creationism
pharyngula | March 5, 2011This is a local reminder: we're gathering at the Morris Public Library today at 3pm to discuss the lies of our recent creationist visitor. All are welcome, if you want to try to defend him, please do…just be aware that there will be a group of intelligent, well-educated UMM students present who will add you to the menu. But hey, we were brave enough to show up for the Mortenson follies, are you brave enough to step into the lion's den?
gregladen | March 4, 2011Or worse. Below the fold. Not work safe. Don't be holding the kitty or you might squeeze it by accident:
UPDATE: My friend Aseem points out that this is the original on which the little christian kids base their song:
mikethemadbiologist | March 4, 2011I haven't gone after creationists in quite a while, because it just starts to feel like picking on the slow kid. Both PZ Myers and Kele Cable attended a seminar by Answers in Genesis High Wackaloon Terry Mortenson. I don't think you could pay me enough to wade through that morass of unadulterated bullshit, but they've filed some reports (there's a Twitter feed here). But what burned me up was seeing this come across the Twitter transom:
Antibiotic resistance always evolves from a loss of information. [PZ:] Not true!
Sweet Baby Intelligent Designer, Mortenson is stupid.
Let's leave aside…
pharyngula | March 3, 2011Jerry Bergman is a fairly typical creationist: he's a loon, and he's dishonest. I debated him once to an utterly ineffectual conclusion, and it was like having an argument with a rabid squirrel — he makes no sense, he splutters out nutty fragments of angry rhetoric, and he's ultimately of no consequence whatsoever. But he still has an audience, and he's still out giving invited talks at churches all over the country. Next week, Bergman will be speaking in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and we've got a preview of what he's going to say on the — duh duh DUHHH — Dark Side of Charles Darwin.
Part 1:
•…
tfk | March 2, 2011Shorter Casey Luskin, Disco. 'Tute Complaints Department: Want a Good Grade in Allison Campbell's College Biology Course? Don't Endorse Intelligent Design:
A college professor in New Zealand grades students down for using debunked creationist claims in college essays. Therefore, Tennessee needs a law allowing high school science teachers to teach debunked creationist claims.
pharyngula | March 1, 2011People keep asking me this question after the creationist event here in town — Mortenson spoke about how creationism is so much more egalitarian than evolution, and how the Bible talks about these wonderful things people did in the book of Genesis, like Cain going out and founding a whole city, by himself! At a time when the world population was 4, however, that doesn't seem like a great accomplishment. Anyway, some people thought that far, realized that in the creationist conception of an entire world population arising from two people only, there was an obvious problem in the second…
pharyngula | March 1, 2011But it's not enough on its own. Case in point: the Raelians have put up a sign in Las Vegas.
It does have a helpful statement from a Raelian spokesman to help you sort the rationalists from clowns, if the flying saucer in the billboard isn't enough for you.
If you drive the freeway between Vegas and Los Angeles, you'll see several signs warning drivers to follow the Bible or else face eternal hell," he said. "Those signs are designed to make viewers feel fear and guilt. We want to counterbalance that fear by letting them know there is no God or Devil. There's no need to live in fear. We…
pharyngula | March 1, 2011It's another frantically busy day, so I don't have time to give you the full run-down on the misleading nonsense Terry Mortenson from Answers in Genesis gave last night, but I do want to give one example. In one section of his talk, he referenced an article in Scientific American which discussed a hominin find: the specimen called "Lucy's baby", the bones of an Australopithicus afarensis, who was 3 years old when she died about 3.3 million years ago. He showed this diagram of the fossil — in orange are the bones actually found, in white are the ones that had to be reconstructed and…
pharyngula | February 28, 2011I sat through another horrid performance from our creationist visitor, Terry Mortenson. He lied and lied and lied for a couple of hours again, and once again refused to answer questions. Once again, I twittered my way through it. My student, Kele Cable, was also there, and he has a blog entry where he lists all of the fallacies from Mortenson's talk from last evening.
One amusing thing tonight was that a couple of nice Christian ladies had a 'conversation' with me. Have you ever considered the possibility that Christianity is true? Have you weighed what you have to gain from life with Christ…
pharyngula | February 27, 2011I just suffered through a few hours of Terry Mortenson, Answers in Genesis stooge, babbling and lying on stage here in Morris. I'm going to recuperate for a while with a nice cup of tea and a little light reading, so don't expect me to post on it now. You can browse my twitter feed for the short choppy reactions I put up during that horror, and I'll try to summarize it tomorrow.
Although…he's also speaking tomorrow night. I suppose I'll have to suffer again, Christlike, for you.
Oh, by the way: the most annoying part of the event is that they announced at the beginning that there would be no…
pharyngula | February 27, 2011Oh, dear…today is the day the clown from Answers in Genesis is speaking at the elementary school in Morris. I guess I'll be going, even though Terry Mortenson is a goats-on-fire flaming moron. Here he is in all of his pursed-lipped pretentious glory.
