creationism
pharyngula | June 22, 2010One of the things I failed to mention when I discussed the Bergman-Enyart dialogue was that the spent some time talking about whether Adam had a navel or not, and the general historicity of Adam and Eve. I did not mention it because it was stupid, and that discussion already had a surfeit of stupid.
But now I discover that BioLogos is also carrying on about the historicity of Adam and Eve, with their usual load of waffle and metaphor and vague ways of trying to say it was really true, and God made us really, really special anyway.
There are such things as stupid questions. Stupid questions…
pharyngula | June 22, 2010I was cured of any interest in debating creationists by Jerry Bergman, that astonishingly awful whiny young earth creationist I crushed last November. It was embarrassingly bad — Bergman wandered all over the place, made absurd claims (did you know the periodic table of the elements was irreducibly complex — even Behe says it isn't), and spent more time bragging about his many degrees and his evangelical history than he did on the topic at hand. Everyone I talked to, including the creationists, thought Bergman's performance was dreadful. And you know that the hosting organization, the Twin…
grrlscientist | June 21, 2010tags: The Laryngeal Nerve of the Giraffe is Proof of Natural Selection, animals, giraffe, evolution, creationism, intelligent design, dissection, necropsy, autopsy, recurrent laryngeal nerve pathway, vagus nerve, cranial nerve X, evolutionary legacy, Richard Dawkins, streaming video
This video, including comments by Richard Dawkins, documents a necropsy (an autopsy on an animal other than a human) carried out in a classroom on a giraffe. In this video, we follow the pathway of the recurrent (inferior) laryngeal nerve, an important nerve that is a branch of the Vagus nerve (tenth cranial nerve…
tfk | June 21, 2010Remember when Disco. spinner Casey Luskin rolled out this silly attempt at refuting critics of irreducible complexity?:
Car engines use various kinds of bolts, and a bolt could be seen as a small âsub-partâ or âsub-systemâ of a car engine. Under [Ken] Miller's logic, if a vital bolt in my car's engine might also to perform some other functionâperhaps as a lugnut--then it follows that my car's whole engine system is not irreducibly complex. Such an argument is obviously fallacious.
He wrote that in April of 2006. Little did I know at the time that the Department of Homeland Security had…
tfk | June 21, 2010Casey Luskin, Disco. 'Tute spinner, has recently relaunched a fight over whether and how textbooks use embryological drawings from Ernst Haeckel's 19th century popular works. In his two posts (excerpting from a jumbled essay he wrote for a law review), he repeatedly claims that those drawings are fraudulent. To wit:
textbooks in use today, in arguing for evolution, still use Haeckelâs fraudulent embryo drawings
That Haeckelâs drawings were fraudulent and have been used in textbooks is essentially beyond dispute
Stephen Jay Gould recognized that Haeckelâs drawings ⦠fraudulently obscured…
gregladen | June 14, 2010Massimo Pigliucci's new book, "How to Tell Science from Bunk" has a great chapter called "Science in the Courtroom." The National Center for Science Education has arranged for you to have it for free. Click here to download the PDF.
pharyngula | June 11, 2010It's the return of Andrew Rosenberg!
Hello Proffesor Myers,
I see that I have become somewhat of a celebrity amongst your endless supply of past-student minions on your forums. Its hard for me to reply to such a massive amount of information that was thrown back at me in the last 24 hours, but I will do my best.
First of all, you replied by asking me why I came to you with questions if I was "so intelligent" myself. I simply put my high school accomplishments down, not as a way to brag, but to try and show you that I was someone with the mental capacity to listen to your replies--not…
pharyngula | June 11, 2010A few years ago, the Discovery Institute set up laboratory to do research, the Biologic Institute, which is in principle a good thing — they do claim to want to take a scientific approach to understanding the origin of life, after all. So far, it's been less than spectacular. They published one paper on software that models encoding Chinese characters as an analogy to protein folding. It's mildly interesting, but its connection to intelligent design is tenuous and abstract, and it's not at all clear how they can use it to expose problems in evolution…and even if they do find a problem in…
sa smith | June 10, 2010Im glad this reader was persistent in poking me with this Q, its a really good un!
Dear ERV--
I always thought that ERVs were some of the best evidence for evolution, but I always wondered if there was an additional aspect to the story that is not usually told. I imagined that different strains of viruses have existed at different times over the last few million years, so if some of the ERVs we share with chimps (or other animals) were caused by retroviruses that HAVE NOT existed since modern humans evolved, this would really put the nail in the coffin to some of the Creationist arguments…
pharyngula | June 10, 2010I try to be patient with all the email I get, I really do, and usually the greatest forebearance I can offer is to simply set a piece of email aside and go on. There simply is not enough time to answer everything, especially when my correspondent is better off going to the library, and most especially when the only reply I'm inspired to give is to snarl, "Go away, kid, you bother me."
So let me introduce you to young Mr Rosenberg. He has written me twice, the first time with a fairly routine set of questions that I politely set aside because I get a few hundred of these every week, and…
pharyngula | June 8, 2010The creation museum in Social Circle, Georgia, complete with all of its contents, is for sale. Like me, I'm sure all of you are going "squeeee!!" right now.
