The five best arguments for creationism ever!

Don’t you just love a challenge? I’m always looking for some splendid argument from a creationist that would make me think, but they always give me such silliness, instead. And then, I saw this: a mainstream newspaper (well, the Telegraph…but at least it’s not the Daily Mail) offers us an article with a tantalizing promise: they’re going to give us the the five very best arguments to support creationism. Whoa. Cool. I’m sure they also put their very best science reporter on the job to get some real stumpers for scientists.

Here goes. Brace yourselves. Prepare to be provoked and excited!

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The Global Darwinist Dictatorship Must Apologize to the Entire World!

I’ve been promoted. I’m now a member of a ruling cabal that forms a world dictatorship. BWAHAHAHAHAAHAAHAHAAHAHAAAA!

At least, that is, according to this email I just got.

Darwinism is under official protection in 95% of the countries of the world. People are forced to believe this false theory imposed on them as an official ideology.

THE GLOBAL DARWINIST DICTATORSHIP MUST APOLOGIZE TO THE ENTIRE WORLD,

  • for presenting innumerable frauds to the scientific world for 150 years,
  • for imposing Darwinism as the official ideology,
  • for trying to keep Darwinism alive by means of official protection,
  • for putting pressure on and removing pro-Creation scientists from their posts,
  • for putting anti-democratic pressure on Creationists all over the world through the press and other means…

To read further:

http://tr1.harunyahya.com/Detail/T/EDCRFV/productId/9546/THE_GLOBAL_DARWINIST_DICTATORSHIP_MUST_APOLOGIZE_TO_THE_ENTIRE_WORLD!

A Statement to Darwinists

THE DARWINIST DICTATORSHIP SHOULD APOLOGIZE:

  • For banning and burning anti-Darwinist books,
  • For refusing to permit any contrary opinions,
  • For removing scientists holding opposing ideas from their posts,
  • For forcing students to give answers in favor of the theory in university exams,
  • For deceiving the world with countless hoax fossils,
  • For concealing Cambrian period fossils for 70 years and for still hiding every new fossil discovery since they constitute evidence for Creation,
  • For concealing the impossibility of even a single protein coming into being by chance,
  • For portraying only hoax skulls as evidence of the so-called evolution of man,
    For so long imposing the lie that mutations cause evolution,
  • And for deceiving all of humanity, admitting a biased lie and nonsense, and violating the human rights of all mankind by disseminating that nonsense.

Darwinist publications constantly talk about freedom of expression and democracy. But they support the banning by the Council of Europe of the Atlas of Creation (http://www.atlasofcreation.com/), which is full of scientific evidence and has caused such a wide response across the world, and do all in their power to bring it about. Yet they oppose the banning by court decision of Richard Dawkins’ insult-filled book and articles. This is nothing more than dishonesty.

To read further:

http://tr1.harunyahya.com/Detail/T/EDCRFV/productId/9653/A_STATEMENT_TO_DARWINISTS

To follow the Darwinist propaganda:

http://www.darwinism-watch.com/

I had no idea that we had so much power. I sure wish I could use it to be able to afford a housekeeping staff for my mansion, and to buy my mansion, and to give me enough money to get a mansion (I’m on sabbatical, which means half-pay, you know) instead of using my immense powers to force students to answer biology exams. Seems kind of a waste of a dictatorship.

Anyway, it’s just noise from a member of the Adnan Oktar cult. The New Humanist has a good bio on Oktar, or Harun Yahya as he calls himself. He’s a crazy, cunning con artist who has enriched himself by peddling nonsense to the gullible.

By the way…NO APOLOGIES.

True confessions of a creationist

A little while ago, we had a report of creationist graduating from Harvard and going on to use his degree for evangelism. How sweet, I know…but surely he wouldn’t admit to simply getting his degree for window dressing, would he?

Why, yes he would! he’s very proud of the purity of his creationist heritage and pulling off the acquisition of a Ph.D. from Harvard.

He went straight to Harvard Medical School, which he said “sounded like it would be useful for credentials and evangelism.”

“I’m a second generation creationist, you might say,” he said. He explained how he saw that “salvation was inherent in creation science” and that it could be used as a tool for evangelism, another passion of his.

