Darksyde takes on the teaching of creationism in Missouri…let’s see if readers here are clever enough to see the dishonesty in this quote.

[Mike] Riddle had been invited to Potosi High and John A. Evans Middle School by Randy Davis, superintendent of the Potosi-RIII school district, and his board to discuss science with science students. During an hour-long presentation, Riddle … prodded the students to question established scientific principals and theories and encouraged them to think about a career in science.

Questioning scientific principles and theories is a good thing, and it’s also good to encourage students to study more science, so what’s the problem? The problem is that the speaker is a representative from Answers in Genesis, the young earth creationist organization, and he’s using the language differently than scientists do. When we say we should teach good science, we mean that there should be an emphasis on evidence and rational interpretation of the work. When AiG says “good science,” they mean a kind of Christian apologetics that cherry-picks data to arrive at a predetermined conclusion, that the Earth is 6000 years old. He isn’t urging students to do science, he wants them to get out there and corrupt a process that contradicts his theology.

This is the new way of creationism: embrace the trappings and the language, which have favorable associations to most people, and use them to advance ideas contrary to good science. It’s creationism in a lab coat.

A reader from Kansas sent in another slogan, prominently displayed on a billboard:

TEACH DARWIN HONESTLY!

[Read more…]

I didn’t think of this one, Dustin did—but take a look at this comparison of search volume for “pharyngula” vs. “discovery institute”. There’s perspective for you: one wild-eyed guy with a blog is gaining on a whole gang of creationists with millions of dollars in funding and a machine to churn out press releases.

There’s an idea…to catch up more, maybe I need to call myself the Pharyngula Institute and start faxing press releases to the newspapers.

Check out this amusing discovery on Stochastic—there’s this new tool on Google, Google Trends, that lets you compare the frequency of various searches. A silly creationist got all thrilled because searches for “Intelligent Design” beat searches for “Darwinism”.

You know where this is going. “Darwinism” is a term used by creationists, not scientists or anyone who knows more than diddly-squat about biology. Run a search for evolution, biology, and science vs. creationism and intelligent design, and the insignificance of the creationists becomes obvious. Once again, the designists are caught fudging the data, and once again, we can see the triviality of their games.

Note that “creationism” and “intelligent design” barely rise above the baseline.

As you might guess, though, throw sex into the mix, and the evolution-creation debate shrinks away. A little perspective is always useful!

The IDists are promoting a staged event at Biola—they are purporting to put their proponents “under fire”…at Biola. Right. This is the same kind of thing creationists always do, promoting their crap in venues that will guarantee a largely friendly, and largely ignorant, audience.

In this case, though, they are trying to salt the crowd with a few opponents. Most have wisely turned them down, since this is about feeding the creationist pretense rather than actually putting some pressure on the clown show. Michael Shermer reveals some of the restrictions; some of their ‘guests’ would be seated in the audience, and allowed only one question. You can guess how any critical questions would be answered, of course: with meaningless noise. Andy Groves, who sometimes comments here (Hi, Andy! Kiss, kiss) was one of the critics invited, and maybe he’ll tell us how he turned them down. Good for him on doing the right thing. I wasn’t invited, but I wouldn’t have gone even if they’d promised I could be the stock villain swinging a folding chair.

This is an escalation of the debating ploy, which was always intended to do one thing: put creationists on stage with real scientists, falsely amplifying the creationists’ credibility. Now they’re setting up a ‘debate’ with their own rules, stacking the situation until it’s as fake as pro wrestling. The event is on the 12th; I will predict that on the 13th, the Discovery Institute will be proclaiming victory by press release, and saying that they sailed through a trial by fire unscathed.

Bad timing! On Wednesday morning, I have a meeting at the Bell Museum in Minneapolis, and then I have to drive to Madison to pick up my son…so I don’t think I can possibly be back in time for this:

The Ecology Evolution and Behavior seminar on Wednesday, May 10 (4:00 p.m. in 335 Borlaug Hall on the St. Paul Campus—Coffee and cookies are served
outside of room 100 Ecology preceding each seminar 3:30 p.m.) is featuring Michael Ruse, who will speak on some variant of the evolution/creationism/ID debate.

Maybe some of you Minneapolitans/St Paulians who read this will be able to make it, but I think I’d have to drive at 180mph down I94 and back, and Connlann would have to break down his dorm room and load it into the car in 10 minutes flat. Somebody should stop by and chew him out for that nonsense he shared with Dembski a while back, though. Bring beer, and take a swig every time he accuses “Darwinists” and biologists of being fundamentalists, OK?

Weep for poor persecuted Kent Hovind. They’ve shut down Dinosaur Adventure Land.

County commissioners showed no sympathy to members of the Creation Science Evangelism ministry who spoke out Thursday night at a commission meeting about the county’s actions.

“Scripture also says ‘Render unto Caesar what Caesar demands.’ And right now, Caesar demands a building permit,” County Commission Chairman Mike Whitehead said.

On the other hand, these guys are criminal con-artists and scum, so hold back those tears.

Legal questions are nothing new for Dinosaur Adventure Land and the leaders of the church group that operates it:

• In 2004, The Internal Revenue Service raided Hovind’s home and businesses. Agents said Hovind had failed to pay taxes. That case is pending, and federal attorneys declined to comment about it.
• While the building permit case was in court, the ownership of the theme park was transferred to Stoll, who resides in Washington State, according to court papers. Stoll has been investigated at least twice by federal authorities, court records show.

Last year, the U.S. attorney in Seattle filed a lawsuit against Stoll, charging him with promoting a scheme encouraging people to avoid paying taxes by claiming to be religious entities, according to news reports.

A federal judge ruled against Stoll, ordering him to stop the practices. Stoll said Thursday that he doesn’t recognize the ruling because he was never properly served with court papers.

(via God is for Suckers)

Uh-oh. Those Catholic creationists had better watch out: the Vatican thinks they’re pagans.

Believing that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed yesterday.

Brother Consolmagno, who works in a Vatican observatory in Arizona and as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Italy, said a “destructive myth” had developed in modern society that religion and science were competing ideologies.

He described creationism, whose supporters want it taught in schools alongside evolution, as a “kind of paganism” because it harked back to the days of “nature gods” who were responsible for natural events.

Yes, I can see how the major monotheistic religions might take offense at the “God of the Gaps” and Designer gods—they are attempts to shift the deity from the cosmic and the abstract to the mundane and the petty, and also to put those gods in the realm of the testable.

I can’t say that I agree entirely with Consolmagno, though.

“Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism—it’s turning God into a nature god. And science needs religion in order to have a conscience, to know that, just because something is possible, it may not be a good thing to do.”

No, we don’t need religion for that. Atheists can have a conscience, too, and we are aware that there are human limits to what we should do. Too often, religion is used as a justification for doing the inhuman to heretics and unbelievers…and to pagans. It’s a piss-poor substitute for morality, unless you think propping up the obscenely rich or damning people for what they do with their genitals is “morality” (and isn’t that also an awfully petty concern for their majestic deity?).