The NCSE has been posting videos of events at the Texas Board of Education — they are very informative and well worth spending some time watching.
Here’s an example of the bad guys: Don Patton preening smarmily and accusing Darwinism of failing because a ‘prediction’ had failed. The ‘prediction’, as he presents it, is that the fossil record would disgorge a complete accounting of all of evolution…and he can quote biologists from Darwin to Eldredge saying that such a complete series has not been found. He ignores the fact that the actual scientific prediction that the fossil record would always be spotty and incomplete, and most importantly, that there are multiple lines of evidence supporting the idea.
To counter that, here’s historian Abigail Lustig. Notice that right off the bat what she does is point out the distinction between common descent and the mechanism of natural selection, and that more than fossils were involved: biogeography, sysematics, comparative anatomy, etc.
This is also something to emphasize: she’s a historian. The creationist assault on education is not confined to just biology—they have targeted every discipline that challenges their claim of Christian superiority and the infallibility of religious belief.
How can anyone on the Texas Board of Education claim there are “missing links” between apes & humans, when they have so many knuckle-draggers right to hand?
I’m reading Coyne’s new book and he points out that we’ve only found fossils representing about 0.1% (or was it 0.01%?) of all species ever to have existed.
Not sure where Patton gets the idea that the consensus is that the fossil record would “would disgorge a complete accounting of all of evolution”.
Touché, PZ. Biblical dogmatism affects History as much as Biology. Recently I was outraged about public schools in Catalonia that “teach the controversy” putting Adam and Eve along Paleolithic. And all scholars in Middle East Ancient History must be very aware of some trends…
Yes–they’re essentially targeting education. Because, as we’ve repeatedly seen, they think that knowledge makes the baby Jesus cry.
Thanks for this post, PZ. It reflects something I’ve mentioned before, and thought for a long time: the attacks on science are an attack on education, and education includes art, history, social studies, and so forth. Everyone has a dog in this fight.
No kings,
Robert
yeah, my spanish teacher was trying to tell me that spanish evolved from latin… jeez i guess everything evolves now! i set her straight though… it was God and the tower of babel… idiot (and dont get me started on my music appreciation teacher)
“I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic and national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us—then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.”
—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, 1996
Quoting the famous philosopher Al Boreland, “I don’t think so Tim.”
It’s a straw man and I’m sure he knows it.
Ok. Seriously. What the hell is “Darwinism”? Are these people so week minded that they need to couch EVERYTHING in terms of an “ism” just to fit into their teeny world views?
Patton preens and calls himself a “Doctor” and a Geologist. He usually refers to himself as “Geologist, Don R. Patton, Ph.D.” His Doctorate is highly suspect and he is not a registered Geoscientist in Texas
He pretends to be a geologist but displays appalling ignorance about geology. He claims to have studied geology in several countries, but he appears to be a professional creationist.
If you are ever at a meeting then his knowledge and qualifications must be challenged. As an ‘expert witness’ he is a fraud.
The Petey at #10:
Their own lens is an “ism,” in a sense, and colors their perception of the world just so. Zeno’s got a good relevant post on his blog from Tuesday, called “Who Would Jesus Elect?” over at http://zenoferox.blogspot.com/
Short answer to your question: yes.
No kings,
Robert
Yep and his target audience will eat it up no questions asked.
*I need to check my numbers in post #2. I think I’m right but it doesn’t sound quite correct. It’s highly possible I’m misremembering the exact context. If anything I would guess it’s a much smaller %
Well, that was really depressing. The audience was clearly behind Don Patton, remaking some of his points for him during the question/answer period. It looked like that audience, at least, was ready to insert “proposed” in front of every transitional fossil description, and to make certain that evolution was taught as not just as flawed, but as a failed theory (fails to confirm the prediction).
Patton made a fundamental error (the “prediction” of a complete fossil record) and went on to base most of his arguments on that error.
One of Patton’s other big guns was the claim that evolution is taught as a religion by fundamentalist “believers” and that it is based on “faith.” So, this is a good reason to insert the teaching of another belief/faith that everyone recognizes as faith?
Oh the poor children, Patton says, being indoctrinated by fundamentalist evolutionists.
Hopeless sod. And a geologist of some note? How did he manage a career as a geologist? Maybe he is a Deist and not a Young Earth Creationist?
His ‘Resume”
He won’t say who granted his ‘PhD in Education’ so it’s likely a Bible diploma mill. “Two years” at a university does not a Gelogy Qualification make, even if you do it twice.
