creationism
pharyngula | December 21, 2009I live in Minnesota; Tim Pawlenty is our governor, and he's got his bland and uninteresting gaze fastened on the White House. Don't be fooled. He's just another Republican hack who has been drifting ever right-ward towards increasing lunacy. He was interviewed in Newsweek, and this will give you an idea of what kind of waffly worthless panderer he is.
Well, you know I'm an evangelical Christian. I believe that God created everything and that he is who he says he was. The Bible says that he created man and woman; it doesn't say that he created an amoeba and then they evolved into man and woman…
pharyngula | December 17, 2009Once upon a time, in vague exasperation at a persistent creationist, I opened up two of his questions to the Pharynguloid horde in a contest to see who could answer them most clearly and succinctly. I shouldn't have done this; I'm lazy, and this was too much like grading term papers. Still, there were a lot of good answers, so it was a worthwhile effort.
The winner, judged for clarity, brevity, and accuracy, was Calilasseia, an infrequent commenter here who clearly needs to increase his or her frequency. I've sent off an email in hopes of a reply with a mail address, or if Calilasseia notices…
pharyngula | December 17, 2009We will never be able to stop this approach. We're doomed!
Unless…we start touting beer and porn as the products of evolution. Get to work on it, gang.
pharyngula | December 15, 2009The Minot Skeptical Society has posted my lecture on Evolutionary Denialism to youtube. You have to work your way through a series of numbered segments to see the whole thing, and I do go on.
pharyngula | December 15, 2009I am often chided by morons.
Consistent
Dear Mr. Myers,
To be wrong is always acceptable, because we are human. But, to be consistently wrong, especially when you call yourself a Professor, is going way beyond the bounds of good sense. Anyone who even gives ear to people such as Dawkins and Kitchens is no less than a fool. There is nothing wrong with being a fool, but teaching others to be one is unacceptable and irresponsible, at the very least. Furthermore, to have a degree or degrees in biology and to still believe in Darwinian theory, shows ignorance in the worst degree. Macro…
pharyngula | December 14, 2009Keep that recent xkcd in mind when you read this one. This is from a creationist who is convinced all those biologists have it completely wrong, because Clovis points are beautiful artifacts.
Im digging in Ancient mans kitchen
Why is it that the deeper I Dig , the more brilliant the artifacts become… Isn't that opposite of the Darwin view? Clovis, First view, Plainview,… these guys were far advanced when it came to the quality of life.. I always was taught the older man was the dumber he was.. That's not accurate in my pea brain view of what I am personally researching… My digging buds…
gregladen | December 13, 2009This is the problem with Christians. They think they have a special pass to do whatever they want as long as it done in the name of their god. Now don't get me wrong here. The average Christian does not think he or she is above the law on a day to day basis. But it is part of Christian religion and culture, and I'm telling you this from personal experience, to ignore the law when one feels that their god or their religion demands it. So, when Ray Comfort produced his bogused-up version of Darwin's Origin of Species, the idea of doing it LEGALLY did not seem too important, apparently.
So…
pharyngula | December 13, 2009When Ray Comfort published his own version of Darwin's Origin, he had to come up with some original content for the introduction. He couldn't. Instead, he stole the first three pages outright from an essay by University of Tennessee professor Stan Guffey — those are the only reasonable pages in his 50 page contribution — and the rest is a mish-mash of standard creationist arguments that you can find on the internet. It's actually kind of impressive that he reached so low on the stupid scale with this one; there isn't one creative thought in the whole sloppy, plagiarized piece of work.
Now the…
pharyngula | December 11, 2009Way, way back on 16 July, I got a letter from the Discovery Institute.
Dear Dr. Myers:
I am writing to ask if you have plans to review Dr. Stephen C. Meyer's new book Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperOne). I would be happy to ask Dr. Meyer's publisher to send you a review copy.
I know you are busy but if you can get back to me about this, including any thoughts or comments you may have, I will grateful.
Sincerely,
Janet Oberembt
Assistant to Dr. Meyer
Discovery Institute
Oh, great, I thought — I know what kind of drivel Meyer was going to…
pharyngula | December 9, 2009Now everyone can read it: Kent Hovind's thesis from Patriot University has been scanned and put on the web. Remember to breathe now and then when you're laughing that hard.
Hello, my name is Kent Hovind. I am a creation/science evangelist. I live in Pensacola, Florida. I have been a high school science teacher since 1976. I've been very active in the creation/evolution controversy for quite some time.
He writes like a second-grader, and I haven't quoted the Christian ravings from it.
