The worst article on Ardipithecus yet

The dishonor goes to ABC News, which put together an appalling mess of an article that gives credibility to creationist denialists. Right from the beginning, you know this article is bunk.

But despite the excitement from the paleontology community, another group of researchers, many of them with advanced degrees in science, are unimpressed by Ardi, who they believe is just another ape — an ape of indeterminate age, they add, and an ape who cannot be an ancestor of modern man for a range of reasons, including one of singular importance: God created man in one day, and evolution is a fallacy.

The whole article is like that: they cite Creation Ministries International, the Institute for Creation Research, and Answers in Genesis, puffing up the credentials of these loons and credulously reporting their dissent. None of these fellows is any kind of researcher, all are looked upon as utterly crazy, and there is no reason to consult any of them on a science story, let alone dedicating a long article solely to their batty position (they quote one of the real researchers just once, saying that the discovery was an important find — but it is more to lend weight to the parade of nutcases declaring it trivial.)

They give a lot of space to Answers in Genesis, especially to one of their pet frauds-with-a-degree, David Menton.

“What creationists believe about human origins we get from the Bible,” said David Menton an acclaimed anatomist and also a creationist. “The creation of the world takes place on page one of the Bible. If you throw out the first page of the Bible you might as well throw out the whole thing. If you can’t live with the first page then pitch out the remaining thousand pages.”

Menton is not an acclaimed anatomist. His sole claim to fame is his weird belief that the earth is only 6000 years old. Although, I must say, I agree with his sentiment here: the first page is metaphorical, poetical nonsense and should be thrown out, and the rest should be tossed right after it. But what really annoys me is the patent disrespect for knowledge in these people. Ardipithecus is a genus that lived over 4 million years ago. Shouldn’t there be a little bit of awe at that? Not from the ICR.

“This is a meaningless discovery of another ape. As far as the creationist community is concerned, this is a big yawn. There is nothing about Ardi that has anything to do with the evolution of man,” said John Morris, president of the Institute for Creation Research in Dallas.

Menton just keeps on bringing the dementia.

Menton believes scientists sat on the Ardi discovery for over a decade just to roll it out during the Darwin anniversary. He questions the ability to accurately date any fossils more than a few thousand years old, let alone millions, and he said the condition of the skeleton was so incomplete and fragile that serious research was almost impossible.

Menton said Ardi’s skull and feet are exactly the kind of skull and feet you would expect an ape to have and have none of the features of modern humans.

“Evolutionists want to call Ardi ‘ape-like.’ This creature is ape-like, because she is an ape. Just call it an ape,” he said.

The biggest problem Menton has with Ardi is her estimated age. The Earth, he says, is no more around 5,000 years old, a number creationists have estimated by counting the generations of man named in the Bible from Adam to Jesus.

“Evolution is supposedly based on science, but the science does not prove what they want it to. Creationism is not based on scientific observation but on God’s word. God created everything in six days, and that’s it.”

Errm, the scientists all agree: Ardi was an ape. They say it right out. They’ll also tell ‘acclaimed’ anatomist Menton that, based on the anatomy, we humans are also apes. We also regard the even older last common ancestor of chimps (which are apes) and humans (also apes) to have been an ape. Therefore, any transitional form between an ancient ape and a modern ape is expected to be an ape.

What did Menton expect? A frickin’ giraffe?

As for the rest…anyone in the 21st century who rants about the earth being 6000 years old and unthinkingly accepts the scientific authority of an ancient book cobbled together by tribes of sheepherders really needs to be shuffled off to a rubber room.

So what is ABC News doing getting a story on a serious scientific issue from a series of lunatic asylums? I don’t know. Who is this ‘journalist,’ Russel Goldman, who scribbled up this gullible slop? I don’t know and I don’t care, except that I’ll know to throw anything else he writes in the rubbish.