You do not need to have any qualification in Geology to become an Affiliate Member of the Geological Society of America.
I can hear it now, Patton and company will label everyone who disagrees with them or questions them as “evangelists for Darwinism.”
The presentation by Lustig that followed Patton’s was half as long, and she didn’t make her points well enough for that audience. I liked her presentation. It was admirable, but for an audience like that one needs to make the major points clearly and repeatedly. I see another post regarding Patton’s qualifications as a geologist was made above — I wish Lustig had known that — either she or someone there should have put the brakes on accepting Patton as an expert.
Go Prof. Lustig!
Regarding Patton “the geologist.”
I can’t find a single publication (including the 1997 abstract he’s supposed to have presented at GSA) that I can be sure is from this dude. I checked GEOBASE, GEOREF, JSTOR, and Google.
I suspect he’s a poser.
Fixed
Typical facts versus values argument. “We don’t like your facts because it offends our Christian values.”
The fact that there is even a fossil record blew creationism out of the water centuries ago.
It was realized long before Darwin that the earth was old and lots had happened. And that life had changed through time, evolution.
The usual creo explanation that god (or satan) is wandering around planting fossils to fool people doesn’t have a lot of empirical support.
According to that “resume” of Don Patton, his ONLY degree is the PhD in education. Nobody who has an actual degree would say instead “four years” or “two years” at such and such a college. Evidently his 4 years in total studying geology didn’t add up to enough credits for even a bachelor’s degree.
I’d like to know more about his work experience and his claims of dinosaur digging. I wonder if they’re as economical with the truth as his educational claims.
Josh, did you mean that you can’t find any record that Patton actually was a speaker at the 1997 meeting? Could his talk have been a poster presentation? How plausible is it that somebody with his flimsey credentials would be invited to speak?
See, even a high school biology student could have explained how rare fossilization is. It’s seems that Patton thinks plant and animal remains never get eaten, or that they should always and immediately be preserved by volcanic ash, or that they’re never exposed to the elements, or that plate tectonics don’t exist.
Whats this crap about conflating naturalism with religion?
We have no rituals, angels farting or holy books.
Seems like a hundred years ago (well, maybe 15), I remarked to a rather religious friend of mine (on his insistence that fossils are more or less a joke from god) that it was astounding that we had ANY fossils to work with – much less any complete story that just laid itself out like a book.
I am by no means any kind of biologist, archeologist, historian, much of anything really. How is it that *I* can know this, and this guy Patton who purportedly works day in and day out with fossils does not?
Does he really think that A: everything that ever existed has produced a fossil and B: that we have uncovered ALL POSSIBLE fossils?
That is just astoundingly stupid, ignorant and maybe a few other adjectives that are not springing readily to hand.
JC
I think I recognize Don Patton from a NASCAR video.
If you’ll forgive the plug, I analyze the ICR’s latest lawsuit against the Texas Higher Education Coordination Board on my blog. (I’m a lawyer.) It’s deliriously, gloriously insane.
Andrew you should post that link here
Don Patton visited our community (sponsored by a local church), on the CVAAS site you can watch him reduced to moronic stuttering when he found himself unaware of first year geology concepts.
Don Patton claims he possesses an Phd in Geology.
Yeah. I haven’t been able to find that he gave a talk at a GSA meeting in 1997 yet.
GSA talks are selected/scheduled based on the ~250 word abstracts (summaries) that are submitted by hopeful speakers. Who gets to present their work is decided on the basis of the abstract, not the person. If you submitted a good abstract that the reviewers liked, then GSA would happily let you give the presentation*. The thing is, even if he gave a poster, I should still be able to find the abstract. That I haven’t yet found it is rather telling…
*Keep in mind also that the reviews that these little summaries receive are not particularly rigorous. Heck, I was getting GSA abstracts published as an undergrad. It’s not at all the same thing as getting a paper published in GSA Bulletin or something. So it’s absolutely not out of the realm of possibility that a creationist gave a talk; it happens. But again, if he did, it should be easy to find.
Yes–they’re essentially targeting education.
As a pretend internet historian, I fully agree. I basically thought this was a science/religion debate until I did the math on Answers in Genesis’s timeline one day.
If they’re right, dinosaurs were walking the Earth concurrent with the Old Kingdom period in Egypt and roughly the same time as the founding of the first Chinese Dynasty. Noah’s flood would have wiped out Sargon I and the Sumerians (I think, I’m a little iffy on the theoretical flood timeline). Not only that, but we know Jericho was founded around 9000 BCE. That means that either Jericho was created five thousand years before the Earth or the Earth has been around a lot longer.
