It’s yet another creationist conference in which the imminent demise of evolutionary theory will be declared this weekend, and it’s being held on a university campus, which is always jarring. The university is said to be “uneasy” about it all.
The 1 November event, called the Origin Summit, is sponsored by Creation Summit, an Oklahoma-based nonprofit Christian group that believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible and was founded to “challenge evolution and all such theories predicated on chance.” The 1-day conference will include eight workshops, according the event’s website, including discussion of how evolutionary theory influenced Adolf Hitler’s worldview, why “the big bang is fake,” and why “natural selection is NOT evolution.” Another talk targets the work of MSU biologist Richard Lenski, who has conducted an influential, decades-long study of evolution in bacterial populations.
News of the event caught MSU’s scientific community largely by surprise. Creation Summit secured a room at the university’s business school through a student religious group, but the student group did not learn about the details of the program—or the sometimes provocative talk titles—until later, says MSU zoologist Fred Dyer. The talk titles led Dyer to suspect that the student group was not involved in planning the conference, he says, prompting him to look into its origins.
First of all, relax. This kind of thing happens all the time. State universities are public places, and they generally have policies to allow student organizations to use meeting rooms for all kinds of purposes. This is a good thing. That sometimes student groups have stupid purposes and bring in speakers or organizations with anti-scientific goals is a side-effect of a policy of openness. It’s regrettable that a pack of idiots are slipping in by following the rules, but if you arbitrarily reject them, what are you going to do next time a student group brings in an atheist, or an environmentalist, or a labor union organizer, or a drug legalization advocate? Someone will complain. Someone always complains.
Secondly, take a look at what they propose to do, and notice…these people are raving loons, and sleazy as well. The first thing I saw was that the first speaker is Gerald Freakin’ Bergman. Are you kidding me? I debated Bergman before — it was an astonishing spectacle. It was the final straw that convinced me that debating creationists was pointless. He was incoherent, weird, and ignorant, and it was a painful experience to be sharing a podium with such a pathetic example of creationist “thought”. None of the speakers are going to bring credit to their position. Let ’em speak and destroy themselves.
Look, Bergman is going to talk about…Hitler.
Hitler’s Worldview
There’s no doubt Adolph Hitler believed in evolution, but to what extent did that belief affect his actions? You might say he caught the “survival of the fittest” ball and ran with it, declaring the Aryan race to be “the fittest”.
Gah. He pulled this crap at our debate, too — Hitler was not an evolutionist. Hitler was a power mad dictator who banned Darwin’s books and was a disciple of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who despised evolution.
For another example, they already acting incredibly disreputably. They are advertising that they are going to have a debate with a member of the faculty at MSU, Robert Pennock. I’d consider that a good draw…not for the creationist side, but because Pennock will reliably say something interesting. But look what they say:
As an outspoken critic of intelligent design, Dr. Robert Pennock has written books and given speeches bashing the same. But do his arguments hold water? Can they with- stand the scrutiny of debate? Find out November 1st when Dr. Pennock debates Dr. Charles Jackson at MSU. That is, if Pennock accepts the invite. The challenge was made back in March and, as of to date, he has yet to reply.
What? They’re advertising a debate with someone who has not agreed to participate? Well heck, why not go all the way. Barack Obama will deliver the opening benediction, that is, if he accepts the invite. Neil deGrasse Tyson will make sandwiches and Bill Nye will personally deliver them to each attendee, that is, if they accept the invite. Darwin himself will rise from the dead and march to the plaza outside the building to be burnt at the stake, that is, if he accepts the invite.
Pennock has not replied. YOU DON’T GET TO ADVERTISE HIM AS A PARTICIPANT IN YOUR CONFERENCE. It really is that simple.
Ethics. How is it creationists are so immune to them?
So again, relax. Clowns are going to be capering at Michigan State University this weekend. They’re going to make themselves look ridiculous.
