Fri - October 20, 2006
Complete works of Darwin online
The
complete works of Charles
Darwin have been posted by University of Cambridge for your free
perusal. The cool thing about this is that it isn't just in plain old text
format. You can also choose to view the text along side a scan of one of the
original published books. They've got the text to multiple editions of
The
Origin of Species
, The
Descent of Man, and even his field
notebooks from the Beagle
voyage.Good stuff here. They also
state that only about 50% of the material has been published, and are promising
to get everything on the site by 2009.
Posted at 12:36 PM Permalink
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Tue - December
20, 2005
Hey Nutjobs: You Lose
It's a nice Christmas gift! The judge in the
Pennsylvania intelligent design trial has ruled today and
said:... (Wait for it)
...That ID isn't science, can't
divorce itself from it's creationist and religious roots, and hence, cannot be
taught in science classes in PA. Expect the counter suits to begin any day now,
as well as Pat Robertson to call for the death of the judge, lawyers, and any
"science types" in Pennsylvania. Can
we put this behind us now, please? Keep your fairy tales out of the science
classroom. That is all.Link
to CNN article.
Posted at 12:04 PM Permalink
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Tue - December
13, 2005
Whales are fish, right?
This was too funny not to post. Google News picks
up these little editorials and letters from small papers around the country with
the keywords evolution, intelligent design, etc. Most of these are
unintelligible and completely forgettable. But every once in a while, you get
something like the
following:
Another convincing proof is the fact that there are similarities between species, which would be expected if they were all designed by the same Designer. If evolution is the great unifying principle in biology, why don't we see the evolution of species today? (The sort of massive change that would be necessary for Darwinism to be true. Imagine. Mammals becoming whales, reptiles becoming birds, etc.) In the absence of such evidence, the proof is strong that one intelligent designer is responsible for whatever similarities exist in nature. Imagine!
WHALES BECOMING MAMMALS!
Man, if that ever happened, evolution would
have just have to be true. But since they're, like, fish, or something, there
must be a designer.
Posted at 11:20 AM Permalink
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Thu - November 17, 2005
Buttars at it again
State Senator Chris "I'm not from South Park"
Buttars is again in the
news with yet another misguided attempt to shove intelligent design
down the throats of educators and students alike. That's right - if you don't
like science, just pass a bill to legislate the truth out of
existence.This guy is just setting up
the state for a ridiculous number of lawsuits costing millions of dollars. I
can't seriously believe that someone in this day and age can be so willfully
ignorant that he spends his time in office not helping his constituency, but
actively working to destroy children's educations.
Like Kansas, soon Utah will become the
laughing stock of university admissions boards
everywhere.Keep up the good work
Chris! Legislating science worked so well in Russia, it's bound to do the same
for us!!
Posted at 04:11 PM Permalink
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Tue - September 6, 2005
Utah Board of Education Votes to Keep Teaching Evolution
Sad that this vote was really needed, but
grateful that it was a unanimous "yes" to keep teaching evolution in Utah's
classrooms. From an article
on
firstamendmentcenter.com:The State Board of Education voted unanimously on Sept. 2 to continue teaching evolution as part of the biology curriculum in Utah’s schools.
In a position statement, the board said the theory of evolution was a mayor unifying scientific concept appropriate for public instruction.
But Utah state Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, is countering the board’s position with his “Academic Freedom Act,” a document that looks like draft legislation to present “intelligent design” in classrooms as well. But
unfortunately, it looks like state senator Buttars is still at it. Get this from
him:
On Sept. 2, he told the state board the theory of evolution had “more holes than a crocheted bathtub,” adding that barring a discussion of intelligent design was a move akin to censorship. It's
obvious now to me that Buttars is completely uneducated with respect to biology.
I thought he might just be pandering to voters, but with statements like these
it pretty obvious he just hasn't read any books on evolution other than Behe's.
As reported, the board ignored his
request for a two hour session to discuss intelligent design.
HA! Good for them!