History is in just as much trouble as science if the YECs have their way.
Rev. BDC: Done. Sorry — didn’t see the previous post and I should have realized PZ would have covered it.
During the question/answer period Patton said that the Supreme Court had declared Natural Humanism (or was it Secular Humanism?) to be a religion. Is that true?
Also during the question/answer period a questioner made the micro versus macro evolution distinction. This mangled concept has been debunked before, but no one at the meeting pointed that out. Patton smilingly agreed with the questioner.
Wait… who are these people asking the questions again? I must have missed all the other posts about this, sorry. Did that guy just say “I think ‘a lie’ is too nice a word, but thank you”, when the idiot creationist said it’s a lie that scientists accept evolution?
Some (well actually, almost all) of Patton’s “facts” that sound dubious or out of context to me:
1) Darwin said that the lack of transitional fossils was the biggest problem for his theory. (I thought he said that the development of complex structures like the eye was the biggest problem.)
2) Darwin predicted that the fossil record would be completely filled in.
3) Eldredge agrees with #2 and says that it hasn’t been completely filled in (I imagine this one is a quote mine – I would guess that Eldredge went on to say that we don’t need every single fossil to know that evolution happened).
4) Eldredge, Steven Stanley (who is he?), and Gould all state that there are no transitional fossils.
5) Gould says that Archaeopterix is not a transitional form (again possibly a quote mine – I have a vague idea that Archaeopterix isn’t considered to be the direct ancestor of modern birds, that it’s somewhat off the direct lineage – does someone know?)
6) Michael Ruse equated evolution with religious dogma.
7) The Supreme Court has said that “humanistic naturalism” is a religion. (Is he thinking of “secular humanism”? I believe the Court has not said that it is a religion, but that teaching it in schools as a religion would violated the First Amendment. I think it specifically rejected the claim that this was being done in the case under consideration.)
“Dr.” Sleazebag definitely let people think his doctorate was in geology. And notice that his recitation of his work experience didn’t include heading up a creationist “institute.”
Mazada must be one of those consulting firms that don’t advertise, have a web page or a phone number
Probably because representing yourself as a ‘Professional Geologist’ when you are not is an offense in Texas
Canada and unless registered in the UK and Australia are not recognised as “Competent Persons” for the purposes of the mining acts.
I believe presenting himself as an expert in geology IN TEXAS is an offense. Perhaps a member of the Texas Board of Professional Geoscientists would like to take some action. If anything qualifies as the ‘practice of Geoscience’ testifying to the Board of Education as a purported ‘expert’ should.
No! No sorry. I was just thinking you’d get more exposure there. Great take down by the way.
Quidam – I don’t have access to the Dissertation Abstracts service from home, but anyone with a legit PhD in the US will have their thesis submitted there (mine is there, Bill Cosby’s is there, Martin Luther King’s is there, Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s is there, even). If someone were to do a search, it could be established quickly if he got a PhD (in any subject) in a legit US institution.
These people are bypassing the “adults” and launching a direct attack on our children. They lie and lie and LIE. And even being told by a conservative federal judge to “STOP LYING” doesn’t phase them for a second.
From what I’ve read, these lying creationists are the LAST people that Jesus Christ would associate with.
I don’t recall, which part of the New Testament says “the end justifies any means”?
If any members of the Texas Board of Professional Geoscientists feels that Patton is violating the provisions of the Texas Geoscience Practice Act, and surely presenting that he is the principal of a Texas based Geological Consulting company and acting as an expert witness to the Texas Board of Education must qualify, then the complaint form is here: http://www.tbpg.state.tx.us/enforcement.html
I would but I’m not a US citizen, although I am a legitimate professional Geoscientist and this burns me.
Just checked Dissertation Abstracts. Nothing (not one) pops up for a “Donald R. Patton.” Only four “Donald Pattons” show up at all, and I suspect one of them is retired/dead (degree in 1949). There is only one “Don Patton” that shows up, and this person has the wrong middle initial.
If any members of the Texas Board of Professional Geoscientists feels that Patton is violating the provisions of the Texas Geoscience Practice Act, and surely presenting that he is the principal of a Texas based Geological Consulting company and acting as an expert witness to the Texas Board of Education must qualify, then the complaint form is here: http://www.tbpg.state.tx.us/enforcement.html
I would but I’m not a US citizen, although I am a legitimate professional Geoscientist and this burns me.
