ChaoSkeptic

It is February 12th once again, which means we get to celebrate one of the greatest scientific minds of the last 200 years, Charles Darwin. I don't really feel motivated to say anything that I haven't already said before. Instead this year instead of making fun of Creationists I thought I'd share a couple of videos of religious leaders who have no problems with evolution.

First up, an orthodox Christian priest who says that people who try to read Genesis literally are dancing with unicorns.



And here is a great interview with Rev. Michael Dowd, author of "Thank God for Evolution":

Jesus Camp is a 2006 American documentary film directed by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing about a charismatic summer camp, where children spend their summers learning and practicing their "prophetic gifts" and being taught that they can "take back America for Christ." According to the distributor, it "doesn't come with any prepackaged point of view" and tries to be "an honest and impartial depiction of one faction of the evangelical Christian community".

The scary part is that every single thing in this movie is 100% true. As far as I know nothing was scripted. This is not a work of satire and there is not a hint of irony involved. The camp in this movie no longer exists but there are tens of thousands of people scattered throughout America that look, think, and act like this. I know, because I've met them before. This is what fundamentalist Christians actually believe. Hopefully you'll still be able to sleep at night after this.




Also: LOL, Ted Haggard!

Current scientific evidence points to the universe forming out of the expansion of a Singularity around 13 billion years ago. After about 9 billion years of matter forming, galaxies forming, dying and then reforming, our tiny star was born. Out of the refuse left over from the Sun came our minuscule blue planet. Around 3 billion years ago complex organic compounds formed in the oceans. For the first 2 billion years or so those organic compounds reproduced like crazy forming more and more complex life forms. Eventually fish appeared, then amphibians crawled onto the beaches, then reptiles braved the continents.

At some point some of those reptiles developed fur to help keep themselves warm. Some of these mammals roamed the forests and learn how to climb through the trees. But then the trees were not good enough for them so they came back down to the ground and formed tribes to keep each other safe. These upright apes roamed the lands hunting down other animals until that wasn't good enough either. They settled down, built huts to live in, and started planting their own food rather than searching constantly for it. At some point they learned how to read, write, do math, harness electricity, and kill each other very effectively. It's all been down hill from there.

As for the purpose of all this, it doesn't exist outside of your mind. However we constantly want purpose to be there so we start making stuff up until the world makes sense again. Some stuff actually does make sense. Others don't because we just don't have enough information. A lot of times the made up stuff is more interesting and exciting than the real truth. But that some people's made up stuff is very different from other people's made up stuff. That is the main reason why we learned to kill each other so effectively...

Here's a pair of evolution themed vids making the rounds right now. First off, Dana Carvey IS DARWIN!!!



Secondly a fun little Christian song called "I'm No Kin to the Monkey". I really really want this to be a Poe but I suspect that it's not.



(Tip of the hat to Pharyngula and Unreasonable Faith respectively.)

You'll be excused for not noticing but the other day one of my very very old posts was hit up by a drive-by troll. In my award-winning post about Questions that Creationists Can't Answer the anonymous coward posted the following:

look up radioactive halos at halos.com
think about this:
if creationism is wrong and the bible is wrong than are we any worse for beliveing it? but what if it's right? than you have a lot to worry about. better safe than sorry!

The first part isn't even worth answering. If you want to know about the creationist claim that polonium halos somehow prove that the earth is young there is an excellent article about it on TalkOrigins.

As for the rest of that post, if you've studied theology for longer than five minutes you would recognize it as a creationist version of Pascal's Wager. The wager can be summed up as follows:

If you erroneously believe in God, you lose nothing , whereas if you correctly believe in God, you gain everything. But if you correctly disbelieve in God, you gain nothing, whereas if you erroneously disbelieve in God, you lose everything.

Obviously there are many things wrong with this. The first is the assumption that believing in God means you lose nothing. Then there is the assumption that God will reward you solely on your beliefs and not your actions (and not punish you for you simply hedging your bets). And there is the assumption that the Christian God is the correct one and not the millions of other gods and goddesses that have been worshiped since mankind first bowed to the sun.

