Evolution Denialism
denialism | June 26, 2007The Brits have decided that Intelligent Design creationism, is well, creationism. It will not be allowed in science classes in the UK.
The government has announced that it will publish guidance for schools on how creationism and intelligent design relate to science teaching, and has reiterated that it sees no place for either on the science curriculum.
It has also defined "Intelligent Design", the idea that life is too complex to have arisen without the guiding hand of a greater intelligence, as a religion, along with "creationism".
...
The petition was posted by James Rocks of the Science,…
denialism | June 21, 2007Nature reports on this new paper that shows a major conflict resolving the fossil and molecular records of mammalian evolution. It's entitled, "Cretaceous eutherians and Laurasian origin for placental mammals near the K/T boundary" and the major finding is that mammals seem to have evolved largely after this boundary based on their discovery of fossil evidence of a new mammal. This isn't a new finding for the fossil record, but this study represents the largest fossil-based evolutionary tree to date.
However, this conflicts with the molecular record (the editorial gets the lead author's…
denialism | June 15, 2007Michael Egnor is to "argument from analogy" as a fish is to __________.
A. Fire
B. Victorian Literature
C. Mathematics
D. Water
Imagine scientists living on an isolated island who have developed sophisticated science and culture, with one exception: they deny that telecommunication is possible. For assorted reasons, they deny that the human voice can be transmitted through space, except as vibrations in air. We'll call this civilization the 'Verizon Deniers.'
One day, they find a cell phone (it dropped from a plane or something). They turn it on, and they hear things. They hear hissing,…
denialism | June 15, 2007I just knew it. The second I read this abstract I just knew that the Uncommon Descent cranks would dust off their old "Junk DNA" harangue and suggest that if it wasn't for them, no one would believe that all that non-coding DNA had a purpose. Sal Cordova obliged, and it's the usual embarrassing misread of our literature.
Heaven forbid that scientists should be so brash as to not infer purpose into everything without studying it first. I've been waiting to use "promiscuous teleology" in a post, I guess this is my chance. But that's not even necessary in this case, this is such an egregious…
denialism | June 13, 2007Now it's the "Rachel Carson killed millions" nonsense over at Uncommon Descent and it's based upon this WSJ editorial from Dr. Zaramba, the health minister for Uganda.
What's really embarrassing is how they link the entire article and it's clear they didn't even read it.
BarryA writes:
When I got home I did some research and was horrified to learn that the malaria epidemic in Africa is perhaps the most preventable health care tragedy in the history of the world. We could eradicate African malaria if only we would allow them to use DDT to combat the mosquitos that spread the disease. I also…
denialism | June 9, 2007It's a good read, also check out MarkCC's review
It's another example of cranks not recognizing talent - or rather the absence of it. And Sean Carroll hits pretty hard in his review making the point that there are so many basic errors in the book that Behe isn't doing ID any favors. He ends with this:
The continuing futile attacks by evolution's opponents reminds me of another legendary confrontation, that between Arthur and the Black Knight in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Black Knight, like evolution's challengers, continues to fight even as each of his limbs is hacked…
denialism | May 31, 2007Gosh, they just can't accept that no reputable science department wants an IDer around. They continue to push this academic freedom issue, when it's perfectly acceptable to consider an applicant's ideas when they are pursued intramurally, and can't quite decide whether they want to make it a religious discrimination issue - risking admitting that ID is a theologic concept or actually looking to see if other Christians have had a problem at ISU.
So I think it's time again to repeat my question for Luskin.
Mr. Luskin, is it the considered opinion of the DI, UD etc., that it is never acceptable…
denialism | May 22, 2007It just makes it too easy to show your dishonesty.
UD continues to harp endlessly about Gonzalez' tenure case as they have nothing else to do, like original research. But I have to give them a piece of advice. If you're going to cherry pick, either don't cherry pick the first line of an article, or don't provide a link, or worse, don't then quote in full the paragraph you've just misread. It just gets too easy to show you're full of it.
Here's DaveScot's quote from this Chronicle of Higher Ed article in his post "The Chronicle says of Gonzalez 'a clear case of discrimination'":
At first…
denialism | May 21, 2007With nothing of any substance to actually talk about, like bench research, original ideas etc., the evolution denialists continue to harp on Guillermo Gonzalez, the ISU professor who failed to get tenure.
