creationism
mikethemadbiologist | December 1, 2008Apparently, humanism is selfish. That would have been news to Albert Camus, Nobel Laureate and resistance fighter. This is from a military chaplain's presentation about suicide prevention that apparently is cribbed directly from evangelical preacher Rick Warren:
In March 2008, this presentation, titled "A New Approach To Suicide Prevention: Developing Purpose-Driven Airmen," was shown at a commander's call that was mandatory for an estimated 1,000 of Lakenheath's Air Force personnel, and sent out by email to the entire base of over 5,000 the following day. As the use of the phrase "Purpose-…
pharyngula | November 30, 2008The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden and the Creation Museum have made a joint marketing agreement and are selling "combo tickets" to get into both attractions for one price.
The Cincinnati Zoo is promoting an anti-science, anti-education con job run by ignorant creationists.
Unbelievable.
Here's a little bit about the Cincinnati Zoo. I've highlighted a few key words and phrases.
Part of the public school system in Cincinnati since 1975, the Zoo hosts a four-year college prepatory program - Zoo Academy. The Cincinnati Zoo is proud to serve as the leading non-formal science educator in…
pharyngula | November 27, 2008Look! It's a liberal Christian going toe-to-toe with a conservative Christian creationist! They should have sold tickets.
pharyngula | November 25, 2008Harun Yahya is soliciting entries in an essay contest to disprove evolution. The prize is 100,000 Turkish lira, about $63,000 or 50,000 euros. All you have to do is write a 30-60 page essay parroting creationist nonsense, and maybe you could win!
They have a list of suggested topics that make it clear that this is going to be judged by the ignorant in favor of the stupid — it's like a series of entries from the index of creationist claims that, as is common, simply ignore the evidence against them, or worse, make up 'facts' that are wrong.
pharyngula | November 24, 2008Creationists must live on a different planet. I just summarized this symposium I attended; I posted the schedule last week. In between, Michael Egnor takes this scrap of information and spins out a weird tale. He actually put up a post titled, "Is P.Z. Myers Attending a Conference on Eugenics?". To which one can only mutter, "WTF?"
Here's his "reasoning":
I'm having trouble finding the program Myers is referring to (why wasn't I invited!?), but Claudia Cohen Hall is on the medical campus at Penn, so I surmise that the presentations will be on eugenics (apologies for it, I hope), which is…
pharyngula | November 24, 2008Time for us all to give up. We've been defeated by Harun Yahya.
A fierce opponent of Darwinism, Yahya takes the credit for defeating the theory of evolution. "First, we offered Darwinists around the world 100 million fossils, which prove that this world came into being as a result of God's creationism and not because of evolution. Second, Darwin wrote in his books that people have to find transitional forms to prove the theory of evolution, but nobody has been able to find a single transitional form. Third, Darwinists claim that the first cell came into being as a coincidence. But it is…
pharyngula | November 23, 2008That ID blog, Uncommon Descent, had a slight shakeup in their management recently. If you had the faint idealistic hope that their comment policy might have become a bit less intolerant, forget it: they're still deleting dissent.
pharyngula | November 23, 2008At Owlmirror's suggestion, this is a new thread to cope with the flaming wrongness of this recent creationist pimple, Teno Groppi, on the Entropy and evolution thread (which is now closed, by the way). This happens, now and then: some obtuse and confident creationist, made even more stubborn by an abysmal ignorance, shows up and starts babbling. So of course people rebut him, but he completely ignores everything that he's told, which means more people jump in to hammer on him, and because he's too stupid to recognize what's going on, he babbles more. And then the thread expands in an endless…
laelaps | November 22, 2008During the opening act of the propaganda film Expelled, Cornell historian of science Will Provine summed up intelligent design as "utterly boring." The same could be said of Expelled, a film steeped in the controversy over the brand of creationism known as intelligent design. An hour and a half long experiment in "Gish Gallop," Expelled is a film that ultimately gets so frustrated by the incoherence of leading ID advocates that it ultimately collapses in upon itself and admits that, yes, this really is all about finding the Judeo-Christian god in nature.
The film seems to have been slapped-…
pharyngula | November 22, 2008A while back, two ladies visited the Discovery Institute, and wrote about their experiences afterwards. They admittedly did so under false pretenses, acting as if they were fellow travelers in creationism, but they did get interesting and amusing responses from the inhabitants.
They tried to do it again. They wrote a letter and were entirely upfront about their motives this time, and asked to have a real conversation about Intelligent Design creationism.