(via Kill the Afterlife)
sa smith | December 8, 2009(this post is me laughing at Sternberg, intermittently talking about ERVs, ask Qs if Im not clear-- sorry, laughing so hard, must share this joke as well as I can between snorts)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
AAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
RICHARD STERNBERG IS SO STUPID!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Arrogant, stupid little twat that doesnt even know what he doesnt know.
*wipes away tears*
*sniff*
I was just listening to the 'debate' between Shermer/Prothero and Meyer/Sternberg.
Prothero brought up ERVs, and how they are leftover garbage cluttering up your genome.
Sternberg was all like, "NUH UH…
pharyngula | December 8, 2009Tim Lambert of Deltoid is discussing a book about climate denialism on FDL. I quite enjoyed his putdown of the ubiquitous Viscount Monckton, and also this familiar joke:
Question: What's the difference between a computer salesman and a used car salesman?
Answer: A used car salesman knows when he's lying.
The point he's making is that there are two broad categories of denialists, the ones who are sincerely nuts (like Monckton) and the ones know better but are lying to make a profit for their cause (like the odious Steve Milloy).
I wish I could make that distinction in my personal choice of…
mikethemadbiologist | December 6, 2009David Sirota was debating (although given that said 'debate' occurred on cable TV, that's probably far too genteel a word) David Frum about healthcare, when Sirota brought up the finding that 45,000 people in the U.S. die every year from a lack of health insurance. Frum's response is incredibly arrogant (go to the 4:00 mark):
Sirota is absolutely right that Frum's discounting of the study with "I went to Harvard, believe me" is incredibly arrogant. But what's worse is what came first:
"That number is not a reliable number, that number is an estimate."*
And evolution is just a theory. Oops…
pharyngula | December 3, 2009Oh, when will we learn? Michael Shermer and Donald Prothero duked it out with a pair of Discovery Institute charlatans recently, to predictable results: the creationists cried victory afterwards. It simply doesn't matter that they had no evidence.
Anyway, a couple of things struck me as too typical in these affairs.
The creationists changed the topic the morning of the debate, from the general "Origins of life" to the "Adequacy of Neo-Darwinian natural selection and mutation to explain the origin of life", which already skews the subject. It's amazing how common it is for creationists to…
tfk | December 2, 2009It's honestly hard to know what to make of Ray Comfort. First he says bananas are proof of intelligent design because of how well they fit in your hand. Then he retracts the claim, accepting that the domestic banana is, in fact, a product of extensive artificial selection. Then he backs off and insists "There isn’t any evidence that the banana has changed its shape in the last 2,000 years."
Better than that is his reply to a question about Biblical references to the Earth being fixed and immobile:
So let’s look closely at what the above verses actually say:
"He has fixed the earth firm,…
pharyngula | December 2, 2009One of the weirdest elements of the Biblical chronology of Genesis is that God waits until Day 4 to create the sun, moon, and stars. I know, it makes no sense at all, but as it turns out,
God had a reason for that. Just ask a creationist!
Why did God wait till Day 4 before He made the sun, moon and stars?
Answer: Perhaps because God knew that some people would worship the sun, moon and stars, and He wanted to show us that they are not so important after all. The sun did not form the earth, and the stars do not control what happens on Earth.God wants us to worship Him, not anything that He has…
pharyngula | December 1, 2009And all I take away from it is that Comfort is as sleazy as I thought. You may have heard that he has retracted his banana argument; not true, as you'll discover, he's kind of waffled around objections to it, but he still thinks the banana is an argument against evolution. He also denies that he makes a lot of errors when talking about science. Comfort is the fellow who made this claim:
Darwin theorized that mankind (both male and female) evolved alongside each other over millions of years, both reproducing after their own kind before the ability to physically have sex evolved. They did this…
pharyngula | December 1, 2009One of the most common strategems for reconciling evolution and the Bible that I've run into is the Day-Age hypothesis, the claim that each of the seven 'days' of the book of Genesis represents one of God's days, which doesn't have to be 24 hours long, but could be millions or billions of years instead. All you have to do is stretch the timescale of Genesis to fit the geological timescale, and voilà, it's a perfect metaphorical description of the very same processes science has described. Why, those old Hebrews couldn't have known all that geology and astronomy, therefore they must have…
gregladen | December 1, 2009When my baby nurses from his mom, he can see her face and bond with her because he was designed to do so by god. Like how a banana is designed by god to fit comfortably in the hand for eating, or maybe just carrying around.
What am I talking about?
Imagine the following two alternative scenarios.
Alternative Universe One
The Scene: Visiting Nurses Inc. VNI contracts with health care providers to send trained visiting nurses around to check in on newly minted babies and their parents. This is standard procedure in many health care plans, and of course, VNI wants to develop and maintain…