Recently in Creationism Category

The Louisiana Coalition for Science has released a press release calling for the Senate to reject the creationist bill approved by the Louisiana House

New group stands up for sound science education in Louisiana

LA Coalition for Science decries House support for SB 733, calls for Senate to reject bill

Baton Rouge, LA, June 11, 2008 — In response to numerous attacks on science education in the Bayou State, concerned parents, teachers and scientists are getting organized. The new group — Louisiana Coalition for Science — calls upon the Senate to oppose SB 733, a bill which will open the door to creationism in public schools.

Spread the news.

Although “Expelled” has been receiving mostly negative reviews from the mainstream media and scientists, creationist organizations other than the Discovery Institute, AIG and ICR (both Young Earth Creationists) have remained cautiously silent. For instance, The Reasons To Believe (RTB) Scholars appeared to be suspicious about Expelled but refrained from any recommendations but now that they have seen a pre-release screening they have sent an email which can be found on the Calvin College ASA discussion list.

Dear RTB Chapter members,

With the impending release of “EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed” (April 18), the Reasons to Believe scholar team thought it best to prepare a statement of our position, a guide for answering questions from chapters, networks, and apologists. Keep in mind that the mission of RTB centers on reaching out to science-minded people with two purposes:

Michael Le Page at New Scientist discusses Evolution: 24 myths and misconceptions.

Shared misconceptions:

Everything is an adaptation produced by natural selection
Natural selection is the only means of evolution
Natural selection leads to ever-greater complexity
Evolution produces creatures perfectly adapted to their environment
Evolution always promotes the survival of species
It doesn’t matter if people do not understand evolution
“Survival of the fittest” justifies “everyone for themselves”
Evolution is limitlessly creative
Evolution cannot explain traits such as homosexuality
Creationism provides a coherent alternative to evolution

Read on for the much longer list of Creationist myths

At the NewScientist blog, we find a posting which raises more questions than it answers

After confirming the news that the movie is without much of any scientific content, and makes ill chosen references to Nazis, Amanda Gefter, opinion editor, describes the Q&A that followed.

We learn at the Discovery Institute Blog about a recent lecture tour in Spain by ID creationists

Over an eight day period last January, Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity (aka DoctorsDoubtingDarwin.com, a rapidly growing, 277-member, physician group from 17 countries) sponsored a lecture tour in Barcelona, Malaga, Madrid, Leon and Vigo. It was titled “Lo Que Darwin No Sabia,” or “What Darwin Didn’t Know.” Tom Woodward, Ph.D. (author of Doubts About Darwin and Darwin Strikes Back) and myself (author of What Darwin Didn’t Know and Billions of Missing Links) lectured on eight occasions to exceptionally large audiences. Santiago Escuain was our translator extraordinaire. Rich Akin, the CEO of PSSI, put in enormous hours into making this trip a huge success.

El Pais reports on the ‘successful’ Spain Tour of ‘Lo que Darwin no sabía’. Of course, the DI does admit later on that the success was limited.

The New York Times reports in an article titled Disinvited to a Screening, a Critic Ends Up in a Faith-Based Crossfire how a critic was invited and then disinvited from attending the screening of Expelled and how the critic still attended the showing.

Shortly before he was to attend a screening in January of the documentary “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” which is about alternatives to the theory of evolution, Roger Moore, a film critic for The Orlando Sentinel, learned that his invitation had been revoked by the film’s marketers.

But Roger Moore decided to attend anyway

Source: Visualizing the Similarity of Human and Chimp DNA

Why this posting one may wonder?

Although Behe has referred to Miller as an ‘intelligent design proponent’, Miller himself is on the record in many different forms that we should not conflate Miller’s faith with his scientific position.

On November 13^th, 2007 Nova will present Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” and as part of the experience, Nova is providing an excellent companion website. One of the features involves the perspective of various scientists on defining the concept of science

Miller has two segments in which he explains both the scientific method and religion and addresses what he considers some of the abuses of logic (“a gross mischaracterization to take a scientist in the past … and say that Newton worked based on a hypothesis of design)

On Isaac Newton Running time 1:34
Science vs. Religion Running time 2:29

Miller Wrote:

What Intelligent design pretends to do to be in the tradition in Newton, What intelligent design actually is, to be perfectly honest, is in the tradition of the middle ages where they stop investigation by saying we cannot answer this mystery it is the work of God “the designer”. This is a science stopper

On Amazon Behe admits that Intelligent Design is nothing more than a code word for Christian faith.

