This is absurd. The Italian National Research Council is sponsoring the publication of a creationist book, titled Evolutionism: The Decline of an Hypothesis. Right away, from the title alone, you can tell that the book has problems: evolution is not a theory in decline, no matter how much the creationists declare it so, but is guiding a thriving research program. The contents are something else, too: apparently, it declares that dinosaurs went extinct just 40,000 years ago, and that radiometric dating is wrong.
Wow. It’s not just a creationist book, but a young earth creationist book. Right away, we can make some predictions about the author. Roberto de Mattei: that he knows nothing about science, and that he’s a political creature.
De Mattei, a political appointee to CNR, teaches the History of Christianity and the Church at the European University in Rome and is president of the Rome- and Washington, D.C.-based Lepanto Foundation, a Catholic group.
You know, when you sponsor a book that proposes to throw out basic physics, chemistry, and biology, you really ought to make sure the author has some chops in those fields.
This book will F A I L.
Italians are strong in secularism, despite Silvio Berlusconi, the Vatican and little funds for public schools.
9000 euros is not too much money, but still, the CNR damaged its own credibillity. Nice to read in the last section that the major institution already refuted to the CNR support of this pamphlet.
Harun has been munching on too much parmesan and has taken to influencing Roberto via telekinesis.
“Italians are strong in secularism”
I have found, here in Oztralia, that secularism can be eroded by the constant drip drip drip of such things. We need to develop a vigorous secular immune system to respond to these things as they arise and repair unwanted side effects they may produce.
With Italy’s religious demographics, I find it hard to imagine who exactly would support this creationist nonsense in large numbers. Are practicing RCs in Italy big on creationism?
#4
Nope. They are not. RCC supports teaching and acceptance of Evolution amongst its members.
Cretinism is not big in Italy at all, nor in Southern Europe generally. I was surprised by this, but I read the short Science news note and I don’t think it’s as serious an oversight as it sounds. Clearly it’s a very bad sign, but the Science article had a Catholic Church spokesman mocking the episode, and noting that the Church is an accord with evolutionary science and geology regarding both the age and history of the earth and life.
‘You know, when you sponsor a book that proposes to throw out basic physics, chemistry, and biology, you really ought to make sure the author has some chops in those fields.’
snark on/
Now, now PZ. Demanding that creationists who seek to arrogantly dismiss actual scientific knowledge out of hand should have some qualification in, or understanding of, the field they seek to mutilate is clearly wholly unreasonable. This is a transparent example of atheist persecution of the ‘puur icwle beweeevers’. Just ask Ken Ham or Ray Comfort (men who would never, ever tell an untruth. No siree, it would go against the Bananaman code of honour, and these are ‘honourable men’, as a theatrical version of Mark Anthony might say. Besides, your encoder ring can be revoked for behaviour like that you know.)
It is vindictive demands of actual competence like this that gives atheists a bad, baby-eating, Elder-god worshipping, homosexual-recruiting name.
Is it any wonder the poor, oppressed, disempowered little creationist dears have to resort to rabid bigotry and attempts to subvert the law to undermine freedom of speech (not to mention rambling, incoherent apologetics with a liberal sprinkling of racism, homophobia and misogyny) to defend themselves?
It is clear that the true villains of the peice are the wicked, wicked atheist fuindamentalists. You can tell how extreme they are, what with their complete lack of the use of violence and respect for the rights and well being of others in society. Why, they are obviously fasci-commie-godless-muslim terrorists! You know, just like Obama.
snark off/
Well, yeah. That’s an aspirated h. They have no business using “an.”
Oh, and the other stuff, too.
Why expect empirical thought from a creationist? They’re all about making-shit-up; that’s how they justify all manner of silliness: the bible is a work of fiction offered as irrefutable logic.
You have to wonder why anyone would bother reading, still less purchasing, this creationist publication. The contents of any creationist book are always so predictable. A short summary of what this tome may as well read;
‘Evilution bad.