Therefore, I have taken to come up with some new wager's of my own.

Cthulu's Wager: The god that exists may be the most malevolent being possible so it is best to worship Cthulu and hope that He eats you first instead of torturing you for eternity.

Dawkin's Wager: It is better to lack belief and do good on earth then hope that whichever god is up there rewards works and intellectual curiosity over mere belief.

Eris's Wager: All of the gods and goddesses might actually exist so it is best to worship as many as you can before you die in order that one might favor you enough to give you a VIP pass to the afterlife.

Thanks to my super generous wife yesterday I received an Amazon Kindle for Valentine's Day (and birthday and anniversary and Father's day and...) So far I'm loving it, but I'll have to get used to reading everything in grey-scale. As my first major purchase I selected Chris Rodda's "Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History" because 1) It's been on my wish list for a ridiculous amount of time 2) I don't have enough rage in my diet 3) the Kindle edition is about half the price of the paper edition and 4) I've been meaning to dive into the debate about the social studies standards in Texas and Chris's book is perfect ammunition for it.

I haven't even begun to read the book so I can't even begin to give a review but it did get me thinking about something I find interesting. Do you realize how many different branches of knowledge you have to touch to even start to be a well-rounded skeptic? Ok, here's partial list I came up with off the top of my head:

Obviously, to go against theocratic revisionists like David Barton you have to know about early American history, Enlightenment philosophy plus quite a bit about Constitutional law.

To be a Nazi Killer going up against Holocaust Deniers you have to know World War II like the back of your hand. Being fluent in German doesn't hurt either.

If you are up against anti-vaxxers, homeopaths, and various other "natural medicine" woosters you have to know about medicine, immunology, and virology. (It's usually very easy to beat them with basic chemistry though.)

If you want to kick a psychic or medium in the balls you have to know cold reading, psychology and sleight of hand tricks. It's often handy to know all the neat camera tricks too.

Because Creationists are typically very very confused about everything you have to have basic knowledge in biology, genetics, geology, paleontology, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, physics, astrophysics, cosmology, theology, psychology, and, if they are feeling really adventurous, neuroscience.

For cryptozoology you have to know real zoology.

If you want to wade into the climate change debate you have to know the difference between climatology and meteorology. (Basic chemistry helps here too.)

For dowsers... well, you just need your eyes for that one. (Dude, I totally just saw him move his elbow!!1!)


And on top of all of that, you have to memorize the entire list of logical fallacies, know how to do your own research plus know your opponent's arguments, your arguments, and your opponent's counter-arguments. Meanwhile, all they have to do is know how to make shit up on the spot. Doesn't really seem fair now, does it?

Arguing with a creationist is like playing Russian Roulette without bullets. It's pointless, & you eventually WANT to blow your brains out. - George Hrab

Ok, I really really didn't want to do this but it has been eating away at my brain since Friday so I guess I have no choice. Some of you may recall my post from almost exactly a month ago about Russ Pulliam's opinion column in the Indianapolis Star about evolution. I got some link love from both Exploring Our Matrix and Clever Badger over it. (Greetings if you are one of the people from there.)

On Friday Russ posted a follow-up piece in the Indy Star and I really want to do a rebuttal... but there is nothing to rebut. Now, I'm not saying that everything Russ wrote is correct, I'm saying that there is no substance to his column. But I guess I could point out a few of his mistakes because I've got time to kill and the scratching in my brain won't stop until I get it out of my system. For instance, he gets things very wrong in the first sentence:

I recently wrote an objection to the belief that Darwin's theory can be used an explanation for the origins of the universe.

I'm glad you object to that Russ, because Darwin wasn't trying to explain the origins of the universe. If you had read even the title of his book you would notice that it was about the Origin of the Species. The theory of evolution explains the diversity of life on earth. Nothing more, nothing less. The origin of the universe would be in the astrophysics classroom down the hall to the left. Ask them to introduce you to Georges Lemaître and Edwin Hubble.

