creationism
pharyngula | September 8, 2009A little while ago, we had a report of creationist graduating from Harvard and going on to use his degree for evangelism. How sweet, I know…but surely he wouldn't admit to simply getting his degree for window dressing, would he?
Why, yes he would! he's very proud of the purity of his creationist heritage and pulling off the acquisition of a Ph.D. from Harvard.
He went straight to Harvard Medical School, which he said "sounded like it would be useful for credentials and evangelism."
"I'm a second generation creationist, you might say," he said. He explained how he saw that "salvation was…
sa smith | September 7, 2009We get a lot of weird spam at SciBlogs.
Specifically, Turkish spam.
Im sure you all have seen one or two that gets through, before we can get around to trashing it-- "I did not expect such a topic. Please type this for another topic. Regards to the author." "Welcome! The long sought such a page but in the end I found, and most importantly - pay up."
The porno sites just copy/paste post text.
Oh, and my post on donating eggs gets lots of 'tubal reversal' spam.
But I do have to check the trash bin now and then to see if one of you all put too many links in a comment, or something, and…
gregladen | September 7, 2009Since the bloggingheads "diavlog" with David Dobbs and me was the first science-oriented installment to come out (more or less) since the repudiation of Bloggingheads.tv by Carl Zimmer and Sean Carrol, and now Phil Plait and PZ Myers, I think I should say something about why I did it and what I think about the whole thing.
I want to start out by saying that my remarks are provisional. I will not tolerate sophistic mumbo jumbo in the comments. Instead, I employ what my Lese friend JM used to tell me as as staring point: "I've got an idea or two for you. If you don't like them, just give…
ddobbs | September 7, 2009Bloggingheads.tv just posted a conversation Greg Laden and I had about the second-biggest scientific controversy of Darwin's time, and of Darwin's life: the argument over how coral reefs form. The coral reef argument was fascinating in its own right, both scientifically and dramatically -- for here a very capable andn conscientious scientist, Alexander Agassiz, struggled to reconcile both two views of science and the legacies of the two scientific giants of the age, one of whom was his father.
His story -- and the tumultuous 19th-century struggle to define science and empiricism -- is the…
pharyngula | September 3, 2009This is how to design an online poll to stymie the Pharyngulistas: make sure it makes no sense and limits the options to only unpalatable choices. Go ahead and try and figure this one out…although it does say it is for creationists, and it is for Christians only.
Why Creationist is your favorite?
15% (3)Kent Hovind
5% (1)Ken Ham
36% (7)Both
42% (8)Neither... someone else
"Why creationist," indeed.
pharyngula | September 2, 2009This peculiar little email is nothing special, but is actually rather representative. It's interesting because most atheists will read it one way, where I suspect he actually means it another way.
Professor Myers,
My name is Jack Heidman and I am an F15 pilot and commercial airline pilot for American Airlines. I am not a biologist. I was too busy flirting with my cute lab partner to pay attention in high school biology class (by the way, I went to Wayzata High - I bet you know where that is).
I would seriously like your opinion on another stupid creationist question I have. I know that…
ddobbs | September 2, 2009
I was pleased to see my book Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral written up in a couple of venues recently. Over at The Primate Diaries, Eric Michael Johnson, who does on history and philosophy of science, looks at the "terrific argument" that the book follows -- an argument simultaneously about how coral reefs form, how to do science, and (a third layer out), creationism versus empiricism. A nice write-up -- you can't go wrong starting a piece about the creationism-empiricism debate (among other things) with an atomic blast.
The book is also mentioned…
pharyngula | September 1, 2009One of the big issues in science education is the topic of science standards: each state is supposed to have guidelines for the public school curriculum, which are intended to enforce some uniformity and also make sure that key subjects are covered. These standards are often accompanied by big political fights as the religious right tries, for instance, to get evolution (and sex education, and historical accuracy, and …) expunged from the curriculum. Sometimes they succeed, and sometimes the good guys win.
An article in Evolution: Education and Outreach assesses the current state of state…
pharyngula | September 1, 2009When you tie a university to a religious ideology, you create stresses that show that the modern search for knowledge is the antithesis of religious dogma. I keep telling people that science and religion are in opposition, and here's a perfect example: La Sierra University is a Seventh Day Adventist college. SDAs are fundamentalists and literalists (although, isn't it strange how different literalist sects all seem to come up with different…ahem…interpretations of the Bible?) who as a point of doctrine believe in a young earth and seven day creation. La Sierra has a biology department, as…
mikethemadbiologist | September 1, 2009During one of the many framing-related flare ups (kinda like zits, aren't they?), I argued that biologists have done the following things well while confronting creationism:
Calling creationists fucking morons (because they are).
Arguing that a better understanding of how life evolved is good in and of itself, and can imbue us with a certain sense of wonder.
Refuting specific creationist claims.
But this is what I thought was missing:
What we rarely do is make an affirmative, positive argument for evolution (as opposed to against creationism). I proposed one particular argument: we can't do…
pharyngula | September 1, 2009Which makes this video very, very smathy.