With a promising and lucrative career in medical research open before him, Jeanson said he underwent a career shift at Harvard. “I asked myself, ‘How can I use and abuse my training to influence eternity, rather than for temporary gain?'” He considered mission work or attending seminary. He decided, instead, to seek employment at ICR, rather than continuing his research in Boston.

Harvard, you’ve been used.

Working towards the perfect pointless poll

This is how to design an online poll to stymie the Pharyngulistas: make sure it makes no sense and limits the options to only unpalatable choices. Go ahead and try and figure this one out…although it does say it is for creationists, and it is for Christians only.

Why Creationist is your favorite?

15% (3) Kent Hovind
5% (1) Ken Ham
36% (7) Both
42% (8) Neither… someone else

“Why creationist,” indeed.

I get email

This peculiar little email is nothing special, but is actually rather representative. It’s interesting because most atheists will read it one way, where I suspect he actually means it another way.

Professor Myers,

My name is Jack Heidman and I am an F15 pilot and commercial airline pilot for American Airlines. I am not a biologist. I was too busy flirting with my cute lab partner to pay attention in high school biology class (by the way, I went to Wayzata High – I bet you know where that is).

I would seriously like your opinion on another stupid creationist question I have. I know that you know your origins view is correct and I am wrong. I also know that you know us creationists (especially young earth creationists) are incredibly misinformed and/or stupid. I am not trying to be sarcastic. You are obviously a very educated individual and I am quite certain you are much more intelligent than I am.

My stupid creationist question is simple: What if you’re wrong? Pascal once said “Are you willing to wager eternity?” Is it possible that where you go when you die might be as important as where you came from (in your case – primordial soup)? Don’t you think your eternity might be worth a little consideration? I’ve seen your picture on the internet and I notice a few grey hairs in your beard. Unfortunately I’m getting a few myself which reminds me every morning when I shave to consider my post-death living quarters (you might want to ask yourself…smoking or non?)

The walls of your Neo-Darwinian Jericho are crumbling around you. You know it. You’ve known it for a long, long time. The problem is, now other people are figuring it out as well. A lot of other people!

Sir, please think about my stupid creationist question. I eagerly await your reply.

Respectfully,

Lt Col Jack Heidman
F15 Pilot and…
A Colossally Stupid Bible Believing Creationist

Most of you are probably thinking that he was being extremely sarcastic, in spite of his disavowal — he starts off by telling me how smart I am and how stupid he is, and winds up asserting that I’m wrong about everything, and he knows it…and then he emphasizes how stupid he is. If you read it aloud, you’d probably adopt a mocking, sneering tone.

However, he probably is entirely sincere and not at all sarcastic (emphasis on “probably” — he could be trying to be obnoxious, but I’ve talked to enough creationists to suspect that he isn’t.) There’s a key to understanding his intent.

This is classic American anti-intellectualism. He honestly believes that intelligence is not a virtue, so in a weird twist of values, he is venting a bit by accusing me of being intelligent, and bragging about himself when he says he is stupid. Heidman is a prideful man with a huge ego; it’s why he starts off with the announcement that he is an accomplished pilot. That isn’t a contradiction with his anti-intellectualism, either: learning to fly an F15 is not an exercise of the brain to him, but a God-given talent. He didn’t believe in wasting time learning in high school, when he could instead make time with the girls. He’d probably also deny being egotistical, because it’s OK to gloat over one’s abilities if they are a gift from God.

He’s also entirely correct. He is Colossally Stupid, because he doesn’t think. He’s happy to toss around Pascal’s Wager even though it is a pathetic argument, because it feels good to his gut, and he’s already blindly confident that his particular faith is entirely true. You can tell him that he is stupid, and he will be unfazed, and will probably take considerable pride in the label — people who think, think, think get in the way of unreasoning acceptance of his blithe confidence. We could easily rip his ‘argument’ to shreds — it doesn’t address any of the issues of origins, it’s little more than a fallacious argument from consequence, and it is non-specific and can be used equally well to defend any random religious belief, from the Amish to Zoroastrianism — but that doesn’t matter. He’d smirk happily through any dissection, because he didn’t use his brain to come up with it, anyway.