Yes, the YEC timeline is ridiculous.
50,000 years ago, humans colonized Australia
14,000 years ago, humans colonized the Americas
10,000 years ago agriculture was invented
There are trees and shrubs that have been alive (as root sucker clones) for 8,000 to 10,000 years
7,000 years ago the Sumerians invented glue and beer
6,000 years ago the earth was created
The creos don’t just target biology. It is all sciences and history and archeaology as well.
This Don Patton? The guy with the phony diploma from the Australian Institiute Of We’re Really A Real School And Not A Diploma Mill, Honestly? The one who argued that eight people on the Ark could multiply to 6 billion (assuming a 20th century population growth rate throughout human history)? That nutcase? The one who spurred me to investigate creationist quote-mining? I didn’t realize he was still around.
Here’s Patton’s complete CV, from the site of the “Metroplex Institute of Origins Science” (which he heads).
http://dfwmios.com/about_us_profile_DonPatton.htm
A few questions about it:
Although he claims to have worked as a geologist in a bunch of countries, he doesn’t mention the names of the companies he’s worked for, except for the Mazada Corporation, of which he is a partner.
Likewise, he doesn’t mention who sponsored any of the digs he has worked on, or what his position was, except for two of the three digs he is “presently” involved with.
I find it a little hard to believe that he is the “site geologist” for an excavation at Qumran. I was under the impression that the Israelis were very professional in their archaeology.
He also claims to be the “Area Supervisor” (whatever that means) for a dig at “the City of David.” That seems like an odd name for a excavation site. Aren’t digs generally named by the current name of the location, at least until it is definitively established that a particular site matches up with a historical location?
Patton also says he’s listed in two Who’s Who books. Only for one year in each book, however. Did the editors decide after one year that he wasn’t worthy of inclusion? I have to wonder if the Who’s Whos were legitimate ones or the vanity kind which lists people in order to market copies of the book to them.
The last five items on his “Presently” list are various colleges and universities, with no indication of what his connection to them is. It can’t be that he’s spoken at them, because he has a separate listing for that.
I’d like to track down “longest dinosaur track ever discovered” claim too. It sounds very implausible that someone with such weak credentials (not even in paleontology) would be given that kind of opportunity.
Being fuzzy from several days in bed with bronchitis, I stumbled in here to see the Anals of the Texas Board of Education and had to look a second time till my eyes focused. But decided I was right the first time, after all.
I know that Don Patton. He is a local loon. I’ve seen his “Malachite Man” lectures in person.
After investigating the ‘facts’ in his lecture, it was clear that that he is one of the most dishonest people I’ve ever seen. He isn’t just wrong, he says many many things that he knows are out and out lies (unless he is just insane).
Creationists don’t come much more disgusting that this one.
Metroplex?
Is it run from a movie theatre?
I vaguely remember something like that. For certain purposes involving discrimination atheism can be considered a religious belief or some such. Not entirely sure of this so IIRC.
Irrelevant anyway. Science is science and has nothing to do with natural humanism, secular humanism, atheism, or whatever. Science uses methodolical naturalism as a working principle but that has nothing to do with religion either.
Patton is just lying his ass off like all creos. These lies are old and pretty obvious. While they may be having fun lying in public, in court, this sort of testimony will destroy their case in a heartbeat. Lying in front of brain dead, stupid religious fanatics is easy but isn’t going to go over well anywhere else.
Thanks to Josh and to plum grenville for sussing out Don Patton’s real background, as opposed to his claimed or inferred background. Patton should be profusely praised by the questioner’s at that meeting for his artfulness as a poseur, instead of their fawning over him for deigning to bring his awesomeness before them.
I’m was struck by Patton’s claim that “Humanistic Naturalism” had been declared a religion by the US Supreme Court, so I did some cursory digging (A.K.A. a Google search). Patton is mistaken in the facts, and even gets his terminology wrong. Whether this is due to ignorance or duplicity I will leave to my fellow Pharynguloids to decide for themselves.
The Council for Secular Humanism explains why this is wrong on their web site:
Apologies for errant apostrophes in previous post. The little buggers propagate where they are not wanted.
Don sure does have some serious hair in his CV pic. You gotta give him that.
@Rev. BigDumbChimp Metroplex = Dallas/Fort Worth area.
Sorry for the double post.
Here Don Patton weasels his way through explaining his ‘credentials’
“I actually have more hours in Geology but my doctorate is in Education.” < Hours don't count as University Degrees unless they are accompanied by exams. It seems his PhD was obtained after two years at "Pacific College of Graduate Studies" which no longer seems to exist. Pacific College is a small religious school run by Australian creationist Clifford Wilson, a close associate of Baugh’s.