Posted at 01:32 PM Permalink
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Wed - August 31, 2005
Connections Between New Agers and Creationists
There is a a great
article in Salon about the surprising (at least to me) connections
between those aliens-and-Atlantis "archaeologists" and today's creationists. It
draws parallels between their methodologies and their common interests in
tearing down the current scientific establishment:
... over the last several decades, a loose and sometimes uncomfortable common front has been forged between fundamentalist Christian creationists and New Age-flavored practitioners of alternative archaeology. Although the two sides' philosophies are sharply different in some areas, they've both launched forceful attacks against the authority and guiding ideology of modern science. (In general, these movements rely on reinterpreting existing data, although some prominent alternative-archaeology researchers fund their own expeditions and research, and there are creationists involved in biblical archaeology.) Good
read.
Posted at 09:56 AM Permalink
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Tue - August 30, 2005
Christian Schools Suing University of California
The Association of Christian Schools
International has sued the University of California because UC has refused to
certify "science" courses that teach creationism. You just knew this was going
to happen, right? The poorly-educated spawn they're churning out is coming
face-to-face with the real world and isn't measuring up. So naturally, they
sue.From an LA
Times article:
According to the lawsuit, UC's board of admissions also advised the school that it would not approve biology and science courses that relied primarily on textbooks published by Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Books, two Christian publishers.
Instead, the board instructed the schools to "submit for UC approval a secular science curriculum with a text and course outline that addresses course content/knowledge generally accepted in the scientific community."
"It appears that the UC system is attempting to secularize Christian schools and prevent them from teaching from a world Christian view," said Patrick H. Tyler, a lawyer with Advocates for Faith and Freedom, which is assisting the plaintiffs. Secularize
Christian schools? Bullshit. No one is stopping you from teaching your own
little myth. You just gotta teach something that is actually true as well. In
reality, these crazed loons can't do this, of course, without blowing a head
gasket, so they have little choice but to sue. Or
something.It's really these guys that
want to dumb down everyone else. Where's the end of this? You don't want to
teach math but still want to go to a university? And that whole readin' and
writin' thing is overrated as well. When you start messing with academic
standards like this lawsuit it just devalues everyone else's education - as
evidenced by these children's diplomas becoming worthless because their "school"
refuses to actually educate its
students.I kinda feel bad for the
kids. For the most part, they didn't choose these schools, but unfortunately,
they are paying the price for the nut-jobs out there who have an agenda.
Posted at 10:28 PM Permalink
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How the ID Hoax was Perpetrated
And another article
from the NY Times, this time an op-ed with an excellent summary of how the
intelligent design nutcases have pushed it into the mainstream, and duped
millions of people in the process. He brings up a good point that I had pondered
(and feared) as well: The attacks against the theory of evolution would work
equally well against, say relativity or quantum
theory.Think about this for a moment:
If those pushing ID can convince people about how ridiculous sounding the theory
of evolution is, just imagine what could be done with quantum theory and some of
it's consequences: they completely defy common sense, and yet they appear to be
completely true. The only reason these things aren't targeted is because they
don't offend the common fundamentalist religious types - yet.
I especially like these paragraphs
toward the end:
The Discovery Institute, the conservative organization that has helped to put intelligent design on the map, complains that its members face hostility from the established scientific journals. But establishment hostility is not the real hurdle to intelligent design. If intelligent design were a scientific idea whose time had come, young scientists would be dashing around their labs, vying to win the Nobel Prizes that surely are in store for anybody who can overturn any significant proposition of contemporary evolutionary biology.
Remember cold fusion? The establishment was incredibly hostile to that hypothesis, but scientists around the world rushed to their labs in the effort to explore the idea, in hopes of sharing in the glory if it turned out to be true.
Instead of spending more than $1 million a year on publishing books and articles for non-scientists and on other public relations efforts, the Discovery Institute should finance its own peer-reviewed electronic journal. This way, the organization could live up to its self-professed image: the doughty defenders of brave iconoclasts bucking the establishment. Very
good read.