It’s sad. There are a lot of people who believe this way, on feelings and gut impressions and simple, stupid confidence in what they already “know”, where “knowing” in their case is nothing but unquestioning acceptance of what they’ve been told.

Be aware. This attitude is more common than you can imagine.

What have you done for science education in your state lately?

One of the big issues in science education is the topic of science standards: each state is supposed to have guidelines for the public school curriculum, which are intended to enforce some uniformity and also make sure that key subjects are covered. These standards are often accompanied by big political fights as the religious right tries, for instance, to get evolution (and sex education, and historical accuracy, and …) expunged from the curriculum. Sometimes they succeed, and sometimes the good guys win.

An article in Evolution: Education and Outreach assesses the current state of state science standards, and one of the things they’ve done is grade each state on their support for evolutionary biology. A centerpiece of the article is this map of science standard scores…how is your state doing?

i-581cff39e192cfb4d1ceca6a9664f1ca-2009_state_science_standards-thumb-400x240-18521.jpeg
(Click for larger image)

Minnesota is doing pretty good. We got dinged for weak coverage of cosmology, and also for the inclusion of some waffly language that was included to appease the creationist lobby. Those are productive suggestions that we can build on for the next round of standards revisions, in a few years. We had our recent infestation of creationist yuckiness (ahh, Cheri Yecke…we do not miss you at all), but we got better. We’ve also built a local advocacy group, Minnesota Citizens for Science Education, that is there to provide support and information in building better standards.

I can’t help but gloat over our neighbor to the east: Wisconsin may have an excellent university system, but their politics have been poison to science education. That may change — they’ve now also got a Wisconsin Citizens for Science group, so maybe someone will be doing some effective lobbying in the future.

I think that’s key: you need activists mobilized to work for improvement, good education doesn’t just poof into existence. The other interesting cases on that map are Kansas and Florida: if you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know that those have been two hotspots for creationist inanity for some time now. So what’s with the perfect As for those states? How can such hotbeds of creationism be scoring so well?

First thing you have to keep in mind is that state science standards just say what should be taught, not necessarily what is taught. States with great standards can still have many teachers who are doing a poor job and not meeting those standards; similarly, there are great teachers in those failing states that go above and beyond to teach evolution well. The standards merely represent what direction the educational authorities in that state want their schools to take. A state with an A standard is declaring that they are aiming high for their students; the F states have essentially announced that they are giving up and diving for the basement.

The other point is that these reflect recent changes: responsible citizens have been stirred up by the crazies infesting their school boards, and are working hard to improve matters. There is hope: there is a clear message being sent to teachers in those states that they must do better. They also have excellent citizen groups organized there — Kansans should join Kansas Citizens for Science, and in Florida, help Florida Citizens for Science.

As for Texas…hoo boy. Texas is a bad story all around. They have some great advocacy groups working there (Texas Citizens for Science and the Texas Freedom Network), but have deep problems. They have a political history of putting the very worst, most unqualified creationist dingleberries in charge — Don McElroy, for instance — which makes progress difficult, and I suspect there is a lot of external pressure on the state, as well. As one of the largest textbook markets, and with a centralized decision-making apparatus for selecting textbooks, they are a major target of all of the creationist organizations; they know that influence in Texas ripples out everywhere else. We can only hope it will turn around soon.

So look at your state. If your standards are good, don’t be complacent: keep them that way, and also work locally to make sure your school districts actually implement them. If your state is shading into the dark grays…look for a state citizens for science group, or if you don’t have one, create one. Write to your representatives and let them know what’s going on; maybe send them a copy of the Mead and Mates paper and shame them a little bit.

Do something, though. It would be nice to see the United States get straight As someday.

Mead LS, Mates A (2009) Why Science Standards are Important to a Strong Science Curriculum and How States Measure Up. Evolution: Education and Outreach 2(3): 359-371.

Carlos Cerna will someday demand his Ph.D.