Third, take action. What can you do? Don’t picket, don’t lobby to have them evicted, don’t do anything to give them an excuse to claim martyrdom. Organize. Put a response team together: get a biologist, a historian, a philosopher, and anybody with any intelligence and an interest. They don’t even need to be faculty — students with a bit of classwork in their disciplines are perfectly capable of rebutting these guys. Have them attend and take notes — they don’t even need to ask questions at the event, unless you really enjoy watching creationists splutter and make fools of themselves. (We do, but remember, no martyrs.)
Do some research. These guys are all on youtube, and their schtick really doesn’t change much: here’s Jackson, DeYoung, Sanford, and Bergman. Go in prepared. It’ll make the talks a little more boring, but you’ll be primed for the foolishness.
Write up responses. Feel free now to make fun — a sense of humor helps. Send them off to your school paper, publish them on your facebook page, or send them here — I’d be happy to popularize the absurdity of creationism, and trust me, they will say many absurd things. I haven’t dealt with the other three, but Bergman alone is a font of inanity.
Relax, relax, relax. Have fun with it. These are among the best creationists have to trot out, and you’ll discover that they’re the dregs of the intellectual barrel. You can bring first year biology students to these talks, and they’ll gape in surprise at how bad creationists are. I’ve done that, and it’s always a treat.
Really, how seriously can you take this gang of goobers when this is how they argue?
Any time creationists use bananas in their arguments, it’s good for a laugh.
PZ:
They’ve been proclaiming the end of evolutionary theory for how long now?
Bwahahahaaa. You’d think they’d learn (well, not really).
We had a creationist group in KS (shocked, I know you are!) that liked to use the uni meeting rooms to lend an air of respectability and scienceyness to their presence. At least, until they discovered that, even in KS, the true believers were a tiny minority that actually showed up for their talks. It was pretty entertaining when the nuclear chemists showed up to explain just how wrong they were about radio-isotope dating. Then the paleontologist showed up (with bonus fossils) to show them how wrong they were about lots of other things. I took care of the astronomy part. :)
Good times. After about 3 meetings, they decided to change their venue to a local church…..
I suggest making a life-size Pennock out of straw, for their “debate”.
I clicked on that link for DeYoung’s “lecture” and scrolled to a random part in the middle.
Shorter DeYoung: Trees exist because I need a bit of home decor.
I suspect they did this knowing Pennock wouldn’t come, so they can claim he’s afraid to debate the Cretinists because he knows evolution is a Satanic lie.
With the understanding that the University has to and should open it’s doors to any viewpoints that can persuade students to have them, what are the limits?
Specifically can they claim this as a MSU conference or just a conference at MSU? And is it crossing a line to claim the involvement of a university professor that is not actually involved? I assume MSU protects it’s trademarks aggressively in the former case, but what do they do in the latter?
They never explain how Hitler being an evolutionist would make evolutionary science wrong. It’s just a case of “this evil man believed in evolution so evolution must be wrong!” Hitler was in favour of cars, so I’m sure creationists ride horses and buggies everywhere.
Holy shit, Jerry Bergman? Hah! That was one of the funniest debates ever.
They’re not allowed to claim affiliation with or endorsement by the university. But these kinds of loons are well-practiced in the art of skating right to the edge.
But, but, but….it doesn’t say they can’t do that in their fucking bible.
Ancestry.com can’t link me to Mr. Chimp because their records don’t go back that far. I need records back to about 6 million BC to find our common link, and the best I’ve been able to do on Ancestry is mid 1400s AD.
It’s a common tactic by Creationists to use unwillingness to debate or lack of response to an invitation to debate as evidence that “they are scared and afraid they will lose the debate.” A former co-worker of mine has challenged me over and over on Facebook to doing a live debate via google hangouts. He is a full-on young-earth nutcase who firmly believes that Noah’s Ark has been found and that all of mainstream science is a conspiracy. No way in hell was I going to let him gish gallop me for an hour or two on google hangouts. I politely told him I’d respond to any argument or evidence he has publicly in writing, where we both have time to think and respond. Nope, he just wants to do it live.
Ancestry.com doesn’t link you to Adam and Eve either, so checkmate theists! ¬¬ The stupidity burns my eyeeeeeees….