Furthermore, Mr. Pulliam writes:

Many of Darwin's followers have taken his theory as the ultimate road map for where humans came from millions of years ago. They occasionally wander out of the science building and over to the philosophy and theology departments. They suggest, for example, that romantic bonding comes from natural selection. It's an interesting theory, and natural selection may have a part in romantic attractions, but it's also speculative.

First, saying Darwin's followers is just ridiculous. No one follows Darwin like a saint. Well, almost no one. He was a fallible man who had some very insightful ideas on biology. However, he knew absolutely nothing about DNA due to the time he lived in and couldn't have possibly known about such important concepts as genetic drift and horizontal gene transfer. No one takes his word as scripture. To imply so is just creationist dog-whistle language meant to make science look as dogmatic as religion.

Secondly, it appears that Russ wants us to limit scientific research to topics that make him feel comfortable. Why shouldn't science be able to research into topics like human sexuality and monogamy specifically? Why wouldn't natural selection (and sexual selection, obviously) play a huge part in the development of human bonding? If natural selection has nothing to do with it then why do we see similar sexual habits in our close biological relatives? And finally, does he have any other suggestions for how human sexuality came to be other than "God created them, male and female"?

He then goes onto mumble something about Dawkins. Yawn... I'll pick it back up just after he quotes another blogger:

Butler University religion professor James McGrath wants me to bone up on modern science. "Perhaps Pulliam's own ill-reasoned article is itself evidence that reason cannot be trusted, that we are too prone to self-deception. Yet even so, it can be argued that scientific methods do a better job of helping us avoid such self-deception and poor reasoning than anything else."

McGrath is the man behind Exploring Our Matrix, btw. Smart fellow who, unlike Pulliam, understands that science isn't a thing or a person or an organization. Science is a verb. It is a process. Or more accurately, it is a toolbox of processes. Pure reason can be very helpful but it can also be very deceiving. That's why you test, re-test, and then re-test some more to be sure. Then you send your work out to someone else to test it again. Get rid of as much bias and unnecessary variables as possible along the way. Yes, this process isn't always perfect but it's the best toolbox we have at this time.

Pulliam's response to McGrath's letter:

Perhaps, but scientific methods don't help when it comes to questions about purpose in life and ethics.

Well, duh! Science isn't about purpose or ethics. That would be the philosophy department, down the hall and to the right. Ask them to introduce you to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. (Check out Søren Kierkegaard while you are at it. He's my personal favorite.) Anyways, Science isn't about explaining the why. Science is about explaining the how. Science is an attempt to map the natural world and the forces within it. Occasionally it will rear its head into the ethics classroom and yell "Hang on a minute" but only when the ethicists start straying away from reality too much.

I don't really have much to say about the rest of his column after that other than to say that I'm jealous that Clever Badger got a mention but that I didn't. I mean, c'mon! I made the exact same point that he grossly oversimplified evolution as amoebas changing into men. Would it have hurt you to slip my name in there? It would help your word count and my hit counter.

Also, it is good to admit that he isn't a Young Earth Creationist so at least he has half a brain. It would be nice in the future if he would just come out and say what his position on all of this is rather than just saying that science can't answer everything. Debating someone who refuses to state their position is like trying to eat jello with a fork. How can I hit you if you won't stand still, Russ???

Hopefully this will be my last post about Russ Pulliam. I don't want to turn this into a series.

Back way way long ago there was a man named James Ussher who was the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate^* of All Ireland. Very important man with lots of time on his hand. So much time that he figured he'd put it to good use by counting back all of the begats in the Bible to see exactly how old the earth is. After much calculation and triangulation he came up with an exact date: Sunday October 23, 4004 BC. Nightfall, to be exact. That means that today (presumably at sunset in Israel) the earth will be exactly 6012 years old. Happy birthday, earth! You've come a long way, baby! However, I must say that you are looking awfully old for your age what with all the wrinkles, stretch marks, and radioactivity. You really need to learn to take care of yourself better.