Blah, blah, blah
Darwin was crazeee and/or evil and/or the child of satan.
Blah, blah, blah
Darwinism via atheism = Hitler, Mein Kampf, The Death Camps (obviously, scratch this one for holocaust denier creationists), fascism in general, Stalin, the Communist Manifesto, the Gulags, communism in general etc.
Blah, blah, blah
Darwinism infects you with Teh Ghey(tm).
Blah, blah, blah
Darwinism and atheism caused 9/11.
Blah, blah, blah
Won’t someone think of the children.
Blah, blah, blah
The End.’
These ‘arguments’ (if one chooses to be so generous as to grace the drivel with the name) have been conclusively rebutted countless times and yet continue to be wheeled out by creationists with monotonous regularity. Still, I suppose no one ever accused fundies or a surfiet of originality. Or intellect.
Good grief – read the comments to the article:
– Its only a theory.
– Theory of evolution is counter to the facts of biology and chemistry.
– No explanation for macro evolution.
For fucks sake, its like playing a game of whack a mole. The same fucktard creationist cannards every time! And the CNR publishing this drivel has just called the moles out for another round.
The creationists keep saying that evolution is on its last legs, vainly propped up by biological people with a vested interest in keeping it alive. Just another example of creationists’ disconnect with reality.
I saw the word Italian in the header and I thought it would be a video of the Pope going down.
“Down goes the Pope! Down goes the Pope!”
40,000 years??? Where the f*** did that come from? I thought it was 6,000. Sounds like there is some dissent in the age of the earth in the creo-nut community. Hopefully, the two camps will teach the controversy and let the kids decide.
Discovery Channel alert! Creatures of the Deep, 10:00 p.m. Eastern time, that’s right now: squids, nudibranches, and hot smokers! Narrated by David Attenborough, by the sound of it.
The title of that book changes its meaning when you remember that the only people who use the word “evolutionism” anymore are creationists.
The Stupid, It Burns!
Quoting Tis’
“The creationists keep saying that evolution is on its last legs,”
Help me with some research, get me started, who is actually saying evolution is on its last legs? URLs maybe?
Pretty much all of them, repeatedly. A link is provided in the OP. WTF?
One of the lines you hear parroted about evolution is that it’s a theory in decline and that in not too many years you won’t be able to find a scientist who still believes it.
This is great! Why?
1) Betting time! (I’m totally serious about this. Why just argue with creationists? Make some money! Really!) “Okay Jimbo, how many years before the number of evolutionist scientist drops below 50%. Five? Ten? Maybe we should make a nearer-term bet; find me five full-time faculty in biology departments of accredited American universities who newly announce their rejection of evolution in the next calendar year, and you win. What’s say we put a hundred on it? Oh, what’s that, you just remembered your moral problem with gambling? Then how about a pre-agreed statement from the loser that they were wrong? If you still have a problem with that, Jimbo, what you’re admitting is you just don’t want to be accountable for anything you say.” Of course only rarely will you get anybody to agree to a bet, but you’ll either shut them up, or put them in a position where you can constantly remind people in comments sections that this particular IDiot wasn’t wo/man enough to put their money where their mouth is.
2) Scientologists repeat these EXACT same claims, except for psychiatry instead of evolution. So, good question for IDiots: why are the Scientologists different from creationists?
Not very helpful, need more.
Jackass. Troll off.
Not trolling, totally serious, really do want to figure this all out. Back up the claim. The “bingo” link wasn’t useful, you have to buy the article.
If you’re not trolling, you’re a fucking idiot. Learn how to write a sentence.
I’m being totally serious and all you can do is attack my grammar? SC, it wasn’t your comment to begin with, so maybe you ought to bow out of the conversation.
Anybody else have some useful links/URLs?
Thanks in advance.
Sandi, ever hear of Google? You could search using plus signs for an and search too. Which is why we aren’t taking you seriously.
