creationism
gregladen | February 28, 2009... Being interviewed by ME! (So don't expect this to go well!!!!)
Sunday March 1, 2009
Prof. Massimo Pigliucci, of the Stonybrook Institute in New York, is a biologist and a philosopher who has published about a hundred technical papers and several books on evolutionary biology. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, selected "for fundamental studies of genotype by environmental interactions and for public defense of evolutionary biology from pseudoscientific attack." Massimo is also an atheist, and has published articles in Skeptical Enquirer,…
tsmith | February 26, 2009I am so incredibly tardy with this information that Arizonian John Lynch and the lovely folks at Uncommon Descent have already blogged this, but recently an "academic freedom" bill was introduced in Iowa. For those who may be unfamiliar, in addition to "teach the controversy," these "academic freedom" bills are one of the new tactics for creationists who want to introduce creationism into science classrooms via the back door by claiming that teachers need the protection to teach "the full range of scientific views" when it comes to evolution (in other words, to teach creationism/ID). The…
sa smith | February 26, 2009The IDiots are trying to get us to OD on The Arguments Regarding Design.
Sexy Casey and John 'Fuck me please, Hitler!' West last week.
Dembski thief at OU again this week, for some unknown reason.
And now the IDiots have let Behe out of his cage-- LouFCD is Twittering it right now (starts at about Page 7, right now).
No mention of HIV, yet.
;)
razib | February 26, 2009I just got pointed to Confronting Evolution's Racists Roots via my RSS. This is a common tactic. And it might work for unsophisticated people on the margins. Just like a tract like "Christianity's racist past" would also sell. Or, "Socialism's white supremacist heritage." But intellectually it's a rather low-brow tactic. The real question is: Is It True? The racism of European intellectuals and the racialist inferences made from evolutionary theory are of historical interest, but not of scientific ones. It isn't as if a tract with the title "Jesus Christ, Semitic Supremacist," would…
pharyngula | February 26, 2009After all, he says nice things about me and not-so-nice things about Ben Stein.
pharyngula | February 26, 2009I was wondering why Harun Yahya kept sending me new copies of his remarkably tedious tome, the Atlas of Creation. It turns out he's been busy expunging it of embarrassing errors, like the infamous caddis fly fishing lure presented as an example of a modern insect. Several of these revisions have been documented now — the Atlas evolves! I think in this case we can safely say that no intelligent design was involved.
mikethemadbiologist | February 26, 2009In the commentary about LA Governor Bobby Jindal's disastrous response to Obama's speech Tuesday night, we keep hearing how smart he is. So what do we call a supposedly bright person who is a creationist and believes that an exorcism cast out cancer? And this is personal:
Jindal and I both received degrees in biology with honors from Brown in the exact same year. Having gone through that program at the same time, there is no conceivable way that he received his degree not knowing that there is overwhelming evidence from the fossil record for evolution regardless of his focus ("the most…
pharyngula | February 26, 2009Anytime something wrong happens, there is a Christian who will blame it on atheism and evolution. The latest is the case of the foolish woman who kept an adult chimpanzee as a pet, and got badly mauled for her trouble. This, of course, is Charles Darwin's fault.
How is it that we live in a culture where people think it's safe to have a chimpanzee as a pet? Where do people get the idea that we ought to take a wild animal and treat it like a human being? The chimp owner treated the animal like a son who ate at her table, slept in her house, and even drove her car.
…
Last week the world…
mikethemadbiologist | February 25, 2009
Creationists say my head will explode. OH NOES!!!!
Driftglass bravely dove into the shallow end of the gene pool that is the Conservative Political Action Conference, which he describes perfectly:
For all nine-minutes of bullshit, faux-introspection chin-music that came from the Right about change, future and vision after they got hog-slaughtered in the last two elections, if you want to know what is really at the corrupt, oozy heart of the American Conservative movement (and its filthy little avatar, the Republican Party) look no further than their ideological trade show: the Conservative…
pharyngula | February 24, 2009They gave a gang of Discovery Institute hacks a free run to publish their delusions (bad). Then, under protest, they gave Jerry Coyne an opportunity to rebut (good). Now, after all that, they add another, final word to the whole mess…and guess who they published?
Phillip Skell.
Perhaps you newbies to Pharyngula have never heard of the fellow, but he's a wacky evolution denialist who got obsessed with me several years ago, and dunned me with email. (Actually, I think he might be one of the first kooks to inspire my "I get email" series.)
