creationism
gregladen | April 2, 2010First, there was plain and simple creationism, a Christian idea that, in an ideal Christian world, would be taught as part of any science dealing with the past, including biology (evolution), geology, and presumably history.
But the constitution stood in the way of implementing basic Christian teachings in public schools in the United States, though that battle took decades. Just as creationists were being driven off he landscape, a sort of Battle of the Bulge occurred, in the form of Intelligent Design.
Intelligent Design is a scientific-looking theory which is really just more creationism…
tfk | April 2, 2010I've never written a law review article, and my first stab at the genre turned into a bit of a beast to wrangle. While most of the papers in the journal ran to perhaps a dozen pages, mine weighs in at 68, in which I offer a brief exploration of evolution for the lawerly set, a review of creationism's legal and social history, a short defense of the Kitzmiller decision striking down ID in public schools, and a review of current anti-evolution efforts, especially so-called academic freedom laws. For all that, I think it hangs together nicely, a tribute to the students at the University of St…
pharyngula | March 30, 2010Good news: the Large Hadron Collider is operational, and has fired two particles together with a force of 7 trillion electron volts…and it's only the beginning, since they're going to ramp up the power gradually. It's too bad Michio Kaku had to muck it up with a lot of nonsense.
"This is a huge step toward unraveling Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 1 - what happened in the beginning," physicist Michio Kaku told The Associated Press.
"This is a Genesis machine. It'll help to recreate the most glorious event in the history of the universe."
Please, no. Genesis has zero correspondence to reality.…
mikethemadbiologist | March 28, 2010While I'm away, here's something from the depths of the Mad Biologist's Archives:
By way of ScienceBlogling Razib, I came across this Reason article by Ronald Bailey summarizing the presidential candidates views' on evolution. Bailey highlights two reasons what lack of support for evolution says about a candidate:
The candidate probably is weak on the separation of church and state.
The candidate is unable to rationally assess evidence.
But I think this misses the point entirely: evolution matters because evolutionary biology matters.
Granted this sounds like something Yogi Berra would…
tfk | March 25, 2010This morning the Templeton Foundation announced the winner of the Templeton Prize: Francisco Ayala, a former priest and current biologist who testified against creation science in the '80s and now continues to demolish "intelligent design" â the madness that creation science became. In the comments to PZ's grudging acknowledgment of the wisdom of the choice, Bill Farrell anticipates the creationist response:
Ohhhhhh, Ayala has been "mean" to Stephen Meyer over "Signature."
Send in the attack gerbil, Disco Tute!
And while Casey himself has yet to reply, David Klinghoffer has sallied forth to…
pharyngula | March 25, 2010I hope I didn't catch something in the Antipodes. There seems to be something awful going around down there: Ken Ham, Ray Comfort, and now…Gary Ablett, Sr. He's an Australian rules footballer with a few seedy drug-related incidents in his past — he's also a world-class moron. He's just written a long and mostly incoherent complaint about atheists for the Herald Sun, a cheesy tabloid in Australia.
Maybe it's the football — they play without the heavy armor American footballers wear, so maybe he's got brain damage. After all, Jason Ball wrote a nice rebuttal, and he's Australian, too, so it's…
oracknows | March 24, 2010It has often been written on this blog and elsewhere that the mark of a true crank is hatred of the scientific consensus, be it consensus regarding the theory of evolution, the science that says homeopathy is impossible, anthropogenic global warming; various areas of science-based medicine; or the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Perhaps the most famous expression of distrust of a scientific consensus is the famous speech by Michael Crichton, in which he famously said:
Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science…
pharyngula | March 23, 2010Man, I must have smacked Michael Ruse really hard. Over and over, he repeats one simple, common phrase that I applied to him — it must have been painfully memorable.
I have been called many things in my time, but I truly believe that "clueless gobshite" is a first. In a way, I am almost proud of this. After all, if you are in your seventieth year and someone feels so strongly about your ideas that they refer to you in this way, then you must be doing something right. Or if not exactly right, you must have ideas that others want to challenge so strongly that they pull out this kind of language…
pharyngula | March 23, 2010I don't understand how Texans can bear it, myself — their board of education has made them a laughingstock. I always thought they had some pride down there.
That one panel captures creationist logic perfectly. They've battened on global warming as an issue that they believe helps their cause.
"Scientists clearly have no idea what they're talking about. They made those mistakes in that report, after all."