Until the peer reviewed scientific literature says otherwise, there is nothing but lies from the creationists. They are good at bravado, and poor at evidence. With science, the evidence wins every time.
Look, you teeniny pinhead:
Evolutionism: The Decline of an Hypothesis
[…I know. If I could fall asleep, I wouldn’t be bothering with this comma-splicing twit.]
Someone somewhere had put together a collection of quotations by people claiming evolution was a hoax and was about to be exposed any day now…for the last 150 years.
Unfortunately, I cannot find it.
“a book that proposes to throw out basic physics, chemistry, and biology’
yeah like the 2nd law of thermodynamics too…..oh wait…..
Ha ha ha! Oh, you’re serious, aren’t you?
Explain what you think this means and its relevance to evolution specifically.
He means he heard it from his friends in a bible study group and figures it’s a stumper. As to knowing what any of the words he used actually means, well…
Science is harder than bible study, and we all know how many creos fail at bible study.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CF/CF001.html
Thomas,
During the day (that’s the part that’s not night) you might have noticed (if there aren’t any clouds in the way) that there’s a big, hot, flaming yellow/orange thing in the sky. Some folks call it The Sun. Why am I mentioning this? Because it means you have to take your moronic ‘2nd Law of Thermodynamics’ argument and cram it up your stupid ass – with walnuts.
Fucking idiot.
From Wikipedia:
working Wikipedia Link
Obviously energy in an open system is necessary to build complex structures. However, it’s not sufficient. There are 4 things that also must take place. Open system, energy, converting that energy into life, and converting energy for metabolic work. The problem is converting energy to life. Cells have a mechanism to capture, store, and transform energy. If this mechanism is not available, the addition of energy alone will not result in life. The development of simple molecules into complex structures and living organisms has never been observed.
Yes i understand that an embryo growing into an adult already has the mechanisms for capturing and converting energy to use in its life process, through vast amounts of information, but how do these complex mechanisms originate?
The “second law of thermodynamics” canard (not the sort with an explosive penis, the other sort) is one of the “arguments” against evolution. It basically comes down to saying that on a large enough scale we live in a closed system, and so entropy must not be decreasing, and evolution would decrease entropy.
There’s a good discussion of the faulty mathematics behind a lot of these arguments by Jason Rosenhouse at http://www.math.jmu.edu/~rosenhjd/sewell.pdf (Sewell is a Ph.D. in mathematics who is an apologist for the mathematical woo.)
From my perspective, it’s intended as an “argument by intimidation”. Construct a question with a lot of technical terms, and when someone answers, charge that they didn’t answer based on the right technical assumptions. You’ll see a lot of people ask these sort of questions who are completely unable to understand the answers. Their incomprehension is then proof that the answer must be wrong.
It’s the biological equivalent of insisting that 0.9999… (infinite repetition) and 1 are not the same number in the standard number system. Just because you don’t understand the answer doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
Thomas the retard said :
I wish this was true, because then I wouldn’t have had to read this ridiculous drivel.
And Thomas, I think your headquarters kinda recommends against using the 2nd law argument, because it makes you guys look just a little bit too stupid, might want to go check with them..:-)
As an Italian, I feel particularly ashamed about this story.
The only good part, is that it caused a strong reactions from scientists against this book and the author.
According to L’Unità, a left wing newspaper, it turns out that this book is the result of an informal meeting at CNR. Unsurprisingly, none of the participants were evolutionary biologists, nor is the author a scientist. He teaches history of christianity and of the church at a christian university in Rome.
CNR issued a defensive press release against censorship and invoking freedom of expression, with the President of CNR bending backwards to defend Roberto de Mattei.
“An Hypothesis”? Sounds like they could have used an help meet with that title.
Yeah, it has. On a planet called earth.
Also at a university called Scripps in Southern California. Look up primordial replicator on google.
Not only is Thomas wrong, but he also committed a fallacy. He assumes that just because we don’t have all the answer yet, creationism/ID must be right. That’s a hasty conclusion, especially since there are way more evidences for evolution than his presuppositions.
