creationism
gregladen | August 25, 2008David Campbell is a life science teacher in Florida who was recently profiled in the New York Times because of his involvement in the debate between Creationism and Evolution. This discussion is being picked up in the Blogosphere, and this is very timely, as this is the time when teachers in most US school districts are just heading back to class.
My "back to school" contribution is a repost of one of my more popular bits on the problem of the bible thumping student. This is revised and reposted from my old site. Enjoy:
.... Have you ever had this happen: You are minding your own…
gregladen | August 25, 2008I am currently reading Charles Darwin (Blackwell Great Minds), and so far I mainly like it.
Ruse, as you may know, is a philosopher, something of a science historian, and a science writer who has criticized what he calls "strident" atheism for being too fundamentalist. So that is as annoying as hell. The volume at hand has a large chapter on this issue, and if you read it not knowing about this earlier debate, I think you would come away not being too annoyed, and might even enjoy it, if you consider yourself a .. ahem ... 'strident' atheist. It is annoying, however, that Ruse places "…
pharyngula | August 24, 2008This story about the struggles of a high school biology teacher in Florida is depressing. David Campbell, the teacher, is a hero — but it's the kind of hero sent off to suffer and fail in a misplaced struggle, who dutifully falls in battle, a victim of bad leadership and poor strategy. It's the same old tactics the educational bureaucracy has been pushing for 50 years or more: tip-toe gently about the subject of religion, never challenge the idiocy students bring into the classroom with them, always strain to allow them to accommodate science to their personal superstitions…which means…
mikethemadbiologist | August 24, 2008By way of Michael Tomasky, I stumbled across this site hosted by presidential debate moderator Rev. Rick Warren (?!?). Here's what the good reverend has to say about evolution:
What about dinosaurs?
Question: How do they fit in with the idea that God created the world rather than the world evolving on it's own? Why doesn't the Bible talk about dinosaurs?
Answer: The Bible tells in Genesis 1 that God made the world in seven days, and that he made all of the animals on the fifth day and the sixth day. All of the animals were created at the same time, so they all walked the earth at the same…
evolvingthoughts | August 22, 2008
A little while back I linked to Sahotra Sarkar's review of Steve Fuller's Science versus Religion. Now Fuller has put up a defence at the Intelligent Design website, Uncommon Descent, under the gerrymandered image of a bacterial flagellum (if you want to know what a real flagellum would look like at that scale, see this).
While I haven't yet read the book (I'll be reviewing it for Metascience), a couple of points that Fuller's post make clear:
1. He has a really casual dismissal of factual accuracy so long as the "spirit" is right
2. This explains why he's allied himself with ID.…
pharyngula | August 22, 2008This clip is of a caller to the Atheist Experience who makes a series of assertions common among creationists.
Matt Dillahunty answers her well, but at the end he doubts that the caller was for real. Sorry, guy, I've heard those arguments a thousand times — they represent a kind of universal creationist ground state. It's why we have Poe's Law: because there are sincere people who actually promote this nonsense.
pharyngula | August 22, 2008Even the lovely island of Malta is infested with creationists…who have somehow acquired positions of authority in private schools.
Far from becoming extinct 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs actually co-existed with early humans, and even helped in the construction of the pyramids.
This is the word of Vince Fenech, Evangelist pastor and director of a fully licensed, State-approved Creationist institution which admits children aged between four and 18.
I have to wonder what the point of licensing schools is when the process is so porous that flaming incompetents like Fenech can run them.
pharyngula | August 21, 2008This is another wonderful example of the sloppy scholarship of the creationists. The always pretentious Berlinski made the interesting claim that John Von Neumann, the deservedly famous mathematician, thought that Darwinian theory was ridiculous. Douglas Theobald crushes that claim. Von Neumann was clearly on the side of evolutionary theory … but of course, whether he was or wasn't is actually irrelevant, since we don't judge ideas in modern biology by the authority of mathematicians from 50 years ago.
sa smith | August 19, 2008Harun Yahya, aka 'Adnan Oktar', aka 'Pillsbury Doughboy Crotch', aka 'Tader Tot' is the leader of Islamic Creationism. If you havent heard of him, you arent missing anything-- Just replace 'Jesus' with 'Mohammad' in all of Discovery Institute/Answers in Genesis crap, and thats 'Islamic Creationism'. Anyway, he thinks hes really important, like all Creationists, so hes challenged Richard Dawkins to a naked Jello wrestling match.
If Dawkins sincerely believes in this theory, we'd like to invite him to Turkey, or else we could come to UK to have a discussion.
Of course, Dawkins has no…
laelaps | August 18, 2008I typically don't pay attention to Dinesh D'Souza. As far as I can tell he is little more than a pundit, someone who manages to write books so full of various orders of fallacies that my head would probably explode if I tried to read any of his titles cover-to-cover (in fact, such a tragedy nearly befell me when I read the chapter on evolution in What's So Great About Christianity?). John Pieret has commented on some asinine assertions D'Souza has made in a recent interview, though, and I thought I would take this opportunity to jump in.