And now for a short rebuttal:


^* - Yes, it is ironic that one of the icons of Young Earth Creationism openly called himself a primate.

So, I was idly eating my dinner tonight at work while reading my local newspaper, the Indianapolis Star. Usually I just skip right to the comics section and do the cryptoquip for the groan inducing puns. Occasionally though, like tonight, I actually read the front section to see day old news and read the horrific opinions section. What should greet me there but a column from the opinions page editor Russ Pulliam entitled "Taking Darwin on Faith".Yeah, this is going to be a fun one. Surprisingly there aren't as many evolution-denying Young Earth Creationists in Indiana as you would think so this usually isn't a problem. In NCSE's last report on how well each state does at teaching evolution Indiana got an A, Good. I have a feeling that is mostly due to the rather large biotech industry here. Eli Lilly and all of the medical supply companies in Columbus know where their bread is buttered. A population that doesn't have a basic understand of science will eventually vote against research funding. That ends up hurting the companies and the state.

Anyways, back to the story... and it's kind of a big disappointment. Pulliam couldn't even throw in one of the standard Creationist arguments like how complex the eye is, how fine tuned the universe is, or even a dig about Darwin being a racist bastard who caused the Holocaust. Instead we get: blah blah blah 150th anniversary, IU is offering special classes on evolution, surveys show that most Americans are blithering idiots don't believe in evolution. Then he hits us with an old favorite of Kent Hovind:

Yet in the debate between evolution and creation, those on the Darwinian side of the discussion often make the same error that they see in their opponents. They observe nature and evolution within species, or adaptation. From there came Darwin's evolutionary hypothesis that humans evolved from the amoebas.

That's right, the old "Goo to the Zoo to You" card (with a side of "Microevolution, not Macroevolution" slipped underneath). Of course the problem with "Goo to the Zoo to You" is that it skips several trillions of steps in the middle. (Not to mention how supremely ironic this is for someone who believes that man was formed out of dirt and clay and that woman was made out of his rib.) No scientist thinks that several millions of amoebae got together one day and "decided" to become a man. It went unicellular organism, mutlicellular organisms, invertebrate fish, vertebrate fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, primates, apes, then humans with about 3 billion years from the start to today. In other words:Then he has to pull out the old "faith" card:

Many scientists contend that the theory has been proven, or rendered undeniable, by so much research. Yet there's a leap of faith involved in Darwinian theory.

Obviously he is using a definition of faith I had previously not heard. Faith is belief without evidence. With evolution we have evidence. TONS OF IT! Billions of it just lying about the place. For instance, all of genetics and paleontology scream Common Descent. It takes as much faith to believe in evolution as it does to believe in gravity, electromagnetism, germs, and the Big Bang.

To further present his case that every biologist in the last 100 years is wrong he employs the help of... a biologist that also happens to be a minister:

Bloomington Reformed Presbyterian Pastor Richard Holdeman also has a doctorate in cell biology and is a lecturer at Indiana University. He sometimes finds himself in the middle of this debate.

"Charles Darwin made careful observations and laid out an elegant theory explaining how biological organisms change over time," Holdeman said.

Carefully note that Professor/Pastor Holdeman has no issue with evolution at all. He even calls it "elegant" which Creationists never do. You aren't helping your case much here, Russ. Next time you want a helpful quote from a questionable authority that denies evolution try giving the Discovery Institute a call. I'm sure they are in your Rolodex.

What troubles Holdeman is how some followers of Darwin have taken his work and turned it into a theological treatise about the origins and purpose of the universe. "Science by nature does not answer questions related to meaning and purpose in the universe." he said. "It is wrong to use science to justify what are essentially religious beliefs. The result is that many religious people are offended by and reject evolution because of its supposed religious implications rather than its scientific merits or lack thereof.