When you tie a university to a religious ideology, you create stresses that show that the modern search for knowledge is the antithesis of religious dogma. I keep telling people that science and religion are in opposition, and here’s a perfect example: La Sierra University is a Seventh Day Adventist college. SDAs are fundamentalists and literalists (although, isn’t it strange how different literalist sects all seem to come up with different…ahem…interpretations of the Bible?) who as a point of doctrine believe in a young earth and seven day creation. La Sierra has a biology department, as well as teaching other science disciplines.

Let that sink in. Science departments. Six thousand year old earth.

Does not compute. Error. Abort, retry, fail?

How do they do that? Well, a recent controversy has exposed what goes on there, and as it turns out…they teach pretty good mainstream science. From that story, the faculty in their biology department seem to know what they are doing, and they teach that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, and they go over the evidence for it in considerable detail. The professor who teaches one of the courses seems to be no-nonsense and on the ball.

Bradley says he’s felt no pressure to change anything about his course, and says bluntly that he doesn’t plan to turn his class into a theological seminar, or to present evolutionary theory only to then dismantle it for students. While he’s fine with helping students work through struggles of faith, Bradley says he won’t undercut decades of peer reviewed scientific research in the interest of religious consistency.

“I am not OK with getting up in a science course and saying most science is bullshit,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Seventh Day Advent church and the administrators of the college have a different agenda in mind. They want the scientific evidence taught to the students so they can oppose it, and the whole mission of the college is to eventually lead them back into the worship of dogma and superstition — they are plainly going to undermine the teaching of Bradley and get the students to believe that most science is bullshit.

By June 19, the president of the worldwide church had written a letter affirming the church’s belief in a “literal, recent, six-day creation” and that “the Flood was global in nature.” Jay Paulsen, the church’s president, went on to say that church-sponsored colleges and universities should teach students about evolution, but mindfully steer them back toward the church’s contrary view.

“As part of that exercise [in teaching] you will also expose them to elements and concepts of evolution. That is understood,” he wrote. “As your pastor, however, I appeal to you that when you take your students out on the journey, you bring them safely back home before the day is over. And their home must always be in the world of faith. You owe it to the students, you owe it to God, you owe it to their parents, you owe it to the church, and you owe it to yourself as a believer to safely guide them through difficult moments on their journey.”

Oh, and by the way, you cannot get tenure at La Sierra unless you are a member of the Seventh Day Adventist church. The mind boggles. I know this kind of restriction is fairly common at fundie colleges, but it is such an imposition of ideology on the faculty — it turns academic freedom into a joke.

One thing I cannot understand is how Gary Bradley can stomach investing so much of his career in such a place…but he says he is a practicing Adventist.

This exposure of the slimy underbelly of a religious institution came to light as a consequence of an angry student with a sense of entitlement (I’ve run into a few of those — we have them even at secular universities). He took one of Bradley’s courses which taught the real scientific evidence for the age of the earth, and was expected to understand it and be able to explain it in a five page term paper. He couldn’t. In fact, his paper is more concerned with presenting a superficial discussion of a few dating methods and then bringing up creationist objections to them, contrary to the instructions he was given.

You can read Carlos Cerna’s paper online. It’s not very good; it’s 13 pages long, but the treatment is incredibly shallow, it has only 5 references, all of which are used to weakly bolster contrarian claims, and simply regurgitates (with skeptical caveats) what he was told in class as representations of standard scientific opinion. For that, he got an incredibly generous C. I would have wobbled between outright flunking the kid or giving him a pity D for being able to type up sentences that are mostly grammatically correct.

You can also read the post-grading exchanges between the student and professor. He’s “flabbergasted” that he only got a C. Yeah, I know those students — the ones who think the grade they should get is the one they want, not the one they earned. Bradley’s comments are actually very cogent and helpful; he explains what he expected, and that the included apologetics are inappropriate. Here’s Bradley’s summary; the student was following standard creationist tactics.

As I said, this paper is unacceptable. When I reluctantly agreed that you could insert paragraphs [single paragraphs!] taking issue with the mainstream data I fully expected you to do a good job with that mainstream data. Instead you have largely ignored it and generated yet another creation apologetic piece that “mines quotes” and ignores volumes of data. You can and must do better than this.

It’s a valid criticism. I don’t quite know why an unacceptable paper was given a C, but I know grade inflation is rampant everywhere.