Patton gets all hissy when asked and insists it was accredited when he got his ‘Ph.D.’. Like Baugh his “2 year Ph.D.” is in Christian Education.
It lost accreditation very shortly afterwards
Ahh. My bad.
“Metroplex?
Is it run from a movie theatre?”
Metroplex is the local term for the Dallas-Ft. Worth area.
It’s analogous to “Twin Cities” or “Bay Area”.
Bruce @51. All right! Thanks for the info. I could tell from the way Patton proffered that particular pile of crap that he knew he was lying — but he was in audience-pleasing mode so he went with it. How can we let Patton’s audience know about his duplicity?
Quidam
html for hyperlinking
<a href=”http://bigdumbchimp.blogspot.com”.com”>Here is a link to my blog</a>
makes this
Here is a link to my blog
ooooops… extra ” before the .comin my example
<a href=”http://bigdumbchimp.blogspot.com.com”>Here is a link to my blog</a>
that’s better
Here is a link to my blog
Quidam @55. Links not working.
Grammar finds a way.
I left out the quotes round the url and that leaves it formatted as a hyperlink but stops it working. In HTML the quotes are not usually required. Anyway here are the links:
Don Patton weasels his way through explaining his ‘credentials’
It seems his PhD was obtained after two years at “Pacific College of Graduate Studies” which no longer seems to exist. Pacific College is a small religious school run by Australian creationist Clifford Wilson, a close associate of Baugh’s.
Pacific College Incorporated (a.k.a Pacific College of Graduate Studies and Pacific International University)[26], from which Baugh claims a master’s degree in archaeology, traces to a small, private, religious school in Australia, whose president is Clifford Wilson.[27] Ian Plimer, a member of the Australian Research Council and professor of geology at Newcastle University, reported that PCI is not accredited or authorized to grant degrees. Plimer stated, “Any degrees from this ‘College’ are illegal in Australia and are clearly being used fraudulently in the U.S.A.[28]
That day at the SBOE meeting was borderline unbearable. Patton’s presentation was scraping the bottom of the barrel. I don’t understand why at least one board member didn’t ask him about molecular evidence. The member who ‘represents’ me, Cynthia Dunbar, is alas way too dim/evil to bring it up.
Perhaps this thought has already been posted: Patton claims that evolution is dead, then claims that one must be religious to ‘believe’ it. I can at least agree with him that to believe that something is true in the presence of contrary evidence requires faith.
Quidam @63, thanks for links. The info presented at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy/degrees.html deserves elucidation. Here’s an excerpt (see original for footnotes detailing sources):
Don Patton’s Alleged Credentials
Since early 1989, Don Patton, a close associate of Carl Baugh and leader of Metroplex Institute of Origins Science (MIOS) near Dallas, has claimed a Ph.D. (or “Ph.D. candidacy”) in geology from Queensland Christian University in Australia. However, QCU is another unaccredited school linked to Clifford Wilson. When questioned about this at a recent MIOS meeting, Patton indicated that he was aware of some problems relating to QCU, and was withdrawing his Ph.D. candidacy.
However, the printed abstracts of the 1989 Bible-Science conference in Dayton, Tennessee (where Patton gave two talks) stated that he was a Ph.D. candidacy in geology, and implied that he has at least four degrees from three separate schools. When I asked Patton for clarification on this during the conference, he stated that he had no degrees, but was about to receive a Ph.D. degree in geology, pending accreditation of QCU, which he assured me was “three days away.” Many days have since passed, and Patton still has no valid degree in geology. Nor is the accreditation of QCU imminent. Australian researcher Ian Plimer reported, “PCI, QPU, PCT, and PCGS have no formal curriculum, no classes, no research facilities, no calendar, no campus, and no academic staff….Any Ph.D. or Ph.D. candidacy at QPU by Patton is fraudulent.”
With surprising boldness, Carl Baugh recently appeared on a radio talk show in Texas claiming the same degrees discussed above, plus a new “Ph.D. candidacy in paleoanthropology from Pacific College.” Baugh complained that critics were now attacking his credentials and those of other fine creationists, including “Dr. Don Patton.”
Think im in love with the beautiful historian: Smart, Pretty and likes to kick creationist asses, what else you can ask for?
