Peter Irons is having just too darned much fun

Poor William Dembski has many thorns in his side. There’s that spunky grad student and that guy who knows more math than he does, and there’s also been a certain professor of constitutional law who has been quietly plaguing him behind the scenes. I’m on Peter Irons’ cc list for these emails, and there have been quite a few occasions when I’ve been laughing from my easy chair at the well-aimed slingstones winging their way from California to Texas.

Dembski has had enough, and has posted his own reply. Irons has been chatting with Baylor President John Lilley, urging him in particular to not bother to respond to the Expelled film crew that was going to be on campus, ‘documenting’ (as if such a manipulative and dishonest crew could put together anything credible) the way poor Billy has been oppressed. Lilley replied politely and briefly:

Peter, thanks for your email. It is greatly appreciated.
I shall not take the bait on the movie. I greatly regret
the difficulty that Dembski has created. John

[Read more…]

Huckabee heaven

As many of the readers here know, one of the most common criticisms of us uppity atheists is the idea that the religion we critize doesn’t exist: that the true power of faith is thoughtful, intelligent, and deep, and plucking out random weird beliefs isn’t really representative. When I hear that (and I have, often), I just have to roll my eyes and give the apologist a scathing look — if they believe naive god-wallopers weren’t the dominant form of religious belief on the planet, then I can at least castigate the self-declared ‘sophisticated’ theology for being an exercise in willful blindness.

But here’s another case. This is a presidential candidate. He has an audience eating out of his hand with his speech on how much he looooooooooves his guns, how the UN should float away, and other fodder for wingnuts. And of course, with gun love comes the love of Christ.

“watching ducks land on a lake in Arkansas in the winter is about the closest to Heaven as you can find on this earth… and as someone who believes, according to my faith, I will go to Heaven when I die, I am pretty sure that there is duck hunting in Heaven!”

Pretty deep thinking there from Mike Huckabee. Shallow, stupid git. But that is what American religion is: wish-fulfillment for the gullible.

Besides, as everyone knows, there is duck hunting in heaven. Every day is opening day, and when the Great Mallard opens his bill and quacks the signal, all of the ducks start hunting … hunting the souls of expired ‘sportsmen’.

The etiquette of squid-eating

Tantalizing news: somewhere out there in the wide, wide world is a video of a pilot whale eating a large squid.

“We looked hard and saw a tentacle of a squid hanging from its mouth and there were other pieces of squid stuck to the whale’s body. It made a number of brusque movements on its side in the water to free the tentacle to eat it — and there we were filming and photographing it all.”

If you follow TONMO you already know it’s probably not a giant squid, as the article breathlessly reports, but it’s still going to be interesting because whales that feed on squid do have a problem: the tentacles are clingy and in many of the large species are equipped with sharp hooks — and they writhe and grip even when the animal is dead. How whales manage a struggling meal is going to be something of interest.

Arrr, I nail a virtual doubloon to the mast of the good ship Pharyngula—first matey to spot the whale and his prey gets it.

Wisconsin’s turn!

Oh, no. Another one. Yet another kook is inspired by Ken Ham’s example and plans to open a “museum” … in the Wisconsin Dells. The Dells, if you don’t know it, is a family resort area, rather cheesy (ha! In Wisconsin! I made a funny), and crammed with waterparks and waterskiing shows and carnival rides and bowling alleys and little stage shows—a creationist “museum” will fit right in.

The guy who has collected a hodge-podge of creationist exhibits, Bill Mielke, exhibits the typical rhetorical coherence of his breed.

“What we’re doing is those that say it’s scientific, is to say it’s not religion against science, but religion against ‘junk science,'” he said. “There is no transitional life forms and there’s no evidence.”

Um, OK. Whatever he just said.

Anyway, this joker has already rented out space in the Waupaca High School (to which we all have to say, “wtf??!?”), and has been exhibiting his trash for some time. Now he wants to put it on display in a dedicated space at a resort, not far from the lovely university town of Madison, Wisconsin. Bleh. All I can say is that, if he does this … ROAD TRIP! Let’s catch the lunacy before it folds into bankruptcy.

(Hat tip to Beautiful Biology)

Does the DUP also believe in leprechauns?

How do the Irish keep track of them all? They have more than two political parties, and yet they only have two middle fingers to raise up and wave at them. All I can say, though, is that if I were living in Northern Ireland, I wouldn’t be voting for the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which narrows the field a little. Look at the tripe they’re pushing on the schools now:

A DUP proposal that Lisburn Council should write to local secondary and grammar schools encouraging them to teach alternative theories to evolution is set to face stiff opposition when it is debated next week.

That sure sounds familiar: “alternative theories” is one of the mantras of the Discovery Institute, which then conveniently neglects to mention that none of the lies they’re peddling rises to the level of legitimacy of a theory. The DUP has an up-and-coming young wanker named Paul Givan to babble yet more familiar old nonsense.

The Corporate Services Committee agreed to a proposal by the DUP’s Paul Givan that they should contact all second level schools in the Lisburn City Council area “encouraging them to teach alternative theories to evolution as the origins of the earth, such as Creation and Intelligent Design.”

Mr Givan said: “I have never believed in the theory of evolution and, like many people, believe in the teaching of creation. I believe science points to creation but our schools are teaching a very narrow remit and many exclude alternative theories to evolution. I have asked the Council to write to local schools encouraging them to give equality of treatment to other theories of the origins of life and how the earth came into existence.”

Mr Givan believes science points to creation, yet his qualifications list only his degrees in Business Studies and, of course, his hobby of lying to children at a Sunday School. Perhaps that’s where he learned all of his science?

While the Irish newspapers might poke fun at our creationist idiots (deservedly, too), at least now we can poke back at Ireland’s own creationism problem, with representation in Northern Ireland’s largest political party.