creationism
tfk | March 1, 2010It's true that there's a lot of overlap between creationists and global warming deniers. Lots of creationists have been conditioned to reject claims of scientific consensus, and so throw in with the deniers.
However, the global warming deniers know that creationism is bad science, and that linking themselves to it would just be embarrassing, which leads to the possibility of internecine warfare, as creationists try to glom onto global warming denial and global warming deniers try desperately to shake them loose.
To whit, this slide from a presentation by global warming denier Richard Lindzen…
pharyngula | March 1, 2010It's good to know that in the ecosystem of inanity, we have village idiots, like Ken Ham, and itinerant idiots, like Sean Meek. Meek has created something called The Traveling Creation Museum as part of his life's work of making people stupider.
The Traveling Creation Museum is available to come to your location. It has exhibits on the days of Creation, the Flood, the Ice Age, dinosaurs and much more. It shows how the real scientific and historical information supports the Genesis account of Creation.The Museum includes many authentic antiquities from the ancient world and reveals in a…
pharyngula | February 24, 2010The Duggars are that creepy family paraded about on The Learning Channel — the ones with the swarm of kids. It's a horrifying show, but in this episode, the nightmare is compounded by the fact that they visit the Creation "Museum" and even get a personal guided tour from freakishly dead-eyed Ken Ham. Only watch it if you like to torment yourself.
One other reason to watch it: they show enough of the "Museum" that you really don't need to go there.
Do pity these poor kids, too.
pharyngula | February 23, 2010Oh, this is a cunning ploy to foil pharyngulation: a whole page of creationist polls, thrown up like chaff to distract us so we won't slam any one of them too hard. You can still play, though, and skew them some. Here are three:
Do you believe dinosaurs and humans ever lived at the same time?
No
45,21%
Yes
39,92%
Probably not
7,84%
They probably have.
7,03%
How old is the earth?
Billions of years
47,01%
Around 6000 years
35,26%
Closer to 10,000 years
8,40%
Millions of years
7,56%
Close to 100,000 years
1,77%
Do you believe that humans were created or that they evolved?
I believe…
pharyngula | February 22, 2010I'm getting a flood of email from Israel. As one correspondent explains, Israel maintains three kinds of state-supported schools: one kind for the ultra-orthodox, because the state has always fostered freakishly fanatical ignorance among the lunatic subset, and these schools teach no science at all; a fully secular system, particularly in higher education, because Jews have also had a strong scholarly tradition, and Israel depends on material strategies for its survival, and these schools teach science very well; and a general intermediate kind of school where religion may be taught but…
pharyngula | February 20, 2010The freethought community is grieving at the loss of Helen Kagin, and Ken Ham, petty whiner that he is, has decided to complain about her obituary.
We found it unfortunate that someone took this sad time as an opportunity to take a shot at the Creation Museum in an obituary. And sad, too, that some of the information was not correct. There were not hundreds at the protest rally outside the gates of the Creation Museum when it opened--we counted perhaps 70 people. Also it was not so "peaceful," considering that the protestors brought in a loud rock band to disrupt our opening day, and also…
sa smith | February 20, 2010Creationism is so boring.
Creationist: BIOLOGICAL FEATURE ___ IS IMPOSSIBLAH!
Scientist: Um, Dude, theres like 65 years of research explaining how feature ___ evolved.
Creationist: NO THAT RESEAERCH SUPPORTS JESUS! EVIDENCES OF CREATION!
Scientist: What? No, we have a pretty good idea the evolutionary steps between ___ and ___. Theres no way this research supports special creation. I mean, its actually taught in undergrad biology classes now.
Creationist: NO. I CALCULATED IMPOSSIBLAH. JESUS LOVES ME!
Scientist: ... Youre just mashing the keys of your calculator. Thats not a '…
pharyngula | February 19, 2010Unfortunately, these stats don't look much different from what we'd get in Minnesota.
pharyngula | February 17, 2010I've got my hands on a strange paper by D Kanduc: "Protein information content resides in rare peptide segments". Here's the abstract.
Discovering the informational rule(s) underlying structure-function relationships in the protein language is at the core of biology. Current theories have proven inadequate to explain the origins of biological information such as that found in nucleotide and amino acid sequences; an 'intelligent design' is now a popular way to explain the information produced in biological systems. Here, we demonstrate that the information content of an amino acid motif…
sa smith | February 16, 2010Thanks to the numerous vaccines I have received over the years, I have superpowers.
100% serious, here.
I mean, I cant fly. Cant see through walls. Nothing cliche like that.
No, my superpower is, I can predict what Creationists are going to say/do before they say/do it.
You might think this is a pointless superpower and hardly worth exposure to the DANGEROUS TOXINS in vaccines, but the fact is, I would do anything for the lulz my superpower provides me with.
So, lets get to my latest prediction:
Abbies Facebook status, Saturday 8.50 am: *HUG* to University of Alabama Huntsville grad…
pharyngula | February 16, 2010And she may be fired for it.
