This 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 pretending that science doesn’t directly contradict their cherished myths. It doesn’t work and has never worked, and the problem gets worse and worse every year.

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This 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.

This 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.

Greetings, 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 go OOooo) and a passing familiarity with various skeptic and atheist organizations and issues.

So I am starting out my guestblogging by passing on a link to a survey on the public understanding of evolution from Michael Shermer’s Skeptic Society at Cal Tech. It’s part of a study they’re doing “on general knowledge of and beliefs about evolution,” and it only takes a few minutes. So, by the powers of Pharyngula invested in me, I command you go forth. Only if you feel like it, of course.

http://www.evolutionsurvey.com/

One thing I found particularly interesting (and challenging) about this survey was that it
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I 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, other techniques, such as radiometric dating, are used to verify ages.

That’s typical for creationists. Even worse to me is the ahistorical lie in the title. Guess who the “Dead Lawyer” is?

Charles Lyell.

That’s right, this clown has simply misrepresented the most eminent geologist of the 19th century, and derogated his life’s work to a mere “silly assumption”. Lyell initially trained as a lawyer, but began his career as a geologist in his early 20s, and by the time he was 30 he was a full-time geologist at a time when there was little institutional support for the discipline. Since Dr Ron Carlson, before he was 2, wore diapers, by the same reasoning we can now address him as “Diaper Wearer Ron Carlson”. As for the claim that Lyell was an atheist who invented uniformitarianism to prop up the theory of evolution…absolute nonsense. Lyell was not an atheist at all, came up with his ideas long before Darwin, and at first equivocated and then offered only tentative support to the idea of the modification of species.

As for Dr Ron Carlson, to whose name the title “Dr” seems surgically grafted, I haven’t been able to find out what his degree might be in, or where he got it from. Somehow, I don’t think it was in geology.

John 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 Dover trial, The Devil in Dover^{(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)}. This is the part of the book where the lawyers for the prosecution are trying to get an injunction to prevent the school board from going through with their attempts to promote ID in the classroom, and they bring in the defendants, Buckingham, Bonsell, and others, to corroborate the arguments documented in the press that they were looking for textbooks that blended evolution and creationism. And to the obvious consternation of the lawyers, they all simply lied and claimed that they’d never said it and the reporters had all made everything up. It was patently dishonest, but it essentially blocked the injunction and let them go ahead with their scheme.

Don’t worry, the chapter ends on a good note: Lebo gets footage from a local television that shows they lied, which will later come to good use in the actual trial.

It’s always disturbing to see how readily these creationists will lie for their own ends, and how happily their supporters will cheer for the lie.

The 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.

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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. Chickens don’t lay eggs with puppies in them. This is apparently evidence against evolution.

Karen calls in with the Galileo issue: equates Comfort to an inquisitor. Comfort uses this to disavow Catholicism, and says “don’t blame Christians” for the Catholics. Weird.

Alex calls to ask what motivation scientists have for promoting evolution. Two answers: Morality. It lets them lust and sin at will. Money. You can get rich for just finding a bone.

Caller whose name I missed: animals have morality, and since there is no evidence for ID it shouldn’t be taught, but could be debated.

Answer: Dogs feel guilt. Claims there is proof for ID, which is, for every creation, there must be a creator. Paintings have a painter, etc.

Evolutionists claim there was nothing that created something, which is scientifically ludicrous.

John rambles on about how most people believe in god, so he doesn’t understand why there is a debate. No answer.

Another caller (Poe?) suggests that maybe astrology should be taught in astronomy, Atlantis in geology. Comfort replies by claiming that evolutionists are advocating censorship. Announcer brings up Expelled — complains that there was no evidence presented in the movie. Comfort claims that just showing the complexities of the cell is proof. The fact that people don’t fall off the earth is evidence for intelligent design?

Jason brings up the uncaused cause argument: if you’ve got one (god), why can’t there be more than one? Usual avoidance: god is eternal. Bleh. Agrees that other people invent gods, but his god is real.

Derek argues that the fairy-tale perfection of christian religious belief is unbelievable. Morality comes from events on earth.