D'Souza's statements offer plenty to argue about, but I…
mikethemadbiologist | August 17, 2008Olivia Judson, in an excellent op-ed, lays out the utility argument for why students should learn evolution as part of biology:
The second reason for teaching evolution is that the subject is immediately relevant here and now. The impact we are having on the planet is causing other organisms to evolve -- and fast. And I'm not talking just about the obvious examples: widespread resistance to pesticides among insects; the evolution of drug resistance in the agents of disease, from malaria to tuberculosis; the possibility that, say, the virus that causes bird flu will evolve into a form that…
evolvingthoughts | August 13, 2008
As I sit here, dying slowly and loudly from a dose of gastro and probably 'flu (Australian male: we don't do sick well), trying to distract myself from the efforts of my lower intestines to escape to Jamaica, I came across a name I recall all too well from my 1970s: Francis Schaeffer. Well, actually his son, also known as Francis (Frank) Schaeffer.
Schaeffer pére was a leading evangelical "intellectual" whose ideas and work in large part helped organise what came to be the religious right in the US, although he lived in Switzerland. He is responsible for getting across to the American…
gregladen | August 13, 2008This just in:
A federal judge has ruled the University of California can deny course credit to Christian high school graduates who have been taught with textbooks that reject evolution and declare the Bible infallible, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
U.S. District Judge James Otero of Los Angeles ruled Friday that the school's review committees did not discriminate against Christians because of religious viewpoints when it denied credit to those taught with certain religious textbooks, but instead made a legitimate claim that the texts failed to teach critical thinking and omitted…
evolvingthoughts | August 11, 2008
Steven ("Steve") Fuller is a well known sociologist of science (he began as a philosopher of science but is presently employed by the University of Warwick as a sociologist). He is widely credited for the subject and journal of Social Epistemology. He is also the guy who wrote several hundred pages of "expert" opinion for the creationists in the Dover Trial for money. Never one to waste work, he has revised it as a book. Save yourself the $20 and read Sahotra Sarkar's review in the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. I particularly like the final sentences:
These excursions into fancy allow…
tqa | August 11, 2008
The initial phase of the California Creationist Lawsuit is over, and quality education is the decisive winner. Kevin Vicklund has Judge Otero's decision, as well as a very nice analysis of the ruling up over at his blog. If you've been following the case closely, you can probably jump right over there for the details. If you haven't been tracking the events closely, or want a quick review of the case, keep reading. I'm going to go over the history first, then I'll talk a bit about what Friday's decision means, and what is likely to happen with the case in the future.
The lawsuit (ACSI v.…
pzminion | August 8, 2008Greetings, fellow minions. Sastra OM, here, belatedly logging in as guest blogger #4. My smooth entry into the blogosphere was temporarily delayed by my fierce objections to signing Seed's contract, which to my horror appeared to involve some sort of ritualized Cthulhu chanting to the Elder Gods. Turns out it simply needed reformatting. My bad.
Unlike some of the other guest bloggers this week, I do NOT have a strong background in biology and impressive credentials from prestigious universities and research labs. Instead, I have a BA in English Lit from Western Illinois University (everybody…
pharyngula | August 6, 2008I actually watched the entire appalling 10 minutes of this ghastly creationist video by Dr Ron Carlson, Learn How Evolution is Largely Based on the Silly Assumption of a Dead Lawyer. The whole thing is built around a completely false claim, that fossils are dated only from the geological strata, and that the strata are dated by the fossils found in them. He repeats his lie many times in this short video, and each time wanted to stand up and shout at him. Anyone with even a casual knowledge of dating techniques knows that while index fossils give you a quick and fairly reliable estimate of age…
pharyngula | August 5, 2008John Freshwater, the Ohio science teacher who uses his classroom to proselytize and promote creationism, is following a familiar tactic: LIE.
Supporters of a middle school science teacher facing firing for burning crosses into students' arms were in the majority at a central Ohio school board meeting.
They gave John Freshwater a standing ovation when he rose to speak Monday night during the two-hour Mount Vernon school board meeting. He attended the meeting to say he has never branded or burned anyone.
This reminded me of chapter 5, "Never said it", in Lauri Lebo's excellent book on the…
pharyngula | August 5, 2008The ever-hilarious Ray Comfort will be on radio station WDAY shortly, at 10am Central — tune in and leave your rebuttals, humorous sneers, brutal put-downs, and random comments here. I'll be on the same station, same time tomorrow.
Question: Explain what intelligent design is?
Answer: Everything is intelligently designed, it didn't happen by accident. Explosions don't produce order, they produce chaos. When he became a Christian, he claims he couldn't find evidence to back up evolution. No species-to-species transitions in the fossil record.
He actually says this: Dogs do not have chickens…