That's Carl Baugh, by the way, who appears regularly on the Trinity Broadcast Network to teach viewers about creationism. It's a good program to watch (I do, now and then) if you want to see how flinking bugnuts insane young earth creationists can be.
This particular episode has all the standard tropes. They bring on a guest gomer, and they go on and on about his credentials — this one is a 'prominent mathematician' who teaches at a high school and part time at a trade school. They puff him up good; creationists really want the Voice of Authority,…
sa smith | September 1, 2009
Oh poor Brad Pollit. You all sent him emails (pollittb@sedalia.k12.mo.us) after he made some breathtakingly ignorant comments about public schools and evolution. The email in the video was perfectly nice-- but the poor babby Pollit didnt want his face on video.
However he was happy to dig himself even further in a hole by stating that because Fundamentalist Christians are offended by EVILUTION, the band shirts artistic rendition of EVILUTION was unacceptable. Even though evolution is a basic scientific fact, we dont want to offend those poor persecuted Fundamentalist Christians, so now…
pharyngula | August 31, 2009Kristin Maguire, chair of the South Carolina State Board of Education, has resigned from her position for all the wrong reasons. She has been a shill for the religious right, and has opposed the teaching of evolution in the public schools; she has also promoted that worthless 'abstinence only' sex education. She should have been fired for basic incompetence. But no, that is not sufficient reason to kick someone out of office in America. What gets American politicians in trouble?
You guessed it: sex. There were unverified rumors of inappropriate behavior, but what really got her was that she…
pharyngula | August 31, 2009Steven Novella has an excellent analogy for the Sedalia evolution t-shirt nonsense: What if the Krishnas had complained about a t-shirt that showed a rocket going to the moon? Apparently, they don't believe in space travel at all, so it would have been just as offensive to them — and it's amazing how well the arguments the evolution-sneerers used would apply.
Except, of course, that non-Christian religions do not receive the degree of deference granted to even the wackiest dogma that has Jesus floating around in it somewhere.
pharyngula | August 30, 2009This is the t-shirt worn by the marching band of Smith-Cotton high school of Sedalia, Missouri.
The 'ascent of man' image is a bit irritating — it is a portrayal of a fallacious idea of directionality in evolution — but the designers had a reasonable goal in mind.
Assistant Band Director Brian Kloppenburg said the shirts were designed by him, Band Director Jordan Summers and Main Street Logo. Kloppenburg said the shirts were intended to portray how brass instruments have evolved in music from the 1960s to modern day. Summers said they chose the evolution of man because it was "recognizable…
sa smith | August 29, 2009Oh. My. God.
We played Sedalia all the time in high school. They were in our conference our district or whatever. I remember them being skankie, but not THIS skankie.
Apparently, this years band theme is "Brass Evolution 2009", so their T-shirts had one of those generic 'evolution of man' images, with the characters carrying band instruments.
The kids had to turn the shirts back in after parents complained. This is their logic, and apparently representative of the kind of science education the kids in Sedalia Missouri are getting:
"I made the decision to have the band members turn the…
pharyngula | August 29, 2009Our silly little friends at Answers in Genesis have said a few more stupid things. Hey, why aren't you surprised?
The first is predictable and ridiculous: they have discovered the PR about finding a function for the appendix. The creationists are so happy! It confirms that Darwin was wrong (although I showed that it does no such thing, and Darwin's infallibility is not a point of dogma with us anyway), and they get to claim that it's not a vestigial organ again, because there is evidence that it has some subtle function. Only it still is vestigial: functionality isn't part of the definition.…
pharyngula | August 29, 2009Denyse O'Leary has a contest: provide a copy of the source code to Dawkins' Weasel demo. The prizes are your choice of a copy of Dawkins' new book, The Greatest Show on Earth, or Meyer's creationist apologetic, Signature in the Cell. It must be like that television game show where you get to choose door #1 or door #2, and one door hides a free vacation in the Bahamas while the other hides a goat.
It's a very silly contest because a) only Dawkins could win it, and he conjures up Bahamas-quality books all the time, and probably doesn't want a copy of Stephen Meyer's rank little goat, and b) the…
razib | August 28, 2009On a lark I decided to see how Catholics & Protestants broke down in regards to evolution by American region in the GSS. Specifically, I clustered the Census Divisions to create the categories of:
Northeast = New England + Mid Atlantic
Midwest = E & W North Central
South = S Atlantic + E South Central + W South Central
West = Mountain + Pacific
I limited the data to non-Hispanic whites for the question "evolved," which was asked in 2006 and 2008, so recently. Results below the fold for this question....
Protestant Catholic No Religion…
razib | August 28, 2009Addendum to my two posts below, here's Michael Behe's side. He notes:
...and John emailed back that he himself requested the video to be pulled because people thought he was too easy on me, which was supposedly contrary to that old Bloggingheads spirit. I find that quite implausible (other shows on the site feature discussions between people who agree on many things). Rather, I suspect the folks at the website weren't expecting the vitriolic reaction, began to worry about their good names and future employment prospects, pictured themselves banished to a virtual leper colony, panicked, and…