If you squint real hard it almost looks like an experiment, at least

i-2807cbbd2e743be114b2b5d87476e986-evolution_disproved.jpeg

I am really surprised at all the people who are saying the original letter had to have been an intentional joke. Haven’t you looked at Ray Comfort/Kirk Cameron/Kent Hovind on YouTube? They say essentially the same things! For another example, I was sent this link (scroll down to where it says “What Are The Scientists Saying?”) to a 50 page document full of nonsense, garbled science and creationism, and random invalid arguments against evolution, all just as silly as this.

Some simply don’t understand Poe’s Law. It states that parodies of fundamentalism will be indistinguishable from the real thing. This letter is indistinguishable by any measure from any of the routine creationist lunacy you can find just about anywhere you look.

Good news from California

Texas has been using their excessive and unwarranted influence on textbook content to insert right-wing propaganda and lies into the entire nation’s school books. I am pleased to see that California has taken the first steps to reduce Texas wingnuts’ influence. A California lawmaker has introduced Senate Bill 1451, a law that calls out Texas for its biased agenda, and mandates the formation of review panels to screen new textbooks for violation of the apolitical and non-discriminatory requirements of public school textbooks. Here’s the relevant text:

(f) Section 60044 of the Education Code prohibits instructional
material to be used in schools that contains any matter reflecting
adversely upon persons because of their race, color, creed, national
origin, ancestry, sex, handicap, or occupation, as well as any
sectarian or denominational doctrine or propaganda contrary to law.

(g) On March 12, 2010, the Texas Board of Education, which
consists of 15 elected members statewide, voted to adopt revisions to
their social studies curriculum for the 2010-11 school year
(formally referred to as revisions to Texas Administrative Code,
Title 19, Chapter 113, Subchapters A-C, and Texas Administrative
Code, Title 19, Chapter 118, Subchapter A).

(h) Although not yet formally adopted, it is widely presumed that
the proposed changes to Texas’ social studies curriculum will have a
national impact on textbook content since Texas is the second largest
purchaser of textbooks in the United States, second only to
California.

(i) As proposed, the revisions are a sharp departure from widely
accepted historical teachings that are driven by an inappropriate
ideological desire to influence academic content standards for
children in public schools.

(j) The proposed changes in Texas, if adopted and subsequently
reflected in textbooks nationwide, pose a serious threat to Sections
51204.5, 60040, 60041, 60043, and 60044 of the Education Code as well
as a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and
academic content standards in California.

SEC. 2. Section 60020.8 is added to the Education Code, to read:
60020.8. Upon the next adoption of the History-Social Science
Curriculum Framework, the state board shall ensure the framework is
consistent with provisions governing instructional materials,
including, but not limited to, Sections 51204.5, 60040, 60041,
60042, 60043, 60044, 60048, 60200.5, and 60200.6.

SEC. 3. Section 60050 of the Education Code is amended to read:
60050. (a) The state board shall adopt regulations to govern the
social content reviews conducted at the request of a publisher or
manufacturer of instructional materials outside the primary and
followup instructional material adoption processes. A social content
review is intended to determine compliance with Sections
51204.5, 60040, 60041, 60042, 60043, 60044, 60048, 60200.5, and
60200.6, and the guidelines for social content adopted by the state
board.

It’s not a huge step, and I imagine publishers will be scrambling to produce books that fit Texan demands without being blatantly right-wing…which probably means they’ll be watered down into even more tepid pap. But at least it’s going in the right direction in putting up an intellectual barrier around the Texas aberration, marking it as a scholastic pariah state.

Alabama suffers some more

The other day, I posted about the smear campaign in Alabama against Bradley Byrne, which tried to impugn the man by saying, “Byrne supported teaching evolution…said the Bible was only partially true”. Byrne won a speck of sympathy from me, despite the fact that he’s a Republican, for at least standing up for the evidence.

That sympathy is gone now. Byrne has come back with a rebuttal.

• I believe the Bible is the Word of God and that every single word of it is true. From the earliest parts of this campaign, a paraphrased and incomplete parsing of my words have been knowingly used to insinuate that I believe something different than that. My faith is at the center of my life and my belief in Jesus Christ as my personal savior and Lord guides my every action.

