This is a danged ugly poll, accompanying an interview with the slimy Ken Ham. It asks,
Regarding creation and evolution, I believe:
The universe was created in six days as described in Genesis.
Evolution is true, but God began and/or directs it.
Evolution is true, and religion has nothing to do with it.
Answer 2 is winning, with answer 3 dead last. Can you all fix that, please?
Cindy McCain is not running for high office, fortunately…but this still seems to be the predominant attitude among the Republican leadership.
Couric: How do you feel about creationism? Do you think it should be taught in schools?
McCain: I think both sides should be taught in schools. I think the more children have a frame of reference and an opportunity to read and know and make better decisions and judgments when they are adults. So, I think you know I don’t have any problem with education of any kind.
What about miseducation, Ms McCain? Do you have a problem with that? Apparently not.
(via Atheist Media Blog)
A couple of ladies in Seattle decided to just up and visit the Discovery Institute. No appointments or anything…they just walked up to the door, buzzed the intercom, and got a tour from Casey Luskin.
They’re a bit of a tease, though, posting this in multiple parts. I anxiously await reading more of their encounters.
It’s a common question, and it isn’t easy to explain, since much of it is complicated while the simple parts are often counter-intuitive. But here’s a
comic that tries and illustrates the problem.
Here’s the correct explanation, that actually jibes with the evidence.
Here’s the ID/creationist explanation:
Then, of course, in the competition of ideas, the two hash it out and…well, you’ll have to read the whole thing yourself. Sad to say, the ending rings true, too.
Some Christian schnook visited a museum, read a sign, and complained to the museum. So what did the museum do?
An information sign, which is part of Abington Park Museum’s display about Charles Darwin and fossils, was covered up after a visitor’s complaint.
Two parts of the sign, concerning ‘Changing Attitudes to Evolution’, are obscured with black paper, but only four lines of text are actually covered over.
It details how Charles Darwin used the study of fossils to help formulate his theory of evolution, set out in On the Origin of Species, which angered fundamental Christians and Creationists.
But following a complaint to the museum, part of the sign was covered over to avoid giving offence and to conceal the poor prose.
Here’s the offending paragraph:
He used the same layers of fossils that had supported the Genesis view of evolution to show the slow changes that are taking place over the millennia of earth history, each small change enabling a species to the rigours of it’s (sic) environment – the struggle for survival through natural selection leading to the survival of the fittest.
Dang. Those apostrophe nazis sure are fierce.
If you’ve got the 29 August issue of Chemical & Engineering News, there’s an interesting editorial inside. It seems there has been a flurry of activity on C&EN on the issue of evolution; the editor dismissed the whole idea of intelligent design creationism back in February, saying that it was not an acceptable alternative to the theory of evolution and should not be taught in the schools. He got hammered with forceful complaints from pro-ID engineers, and many letters were published in the April issue. Uh-oh, I hear all the engineers out there groaning, here comes the Salem hypothesis again…
However, here’s the cool thing: those pro-creationism letters spurred an even greater response from the C&EN readership, a wonderful colossal roar of disapproval against the vocal subset who were endorsing ID, and a small fraction of the letters are published in the latest issue (I’ve got the print copy; the online edition is a bit behind, but keep an eye open for it.)
It’s reassuring. A noisy few cranks in engineering occasionally get all the news, but give them a chance and a voice and the majority do favor good science.
This story about the struggles of a high school biology teacher in Florida is depressing. David Campbell, the teacher, is a hero — but it’s the kind of hero sent off to suffer and fail in a misplaced struggle, who dutifully falls in battle, a victim of bad leadership and poor strategy. It’s the same old tactics the educational bureaucracy has been pushing for 50 years or more: tip-toe gently about the subject of religion, never challenge the idiocy students bring into the classroom with them, always strain to allow them to accommodate science to their personal superstitions…which means pretending that science doesn’t directly contradict their cherished myths. It doesn’t work and has never worked, and the problem gets worse and worse every year.
This clip is of a caller to the Atheist Experience who makes a series of assertions common among creationists.
Matt Dillahunty answers her well, but at the end he doubts that the caller was for real. Sorry, guy, I’ve heard those arguments a thousand times — they represent a kind of universal creationist ground state. It’s why we have Poe’s Law: because there are sincere people who actually promote this nonsense.
Even the lovely island of Malta is infested with creationists…who have somehow acquired positions of authority in private schools.
Far from becoming extinct 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs actually co-existed with early humans, and even helped in the construction of the pyramids.
This is the word of Vince Fenech, Evangelist pastor and director of a fully licensed, State-approved Creationist institution which admits children aged between four and 18.
I have to wonder what the point of licensing schools is when the process is so porous that flaming incompetents like Fenech can run them.
This is another wonderful example of the sloppy scholarship of the creationists. The always pretentious Berlinski made the interesting claim that John Von Neumann, the deservedly famous mathematician, thought that Darwinian theory was ridiculous. Douglas Theobald crushes that claim. Von Neumann was clearly on the side of evolutionary theory … but of course, whether he was or wasn’t is actually irrelevant, since we don’t judge ideas in modern biology by the authority of mathematicians from 50 years ago.
