It’s my afternoon for getting lots of whiny right-wing Christianist email, I guess. This one is notable, not for its content (which is predictable, humorless, and indignant, and just like most of the complaints I get), but for the fact that it was also sent to my chancellor and every member of the biology faculty. Nice work, spammer.
My criticism of Mark Armitage’s “research” published in the ICR “journal” seems to have struck a nerve — he just sent me (and his colleagues at the ICR) an angry letter in which I think he is attempting sarcasm, he just isn’t very good at at it. Poor baby. Here it is:
Mike Dunford has a series of articles on a recent California court decision — in brief, Christian homeschoolers tried to sue California universities to force them to accept courses taught with Christianist literalist creationist textbooks as legitimate, college-level science credit, and they lost. They lost hard.
But the really funny part is that the creationists brought in Mike Behe as a friendly witness. Behe was asked to review the creationist textbooks that they used, bad books that anyone can see are misleading, unrepresentative, and ridiculous, and he approved them. The man has no standards and no credibility, and it’s appalling that he is such a man-whore for creationism that he’d approve even young earth creationist, fundamentalist books as reasonable texts for a science class.
But that’s not what the judge in this case ruled on; rather, Behe’s defense of these books was that it was “abusive” to ask students to subscribe to an idea like evolution with which they disagree. Setting aside the obvious point that the whole point of education is to introduce students to a multitude of ideas with which they may or may not agree, the judge pointed out that the books which Behe approved flatly state that Christians must accept creationist conclusions—unlike our biology books, which don’t demand any religious litmus test of their readers—and were therefore perfect examples of exactly the problem he was complaining about.
So, once again — Behe goes down in flames in a court of law, dragging the whole case to perdition with him. He’s like the fire ship of the creationist fleet, always being launched into a headwind. But, to be fair, you can’t just pick on Behe: the problem is that the entire creationist position is so bad, and so stupid, that whoever gets appointed to be the front man for it is going to look like an idiot. Poor sap.
The Institute for Creation Research is a treasure trove of sloppy pseudoscience. I mentioned one “research” article that they put out that was nothing but a flurry of bible verses wrapped around an argument from incredulity; now a reader has pointed me to another article that tries very hard to ape the form of a real scientific paper, and fails horribly.
It’s titled “COMPLEX LIFE CYCLES IN HETEROPHYID TREMATODES: STRUCTURAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL DESIGN IN THE ASCOCOTYLE COMPLEX OF SPECIES”, by Mark Armitage. Oooh. Sounds so sciencey. And then you read further, and you see that it almost follows the correct form.
The Institute for Creation Research has just published a fairly typical article for them: it’s the usual laundry list of amazing biological structures that cry out “Jaaayzuusss!” to the faithful. In this case, they pick on squid. You see, squid have wonderfully complex specializations to control pigment granules in their skins; these are so lovely and so intricate that — and this is the major leap of ignorance they demand of their readers — they couldn’t possibly have arisen by natural mechanisms, and must have been specially placed there by a loving god. As an extra special bonus, some squid have a symbiotic relationship with luminescent bacteria, so at long last the creationists notice a possible benign function for bacteria.
The reflectins seem to be unique to squid, coded for by at least six genes (specific DNA segments). In addition, researchers have found that the Hawaiian bobtail squid efficiently uses an exclusive bilobed ("two-lobed") light organ to its advantage. A species of bioluminescent bacteria called Vibrio fischera in the light organ receives nourishment from the squid. In return, the bacteria secrete a tracheal cytotoxin designed to control the development of the light organ. This cytotoxin is a small segment of the deleterious bacteria that causes whooping cough in humans. But perhaps the toxin served a more useful function, as we see in the squid, prior to the introduction of sin into God’s creation, which led to the Fall and the current curse under which creation groans (Romans 8:22).
To conclude, not only is biophotonic design evidence for a clearly seen creation (Romans 1:20), but the Hawaiian bobtail squid in particular provides the creation scientist with a possible original benign function for disease-causing bacteria. Truly, God’s creation declares–and reflects–His glory (Psalm 19:1).
Reflectins are proteins that stack in flat plates and efficiently reflect light, and it’s true that they are unique to cephalopods. However, there’s nothing magical about them — other animals have similar structures, they just tend to use crystallized purines. All it takes to make a reflector is a layered tissue that alternates sheets of high and low refractive index, and there are many routes to that kind of functionality.
