creationism
tfk | May 2, 2011It's a running joke that any time some horrible person is in the news, Discovery Institute fellow David Klinghoffer is sure to pen a piece trying to link that person to the nefarious ways of evolution-defenders. He's written such pieces about Hitler, the Columbine killers, the Holocaust museum shooter, and many other modern monsters.
Today's headlines are dominated by talk of Osama bin Laden, so we get, on the DI twitter feed:
David Klinghoffer explains the connection between Osama bin Laden and "junk" DNA
And indeed, the post over at the Disco. 'Tute complaints department is titled "The…
pharyngula | April 27, 2011
I've been giving talks at scientific meetings on educational outreach — I've been telling the attendees that they ought to start blogs or in other ways make more of an effort to educate the public. I mentioned one successful result the other day, but we need more.
I give multiple reasons for scientists to do this. One is just general goodness: we need to educate a scientifically illiterate public. Of course, like all altruism, this isn't really recommended out of simple kindness, but because the public ultimately holds the pursestrings, and science needs their understanding and support.…
pharyngula | April 27, 2011The existence of Ken Ham proves that creationism changes, therefore proving that it is not absolute, inerrant truth as he claims, therefore Ken Ham disproves creationism. QED. We can all go home now.
By the way, that's not a bad diagram for illustrating the relationships of the various versions of creationism, except that the pedigree breaks down for Intelligent Design creationism, which is kind of a weird syncretic hodge-podge that accommodates both of the major branches of the creationist tree. It really ought to be shown as the warped, evil offspring of an unnatural act, an orgy of all of…
tfk | April 25, 2011Chad Orzel says Support the National Center for Science Education:
I try not to do any shilling for political groups on the blog, but I'll make an exception for the National Center for Science Education. Why? Three reasons:
1) They do good and important, if not always glamorous work, supporting the teaching of evolution in public schools, both in the classroom and in the courts.
2) Josh Rosenau has a really good blog, one of the best on science-and-politics issues, and his day job is with NCSE.
3) Jerry Coyne is a jackass, whose latest bit of jackassery involves sending an open letter to NCSE…
tfk | April 21, 2011Chris Mooney reports on Psych Evidence that Supports New Atheism, writing:
In general, I believe what we know about human psychology runs contrary to the New Atheist approach and strategy. However, I do my best to follow the data, and here's a study that suggest at least one aspect of their approach may work. The tactic finding support here is not necessarily being confrontational-that would tend to prompt negative emotional reactions, and thus defensiveness and inflexibility towards New Atheist arguments-but rather, making it more widely known that you're actually there-as "out" atheists try…
tfk | April 20, 2011Point of Inquiry:
Our guest this week is Josh Rosenau, the Programs and Policy Director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), and writer of the blog "Thoughts from Kansas" at ScienceBlogs....
In this interview with Karen Stollznow, Josh presents the "Three Pillars of Creationism", the beliefs and claims of creationists. He describes their rhetoric and propaganda, and the setbacks they cause for science, from legal cases to creationist theme parks.
Josh also talks about some recent successes for science. The NCSE works tirelessly to battle creationists and improve the public…
pharyngula | April 19, 2011Oh, sure, Ken Ham wants to build a life-sized Noah's Ark…but he's trying to get tens of millions of dollars of tax breaks to build a giant ark that won't even float. Johan Huibers is building his own version, and even plans to sail it around the world. Sorry, but the video is entirely in Dutch, but at least you can witness his sophisticated building techniques.
Do the Dutch authorities demand some kind of inspection before they allow so-called boats to be launched? Because that thing looks like it will barely make it into the harbor before it capsizes.
Ken Ham needs to meet this challenge:…
pharyngula | April 19, 2011A recent issue of the philosophy journal, Synthese, focused on creationism and intelligent design; the articles I've read from it have so far all been anti-creationist, or at least recognize that creationism is in deep conflict with science. It's all interesting stuff, anyway.
But there's a problem. This issue was assembled with two guest editors, Glenn Branch and James Fetzer, and represents well the consensus view on ID and creationism. The editors-in-chief, however, published a disclaimer in the print edition.
Statement from the Editors-in-Chief of SYNTHESE
This special issue addresses a…
pharyngula | April 15, 2011Tennessee legislators are debating the addition of creationism to their science curriculum, and apparently they've run out of reasonable excuses, so Redumblican Frank Nicely dragged in the corpse of Albert Einstein, stuck his hand up his bony thorax, and rattled his jawbone to make a speech.
I think that if there's one thing that everyone in this room could agree on, that would be that Albert Einstein was a critical thinker. He was a scientist. I think that we probably could agree that Albert Einstein was smarter than any of our science teachers in our high schools or colleges. And Albert…
tfk | April 14, 2011
...Or "What I've been up to for the last week or so."
Last week was a busy travel week. I was in West Virginia for the first half of the week, on a whirlwind tour of the Morgantown area, speaking in the geology department at West Virginia University, then twice at a symposium on science communication, and then at a local freethought group (meeting in a beautiful Unitarian church with a view of the valley).
