creationism
pharyngula | February 8, 2010Dutch creationists have put up a foolish little poll — surprise them with a little adjustment.
Hoe is het leven op aarde ontstaan? (How did life arise on Earth?)
God schiep het leven in zes dagen (God created life in six days)
69.4%
Door Evolutie (By Evolution)
20.7%
Door Spontane Generatie (By Spontaneous Generation)
5%
God stuurde de evolutie (By god-directed evolution)
4.1%
God schiep het leven in langere tijd (God created life some time)
0.8%
Er is een intelligente ontwerper maar onbekend wie (There is an unknown intelligent designer)
0%
pharyngula | February 8, 2010In my week long visit to Ireland, I only had one encounter that left a bad taste in my mouth. Everyone I talked to was forthright and willing to state their views clearly, even if I thought they were dead wrong and rather stupid (my radio interview with Tom McGurk comes to mind — he was an unpleasant person more interested in barking loudly than having a conversation, but his views were plain), and most of my conversations were fun and interesting. The one exception was with a creationist in Belfast.
After my talk, this one furtive fellow who hadn't had the nerve, apparently, to ask me…
gregladen | February 7, 2010A federal appellate court has ruled against a Christian school in Murrieta which had sued the University of California over its refusal to accept high school courses that rely on the Bible as the unerring source of truth.
Details here.
Next step: Homeschoolers!
(Hat tip: August Berkshire)
pharyngula | February 6, 2010I've often noticed a tendency for some people to host a whole gnarly syndrome of denialist symptoms: some people are creationists+HIV denialists+global warming denialists+ant-vaxers+whatever. They stand out in the crowd as hyper-intense paragons of idiocy; I often wonder how they get around at all, since the power of their disbelief is so strong that they probably deny their shoelaces as soon as they get up in the morning, yet at the same time they believe a magic man in the sky will soon make them float up into the air to a rapturous eternal congress of their fellow reality deniers.
I've…
mikethemadbiologist | February 3, 2010Here are some 'interesting' results from a poll conducted by Research 2000:
QUESTION: Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist?
Yes 63
Not Sure 16
No 21
But that's not the crazy part. There's more:
QUESTION: Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win?
Yes 24
Not sure 33
No 43
Moving right along....
QUESTION: Do you believe ACORN stole the 2008 election?
Yes 21
Not sure 55
No 24
Yes, three-quarters of Republicans are open to the idea that a cash-strapped community group composed of a lot of poor and working class people created millions of illegal votes. But we're still not…
pharyngula | February 1, 2010I'd recommend that every school board member who proposes that we teach both sides of the evolution "controversy" view this movie, except they're usually such delicate prudes who get outraged at tone that they'd probably have a heart attack at the profanity in this clip.
Wait…maybe that's an additional reason they should watch it!
pharyngula | January 31, 2010There is a nest of creationist fruit loops scattered across Wisconsin, and they do try to get on school boards. The latest is David Weigand, a candidate for the board of education in the West Bend school district. Seriously, do not vote for this kook. Here's his statement on evolution.
WITH REGARD TO TEACHING EVOLUTION OR CREATION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
In a nutshell, this is what I believe:
1. Origin studies, (whether Creation or evolution) and the idea of "millions of years" does not belong in the science classroom because these are not testable, repeatable or observable; they are…
oracknows | January 31, 2010This may be a bit over the top, but it does rather point out what is in effect done when journalists lazily present "both sides" of issues that don't really have two sides, at least not two sides that are anywhere in the same universe as far as scientific validity:
I do rather think that they could have found a better example for "Western" versus "alternative" medicine. That part of the video was actually pretty dumb and, quite frankly, painfully unfunny. Come on! A Hulda Clark parody, where the alt-med practitioner claims that all cancer is caused by a liver fluke and that it can be cured…
pharyngula | January 28, 2010Ben Stein wins another honor. He has been declared the Rosa Parks of Darwin skeptics on the Rosa Parks of Rosa Parks Blogs, which points out amusing and offensive instances of rhetorical hyperbole. The amusing bit here, though, is that he got named this on the basis of an old post by creationist Kevin Wirth which does literally say Ben Stein is the Rosa Parks of Darwin Skeptics, right in the title. I'd seen this before, way back in the old days of the Expelled hoo-ha, but this time I noticed an interesting connection. At the bottom of the article, it has this brief biographical note:
Seattle…
sa smith | January 27, 2010
This is a repost from the old ERV. A retrotransposed ERV :P
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science have a special online edition focused on the place of evilution in medicine.
Shorter Michael Egnor:
:-O
Hat tip to Pharyngula.
Oops. Dr. Egnor, Mr. Professor of Neurosurgery, doesnt seem to have learned a lesson from Mr. 99. And now hes going to get made fun of by a 23 year old girl, too. Someone get a Ziploc bag for his testicles.