• As a Christian and as a public servant, I have never wavered in my belief that this world and everything in it is a masterpiece created by the hands of God. As a member of the Alabama Board of Education, the record clearly shows that I fought to ensure the teaching of creationism in our school text books. Those who attack me have distorted, twisted and misrepresented my comments and are spewing utter lies to the people of this state.

Well, screw you, too, you rednecked ignorant yokel. It’s a real shame that the people of Alabama are being served by fools and pandering morons. Now the Alabamans know who to vote against, I just hope there’s somebody sensible left in the field to vote for.

Creationists on race

I almost agree with some pieces of what these guys at onehumanrace.com say. Except for the fact that they are insane.

What is the only answer to racism?

Before we can solve the problem of racism, we must first ask the question: “Where did the different ‘races’ come from?” Explore this site for the answer, plus fascinating scientific research demonstrating that there really are no “white” or “black” people.

Take it piece by piece. There is no one answer to racism, so the opening question is misleading; but otherwise, the next assertion that it would be useful to know about the origins of human races sounds reasonable to me. But wait: there are no people who can be distinguished by skin color, by ethnicity and history? Weird. I’m going to have to follow a few of their links to see what the heck they are talking about.

Before you leave the front page of the site, though, look at the fine print at the very bottom of the page. Uh-oh.

Sponsored by Answers in Genesis, in association with GospelCom.Net and Master Books.

You now know what to expect. This is going to be race and racism as explained by the residents of a clown college.

So, how do we answer this essential preliminary question about where races come from? If we need to know the answer before we can solve the problem of racism, this had better be a very good explanation.

According to the Bible, all humans on Earth today are descended from Noah and his wife, his three sons and their wives, and before that from Adam and Eve (Genesis 1-11). But today we have many different groups, often called “races,” with what seem to be greatly differing features. The most obvious of these is skin color. Many see this as a reason to doubt the Bible’s record of history. They believe that the various groups could have arisen only by evolving separately over tens of thousands of years. However, as we shall see, this does not follow from the biological evidence.

The Bible tells us how the population that descended from Noah’s family had one language and by living in one place were disobeying God’s command to “fill the earth” (Genesis 9:1, 11:4). God confused their language, causing a break-up of the population into smaller groups which scattered over the Earth (Genesis 11:8-9). Modern genetics show how, following such a break-up of a population, variations in skin color, for example, can develop in only a few generations. There is good evidence that the various people groups we have today have not been separated for huge periods of time.

Nope. We’ve got very good evidence that the human species is over 100,000 years old. We can measure the frequency of variations between human subpopulations, we know quite a bit about the rate of accumulation of new variation, and we can calculate how long one group has been diverging from another. We can also look at the pattern and distribution of human genetic variation, and work out historical migrations. This is my family tree:

i-9897d9b90311be17c7a9406d91fcf72f-M343.jpg

I carry a set of mutant markers that put me in the M343 group, along with a lot of other Europeans. M343 is a relatively new marker, but I also have some mutations that put me in the M173 group; I also share genetics with the M45 goup; they in turn share markers with the M9 group; and working backwards through many shared alleles, I can trace my parentage right back to East African groups, between 100 and 200 thousand years ago.

Ken Ham is simply lying. Genetics can show how a small number of novelties can arise in a short time…but the evidence shows that human populations have accumulated a large number of variations, and any competent scientist will tell you that there is no way all human variation could have arisen in 4000 years from a starting stock of eight people. Throughout the site, the Hamites constantly make this kind of dishonest argument: they show that a couple of alleles could assort in a couple of generations, and then leap to the assertion that time is irrelevant, and the sum total of all variation could have arisen very quickly, and further, that all human variations were carried by those 8 people on Noah’s big boat.

It’s strange stuff to read. The creationists have been compelled to accept a surprising amount of evolutionary theory — this bit is hilarious because it shows that they understand the basic principle of Darwinian evolution, and are actually teaching it to their kids. They just shy away from the inevitable and unavoidable conclusion of their reasoning.

Thus, we conclude that the dispersion at Babel broke up a large interbreeding group into small, interbreeding groups. This ensured that the resultant groups would have different mixes of genes for various physical features. By itself, this dispersion would ensure, in a short time, that there would be certain fixed differences in some of these groups, commonly called “races.” In addition, the selection pressure of the environment would modify the existing combinations of genes so that the physical characteristics of each group would tend to suit their environment.

