Don’t you dare tell me that “Jesus saves!”

Some days, it’s a little depressing to see all the ignorance running rampant in this country, so it’s a bit of a relief to see people in other countries say something brain-bogglingly stupid. In this case, it’s a reaction to the atheist bus advertising campaign in the United Kingdom — the signs that say, “There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Now someone is making a legal claim, trying to suppress the signs, and his rationale is hilarious. Stephen Green, a known religious kook, is challenging the statement on its accuracy.

Mr Green has challenged the adverts on grounds of “truthfulness” and “substantiation”, suggesting that there is not “a shred of supporting evidence” that there is probably no God.

Seriously. Stephen Green thinks “there is probably no god” is a misleading advertising claim, and he’s trying to get it eliminated in the same way one would pursue the claim that “chocolate cures cancer”. He cites parts of the marketing code that say, “No marketing communication should mislead, or be likely to mislead, by inaccuracy, ambiguity, exaggeration, omission or otherwise.”

This could get interesting.

So, if even general and mild statements about the nature of the deity are disallowed, what shall be done with the stronger statements of the Christian clique? Should something like this also be banned?

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After all, there is absolutely no evidence that god will make traffic move more slowly if someone shouts “Jesus!” when they stub their toe. This sign is in violation of the truth in advertising guidelines!

(via Muse in Vivo)

This one campaign still keeps me smiling

Our efforts in squelching the Cincinnati Zoo/Creation “Museum” connection have yielded extra dividends. Ken Ham is weeping over the after-effects.

As a result of all this flak and the ending of the joint promotion after only two days, a prominent national travel group ended its conversations with our museum staff last month about a possible arrangement where our Creation Museum would be given a higher profile in one of its travel guides, along with a museum discount if a visitor presents their membership card. Here is what we heard from this particular travel organization:

From: KXXXXX
To: John Eytchison, Creation Museum
Subject: RE: Creation Museum

Hi John,

Unfortunately, I think [official’s name deleted] is just too leery after the incident with the Cincinnati Zoo to bring in the consignment tickets. [Name of travel org. withheld] used to sponsor a NASCAR race car and believe it or not, there were a couple members who actually dropped their memberships because of that affiliation-one which is a perfect fit for [name of travel org]. I think she’s afraid of putting something out there that has the possibility of causing a stir among some members at this time. . . .

I’m sorry things have not worked out, but I do wish your museum success and I hope that you have a Merry Christmas.

Thanks,

R—

Well, gosh, what can I say?

QQ MOAR, KEN HAM!

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And of course, to everyone here — Happy Monkey!

At least now you’ll know what you are worth

Burger King is running a strange promotion on Facebook: for every 10 friends you drop from your list, they’ll send you a coupon for a free hamburger, because you love the Whopper more than your friends.

Let’s see…I’ve got 3,747 friends on Facebook. That would mean I could get 374 free pieces of meat between slabs of bread, and each of you is worth what, about 30¢?

By the way, I have discovered that when you have that many facebook friends, it has some very rough spots. There are a few places where you click on something, and it asks if you want to send something to any of your friends, and it has to sit there loading all 3,747 names with pictures and links, and it takes something shy of forever. Maybe I should drop a few thousand of you…

(Nah, I wouldn’t do that.)

Here we go again — Mississippi’s turn!

The fine state of Mississippi is about to be led astray by the cretins they’ve elected to congress. They have introduced yet another textbook disclaimer bill, which will require that all school books that mention “evolution” be slapped with this sticker:

The word ‘theory’ has many meanings, including: systematically organized knowledge; abstract reasoning; a speculative idea or plan; or a systematic statement of principles. Scientific theories are based on both observations of the natural world and assumptions about the natural world. They are always subject to change in view of new and confirmed observations.

This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things. No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore, any statement about life’s origins should be considered a theory.

Evolution refers to the unproven belief that random, undirected forces produced living things. There are many topics with unanswered questions about the origin of life which are not mentioned in your textbook, including: the sudden appearance of the major groups of animals in the fossil record (known as the Cambrian Explosion); the lack of new major groups of other living things appearing in the fossil record; the lack of transitional forms of major groups of plants and animals in the fossil record; and the complete and complex set of instructions for building a living body possessed by all living things.