Meanwhile, the Seventh Day Adventists are freaking out, and protesting that kids are actually exposed to good science in the biology program at “their” university, which they think ought to be teaching only the dogma of their religion. If you ask me, their kids look to be getting a far better education than they deserve.

WARNING TO BIOLOGY PROGRAMS EVERYWHERE: The student, Carlos Cerna, has announced his intention to get a Ph.D. in molecular biology. If you take him on, be aware that he’s going to need a lot of remedial instruction, that he has an attitude, and that he probably just wants a degree from your institution so he can use it to peddle creationism to the ignorant. Don’t let him slip through your program without thoroughly grilling him on the basics of biology, or he’s going to bring some shame on your program.

Smarm + Creationist Math = Smath

Which makes this video very, very smathy.

That’s Carl Baugh, by the way, who appears regularly on the Trinity Broadcast Network to teach viewers about creationism. It’s a good program to watch (I do, now and then) if you want to see how flinking bugnuts insane young earth creationists can be.

This particular episode has all the standard tropes. They bring on a guest gomer, and they go on and on about his credentials — this one is a ‘prominent mathematician’ who teaches at a high school and part time at a trade school. They puff him up good; creationists really want the Voice of Authority, which is why so many of them chase after bogus degrees…it’s for the window dressing.

Then they do a lot of mutual backslapping, where they tell each other how skeptical and scientific they are, and in this case, bray about how mathematics is the language of science (which is true) and how they are going to look critically at the actual data using objective mathematics.

Then they “crunch the numbers.” I think that’s creation-speak for “diddle the books.”

All the guy does is plug numbers into the standard formula for compound interest to calculate the expected number of people in populations after a certain period of time. Seriously. I tried it, and got pretty much the same numbers he did. You can play the same game with his Biblical scenario in a little more detail and calculate populations at various times in history: the world population was about 150,000 at the time of Alexander the Great, 600,000 when Jesus was born, 5 billion when I was born. As usually happens with these kinds of bogus calculations, our smath professor needs to use an invalid formula and apply it inappropriately to get numbers that only match at the beginning and end of the time period he is examining, but are so low as to be laughable at the earliest times in his history, and that don’t match up at all over periods where we have good census data.

You might also wonder where he got his growth rate of 0.456%. He made it up. It happens to be the number that, assuming a starting population of 8 4500 years ago, you get a final population of 6.5 billion now.

Leaving death out of his calculations is a tiny omission that makes even that fudged number wrong.

I stand corrected — his growth rate, imaginary as it is, consolidates birth rates minus death rates, so it still works with non-immortals.

For all the wrong reasons

Kristin Maguire, chair of the South Carolina State Board of Education, has resigned from her position for all the wrong reasons. She has been a shill for the religious right, and has opposed the teaching of evolution in the public schools; she has also promoted that worthless ‘abstinence only’ sex education. She should have been fired for basic incompetence. But no, that is not sufficient reason to kick someone out of office in America. What gets American politicians in trouble?

You guessed it: sex. There were unverified rumors of inappropriate behavior, but what really got her was that she has a history of publishing hard core erotic porn on the internet, under a pseudonym — ordinary stuff, of the sort you can find on all kinds of sites, like Literotica, all over the place.

I say, good for her. There’s nothing wrong with a healthy sexual outlet, especially since it harmed no one at all. The hypocrisy of fostering a repressive social agenda in her work while indulging in fantasy play in private is a bit bothersome, but that a human being enjoys sex personally and in a way that does not interfere with his or her work should not be a bar to working in government.

Pushing creationism…that ought to be a serious problem. She did not lose her job for that, annoyingly.

At least now she’s free to write more stories!

How dare you disrespect the Krishnas?

Steven Novella has an excellent analogy for the Sedalia evolution t-shirt nonsense: What if the Krishnas had complained about a t-shirt that showed a rocket going to the moon? Apparently, they don’t believe in space travel at all, so it would have been just as offensive to them — and it’s amazing how well the arguments the evolution-sneerers used would apply.

Except, of course, that non-Christian religions do not receive the degree of deference granted to even the wackiest dogma that has Jesus floating around in it somewhere.