Yes, it is true that evolution doesn't prove that God doesn't exist. That is a slippery eel that will never get disproved since the definition of God keeps changing to something unprovable. All evolution did was take away one of the gaps that God was hiding it. It took away the Teleological and anthropic arguments in one fell swoop and is very quickly working on the argument from morality. Add in the fact that the Big Bang Theory destroyed the cosmological argument and, well, God doesn't have very many places left to hide.

"In addition, some scientists have underplayed the significance of the unanswered questions relating to evolutionary theory. For example, where did the first cell come from? Thus there is a general mistrust of the scientific community among many people of faith."

GAAAAHHHH!!! How the hell does a cellular biologist not know the difference between evolution and abiogenesis??? Seriously, you work around cells all day and presumably have for the last 20 plus years. Evolution doesn't talk about where cells come from, the tell us what happens after those cells got here. A layman like me shouldn't have to tell you this!!!

I almost felt bad writing all of this because Russ's article is just a throwaway column at the end of the week. There was really no substance there except to say that "Sometimes atheists use evolution to say bad things about God." At least he and I can agree on one thing though:

Or, as Holdeman puts it, "As long as evolutionary theory is advocated in semi-religious terms, this debate is not going to go away."

The sooner religion learns to accept scientific fact, the sooner we can all move on to more productive debates. Like, where is my beer?

SEE PART II TO THIS HERE: http://chaoskeptic.blogspot.com/2009/10/indy-star-on-evolution-pt-ii.html

I didn't realize it until yesterday but it looks like the guys at the Naked Scientists are doing a whole podcasting series of interviews that that did at this year's Cambridge Darwin Festival. I already mentioned their coverage of Baba Brinkman's Rap Guide to Evolution. For this week's show they interviewed one of my all-time favorite authors Terry Pratchett:



A couple of comments about the interview: I love the fact that he did a Science of Discworld book completely on the subject of biology and evolution. The fact that he made Richard Dawkins into a priest makes it even better. He has his history of evolution down pretty good but I think he misunderstands the Creationism movement:

And perhaps it's possible, one could speculate, if there was this intelligent design theory of evolution at that time just possibly the two sides, the Church and Science, might just have thought, "Well, you know, this isn't the best there could be but it's got something in it for everybody. And we can more or less sorta live with it and so we'll just shake hands on that one because it doesn't cause very much trouble."

First off, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he meant "theistic evolution" instead of "intelligent design". I've seen many other people make the exact same mistake so I'll let it slide. It's just goes to show you how nefarious the Discovery Institute's propaganda truly is. Theistic evolution is a theological position that God created the process of evolution to create all of the species of life on earth. Intelligent design is an anti-evolution political movement that is purposely trying to destroy the underpinnings of the philosophy of science and force religion back into public schools.

Secondly, there were many natural theologians then and today that have absolutely no problems with the theory of evolution. Yes, there were big debates in the first 50 years or so after Darwin published but that all went away for a time after all of the evidence started piling up. Almost every denomination has put out statements affirming that evolution does not conflict with their theology including the Roman Catholic church, Eastern Orthodox church and most mainline Protestant groups.

Modern Creationism that denies evolution has only been popular for the last 50 years and only in denominations that follow a strict literal interpretation of the Bible (or Koran). Almost everyone accepted the theory of evolution until Henry Morris dusted off an old Seventh-Day Adventists book on flood geology that modern Young Earth Creationism took off. The only religious groups that officially back YEC are Evangelical Christians and certain Muslim sects. Unfortunately those Evangelicals have strong political power in certain parts of the United States. Those are the ones trying to undermine science education so that they might push their religion in schools. Everyone else seems to be cool with evolution.

Other than that one little section it was a great interview. It doesn't seem like the Alzheimer's has affected him too much so far. Here's hoping that Terry hangs on for awhile longer to give us many more Discworld novels.