An evening in Minot

The Minot meeting this evening was lots of fun; what made it especially entertaining was that it was attended by a few fervently deluded creationists who boldly asked questions at the end. I got a few variants of “you’re uncivil, so I think you’re wrong” (tough — peddle bullshit arguments, I’ll call you a bullshitter), the “you just have different presuppositions than I do” argument (which works wonderfully in arguments for the existence of Santa Claus), and the claim that “creationists and scientists look at the same facts and just interpret them differently” (not true, creationists selectively ignore most of the facts). I also got a few specific questions outside my field, like the one about the shrinking sun. Too bad I didn’t have my counter-creationism handbook with me, because this is a stunt they always pull: I talk about genetics and molecular biology, so they pepper me with misconceptions about physics and geology.

Anyway, I did show one amusing video at the end of my talk to illustrate creationist theology. Here it is:

Sometime, I have to get some sleep, though. And sometime, I have to drive all the way back to Morris. Oy, this has been a long week. What day is it?

Monday?

Oh, crap.

An entirely appropriate summary of Stephen Meyer’s talk in Oklahoma

It was very simple: DIRP.

I knew ahead of time exactly what it was going to be: complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity, therefore, DESIGN. It doesn’t follow. The logic is nonexistent. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect a competent person with a Ph.D. in philosophy to recognize, but no, it’s the same ol’ thing, trotted out every time they get up to speak.

COMPLEXITY DOES NOT IMPLY DESIGN. You can build up an awesome mess of complexity by accident, so you need to demonstrate something other than complexity to demonstrate intent.

I get email

This is a lovely example of offended sensibilities that was sent to the University of Minnesota alumni association, as well as several other administration people and myself. I don’t think the author realizes it, but this is the kind of hate mail that makes me very happy.

Dear Alumni Association,

Due to the protest of the museum in August of 2009, I will no longer be contributing donations to the University. Actions have consequences — even free speech actions. I believe that tax payers of Minnesota have a interest in not having our professors at the public universities contributing publically to the coarsing of American discourse — and behaving silly (see the picture of the riding dinosaur)

I will also be telling my co-workers and friends to no longer contribute — especially those who went to Morris. I have attached a few links detailing the protest.

Thanks,
Bill Frische

This is PZ Meyers Blog
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/08/expelled_from_the_creation_mus.php

This is a more balanced report:
http://www.examiner.com/x-9090-NY-Atheism–Skepticism-Examiner~y2009m8d9-Atheists-expelled-from-Creation-Museum
(note that at the end of this piece it does say they were mocking the museum in the museum — which is why the museum says it asked one of them to leave, although I like the bucking bronco of the profession on the dinosaur, maybe that’s not really him, i don’t know for sure)

Here is the museums report:
http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/aroundtheworld/2009/08/11/can-university-of-minnesota-professors-research-be-trusted/

Of course actions have consequences, and I am very pleased to see that my actions have led to a tiny diminution of the possible monetary influence of prating creationist dunderheads on university policy. I also think that people who attended our university and graduated with such a poor grasp of grammar and spelling might not be the best representatives for our mission, anyway.

Kirk vs. Cristina

This is hardly a fair fight. Cristina has about ten times the brains of Kirk.

In further news, Ray Comfort has announced that his give-away of the edited Origin of Species has changed: he’s going to give away 100,000 books at 100 universities, Darwin’s text will be left intact (although his page counts don’t add up), and he’ll be revising his 50 page foreword to be more fair to atheists and evolution. I’m beginning to suspect he’s lying to us.

Foil the depraved designs of a dastardly duo!

Back in June, I reported on this new sleazy tactic by Ray Comfort: he produced an abridged edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species, and then had the gall to tag on a preface that he had written himself, full of the standard creationist misconceptions. Comfort is astoundingly ignorant of basic biology; the best analogy to what he’s doing here would be if I were to give a chimpanzee a few blank sheets of paper and a convenient pile of his own feces and ask him to write a theological exegesis of the book of Genesis.

Oh, wait. On second thought, the chimpanzee would probably do a smarter job of his task than Comfort did of his.

Anyway, Ray and his polyp, Kirk Cameron, have a grand plan. They are going to give away their mangled edition of the Origin on 50 college campuses on 19 November, with the intent of allowing students to see the ‘alternative’ view. As if no one has heard of creationism, or as if it was a valid alternative to science.