I love how they had to spell out to their readers that “bilobed” means “two lobed”. They could have just written out “two lobed” in the first place, so all they’ve done there is show that they are pompously bad writers, and that they have a very low opinion of the reading abilities of their audience. It’s perfect.
Bacteria secrete all kinds of interesting stuff; in this case, Vibrio is pumping out a peptidoglycan, a pretty common class of molecules with diverse functions. It is not a sign of intent that similar molecules can regulate cell growth or cause symptoms of disease; rather, it tells us something about the flexibility of proteins and the variety of effects they can have in different contexts. The lesson of Darwin is that unguided natural processes have the ability to generate complex functionality, so it takes more than just showing complexity and function to demonstrate purpose. Creationists don’t understand that at all, so they keep whining “it’s complex!” as if they have brought up an irrefutable argument for design, when they’ve done no such thing.
And finally, isn’t it annoying and doesn’t it expose the ignorance of this creationist writer that he thinks finding bacteria that glow in squid at long last reveals a purpose for disease-causing bacteria? Bacteria thrive because they have abilities that help themselves, not because they’re servants to squid. That same creationist is carrying along a gut full of bacteria, and is covered with a layer of bacteria, and is living in a world aswim with bacteria, all dribbling out molecules that they find useful, and that sometimes do unpleasant things to human beings (and sometimes do useful things, but usually do things that have no direct effect on us) … and this confused, blinkered gomer finds one symbiotic function that biologists have known about for many years and thinks he has an answer? Please.
I wish I could think this article was an April Fool’s joke, too, but I know that creationists babble this kind of nonsense all the time.
Sometimes, people wonder if criticizing creationists brings more attention to them than they deserve — it’s a weird dynamic on the web, where we measure popularity by traffic (unfortunately), so referencing the bad guys sends them traffic, which seems to increase their apparent popularity. There’s no way around it, because that’s the way it works.
So we’ve always got people urging stasis — don’t raise a ruckus, keep mum, hush, don’t draw more attention to the crappy, crazy creationists — and they mean well, but they’re wrong. I say we need to be loud and tell everyone about them. We need to point and laugh. Really, it works. It does bring more attention to them, and I think there is a certain movie that will have more viewers than it would otherwise, but it’s all people seeing people point and laugh and going into it with a more skeptical, critical attitude, and that’s a win for us. They get to take home a little more money, but we have more people willing to point and laugh, and that’s the currency I’m gambling for.
One of the rascals at AtBC (not the one who is a witch) dug up an interesting Alexa comparison of traffic to my site (actually, the whole of scienceblogs, but I own an embarrassingly large percentage of that — please do go to the entry page and say hello to some other worthy blogs, won’t you?) and to that movie site. Guess which one is the gently rolling prairie beneath the craggy mountain peaks?
At a recent phone conference, the possessors of the tiny little red line claimed to have achieved massive popularity on the web last week, and even said they had the #1 spot for popularity at that time…but I think you can tell who was actually winning that little competition for eyeballs, and who was fibbing again.
You can go ahead and tell me to shut up, but you better be careful — I might point and laugh instead.
By the way, I mentioned that a bunch of reporters had contacted me about the recent chaos at the conference call — almost all of them are from very small outfits, mostly religious newspapers and sites. I suspect that the big newspapers have given up on Expelled as fluff and noise, and no longer newsworthy. We’re getting our cake and eating it, too! It’s also amusing that the producers are still trying to buy an audience.
I have to make this really, really simple for the “Hitler was an evolutionist” dimwits.
There is a central, incredibly obvious fact in Darwin’s insight.
If members of a population die or are killed off, they will leave no descendants for subsequent generations.
It isn’t razzle-dazzle genius. Any idiot can figure that one out — and many idiots have. Farmers have known it for millennia, when they set aside particularly fruitful seed stock or especially robust farm animals for breeding, and eat the rest. Nazis used this elementary logic when they decided to exterminate Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals. Eugenicists used it when they wanted to argue for shifting the distribution of certain properties in a population.
It ain’t “Darwinism”. It’s self-evident, obvious, selbstverständlich, apparent, évidente, transparent. The KKK knows it, farmers know it, dog and horse breeders know it, the Nazis knew it, they didn’t need Darwin to spell it out for them. Blaming that on Darwin is awesomely stupid.