You know, Father's Day is just around the corner, and rather than getting me a $5 tie, maybe the kids should chip in and get me this. It shouldn't cost much more. And as a special bonus, Georgia benefits when the trucks come in and haul all this trash away. There should be a picnic and a parade.
Maybe I'm being unfair. It might be worth more: that "museum" looks wonderfully kitschy. Everything is in flashy gilt frames, and just the Robot…
gregladen | June 8, 2010Considering how right wing SC is, this is rather remarkable. Here's the details:
Can teachers be "allowed" teachers to "help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and weaknesses of existing scientific theories pertinent to the course."
like, as in, teach evolution?
Not in South Carolina!
Or, can a law be enacted that requires the state board of education to "examine all curriculum in use in this State that purports to teach students about the origins of mankind to determine whether the curriculum maintains neutrality toward…
pharyngula | June 7, 2010
Jonathan Sarfati, a particularly silly creationist, is quite thrilled — he's crowing about how he has caught Richard Dawkins in a fundamental error. The eye did not evolve, says Sarfati, because it is perfectly designed for its function, and Dawkins' suggestion that there might be something imperfect about it is wrong, wrong, wrong. He quotes Dawkins on the eye.
But I haven't mentioned the most glaring example of imperfection in the optics. The retina is back to front.
Imagine a latter-day Helmholtz presented by an engineer with a digital camera, with its screen of tiny photocells, set up…
pharyngula | June 6, 2010The Discovery Institute is getting so politely eviscerated by a couple of people right now — you ought to savor the destruction.
Richard Sternberg, the wanna-be martyr of the Smithsonian Institution, made a stupid mathematical mistake in explaining alternatively splicing, and then, after it was explained to him, did it a second time, revealing that it wasn't just an unfortunate slip, but a complete failure to grasp the basic concept. Even that wouldn't be so bad, except that Sternberg has been yammering away about how alternative splicing represents a serious problem for evolution.
Steve…
tfk | June 6, 2010Never let it be said that I don't acknowledge error. Ophelia Benson, responding in part to my earlier posts on the World Science Festival's science and faith panel, points out amistake I made:
Meanwhile â Josh Rosenauâs claim, in his post on why there shouldnât be any atheist scientists on the panel
Whoa, there. I can see how what I wrote implies that, but it wasn't what I meant, and thus I need to apologize and correct myself. My point was about Affirmative/New Atheists, not about all atheist scientists. Frankly, Francisco Ayala's religious views are fairly obscure, and according to some…
tfk | June 6, 2010Steve Matheson writes An open letter to Stephen Meyer:
Dear Steve:
â¦Yes, it would be great to follow up on our brief meeting onstage, and to find ourselves in situations in which topics of mutual interest are discussed by knowledgeable and intelligent people (at conferences, for example, or in multidisciplinary working groups). â¦
Right now, I don't see how you could be a thoughtful contributor to such an effort. It's not because you're stupid, or because you have "bad relationship skills," and it's not because you prefer ID-based explanations for biological phenomena. It's because you seem…
tfk | June 2, 2010Chad Orzel, responding to Sean Carroll, is absolutely right. The question is whether a panel at the World Science Festival (funded by Templeton, ZOMG!) should include incompatibilist atheists in a discussion about science and religion. Chad argues that doing so would derail the discussion:
In the end, I'm not convinced you need anyone on the panel to make the case that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible. That idea is out there, coming from both sides of the science-religion split (and you'll notice they don't have any young-earth creationists on the panel, either). The…
drorzel | June 1, 2010Thinking from Kansas, Josh Rosenau notices a correlation in data from a Daily Kos poll question on the origin of the universe:
Saints be praised, 62% of the public accepts the Big Bang and a 13.7 billion year old universe. Democrats are the most positive, with 71% accepting that, while only 44% of Republicans agree (38 think it's more recent, the rest are undecided). I've said it before and I stand by it: conservative Republicanism is incompatible with science.
But looking at the finer details tells us a lot. The only group - gender, race, or region - with anything like the Republicans'…
pharyngula | June 1, 2010As you've probably heard, Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute published a book last year calle Signature in the Cell. It stunk, it got virtually no reviews from the scientific community, although it was avidly sucked up by the fans of Intelligent Design creationism. One curious thing about the book is that it has sunk out of sight already, which is a bit peculiar and a bit disappointing for an explanation that was promised to revitalize ID.
Remember Michael Behe's book, Darwin's Black Box? I'll give Behe credit, that one was well-marketed and got the brief attention of many scientists,…
tfk | May 31, 2010Daily Kos asks 1200 voters:
Most astronomers believe the universe formed about 13.7 billion years ago in a massive event called the Big Bang. Do you think that's about right or do think the universe was created much more recently?
Saints be praised, 62% of the public accepts the Big Bang and a 13.7 billion year old universe. Democrats are the most positive, with 71% accepting that, while only 44% of Republicans agree (38 think it's more recent, the rest are undecided). I've said it before and I stand by it: conservative Republicanism is incompatible with science.
But looking at the finer…