Posted at 01:11 PM Permalink
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Fri - August 26, 2005
Buttars in the News Again
State Senator Chris Buttars from West Jordan,
Utah is AGAIN in the
news for his ridiculous pandering stance on intelligent design. From
the
AP:The state Board of Education next week will consider a position statement on the matter. The statement likely will support the current curriculum and include language on teacher sensitivity to student beliefs ... Buttars plans to address the board on his stand that evolution should be taught "as an unsubstantiated theory."
If the board refuses, Buttars said he would request that intelligent design be taught in some sort of humanities class. "Unsubstantiated
theory." This fool is completely ignorant. If this keeps up we're going to get
as good a reputation as Kansas.This
comes after his July 18th retraction
of his bill that would require teaching intelligent design in class. Of course
he on did this because "State Board of Education director Patti Harrington
assured him that Utah public school curriculum does not teach that man descended
from apes," which is good because we DIDN'T DECEND FROM APES, but a common
ancestor. He would have known this previously if he'd actually read a book. I
can't help but imagining Harrington snickering to herself as she assured Buttars
that this wasn't taught, simply because it ISN'T TRUE.
Posted at 02:46 PM Permalink
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ISU Faculty Opposing Idiocy
This article
from the Des Moines Register shows how far intelligent design has infiltrated
our educational system. At Iowa State University - a University!!! - they are
having a forum "on how the theory of intelligent design should be taught." Ack!
They're even calling it a theory. Fortunately, 124 of the ISU faculty have
signed a petition opposing the teaching of intelligent design as a scientific
theory at the school. But get this:
Guillermo Gonzalez , an ISU astronomy professor who is nationally known for his research on intelligent design, said his colleagues are creating a hostile work climate by circulating the petition.
"I'm really taken back by the viciousness of the attack," Gonzalez said Thursday in an interview with The Des Moines Register. "I'm amazed at the campaign they are orchestrating to try to intimidate me with this petition." Well,
professor, maybe they're getting a little fed up with idiots pushing a "theory"
that doesn't have a single piece of evidence backing it up; a "theory" whose
only real purpose is to attack the theory of evolution; a "theory" with any
merit whatsoever. Perhaps they are tired of fighting a constant battle against
the mindless followers of this junk
"science."Persons supporting
intelligent design like Gonzalez always fall back on the "I'm being persecuted"
line. This is always their defense when confronted with the fact that there has
never been any published evidence for intelligent design. Indeed, Gonzalez's own
book, which he says "argues for design based on evidence drawn from the physical
sciences," is published not by any scientific press, but by Regnery Publishing,
a self-described "conservative publisher." They put out such great works as
Unfit for
Command, the book that unfairly portrayed John
Kerry as a liar during the last presidential election cycle. This same publisher
has been linked
to white supremacist groups. Perfect place for a scientific treatise,
huh?Gonzalez said he doesn't want to attend forums because he doesn't approve of Avalos' [associate professor of religious studies at ISU] tactics.
He said he is the only "lightning rod" for intelligent design at ISU, which is why he said he feels the petition targets him.
Baldwin said she understands Gonzalez's reluctance to attend the forum.
"I think the problem here is we have a great number of faculty en masse who have said this is not science," she said. "Dr. Gonzalez is there, perhaps, alone. I don't know how many supporters he has in his department." I
feel so sorry for him. He's a lightning rod for intelligent design. Poor baby.
Maybe if he didn't support such crackpot theories he'd feel
better.
Posted at 10:25 AM Permalink
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Thu - August 25, 2005
Gates Funding Intelligent Design
This
Salon article gives a good summary about something I've seen mentioned
a few times during the great ID debate: That the Gates Foundation (Bill Gates'
charitable arm) has given over $10 million to the Discovery Institute, the prime
pushed of intelligent design around the world. This "think tank" is responsible
for just about every piece of ID propaganda in the US. However, they do have
other projects, including one called the Cascadia Project, a program aimed at
improving transportation in the Northwest. It is to this project Gates'
foundation is providing money. So he's not directly funding intelligent design
research. But he is funding a good portion of the Discovery Institutes' founder
and current director, Bruce Chapman - to the tune of $50,000 a year. Ostensibly
for the work on the transportation project.
