Shermer on Salon

Don’t let the first paragraph stop you—it’s awful. Once the reporter gets out of the way and lets Shermer get going, though, it’s a good interview.

Here’s the bad part of the opening:

Some of Shermer’s ivory towerish science pals, like Richard Dawkins and the late Stephen Jay Gould, told him not to bother with the I.D. boosters, that acknowledging them meant going along for their political ride, where the integrity of science was being run into the ground.

Gould and Dawkins have both said we shouldn’t debate creationists—we shouldn’t elevate them to the same status that science holds. But both certainly have ripped into ID; the argument isn’t that we shouldn’t criticize them forcefully, but that we shouldn’t give them the opportunity to pretend their dogmatic foolishness is the equal of science.

After that, though, the article is good godless fare.

From the mailbag

Since several have asked me to post these strange emails prompted by the WingNut Daily article, here’s a couple of the cleaner, more coherent ones.

Batboy satanist
I believe that you are a satanist.Pukehead.W.M.

It is a shame that such a learned individual can be so afraid of opposing viewpoints. How can one explain maintaining a point of view about something (evolution) that most scientists secretly admit is bunk. Despite the years of research and billions in funding spent on this idiotic “theory”, never has anyone been able to produce ANY hard evidence to support this theory. In fact, more evidence exists to disprove it. Yet, our tax-payer funded schools are being forced, despite the will of the people in this “democratic” nation, to teach this bunk to our children, while being blocked from teaching ANY opposing viewpoints. And, those who dare will find themselves in court so fast it will make their head spin.

I dare you to read this
Jesus loves you even if you are a pig-####### ############. [I edited that last bit]

“…ejaculations from a godless liberal
Why are godless liberals the only ones who seem to have faith in the Darwinic system of beliefs? Evolution was a great belief when it was first introduced. After all there were brass microscopes and all kind of modern tools to study this new found faith. Today evolution is as ###### as it was in the past and people who hold no faith in religion or evolution can see it for what it is. A farce!

You can see why I don’t dump more of these here: they’re boring. Especially after you get 20 or 30 of them.

Maybe it’s to prevent evolutionists from exercising in air conditioned rooms…

I’m hearing lots about this CHE story that documents an omitted category in a list of subjects eligible for a class of grants…and the omission conveniently knocks out evolutionary biology. I’m suspicious, and everyone is suspicious, and for good reason—this is an administration that elevates incompetent ideologues to positions of unwarranted power in the halls of science, so seeing that kind of selective deletion isn’t too surprising.

However, Matt Brauer at the Panda’s Thumb finds two other deletions: exercise physiology, and…Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning Technology? Unless there’s a passage in the Bible that says Jesus hates ducts, this sounds like a case of incompetence being a bigger factor than ideology.

Another accolade from a ‘prestigious’ journal

The June/July issue of Creation Matters, the house organ of the Creation Research Society, has an article about…ME. Guess what?

They don’t like me. Not one bit.

I’m so crushed that I’m going to post the entire article below the fold, and I think I may have to have a party tonight. It’s always such an honor to be hated by people who believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old, was conjured into existence in six days, and that not believing their god appeared on Earth, like Zeus before Leda, means your non-existent soul will burn in hell forever.

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Seven small peas do not a dinner make

Orac has another tale of the Hitler Zombie—the unstoppable corpse has met Coulter, Weikert, Kennedy, Behe, Johnson, Strobel, and Taylor and eaten their BRAAAAAAAAINS. Sad to say, that was an awfully thin diet—kinda like getting served California cuisine, a few sprigs of something weedy artfully arranged on a plate, when you’re hoping for a more midwestern meal consisting of large lumps of starch and fat—and the Hitler Zombie is going to be ravenous. He will strike again.

Hold the presses: Collins is being used

A reader wrote to Francis Collins about the use of his name to promote D. James Kennedy’s upcoming ahistorical anti-evolution program, and Collins wrote right back. He’s doing exactly the right thing.

(Oops, no — Collins doesn’t want to be quoted on this, so I’ve removed the email. He’s unambiguous in stating that he was interviewed about his book, and that was then inserted into the video without his knowledge.)

Good for him, and that’ll teach me: just when you think there are no further depths to which a creationist will sink, there they go, plumbing ever deeper. Kennedy and his crew are apparently putting together the video equivalent of a quote mine.

I apologize to Dr Collins for assuming he was a party to this creationist video, and I hope he sues those frauds.

Et tu, Francis Collins?

The Raw Story reveals that D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries will be a hosting a program that blames Darwin for Hitler. Orac has going to have to resurrect an entire zombie Wehrmacht to handle this one: look at the unholy corps of creationists he has assembled to defend this outrageous claim:

The one-hour program features Ann Coulter, author of Godless; Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler; Lee Strobel, author of The Case for a Creator; Jonathan Wells, author of Icons of Evolution; Phillip Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial; Michael Behe, author of Darwin’s Black Box; Ian Taylor, author of In the Minds of Men, and Francis Collins, Director of the Human Genome Project.

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