What? Are you talking about BBCode or something? ~:-|
Hey, I think I might have found the 1997 GSA abstract that Patton was on (I was in a meeting or I would have sent this earlier).
http://rock.geosociety.org/absindex/annual/1997/50598.htm
Interestingly, Patton isn’t the contact person and is second author. I think it’s fairly likely that he didn’t actually present this talk…(if this is actually him, which seems likely considering how infrequently the name shows up).
They are if you want your code to pass W3C validation. Missing quotes won’t usually cause a problem for browsers as they are generally pretty good at rendering HTML that isn’t strictly standards-compliant, but certain errors and omissions can give some server-side stuff the heebie-jeebies.
I was wondering about that as well but it’s been a while since I’ve had to visit the w3c sites.
This is making me very happy I moved out of Texas a few months ago. Well, I moved *into* Kansas, but at least we have a sensible governor right now.
I don’t know if I should be pleased or annoyed that we chemists don’t get directly targeted – yet. It’s hard to insert god into something like Swern oxidation.
Hmm… The reference Josh dug out relates to bivalves being buried during the Eocene. And this means what to creationism how? Mighty far afield, or a mighty liar.
If this is the guy, then it relates to creationism because it’s all about catastrophismTM. I personally think that the human skull/dinosaur eggs (and the weird flowerly way it’s written) is creo-code, but even ignoring that, look at the take-home of the abstract:
If you read between the lines, this whole abstract is all “SEE! Uniformitarianism is WRONG! This is catastrphic sedimentation!” They’re punching hard at Alan Clarke’s favorite strawman (geologists say that all geological processes take millions of years).
This is what these guys do. They write something that GSA will accept (this one is not very good; I’m kind of surprised that it got accepted; the creo-code is usually better hidden) and then use it to bolster their credibility (as Patton has done). But it is almost always sedimentology of this kind of flavor. This is written eerily like Steve Austin’s GSA abstracts about the Grand Canyon.
And, coming out in tomorrow’s Nature, check this shit out:
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/43090/title/Fossil_of_a_walking_seal_found
Oh, and of course, it’s another stupid ass science journalist using the term “missing link.”
If any of you are lurking out there, PLEASE FUCKING STOP USING THIS PHRASE. If you care about science at all, cut it the fuck out. Even if the researcher you interview actually spouts it, please resist the temptation to quote them. You just make our lives more difficult when you do this shit.
Josh, thanks for explaining the creospeak for us plain speakers. The Nature article looks very interesting, just like Shubin and his fish. The gaps just keep getting smaller.
I have a suggestion for your sabbatical PZ. Write a high-school biology textbook, include lots of evolution and put in the weaknesses:
1. It tends to be better retrodictively than predictively. When it makes predictions its often vague, for example we know that flu viruses will change, but we don’t know how. Evolution tells us we need to renew our flu jabs, but doesn’t tell the manufacturers what to produce as early as we would like.
2. There are several aspects of the mechanisms that aren’t known. We can’t pin down whether it’s gradual-Dawkinsist or stepped-Gouldist. Is it a tree of life or, at the base, does it have web-y bits?
3. It’s annoyingly incomplete. Given life arising we know evolution occurs, just as given big lumps of stuff we know they’ll behave relativistically. But, just as we have difficulties merging relativity and quantum theory we have difficulties merging evolution with abiogenesis.
You have more and better examples than be but, the main point is that to give a decent view of the weaknesses of the theory one has to adopt the theory. And now that you’ve kept the fundies happy you can turn to the strengths of the theory.
Not the ones printed by Marquis. Quick check of their index doesn’t show him.
Someone should call Guillermo Gonzalez and see if this confirms the privileged planet thesis. Let’s see if the planets have good discoverability.
Jeez, HTML Nazis. By ‘not usually required’ I mean most browsers handle it just fine, not that it’s not WC3 compliant, not a document high on my reading list. I mostly program HTML (when I have to) by experiment and empirical observations. I was fooled by the preview formatting the text as if it was an active link.
Mea Cupla.