Check out this quote from the Salon
Article:
In an e-mail, Keith Pennock, the program administrator of Discovery's Center for Science and Culture (which runs its intelligent design work), concurs. "Mr. Martin is a member of the Discovery Board in his individual capacity and does not represent the Microsoft Corporation. Does Microsoft support Discovery's work on intelligent design? No."
Kennock ends his e-mail to Salon with criticism over the inquiry into the groups that finance Discovery's work. "Finally, I have been asked to advise you that it is unseemly for people who dislike one program at a think tank (or a university -- or an on-line magazine, for that matter) to try to pressure funders of other programs there," he writes. "It is illiberal and contrary to the spirit of free speech." Yes,
well, that's a nice sentiment, and one I'd be generally inclined to agree with.
Except that the Discovery Institute's pushing of intelligent design is so odious
and so contrary to Bill Gates' statements about the poor quality of science
education in the states that it merits special
attention.Maybe this explains why
Windows sucks so much - they're relying on the mythical creator to fix all it's
problems. :-)
Posted at 09:50 PM Permalink
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Sun - August 21, 2005
Bill Frist Supports Intelligent Design
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist came out in
favor of intelligent design recently. Frist is a actually a medical
doctor, and someone you'd expect to have a firm grasp of biology. You'd be wrong
to expect this, of course. See, Frist doesn't even know if you can catch AIDS
from tears. Or at least he won't admit it. And he diagnosed Terry
Schiavo as being just fine by watching a
video
tape. Of course later the autopsy proved he
was completely wrong. In all
fairness, he recently
endorsed stem cell research so he's not all bad. He's been taking a
lot of heat from the loony fringe over this. The ID endorsement probably leveled
things back out. As long as you remain evenly anti-intelligent, you're OK for a
run for president.
Posted at 11:51 PM Permalink
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Fri - August 19, 2005
Drooling Masses Out in Force
Check out this short
blurb in Boing
Boing (one of the finest places on the web.) Yesterday one of their
regular contributors, Xeni, posted another piece
about the Flying Spaghetti
Monster. In response, she received a bucket of email from ID
supporters, including one from someone named Anne Kenny who - get this -
challenged the entire world to answer Dr.
Dino's (aka, Kent Hovind) $250,000 Evolution Challenge, in where he
will give you $250,000 if you can provide any evidence of evolution. Of course,
there are MAJOR caveats to his offer, which he doesn't publicize to his
mouth-breathing faithful. Read about them here.
Dr. Dino is so discredited, even his
fellow creation "science" peers try to pretend
he isn't there. But the mindless masses still listen to his seminars
(he gives several a month) and he's definitely a star on the
earth-is-6000-years-old circuit. Well,
Boing Boing has offered up $250,000 to anyone "...if they can produce empirical
evidence which proves that Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti
Monster." Well, $250,000 faith-based dollars.
Get started! May you be touched by His
Noodly Appendage! RAmen!
Posted at 01:07 PM Permalink
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Thu - August 18, 2005
Another Clueless "Analyst"
I should have known what I was going to read when
I saw this
article. I should have known because the site was called "Renew
America", code for "All you godless heathens need to get out." But read it I
did. The guy who wrote it, Fred Hutchison, actually gives some good scientific
philosophy background. Well, he got the people and their philosophy right, but
he's completely out in right field when applying their work to his pet cause. In
reality, he's just using this history to set up an elaborate strawman argument.
One COMPLETELY and UTTERLY divorced from reality.
Check this
out:Recurring statement of evolutionists: "We do not have to respond to criticism from intelligent design people because they are not of science." Truth: It is a fallacy to say they are not of science because they do not subscribe to a philosophy of materialism. It is contrary to an essential principle of science that inconvenient criticism can be disregarded. One of the time-tested principles of science is that the science community must attempt to "falsify" the results of research. Only conclusions that cannot be falsified should be accepted as sound research. The refusal of evolutionists to answer serious criticisms might be an evidence that they have no answer and prefer to silence the conversation. This
comes toward the middle of the article. He spends most of his words creating a
random chain of reasoning that somehow science is all about materialism. Well,
that's nice. But what does that have to do with being able to falsify results?
