Intelligent design/creationism
oracknows | August 4, 2007I really, really wish the Discovery Institute would stop putting out idiocy like this:
We have blogged in the past about the growing numbers of doctors who are skeptical of Darwinian evolution to explain the complexity of life.
Those numbers are continuing to grow, and conesquently doctors are beginning to organize themselves and reach out to others who hold similar positions. Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity (PSSI) has for sometime had a website at www.doctorsdoubtingdarwin.com. Recently they have begun using the site to organize and promote conferences about Darwinian…
oracknows | August 3, 2007Michael Behe, that Don Quixote of "intelligent design" who never tires of tilting at windmills of "fatal flaws" in evolutionary theory that he think he's identified, did quite a bit of tilting at HIV in his book.
Watch his blathering taken down by a pre-graduate student named Abbie. It's so good it's been republished at Panda's Thumb.
Enjoy.
tsmith | July 20, 2007A looong time ago, I mentioned that I spent St. Patrick's Day weekend in Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, at a symposium I helped to plan (but neglected to blog! Oops). Along with other scientists, theologians, philosophers, and generally interested persons, we worked for a bit over a year to put this symposium together. Why?
The principal aim of the conference is to clarify the causes of the conflict between science educators and those who wish to have Intelligent Design taught in public schools. We do not claim to be neutral on this issue. We are convinced that ID is not good science…
tsmith | July 17, 2007By now, regular readers will probably be familiar with The Clergy Letter Project spearheaded by Michael Zimmerman. Formulated in part to respond to the framing of the evolution controversy as a battle between science and religion, the letter now boasts more than 10,700 signatures from clergy, and have sponsored Evolution Sunday events for the past 2 years.
Well, Zimmerman has a new project now:
Our latest initiative is to create a list of scientists around the world who are willing to answer scientific questions posed by clergy who are supportive of modern science in general and evolution…
tsmith | July 12, 2007Traveling yet again today (things finally calm down in September, I think). In the meantime, here are a few posts from elsewhere I've been meaning to highlight:
Some more background for those of you who may not be up to speed on HIV/AIDS: AJ Cann explains what we know (and don't know) about how HIV causes AIDS.
Speaking of HIV, ERV has 4 years to come up with an HIV vaccine, and another bad story about science in the media.
David asks if biologists have physics envy. I think I just have other-fields-of-biology envy, and want to do it all.
PZ has a very nice posts explaining the…
oracknows | July 10, 2007I'm devastated.
Truly and totally devastated emotionally and intellectually. Indeed, I don't know how I'll ever be able to recover, how I'll ever be able to live down the shame and go on with my career.
What could bring me to this point, you ask? I'll tell you. Everybody's favorite creationist neurosurgeon and dualist Dr.Michael Egnor thinks I'm "unprofessional."
Worse, he does it while agreeing with Pat Sullivan's article in which Pat asserts that "Darwinism" has what he calls a "marketing problem," in essence seemingly saying that, because he can't understand "Darwinism" but can understand…
oracknows | July 6, 2007Thanks to a commenter going by the 'nym of djm, I found in a comment yet another hilarious example of how credulity towards pseudoscience of one form often goes hand-in-hand with other forms of pseudoscience. It looks as though the "intelligent design" creationists are down with Steorn's claimed free energy machine as "evidence" against materialism:
Steorn's findings totally undermine the basic premise of materialism, simply by demonstrating a confirmed physical effect that materialists predict cannot happen. These clever Irish researchers have demonstrated that the principles of…
oracknows | July 3, 2007One thing that's become obvious to me over the last few years that I've been engaged in dealing with various forms of pseudoscience, alternative medicine, and conspiracy theories is that people who are prone to credulity to one form of pseudoscience, the paranormal, or other crankery tend to be prone to credulity towards multiple forms of crankery. For example, Phillip Johnson, one of the "luminaries" of the "intelligent design" creationism movement is also a full-blown HIV denialist who doesn't accept the science that demonstrates that HIV causes AIDS. Another example is Dr. Lorraine Day,…
tsmith | July 2, 2007Over at Uncommon Descent, the blog of William Dembski and friends, a contributor has a post up discussing Peter Duesberg's aneuploidy hypothesis for cancer (which Orac discussed here for more background). The post itself is a bit confusing--it's titled "When Darwinism Hurts," and according to the author's clarification, it's about "Darwinism" leading us down the wrong path as far as cancer research goes. (Though whether cancer would be due to mutations in specific genes or in chromosomes, it's still an evolutionary process, but I digress...) To me, anyway, the more interesting portion was…
tsmith | July 1, 2007AiG volunteers confront gay man, love sodomites:
We asked the lone gentleman behind the booth about the origins of the rainbow colors as a symbol for the homosexual movement. He gave us some history, apparently in San Francisco is where it originated. It was meant to reflect the diversity of lifestyles. This was an easy springboard to a discussion of the origins of the actual rainbow. We talked about Noah's flood and God's promise to Noah (and by implication all people down through the times, including sodomites, whom we love) that He would never destroy the world again through a global flood…
