creationism
laelaps | July 3, 2008Remember Christina Comer, the woman who was expelled from her job at the Texas Education Agency for merely forwarding an e-mail about a talk by Barbara Forrest? According to reports released yesterday she is suing the TEA and Education Commissioner Robert Scott for illegally and unconstitutionally firing her from her position. What is most pleasing to see, though, is that the suit is specifically fashioned to instigate change; to overturn the absurd "neutrality" requirement the TEA imposed on creationism and to get Comer her job back. This isn't about getting compensation for damages and…
pharyngula | July 3, 2008Chris Comer, who was fired for whispering "Barbara Forrest", is fighting back. This could get interesting.
Christina Comer, who lost her job at the TEA last fall, said in a suit filed in federal court in Austin that she was terminated for contravening an "unconstitutional" policy at the agency. The policy required employees to be neutral on the subject of creationism - the biblical interpretation of the origin of humans, she said.
The policy was in force, according to the suit, even though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that teaching creationism as science in public schools is illegal.
"The…
tfk | July 2, 2008According to a press release datelined from Mumbai, the crapfest Expelled will be distributed on DVD by Vivendi Entertainment, proud home of many classic films. If you want reruns of Swamp Thing or McHale's Navy, you always knew Vivendi Entertainment was the place to go. But did you know they've got such modern classics as:
LITTLE JJ'S ALMOST GROWN VARIETY SHOW
Almost Grown is a live variety/ sketch show hosted by Lil JJ, the star of Nickelodeon’s hit sitcom, “Just Jordan.” Almost Grown showcases Lil JJ’s comedy, acting, rapping and dancing talents. It also features show stopping…
gregladen | July 2, 2008In a surprising result, most Young Earth Creationists would prefer that Creationism not be taught along side Evolution.
Source
pharyngula | July 1, 2008Oh, man…you know you've got colossal wackaloonery when you find a website titled "Remember Thy Creator" — but then you discover that they are sponsoring a YEC conference at the end of July, that they list luminaries like John Morris and Ken Ham, and that they've got a front page article demanding that people reject the idea that the earth is old because the Bible says so, and best of all, they've got an open online poll. "Do you think Creation should be taught, along with Evolution, in public schools?"
Go on, skew that sucker.
sa smith | July 1, 2008Does anyone watch TV anymore?
Anyone?
I mean, seriously, its like every other day Creationists are doing something infinitely more hysterical than anything Hollywood can think up.
Todays side-splitting sitcom is brought to you by William Dembski and a new character*-- a buxom young brunette named Sean McDowell. They wrote a new hip (some would say, 'groovy'... perhaps even 'ZANY!') book on ID Creationism for teenagers, 'Understanding Intelligent Design'.
I think Creationists are going for 'The Odd Couple' spin with this mismatched duo! Check this out!
Dembski: theotard with no scientific…
tfk | June 30, 2008The Washington Post points out that:
as justices finished their work last week, two overarching truths about the court remained unchanged: It is sharply divided ideologically on some of the most fundamental constitutional questions, and the coming presidential election will determine its future path.
A victory by the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, would probably mean preserving the uneasy but roughly balanced status quo, since the justices who are considered most likely to retire are liberal. A win for his Republican counterpart, John McCain, could mean a fundamental shift to a…
pharyngula | June 30, 2008The propaganda movie opened in Canada, and the weekend box office numbers are in.
$24,374. Nationwide.
So Canada is a smaller country in population than ours, and their money is worth a little more than ours, but still…I don't think we can call that anything but a flop.
Where's Creationist Keith now? He was ranting about the hundreds of millions of dollars the movie was going to make, how it was going to trigger a world-wide change in attitudes towards evolution, and how it was going to get me fired. Boy, was that prediction ever wrong.
sa smith | June 29, 2008Despite the wackaloon letters PZ gets, Im being serious! It really is nice!
I encourage everyone to leave questions in the comments or send me emails if they want to know more about a topic, and I am just as happy to oblige a evilutionist as a Creationist. Especially when theyre nice about it!
So I got a Q from a nice fellow a couple days ago:
Hello there. I noticed your article in regards to the HIV variant that resulted in a new protein-protein binding site as a counterexample of one of Behe's claims (that we have not observed such a thing in HIV). I just finished reading EOE and…
gregladen | June 28, 2008Our local paper, the Star Tribune is re-printing a New York Times story on the Philidelphia "Year of Evolution" .... Which is just fine. But the story has a comment section and it would sure be nice to have a few more pro-evolution comments on it. Please consider contributing to it, here.
