Prophecy!

I have been warned that portents of my personal doom have been issued.

I predict that within one year of this date, Pharyngula, Panda’s Thumb, EvC, RichardDawkins.net and Uncommon Descent will all have so completely degenerated as to become nothing but embarrassing footnotes in the history of internet communication. I also predict that P.Z. Myers and Richard Dawkins will have so embarrassed their home institutions that overt attempts will have been initiated to have their tenures revoked on the grounds of moral terpitude and seeking to overthrow the government. Public institutions like the University of Minnesota and Oxford cannot continue much longer to tolerate representatives so lacking in moral and ethical fiber as these two pathetic products of a “prescribed” and now terminated organic evolution. They make Ward Churchill look like Shirley Temple. Unlike Churchill who was never a threat to anyone, these two actively seek to destroy Western Civilization. I also predict there will soon be an Atheist Political Party. We already have an Atheist Political Action Committee (APAC) and a professed atheist member of the House of Representatives.

It is hard to believe isn’t it?

Fortunately for them, by that date, February 9, 2009, the physical destruction of our civilization will have proceeded to such a degree that thinking people will no longer be concerned about intellectual trash like Richard Dawkins and P.Z. Myers.

You should all be worried. This time next year, you’ll all be huddled in your bunkers as civilization collapses around you, while I’ll be off flaunting my moral turpitude in an opium den with a pair of contortionist twins and a tank of squid, giggling maniacally over my brilliant schemes that have Destroyed the World! Bwahahahahahaaha!

After all, John A. Davison could never be wrong, could he?

Texas = Sodom!

And it’s a good thing! The Texas ban on sale of sex toys has been ruled unconstitutional. There will be a lot of people smiling in that state in days to come — I’d like to think that flooding the state with vibrators would have a salutary effect on the repressive prigs who are also responsible for the promotion of creationism.

So, Texans, you know it’s Valentine’s Day … does this give you any gift ideas?

It’s not just the Muslims

Down there in Weird Kansas, there was a minor incident that is symptomatic of an ugly way of thinking. A high school basketball team refused to allow a woman to referee.

The Kansas State High School Activities Association said referees reported that Michelle Campbell was preparing to officiate at St. Mary’s Academy near Topeka on Feb. 2 when a school official insisted that Campbell could not call the game.

The reason given, according to the referees: Campbell, as a woman, could not be put in a position of authority over boys because of the academy’s beliefs.

It’s also quite possible that her face was uncovered, that she had driven a car to the game, and that she may at some time in the past have actually played basketball in immodest clothing, against men…and she might even have won.

I’m sure that when all of the activities of this domineering Jezebel aspiring to be almost as good as a man are revealed, the upright young men of St Mary’s Academy will march over and burn her.

Oh, but here’s a hint for an organizations that want to exercise discriminatory policies. The local athletic organization is contemplating stripping St Mary’s membership over the issue, but they have to wait on one little thing.

Gary Musselman, the association’s executive director, said the organization will not make a decision until it confirms whether St. Mary’s Academy has a written policy of not allowing female referees to work boys’ basketball games.

Here that, administrators who want to implement racist or sexist policies? It’s OK as long as you don’t write them down.

Are there no intelligent creationists?

I’ve been overestimating creationists. Every time I look at what they’re saying about evolution, my estimation drops yet further … you’d think that after years of tracking this stuff, they’d bottom out, but no. The latest examples are some snippets from a presentation by Caroline Crocker. Crocker is one of the martyrs of ID — she was released from a temporary teaching position at George Mason University, and claims it was because she is a creationist, when the real explanation is that she’s an incompetent kook.

Her powerpoint slides have to be seen to be believed. Here’s one example. Can you spot the egregious errors?

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Author opens mouth, exposes wackiness

James Randerson scrapes a little more info on the Han and Warda paper. The editor, Michael Dunn, sounds uncommunicative, but I can’t blame him for wanting to proceed cautiously…I just hope that eventually we get a better accounting.

The interesting revelation is a letter from one of the authors, Warda. I think we’ve found the source of the weird fantasies in the text.

The problem is that we described in very clear and definite way the disciplined nature that takes part inside our cells. We supported our meaning with define proteomics evidences that cry in front of scientists that the mitochondria is not evolved from other prokaryotes. They want to destroy us because we say the truth; only the truth.

Yes, the paper does describe the complexity in mitochondria. However, the paper does not back up their claim to have “disproven” the endosymbiotic hypothesis for the origin of mitochondria at all, nor does it provide any evidence for an alternative…and postulating a “mighty creator” is not a scientific alternative hypothesis. Complexity is not an argument against evolution!

Nobody was interested in destroying them. They wrote some foolish things in a science paper that were completely unwarranted, and people are discussing the sloppy and inappropriate content. There is no fatwa here.

He also denies plagiarizing anything. Sorry, guy, the evidence is there, and stonewalling is not a credible option right now. It just makes me want to reject everything you say, since the smoking gun is right there in your hand, where everyone can see it.

Mr Warda revealed his agenda yet further in comments to the the Times Higher Education supplement:

Co-author Mr Warda told Times Higher Education that to criticise Western science was “taboo”. He said: “It is clear that the fingerprint of (the) mighty creator (is) inside everyone in this Universe.”

After initially claiming that evolution was a “useless, evidence-less” theory, he said the process did take place, but under the control of “complete, disciplined wisdom” and not in a chaotic way. “Even one amino acid, when mutated in any of millions of tiny different cell receptors in their body, can kill or ruin life,” he added. “Is this chaos?”

So I think we can now safely say how the goofiness got into the paper: one of the authors simply and unashamedly put it there. Now the puzzle is to figure out how such blatant garbage got past peer review.

Ahistorical garbage from the producers of Expelled

BPSDB

The gang of prevaricators behind Ben Stein’s Expelled movie had their own way of celebrating Darwin Day: they wrote a blog post that was a solid wall of lies and nonsense. In a way, I’m impressed; I’d have to really struggle to write something that was such a dense array of concentrated stupid, but for them, it seems to be a natural talent, allowing them to blithely and effortlessly rattle off a succession of falsehoods without blushing.

Let’s begin with the beginning. You don’t even have to be a biologist to be embarrassed by these wankers.

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Tit-for-tat

The Danish cartoonists vs. Muslims conflict is flaring up again, with the discovery of a conspiracy by Muslims to kill a cartoonist. There are many levels of irony here; it’s simply stupid to try and protest accusations that you are violent by committing acts of violence. I’ve also noticed an interesting pattern of escalation.

The aggrieved Muslims are saying, “Mock our god and we will kill you.” They have the goal of suppressing images they consider blasphemous.

The cartoonists are saying, “Threaten to kill us and we will mock your god.” Obviously, they’d like to stay alive, but their goal in this context is to see their work disseminated widely.

Now ask yourself, who is achieving their goals? Who is winning?

It looks to me like a few relatively obscure cartoonists are crushing the fundamentalist Muslim world. Those cartoons aren’t even that good, and they’re being published everywhere, even appearing on blogs.

i-a3e4da534f1f85f19b7d224c4cbe6b3f-mohammed_bomb.jpg

Now maybe I’m misinterpreting the fundie Muslim position here: maybe their goal is actually to make sure the world thinks their beliefs are dangerous and stupid, and also ineffectual; they’re flailing pointlessly to suppress a couple of scribblings that would have vanished into obscurity, and have managed to turn them into icons of Islamic insanity. They’re doing a good job if that’s so. They’ve convinced me, at any rate.