Darwin’s real contribution, the one that had everyone smacking themselves in the forehead and wondering why they didn’t think of it first, was the realization that the natural environment does the killing — that natural selection shapes heredity. The idea of culling populations is not only so easy that a hate-mongering cretin can think of it, but that weather, bacteria, viruses, parasites, predators, etc. have been doing it for eons, with no intelligence required, and that mindless microorganisms have been far greater agents of hereditary change than the worst the Nazis ever accomplished; does Charles Darwin also get the blame for that? Darwin realized that the environment has consequences and can shape the generation-by-generation passage of hereditary traits in populations, and that examination of the natural world reveals that it has been doing exactly that. He realized that ubiquitous forces that are so simple we take them for granted have been quietly and slowly sculpting our heredity since the beginning of life on earth.
When clueless creationists argue that Darwin led to Hitler, or worse, throw away buckets of money making elaborate propaganda films arguing such nonsense, it’s worse than inane. It’s as if they have completely missed the point of the idea they are damning.
Some of you know that the producers of Expelled had a conference call this afternoon…a carefully controlled, closed environment in which they would spout their nonsense and only take questions by email. I listened to it for a while, and yeah, it was the usual run-around. However, I dialed in a few minutes early, and got to listen to a tiresome five minutes of Leslie and Paul chatting away, during which time they mentioned the secret code (DUNH DUNH DUNNNNH!) for the two way calls. I know. Sloppy, unprofessional, and stupid, but that’s the way they work.
So … I redialed. (DUNH DUNH DUNNNNH!)
Then I listened along quietly until I could take no more.
They repeated the usual lies (the Minneapolis event was a private screening [which was publicly linked on the web, where any idiot could get to it]; their blog was #1 on blogpulse [near as I can tell, it wasn’t—it was my exposure of their hypocrisy that was #1]; they didn’t lie to get interviews [totally bogus], etc.). They made amusing contradictions. Walt Ruloff first claims that the genesis of the movie was in 2006, when he claims to have started investigating biotechnology and discovered that there are “questions that can’t be asked” and that people were suppressing information that called Darwinism into doubt — note, though, that he never stated what those unnameable questions are. A moment later Mark Mathis comes on to say that the subject of the film was a work in progress, that they hadn’t settled anything, and that the name wasn’t even decided upon. Come on, they registered expelledthemovie.com in early 2007, well before they asked us to be interviewed.
They threw out a bunch of softball questions to Ben Stein: “How can you be so intelligent and question Darwinism?”, I kid you not.
One good question got through on email: KMOX radio contested the claim that there was no distortion of the interviews of Dawkins and Myers because they surrounded the interviews with film clips of Nazis — I think it’s obvious how they were trying to bias the discussion, and I was floored by Stein’s reply. He wanted more goose-stepping Nazis all over the place.
This was all a great deal to stomach, but I restrained myself. Then Mathis really started to lie: he said that all anybody ever blogged about was distractions, and several times he claimed that we never addressed the content of the movie. Let’s set aside the rank hypocrisy of expelling the people interviewed in the movie from screenings so we couldn’t see it; it’s simply not true. We have blogged extensively on the ridiculous premise at the heart of the movie, that the Holocaust was a consequence of evolutionary theory.
Here’s one of my entries in this subject.
Here’s Richard Dawkins’ review, which discusses the bogus Nazi connection quite a bit. Josh Timonen, of the RDF, also saw the movie.
John Wilkins has an excellent post on Darwinism and racism.
The Panda’s Thumb has discussed the false connection several times.
So I interrupted. I said, in essence, hang on — you guys are spinning out a lot of lies here, you should be called on it. I gave a quick gloss on it, and said that, for instance, anti-semitism has a long history in Germany that preceded Darwin, and that they ought to look up the word “pogrom”. There was some mad rustling and flustering about on the other side of the phone some complaints, etc., and then one of them asked me to do the honorable thing and hang up…so I said yes, I would do the honorable thing and hang up while they continued the dishonorable thing and continued to lie.
Then I announced that if any reporters were listening in, they could contact me at [email protected] and I’d be happy to talk to them.
So excuse me, I’ve got a few dozen emails in my inbox right now.
