creationism
pharyngula | December 17, 2010There is some faint concern from the Kentucky governor that the Ark theme park will discriminate in hiring — I doubt that it will become a major sticking point. But still, it's true, they will be selective in their hiring based on religious belief. They say that isn't true, but one thing we know about creationists is that they lie.
"There will be positions that will require Bible knowledge because...we have certain things in there that are requiring biblical knowledge," he explains. "That doesn't mean, though, if you don't have that you can't work over in the restaurant or some other part of…
pharyngula | December 15, 2010Poor Ken Ham is getting mocked everywhere for his Creation "Museum" and proposed Disneyland for Dummies, so he has put up a post defending Kentucky. It's a remarkably weak argument (no surprise there, that's all he can do), which mainly lists famous people who have been born there and occasional connections and horse racing. Whoop-te-doo. He also left off a few important merits to the state.
PZ Myers had ancestors who lived in Kentucky!
PZ Myers has a son who lives in Kentucky right now!
Ken Ham is not from Kentucky!
Ham did find one relevant piece of information: he dug up one study…
pharyngula | December 13, 2010Gaskell is an astronomer who applied for a job at the University of Kentucky, and didn't get it. This is not news. The great majority of the people who apply for jobs in the sciences don't get them, even if they are well qualified — the rejected candidates know just to pick up and move on to the next application, because it is so routine.
Not Martin Gaskell, though. Gaskell is suing the university for not hiring him, which is amazing: when I was on the job market, I sent out at least one hundred applications, and ultimately got hired for one, so I guess that means I missed 99 potentially…
pharyngula | December 8, 2010There's nothing I detest more than intellectual dishonesty, and the Discovery Institute is a world leader in that. They have a ghastly little article up on their website, "Is origin of life in hot water?", which cites a recent paper in PNAS to argue that life couldn't have evolved without the enzymes that catalyze chemical reactions. Here's what they say about it:
So it seems according to a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors address the conundrum of origin of life chemists between the rate of (un-catalyzed) organic reactions and the lack of time…
pharyngula | December 7, 2010This is fabulous news: the Louisiana school system has been wrestling with a proposal from the Louisiana Family Forum (you know the rule: the word "family" in their title means they're anything but) which would have had the schools using science textbooks with absurd warning labels and watered down content. The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has seen the light, however, and voted 6 to 1 in favor of using quality textbooks for the kids of Louisiana. It's an all-around win for everyone.
The Louisiana Patriarchy Forum is not happy. They are venting their frustration a bit with a…
pharyngula | December 6, 2010…take a look at the depressing state of American education. This is the gloomiest article I've seen on the American future.
Add to this clear evidence that the U.S. education system, that source of future scientists and innovators, has been falling behind its competitors. After leading the world for decades in 25- to 34-year-olds with university degrees, the country sank to 12th place in 2010. The World Economic Forum ranked the United States at a mediocre 52nd among 139 nations in the quality of its university math and science instruction in 2010. Nearly half of all graduate students in the…
pharyngula | December 6, 2010Ken Ham is humbly appreciative of the coverage his Giant Wooden Box project is getting.
We were notified late this morning that AiG's latest project, the Ark Encounter, will be featured tonight (Monday) on ABC-TV's evening newscast, World News with Diane Sawyer. Check your local listings for the ABC affiliate station in your area and the time of broadcast. (See the ABC-TV news site.) Also, here is a link to the article about the Ark project that appears in the New York Times today: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/us/06ark.html.
The website for the Ark Encounter is ArkEncounter.com.
We…
pharyngula | December 6, 2010I'm not getting a good opinion of people in New Jersey. They've got the awful George Berkin, a cretin who rants on NJ Online, and has a reputation as one of the dumbest jerks in the state. And he has commenters. I want to talk about one of them, Terry Hurlbut, who is a marvelous example of creationist pseudoscience and dishonesty. He's commenting on a Berkin article that is characteristically crazy (it's a defense of Christianity against atheism that cites CS Lewis's trilemma), but Hurlbut goes beyond mere inanity to lie about science.
Take a look at this. Creationists only rarely get this…
pharyngula | December 5, 2010It's still going on. Jerry Coyne repeated our common criticism that the NCSE spends too much effort promoting Christianity; then Richard Hoppe fires back, complaining that his comment was held in moderation (Coyne has been sick for a while, you know…I wish people would have more patience), and then repeating the common and misguided defense that NCSE is not an atheist organization. We know. We've both agreed on multiple occasions that the NCSE should not be an atheist organization. But still we get this same tiresome objection.
NCSE's main remit is defending the teaching of evolution in the…
pharyngula | December 4, 2010What do you get when you cross Ken Ham and Twitter? You probably shouldn't look — it's terrifyingly inane. Besides, it's mostly just links to Ken Ham on Facebook, where he puts his whiniest complaints about atheists persecuting him, and where he has a few thousand people agreeing with him and Jesus Christ.