Saad #4: But definitely not fig trees.
Jackson vs Pennock would be high-larry-ous! Jackson is an American Loon former high school teacher.
On their website, they explain their Backdoor Strategy of tricking student organizations to get on campus. Backdoor strategy? Wedge strategy? What is with the guys, talk about fixations!
I’d go out of my way to publicize it, actually. Maybe make some fliers up for them. “A Showcase of Christianity’s Finest Minds.” “Come hear the very best religion has to offer.” “Christians explain why their beliefs are incompatible with science and reason!”
Ah, the old “debate the empty chair” trick! Sorry about that, Chief!
Jerry “carbon is irreducibly complex” Bergman. Yeah, I was there. The scary thing is that I walked out behind some fundies who thought PZ lost the debate and could learn something by attending a creationist fair.
Saad @4:
From the quote material:
::rolls eyes:: He really thinks the world was put here for the benefit of humanity…
I wouldn’t mind having Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp in my ancestry. He was totes cool.
In general, I agree with you, however it sounds like Michigan State has a policy that events have to be organized through a student group and that in this case the student group may have been duped, or not involved in organizing the event. Depending on the language around student group events in their rules, they may have grounds to stop this event based on it not actually being organized by a student group. Of course, cancelling it at this stage in the game would be a very bad idea and only give publicity to the Creationists and fuel for their “Expelled” style arguments. So they should not cancel. But they may want to look into their student group guidelines and how student groups are being trained on implementing them (student group organizers at my alma mater had to go through an orientation class that could cover things like this) to insure they don’t allow themselves to be used and manipulated by outside groups.
We had a rule that anyone coming on campus has to be sponsored by a student group and, while I don’t know exactly how it worked, I believe student groups used it as a fundraiser: “your bank wants to hand out t-shirts and credit card applications? Sure, give us $500 and we’ll sponsor you”, or something like that. What this led to was Scientologists setting up a tent to give e-meter readings and what not after paying a student group to sponsor them (there was no student Scientology group). Eventually there were a lot of complaints, someone probably spoke to the student group, and I don’t know what exactly happened but they stopped sponsoring the Scientologists and it seemed, at the time, that they did so because they were embarrassed that they were being associated with Scientology and not because they were coerced. Whether that’s an accurate perception, I don’t know, but it was strong enough that there was no outcry of censorship at all.
Well, I guess that spells the end for “time and chance happen to them all.” One down, tens of thousands of Bible verses to go.
Tabby Lavalamp wrote @7:
No, no, no; not that far; I’m sure they’d not have Volkswagens (being Hitler’s design), nor Porsches, (being squashed VW’s). They must only own those Gawd-given American cars, like Fords or Buicks. When will these cretins learn that Science #thrives# on challenges? They just keep bleating empty air, the scientists just keep waiting to hear: reasoned challenges.
Hmm, I thought creationists also denied climate change. That being the case, I see them as driving Hummers.
Someone ( maybe Paul Bloom or Bruce Hood or Steven Pinker, I’m feeling lazy and not looking it up) has written specifically on studies confirming the very human-centric and utilitarian thought processes of toddlers and small children. When asked questions like “what are tigers for?” or “why is there a moon?” the answers are usually something like “tigers are to go in zoos” or “the moon is there for me to look at when it’s night.” After a certain age, however, the nature of the responses changes and more natural and less personal causation is introduced.
Unless we’re talking religion, I guess. Now we all get to shift back to infancy and the Playpen Theory of Reality. God made trees for us to learn to say “Thank you, God.” Same answer applies to everything.
PZ, your debate with Bergman was a high point. I seem to recall that that was where Bergman first revealed to the world that the carbon atom is irreducibly complex.
Then there was this stellar bit of dialogue:
Bergman: “There are no ID propnents employed as tenured biology professors at any university!”
PZ: “And the problem with that is?….”
Yeah, in this case, made by us, because it took a hell of a lot of artificial selection to make the cultivars of apple tree what they are today….The apples that they delusionally think their god made are pretty shite for eating, let alone making pies…
How about the mature segments of an adult Taenia solium dangling from someone’s rectum? Is that also made by your god to be pleasing to the eyes?