That’s just plain old basic evolutionary theory right there, and in fact, it’s a kind of hyper-Darwinism…except for one significant difference that they spill in the next paragraph: no novel variations are allowed. Every gene now present in our population stepped off the Ark with Noah’s family.

There has been no simple-to-complex evolution of any genes, for the genes were present already. The dominant features of the various people groups result from different combinations of previously existing created genes, plus some minor degenerative changes, resulting from mutation (accidental changes which can be inherited). The originally created (genetic) information has been either reshuffled or has degenerated, but has not been added to.

This is simply false. For example, the published count of alleles of ABO glycosyltransferase, the gene associated with the ABO blood types, is up to 29 so far. The three sons of Noah and their three wives only had a total of 12 copies of chromosome 9, where the gene is located, and even assuming maximum heterozygosity and no shared alleles between any of them, that still leaves 17 alleles that had to have arisen later. We know that Ken Ham is wrong both logically and empirically, and we also completely lack a magic mechanism that would simultaneously guarantee the purity of the original alleles inherited from the tiny Noachian population while simultaneously maximizing subsequent diversity to reach modern levels.

Reading that site, it’s clear that they’ve just battened upon a few elementary genetic facts, and then abused them inappropriately to pretend that science supports them. Whenever they write “Modern genetics supports…” and then state some bizarre Biblical claim, they are lying.

And then, of course, they end it all with an ironic twist, saying that the reason racism is a problem is that false claims are made about the origins of races, and then listing several cases of scientific racism. They conveniently leave out the fact that there were also Biblical justifications for slavery and racism, and that most scientists (and many Christians!) today deplore those distortions. We do not correct them by adding another layer of lies on top, though, as Answers in Genesis has done.

Grow up, Alabama

Bradley Byrne is apparently the front runner in the Republican race for nomination in the Alabama gubernatorial campaign. His opponents have put up this ad against him.

What horrible things has Byrne done, the mere statement of which is sufficient to horrify Alabamans? “Byrne supported teaching evolution….said the Bible was only partially true”. It’s so open and so much taken for granted that stating truths are violations of conservative principles…it’s just crazy.

Poke fun at some creationists while I’m occupied.

Hey, it’s been awfully quiet around here — it’s been one of those lost weekends for me. Sorry about that, I’ve been up to my eyeballs in busy-ness, and it doesn’t look like it’ll get much better today. So I guess I’ll steal something from the May/June edition of Skeptical Inquirer, by permission of managing editor Ben Radford.

14 (+ 1) Reasons Why Creationists Are More Intelligently Designed Than Evolutionists
Paul DesOrmeaux

  1. “Creationism” comes before “evolution” in the dictionary.

  2. Radiometric dating has determined that Kirk Cameron is between 6,000 – 10,000 years old.

  3. The banana has obviously been perfectly designed by a designer for eating and for using in other creative, non-edible ways.

  4. Where the hell are those transitional species, like flying squirrels, for example?

  5. If we evolved from monkeys, why don’t we look more like the Planet of the Apes chimps?

  6. Ben Stein offers a perfect example of irreducible complexity “wherein the removal of any one of the parts [such as dying brain cells] causes the system to effectively cease functioning.”

  7. Especially when filled with animal crackers, my Noah’s Ark cookie jar is an exact replica of the real deal as depicted in my illustrated Bible.

  8. Evolution violates the second, third, fourth, and any future laws of thermodynamics that science types can dream up.

  9. If the earth were actually billions of years old, all the water from the Genesis flood, which currently covers three-fourths of the Earth’s surface, would have disappeared down the drain by now.

  10. After supposedly “millions of years,” tetrapods haven’t evolved into pentapods.

  11. Evolution is only a theory, like the theory of the Scottish origin of rap music.

  12. There are well known, professionally published scientists who believe in God and who think dogs can telepathically communicate with humans.

  13. If you leave bread, peanut butter, and Fluff on a counter long enough, does it eventually evolve into a Fluffernutter sandwich? Not likely.

