Pat Hayes wonders about the sensibilities of Minnesotans:
What is it about Minnesota — the cold winter weather, perhaps — that seemingly helps our northern neighbors see this issue more clearly than others?
You might also note that Canadians aren’t mired in a bloody mess in Iraq, either, suggesting that there is some bracing quality to the Northlands.
I’ll tell you the secret. Superconducting silicaceous brains.
How odd. That little crank site that Bill Dembski runs has intentionally removed itself from the Google indexes: no search is going to turn up a link to Uncommon Descent. Elsberry speculates that it’s to remove the possibility of their penchant for revisionism being discovered.
I applaud this move. I suggest that the next step is to voluntarily remove their url and ip address from the DNS registry. We shall all be simultaneously dazzled by their technical prowess and absolutely confounded by our inability to point to the stupidity of the Dembskiites. That’ll teach us.
Hey, papal apologists (papalologists?), stop reading this! You won’t like it. It’s nothing but a couple of links to religion-bashing, prompted by the naked sectarian stupidity of one bizarre religious leader.
Ugh. John Pieret is right: this effort by Michael Shermer to reconcile evolution with conservative theology is hideous, on multiple levels. It takes a special kind of arrogance to think that Christians are going to consult Shermer, a godless hellbound skeptic, on how to interpret the fine details of the Bible. Either reject it or buy into it—but nobody is going to believe that Shermer accepts the religious premises of the book. He’s being a kind of concern troll on a grand scale.
It’s also nonsense.
Because the theory of evolution provides a scientific foundation for the core values shared by most Christians and conservatives, it should be embraced.
Oh, really? Ask a Christian what his or her “core values” are, and they’ll probably spit up either doctrinal beliefs, such as the divinity of Jesus and the idea of salvation, or they’ll bring up a list of social concerns, such as abortion, homosexuality, or religiosity in government. Evolution either is irrelevant to those worries or contradicts them, and as I say over and over again, Christians aren’t necessarily stupid, and they know this.
I’m also not keen on someone using science to falsely bolster conservative ideology.
The Give Up Blog has a post outlining a general problem: denialists. The author is putting together a list of common tactics used by denialists of all stripes, whether they’re trying to pretend global warming isn’t happening, Hitler didn’t kill all those Jews, or evolution is a hoax, and they represent a snapshot of the hallmarks of crank anti-science. Most of the examples he’s using are from climate change, but they also fit quite well with the creation-evolution debates.
I confess that I have not read Bérubé’s new book, yet. It’s on my list, but that list is long and dreadfully discouraging…and now, Chris Clarke has undermined the book’s sales by publishing a condensed version of its contents. I also suspect that Bérubé’s book lacks the beautiful illustrations.
All hail the democratizing power of the net! Information must be free!
Of course! They’re lurking everywhere, scheming to get onto school boards and wreak havoc. I recently heard from a few people at the University of Hawaii who were shocked to see some of the responses of school board candidates there to the question, “Should public schools teach intelligent design?”—they gave answers like this:
Henry W. Hoeft, Jr. says Intelligent Design creationism “Should be taught side-by-side with Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and students can decide which view to accept”.
Brian Kessler says “Voters should decide by referendum”.
(via Language Log)
Now we’ve got unconfirmed rumors that Steve Irwin was born again shortly before he died. You may recall that Charles Darwin was also tarred with claims of a deathbed conversion, too.
The message is clear. Don’t convert, or you’ll die.
The only question is whether it’s Jesus that does the execution, or whether wandering evangelicals are actually serial killers. And since I don’t believe in Jesus…