The video above is a slidecast from a talk NCSE's Steve Newton and I gave about the Process of Science and Scientific Controversy. Steve didn't record his talk, so you miss the lead-in,…
pharyngula | April 13, 2011The man certainly has an ego. His new commercial features…Ken Ham himself. Speaking as a non-photogenic and not particularly heroically-voiced fellow myself, it's a big mistake from a purely commercial perspective for creeeepy, neck-bearded, thin-voiced weirdos with a foreign accent to be doing ads, unless he goes for the wacky angle. And this one might just feed the Christian persecution complex by highlighting the way all the media thinks his little freakshow in Kentucky is dumb, but everyone else is simply going to have their impressions confirmed when good ol' Kenny boy stands up to out-…
sa smith | April 12, 2011A couple weeks ago, Teh Discovery Institute held some kind of revival 'conference' at a local Evangelical church. The Usual Suspects were there-- Caseytits, West, some other guy, but also my HIV Evolution BFF Michael Behe. I ended up not being able to go due to a scheduling conflict. I was at a conference on HIV Evolution, which as we all know, according to the worlds most preeminent HIV researcher Michael Behe, doesnt exist.
So Ive been Googling around trying to get a recap of what went down.
Apparently, nothing.
As the kids say, "not a single fuck was given that day".
Not one blog post…
pharyngula | April 12, 2011The NCSE has a list of recent creationist legislation, and you've all been up to no good. I hope you are all chastened now and will strive to throw the inane rascals out of your legislatures at the earliest possible opportunity.
pharyngula | April 12, 2011Perhaps you have no idea who Jack Cashill is — he's not a person of great consequence, but he is representative of the deranged right. I first ran across him as a creationist activist, which tells you right there that he's a few bushels short of a hogshead. He was featured on A Flock of Dodos as the fervent but somehow, supposedly, reasonable political voice of creationism. He didn't have two heads, he didn't tie anyone to a stake and set them on fire, so by golly, he must not be that bad a fellow…which is an interesting phenomenon, that we so readily set aside significant intellectual…
tsmith | April 11, 2011We all know of once-respected scientists who ended up going off the deep end, adhering to an unproven idea despite massive evidence to the contrary. Linus Pauling and his advocacy of megadoses of Vitamin C, or Peter Duesberg's descent into HIV denial. It's all the more disappointing when the one taking a dive is a woman, since there are, compared to men, relatively fewer female "big names" in the sciences. So when one goes from views that were, perhaps, outside of the mainstream (but later proven largely correct) to complete science denialism, it makes it all the more depressing. Even worse,…
pharyngula | April 10, 2011This afternoon, a couple of smiling, glassy-eyed young ladies stopped by my house to talk about Jesus. I was delighted, but I made the mistake of telling them up front that I was an atheist, and didn't believe in their religion…and they backed away slowly, said "goodbye!", and scurried away. It's so hard to bait the trap when you insist on using honesty.
Anyway, I did get a little online satisfaction reading this great ferocious rant about Seventh Day Adventists.
The Seventh-day Adventist cult's "prophet" and founder, the alcoholic, masturbation-obsessed habitual plagiarist Ellen G. White,…
pharyngula | April 10, 2011Paul Nelson has deigned to write a two-part essay on "Ontogenetic Depth", his sciencey made-up term for a metric that he claims makes evolution essentially impossible. We've been wrangling over this for a long time — he and Marcus Ross introduced this in a poster at the Developmental Biology meetings in 2004, titled "Understanding the Cambrian Explosion by Estimating Ontogenetic Depth", and in our conversation at that time I certainly got the impression that he and Ross were busy collecting this peculiar thing alien to creationists called "data". I have asked him multiple times over the last…
pharyngula | April 7, 2011How could I forget? Easy, actually, it's a rather forgettable event in which nothing happens. Seven years ago, Paul Nelson invented a creationist metric, ontogenetic depth, which purportedly measures the complexity of developmental processes and somehow implies that evolution is impossible. At that time, he wasn't able to tell us exactly what it was or how to measure it, but he promised to explain it…tomorrow. A tomorrow which has so far stretched out to seven long years, and we now annually note the anniversary.
I really don't care anymore if Nelson ever comes up with a nonsensical…
pharyngula | April 4, 2011I'm afraid I don't have access to this specialty journal, Curator: The Museum Journal, so it's a good thing the author sent me a copy of his article on the modern treatment of human origins in museums. It's amusing, since part of it is a substantial comparison of the exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Smithsonian in Washington DC, but there is also a thorough discussion of Ken Ham's Creation "Museum" in Kentucky. The Creation Museum does not come off at all well.
Asma highlights a couple of things that leapt out to me, as well. It's not really a museum —…
tfk | April 3, 2011John Pieret reads Jerry Coyne so you don't have to, and catches Jerry Coyne rewriting history. Pieret notes in particular that Coyne is insisting that "faitheist" was never meant as a pejorative, when it clearly was, and has always and exclusively been used as such. For Coyne to try to rewrite history and claim otherwise is shameful, especially from someone who insists he is the great defender of the principle that "the truth matters."
Speaking of which, Pieret closes by noting: "As an aside, Coyne accuses [Center for Inquiry VP John] Shook of 'redefining' "accommodationism." Where, exactly…