  14. Contrary to claims by Darwinists, Ann Coulter is not a transitional fossil.

  15. If creationism isn’t a valid alternative theory, then what are we going to do with all that crap in the Creation Museum?

    “Hello, My name is Herb Grossman”

    It’s hard to find something dumber than Kent Hovind, but here you go: the website of Herb Grossman, trashevolution. It’s what Hovind could have produced if he’d been an alcoholic gay man in denial. He has a rambling, mostly incoherent set of pages that he claims disprove evolution, but if you read just one, it should be his page on homosexuality. It doesn’t really exist, you know, although he has been feeling supernatural homosexual urges for years.

    No one has to be a homosexual, because—

    —Homosexuality is a Cruel Deception,

    and you should not worry about possibly being a homosexual, because there is no such thing–homosexuality is an evil supernatural trick! The key is to fight it, and the sooner the better. I still sometimes get supernatural “urges” towards perversions or homosexuality, but by immediately rejecting “it” (both physically and mentally), “it” goes away.

    What I write or say concerning belief in evolution being a major encouragement towards homosexuality is not meant to win some popularity contest. Some of you will laugh and think I am stupid for writing this, but the shoes I have walked in–the years of aggravation while fighting off the cause of homosexuality–have given me a certain amount of sympathy for the homosexual and a hatred for the way evolution is such a big factor in keeping many of them trapped in their unfortunate perversion. It would be a crime for me to know what I know and not do something, because I thoroughly believe that many people will benefit from knowing of the troubles I’ve been through and will be inspired to avoid or get out of the homosexual trap

    He never does get around to explaining how evolutionary biology contributes to homosexuality, and after reading about his miserable life with two angry divorces, 35 years of alcoholism and gambling addiction, I’m thinking he’s about the last person I’d want advising me on how to live a good life. Instead of actually addressing anything about evolution or homosexuality, though, what Mr Grossman does next is recite a litany of “supernatural” events that occurred to him and which prove there is a god. Here’s my favorite of his examples:

    I had several situations where I would be sitting and think of something good I could do, and a big foam-rubber-like hand would then pat me on a shoulder as if approving of my thoughts. Was an invisible person standing beside me? Some supernatural person was–and I was inclined to think “God,” but I now suspect it was really someone conditioning me towards accepting supernatural deceptions.

    Did I mention that he was a long-term alcoholic? Yes, I did. This is what most of his supernatural events are: imaginary incidents, bleary fantasies of seeing things that weren’t there. And then, finally, he ties this all back to his ideas about homosexuality (but not evolution):

    It wasn’t long before I fell into about three months of doing perverse, homosexual acts with invisible, supernatural people/beings* Strong thoughts and sensations would get things started, but I was not the cause–no pornography used. Somebody had control of me! (I did meet up with some visible demonic types, but those encounters, although weird, were not of a homosexual nature).

    *I have never acted in any perverted/homosexual manner with any man or boy, nor felt any attraction/sensation towards the same. However, I am not claiming total innocence on my part, as I must admit to some perverse actions (sometimes with use of pornography) in my past that I am ashamed of (I wish I knew then what I know now). Looking back, I suspect those past actions likely made me an attractive target to the supernatural “persons’ that drive the homosexual deception system. To be fair, though, I realize there are many social forces and situations that might condition a person to accept the homosexual deception. and I do not doubt that some people have fallen into the homosexuality trap without having prior perverse activities:

    What a sad, repressed, confused little man. He never felt any attraction towards other men…he just fantasized about homosexual acts with invisible people. And has so little ability to distinguish the imaginary from the actual that he thinks those dreaming encounters were real, but at the same time not real enough to count as gay impulses.

    The other sad thing about his series of articles is that he’s addressing them to “Mr. or Miss Teenager of America.” He’s trying to reach out to youth and convince them that he has all the answers, but I can guess what young people will think: “Ewww. Creepy old loser.”

    Massimo Pigliucci is so very rude

    Massimo Pigliucci has written a book, Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science From Bunk(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), that actually sounds very interesting — it takes a strong skeptic’s approach to truth claims. What really makes it sound worth reading, though, is a review by Carlin Romano that pans it, Pigliucci, and a whole great legion of scientists irritated with the public endorsement of nonsense: Romano complains that we’re on “ego trips.” Why? Because Pigliucci expresses such strong certainty about the conclusions of science.