Behe Wrote:

Miller Wrote:

Behe happily notes, as I would, that we live in a universe whose fundamental physical constants are remarkably hospitable to life. To me, and apparently to Behe, these constants may well reflect the will of a creator we would both identify as the God of Abraham.

So let me emphasize: Kenneth Miller is an intelligent design proponent. He believes that the laws of the universe were purposely set up to permit life to develop. Miller thinks that, to accomplish the goal of life, the universe had to be designed to the depth of its fundamental physical constants. I agree with him as far as he goes, but, on the other hand, as I write in The Edge of Evolution, I think design extends further into the universe, past physical constants, past anthropic coincidences, and well into biology. Yet, with respect to design, he and I differ only on degree, not on principle.

On UcD, BarryA claims that “Dawkins: “Darwinism Leads to Fascism””

As irksome as Richard Dawkins can sometimes be, one must nevertheless admire his occasional outbursts of honesty. Over at First Things Fr. Ed Oakes refers to an interview Dawkins gave to an Austrian newspaper, Die Presse (July 30, 2005), in which he said: “No decent person wants to live in a society that works according to Darwinian laws. … A Darwinian society would be a fascist state.”

That’s like saying that a Quantum Mechanical society would be an anarchy. I hope that those better versed in logic than our Intelligent Design defender, understands the difference between “A Darwinian society would be a fascist state” and “Darwinism leads to Fascism”?

Kids, you be warned, this is your brain on Intelligent Design…

And what about the ellipsis?

The Ledger reports how “..45-member committee appointed by the state Department of Education began revising the science standards in May in response to a failing 2005 report on Florida’s public school science curriculum by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit group.”

The science side is well supported by an NCSE representative

Jonathan Smith, a Lakeland resident and a representative of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit group critical of intelligent design, helped write the new standards.

“It (new standards) closed the door on any ambiguity” about evolution, Smith said. “There isn’t both sides. There is only one side as far as science is concerned.” That side is evolution, he said.

and there are also some creationists who lament that God/Intelligent Design is unfairly excluded

But Mickey Carter, pastor at Landmark Baptist Church in Haines City, said the revisions will be a disservice to students.

He said there should be a balance between both intelligent design and evolution.

“We are denying freedom of ideas, speech and shutting down one side,” Carter said. “The kids ought to be able to study both sides of it so we don’t just turn out a bunch of rubber-stamped robots in the classroom.”

Carter said that science is limited in its ability to determine every fact. “When it’s all said and done, folks just don’t give God enough credit,” Carter said. “Too many things on this world cannot just be an accident. You’ve got to give some credit to some intelligence.”

Why is it that Intelligent Design supporters are honest enough to admit that it ID is all about God while its major activists seem to be denying the obvious fact? Teach the controversy… Despite denials by the Discovery Institute, Intelligent Design is correctly identified as a religious concept. O’Reilly, Ben Stein and many ID supporters could not possible be all wrong :-)

In Florida, we have just finished writing new science standards for all grades of public schools. The standards are intended to be a core of fundamentals that will be taught and tested. I am commenting on an email sent to a number of the standards writers by Fred Cutting of Florida. Cutting has some suggestions for the new Florida School Science Standards, and concludes a longish email with these two proposed additions:

1. Standards requiring students to learn about the anomalies to all theories (standard models) including standard models for the origin and evolution of life;

2. Standards requiring students to learn about the abuses and misuses of science in America’s recent history.

Update: now crossposted to Florida Citizens for Science

The first of these is supposed to accomplish many things:

Laurence Moran at Sandwalk comments on a video excerpt with Bill Dembski, recently touted by the Discovery Institute’s Robert Crowther. What is fascinating that despite more than a decade of Intelligent Design ‘research’ this is the best ID has to offer.

Ironically, Dembski starts of by stating that “what darwinists have done is hidden behind complexities of living systems”. How ironic can this be… While science, as I have shown in several examples, deals in explanations, pathways and hypotheses, Intelligent Design has contributed exactly zero to our scientific understanding of these systems. Worse, while Dembski mentions some complex systems, he also avoids some examples of complex systems science understands quite well how they may have evolved.