There is a strategy to address this obscenity. They’re giving the books away for free: just get one or a few. Take them away and put them on a bookshelf, or rip out the introduction and donate the rest of the book to charity (which is a little impractical, I fear: these books will be very cheaply bound, and will not survive the mutilation). But anyway, let the intelligent, rational community sop up these sad mutilations of a great book and tuck them away from the gullible.

Alternatively, send copies to your favorite opponent of creationism on your campus. I know I keep a bookshelf full of creationist literature, and a Cameron/Comfort-edited version of the Origin would be a hilarious joke to have on hand. I doubt that the University of Minnesota Morris will be ‘lucky’ enough to get a team of these evangelical idjits on campus, though…so maybe one of you readers can get a copy for me? Get two, I’ll sign one and send it back to you so that you have an extra special version. Be sure to tell the people handing it out that you want an extra copy for an evil atheist!

A good first step

The director of the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History (the one hosting a Discovery Institute event) has posted an open letter about the program. I presume there will be more coming, because while it’s a beginning, I’m not too impressed yet.

Although the museum does not support unscientific views masquerading as science, such as those espoused by the Discovery Institute, the museum does respect the religious beliefs of all people. Moreover, the museum is obligated to rent its public space to any organization that is engaged in lawful activities, free speech and open discourse. The museum does not discriminate against recognized campus organizations based on their religious beliefs, political philosophy, scientific literacy, or any other factors.

It’s nice that they clearly dismiss the DI as unscientific, but they would have been better off leaving out the nonsense about respecting the religious beliefs of all people. They don’t have to come out and say they disrespect some religious beliefs, as I would, but they shouldn’t have pretended otherwise. No one should offer blanket respect to all religious foolishness — the kind offered by the DI, or any creationist group, is antithetical to the mission of a science museum. Do not offer them false comfort!

Their plan to address the bogosity that will be presented in their halls is currently a bit vague.

We invite everyone interested in an accurate description of how life developed over the last four billion years to visit our galleries. The well-organized and scientifically accurate exhibits illustrate – through real specimens and scientific methods – the fact of evolution by natural selection as first described by Charles Darwin and continually supported by all branches of science ever since that time. The museum also recommends that people interested in evolutionary science review the more than 1,000 publications by our curators and professional staff that are based in evolutionary biology.

The museum’s many galleries will be open for free before and after the showing of the Discovery Institute’s film “Darwin’s Dilemma” on Sept. 29 so the public can see that there is no scientific controversy in evolutionary science’s explanation of the development and history of Earth’s biodiversity.

“Read our publications” and “free admission before and after the presentation” will not do the job. I hope that more will be added later — but they really need to directly address the lies that the creationists will be peddling. With this minimal plan, I know exactly what will happen: most of the creationists will arrive just for the DI’s movie, and leave afterwards. They will tell their friends that they saw a movie about science in a science museum that proves that a god created all life on earth. Some might stay a little later and browse, but the DI will have their people there to provide a creationist spin to all the exhibits.

They need to address the dishonesty directly: stir up controversy of their own to get people to want to hear the rebuttals. Don’t claim to respect every religious belief out there; point out that this religious belief is incredibly bad science and rotten theology, and have people lined up to criticize it without the lame excuses. They don’t need to bring in a bunch of atheist hired guns to do that, either: they almost certainly have biologists on campus with religious views of all kinds who will happily agree that intelligent design creationism is garbage.

What are you Coloradans doing on Halloween?

You don’t need to watch a spooky movie or visit a haunted house to see dead zombies walk: you’ve got an Intelligent Design creationism conference going on in Castle Rock! Watch them stagger about, drooling, looking for some brains, frustrated because there aren’t any on stage. They’ve got Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, and David Berlinski (oooh, a zombie with an affected air of superciliousness! Creepy!), and they’re going to explain to you how Darwin drowned the world in a sea of meaninglessness. And you get to learn how to turn the tide! Right.

It’s a little bit revealing, too, that this is organized by the Shepherd Project, which provides “Christian speakers, conferences and resources to help Christians maximize their impact on the world for the sake of God’s Kingdom”. I thought ID was a secular hypothesis? Was I wrong?