Hussain is an eighth grade science teacher in North Carolina who was getting harrassed by bible-thumping students in her classroom — harrassment that was apparently encouraged by their red-necked ignorant parents. The kids were giving her Bibles and Jesus postcards and reading Bibles instead of doing their classwork, and seemed to have enjoyed flaunting their dumb-ass religiosity at her. So she vented on Facebook. The parents got indignant that she would dare to express her unhappiness with their darling little children, and are pressing to have her fired — but…
pharyngula | February 16, 2010Without hesitation, I can tell you who the most contemptible, repulsive creationist I know is: he tops even Ray Comfort and Ken Ham in the pantheon of creationist liars for Jesus. It's the otherwise negligible Sal Cordova, a whiny little nobody with no talent and no reputation other than his ability to cobble up some of the most disgusting innuendo. His latest achievement is to tie the murders by Amy Bishop to evolution; he's found that Bishop is named in the list of supporters of the Clergy Letter Project, which means he gets to sneer a bit.
Amy Bishop was charged in the murder of several…
pharyngula | February 15, 2010Shorter Ken Ham: Other museums have dinosaur models with saddles, so why does everyone pick on my "museum"?. Ham seems to have been scrambling to save face by finding a few other places that put out exhibits of dinosaurs with saddles, but he, as usual, misses the point.
Yes, other places will display dinosaurs as fun exhibits for the kids, and I have no problem with that. The natural history museum at the University of Utah had a talking dinosaur out front — throw a coin in its mouth, and it would roar and thank you for your donation, and my kids were always pestering me for my spare change.…
pharyngula | February 13, 2010That sad creationist, Professor Dendy, has been banned from this site, but he still rails against us in prolific obsession from his website. His latest diatribe is irresistible — he claims that atheists can't handle the truth, and you'll be surprised to learn that the "truth" is that Charles Darwin denied the efficacy of natural selection. "Oh, really," you might ask, "He's not going to trot out the hoariest old quote mine in the universe to back that up, is he?" And the answer is that yes, he certainly is. I had to laugh aloud. This is only second in the list of ridiculous but common claims…
pharyngula | February 13, 2010Would you believe that Answers in Genesis has an iPhone app? Yes, they do, and as you might expect, it's really, really bad. Not bad as in poorly programmed, that looks fine; bad as in now you can get the dishonest trash Ken Ham peddles streamed straight to your phone.
The only reason to download it is so you can give it a bad review. And you have to wonder about Apple's quality control on iPhone apps—they classified it as educational? Seriously?
pharyngula | February 12, 2010We have a couple of unfortunate events happening.
One is the Creation Science Fair. I've been thinking for years that I ought to drop in on this event, and every year it rolls around and I find myself completely unable to do it. I can cope with adults who do stupid things — they are independent and presumably responsible, after all — but these are kids who are being lied to and led deeper into ignorance. It would be like going to a puppy-kicking party, and I'd just want to gather up all the victims and take them home with me.
The other event this weekend is a debate…a debate between a…
gregladen | February 10, 2010Har Mar is a funny little shopping mall in Roseville Minnesota. It is the home of the annual Twin Cities Creation Science Science Fair. Sometimes we visit the science fair, but it is not to laugh at the students....
... that would be rude and uncivil, and despite the fact that politeness and civility are EVILE, when it comes to children we should not be all in their faces.
Rather, we go to the funny little mall to enjoy each other's company, those of us who wish we got together more often than we do, to browse through the Creation Science Fair displays, and to size up the local…
sa smith | February 9, 2010Look, I like weird people. Goth kids. Sci-fi geeks. Language nerds.
Weird people are far more interesting than, say, the 'normal' people that get cast for shows like 'The Bachelor': Generic Human #231975, Generic Human #576930, Generic Human #750193, bleh.
But theres a whole different level of weird, and that level is 'Creationist'.
Example: Remember that guy, that Creationist that branded kids in his Ohio classroom? Had a whole system of weird signals and words and stuff he was brainwashing kids with?
Yes, that was weird, but now weve reached a level of weird only Creationists can hope…
pharyngula | February 9, 2010It's never going to end — Ben Stein's voice still makes me grind my teeth (oh, wait — Stein's voice did that to me even before he made Expelled). Now here's another parody of his horrible little movie, with a little name check of yours truly in there.
pharyngula | February 9, 2010Grassroots action can do wonderful things. Voters in Don McLeroy's district in Texas are organizing an ad campaign and are looking for contributions to help air radio ads opposing McLeroy's candidacy: as they say, "The ads will target moderate republicans who realize that to compete globally in the 21st century Texas needs smart students who are well educated, critical thinkers," which is exactly the right approach to take. We need to mobilize the sensible conservatives and get them to realize that their continued entanglement with raving nutbags has been a formula for short-term electoral…