The offenses of creationists aren’t always blatant: it’s the sneaky erosion of science, the quiet omissions, the gradual degradation of good science where they make the most gains, and it’s where they get bold and stick their heads out (like Dover) where they get slapped down. We need to be aware of the small stuff, too, because it adds up — like this effort by Dutch evangelicals to edit David Attenborough’s documentaries. Some changes have to be made in translations and so forth, and the BBC does allow cuts up to about 5 minutes per hour, but the nasty thing is how targeted the cuts are at slicing out just those bits a pathologically ignorant theist would find objectionable.

I’ve had some people complain that we ought to reserve our outrage for the big stuff, the dramatic crap the creationists try to pull. I’m going to have to disagree. The little stuff that nibbles away at accurate information and slowly destroys the public education of science that must be confronted just as strenuously.

After his recent rampage against the Baylor administration, Bill Dembski now claims to be offering an apology to Baylor…only not really. I don’t think he knows what ‘apology’ means — a statement loaded with reservations like “I mean in no way to mitigate the gravity of Baylor’s wrong in censoring the research of Robert Marks and his Evolutionary Informatics Lab” and “I hurt my family and lost about three weeks of productive work by being consumed with anger about the injustice against Robert Marks” is not an apology — it’s an opportunity to reiterate your grievances. And closing with the injunction to “leave justice in the hands of a God” is just a standard Christian passive-aggressive threat.

This wasn’t an apology. It was an opportunity for Dembski to flush several embarrassing posts down the UD Memory Hole™.

My crank mail can be categorized into several categories. There are the short, barely literate splutterings of abuse; the weird rants and threats; the reiteration of long-dead creationist talking points (yeah, I get email where the writer thinks he’s trumped me by saying “If evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?”); and then there are the long, rambling lectures from deeply clueless individuals. I’m afraid this is one of the latter. I’ll understand if you fall asleep partway through.

By the way, the author actually sent this to me pre-formatted in Comic Sans. I’m also rather peeved that he’s sending me a letter addressed to Eugenie Scott.

[Read more…]

So now the tale of the lying creationists of Expelled has made the Grauniad. Somebody let me know when my name is mentioned in Le Monde.

Mark Mathis must be happy about this. He is, after all, the “The No-Spin Doctor” who “demonstrates that most of what you need to understand about attracting great publicity, delivering excellent quotes, or managing a media crisis you already know.”. He certainly is getting lots of international attention now, but I would think that a reputation as a dishonest fraud and creationist hack isn’t exactly what most people would desire, and hunkering down and hiding isn’t exactly the cleverest way to manage a media crisis.

I guess that when all you’ve got to work with is lies, becoming a really good liar is an accomplishment.

Tikistitch reports that certain billboards are popping up in Oregon — yeah, the same signs our crazy billboard lady has been putting up around Minnesota. Try reading her forum — the stupid will burn, and you will wonder how anyone that ignorant is getting her message spread across the country.

I met Thomas Martin the other day in NY — he’s the fellow who wrote the winning essay in the Seed science writing contest. I had no idea he was a flaming creationist! At least, you’d get the impression that his essay was ID-friendly from the assessment of Uncommon Descent.

Of course, what the essay actually says is that science works because “it compels smart people to incessantly try to disprove the ideas generated by other smart people,” and that one goal of science is to “find those ideas that can withstand the long and hard barrage of evidence-based argument.” I don’t think Martin was being at all kind to ID, because I’m afraid ID withers before the evidence.

It is interesting, though, that the first response of the creationists to an essay on science literacy is to quote-mine it.

That movie Expelled is acquiring an international reputation: Spiegel reports on Unfreiwillige Kreationisten-PR: Forscher fühlen sich von Filmemachern missbraucht (if you’d rather, here’s the google translation). By the time the film opens, what it will be best known for is that they had to lie to get their interviews.

(They quote me. They get my name wrong. Oh, well, it’s part of my grand plan: from now on, every scientist with a weird name you’ve never heard of before? Just assume it’s me. I shall be ubiquitously mysterious.)