Announcer asks about the banana argument. Comfort disavows it, claims that it was evolutionists taking it out of context to make him look bad.

A caller asks about Satan…we get biblical babble in reply.

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Announcer is skeptical about both sides. Comfort uses this as an excuse to trot out his tired “everyone is a sinner” argument and that you need to read the ten commandments. He’s just preaching at this point.

Cal calls in to promote Answers in Genesis. Phbbththbht. YEC idiot.

Carol is a paleontology student. She points out that they do not do it for the money, and that it’s because they love the work.

Sign out at 10:40am.

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That was truly awful. Comfort is a real ignoramus. However, I can see now why they decided not to do a debate: they really gave a lot of air time to callers, which is good, I think. If I’d been on at the same time, they wouldn’t have been heard over my snarling and bone-cracking and horrible slurping noises, and Comfort’s screams.

Ray flat out lied when he claimed that atheists misrepresented his banana argument by removing it from the context of his coke can analogy. Not true. Here’s the whole thing, both the coke can and the banana story, and it doesn’t help him: both parts are incredibly stupid.

I know many of you had your hearts set on a debate between me and Ray Comfort, but there has been a slight change of plans, for the better, I think. Instead of a debate, Comfort will be on tomorrow morning, Tuesday, at 10am Central time, and will express himself without fear of snorts of derision from me. I will then be on Wednesday, same time of day, to address the same topics. It’s a better plan, since we all know Comfort is going to gallop through a scattershot collection of nonsense, and I’ll be able to say something coherent in contrast the next day.

You can listen to WDAY radio live. I’ll open a thread Tuesday morning for anyone to state their opinions here as it plays out on the radio.

I know. It’s WorldNutDaily, so it’s guaranteed to be abysmally ignorant, but I had to comment on the opening bits of this dreadfully bad review of Wiker’s book that blames Darwin for the Nazis.

As a prologue to this book review, I propose the question: Can an idea, a theory, even a delusion kill? A cursory review just of 20th century dictators who overtly or covertly embraced and applied Darwin’s ideas about evolution, survival of the fittest and natural selection to humanity, resulting in tens of millions of corpses they left in their wake, lamentably beckons a resounding, Yes!

I agree that ideas can be powerful things that can lead to lamentable outcomes. That’s why I insist that all ideas must be regarded with skepticism, tested thoroughly, and only those that meet some standards for rigor be accepted…and even that, only provisionally. Evolution has met those standards to a degree that you have to be a fool to reject it, especially when your alternative is the empty promises of Intelligent Design, and the bogus dogmatism of creationism.

Those millions of deaths are a consequence of fanatical adherence to poorly supported ideas: the ideologies of communism and fascism. Evolution is not at fault, and can’t be legitimately blamed, especially if your reasoning is as bad as Wiker’s.

In the opening chapter on Darwin, Wiker wrote: “Reading Charles Darwin’s ‘The Descent of Man’ forces one to face an unpleasant truth: that if everything he said in his more famous ‘Origin of Species’ is true, then it quite logically follows that human beings ought to ensure that the fit breed with abandon and that the unfit are weeded out.”

Wiker actually said that? He’s a bigger idiot than I thought. Does he also read books about epidemiology and assume that the science is all about killing the most people possible with microorganisms? Is oncology all about inflicting slow painful deaths on people? Are the police out to foment crime, and firemen have the job of starting fires?

What logically follows from Darwin’s theory is that fit individuals are those that survive and have offspring. There is no presumption that there is only one possible strategy to accomplish that survival: if we maintain a state that helps the weak and sick live and have children, then we have increased their fitness.

Maybe it’s just me, but I read the truth of evolution as saying that we can work to oppose brute nature and make life better for our fellow human beings, or we can surrender and refuse to resist nature’s course. We have a choice. You can be an enabler of greater rates of selection (using arbitrary criteria that may not generate enhanced survival for anything but the select occupants of a totalitarian state!) or you can work for a better life for more.

It’s somehow predictable that right-wing hacks always project their hateful vision of increasing mortality on a theory that allows for the possibility of change by reducing it.