Here’s another sample of strange creationist email. This one spares the freaky fonts and excessive style changes, and instead we get an abrupt opening with no explanation, and a healthy dose of paranoia.
I told you that Answers in Genesis was trying to hire a geologist. You’ve blown it now, they’ve gone and hired a real pro.
The addition of Dr. Snelling confirms AiG’s continued efforts to meet the highest standards in its research in creation studies, according to AiG President Ken Ham. “Dr. Snelling’s stature among the scientific community should be an unequivocal sign to the academic world and the media that serious research is being conducted at AiG and its museum,” Ham said.
Oh, sure: “Snelling’s stature among the scientific community” is a significant indicator. Let’s see…
Creationist geologist who worked for Ken Ham in Australia
Has been working for the Institute for Creation Research for the past several years
Believes the earth is only 6,000 years old
Has had his work characterized as “sloppy” by real geologists
Oh, my gosh—Ken Ham was telling us the truth! This is a sign to the academic world and the media about what kind of serious research they’re doing!
This is perfect: a crossword puzzle, with the answers filled in as a scientist would, and then as a creationist would. Very cute—the creationist answers don’t fit!
They will argue, of course, that the problem is our metaphysical insistence on using words that fit the grid and address the clues.
The Council of Europe has put up a wonderful motion for a recommendation. Can anyone imagine this being discussed in the American senate or house of representatives? The Republicans would howl in fury against it, and the Democrats would rush to bury it, lest they offend the Republicans and annoy the ignorant members of their electorate. (The Council of Europe, by the way, is not the same thing as the Council of the European Union or the European Parliament, so it’s not really comparable to our congress. Europe says some very sensible things, but Europe is also very confusing.)
Bill Dembski is touting some strange ID-positive blog as a sign that there is a “growing number of non-religious ID proponents” — alas for poor Bill, when you glance at the blog, it’s some random guy making a post about once a month, whose background is as a musician and professional crackpot. His sole qualification as a “scientist” seems to be that he signed up to post on that ID web forum, ISCID. You should read more on Stranger Fruit, and Afarensis reveals that rather than touting his non-religious credentials, his unique claim to fame is as an “ID Pleasurian,” believe it or not. How will we ever deal with the growing number of sex-positive, porn-friendly ID proponents?
Oh, and he’s resentful that I actually have a blog category titled “Kooks.” Probably because he presciently knew that if ever I commented on William Brookfield, that’s the category I’d pick.
Everyone did good: they met Scalzi’s challenge and then some, so now he has to go spend $20 and tour the horrid little place.
This will chap Ken Ham’s buns, too. Sure, he’ll have to buy a ticket, but he also raised $5,118.36 all of which will be donated to Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Good deal!
A Cincinnati news weekly, the City Beat, has weighed in on the Creation “Museum”. They don’t seem to like it.
Here are some of the good quotes from the article.
Gene Kritsky, biologist:
it’s almost like intellectual molestation.
Not only is it bad science, it is filled with bad religion, and it’s also bad sociology and bad history, too.
Lawrence Krauss, physicist:
This is an institution designed to mis-educate children.
This is nothing but an institutionalized lie and a scientific fraud.
Edwin Kagin, lawyer:
What they are doing is no less an attack on the very way that science and enlightened thought works to produce the modern world. They want to substitute mythology for knowledge. Ignorance is a form of terrorism.
The local paper, The Cincinnati Post:
Frankly, we wish the Genesis museum had been built somewhere else. We wish the 250,000 men, women and especially children expected to visit this year were getting a view of science that comports with what science really knows about the world. Why? Because Greater Cincinnati is trying so hard to market itself, nationally and internationally as a hospitable home for a knowledge economy.
At least, I get the impression it’s not a favorable review. Maybe I need to read between the lines a little more carefully.
This is the last day to donate to the “Send Scalzi to the Creation Circus” game. Come on, people: if ever you’ve read one of his books, you know you want to torment him. Go ahead, get even. (Hmm…appealing to the extremely tiny population that has ever read a Scalzi book may not be the most potent strategy for mustering contributions I’ve come up with.)
I mentioned before that there has been a peculiar silence on the ID blogs about Michael Behe’s new book, The Edge of Evolution. Behe was the one marginally credible biologist on the Discovery Institute team, the guy who got everything rolling with Darwin’s Black Box and their old magic mantra of “irreducible complexity,” and it’s been like an information blackout from Dembski and Luskin and West and Meyer on his latest effort.
Now John Lynch has cataloged the responses. There are some complaints about the critics, but almost no one is trying to defend any of Behe’s conclusions.
So far, this is nothing like the circus we got when Darwin’s Black Box was released—we were constantly slapping down little creationists who were enthused to pieces that they had this serious book that they were sure completely refuted all of evolution. I suspect there are two general responses from ID-leaning readers out there:
That is, they’re torn between the clueless rejection of the parts of evolutionary biology Behe has accepted (which is probably the majority view) and the realization that Behe has said too much about the nature of their designer—so much, in fact, that it’s going to turn off their backers who want evidence that they are the creations of a loving god.
There may also be some reluctance for a proponent to do a thorough review because they’d feel compelled to criticize major parts of his claims…and doing that would be fomenting a schism.
We’ll have to wait and see if ever any of the fellow travelers in the ID movement ever get around to articulating their views.
Coyne not only dismantles Behe’s argument, he gives a nice primer in the basics of evolutionary biology. He also points out that Behe, one of the few biologists in the Intelligent Design camp, has conceded virtually everything to science, and is left clinging to one forlorn hope, that mutations are inadequate to produce the variation that is the fuel of natural selection.
I think he should have titled his book The Edge of Intelligent Design: Behe is hanging from the precipice by one trembling hand, and Coyne and nearly every other biologist in the world is stomping on his fingers.
Whoops, if you can’t read that link, try this one. Hmmm. I don’t subscribe to the New Republic…does my university? I got it with no registration required.