My thanks to Robert Crowther for presenting the “best’ response ID has to offer. You be the judge.

ID proponents are quick to argue ‘viewpoint discrimination’ whenever their attempts to introduce their scientifically vacuous ideas fail. If ID were really interested in protecting people from viewpoint discrimination then surely they will be outraged by the following article Can God Love Darwin, Too?

Remember RIchard Colling, a biologist and professor at Olivet Nazarene University in Illinois. In 2004, Colling wrote a book called “Random Designer”.

… as he said in a letter to students and colleagues this year—“I want you to know the truth that God is bigger, far more profound and vastly more creative than you may have known.” Moreover, he said, God “cares enough about creation to harness even the forces of [Darwinian] randomness.”

After posting Yet Another Creationist Meltdown last July, I began to mull over testing a little hypothesis, namely that right-wing idealogues caught up in embarrassing political or sexual scandals have a better likelihood of being Creationists.

Well, we have a new Data Point. It turns out that Senator Larry Craig, R-Idaho, has been up to more than just allegedly soliciting men in adjacent bathroom stalls.

Courtesy of Jim Fisher’s January 9, 2006 article in the Lewiston Morning Tribune (original here, registration required):

Then there’s U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, who as a House member 16 years ago co-sponsored a constitutional amendment, the “Community Life Amendment,” to authorize teaching “the creation of the earth as accepted in Judeo-Christian tradition.”

And indeed, right there in the 101^st Congress, 1989, there is (then Representative) Larry Craig co-sponsoring House Joint Resolution 297:

JOINT RESOLUTION

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to the right of the people to allow voluntary prayer and the teaching of the Judeo-Christian ethic in public schools. … SECTION 2. For the purpose of section 1, the term ‘teaching of the Judeo-Christian ethic’ shall include the Ten Commandments and the creation of the earth as accepted in Judeo-Christian tradition.

Discuss.

No, this post isn’t about creationist Ted Haggard and his male escort/methamphetamine scandal.

And it’s not about creationist Kent Hovind, currently serving hard time for federal tax evasion.

It’s not even about the lawsuits and charges of corporate theft that have cropped up between Creation Ministries International (formerly known as Answers in Genesis (AiG)-Australia) and its former partner, AiG-USA, under Ken Ham, nor is it about the on-line porn star who played the role of Adam in a movie made for AiG’s new Creation Supposeum.

No, this new scandal involves Kevin Jackson, whose term as Mayor of Rio Rancho, New Mexico ended prematurely when he was forced to resign over a slew of allegations of financial misconduct.

So, how is Rio Rancho’s ex-mayor involved with creationism? More below the fold.

It looks like somebody either never heard of Dover, or refused to learn from their lesson. It seems the local ID supporters of Chesterfield County aren’t happy:

So far, the official actions of the CCSB have been limited to issuing a rather vague and confusing statement. ID proponents had hoped to influence the selection of science textbooks, but they started their campaign too late, and the CCSB approved the selection of standard biology texts. But there is still much concern about the situation in Chesterfield. ID supporters, backed by a local conservative group called the Family Foundation, are energetic and well-organized, as evidenced by their ability to deliver a petition with more than 1,100 people who questioned the use of “evolution-only” science texts.

Energetic and well-organized supporters of pseudoscience… sounds like a one-way ticket to another budget-busting, unwinnable multimillion dollar lawsuit. Virginia, you can do better than these guys.

The Alliance for Science has the full story. If you are a Virginia resident and want to get involved, please contact them. Also, visit the link to learn much more about the story, and also about Shawn Smith’s blog that tracks the Intelligent Design Creationism movement in Chesterfield County. Let’s keep sound science in Virginia science classes and get the jump on things before they can stir up trouble.

Crossposted at Neurotopia

The Alliance for Science, a wonderful group of which I am a member, has a link about a survey that examines public perception of the new Creation Museum. Having recently visited the Propoganda Ministry Museum myself, I was very underwhelmed. I will report my experiences there in a future post replete with pictures over at Neurotopia. I feel bad because I haven’t been keeping up on the evolution/science activism side of my life for a very long time now, aside from this post and pushing the Alliance for Science’s Evolution Essay Contest, I have done very little this year to even address the issue. Might have something to do with my dad dying and whatnot, I’m not sure.