Therefore, the earth is 6,000 years old."
"And Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs."
tfk | March 22, 2010Casey Luskin, Disco. DJ and legal eagle sparrow asks "When Is it Appropriate to Challenge the [scientific] 'Consensus'?"
Simple answer: When you can make a convincing scientific argument.
Casey disagrees, joining Jay Richards â Prodigal Son of the Disco. 'Tute â in arguing that:
we must carefully examine the scientific, sociological, rhetorical, and political dynamics of a debate to determine if the consensus deserves our assent, or our skepticism.
This actually combines several errors. First, one can be skeptical of something which deserves assent, and indeed to which one does assent.…
tfk | March 22, 2010
It's like he's been reading my mind. He's even nearly re-derived Intelligent Falling. But upside down!
tfk | March 18, 2010Shorter Richard Sternberg: Beginning to Decipher the SINE Signal:
If science fiction weren't fiction, ID would be really good science.
In responding tangentially to our earlier criticism of him for employing arguments of a paranoid schizophrenic nature which treated movies as if they were evidence of how science works, Sternberg pens an essay in which we're to pretend that we find monoliths on Earth's two moons and they send us crazy signals that make our computers suddenly intelligent.
He quotes a hypothetical critic replying:
We think youâre a nice guy, but your arguments are insane.…
pharyngula | March 17, 2010Emancipated from the rigor of science, we are free to propose any fanciful idea and exercise our imaginations to the fullest — all that matters is that you have a cool story with T-rexes biting the heads off people.
Get right on this one, Discovery Institute!
pharyngula | March 17, 2010Kent Hovind's infamous alma mater has put together a collection of responses because they are "under attack!" Only they aren't—they're being laughed at. And whoa, these pages are even more hilarious. (Warning: all of the links below go to pages that fire up some tedious piano music on autoplay…that you can't turn off.)
The first one is offended at the falsehoods their critics promulgate. For instance, people have passed around this photo, claiming it is a picture of the Patriot University facilities:
It is a filthy lie! That is the minister's house. To show how wrong this portrayal is, the…
tfk | March 16, 2010Shorter Richard Sternberg for the Disco. 'Tute: Ayala and Falk Miss the Signs in the Genome:
We should learn how to do science by watching movies.
For reference, actual Sternberg:
In this and subsequent posts, I will provide other sorts of evidence that so-called âjunk DNAâ is not junk at all, but functional.
We have all seen a variant of the plot in a movie. A strange signal appearsâ¦On the Beachâ¦Contactâ¦Signsâ¦. a Coca-Cola bottle⦠which sometimes leads to a telegraph key being tapped ⦠a complex set of encrypted data with an intricate mathematical patternâ¦crop circles â¦
Now, the…
pharyngula | March 15, 2010Gosh. I have been informed that yesterday's posting of my crazy email was too, too harsh, and that I'm such a meanie. Well, I resolved to be much nicer as I worked my way through my neglected in-box, so here are a couple more letters I've gotten in the last day or two.
Dear PZ,
I find the blatant hostility shown towards God and Jesus Christ defies belief when all either of them (God and Jesus) want is for mankind to have peace on Earth. And peace IS possible if only the emotionally handicapped intelligensia were to open their hearts to the love God has for each one of us - including them…
pharyngula | March 14, 2010There was a bit of unwarranted controversy in Richard Dawkins' talk here at the Global Atheist Convention. In the Q&A at the end, one woman got the microphone, declared that she was a believer, announced that she was grateful to a god, and asked the question, "What is DNA? Where did DNA come from?" (and she did not ask in the tone of someone who sincerely wanted an answer to a basic question in biology.) She was loudly but briefly jeered, before Dawkins and the organizers quieted the audience, and then Richard went on to answer the question politely and at length.
Some people felt badly…
tfk | March 13, 2010One of my colleagues from Scienceblogs.com.br contacted me a week or so ago to talk about creationists and global warming deniers, and I just checked and his story for Brazil's largest paper is online. Frankly, I think I gave him one of my juicier quotes:
"Dos negacionistas do aquecimento global, a maioria é motivada principalmente pelos negócios e pela polÃtica. Um número chocante de pessoas parece se opor à ideia porque não gostam de Al Gore. Muitos trabalham em empresas petrolÃferas ou pertencem a indústrias que teriam de pagar pela mitigação do aquecimento", diz Rosenau. "Então…