The Pagan Prattle has an article about the infection of the UK with a rather American sounding version of creationism/ID. It sounds as if the response has ranged from dismissal to dithering avoidance, so it doesn’t seem to be a big threat (yet—these nasty little strains can expand into chronic virulence fairly easily), so the most interesting thing, I thought, was some terminology.

There is an air of superficial plausibility about this, which is apparent in four lesson plans on Irreducible Complexity (Intelligent Design’s catchphrase), the Fossil Record, Homology and Natural Selection. As a geologist I will only comment on the Fossil Record Lesson Plan, where Pupils are introduced to the three theories currently used to interpret the fossil record: Phyletic Gradualism, Punctuated Equilibrium and Phyletic Discontinuity. These three are, of course, Darwinian gradualism, PE and essentially Six Day Creation. Both scientists and theologians contend, with massive evidence that it is disingenuous to present the last as a scientific theory.

Ooooh. “Phyletic Discontinuity Theory”. It sounds so…sciencey.

In case you haven’t been following the vivisections of Wells’ horrid book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, I thought I’d mention that there’s more online at the Panda’s Thumb. Wells’ book is a collection of anti-science propaganda, brought to us by those friendly frauds at the Discovery Institute and Regnery Publishing, and the crew at The Panda’s Thumb are slowly working their way through it, documenting the falsehoods, the distortions, the poor scholarship, and the generally atrocious crapitude of the book. It’s great fun!

The critiques of Chapter 3 (developmental biology), Chapter 9 (the genetic code and information), and Chapter 16 (American Lysenkoism, and this chapter was such a mess of lies that it spawned two additional posts: the distortions of the Ohio situation and Wells’ legal dishonesty are treated separately) went up early, but now various contributors have stuck the knife in Chapter 7 (who needs evolution?), Chapter 10 (irreducible complexity), and Chapter 15 (the war on Christianity). There are only about ten more stalls to muck out in this Augean stable. They’ll be done eventually, but one thing is certain: the fellows of the Discovery Institute will have spewed out more crap by the time it’s done.

The Christian group that spread the initial rumor that Steve Irwin had been “born again” shortly before his death has retracted the claim.

But as encouraging as it might be for Christians to know they
may share heaven with Irwin, the group now concedes there is reason
to doubt the conversion. The unverified story was sent out by an
exuberant staff member, said the group’s managing director, Carl
Wieland. “Though we are able to substantiate our suggestion that
Steve’s wife, Terri, was a church-going Christian, the stories of
Steve coming forward can, at this stage, not be substantiated,” he
said in a statement on the group’s website.

Note the name: Carl Wieland. The Australian co-founder of Answers In Genesis, the creationist group. I am not surprised.

ID advocates are prone to brag about their self-professed expertise, which all too often relies on some respectable knowledge of engineering or other fields irrelevant to biology. DaveScot, the raving mad anti-scientist at Uncommon Descent, is a perfect example…but even in their own domains of knowledge they too often prove to be incompetent. Case in point: their blog has somehow become delisted from Google, and now DaveScot is flailing about, trying to find someone to blame. His answer? Wesley Elsberry did it. It’s all because other sites mirror their content, which he thinks Google finds offensive.

[Read more…]

It is so predictable that Michigan candidate for governor Dick DeVos is a Republican and a Christian.

[Read more…]

This is what I like to see: high school science teachers blogging. Particularly when, in this new blog, Beautiful Biology, the teacher stands up for good science.

That’s exactly how it should work. Biology teachers should teach evolution unapologetically, and when clueless parents protest, they should be politely told that they are wrong. Repeat that every day in every school district, and creationism will slink back into the shadows.

Whoa…faux-Seussian poetry, fairly nice animation, all in the service of a dumb, dead idea: The Watchmaker. It’s a rather elaborate setup for Paley’s watchmaker argument that starts with an imaginary animated analogy of glass and metal condensing to spontaneously form a watch, and then compares the absurdity of that argument with cells, which contain “assembly lines, robots, electrical cable”, and argues that it’s silly to claim that cells could just happen from dirt and warm water…as if anyone has argued such a thing.

Isn’t it enough to simply point out that watches need watchmakers because they don’t reproduce? Rabbits don’t need rabbitmakers (other than other rabbits), so the analogy fails just by contradiction with common experience.

One enlightening and informative aspect of the exercise is that it does go on about the debunked watchmaker argument, and also associates itself with Intelligent Design—the Discovery Institute is recommended on the page—but it is screamingly evangelical and religious.

Kids 4 Truth International is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that exists to inspire and equip God’s people to reach boys and girls worldwide with the memorable, creative, leading-edge teaching of God-focused truth.

Great science there, isn’t it? It’s more propaganda for creationism aimed directly at children. If there were a god and heaven, I would hope that lying to impressionable kids would be one of his most smite-worthy sins.

How odd. That little crank site that Bill Dembski runs has intentionally removed itself from the Google indexes: no search is going to turn up a link to Uncommon Descent. Elsberry speculates that it’s to remove the possibility of their penchant for revisionism being discovered.

I applaud this move. I suggest that the next step is to voluntarily remove their url and ip address from the DNS registry. We shall all be simultaneously dazzled by their technical prowess and absolutely confounded by our inability to point to the stupidity of the Dembskiites. That’ll teach us.