    Here’s the heart of the review. It’s a lot of aggravating piss-pottery about tone.

    Pigliucci offers more hero sandwiches spiced with derision and certainty. Media coverage of science is “characterized by allegedly serious journalists who behave like comedians.” Commenting on the highly publicized Dover, Pa., court case in which U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled that intelligent-design theory is not science, Pigliucci labels the need for that judgment a “bizarre” consequence of the local school board’s “inane” resolution. Noting the complaint of intelligent-design advocate William Buckingham that an approved science textbook didn’t give creationism a fair shake, Pigliucci writes, “This is like complaining that a textbook in astronomy is too focused on the Copernican theory of the structure of the solar system and unfairly neglects the possibility that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is really pulling each planet’s strings, unseen by the deluded scientists.”

    Is it really? Or is it possible that the alternate view unfairly neglected could be more like that of Harvard scientist Owen Gingerich, who contends in God’s Universe (Harvard University Press, 2006) that it is partly statistical arguments–the extraordinary unlikelihood eons ago of the physical conditions necessary for self-conscious life–that support his belief in a universe “congenially designed for the existence of intelligent, self-reflective life”? Even if we agree that capital “I” and “D” intelligent-design of the scriptural sort–what Gingerich himself calls “primitive scriptural literalism”–is not scientifically credible, does that make Gingerich’s assertion, “I believe in intelligent design, lowercase i and lowercase d,” equivalent to Flying-Spaghetti-Monsterism?

    Tone matters. And sarcasm is not science.

    Romano is oblivious to the actual facts of the Dover case. William Buckingham was not some thoughtful theist who wanted a philosophical discussion in the science classroom; he wasn’t even an ID proponent. He was a born-again jesus freak befuddled on hillbilly heroin who was more of a young earth creationist. He wanted to get the Christian Bible into the public school classrooms, was willing to lie on the witness stand to do it, and saw intelligent design only as a tool to smuggle Jesus into the science classes.

    Yes, really.

    “Inane” is also how Judge Jones described the school board’s actions: to be precise, he called it “breathtaking inanity”. The view they were trying to push on children, that the there is a magic man in the sky who poofed us all into existence, is actually entirely as silly as the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Pigliucci was right. Romano is wrong.

    But what if Buckingham had been a genteel, considerate, ruminative Owen-Gingerich-style Pennsylvania populist? Would that make any difference? No. Gingerich is a religious cosmologist who believes that “a common-sense and satisfying interpretation of our world suggests the designing hand of a superintelligence.” There is absolutely no evidence for this, despite his claims that that bogus ‘fine-tuning’ argument supports the notion. It’s a fabulous fantasy of a grand cosmic super-brain hovering about at the beginning of the Big Bang that is just as ludicrously unfounded as the claim that Jesus did it, or that the Flying Spaghetti Monster flapped a few noodly appendages to conjure a home for pirates into existence. Leaving the word “Jesus” out of your explanation does not turn it into science.

    The only thing I agreed with in Romano’s cranky review was the second to the last sentence above: “Tone matters.” It certainly does, but not in the way he imagines. Romano has written a kvetching review in which he reserves all of his bile for the fellow promoting an evidence-based view of reality, and provides nothing but gentle strokes for people who favor fantasies over hard truths…and his complaint is that scientists are insufficiently conciliatory to those deceitful purveyors of faith and fables. Tone does matter when you use that brand of argument to beg special treatment for liars, and to justify chastising those who deliver a blunt truth — it means one is pandering to faith-based folly.

    Tone matters, because too many have been insufficiently fierce in their criticism of pious excuses for sloppy thinking. Tone matters because we haven’t been rude enough in the face of special claims of privilege for religious inanity. We need to flip that tone argument around 180°—the problem isn’t that our tone is so harsh, it’s that yours is so inappropriately soft towards people who lie to children, who want to gut our educational system, and who want to taint science with a bias for magic.