More accounts of the press conference:
I’m writing this at an altitude of 37,000 feet, 7 miles up in the air. Now I’m not really afraid of flying — I am entirely confident that I’ll be able to post this sometime after I land — but if you think about it, it’s grounds for trepidation. This is insanely high, and I’m in this fragile tin can that is reliant on a constant stream of exploding jet fuel to keep from simply falling out of the sky … an event which I and the other passengers would not survive. I don’t want to dwell on it, of course, but I have put myself in a potentially lethal situation, and I have to do this regularly as part of my job. Why? Who is at fault for creating this culture of risk?
I blame Newton.
Newton was a wild-eyed lunatic, cruel and inconsiderate to his peers (actually, he was so arrogant he seems not to have regarded anyone as his peer), and he documented in excruciating, obsessive detail the behavior of falling objects, which includes the falling of living, breathing, caring people. He plotted mathematically and with complex formulae the rates that objects, including people, would fall, and the force with which they would strike the ground — it’s hard not to imagine him cackling with glee like a psychopathic child pulling the wings off flies as he calculated the trajectories of objects, like people, flying through space. He was a horrible man.
Look back over the worst tragedies of the twentieth century, this period of time when Newtonists have run amuck. We’ve been lofting people into the sky for well over a hundred years, and quite often, they’ve fallen down. How many have died due to the tyranny of the gravity Newton put into the hands of conscienceless materialist scientists? Examine Hitler’s record, for instance. He was an ardent Newtonist who put his Wehrmacht to evil purpose, building machines that used the wicked geometries of Newton to shatter Europe. Nazi artillery and tanks used Newton’s tools to strike at his righteous opponents. Who can forget the V2 rockets lofting into the air on tongues of F=ma (another Newtonist “theory”!) to then fall along Newtonian trajectories, showering death on the good Christians of England. Hitler also dreamed of firing his evil Newtonist weapons on America, and if we’d given him enough time, he would have succeeded…thanks to Newton.
Perhaps you want to argue that Newton is not to blame, that someone would have said the same thing; or perhaps you want to make the claim that the world would have been the same without his work. But that neglects an important fact: Newton killed hope. Once, I might have thought that I could survive falling if I watched my diet and were as light as a feather, but no — Newton’s cold equations dictate that no matter what I weigh, I’d fall just as fast, so in despair I have let myself go, just as, I can see, many of my fellow Midwesterners. We despair because of Newton, and seek forlorn solace in trying to increase our wind resistance.
And those equations! The force of gravity is described as g•M1•M2 / d2, and those little letters don’t stand for God, motherhood, marriage (heterosexual), and devotion. There is no room in Newtonism for the reassuring idea that my airplane is being cradled in the loving, supportive hands of an intelligent anti-gravity agent. Just the idea of opposing gravity is anathema to the intelligentsiac — they think gravity is a great thing, and don’t want to question it.
Try polling university physics departments sometime: you won’t find the faculty questioning Newton at all. Gravity is over and done with those people, with nothing left to learn, and they won’t tolerate even the slightest deviation from Newtonist dogma. An open-minded physicist who suggests even the tiniest revision to the “theory” — for instance, suggesting that maybe Newton got the exponent a little bit wrong, and gravity varies with the cube of the distance, and they laugh at you and refuse to give you tenure. Shouldn’t these questions be discussed? Are they so intolerant that they will allow no dissent at all?
Don’t be fooled. The catastrophic social consequences of falling demand that we question all of Newtonism.
*For instance, those feminists. Little known fact: bra-burning is actually an act of submission to Newtonist theories of gravity.
Florida did it: their ridiculous “academic freedom” bill that promoted creationism has been approved by their senate committee.
Here’s the cast of characters:
Floridians, you have a job to do.
Call or write Sen. Ted Deutch and thank him: he’s the only one who voted against the bill. Urge him to keep up the fight.
The chair and vice chair of this committee were absent and did not vote. Call them and cuss them out for abdicating their responsibilities. Tell them they screwed up, and that you do not support failure.
The rest…call or write and tell them that you won’t be voting for them in the next election. Explain that as members of the education committee, they had a responsibility to support good science education.
I don’t think all is lost just yet. This just means it moves out of committee and on to the rest of the senate (OK, maybe we are doomed). Whoever your representative is, call or write and tell them that this bill must be opposed, that it is a potential disaster for science education in the state, and that it is a lawsuit waiting to happen.