Study hard and keep an open mind.

Sound familiar? They all kind of run together into one blur of noise, don’t they.

This is nothing new. Here’s the textbook disclaimer they tried to push in Cobb County, Georgia.

This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

Here’s the disclaimer that was read to classes in Dover, Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part.

Because Darwin’s Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.

Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves.

With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life to individual students and their families. As a Standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on Standards-based assessments.

They all have some things in common: in particular, the pettifogging and incorrect attempt to hide behind the word “theory”, as if that somehow discredited the idea; the pretense of open-mindedness, when these are actually attempts to slander good science; the setting aside of evolution as a special case, when all scientific ideas are supposed to be regarded critically; and just the general notion that the fact that evolution is discussed means the whole subject must be treated gingerly.

The Cobb County and Dover disclaimers have something else in common: they were slapped down hard by the courts. The Mississippi disclaimer should join them soon, and it’s a little surprising that the backers of this bill didn’t bother to consider legal precedent.

The differences are also interesting. Mississippi tries to get specific, and offers a list of topics that are not discussed in the textbook. This is very peculiar, because all of those items are topics that are discussed in some detail in the college-level textbooks with which I am familiar. The creationists have been campaigning for decades to strip out the evolutionary content of our public school science texts, and now they are using the absence of substantive discussion of select issues as an argument for further damning them? The lesson to authors and publishers should be clear: you don’t gain anything by caving in to these troglodytes.

Maybe the message to the Mississippi school board now is that they should pick out science texts that carefully discuss the evolutionary context of the Cambrian, describing the pre-Cambrian antecedents that led to the tens-of-millions-of-years “explosion”. Then they can describe how the majority of animal phyla (but not all forms!) diversified over the next 500 million years into the different patterns we see now, and how there are many transitional forms on record illustrating portions of this process, and how we are now discovering the details of molecular complexity that further reinforce the idea of common ancestry. These are the conclusions of modern science, and we shouldn’t allow the history of censorship by public school boards stand in the way of letting these stories be told in the science classroom.

The message should be to broaden and deepen the coverage of evolution in our schools, so that we stop seeing ignorant clowns like Representative Gary Chism foisting their inanity on our children.

Another shooting

Everyone’s telling me about this ugly incident in Colorado, where a lunatic charged into a ski resort with a lot of guns, killed one person, then committed suicide. The relevant part of the story here is that the attack was partly religiously motivated: he shouted, “If you’re not Christian, you’re going to die”.

He was either operating under the instructions of the Lord, or the burden of festering insanity, and the truth of the matter is that there isn’t much difference between either condition. It obviously isn’t typical religious behavior, but next time someone tries to tell you that but for a belief in a god, we’d be robbing and raping and murdering…remember Derik Bonestroo. He seems to have gone on a murderous rampage while believing fervently in that Christian deity.

An Origin virgin reads the book

This could be cool: an evolutionary biologist is going to read Darwin’s Origin of Species for the first time and post chapter-by-chapter discussions of the book right here on Scienceblogs between now and Darwin Day. Get your own copy and follow along with John Whitfield!

Another reading suggestion: Wilkins writes about Darwin worship. It’s going to be a tricky balancing act this year — Darwin was a great scientist and his contributions were immense, but he is not an object of veneration. The difficult job will be to maintain a balance between hero worship and reactionary criticism, and to show the real man and the real work.

The woo is strong in Glastonbury

Glastonbury is the legendary burial place of King Arthur, so as you might imagine, if you’re a fey English wackaloon with a fondness for magic crystals and pagan rituals, it’s a magnetic attraction. How bad can it be? Well, the wicked government of Great Britain, always trying to suppress the Old Ways and encourage this horrible practice of “modernization”, has flipped the switch and turned on free wireless networking for the whole town. Evil!