Materialism is a philosophy that that everything comes down to basic matter and
it's interactions. Something most scientists would agree with, I'd bet, but it
isn't necessarily a core tenant of science. Being able to falsify results is,
and is something that the ID theorists (and the author of the article) need to
throw out. See, with no way of testing their hypothesis (that an outside "being"
or "force" (code for God in most of their minds) guided the creation of all
life) they need to resort to tearing down science itself, by getting rid of one
of it's key tenets. Their whole "theory" is nothing more than a random
conjecture if you can't test (falsify) it. It's no better than Last
Tuesdayism.But it gets even
better:Recurring statement of evolutionists: "There is no evidence to support intelligent design and no evidence that challenges evolution." Truth: Such a statement can only be made by a liar, or one who has never read what the intelligent design scientists are saying. Evolutionists get away with the big lie tactic by suppressing the works of intelligent design scientists. Yes,
it's all the big bad evolutionists suppressing the poor freedom fighters of
intelligent design. I'll give you a leg up here. The
ONLY
"evidence" that the intelligent design people have is this: Their own disbelief
that something complex could come about without outside help. That's it. There
is absolutely
NOTHING
more to it than that. Everything else is just frosting on their cake of
incredulity. In other words, they can't believe their eyes, so they turn to
making up invisible beings. For some reason, this makes more sense to them, but
just don't ask them to tell you where these invisible beings came
from.And we come last portion of the
article where the author goes and dumps out some well-worn and well-rebutted
creationist/intelligent design arguments against evolution. We'll get to those
in a moment, but I'd like to point something out (again.) Intelligent design
doesn't give any real evidence of it's truth. It's only purpose it to attack
evolution, and we can see this in this article. Instead of putting forward a
rational argument for intelligent design and show why it explains the facts as
they have been observed better than evolution, it's proponents only attack the
the theory of evolution itself. And do it badly, as we've seen time and time
again. On to his attack:So in order,
we have the old Cambrian Explosion
"mystery":All nine phyla of complex animals appeared suddenly in the Cambrian rock in China. No complex animals appear in Pre-Cambrian rock. No transitional forms of simple creatures evolving into more complex creatures appear in Pre-Cambrian rocks. Some Chinese scientists have rejected Darwinism because of these findings. The American evolution establishment has suppressed the information, so that many American scientists and students of science have never heard of the "Cambrian explosion." Scientists in Communist China have significant freedom of thought and publication. Biological science in democratic America is under the dictatorship of the evolution establishment. However, if President Bush has his way, high school children will be allowed to hear about the "Cambrian explosion." Well
it's nice that someone read a book and regurgitated the nine phyla fact. But it
isn't quite true about the complex animals missing from Pre Cambrian rock. See
this
for more information. And I like the dodge here: "No transitional forms of
simple creatures evolving into more complex creatures appear in Pre-Cambrian
rocks." Notice that he doesn't say Post-Cambrian (or even during the Cambrian
explosion itself!) These transitional fossils are well documented. As to these
mysterious Chinese scientists, well, good for them. As we've seen, being
ignorant isn't just an American thing. And it's well known that President Bush
is a well-respected micro-biologist and paleontologist when he's not saving the
world from the evil horde of
evolutionists.Claim two I cannot even
begin to address here. It's so full of mistakes, misconceptions, and
misunderstandings of basic biology it's truly amazing. Dogs can't evolve into
cats? Well, ok then. "A society of breeders can start with poodles and after
thousands of generations of selective breeding wind up with a Saint Bernard. All
the information in poodle DNA is also in Saint Bernard DNA." Ahh, I bet their
DNA isn't identical. They've evolved. And somehow this turns into a rant about
micro-evolution and macro-evolution, with some sort of assumption that the
evolutionists don't want our children to hear because it might make them
question the God of Evolution and the Posse of Darwin. Or something. But again,
President Bush to the rescue: "It is very easy to conceal the difference between
micro-evolution and macro-evolution from students. The evolutionists do not play
fair. If President Bush has his way, students will be allowed to hear about the
difference between micro-evolution and macro-evolution." Nobody is hiding
anything. Read this for
the real info.Claim three is the old
punctuated equilibrium theory, but muddled into a complete mess. He begins with
a quick (and partly erroneous) introduction to PE, then inexplicably goes on to
imply that the (evil) evolutionists wanted to suppress Gould's theory: "Gould
was too famous and too widely published for his theory of punctuated equilibrium
to be suppressed. However, the evolution establishment has enough clout to
prevent school children from hearing about punctuated equilibrium." Again, we
see the attacks against evolution. PE has been left by the wayside because it
didn't fit the facts well enough. But to these crusaders, is a suppression of
the Truth. Or something. See, they don't really care about what's really fact or
fiction. All they really want is a way to tear down the theory of evolution.