But, but JESUS!
Back in 1990, in a sermon titled “Evolution and You,” D. James Kennedy proclaimed the demise of Darwin’s brain-child: “My friends, evolution is dead coming out of the starting gate. They rang the bell, lifted the post, and the horse dropped dead.” Kennedy himself is several years dead now, but evolution theory keeps chugging along. How disappointed he would be!
Tony! The Queer Shoop @ 1:
They’ve been proclaiming the end of evolutionary theory for how long now?
At least since 1850 (yes, before Darwin published) and, of course, constantly since the Origin came out:
http://answersinscience.org/demise.html
Of course the chimp wouldn’t be an ancestor of mine…but we would have a common ancestor.
Actually…if one could go back far enough, I’m sure one would find some Neanderthals in my ancestry. (Two of my grandparents came to the US from Denmark, and a great grandfather came from Prussia…so lots of Northern European ancestry.)
@Tabby Lavalamp #7
From the OP:
They’re basically working from the “there exist moral absolutes” stance: since the holocaust was wrong, and they can say that was just Hitler trying to make the “Aryan race” be the fittest was wrong, and since in their book unnatural = immoral, this shows that human nature can’t be evolutionary. If you believe in Adam and Eve and that they were in humanity’s “natural state”, then any scientist showing humans to be naturally cruel and violent is wrong.
At least that’s my take.
nonprofit Christian group
Good one!
Hitler believed that 2+2=4 so should we stop using arithmetic?
Hitler should be ignored for anything other the prima facie example of the problems of nationalistic fascism. Which has zero to do with science and mathematics. Although it might impinge upon religion, since he tried to use it for his purposes.
Hitler was a vegetarian and established Germany’s first national parks.
A biologist, an historian and a philosopher walked into a bar. The barflies made more sense than the creationists at MSU.
Thank you, I’m here every night.
@chimera: Watch out, you will be quote-mined to say that atheists support Hitler.
I think that the University should allow them to book their spaces, but I fear that this will be used by the creationists to give themselves credibility “Per Prof XYZ’s lecture at the Michigan University”…
So beautifully, succinctly said:
^ Now that is one lean resume´
They could just as easily have that very same caption with Isaac Newton (presumably with 2 apples rather than 2 bananas). Or Jesus Christ (2 crackers?), or Leonardo Da Vinci ( 2 Mona Lisas?), or sundry famous others who died childless or whose lines died out.
This is…contested.
I’d like to present Exhibit A, the “Giant Stinging Tree” of Australia (of course), which I would not want anywhere near my eyes.
Even worse, wasn’t he a raw-foodist?
I love (read: fucking HATE) how the media twists shit like this.
caught by surprise… because 99.9999999999% of working scientists DON’T PAY ANY ATTENTION to idiots like creationists.
now, you can argue the politics of that, whether it’s a good or a bad thing for science that by and large, idiots are ignored. but it’s a fact. most scientists simply don’t have time for numpties.
they were caught by surprise like you would be “surprised” that the five year old kid belonging to someone you’ve never met in your life shaved their cat.
PZ two posts ago:
media:
“PZ Myers, caught largely by surprise by the actions of the creationist community”
Maybe he did, but Adolf Hitler didn’t.
including discussion of how evolutionary theory influenced Adolf Hitler’s worldview,
Gah. He pulled this crap at our debate, too — Hitler was not an evolutionist. Hitler was a power mad dictator who banned Darwin’s books and was a disciple of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who despised evolution.
Not to mention that Hister specifically rejected common descent in Mein Kampf.
The apple tree might not have been the best choice to pick for that example…..
I don’t know if Hitler believed in evolution (although allowing the burning ‘The Origin of Species’ might be a subtle hint to his views), but he sure didn’t believe that his goals would be accomplished by *natural* selection. He clearly thought *artificial* selection was necessary.
Which was animal husbandry, an age-old method of improving the breed prior to the concept of evolution.
So, what is your point?
Same old same old…