The interesting part of the survey is that “white evangelicals” or “fundamentalists” weren’t particularly approving of the intellectual travesty Museum either. Maybe there is hope for America after all. Or, maybe the “Museum” really is such a shoddy, transparent attempt at evangelizing that nobody is fooled.

Do stop by and check it out.

Quick, before I start the post proper, guess how many beneficial mutations separate us from the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees. Write your guess on a bit of paper, then read on.

Over at Uncommon Descent, Dave Scott opines

“Coyne and his chance worshipping peers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. The rock is gradualism and the hard place is Haldane’s Dilemma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haldane’s_dilemma) . As gradualism gets more gradual Haldane’s Dilemma gets more difficult to overcome – there’s a limit to the number of mutations that can become fixed. As gradualism gets less gradual then the improbability of simultaneous beneficial mutations becomes more difficult to overcome. A truly classic example of being stuck between a rock and a hard place!”

The “simultaneous beneficial mutations” argument is a relatively new (or at least rejigged) argument that is dealt with elsewhere (see also here). However, Haldane’s dilemma has been a favoured argument in anti-evolution circles for a long time. Unfortunately for the anti-evolutionists, Haldane’s dilemma has never been a barrier to evolution, despite their misrepresentations. Recent work from the Human, Chimpanzee and Macaque genome projects underlines the fact that Haldane’s dilemma does not prevent evolution, and it is worthwhile revisiting one of the core anti-evolution arguments relating to it in the light of these results.

The Answers in Genesis world, that is. That is the impression you clearly get from the 40-page Briese Report posted on the Briese Committee website of Creation Ministries International, formerly known as AiG-Australia, until (according to the Briese Report) a number of amazing/suspicious/incredible events occurred that basically amounted to Ken Ham’s AiG-USA taking over the name, copyrighted content, and mailing lists of AiG Australia. The report makes you realize some things about modern creationism: (1) It’s a big business and the money comes from the subscribers to publications and the speaking tours to fundamentalist churches; (2) thus, economic competition between groups for limited resource of audiences and subscribers is very real; and (3) Ken Ham knows these facts very well, and according to the Briese Report he has twisted a lot of arms to make sure AiG-USA stays on top. I have not been able to find a response from AiG-USA, if anyone finds something please post it.

Ever want some good ole fashioned southern California creationism? Well the Jesse Nickles, an international studies major at UC Irvine, has your answer: Evolution Doesn’t Make Much Sense. With arguments like these he will be running the Discovery Institute in no time.

Females: Although debatable, humans are the only species in which the females are more physically attractive than the males—the sole exception being, perhaps, Stephen Colbert. …

Time: According to the theory of evolution, it took millions of years for mankind to figure out how to cultivate, hunt, invent the wheel, etc., and yet, in the last few hundred years alone, we’ve discovered the steam engine, the car, electricity, the computer and the safety pin? You’ve got to be kidding me.

And don’t miss the surprise ending.

The previous thread, “Is Creationism Child’s Play?”, was closed by an admin because it was getting so long that it was loading slowly or not at all. A contributing factor is that PT has apparently been experiencing some kind of denial-of-service attack which is also slowing things down.

I have been out of town and not able to contribute to the thread much, or even read all of it, but apparently it has evolved from mudslinging into a reasonable dialog with a young-earth creationist, Mark Hausam, who actually wants to discuss the issues. Mark has pretty much acknowledged that his belief is based on a literal, inerrant interpretation of the Bible, and that he is willing to invoke miraculous “appearance of age” arguments to explain away physical evidence that conflicts with his interpretation of the Bible. Usually this sort of person is about six months away from complete deconversion from creationism. With the appearance-of-age argument, they have already admitted that the physical evidence on its face is totally against them, and that they have admitted that Last Thursdayism is as well-supported as young-earth creationism (Last Tuesdayism, of course, is unspeakable heresy). Once they’ve gone this far, most people can’t maintain the necessary doublethink for very long (Paul Nelson, John Mark Reynolds, Kurt Wise, and Marcus Ross are about the only exceptions, and they each have the peculiar ability to remorsely drown their scientific conscience whenever reality intrudes upon their textual interpretation).

This sort of discussion should be encouraged so I am starting a new thread for those who wish to discuss the issues. I will be watching the thread to ensure that it remains courteous.