Don’t you see, God has put these things here to test us. The Bible, which must be true because it claims to be, warns against using “knowledge” or “science” (depending on the translation):
“Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the faith.
Grace be with you.” (1 Timothy 6:20-21)
I think it’s fair to call Pharyngula “godless chatter” so Thomas, please turn away as God has directed you.
To claim, as you have, that Italy should be ashamed of itself because of the publication of such a niche-market publication as “The Decline of a Hypothesis” (its own decline I hypothesise) would suggest the next title of an article for you to write: “The Shame of America”. I suggest the subject as the Scientology cult that proposes some of us (their members, of course) are descended from spacemen and are therefore clearly superior to the rest of us. Several other cults come to mind that could substitute, if you are wary of upsetting Hollywood, of course…
Brownian,
I (and others) have previously linked to G.R. Morton’s The Imminent Demise of Evolution: The Longest Running Falsehood in Creationism
It’s a “young, but not as young as 6000 years” creationism! Hahaha – sometimes I wonder if there are more variants on creationism than there are on jesusism. I guess the catholic church is only 2 hours old this year.
The radiocarbon dating denial (and since these idiots know nothing of basic nuclear physics, all “radiometric dating”) is usually chanted by idiots who don’t want to accept that the shroud of Turin is simply a late 13th or early 14th century artwork. I wonder if de Mattei’s mob edited the Wikipedia’s entry on the shroud since it’s 100% pure revisionist bullshit – the current page even claims descriptions of the burn patterns in the linen which predate the actual creation of the art – a truly bizarre anachronism since the exact year when the shroud was burnt is known: 1532.
Great jesus zombie – the mythical websites about the goddamned shroud far outnumber the factual websites.
@ jeff , #6:
How militant, strident and intolerant of him!
Italy should be ashamed because: 1) a science denialist was appointed as Vice President of its major scientific institution, and 2), because said institution contributed with public funds to the publishing of his book.
Since evolution and abiogenesis are two different things, Thomas has a lot of learning to do. I will point out though that stone can store energy. Heat energy. You also don’t need stored energy to have life if you have constant movement such as in the ocean. Which funnily enough…
However, the only thing breaking the 2nd law of thermodynamics around here is creation. Things poofing into existence is a definite no-no. Thomas look up the word “irony”, then “hypocrite”. “Moron”, you should already know.
Why is a “Research Council” sponsoring a book to stop researching something?
My other question is :
Isn’t the church going to be rather annoyed that someone has gone behind their backs and said the opposite to them…
From wikipedia : “In an October 22, 1996, address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Pope John Paul II updated the Church’s position to accept evolution of the human body”
Sorry that should obviously read “the only thing breaking the laws of thermodynamics around here”
I quote from the news:
And Verlusconi wrote:
Fascists have been doing this since Constantine and, wonderfully, it has always worked!
“Italy should be ashamed because: 1) a science denialist was appointed as Vice President of its major scientific institution, and 2), because said institution contributed with public funds to the publishing of his book.”
So Italy – by which I presume you are referring to a country of 60 million people here – should be ashamed for the actions of one particular group of people? Would that be the same as the US needing to be ashamed for the actions of the president of the NRA then?
Let’s see if I can spell it more clearly for you.
Italy should be ashamed for having voted for a government that holds science so highly to feel that someone like di Mattei can be appointed to the position of Vice President of the CNR, the National Research Center, a public institution.
It should further be ashamed that the President if the CNR, although stating that his views are diametrically opposed to those of di Mattei, came in his defense and justified the financial support of public money granted to the publisher of the book. Money that was taken away from the already meager budget for scientific programs.
So, yes. We should feel very much ashamed.
Apparently creotards have taken over the comment section at the SciAm article. I can understand why people are sick and tired (or bored) of battling creationism in comment threads, but it still makes me nauseous. Especially when I think of all the people who will be pointed to that article and come away with the impression that dominance of creationists in the comments is evidence of that mythical “demise of Darwinism”.