David R McQueen (th primary author of that paper) is also an ICR Young Earth Creationist
Here he uses Porphyrins to argue for a flood origin for oil. Unlike Patton he does have real geology degree. The argument is that Porphyrins degrade rapidly on exposure to oxygen, so the oil sources bust have been buried rapidly. He doesn’t explain how the deposits are of differing ages and associated with differeing fauna and flora. Palynology – the study of pollens, nothing to do with Sarah – is very useful in Oil stratigraphy whereas it would be completely useless if Flood Geology was anything other than a myth
One might think that having a divine insight into the True Origins of oil would give him a unique advantage as an Oil Geologist, but since he wasn’t very successful he is now employed as “Assistant Professor of Geology, ICR Graduate School”
Which a more
Creatards… always extremely quick to try drawing equivalence between their intellectually dishonest bullshit and real science. It can take the form of “Evolution is religion for atheists,” or “Our crap is science too (e.g. Answers In Genesis).” I can understand why they do it, because being on equal ground with science would give them some credibility. It’s funny when this equivalence-drawing instinct goes haywire though, and the Creatard pulls a completely hypocritical “Evolutionists are closed-minded, dogmatic zealots!” Mmm, yes, your true colors are showing.
Hehe. Sorry.
Also interesting is that the Beaverton Natural History Museum, listed as Patton’s address on that abstract, isn’t immediately obvious as being real.
http://www.worldartantiques.com/Oregon.html
Josh @ 68: Thanks for tracking down the abstract–it’s really horribly written. My favorite part, though, is that the word ‘diagenetic’ is misspelled two different ways: ‘diagenitic’ and ‘diogenitic’. You’d think a bible thumper could correctly spell a word whose root is ‘genesis’.
Indeed. And beyond that, you would think that the reviewer would be like…uh, guys?
“historian Abigail Lustig”
Swedish entry
lustig lustigt lustiga adj.
rolig, komisk
English translation
amusing, funny
:)
Yes, Don Patton is a big type fraud. He got his diploma in an unacredited Wuuuniversity that is not dissimilar to Hovind’s and it may not longer exist.
He also has a creationist group in Dallas, and he believes that dragons really existed and that he may have found Noah’s ark.
The guy is batshit crazy. The North Texas Skepticts have a lot of info about him.
Right, and if the misspellings and horrible grammar weren’t enough, the mention of dinosaur eggs and human skulls in fucking Eocene rocks should have raised some red flags.
To be fair, the abstract only mentions that these things have been reported from the formation, not that any of the authors actually found them. But knowing their backgrounds, I can’t help thinking they went there really hoping to find human and dinosaur remains together. And failing that, they cobbled together an abstract about catastrophism.
Yeah–I suspect that this was the motivation behind the entire expedition.
Okay, so I watched some of the other people who came up to talk, and it seems to me, that every time a pro-creationist came up, the board would just throw up some softball questions. Did anyone else catch that?
An ancestor of seals? Naah… That’s just another victim of THE FLOOD. It clearly has nothing to do with seals.
*rollseyes*
Now seriously, that fossil is fantastic. These discoveries always leave me thinking about how many more creatures are still out there buried and fossilized, just waiting to be found by a lucky paleontologist some day. I can’t even begin to imagine the feeling of discovering something like that.
#75
Flippin’ sweet.
Frantic Tiktaalik discovery-type spin from the DI, ICR, and AiG in 3, 2, 1….
Aargh… that was me at #92.
Fucking TypeKey logged me out. I know it’s not just me but anyone knows why does this happen?
@#81: Being an HTML Nazi is not a bad thing. People not following standards is what got the web into the mess of pages it’s in today. The sooner we all start to get used to writing standards-compliant HTML, the better.
Dania wrote:
Yeah–as Nerd observed above, the spaces between the data points continue to shrink. It’s almost as if we were doing…science!
I wonder…does a walking seal qualify as a beastie that would have been on the Ark, or is that one of the ones they would argue got ignored?
Josh #84: I’ve lived in and around Beaverton for 32 of my 37 years. This is the first I’ve heard of a Beaverton Natural History Museum. Plugging the address from the abstract into Google Maps shows that it’s a residential address. Is he running a Natural History Museum out of his house, or did he pick an address at random out of the phone book hoping no one would look it up?
I dunno. Bizarre, isn’t it? I did some Googling before I wrote that comment and, as you can predict, game up with fuck all. As Nerd would say, this guy sets off my BS alarm but good (beyond all of the stuff we already knew).
I’d say it depends on the creationist you ask. Different creationists may come up with different shit to cover the inconsistencies in their fable.
Or they would just copy/paste from whoever answered it first. They looove copy/paste.
Don’t know if anyone caught it (or could last through it), but at the end of the Patton vid, someone mentioned field photos of Don Patton wearing “his Indiana Jones costume” – “how sad,” is all I could think…
Safe to say I wouldn’t even trust this Patton guy to tell me the sky is blue…
*Sigh*
Everyone thinks they’re a fucking paleontologist.