“I don’t want my son exposed to risk 24 hours a day, including at his primary school, which is within the Wi-Fi zone,” yoga teacher Natalie Fee tells London’s Telegraph. “I would be failing in my duty as a parent if I did.”

Hey, Natalie, what about those darned dangerous radio waves that you’re soaking in right now? AM, FM, there are all these fluctuating vibrations permeating everything, everywhere you go. Let’s shut them all down! And are you going to tell your son that he isn’t allowed to own a cell phone, ever?

One man has even begun making orgone generators, which use crystals, semi-precious stones and gold to purportedly put out positive energy to combat the negative vibes flooding the town from the Wi-Fi base stations.

“I have given a number of generators to shops in the High Street and hidden others in bushes in the immediate vicinity of the antennae. That way you can bring back the balance,” Matt Todd told the Telegraph. “The science hasn’t really got into the mainstream because the government won’t make decisions which will affect big business, even if it concerns everyone’s health.”

I’d like to see the evidence that 2.4 and 5 GHz frequencies are “negative”, and that a bunch of cheap gee-gaws some space cowboy slaps together with a hot glue gun emit any energies, let alone “positive” ones.

And hang on, orgone generators? Devices that pump out magical sex energies? Isn’t that going to be even more confusing to Natalie’s little boy?

They do have a special problem out there in the UK that we don’t here in America — ley lines haven’t been a big deal in this country.

Todd says the Wi-Fi network is weakening the ley lines, supposed invisible webs of energy running through the landscape that the Druids and other ancient Britons are said to have been well aware of.

We also get fake biology. This is nonsense: melatonin really doesn’t do everything, the pineal is not going to be particularly responsive to random radio frequencies, and these kooks don’t even have a way to assess melatonin levels.

Others Glastonburians say their levels of melatonin, a hormone that regulates sleep and is seen as a wonder drug by natural-health types, have been all out of whack since the Wi-Fi network went on.

“The pulsed microwaves feed the pineal gland with false information,” local Jacqui Roberts tells the Western Daily Press. “Melatonin fights the free radicals and cancer-producing cells.”

Let’s be fair to Glastonbury, though. I get the impression that whoever put this article together made a special effort to dig up a few New Age nuts who are having hysterics over a non-problem, and probably ignored the sensible majority that are quite pleased to have freely accessible wireless networking everywhere they go.

The stupid, it burns

The letters to the editor section of our local newspapers is where you find the proud regalia of the American boob in prominent display. Here’s a fine example of creationist inanity from Dothan, Alabama. Try to count the misconceptions about evolution here.

Grade school textbooks teach evolution as fact. It is a monstrous lie that harms our children.

The evolution theory says we evolved from the original Big Bang and later crawled out of a green slime from the ocean.

Here is one example of its ludicrous hypothesis.

Of all the mysteries surrounding evolution, the one that is most baffling to the evolutionists, is “water.” Where did all the oceans come from?

As explained on the National Geographic program, it came from a massive collision in space. As the Earth was cooling from the Big Bang, it was approached by a stray planet that was teeming with water. It collided with Earth, spilled its water onto the Earth, then careened off into space.

Talk about fairy tales. By the way, where did the stray planet get its water?

Come on evolutionists, surely you can develop a more plausible explanation that can be easier to swallow. Until then, I accept the Bible’s answer. After all, the 4,000-year-old book has a perfect track record.

The evolution theory is only 140 years old.

Bill DeJournett
Dothan

Where to even begin? Evolution only starts once you have chemical and biological replicators; the Big Bang preceded it by a few billion years. We didn’t crawl out of a green slime, other organisms evolved in the oceans that preceded us.

I have never heard of the “ludicrous hypothesis” he’s talking about, and I rather doubt that NatGeo advocated anything of the kind.

His 4,000 year old book actually has a miserable track record — it’s just that gullible fools keep making excuses for it. It also doesn’t describe how earth got its water, other than to claim a god poofed it into existence.

It’s an interesting strategy, though, to invent unbelievable claims for the other side of the argument and then laugh snarkily at how crazy they are. For another example of such disinformation, take a look at what Wesley dug up.