Intelligent design or discredited theories - it doesn't matter to them what the
truth really is, as long as they can continually heap scorn on evolution. It's
they who want to suppress the truth about the world, and no one else. Apparently
PE is too much for old Bush; the author doesn't mention that he'll be pushing
this theory personally to the students of the world. (For more info on PE, see
here and
here.)At
the bottom you have these rather astounding closing
paragraphs:Like the theory of evolution, intelligent design science has links to a philosophy, namely the philosophy of Deism and natural law. However, intelligent design science is protected from corruption by its careful adherence to the empirical disciplines of Francis Bacon.
In conclusion, whether one believes in evolution or intelligent design science, one is obliged to consider that at present, the intelligent designers are operating at a higher level of integrity than the evolution establishment. Ack!
Bacon would eat these idiots for lunch. For all practical purposes, he FREAKING
CREATED the methods of scientific inquiry being used today. The very same method
being dismissed in the beginning of the article. Somehow, it's the scientists
with an enormous body of evidence for evolution that are in the wrong here. This
author should be ashamed of himself for writing such obvious and utter
falsehoods. A higher level of integrity? Bullshit. This article is the epitome
of lack of integrity.
Posted at 10:47 AM Permalink
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Thu - August 11, 2005
Idiocy at Home
Here in the great state of Utah, a state senator,
Chris Buttars R-West Jordan, is trying to cram intelligent design down the
throats of the local school board, who is unanimously against the idea. Buttars,
apparently not one to take no for an answer, says that if the two sides can't
compromise (read as, "I get my way") he'll introduce a state bill to force the
issue: "Legislation is a last resort," Buttars said. "I'm still working on it,
but I'm really not highly hopeful we'll come to a consensus."
Someone needs to stand in the corner.
Despite the religious domination of the LDS church here, to their credit, there
does seem to be some separation of church teachings and the classroom. State
board chairman Kim Burningham:
"As I understand and as I read, the intelligent design concept is a concept that many of us have sympathy with, but it's not one based on science, and to put it in a science curriculum seems to me would be a misplaced position," Burningham said. "We always (try to) separate in this state very carefully our religious beliefs (from state operations). That general philosophy, it seems to me, needs to continue." Well
spoken. Buttars: GET A
CLUE. This crap you're promoting is only being
pushed because people don't understand the science, and pandering to these
drooling mouth-breathers doesn't make you look very
good.However, to be fair, Buttars has
stated he would consider teaching intelligent design in a mandatory philosophy
or humanities class. Sounds better than teaching it alongside the theory of
evolution in science class; but pushing this nonsense in any form is just
another slide down the slippery slope. I notice that these people pushing ID
wouldn't consider teaching it along side all the other creation myths of the
world. 'Cause they're wrong.Link
to Deseret News article about the issue.
Posted at 11:03 AM Permalink
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Published On: Oct 20, 2006 12:41 PM
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