#102
counselor: Well yes. Yes. Of course, it’s a bit of a jump isn’t it? I mean, er, chartered accountancy to lion taming in one go. You don’t think it might be better if you worked your way towards lion taming, say, via banking…
Anchovy: No, no, no, no. No. I don’t want to wait. At nine o’clock tomorrow I want to be in there, taming.
counselor: Fine, fine. But do you, do you have any qualifications?
Mr. Anchovy: Yes, I’ve got a hat.
counselor: A hat?
Mr. Anchovy: Yes, a hat. A lion taming hat. A hat with “lion tamer” on it. I got it at Harrods. And it lights up saying “lion tamer” in great big neon letters, so that you can tame them after dark when they’re less stroppy.
I dropped out of history because my textbook didn’t include a complete account of every minute of every single person’s life (including my own) right up to the present.
I demand they teach the alternative theory that no history has happened ever, and the world began exactly 1 second ago from…now! No, from…now! Um, from…now! Okay, a second ago from…now!
Okay, so it’s not perfect, but history is a total religion: if Genghis Khan and Kublai Khan both existed, then how come there’s such scant information on the rest of the 100 million individuals living in the Mongol Empire at the time? We should be inundated with myths and songs and stories and poems and books about nearly every one! Also, you’ll get fired or denied tenure at nearly any secular, liberal university if you even dare to question the dogma of the existence of history. And I can’t even count on my fingers the number of people flunked because they refused to regurgitate so-called ‘dates’ on history exams. You know who else referred to ‘dates’? Hitler! Mein Kampf is littered with references to history, for crying out loud!
Teach the controversy!
There really ought to be a listing somewhere of the ‘dramatis personae’ of all the protagonists and antagonists in all this…
Darwinism is a combination of evolutionary science and dogmatic materialism. Darwinism also aims to stifle the academic and religious freedom of dissenters of the theory of evolution.
For usage see
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/
“The pro-religion stance of the NCSE is offensive and unnecessary… it dilutes their mission of spreading Darwinism”
Fixed!
Geds @ # 32: History is in just as much trouble as science if the YECs have their way.
History-mangling hyperchristians are hardly limited to creationists.
@64 and everyone else,
Ok, I would like to officially apologise about the US being overrun by Australian creationists.
You may already know that creationism isnt a popular current of thought in Australia, which is probably why they migrate to the US.
Truth be told, I didnt even know Ken Ham existed until I had to research him for an assignment on the evolution/creation debate in the US – most of the class didnt know who he was either – and now you mention this other Aussie called Clifford…sheesh!
Well, no wonder when I visited, I liked Oz so much!
Oh, for a long black…
Anyone happen to notice the scientific name for that walking seal?
Puijila darwini
Nice touch I thought.
Actually, I wouldn’t worry so much about HTML compliance if I were you. There is currently no browser that will correctly render or even parse all HTML that validates, and for most browsers this is by design. (Because older browsers didn’t work correctly, apparently a lot of pages came to rely upon certain things not working, so effectively those older browsers are the standard that most browsers “validate” to. And since a lot of those pages have doctypes referencing whatever HTML standard, there is no way to tell browsers “but I follow the standard, really”.) In a way, there comes a point where the existence of a standard creates a situation that’s worse than if there were no standard at all, because it has turned a lot of people, including browser vendors and people who teach HTML to others, into pathological liars. This doesn’t help people like me (HTML content authors) at all. Browser vendors should just be honest about it and publish the standard that they’re already using anyway. And perhaps provide a way to tell the browser to read your document as real HTML. But it’s probably all too much to ask.
Back on topic: I was extremely annoyed that while that lieing windbag got to bore me for 10 minutes, the historian only got 5 and was visibly and audibly rushed through it all. The windbag had essentially finished his material around the first three minutes or so, but I think she could have gone on for hours, and everyone there would have done themselves a great service if they’d let her.
Ineffable @107, see my comment@7 in the thread about Coyne’s essay. You fell for it and began your quote mining, as predicted. Ridiculous.
Mr. Fire said, “I don’t know if I should be pleased or annoyed that we chemists don’t get directly targeted – yet. It’s hard to insert god into something like Swern oxidation.”
Mr. Fire, there is no need target chemistry because prayer can change the course of reactions. Obviously, you have never had colleagues that prayed over their experiments and were successful. I can’t complain, straightening out these miracles provided me with quite a bit of work over the years. I worked for a very large chemical company with a PhD research staff of over 200 (most of the time).
@105, Brownian, OM, wins the thread!
Hahaha well done Brownian :D