The new preview for the movie Expelled looks very slick and professional — there are some deep pockets behind this effort.

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Both Larry and Shalini have picked up on this most excellent comic — it’s perfect.

The NY Times sent a reporter to the First Conference on Creation Geology, and came back with a discouraging tale of creationist blindness. The two stars are Kurt Wise, old school, and Marcus Ross, new school. Ross recently recieved a Ph.D. for his paleontological work on mosasaurs — marine reptiles from 65 million years ago — yet he also goes to creationist conferences and touts his belief that the earth is less than ten thousand years old. The dissonance does not disturb him at all.

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I mentioned that I should probably attend the odious John West’s talk at the U of Minnesota next Friday, and Rick Schauer has stepped up to the plate and provided compelling motivation.

To help make it easier for you to attend West’s talk, PZ…I’ll sponsor a
Pharyngula Fellowship event at the UM Campus Club.

I’m talking free-beer and munchies to you and any other Pharyngulaites
reading this from 5:30-6:45 at the Club. We then all walk from Coffmann to
Nicholson and confront the poor sap in unison. We’ll make more plans as
time passes.

Free beer? I thought this was a myth, a hoary legend of something truly impossible. Maybe there is a god.

Seriously, though, this is a brilliant idea. One of our disadvantages in these kinds of events is that the creationists will truck over church-loads of true believers, and the science side goes in outnumbered. Organizing a social event for skeptics beforehand is an excellent scheme to motivate a turnout that is more critically-minded — it doesn’t even require a generous philanthropist to host the fellowship, although we certainly won’t turn down free beer.

So yes, now I will definitely be there. I urge other Twin Cities Pharyngula readers to show up, too. If we come prepared with arguments against West’s thesis, that evolution dehumanizes society and Darwin is therefore responsible for the errors of eugenics, and share our perspectives in friendly conversation, we’ll also be more effective in the Q&A in the talk.

If you aren’t in the Twin Cities, but are having various creationists show up to harangue your citizenry, think about this simple idea as a model: host a pre-talk social event and get the science-minded locals to turn up. I’m not at all keen to go listen to another Discovery Institute liar, but the opportunity to bend an elbow with a group of smart people? Count me in.

It is best to wait until the person you are quote-mining is dead or senile, lest they notice what you’ve done and make a public dismissal. Denyse O’Leary seems to have forgotten this, and tried to use a paper by Brian Leiter — Brian Leiter! — to argue for the irrelevancy of evolution. Leiter seems to be neither dead nor senile, as he has noticed.

Sometimes the spectacle in the comments can be as fun as the articles. Here are a couple of examples loons trying to address the criticisms directed at their ideas on a couple of blogs.

Larry Moran attended a lecture by a creationist, Kirk Durston. The creationist pulled the usual stunt: cite a few of the multitude of science papers out there, and misrepresent it to support his fallacious claims. Not even Larry is able to have all those papers right there in his forebrain, which allows Durston to briefly pretend to be the voice of authority. Of course, later Larry looks it up and points out the misrepresentations. The fun part is that Durston joins the thread to argue. Durston also objects to having his argument for an omnipotent Intelligent Designer called a “god”.

There’s more fun along the same lines at Scientia Natura: Shalini has a geocentrist on the line. This is hilarious.

What’s particularly amusing is how much alike Durston and the anonymous geocentrist sound: both are completely convinced that the scientific evidence actually supports their ludicrous positions.

It’s a little odd to find myself cited in a Polk County, Florida newspaper as evidence that their pro-ID activities have received “national attention.”

Otherwise, it’s an article that testifies to the inevitability of a conflict. A majority of the school board members in Polk want to insert creationism into the curriculum, and they’ve got a few supporters in the schools.

…an eighth-grade science teacher at Union Academy in Bartow spoke in favor of intelligent design, a belief that living organisms are so complex that they must have been created by some kind of higher force.

“When you talk about laws in nature it shows some order or design,” said Lawrence Hughes, who has taught at the academy for 16 years. “The laws of nature don’t support change from one organism to another organism.”

What utter tripe. What we see in nature is that the boundaries are extremely fuzzy, and that there are no “laws of nature” that block change. Perhaps Mr Hughes would like to state what these laws are, exactly?

A few people are arguing strongly on the side of reason, but one gets the impression that the creationists have made up their minds and are spoiling for a fight.