Anyway, I'll be attending his 6:00 lecture — "Dinosaurs: Have You Been Brainwashed?" — and the 7:30 exercise in idiocy — "Noah`s Flood: Washing Away Millions of Years". The schedule is online; I may get more than my fill today, so I don't know that I'll go to any of the Monday events. It's a disgrace that such a fool was invited here.
I will…
mikethemadbiologist | February 27, 2011Mike Konczal put together this nice graphic of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's roadmap to a batshitloonitarian paradise:
Konczal notes:
There's a three-prong approach in Governor Walker's plan that highlights a blueprint for conservative governorship after the 2010 election. The first is breaking public sector unions and public sector workers generally. The second is streamlining benefits away from legislative authority, especially for health care and in fighting the Health Care Reform Act. The third is the selling of public assets to private interests under firesale and crony capitalist…
tfk | February 24, 2011Jerry Coyne is confused:
Iâm surprised that accommodationists and the National Center for Science Education donât criticize [other] evolutionists for describing the evolution and natural selection as âpurely natural and materialistic processes,â for that steps on the toes of the faithful just as hard as saying that evolution is âunguided and purposelessâ. In both cases divine intervention is explicitly ruled out.
Not sure why he omitted the word "other," but the first sentence doesn't make sense without it.
That he would find this confusing is simply further evidence that Coyne does not…
tfk | February 17, 2011John Pieret on Russell Blackford on Accommodating Incompatiblism. Russell writes:
religion needs to be constantly reinterpreted to maintain even logical consistency with our empirically-based secular knowledge. This process in itself leaves religious beliefs looking ad hoc and implausible.
John notes:
But, wait a minute, doesn't science constantly reinterpret itself to maintain consistency with empirically-based knowledge?
So, is the complaint that those forms of theism that try to reconcile empirical knowledge and religious faith are being too damn much like science?
Seriously, if you aren'…
tfk | February 16, 2011
Last Sunday, I talked at Kol Hadash, a secular Jewish community, about NCSE's recent work in the creation/evolution trenches. Our intrepid communications director Robert Luhn was there to film it, and has posted video of the talk to our Youtube channel. The Q&A will follow.
A big shout out to a South Dakota student who comments:
Wow. I live in South Dakota. We just learned about global warming. We were taught it was fact. I'm sure in a lot of the small towns the kids are being taught that global warming is only a theory. I hate that this is an actual resolution. I wouldn't vote for…
pharyngula | February 14, 2011People are still whining at me about Martin Gaskell, the astronomer/old earth creationist who didn't get a job at the University of Kentucky. I'm afraid you're not going to convince me; I wouldn't hire the guy under any conditions, because he endorses very bad science.
How bad? Well, read his defense of Genesis. Even though the version on the web has apparently been edited since the controversy began, it still contains some telling revelations. Clearly, the fellow he views as one of the best sources with views similar to his own is Hugh Ross; he's cited frequently, and is praised as a good…
pharyngula | February 12, 2011I'm so sad. It sounded so charming: "This special evening begins at 6:00 PM with an inspiring message about love and the biblical view of marriage from Creation Museum founder, Ken Ham". If only I could learn about romance from a sleazy fundamentalist atavism with a neck beard.
Sadly, some people who did know about it, and who paid the $71.90 in advance, and showed up to hear Ham's special squeals of wisdom, got expelled.
Unfortunately, we were told at the door that we would not be allowed entry.
They explained to us that the Creation Museum Date Night was a "Christian environment",…
tfk | February 12, 2011If you haven't seen Kansas v. Darwin, the documentary about the Kansas science standards fight from 2005, you can stream it for free from the filmmaker's website.
Why not invite some friends over, stream the movie, and talk about what you'd all do if it happened in your neck of the woods? NCSE has some resources to help that discussion along. Don't be afraid to write or call if you want a hand organizing something.
tfk | February 9, 2011Scott Aikin and Robert Talisse are not accommodationists. At least, they say they aren't, and that's hard to evaluate, because "accommodationist" is a bad word, and to ensure that it stays a bad word, critics of accommodationists give it protean meanings. Sometimes it's supposed to mean the belief that science and religion are compatible. Sometimes it's just about atheists working with religious people toward shared goals. Other times, "accommodationist" seems to constitute the subset of anti-creationists who oppose gnu atheists. The label "accommodationist" has been thrust upon me…
pharyngula | February 9, 2011Wow, Ken Ham has been touting all the jobs his Ark Park will bring into Kentucky, and he's already advertising. Isn't that great? Look what opportunities are available:
Job Opportunities in the United States:
Constituent Data Administrator (CDA)
Guest Services Coordinator
Public Safety Console Operator
Senior Database Administrator (Senior DBA)
Video Editor/Animator/VFX
Web Developer--Python
Zoo Keeper
Ark Encounter Jobs
That's a diverse assortment of jobs, and they just have one thing in common. One little bitty catch.
All job applicants need to supply a written statement of their…