I am a reader here at pharyngula since over a year now, and I never really felt the urge to comment: you can rely on someone else getting it just right anyway around here.
Today however, as an Italian, the shame and disgust is too big not to be expressed in words…
Thomas, did you notice this? You started off implying the 2nd law of thermodynamics was violated by evolution, but then you said “Obviously energy in an open system is necessary to build complex structures. However, it’s not sufficient.” That implies that you agree that biological systems are open systems, thermodynamically speaking.
The problem is that there are many different ways of describing the 2nd law, but they all mention it’s only valid for closed systems. (“In all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state.”) It’s in every formulation, because it is necessary. Simply put, the 2nd law doesn’t hold for open systems.
Yet you seem to realize the Earth is an open system. You see? You agree it’s an open system, but since it is, the 2nd law is irrelevant, since the 2nd law doesn’t deal with open systems.
Now what some dishonest creationists do (and I’m not accusing you of dishonesty), is they’ll bring up the 2nd law as a rhetorical ploy, because it sounds authoritative. But they rely on a misconception of the 2nd law, namely by ignoring the closed system requirement. But you understand that. Now I won’t assume you’re being dishonest, perhaps you just have a different misunderstanding of the 2nd law. You do realize those “4 things” you listed are not part of the 2nd law of thermodynamics? That they’ve never been part of the 2nd law? That the “4 things” are not accepted or taught by the physics community, and don’t appear in peer-reviewed literature? You realize that those “4 things” were just made up by creationists, and have nothing to do with the 2nd law, right? Those “4 things” really should have their own name, since they aren’t part of the 2nd law, shouldn’t they? Wouldn’t “4 thingys some creationist wrote down once” be more accurate? (That’s why I described it as a rhetorical ploy. Saying “it violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics” certainly sounds better than “it violates these “4 thingys some creationist wrote down once”.)
So do you intend to continue to falsely claim evolution violates the 2nd law, when you know very well that it doesn’t apply? Or did you honestly think those 4 things were part of the 2nd law? These last two are the only questions I’m really interested in the answers to.
That is happening at other science websites as well. I was reading an article about flying dinosaurs at discovermag.com and the usual dumb creotard comments were there.
I suppose when you are a religious kook with no outlet for your insanity, filling the web up with lies and nonsense is about all they can do.
Wikipedia gets hit by the religious fanatics as well. Anything to do with xianity, the bible, and its many weird sects gets destroyed. The Mormon church is one of the worst offenders.
It is boring and annoying to someone who just wants to read the article and comments. I don’t have a solution though since they can stay crazy and stupid far longer than normal people can stay interested.
Well, CS – let me just say that your feelings of guilt and “mea culpa” should be funneled into doing something about the situation here (yes, I live here too!) rather than just feel sorry for yourself for being Italian, yes? It is because of inaction by people that should feel engaged in the situation we face here in Italy that continues to feed the casino that is Italian politics and allows the PdL and Lega to thrive, unchecked. Guilt is the feeling you should be putting aside, not the ability to think – and act! Creationism is the result of a lazy and theologically crippled mind – not an act of nationhood.
Italy had plenty to be ashamed of even before this, and it’s the continued inaction of the many that allows the few to pull crap like this (and pretty much everything Berluskeevy’s (Or Berluschifo, as I call him in Italian. Thanks, etymology, for making that work so well in both languages!) government gets up to), so yes, all of Italy’s citizens (self included) should be ashamed. Anyone who says different is in denial, is trying too hard to be culturally sensitive, or is one of Italy’s charming ultra-nationalistic neo-fascists(this is not an exaggeration or misapplication of the term, incidentally), many of whom hold high positions in the government. Hooray!