He's got one note that he plays repeatedly and…
pharyngula | February 24, 2009Ray Comfort desperately wants to debate Richard Dawkins, and has even offered to pay him $10,000. Dawkins has a counter-offer: he'll do it for $100,000, to be donated to the RDF. Comfort has now upped the ante to $20,000. It's not enough.
I would encourage teams of creationist philanthropists to get together, scrape up the $100K, and pass it along to Comfort, who will then deposit it in the coffers of the Richard Dawkins Foundation. Not only would creationists have finally done something productive and contributed to the promulgation of reason for once, but the spectacle of this debate would…
sa smith | February 21, 2009So remember how last night Casey Luskin was all for freedom of speech? Academic freedom? This is what ID Creationists do to students that dare to speak out against them.
Casey is allowed to post here to defend himself and his actions, but because he cannot defend his behavior, hes decided to lick his wounds and revise history via press release at EN&V. Please note the obvious: EN&V is bitching about a troll being unable to post on ERV, yet no one is allowed to post on EN&V.
On the bright side, its easy to tell when Casey is lying. His lips are moving. So Im not particularly…
pharyngula | February 21, 2009They're finally getting organized. Minnesota has had our citizens for science group together for years now, and only now is Wisconsin catching up. Better go sign up now, Wisconsinites, lest your membership look pathetic next to ours.
I'm looking at you, UW Madison. Get in there and participate and keep your state off the creationist roster!
sa smith | February 21, 2009
This is a repost from the old ERV. A retrotransposed ERV :P I dont trust them staying up at Blogger, and the SEED overlords are letting me have 4 reposts a week, so Im gonna take advantage of that!
I am going to try to add more comments to these posts for the old readers-- Think of these as 'directors cut' posts ;)
I thought now would be a good time to repost one of my previous encounters with Casey Luskin, a charming gnome that volunteers at soup kitchens, who tried to take an internet 'hit' out on me.
A friend and I were loling about Caseys speech last night. Friend hadnt encountered…
pharyngula | February 21, 2009We'll have to see how long this video remains available. Thunderf00t, the well-known godless anti-creationist creator of fine youtube videos, is routinely targeted by Christian/creationist scriptbots to downgrade his videos and even get them banned, and he's had enough — this clip takes the youtube management to task for kowtowing to the ignorant god-crowd. It was, of course, deleted by the youtube management, but not before it got copied to many other places.
It's actually rather sad to see. There have been a lot of shenanigans like this recently, and I've gone from regarding youtube as…
pharyngula | February 20, 2009The Texas legislature is generally the butt of jokes, and it's not hard to see why: it's an awesome body of distilled stupidity. However, that doesn't mean there aren't some good ones among the chaff, and State Senator Rodney Ellis and State Representative Patrick Rose should be counted among them. They've written an excellent op-ed for the Houston Chronicle in which they point out the contradiction of a state that wants to build a leading-edge set of scientific research institutions with a State Board of Education led by a mob of incompetent creationist cretins. They've put together some…
pharyngula | February 20, 2009ERV is apparently attending a talk by John West and Casey Luskin right now. Would you believe that West actually cited the New Scientist "Darwin was wrong" cover? That's going to have to be one of the new hallmarks of creationist idiocy: West couldn't have read anything between the covers.
We'll have to tune in later to find out what else they talked about. I predict West will have accused "Darwinists" of being behind Hitler, and Luskin will have complained about the viciousness of proponents of evolution.
Be sure to check the updates to ERV's posts above — I called it perfectly. In the…
sa smith | February 20, 2009*swoon*
Casey Luskin is as breathtakingly sexy in person as he is on film. Im going to pass out. Hes like a WOW gnome.
**SWOON!!!!**
Update: Shit. Im hungry.
Update #2: Casey is trying to justify 'cdesign proponentsists'. Srsly. Srsly.
Update #3: The next time I hear someone say 'Creationists are such good public speakers' Im going to hog-tie said person, drag them to Seattle, and make them listen to a presentation by John West or Casey Luskin. By the time we got to Caseys talk, a couple dozen people had left, and others were napping, playing on iPhones, etc. I was reading papers for…
sa smith | February 20, 2009Right now, as we speak, I am giving John West brain cancer with my mind.
Update: Jesus Christ Im bored. 'Seven Myths about Darwinism'-- the last 4 have been the same damn thing. I should have gotten drunk first.
He answered 3 4 questions. 3. 3. 4. I didnt ask my big-gun Q, but I got him over misrepresenting the New Scientists article.
Please act shocked he boasted about DARWIN WAS WRONG!
Update #2: I really wish I brought my Nintendo DS to John Wests presentation on 'The Seven Myths of Darwinism'. I just started counting things I was so bored. But Ill list the 'seven' here for…