However, my question for Casey Luskin remains unanswered. They have accused science of a conspiracy (surprise surprise) because we don't accept ID as science (neither do the courts, anyone with a brain ... ). DaveScot, never one interested in consistency, has even suggested they leverage Dover against the tenure decision, because if ID is religion, they can't discriminate again Gonzalez…
denialism | May 17, 2007Evolution news and views on me
That's fascinating logic: apparently the widespread feeling that it is "sensible" to remove individuals of a particular viewpoint does not necessarily mean there's a "conspiracy" to remove individuals with a particular viewpoint.
Mr. Luskin, is it the considered opinion of the DI, UD etc., that it is never acceptable to discriminate against a professor in a tenure decision based on their ideas?
You know, I tolerate lots of people with different ideas from mine, and there is a broad range of ideas that are perfectly acceptable to me. If other scientists hold…
denialism | May 16, 2007Or at least "Darwinism" whatever the hell that means these days. I guess they couldn't keep quiet all day. UD's new argument is an easily dismissed straw man. It goes like this.
Scientists discover fruit flies put in a sensory-deprivation chamber,instead of flying around randomly, or in a rigid pattern, fly in a pattern with both random and non-random properties. (PLoS one article)
Uncommon Descent which should have its RSS feeds revoked, says it's proof of design! Darwinism requires there is no free will! This is apparently based on a stunning misunderstanding of Dawkin's ideas by…
denialism | May 15, 2007A fun thing about reading things on the ID sites and then actually checking primary sources is how bizarre Uncommon Descent is as an information filter. I guess this would be an example of the dreaded "framing" of science which I don't want to fight with my sciblings over. Take for example their discussion of Guillermo Gonzalez's qualifications in light of his failure to get tenure.
UC says:
"he has had his research featured in Science, Nature, and on the cover of Scientific American."
Then you see what they're talking about and you see they're talking about this negative review of "…
denialism | May 14, 2007All the evolution denialists are up in arms because one of their own, Guillermo Gonzalez, was denied tenure. It's persecution they cry! Let's write a letter to ISU they cry! And now Denyse O'Leary says, "It's a conspiracy!"
How tiresome. Could a kind reader make me an animated gif of a man climbing up on a cross for me? This persecution complex of the IDers needs a graphic.
There are a number of good reasons why Gonzalez might have been denied tenure (and so far I haven't seen Gonzalez himself cry persecution - just his fans at UC)
It's getting so old. If you criticize them it's…
denialism | May 10, 2007Not to harp on Uncommon Descent today, but their seeming inability to see words that they don't like gives the appearance of no reading comprehension skills whatsoever. Take for example their read of this New Scientist article on cute little marsupials.
Let's first quote from the article:
From the genome sequences of placental mammals such as humans, mice and chimpanzees, the researchers identified a set of sequences that are relatively unchanged (conserved) in all placental mammals and are therefore likely to be of some functional significance.
About one-third of these sequences lay within…
denialism | May 7, 2007Hey PZ, when do I get access to the time machine! I'm so jealous.
Apparently sites like Talk Origins and Panda's thumb have been subverting the study of transposons because of their Darwinist bigotry. And they've been doing it since 1956!
According to the press release, however, it has taken scientists decades to investigate and validate this function--a lot longer than it should have: "Bejerano and his colleagues aren't the first to suggest that transposons play a role in regulating nearby genes. In fact, Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock, PhD, who first discovered transposons, proposed…
denialism | May 7, 2007I thought Michael Egnor was the DI's biggest liability for stupid arguments. Now I'm thinking based on Aferensis' posts that it's probably Dave Scot based on his suggestion that "All the hominid fossils we have wouldn't fill a single coffin."
But my favorite part of how embarrassing he is for humanity is how people, sometimes inadvertently, make predictions about his stupidity.
Take this entry on global warming on Mars
The planet Mars it seems has heated up a half degree since 1970 just like the Earth has. Its southern ice cap is melting just as the northern glaciers are melting on Earth.…
denialism | May 7, 2007Dembski misses the point as always with his recent post describing why the vertebrate eye is again evidence of design. You see, the big bad Darwinists used the structure of the eye, which has its photoreceptors in the back behind all the layers of the retina, as evidence that our eye isn't designed, because what kind of designer would have the light pass all the way through the layers of the retina to reach the receptor cells?
I'm interested in talking about these cranks today because I think this argument is one that exposes the fundamentally deceptive nature of the DI and proponents of the…