The Secular Student Alliance just recently had their annual conference in Columbus, OH at The Ohio State University and decided that they need a fun little field trip to add to the secular experience. Instead of going to the boring old Louisville Science Center or the Louisville Slugger Museum or even Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom they made a trek to Petersburg, Kentucky to the monument of stupidity and shrine to ignorance that is Ken Ham's Creation "Museum". 'Tis a truly heinous place that encapsulates all that is wrong with America right now. The fact that a large percentage of my fellow citizens despises science and embraces such dense religious dogma infuriates and confuses me. I would like to go see this monstosity some day but I'm a bit hesitant to give my money to their cause. It would have been nice to have gone with fellow skeptics on this little outing but my work schedule is always keeping me from doing cool stuff.

Thankfully though quite a few bloggers were along for the journey. PZ Myers has a post over at Pharyngula that has collected blog posts from just about everyone that went there. He's also been sparring with Ken Ham a bit over a couple of the exhibits. Jen at Blag Hag has a 9 part series on the madness (she also did me a favor by taking a pic of my favorite artifact in the history of the world!) Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist has also written a long blog post about it with tons of awesome pictures. Many people tried to tweet from inside the museum but had problems with their reception. However people are still using the #CreoZerg hashtag to talk about the mission.

I'll leave you with a single picture that helps capture the true absurdity of a Creation "Museum", PZ Myers riding a triceratops:

Meet Baba Brinkman, a Canadian rapper and pioneer in a relatively new genre called Lit-Hop. A genre that takes the hard grittiness of Political Rap and adds a PhD to it. Or in Baba's case a Master's in Medieval and Renaissance English Literature with a thesis comparing hip-hop to literary poetry. He followed that up with a theater show called "The Rap Canterbury Tales" where he rapped Chaucer's work with a hip-hop beat.

This year he switched it up a bit. He decided to celebrate Charles Darwin's 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of "On the Origin of Species" by doing an entire show on evolution. It's not often that you will hear a rapper sampling a bit of a Richard Dawkins' speech but Baba pulls it off nicely. He also does a great job of reappropriating other rap songs like Mobb Deep's "Survival of the Fittest" to explain evolutionary psychology and Biggie Small's "Hypnotize" to explain sexual selection. If you want a sample of the show, check out the Naked Scientists podcast from July 16 when they recorded his performance at the Cambridge Darwin Festival.

Or hey look, I finally figured out how to embed MP3s:

Yes, I'm still alive. Yes, I'm still on vacation. The crappy weather is making my head feel like it is in a vice grip so I can't think straight enough to actual write anything. I hate having a big time gap in my blog though so here, watch this video from MC Frontalot:

"Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon; it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory." - Scott D. Weitzenhoffer

If you know me well you probably know that I've been following the evolution-creationism "debate" pretty devoutly for the last 4 years or so. I don't know why. It's usually like a rather nasty car crash with steel twisted every way. The creationists mindset is some rather interesting head space though. The amount of cognitive dissonance and outright denialism contained in one hardcore Creationist is more than enough to keep a whole team of psychologists and neuro-scientists busy for several lifetimes.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, perhaps) I've never been one to directly engage in prolonged debate with Creationists. Mainly because 1) research is hard 2) I'm allergic to direct conflict 3) I don't particularly like bashing my head against the wall. Instead I've always sat on the sidelines, cheered on the good guys, and occasionally tossed a very sharp object into the ring.

That being said, I have actually picked up some knowledge along the way. For instance, there are certain questions that will stop almost all Creationists in their tracks and make them do an abrupt 90° turn (because we all know that them doing a 180° is impossible). The one thing Creationists are good at is making rationalizations that they dub "apologetics". There are certain things that they can't answer though such as:

1) Why can we see starlight from millions of light years away? (Otherwise known as the Starlight Problem.) The only apologetics I have seen for this involve completely changing the laws of physics beyond repair or to invoke the Trickster God of Omphalos.