@black-wolf72 #56
Yeah, the creotards are out there in force over there at the SciAm article, trotting out the same old tired canards. Most of it reads like:
lulz, Ize on ur internets, trolling yurz commentz
Usually good for a few laughs, but the stupid seems to be prevailing over there…
Other new and exciting comments from the retard commentors on SciAm :
Evolution is only a theory!!!
You can’t prove God doesn’t exist!!!
If you just read the bible, you can see its “Divinely Inspired” unlike all those others.
You just have to believe…really, really hard….
We proved global warming was a hoax!!elebenty!! So all of science is wrong!!!!
The originality of these people is homeopathic.
Didn’t even get that right. It is, “clap your hands and believe real hard or Tinkerbelle, I mean god, will die.”
Just how do you force yourself to believe in invisible, undetectable sky spooks?
@ John Morales #47:
Thanks John! That’s what I was looking for! If sandiseattle was genuinely looking for such info, there it is.
Luke Dixon, this may come as a disappointment, but I feel no guilt nor am I sorry (or proud) for being Italian.
And maybe you should make an effort to direct your preaching urges towards those whom you know.
Yubal @ #4
As a former RC, that’s what I thought.
I didn’t even know anybody believed so much of the Bi’le was to be taken literally until I was in my mid-late teens.
I was just wondering, against all previous anecdotal evidence, if things were somehow different in Italy.
Weird.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present Middle Earth Creationism!!!
<running off stage and diving through right exit>
Tarnation, that David Marjanowhatever made his escape afore I finished loadin’ my snotgun.
David–Before you go on about middle earth creationism, I would assert that orcs came descended from elves. That’s right. They EVOLVED. With the help of magic. According to scripture:
“They were Elves once. Taken by the Dark Powers … tortured and mutilated…a ruined and terrible form of life. And now…perfected.”
That is is a completely nonsensical statement. Only someone who has absolutely no clue as to what life is and what energy is could possible produce an utterance as ignorant as this.
If Thomas can produce evidence that he is actually from the 1600s, (when the state of knowledge was such that vitalism was still a reasonable proposition) and was sent to this century by a random timewarp no earlier than yesterday (as it only takes no more than 24h of net surfing to learn that vitalism is thoroughly debunked), I will retract this statement.
“Capture” of energy need not be anything more sophisticated that sitting near a good energy source and letting that energy vibrate your molecules. More sophisticated means of capturing energy are only necessary for leaving the accessible-energy environment.
“Storage” of energy similarly is not necessary for life in an environment that regularly produces high-energy chemicals, which is exactly the kind of environment that abiogenesis theories predict that life on earth originated in. Storage is only necessary for lifeforms to leave that ancestral cradle environment and populate the rest of the world.
“Transformation” of energy occurs automatically in any energy rich environment, and a lifeform need only be in the vicinity to take advantage of those spontaneous transformations. Once again, a more sophisticated ability to control energy transformations on its own increases the organism’s robustness and is helpful in allowing it to leave the cushy ancestral environment, but is in no way necessary for life.
Two things, and two things only, are required for the creation of complex systems: 1. self-replication with variation, and 2. selection. Energy is required only inasmuch that 1. and 2. both need energy, but since every process in the universe requires energy to run, saying “life requires energy” is about as insightful as saying “the atmosphere needs air”, or that “monotheism needs god”.
#70:
That’s ok. Middle Earth Baraminology is allowed. Orcs and Elves are just two variants of the same kind.
Antiochus, ampiox: the issue is controversial.
</geek>
#73:
Ah. So then Middle-Earth Creationism is about to schism?
You’re plumb crazy. ‘Course we can convert energy to life! I seen it!
Deep Rifts, my friend. Deeeeep Rifts.
destlund, you malformed your link.
(Heh, the expression “I seen it” reminds me of the witness in the old Bugs Bunny cartoons)
That’s what I was going for, my friend. Thanks for fixing it. Oh, and sorry about the new link. It just sprang to mind as I was typing. Making fun of my own rhetorical style should not expose you to people like him.
Just one quick question for you, Thomas:
Do you have a refrigerator?