oracknows | June 27, 2007You may have noticed that I haven't commented much on Michael Behe's recent book, The Edge of Evolution, other than to bemoan its presence in the Evolution section of the University of Chicago Barnes & Noble. I have, however, read with some amusement some of the reviews. The most recent is one by--who else?--Richard Dawkins in the New York Times. Because it's behind the Times Select pay wall, I'll just give you a couple of the best quotes. First, he dismisses Behe's most famous book, Darwin's Black Box:
In "Darwin's Black Box," Behe simply asserted without justification that particular…
oracknows | June 25, 2007Longtime readers of this blog may recall Pat Sullivan, Jr. He first popped up as a commenter here two years ago, when I first dove into applying skepticism and critical thinking to the pseudoscientific contention that vaccines in general or the thimerosal preservatives in vaccines cause autism. He's a true believer in the mercury militia and, even to this day, posts on his blog about the unsupported belief that vaccines cause autism somehow. Eventually, he "outed me"--and no doubt will do so again when he notices traffic coming in from this post (yawn). In any case, I haven't really thought…
tsmith | June 25, 2007I mentioned that a whole group of us went to the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Professor Steve Steve has his account now up at the Thumb, while Jason Rosenhouse has a two-parter at EvolutionBlog, and Wes Elsberry's account is here. Oh, and a group picture:
Rear, L to R: Evil Monkey, Richard Hoppe ("RBH"), Wes Elsberry, Andrea "I'm Italian, not female!" Bottaro, Jason Rosenhouse, and Art Hunt. Front row: RBH's wife (whose name I didn't catch, sorry!); journalist Lauri Lebo; me; Professor Steve Steve, and Art's daughter (and Steve Steve's kind tour guide), Amy Hunt.
tsmith | June 21, 2007I mentioned I was back in Ohio last week. The occasion was the celebration of my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary, but while I was in the area, a number of us from Panda's Thumb also met up south of Cincinnati to take our own tour of Answers in Genesis' Creation Museum. (Wesley has a picture of the group here; I'll also try to scan in another "official" picture tomorrow).
My brain still hurts. My thoughts on everything below (with photos, of course):
This trip has been planned for awhile, and I've purposely tried to avoid most of the blog posts on the museum. I've checked out…
oracknows | June 16, 2007I must confess that I never really grokked the whole "LOL Cat" thing. I must admit to being a bit puzzled by the phenomenon when it metastasized to ScienceBlogs and some of my fellow SBers applied it to creationists, spurred on by Mark H at denialism.com (althogh I must admit that I nonetheless found the first entry in this post to be particularly amusing).
I should have known that it wouldn't be long before the phenomenon attacked one of my favorite SF/fantasy shows of all time, Doctor Who. So, here they are, LOL Doctor Who Cat Macros. A few that I found amusing are below the fold…
oracknows | June 13, 2007Yesterday, I discussed how pseudoscience--nay, antiscience--may well triumph over science in the Autism Omnibus trial presently going on. One reason that this might happen is because of the primacy of feelings over evidence among the plaintiffs, to whose power even the Special Masters running the trial are not entirely immune. As a fellow human being, I can somewhat understand this tendency in the parents of autistic children. After all, the parent-child bond is one of the strongest there is, making it difficult for even the most rationalistic parent to think clearly when it comes to their…
oracknows | June 12, 2007Many of my fellow SBers have blogged about the Gallup poll showing just how scientifically ignorant Americans, and in particular Republicans, are:
PRINCETON, NJ -- The majority of Republicans in the United States do not believe the theory of evolution is true and do not believe that humans evolved over millions of years from less advanced forms of life. This suggests that when three Republican presidential candidates at a May debate stated they did not believe in evolution, they were generally in sync with the bulk of the rank-and-file Republicans whose nomination they are seeking to obtain.…
oracknows | June 6, 2007Date: June 4, 2007, 2 PM CDSTPlace: University of Chicago's bookstore
Depressing. At what is supposed to be a bastion of science, we find Michael Behe's latest tripe on the same bookshelves as Stephen Jay Gould's books (see the shelf below). On the other hand, Creatures of Accident looks potentially interesting.
Still, I'm disappointed that this book isn't in the philosophy or religion section--where it belongs.
oracknows | June 6, 2007Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that it's been quite a while since I've featured the antics of a certain character who's become a bit of the bête noire of my fellow surgeons. I'm referring, of course, to Dr. Michael Egnor, a renowned neurosurgeon from SUNY Stony Brook who's made 2007 a very embarrassing year indeed for surgeons like me who accept evolution as a valid scientific theory, as, in fact, the entire underpinning of modern biological and medical sciences. Starting back in March, having whetted his appetite for looking foolish by jumping into the comments of a posts in…
tsmith | June 5, 2007 You've probably already seen a few reviews of Michael Behe 's new book, The Edge of Evolution. I've barely cracked open my review copy yet, but I already know that one example that features prominently throughout the book is malaria (hence my interest in it, moreso than any more "irreducible complexity" or bad math). However, Nick's already managed to take away some of my interest even in the malaria angle, dang him. More below...
One of Behe's arguments, much like in Darwin's Black Box, centers on "irreducible complexity" in the construction of cellular flagella (and adds eukaryotic…