2) Why doesn't the Institute for Creation Research do any research? Why hasn't the Discovery Institute discovered anything? So far all either of these organizations have contributed is apologetics, public relations and legal muscle. Neither Creationist organization has ever put forth any new scientific information. They have never put forth a scientific model to do any tests around. There have only been a handful of Creation "scientists" that have done peer-reviewed work and none of these papers involved a creationist model. Their excuse is that Big Science is blackballing all of them but that leads us to our next question...

3) How far does the Big Science conspiracy go? Currently more than half of all humans in the industrial nations agree with evolution. We can wave that away by saying most of those are being fooled by the evolution "hoax". However we still have millions of scientists in the last hundred years that understand biology and agree with evolution. According to creationists they are just keeping their mouth shut because overturning an entire branch of science and winning a Nobel Prize would be too stressful. Add to that the fact that most government scientific agencies (and the entire Judicial branch of the US government) are helping prop up the theory. Then take into account the fact that many drug companies use the theory of evolution to develop new drugs (here is where Big Science intersects Big Pharma). And don't forget the oil and mineral companies that use non-Flood geology to discovery veins of the good stuff. Well, then you are talking about the biggest conspiracy in the history of mankind. It would include hundreds of millions of people over the last 150 years without one single person blowing the whistle. Of course, we can always hand wave this away by saying "Satan did it".

4) Why aren't there more Nazis in Scandinavia? One of the main theses of the movie "Expelled" was that Darwinism directly lead to the Germans killing millions of people. In fact, Ben Stein very clearly said in an interview that "Science leads you to killing people." And yet today the countries that have the highest percentage of people that accept evolution are the most peaceful. In the Scandinavian countries more than 75% accept the modern theory of evolution yet they aren't committing mass genocides. I wonder why this is.

5) Why do we patterns in the genetic sequence of all living things? Why is it that humans share more than 90% of our DNA with the other Great Apes? Why do we see the same exact pattern when it comes to endogenous retroviruses? I've always heard the excuse of "Same designer, same design" but that doesn't even make sense. Why would the same designer reuse the same bits in a specific pattern that makes it look like everything is related in a nested hierarchy? Why would he bother to put all of those retroviruses in in the first place? Is this another appeal to the Trickster God?

6) This one is specifically for Intelligent Design proponents: How can we gain knowledge of the Designer? What is the possibility for there being more than one Designer? And while we are at it, is there a possibility that the Designer isn't omnipotent, omniscient or benevolent? Could it have been aliens? At this point they will give away the game and reveal that Intelligent Design isn't really science, it's just rewarming the old natural theology arguments from the 1800s and using cooler jargon.

Ok, that is more than enough questions from me. If you want to see the master list of creationist claims and how to debunk all of them go over to Talk Origins. I'm pretty sure that they have over a thousand by now.

How about some straight-up nerdcore to get your weekend rockin'!!!

(Caution, NSFW languages bitches!)

Yep, this about sums it up:



From Toothpaste for Dinner

I'm a couple of days late, but it looks like the Discovery Institute did finally decide to respond to the challenge put to them by Concordance (and Thunderf00t). Kinda.. sorta... not really. Long story short, Casey Luskin responded by basically saying that the Intelligent Design theory is extra special and should never, under any circumstance be tested. At least, I think that was what he is saying. Luskin has never been very good at writing in very clear language, IMHO. I guess that is what happens when you send a lawyer to do a biologist's job.

William Dembski, the "Isaac Newton of information theory" *snort*, on the other hand decided to try his hand at the Common Designer gambit. He quote-mines some hay from an evolution for dummies book, builds a strawman and promptly lights it on fire. The argument basically goes that animals that seem similar only appear that way because they were made by the same "Designer" (wink, wink). Forget for the moment that this doesn't explain things like endogenous retroviruses, homologies, and the twin-nested hierarchy that all living things fall into. This argument should be considered sacrilege by almost every theist. This arguments puts the "Designer" into a very small box. If this "Designer" is of the omnipotent variety then it should be trivial for "It" to similar creations with very different genetic codes. Plus the fact that the codes for similar creatures fall into a specific hierarchy where it appears that the creatures evolved without any supernatural assistance make this "Designer" into a trickster that wants humans to chase their own tails when it comes to the natural world. As a Discordian, I have no issue with this but I doubt it's the message the Discovery Institute wants to send out.