Hope you get a chance to do it and that the Strib does not make it too difficult.
pharyngula | June 27, 2008A certain Brown University biology graduate has taken an unfortunate step, one that we asked him to avoid. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has signed a pro-creationism bill into law, all to pander to evangelical protestant hicks. We know this is a guy with national aspirations, so he's taking a big gamble that we aren't going to swing back towards a more sensible secularism, since the only people who could vote for him now are fundagelical god-wallopers who don't understand science. That may be a fairly big voting base, but I'm hoping that it's shrinking. Either Bobby Jindal is toast… or we all are…
mikethemadbiologist | June 27, 2008In my response to my post about Maureen Dowd's brief relapse into sanity, PhysioProf writes:
Dowd's been on the list of the top ten mainstream shitbag media enablers of the depraved right-wing Democrat-feminizing-gayifying shell game for twenty fucking years. As far as I'm concerned, she can go fuck herself, and take her fake-ass new-found Dirty Fucking Liberal Hippie Commie Islamofacist schtick and shove it up her fucking ass.
The only reason she's doing this is because she has finally figured out that the right-wing scumbags she's been tongue-bathing for the last two decades are losing…
pharyngula | June 26, 2008You may have heard that Expelled opened in Canada this week…but it's not off to a soaring start. The first reviews are coming in, and I am encouraged by the opening line of this one: "I found this film so distasteful I hestitate to dignify it with even a thumbnail review."
Also noteworthy: the reviewer interviewed the awful Ben Stein about it.
I interviewed Ben Stein for a Newsmaker item in this week’s Maclean’s, and he did acknowledge the debt his film owes to Michael Moore. "We were greatly influenced by him," he said. "He showed you can make a documentary on a political subject and make…
evolvingthoughts | June 26, 2008
Barbara Forrest has an excellent analysis and background story on the introduction of the creationist bill in Louisiana, and the organisations supporting it, here at Talk2Reason.
There's a new phylogeny of birds out. See GrrllScientist's post, and a full size tree here. Late edit See Bird Evolution - Problems with Science for more.
Jesse Prinz has an essay on atheism and morality, which I think jumps the shark at the end (how can there be atheist charities? Atheism is the lack of some belief, so any charity that doesn't make theism part of its core mission already is atheist), here at…
pharyngula | June 26, 2008Eric Hovind is continuing his father's tradition of utterly inane arguments against evolution. In this case, it's a video of Hovind and two of his bland buddies sitting around talking about…cephalopods. Oh, it is painful to witness.
They show excerpts of some perfectly lovely videos of cuttlefish swimming about, exercising their camouflage, and they talk about its specialized defenses and sophisticated behavior. In classic creationist form, they watch all this beauty and throw up their hands in surrender, and exclaim that they don't see how this could have evolved, and ask, "How does…
pharyngula | June 25, 2008But you should still watch this retelling of the ID saga, as it would be written by Dr Seuss.
gregladen | June 25, 2008
Click here for the full post by Gallup.
Far more Democrats believe in evolution than do those pesky Republicans. Interestingly, the configuration for "independents" looks just like the configuration for Democrats, not Republicans.
These results are mirrored, as usual, by the differential religiosity of these groups. God created or guided thinking is linked to going to church. and so on.
What is even more interesting is the upcoming/current issueof Skeptical Inquirer, which has a short article by ME in it, on a related issue.
John Lynch has also commented on this.
tfk | June 24, 2008As Ben Stein's egregiously bad Expelled opens in Canada, the Canadian press is getting a taste of the offensive bile Stein unleashed in his US media tour. Peter McKnight, of the Vancouver Sun, asked Stein about the ADL's condemnation of his movie:
Nowhere does Stein mention the centuries of anti-Semitism before Darwin -- in fact, Expelled all but ignores anti-Semitism as a reason for the Holocaust. Consequently, the Anti-Defamation League issued a statement saying, "Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes the complex…
gregladen | June 24, 2008Continuing with our discussion of the Evolution 2008 conference ...
Yet another item from the first day of the conference, the pre-conference teachers day sponsored by Evolution 2008 and the Minnesota Citizens for Science Education (MnCSE) ...
The Minnesota Citizens for Science Education presented Ken Hubert with an award. I am blanking on the name of the award right now, but eventually, the MnCSE web site will probably have a page on this, or an announcement about it. (We need time for some dust to settle.)
Who is Ken Hubert?
Well, when it comes to the Evolution - Creationism 'debate…
pharyngula | June 24, 2008Once again, Richard Lenski has replied to the goons and fools at Conservapædia, and boy, does he ever outclass them. For a quick outline of the saga, read this summary at A Candid World; basically, Andy Schlafly has been demanding every bit of data from Richard Lenski's work on the evolution of E. coli, despite the fact that Schlafly doesn't have the background to understand it and doesn't have any plan for what he would do with it if he got it. Lenski has been polite and helpful in his replies; his first response is a model for how to explain difficult science to a bullying ideologue. Now…