    I get email

    I was cleaning out my filtered junk mail folder, and what do I discover? Mail after mail after mail from a long-banned kook, the infamously idiotic John A. Davison. Davison’s is notoriously incompetent: this is the fellow who has created multiple blogs, each with one entry, which he closes when it gathers enough comments…most of which are from Davison himself. He also tends to get in long running battles in blog comments, all over his dismissal of evolution, which he regards as the most important battle in the history of mankind!!!. He has also reported me to my university provost.

    He has banned here for a long time. He’s banned just about everywhere, which he complains bitterly about, but it’s entirely because he’s obsessive and insane and repetitive — even the ID/creationist blogs can’t stand him.

    So he’s been dunning me with email, apparently. He’s usually yelling at me to pay attention to him, and spamming links to one of his blogs…usually to some specific comment at his blog, because, as is par for the course, his blogs have almost no actual entries, just long mumbling rants by himself in the comment threads.

    But he’s been so persistent that I’ll give him a moment’s attention, just to taunt him. Because he’s such an ass, though, I’m going to torment him by deleting all the links he sent me. Trust me, they all say the same thing: “I love it so,” and various permutations of his claim that evolution is finished, and that he has proven it wrong. He hasn’t.

    These are just the most recent of his missives. There are many more, but I’ve deleted them.

    22 March:

    Dear PeeZee,

    I invite you to savor my several recent essays which can be found on the link –

      url redacted  

    Perhaps you would be willing to introduce them to your flock so they can enjoy them as well.

    It doesn’t get any better thn this.

    22 March:

    Dear Pee Zee

    Enjoy my recent essays –

      url redacted  

    Let me know how you feel about them.

    30 March:

      url redacted  

    #712

    Enjoy!

    15 April:

    Check out my latest challenge –

      url redacted  

    and acknowledge it. I will look for it!

    22 April:

    Hey PeeZee,

    Why don’t you call the attention of your drooling retards to the emails you get from me? I’ll look for it!

    27 April:

    PeeZee,

      url redacted  

    #267

    Enjoy!

    28 April:

    Dear PeeZee,

    A collection of my unpublished Evolution papers is now available

      url to self-published book redacted  

    The definitve cover and possible endoresements are not yet in place.

    29 April:

    Dear PeeZee

      url redacted  

    #404

    I expect to see an acknowledgement that I exist on Pharyngula.

    30 April:

    PeeZee

    Why don’t you rate my book? I’m sure your fans would love to see you destroy it. I will look for it!

    30 April:

    Pee Zee

    I see you, like Dawkins and Elsberry, go right on petending I don’t exist. That won’t work any longer. You clowns are finished. Now get cracking and recognize that you have been mortally wounded. The longer you ignore me and my sources the worse it wll be for you. I will see to it. Trust me.

    1 May:

    Dear PeeZee

    How does it feel to realize that everything you believe is about to be exposed as meaningless drivel? It must be awful for you. Check out my Why Banishment? thread from time to time. There you will discover that [email protected] refuses to accept my emails, a response in itself. Lynn Margulis has resorted to the same desperate device. If you Darwinian mystics think you can continue your time honored tradition of ignoring your real adversaries, you are all very sadly mistaken. It is crunch time PeeZee. Gird your loins. The longer you insist on silence the worse it will be for you. I will see to it and will enjoy every moment of it! Trust me.

    Cheers

    John

    He’s just getting crazier and crazier, and now he’s beginning to sound like that other banned kook, Dennis Markuze.

    Texans shall demonstrate

    On 16 May, there will be a demonstration protesting the foolish curriculum the Texas Board of Education is imposing on the state. If you’re near the capitol, join in! Here’s their rationale:

    A religious-right faction dominating the Texas Board of Education is trying to distort the content of public school textbooks. This revisionist history includes downplaying or eliminating mention of Enlightenment thinkers including Thomas Jefferson, more emphasis on religious themes and figures (theocrats like John Calvin!), and even attacks on Darwinian evolution. These religious extremists wish to turn our public schools into pulpits for sectarian preaching and an authoritarian social and cultural agenda.
    Read the Proposed Revisions here

    Their actions could affect the content of school texts in nearly two-dozen other states as well!

    We urge you to join us for a peaceful assembly on the steps of the Texas State Capitol in Austin to protest this outrage, and to express support of teaching solid science, balanced history and facts over sectarian religious dogmatism. Stop the Texas Textbook Massacre!

    Go and send me photos.