An interview that goes straight to the important issues

People are still interviewing me about the silly Expelled movie. The most prestigious news source so far, though, has to be my campus newspaper, The Register. They even ran it on the front page of their April Fool’s issue, a signal honor which I only acknowledge at this late date because I was so busy gallivanting about that I missed it. You’re supposed to be able to read it at the source, but the link seems to have gone all flaky, so at least until it’s fixed, I’ve put the interview below the fold.

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Truth tickets and stupid offsets

Perhaps you’ve heard of carbon offsets: the idea that if you’re going to do something that will release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, you also buy or support something that will sequester an equivalent amount of carbon. It’s a rational way to compensate for necessary activities and keep your damage to the environment neutral.

Well, how about stupid offsets? Let’s say you’re going to do something that will increase the net amount of stupidity in the universe, like, say, paying to watch some inane creationist propaganda film because you’re curious about just how bad it can be. You can, without feeling guilty, if for every dollar you spend on the dumb movie you also invest an equivalent amount in something that increases intelligence, like donating to the NCSE. It’s an excellent idea: if you absolutely must pitch a few dollars into the pockets of lying frauds, make sure you counterbalance the problem and buy Truth Tickets, too.

And even if you don’t want to see the stupid movie, you can still buy Truth Tickets to compensate for all the idiots who will.

Menuge debate coming up

On Saturday, 19 April, I’m supposed to be in a debate on campus. It’s with Angus Menuge of Concordia University and the Discovery Institute, a fellow who did not impress Josh Rosenau, and who professes to have been converted by C.S. Lewis, which bodes ill right there. The organization has been a low-level, simmering clusterkluge ever since a few students asked me to do this months ago, exemplified now by the signs that have gone up all over campus that misspell my name (of course), and by this amazing announcement of the topic on the campus Lutheran ministry web page.

SPRING RETREAT: The Spring LSF Retreat will be held April 19th at the U of M, Morris chapter. Dr. Angus Menuge, professor at Concordia University Wisconsin will be the main speaker. There will also be a debate between Dr. Menuge and Professor P.Z. Myers (UMM) discussing “Does neuroscience leave room for God”. Myers has postulated that the reason people believe in God is because there are “ghosts” in their brains, and as Pastor Jarvis understands it Myers believes that theists have something wrong in the way their brains function that make them believe in God. If you have any questions regarding this debate, please forward them to Pastor Jarvis from UMM. rjarvis@hometownsolutions.net. If you are interested in going to the retreat please see Shaina or Pastor.

I am always impressed at how much creationists can get wrong in one sentence.

Anyway, I don’t think this will be much of a debate. Menuge will drone out some theology, the creationists in the audience will be happy; I plan on discussing some real neuroscience, and if that audience listens they might learn something, but more likely they’ll come away with some mangled, confused mess of scrambled ideas, like “Myers thinks there are ghosts! In brains!”, that gets everything completely wrong. I am not going into this with a high estimation of the majority of the audience, unless, of course, you show up. I may have to invite students in my classes to go just to bring more good minds into the room.

I wonder if Menuge is getting coached by his fellow Fellow, Michael Egnor?

At last! A candidate I can support!

The New York City Skeptics sent me a t-shirt today, and at last I have the candidate I want.

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I know, I know, you’re all thinking that there’s one little problem with the guy — he’s British.* I’m sure we can sneak a little amendment through real fast — we’ll tell everyone it’s to let Schwarzenegger run, and do a quick last minute swap.

*He’s also dead, but he’ll still do a better job than the clown in office right now.

Get out of here, atheists!

The governor of Illinois has been playing some games with state money, shuffling a million dollars to benefit a Baptist church, and an atheist dared to testify to the legislature against this. The response from one legislator was unsurprising: she shrieked at the atheist to get out.

Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) interrupted atheist activist Rob Sherman during his testimony Wednesday afternoon before the House State Government Administration Committee in Springfield and told him, “What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous . . . it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!

“This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God,” Davis said. “Get out of that seat . . . You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon.”

Disbelief in religion means you have “no right” to speak to members of government? Wow. And note the “D” after her name — she’s a member of the party most (but definitely not all!) American atheists lean towards.

There’s more on this exchange: it looks like Sherman kept his cool, while Davis spewed her hate.

Chicago atheists, you know what to do: next election, campaign against Monique Davis. Get someone who is not a raving nutbag to run. Right now, her district needs to flood her mailbox with letters of protest. You can find her contact information online; let her know that you do not appreciate her efforts to disenfranchise and discriminate against you.

Have a querulous Paul Nelson Day!

The new generation of creationists has been doing something rather remarkable. Flaming anti-scientific religious nutcases like Wells and Dembski have been diligently going to real universities, not the usual hokey bible colleges, and working hard to get legitimate degrees in actual fields of science and math to get themselves a superficial veneer of credibility. It’s basically nothing but collecting paper credentials, though, since they don’t actually learn anything and never do anything with the knowledge they should have acquired, other than use it to razzle-dazzle the rubes.

One other example is Paul Nelson, and today is the anniversary of an infamous interaction. You see, Nelson likes to flaunt the pretense of being knowledgeable about developmental biology. Several years ago, he invented this mysterious metric called “ontogenetic depth” that he claimed to be measuring, and which he claimed to have used as evidence that the Cambrian fauna did not evolve. He even dragged this nonsense to professional meetings where he was ignored, except by vicious anti-creationists. I harshly criticized the entire vacuous notion. (I also expressed sympathy for the poor graduate student Nelson had lured into this waste of effort…it was Marcus Ross, remember him?)

He said he’d write up a technical summary that would explain exactly what ontogenetic depth was and how it was measured. He gave us a whole series of dates by which he’d have this wonderful summary. Every one of those dates sailed by without a word. And ever since we have commemorated Paul Nelson Day on 7 April, one of the dates in 2004 that he promised us an explanation. Here’s my anniversary timeline from last year.

I was just reminded that last year at this time I announced an anniversary. In March of 2004, I critiqued this mysterious abstraction called “ontogenetic depth” that Paul Nelson, the ID creationist, proposed as a measure of developmental and evolutionary complexity, and that he was using as a pseudoscientific rationale against evolution. Unfortunately, he never explained how “ontogenetic depth” was calculated or how it was measured (perhaps he was inspired by Dembski’s “specified complexity”, another magic number that can be farted out by creationists but cannot be calculated). Nelson responded to my criticisms with a promise.

On 29 March 2004, he promised to post an explanation “tomorrow”.

On 7 April 2004, he told us “tomorrow”.

On 26 April 2004, he told us he was too busy.

On 13 January 2005, he told us to read a paper by R Azevedo instead. I rather doubt that Ricardo supports Intelligent Design creationism, or thinks his work contributes to it.

Ever since, silence.

This year he is apparently off in Brazil, proselytizing his lies and fake science to the people there, so I’m assuming he won’t get around to explaining his magic metric tomorrow, either. Isn’t it amazing how creationists can make stuff up and get a career speaking at exotic places all around the world?

Oh, and get a day named after them! In his honor, we should all make it a point to ask people “How do you know that?” today, and the ones who actually can explain themselves competently will be complimented by being told that they’re no Paul Nelson.

We’ll celebrate it again next year, I’m sure.