Man, everyone is sending me this comic and saying it reminds them of me. I don’t know why.
Just for the record, I would never shoot a dog. I know how to use an IV and some barbituates to painlessly euthanize them. But I wouldn’t. That’s only your theory.
…don’t bother.
A reader sent me a link to his photo set from the BVCSM, and I’m afraid all you’ll find there is the Wall O’ Text approach to instruction. You know what that is: print out a page from Answers in Genesis, blow it up real big, and slap it on a wall … instant museum!
There is one amusing revelation — creationists sometimes have the wackiest ideas — and it made me laugh.
Did you know that ALL dinosaur footprint fossils found are pointing in the same direction?! This is IRREFUTABLE PROOF of the dinosaurs running from a global flood!
Creation Logic 101: you don’t need any! And now that you know everything that’s entertaining about the place, you won’t need to pay out $5 to some nut in a small town in Alberta, Canada to see it. Go to the Royal Tyrrell instead.
Actually, the funniest comment I’ve seen in a while is a testimonial proudly displayed at the top of the BVCSM website:
“I spent more time in this museum than I did in the Smithsonian”
The picture at the top of this article is the Big Valley Creation Science Museum: a small remodeled ranch house. This is the Smithsonian Institution: 19 museums and 9 research institutions, and over 100 million objects in their collections. That statement above is a testimonial to the delusions of the creationists, nothing more.
Oh, that little scamp, Billy Dembski. He’s all upset about his shabby treatment at Baylor, and he’s displacing his anger into a defense of Robert Marks.
President John Lilley of Baylor appears to have made up his mind that Prof. Robert Marks’s Evolutionary Informatics Lab is to have no place at Baylor. There is only one court of appeal now, the Baylor Board of Regents, who can reverse Lilley’s decision and even remove Lilley as president. Here is the list of board members. I encourage readers of UD to contact them (respectfully) and share their concerns about this gross violation of academic freedom.
One amusing bit of background, though: the Evolutionary Informatics Lab didn’t exist. It was a web page, nothing more, so it’s a little strange to complain that it doesn’t have a place at Baylor. What’s actually been refused is that the Evolutionary Informatics Lab doesn’t get to pretend that it’s a Baylor initiative. It’s a bit excessive for Baylor to refuse to host a faculty member’s wacky web page, but there’s nothing to stop them from putting it up on, say, the DI’s servers. It’ll be just as effective there as anywhere. Or, hey, does geocities still exist and offer free hosting?
The other thing, though, is that Dembski then goes on to list all the members of the board of regents, including home phone numbers and addresses. I guess Dembski responds to the fact that he has been Expelled with Intimidation and Incitement, which must be the next two movies in the creationist trilogy.
Oh, and no more links from me to UD while Dembski has his hit list online.
Got an hour or so? A BBC special on the Dover trial has made its way to YouTube. See how the rest of the world sees that bizarre episode of American inanity.
Here’s the first part.
The other four are below the fold.
We all know what online petitions are worth, but this is at least a worthy cause: some graduate students have a Petition by Informed Citizens to reclassify non-science books from science categories. The goal is to persuade the Library of Congress to reclassify books about intelligent design creationism into something other than science.
Larry Caldwell has a history of suing in California courts for creationist causes. Mike Dunford has some material on the latest attempt to claim that leaving out Christian myths was “viewpoint discrimination”, and in particular on their interesting choice of a star witness.
The Christian schools hired Dr. Behe (for $20,000) as an expert in “biology and physics.” (That second part should make Chad and Rob’s heads explode, given that Behe has absolutely no physics experience of any kind.) To earn his fee, Dr. Behe prepared a report that said, basically, that the Christian textbooks are excellent works for high school students. He also defended that view in a deposition that was taken back at the end of May.
Wooeee, that Behe fella has a real racket going. No wonder he’s so committed to his absurd version of creationism — there’s profit in it.
Anyway, Chad and Rob can break out the superglue and reassemble their crania now, and use a pastry gun to reinject their splattered brains. The case has been dismissed.
I’m sure Mr Caldwell will be back next month, filing another frivolous lawsuit. I’m also sure the Discovery Institute will be very, very quiet about this new failure in their history of legal shenanigans.
Oops. Behe was testifying in a different case in California. How many suits are the creationists involved in, anyway? Wesley has the rundown on the correct legal case.
A couple of graduate students have a group called Extant Dodos Productions that uses YouTube to rip into creationist claims. In particular they’ve used some of Kent Hovind’s materials to dissect his arguments. It’s a clever idea — they take creationist videos and edit them to insert rebuttals to each argument as they are made.
Apparently, though, Creation Science Evangelism doesn’t like the fact that their claims are being popularly weighed, analyzed, and pulverized, and they’re now trying to strong-arm Extant Dodos Productions with intimidating letters that say they are infringing on their copyright by using their videos. It seems to me that this work certainly ought to fit under the conventions of fair use, but they have an even stronger case: the videos they used all come with a formal waiver of copyright with the stipulation that the material not be sold.
The Minnesota Family Council is a spawn of Dobson (it’s got “family” in the title, so you know it’s got to be evil), and it’s usually one of those organizations that lobbies to get legislative support for their hatred of women and gays. They are not nice people. If you’re ever in this state and want to see some splendid examples of calcified brains, this is the group you want to track down.
Anyway, they’re starting a new training program: the Minnesota Worldview Leadership Project. It’s the weirdest thing. Apparently, it’s a seminar and discussion series that is supposed to turn you into an even more fervent theocrat, ready to shape the United States into a more Christian nation. And, as you might guess, they don’t like evolution. They’re reading Nancy Pearcey, and John West is flying in to give a seminar…wait a minute, I thought Intelligent Design was a secular theory? Nah, never mind.
Creationists sure are sneaky little liars, aren’t they? Here’s an account of a theologian who was suckered by a creationist film crew — now he’s on a DVD that mangles his ideas and postures for young earth creationism and biblical literalism.
Dishonesty must be a universal property of creationists.
Richard Colling is in big trouble. He’s a biology instructor who is getting slapped down by his college and his community.
Colling is prohibited from teaching the general biology class, a version of which he had taught since 1991, and college president John Bowling has banned professors from assigning his book. At least one local Nazarene church called for Colling to be fired and threatened to withhold financial support from the college. In a letter to Bowling, ministers in Caro, Mo., expressed “deep concern regarding the teaching of evolutionary theory as a scientifically proven fact,” calling it “a philosophy that is godless, contrary to scripture and scientifically unverifiable.” Irate parents, pastors and others complained to Bowling, while a meeting between church leaders and Colling “led to some tension and misunderstanding,” Bowling said in a letter to trustees.