Thankfully Thunderf00t has put up a better explanation to why the "Common Designer/Common Design" argument fails mightily.



So in summary, the Discovery Institute feels like it's not their job to put forth any actual evidence for the intelligent design hypothesis. They seem to think that if that they muddy the waters about naturalistic evolution enough that they will somehow win by default. To that I will quote philosopher Francisco Ayala at the McLean v. Arkansas trial almost 30 years ago:

“My dear young man, negative criticisms of evolutionary theory, even if they carried some weight, are utterly irrelevant to the question of the validity or legitimacy of creation science. Surely you realize that not being Mr. Williams in no way entails being Mr. Ayala!"

I'm sure most of you know Ray Comfort. I know I've mentioned him and his boy sidekick Kurt Cameron several times before. He is arguably the worst Christian apologist in the history of the world. So bad that Poe's Law kicks in and you have no idea if he is being serious or not. (I still have an inkling that he is a Black Flag troll purposely trying to make Christians look stupid but I'll save that for another time.) Anywho, someone named TaishaMcGee has decided to fashion a suitable tribute to Ray-Ray out of felt and thread and put it up for sale on Etsy. Without further ado I present to you the Ray Comfort Tampon Holder (complete with banana):



As she says:

This is an Art Piece I created as a reaction to Ray Comfort's blatant and willful ignorance. If you don't "get" this piece, that's a sign that you still have your faith in humanity. I realize this piece is somewhat anti-feminist, but so is Ray. Profits from the sale of this item will go to a program supporting young female paleontologists. Tampons ARE included.

And it can be your for the low low price of $10 (plus S&H). Act now! Operators are standing by!!!


(Hat tip to Unreasonable Faith)

Anyone who has followed the evolution-creationism debate for the last couple of years knows who the Discovery Institute is. They are the right-wing Creationist "think" tank that has been trying to push the Intelligent Design concept into schools. They completely failed to live up to their name for they have not discovered anything in the last 15 years. Well, except for the fact that it is easy to fleece people out of money and that even conservative judges won't put up with their bullshit.

But now the gauntlet has been thrown down. Youtuber C0nc0rdance (with the help of thunderf00t) has put up a challenge to Discovery Institute:



All the Discovery Institute needs to do is go through the 180 or so complete genomes that have been sequenced and show just one gene that was intelligently designed. Just show the world a gene that is irreducibly complex and could not possible have evolved through natural causes. Should be simple enough. The thing is that the Discovery Institute won't do it. They have never been about science or scientific research. From day one they have been an apologetics organization that seeks to wedge Christianity back into public schools. The challenge was posted today, May 15, 2009. Let's count to see how long it takes them to respond.

(Note: A follow up post can be found here: Part II)

(I seriously hate doing two videos on evolution right in a row but what are ya gonna do?)

Rep. Mike Pence from Indiana's 6th District (roughly two over from the one I'm living in) was asked a fairly innocuous question by MSNBC's Chris Matthews: Do you believe in evolution? Should be a fairly easy one to answer. It should be as easy to answer as "Do you believe in gravity?" or "Do you believe in the theory of relativity?" But, alas, nothing is ever that easy in American politics.



Pence goes all over the map talking about global warming and stem cells and doesn't answer the question. Matthews does a great job of nailing him on the fact that (mosbunall) Republicans are actively anti-science. They have been wrong on stem cells, climate change and evolution. They almost always choose ideology over reality. I'm glad their party is spending a little time in the wilderness to think things over a bit. Maybe it'll give them to some time to see that fighting science is always a losing battle.