Awfully vague article about Dave Eaton

Eaton was the Minnetonka school board member and advocate of Intelligent Design creationism who abruptly resigned, shortly after his attempts to weaken his school district’s science standards were quashed. You wouldn’t know anything about that bit of backstory from this puff piece on Eaton, which has little but praise for the man and explains his departure by quoting him as saying he is “not leaving for any health, family or career reasons.”

C’mon, Strib. Come clean and say it. We know why he left: it’s because his brand of creationism was decisively crushed in Minnetonka, and he knew he was marginalized and isolated.

Pssst. Want a thousand dollars?

Take the geocentrism challenge from Catholic Apologetics International! They’re offering $1000 to the first person who can prove that the earth revolves around the sun. They claim that good Catholics really do have to believe that the earth is the center of the universe.

Scripture is very clear
that the earth is stationary and that the sun, moon and stars
revolve around it. (By the way, in case you’re wondering, “flat-earthers”
are not accepted here, since Scripture does not teach a flat earth,
nor did the Fathers teach it). If there was only one or two places
where the Geocentric teaching appeared in Scripture, one might
have the license to say that those passages were just incidental
and really didn’t reflect the teaching of Scripture at large.
But the fact is that Geocentrism permeates Scripture. Here are
some of the more salient passages (Sirach 43:2-5; 43:9-10; 46:4;
Psalm 19:5-7; 104:5; 104:19; 119:90; Ecclesiastes 1:5; 2 Kings
20:9-11; 2 Chronicles 32:24; Isaiah 38:7-8; Joshua 10:12-14; Judges
5:31; Job 9:7; Habakkuk 3:11; (1 Esdras 4:12); James 1:12). I
could list many more, but I think these will suffice.

I don’t think you stand much of a chance of winning though. Not only are they vague on how it will be judged, but looking over the site, it’s hard to believe it isn’t a satire.

If you have a few hours, take a look at the Fixed Earth page. This is High Crackpottery of the First Order—the author doesn’t believe the earth moves, that it is billions of years old, or that evolution occurred. NASA has been faking its planetary missions, and is engaging in spiritual warfare, driven by Pharisaic Kabbalism.

Easterbrook belongs on the Onion staff

I am not a fan of Gregg Easterbrook. He’s a pretentious twit who lectures Hawking on physics, calling him “kooky”, yet thinks Townes is wonderful and believes in an “invisible plane of existence: the spirit”. He makes ill-informed rants against atheists and Richard Dawkins, and has gone off on evolution before —he likes Intelligent Design.

His qualifications for these tirades on science? He’s a sports writer.

In the past, he’s been clear on finding this whole business of natural selection inadequate, preferring to preach that there is a loving god who has directed evolution.

The latter biological possibility is actually one of the reasons TMQ believes that human beings were made by a God who loves us. Why would natural selection have cared about reducing a person’s trauma at death? All natural selection cares about is fitness in passing down genes; if after replicating its DNA an organism dies in pain or panic, what’s that to evolution? In Darwinian terms, there would be no “selection pressure” favoring the peaceful death over the horrible death. Yet there appear to be biological mechanisms that help most people die peacefully. Why are such mechanisms in our physiologies? Maybe because somebody loves us.

Now Easterbrook has a post-Superbowl column in which he takes on evolution again. He’s got a new argument, though: that general evolution and selection stuff that he was arguing against before? It’s to be taken for granted.

That organisms evolve in response to changes in their environment is well-established—anyone who doubts this doesn’t know what he or she is talking about.

I think that’s what a sports commentator would call an “own goal”. Yeah, all that stuff Easterbrook has written on the subject before shows he doesn’t know what he is talking about.

His “new” argument is to insist over and over again that evolution provides no information on the origin of life, accompanied by much protestation that those other ID advocates, who must not be as smart as he is, don’t know how to use the word “theory” and are misstating everything.

Now a know-nothing Utah state representative has proposed this bill that “requires the State Board of Education to establish curriculum requirements and policies that stress that not all scientists agree on which theory regarding the origins of life…is correct.” Hey, Utah state legislature, there are no theories on the origin of life. A few biologists have made wild guesses involving RNA, clay or hot ocean vents, but no scientist has offered anything nothing remotely near the level of a testable theory. (The details on that point) Given the presence of life is so mysterious, a creator God may be why we are here. But please, science illiterates, stop attempting to enact rules about intelligent design; you are ruining the idea.

Oh, and the “details on that point” about models of abiogenesis? He references an article by himself in The New Republic. He’s wrong. There are good theories on the origin of life, and there are scientists working on them…this isn’t a matter of wild guesses.

