hey, David Barton,…
pharyngula | June 8, 2011I am infested with the fleas of a thousand camels. One unfortunate side-effect of this trip to Ireland and the UK is that I have publicly engaged with Muslim creationists — there's a bit of a dearth of them in Morris, Minnesota, and the few Muslims I have met there are there for the university, and are educated and intelligent — but now I'm on their radar, and my inbox has a new, exotic stench to it. Here is a sample.
Dear Dr. Myers,
In your recent exchange with Hamza you asserted that Quran contain no specifics when it comes to science. I will let you be the judge:
[The disbelievers are]…
pharyngula | June 8, 2011Can you bear more blithering Muslims? I showed you that partial clip from my encounter the other day, but you missed the first chunk. I had gone outside to get some fresh air and take a look around Dublin, when I got ambushed by a trio of Muslims with a camera, and the crowd just gradually developed and surrounded me, with some of them taking pictures (hi, Rebecca!). This is the recording from the Muslims themselves.
Some of my favorite weird pseudo-philosophical babble were his claims that he had evidence, but that it was "conceptual evidence", and imbedded in one long spewage was this…
pharyngula | June 8, 2011I'm going to do it again. You're all about to facepalm once more, just as you did yesterday. By now, you should know this blog and be conscious of the need for deliberation and caution when putting your hand to your face.
I was sent this example of science proving atheism wrong. Perhaps you should gently place your hand on your forehead before you start reading, to forego the possibility of slamming your palm into your face with great force.
So…this clever calculation is contingent on the premise that there has been 6 billion people on the earth for 3 billion years, and, tragically, that…
pharyngula | June 7, 2011A couple of years ago, a student, Matthew LaClair, exposed his teacher, David Paszkiewicz, as an evangelical creationist who was using a public school classroom as a pulpit. He did this by the simple expedient of bringing a hidden voice recorder into the room and catching Paszkiewicz preaching instead of teaching (the recording is on the web).
Now a documentary has been made about LaClair and Paszkiewicz.
The movie is going to be shown on Sunday, June 12 at 2 p.m. at the New York Ethical Culture Society at 2 West 64th Street in New York — I wish I could go. There's also going to be a Q…
mikethemadbiologist | June 7, 2011I'll get to creationism in a bit, but first...
Last week, Yves Smith started a wee lil' ruckus among progressives with a post titled "Bribes Work: How Peterson, the Enemy of Social Security, Bought the Roosevelt Name." In that post, she argued:
Bribes work. AT&T gave money to GLAAD, and now the gay rights organization is supporting the AT&T-T-Mobile merger. La Raza is mouthing the talking points of the Mortgage Bankers Association on down payments. The NAACP is fighting on debit card rules. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute supported…
tfk | June 6, 2011Jerry Coyne is trying to do math. A new survey out from Pew finds that, as in 2007, 61% of Americans say they'd be less likely to vote for someone who did not believe in God. Coyne thinks:
The unchanged level of disapprobation is a bit disconcerting, but at least gives the lie to accommodationist claims that vociferous atheism is turning people off. And we know that lack of religious belief is still increasing everywhere in America.
Several problems arise here, exacerbated by the generally handwavy attitude Coyne-as-blogger takes towards data and logical argument. We have to guess what…
pharyngula | June 6, 2011It's a fitting end to the movie that got me expelled, and whose PR I rudely interrupted. The company is no more.
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed — the 2008 creationist propaganda movie fronted by Ben Stein — is scheduled to be auctioned, lock, stock, and barrel, pursuant to the bankruptcy proceeding of Premise Media Holdings LP.
I suspect no one is surprised.
tfk | June 6, 2011NCSE's Glenn Branch is known for his nigh-omniscience, and today he got a great scoop: the production company behind schlockumentary Expelled is going bankrupt. You'll recall Expelled: No Intelligence... as a movie so full of crap that even frontman Ben Stein acknowledges it's best watched while high. It's so bad that the New York Times called it "One of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time," Roger Ebert said "This film is cheerfully ignorant, manipulative, slanted, cherry-picks quotations, draws unwarranted conclusions, makes outrageous juxtapositions, segues between…
tfk | June 6, 2011John Pieret is a snark genius, and you should read his latest, especially checking his links.