I just thought you'd want to know.
pharyngula | December 3, 2010Ken Ham commissioned a company named "America's Research Group" to produce a feasibility study for the construction of his theme park for biblical literalists — I'm sure its conclusion that the park would bring in 1.5 million visitors and $200 million in revenue was a factor in convincing the Governor of Kentucky to embrace the idea.
Only there's a catch. America's Research Group is run by Britt Beemer. Who is Britt Beemer? Oh, look: the feasibility study was written by Ken Ham's personal friend, coauthor, and fellow fundagelical kook.
This wasn't an independent study at all. It was by a…
pharyngula | December 3, 2010I've been poking fun at Kentucky this week, which is easy to do — investing in a theme park that has Biblical literalism as its centerpiece is embarrassingly ridiculous. But let's be fair. Ken Ham could have landed in Minnesota, if instead of aiming for a location within a day's travel of 40% of the nation's population, he'd wanted a place within a day's travel of North and South Dakota, and then we'd all be laughing at this rural assembly of yokels. And also, of course, Kentucky has plenty of smart, aware, rational people, as we can see from this editorial in the Louisville Courier-Journal.…
pharyngula | December 2, 2010Those porn sites you've been browsing? They've been slurping in more of your private data than you think. A paper has been published documenting the invasive practices of many websites. They're doing something called history hijacking, using code that grabs your entire browsing history so they can monitor every site you've visited. Cute, huh? There are tools you can use to block this behavior if you're using Firefox, at least.
Several people have written to me about this because of Table 1 on page 9 of the paper. There among the porn and gaming and commercial sites one stands out as unusual.…
pharyngula | December 2, 2010This ain't gonna be free: the state guvmint is kickin' in $37 million in tax incentives to help a gang of Bible-totin' theocrats build a fancy Disneyland for ignoramuses. This is what it's gonna look like, they think:
Lookie there: the centerpiece will be a genuwine, life-sized, full scale copy of Noah's very own ark, all 300 cubits by 50 cubits by 30 cubits of it, and they say it's gonna be built with materials and methods as close to possible as the ones in the Bible. Where they gettin' gopherwood? And are they really gonna build it with handsaws and mallets and wooden pegs? That's gotta…
pharyngula | December 1, 2010We have at least a cursory account of the creationist press conference in Kentucky, in which Governor Beshear proudly announced the state's cooperation with Answers in Genesis in promoting lies to children. It's via Twitter, so just read it from bottom to top:
joesonka
Video of the press conference (Kentucky's Shame) coming soon. Yaba Daba doo!
31 minutes ago
joesonka
Press conference over. Kentucky has had many humiliating days in its history, but this has to rank near the top
32 minutes ago
joesonka
I ask if Beshear supports young earth creationism being taught in public schools…
gregladen | December 1, 2010The builders of the Creation Museum plan to build a full size replica of Noah's Ark as the centerpiece of a new religious themed amusement park. Answers in Genesis, builders of the Creation Museum, will build the religious-themed amusement park in Kentucky.
Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear is expected to hold a press conference Wednesday to talk about the venture
source
Hat Tip: Joe
pharyngula | November 30, 2010Answers in Genesis is planning to build an idiotic creationist theme park in Kentucky — we've known that for a little while now. The latest news, though, is that they've brought Steve Beshears, governor of Kentucky, on board to participate in a press conference announcing the latest accomplishment of creationism. That's right, the Democratic governor of Kentucky is going to endorse this latest monument to ignorance and miseducation.
Early tomorrow morning. That is, Wednesday. At 9:30. It's a smart move, giving us little time to respond.
So, belatedly, I'll ask you all to register your…
pharyngula | November 29, 2010I once gave a lecture in which I summarized Intelligent Design arguments as simply repeating the word complexity a lot. I was wrong; I left out a word. They also use the word "purpose" a lot.
The latest example of the same tired old nonsense comes from Michael Behe, who really is just repeating the same thing he's said many times before — in fact, he's said it so many times that at this point it's clear his brain is not engaged, and this is a reflex action by his typing fingers.
My contention is that 'the purposeful arrangement of parts' to achieve a specific purpose is the criterion that…
pharyngula | November 27, 2010There's a sucker born every minute, and you'll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
The Creation "Museum" is expanding and building a theme park. It's simply a fact that Ken Ham's Institution of Ignorance is doing business like gangbusters — it is well-attended and successful, has low-brow appeal, has negligible operating expenses (unlike a real museum), and is drawing in crowds of rubes and doing a great job of separating them from their money. I'm not at all surprised that Ham is rubbing his hands together and calculating new ways to fleece the flock; it's…
tfk | November 24, 2010Turns out slacktivist and I share a pet peeve:
I want to mention a pet peeve of mine -- a phrase frequently employed by Al Mohler and other proponents of creation-ism. It's a phrase that bothers me as a lover of the Bible and of stories and of words.
That phrase is "the creation account" or "the creation account in Genesis."
The book of Genesis offers no such account. It provides a creation story -- more than one, in fact, the first 11 chapters are nothing but origin stories. But it most decidedly does not provide an account of creation.
An account is testimony, witnesses telling what they…