Really, it's a funny question. Think about it. Would anyone sponsor an essay contest on 'Why I would want my doctor to study anatomy' or 'Why I…
pharyngula | January 27, 2010Our state science standards are being patched up right now, and while they're mostly just fine, one sneaky provision is still on the books.
"The student will be able to explain how scientific and technological innovations as well as new evidence can challenge portions of or entire accepted theories and models including but not limited to cell theory, atomic theory, theory of evolution, plate tectonic theory, germ theory of disease and big bang theory."
It's the old 'teach the controversy' argument. While it seems innocuous, and we actually should teach kids how to address established…
gregladen | January 26, 2010The following story is current, but the issue is not new. But interesting. ...
Science standards for Minnesota schools are about to be set for the next six years. Is the battle to keep pseudoscience out of our classrooms over? Sadly the door has been cracked open for intelligent design, an idea with no real scientific basis cooked up by creationists, to remain in Minnesota's classrooms.
The same vague science benchmark that was a compromise in the intelligent design controversy early in the Pawlenty administration still exists, unchanged, in this round of science standards. These standards…
tfk | January 26, 2010Darwin biopic Creation premiered in seven movie theaters across the country last weekend, earning $53,073, an average of $7,582. That's not a lot of money, but at roughly $10/ticket, this works out to 760 viewers per theater, a solid showing. I know the theater I saw it at was full for their 7 pm showing.
Compare that to creationist schlockumentary Expelled: No Intelligenceâ¦, released two springs ago. Part of its promotional strategy was a big opening weekend; coordinating with the owners of Regal movie theaters, they opened in 1,052 theaters, earning $2,970,848, or $2,824 per theater (…
pharyngula | January 21, 2010A good take-down is a thing of beauty. A.A. Gill visited the "museum" in Kentucky, and gets right to the heart of the matter: it's not a museum, it's a national embarrassment.
The Creation Museum isn't really a museum at all. It's an argument. It's not even an argument. It's the ammunition for an argument. It is the Word made into bullets. An armory of righteous revisionism. This whole building is devoted to the literal veracity of the first 11 chapters of Genesis: God created the world in six days, and the whole thing is no more than 6,000 years old. Everything came at once, so Tyrannosaurus…
tfk | January 18, 2010Max Lampenfeld of Lehigh Township is upset. The Allentown, PA Morning Call had an illustration referencing the Big Bang, and Max won't take that lying down:
The disturbing part of the article is the way the ''Big Bang'' is presented as fact, when it is only a theory and cannot be proven, at least not yet.
Forget about ''In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth'' -- what really happened was, there was this Big Bang!
Mr. Lampenfeld notes that the paper recently re-ran the famous "Yes, Virginia" letter, and concludes by summarizing the entire conflict:
Evolution, global warming…
grrlscientist | January 16, 2010tags: religion, IDiots, satire, parody, comedy, humor, fucking hilarious, Hitler, DOWNFALL, streaming video
The so-called Discovery Institute is a pretentious über-Christian disguise for creationism and an ultra-Conservative social agenda called The Wedge Strategy. So-called Intelligent Design theory is plagiarized from William Paley's long-refuted Blind Watchmaker argument, and is merely creationism in a not-so-cunning disguise.
Having neither facts nor logic at their disposal, the polemicists of the so-called Discovery Institute have been forced to resort to lies and subterfuge. One of…
pharyngula | January 14, 2010If you ever argue with creationists, you know that the Index to Creationist Claims is an incredibly useful site, as is the book version, The Counter Creationism Handbook. Life just got a little sweeter: it is now available as a smartphone app for the blackberry and iPhone (just get into the App Store and search for 'creationist'). Well, sweeter for us; creationists will find themselves a little more readily refuted now.
pharyngula | January 13, 2010Crazy Ken Ham has learned about the Atheist Convention in Melbourne, and he has written his confused, garbled version of what it's all about. He's also done his typical cowardly routine of complaining about the convention and also, by the way, about me, but refusing to mention any of us by name, let alone linking to us. He can't have his readers actually seeing what the other side has to say, after all; the world must be filtered through the benevolent and opaque lens of the Maximum Leader, you know.
At least it's fascinating to watch a weak mind struggle to grasp something he doesn't…
pharyngula | January 12, 2010Apparently, Kent Hovind filed for an appeal to the Supreme Court based on a claim that he really wasn't trying to finagle his way past US tax laws by structuring all of his bank withdrawals to be under $10,000, therefore avoiding a trigger that would demand they be reported; it's unfair to target withdrawals that way, and besides, they were all for his Christian ministry. Hovind also had another ace up his sleeve: he begged his readers to pray for him.
I guess God doesn't like him: "Mr. Hovind's appeal for a rehearing before the Supreme Court has been denied.".
By the way, Kent Hovind is…
pharyngula | January 10, 2010This is far too familiar.
And they say atheists have no morals. Isn't it proof enough of my restraint that not once in my life have I ever throttled a creationist?