And check out his recent WTF moment, not to mention his non-snarky, but moving and thoughtful essay on respect.
pharyngula | June 5, 2011Since I'm lazy and occupied, I'll just link to Rorshach's account of the last day of the event.
I'll just say…Maryam Namazie was awesome. I am so glad she was the last speaker of the weekend, because if she'd gone first, the rest of us would have had to sit quietly and simply refer everyone to her. She made a fierce, impassioned, reasoned criticism of Islamism and it's degradation of humanity — she was wonderfully clear and humane.
I also got into a brief argument with Hamza Andreas Tzortzis, the Muslim creationist. Picture the unholy progeny of a union between Ken Ham and William Lane Craig…
pharyngula | May 30, 2011Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy. This is wonderful news, happy happy joy joy, gosha'mighty, I'm wiggling in my chair like a tickled puppy. What has made me so happy, you might ask?
A week from today I'm going to be speaking at the Crystal Palace in Glasgow, Scotland. I'll be talking about the developmental evidence for evolution, and it should be great fun.
But that's not the exciting news.
Glasgow has its very own Centre for Intelligent Design, and a fine collection of know-nothings it is. And they are being encouraged to attend my talk! So maybe there will be a contingent of critics present —…
pharyngula | May 30, 2011The Creation "Museum" is 4 years old, and co-founder Mark Looy was interviewed.
"The number-one comment we get, whether it's from a Christian or a non-Christian, is that this place exceeded their expectations," he reports. "The quality of the exhibits, the special effects theatre, the state-of-the-art planetarium, the animatronics dinosaurs -- this is a museum unlike any other in the world."
Mark Looy (Answers in Genesis)But the museum is not just unique because it rejects evolution and proclaims creationism, says Looy, who notes it also "presents the history of the Bible in a fun and…
pharyngula | May 30, 2011Johan Huibers, the owner of a construction company in the Netherlands, is way ahead of Ken Ham. He has actually begun construction of a replica of Noah's Ark, and his even floats—although he accomplishes that by cheating, building his ark as a wooden superstructure on top of an array of bolted-together steel barges.
The revealing factoid about this crank, though, is this:
Actually, this ark is not the first that Mr. Huibers has built. He first began dreaming of an ark in 1992, shortly after a heavy storm lashed the coastal region north of Amsterdam where he lives. His wife, Bianca, a police…
pharyngula | May 29, 2011Rabbi Moshe Averick asks, "Seriously, Aren't Atheists Embarrassed by P.Z. Myers?"
Seriously, aren't you? What's the matter with you people?
What prompts his outrage is his discovery of a lecture I gave some time back on the complexity argument from intelligent design creationists. He is appalled at my total lack of logic! Unfortunately for him, his misconceptions arise because he makes some unwarranted leaps about what I was saying.
He specifically objects to the fact that I showed a slide of a wall of driftwood at a beach, and that I explained that it had accumulated by chance and the…
tfk | May 27, 2011
In the video above, you can see my creation/evolution hero of the last school year. Zack Kopplin is a Louisiana high school senior (heading to Rice University next fall) who decided to fight the misnamed Louisiana Science Education Act. That bill, passed in 2008, opens the door to creationist materials in science classrooms. It is the only one of these so-called academic freedom laws that has passed a state legislature, though dozens have been proposed.
It passed the Louisiana Senate unanimously a couple years ago, but Zack found a Senator to sponsor his repeal bill, he got 43 Nobel…
pharyngula | May 27, 2011I've had people ask me this in all seriousness, but I haven't seen a real sign yet with this message:
There is a church with this name and logo in Richmond, VA, and the sign doesn't match any of the standard church sign generator designs, so I think it's real.
I know I shouldn't be surprised, but to see such idiocy clearly captured in the wild is impressive.