Easterbrook is hardly worth dissecting, but as I was reading his column, the breathless tone, the skewed point of view, the clueless but confident statements that are almost right but have all the details wrong and show he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about…they reminded me of someone.

i-a399e5a11a0578780fb25b686bdb1324-harvey.jpg

i-9b6473dbe10ec2d938182f1f7f7418ba-easterbrook.jpg

I think Gregg Easterbrook is the Jackie Harvey of the Intelligent Design movement.

I’m flattering him. Guess who looks the more intelligent of the two?

That godly perspective

I haven’t mentioned the Clergy Letter Project or Evolution Sunday events before. They’re nice ideas—it’s an effort to get clergy to acknowledge good science, and encourage discussions about the subject on Darwin’s birthday, this Sunday—but I have to admit it’s rather orthogonal to my point of view. While I appreciate the sentiment and think it’s a positive step on the road to reason, I prefer to cut to the chase and jettison all the old religious baggage altogether.

I may have to take a more positive view towards it, though, since I ran across this weird wingnut site (well, maybe not too weird…he fits in well with a lot of Christians.) The author is greatly incensed at the temerity of these radical pastors.

Beginning with the Bible, it is simply impossible to arrive at evolution.

I have to agree with him on that. I’d counter it by noting that beginning with the world, evolution is simply inevitable and inescapable.

These 10,200 pastors arrogantly or ignorantly deviate from Christian tradition and orthodoxy by claiming their opinions trump the thousands of years of tradition and the plain reading of the Bible. The relativistic language, “forms of truth,” confirms that this is an appeal to pastors duped by the cultural influence of tolerance.

Heh. I’ve rarely seen anyone admit that they oppose tolerance, but there you go.

On the 197th anniversary of the birthday of Charles Darwin (February 12), 412 churches in 49 states will celebrate “Evolution Sunday.” Created in the imagination of University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh professor Michael Zimmerman, “Evolution Sunday” celebrates the “harmony of evolutionary science and faith”. Dismissing the Biblical accounts of creation as “beloved stories found in the Bible,” and as, “a different order than scientific truth,” Zimmerman and these churches proclaim that when science contradict the Bible, science wins.

Why, yes. Yes it does. The physical world does seem to trump religious delusions most effectively, doesn’t it?

After reading that twisted rant, I find myself viewing Zimmerman’s project much more charitably.

Ugh…I’m against it

In Wisconsin, a bill has been proposed to ban intelligent design from science courses.

Two Democratic lawmakers introduced a plan Tuesday that would ban public schools from teaching intelligent design as science, saying “pseudo-science” should have no place in the classroom.
The proposal is the first of its kind in the country, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and comes as a debate over how to teach the origins of human life rages in local school districts.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Terese Berceau, D-Madison, acknowledged the measure faced an uphill fight in a Legislature where Republicans control both houses.
The measure would force material included in science curriculums to describe only natural processes. The material also would need to follow the definitions of science adopted by the National Academy of Sciences.

Noooooooo! This isn’t how to do it!

Legislators need to keep their hands off science and science teaching, no matter what side they are taking. Promoting good science is OK; suggesting to school boards that they follow guidelines set by the major scientific ideas is so obvious that it shouldn’t need to be said; picking and choosing and saying which specific ideas ought to be taught and making them part of law is just plain wrong.

This is one case where I’d side with the Republicans. This is too much interference.

Heck yeah—Caroline Crocker should have been fired

…but she wasn’t. She was allowed to continue her educational malpractice until her contract expired, and then was not rehired—something that happens to adjunct and assistant professors all the time, with no necessary implication of poor work.

Caroline Crocker, if you’ve never heard of her, is the lead topic in an article in the Washington Post today, and you may also have read an account of her situation in Nature. She’s a molecular biologist who believes in Intelligent Design, and who was released from her position at George Mason University. Now she wants to claim that her academic freedom was infringed.

[Read more…]

Don’t be surprised—physics has always been a target

As long as I’m making addenda to posts, let’s hit up this one, too.

Some people have mentioned that they knew the creationists would come gunning for other domains of science sooner or later, and see George Deutsch’s remarks as confirmation. There is absolutely no surprise to the criticism of physics, and it’s been going on for a long while. Ultimately, the gripe the religious have isn’t with the simple facts, it’s with the process. Science is a tool that has been incredibly successful at digging into the nature of the universe, and religion is a proven flop next to it. That rankles, I’m sure.

Look at Philip Johnson and the Wedge document, too: they aren’t after just the idea that man evolved from apes. They’re out to demolish the whole enchilada. Their enemy is naturalism. Every science is a target.

Remember this: anything that isn’t learned by way of dogma and revelation is a direct challenge to the authority of religious leaders. Science, all of it, is a threat to the religious cash cow. And most daunting to the theocratic mindset, clawing your way to the top of the scientific heap doesn’t translate to the same kind of immunity to effective criticism we see in Christianity. They just don’t see how they can shift a scam that requires credulity to a paradigm that demands skepticism.