Casey Luskin wrote back. It would have been entirely understandable if he'd simply turned them down, but no … instead, he writes a long…
pharyngula | November 20, 2008The Texas State Board of Education is holding hearings right now on their science standards, and by all reports it is an embarrassment to the state: on the one side, we have the educated teachers and scientists, and on the other, a coterie of ignorant ideologues. Martin has been attending the meetings (it doesn't sound like much fun), and he cuts to the heart of the creationist strategy:
This cannot be understated: Just as the anti-gay contingent of the Christian right sells its opposition to gay marriage as a "defense" of "traditional" marriage that can in no way be compared to opposition to…
laelaps | November 19, 2008Earlier this year, intelligent design advocates were trumpeting the forthcoming "fall of Darwinism" with the release of the propaganda film Expelled. The film stirred up some controversy, had a modest (at best) showing, and generally preached to the choir, but it didn't seem to have as momentous a reception as the filmmakers were hoping for.
I was curious about what the entire film was like, but I wasn't about to support the people behind it by seeing it in theaters or purchasing a DVD. Last week, however, I noticed that Netflix has added Expelled to a list of movies subscribers can watch for…
laelaps | November 18, 2008
For nearly 150 years, various critics and authorities have been predicting the death-knell of "Darwinism." It is a crumbling ideological edifice, they say, and it will soon collapse. Just as predictions about Armageddon have turned out to be invariably wrong, so too has the wailing and whining of many of Darwin's critics, but there was a time when evolution by natural selection was being eclipsed.
As I have said before, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection served to stir debate rather than resolve how evolution occurred once and for all. It was widely appreciated as a…
pharyngula | November 17, 2008A survey of scientists in Texas reveals that the vast majority reject all versions of creationism — only 2% give it any respect at all. This is in Texas, the state with Don McLeroy, creationist dentist, running the educational show. There is some dissonance there.
What about that 2%? The survey explains those:
What can we say about the small minority of Texas science faculty (2%) who evidence some measure of support for intelligent design/creationism? (For purposes of this analysis, intelligent design/creationist supporters are all respondents who indicated either "Modern evolutionary…
sa smith | November 17, 2008Holy crap...
... Its a disaster, you guys...
... The TARDmine... its collapsed...
... The carnage... its killed Dembski and DaveTard...
... Denyse has sustained severe head trauma...
... BarryA is the only one left alive...
There is no god...
pharyngula | November 17, 2008What I suspect is the most popular Intelligent Design site on the net (which is not saying much at all), uncommondescent.com, is getting a bit of a shake-up. Bill Dembski is stepping away from it, DaveScot is no longer a moderator, they're adding paypal donation buttons…well, OK. I'm feeling ho-hum about it all. Once upon a time, I'd check in weekly to see what flavor of nonsense they were promoting, but increasingly I've found that I simply don't care what the kooks were saying. It's become a nice self-constructed ghetto for the irrelevant lunatics, with the virtue that I can easily ignore…
evolvingthoughts | November 16, 2008
We had a little storm here yesterday. It left my brother's flat wet inside and out, destroying their mattresses, and giving my motorcycle a jet blast clean. It's clean for the first time since I bought it four years ago. I was, not to put too fine a point on it, very scared. Two minutes before I arrived at my brother's place, I was on the road on my bike. Then this happened. Hailstones the size of a small orange, winds up to 130km/h (and I am sure that was what I saw when I took this pic), tree branches down and water just pouring into the flat.
Anyway, that to one side, here are some…
gregladen | November 14, 2008... which should not be a huge surprise. Here are a few quotes from the recently published ... then hastily removed ... column of Cynthia Dunbar, who is a member of the Texas State Board of Education. Yes, she's one of the creationists:
Can we truly even imagine an America under an Obama Administration? I sincerely believe that an Obama Administration would ultimately mean one thing...the end of America as we know her.... [some babbling about Obama not really being a citizen] ...
I perceive it [terrorist attack on U.S. soil in first six months of Obama Presidency] will be a planned effort…
pharyngula | November 12, 2008You can enter a drawing for — this is really going to thrill you all — a copy of Expelled! Please do enter, I'd like to see someone rational win it, so they can use it as a coaster or something.
I'll try to find a better contest next time. Anyone know of any drawings for a handful of dung?
laelaps | November 12, 2008
A particularly interesting line of fundamentalist Christian argument against evolution is that of "devilution." There was more of a tendency for life (particularly humanity) to degenerate rather than progress upwards. Where the argument originated among creationists, I have yet to discover, but during the beginning of the 20th century some considered it more reasonable that apes were degenerate humans than humans derived apes. This is not to say that they actually believed this, but that they directly tied evolution to causing "backsliding" and moral decay, a more vivid version of the "If we…