We all knew this was coming. Xiaotingia, the newly described feathered dinosaur, suggests a reevaluation of the taxonomic status of Archaeopteryx, so the creationists are stumbling all over each other to crow about the failure of science…which doesn’t make any sense, since reconsidering hypotheses in the light of new evidence is exactly what science is supposed to do.

David Menton and Ken Ham appear in WhirledNutDaily to say that 1) it’s all a lie anyway, so this evidence can’t teach us anything new, and 2) forget Archaeopteryx! It’s just another dinosaur!

Uncommon Descent, the intelligent design creationist blog, has a couple of posts on Xiaotingia. One claims that a big hole has just been blown in an icon of evolution, but that the “tenured Darwin bores” are all flapping their hands and telling everyone to ignore the damage. Another claims that evolutionary biology was looking for a simple linear trajectory in avian evolution, and now it’s shown to be a complex mess, therefore…what? Because creationists have a misconception about what was expected, evolution is wrong?

Ho hum. Science will keep on strengthening our understanding of the past with new evidence avidly sought, creationists will just keep on clamping their eyes even more tightly shut.

I’ve received a couple of shocked emails from people lately, about something called Dinosaur World. It’s a set of three theme parks, in Plant City, Florida, Cave City, Kentucky, and Glen Rose, Texas (that last one probably set off alarm bells already) which feature life-size fiberglass and concrete dinosaurs in a park-like setting. They also have a web site and blog which has some popular appeal: all of the entries in the blog are short descriptions of dinosaurs, with a photo, geared to the level a young child could understand. Here’s an example:

Maiasaura was a large, plant-eating, duck-billed dinosaur. Maiasaura was the first dinosaur that was found alongside its young, eggs, and nests. This suggests that Maiasaura nurtured its young.

When you look through them now, though, you’ll notice something a little ominous: they always make these brief descriptions of their appearance, but they never mention when these dinosaurs lived. There’s a reason for that.

What prompted the flurry of surprised email was that on 25 July, they posted this educational announcement:

At Dinosaur World, we present interesting facts about each dinosaur. Examples include, what they ate and unique charactaristics of each. However, we do have many books in the giftshop including information on creationism. Below is an example.

Why is so little known about dinosaurs? Despite all the new dinosaur discoveries, little is known about the dinosaurs because all information comes from fossils and a lot of “educated guesses” have to be made.

Where did dinosaurs come from? God created the entire universe and everything in it including all animals (Gen 1:20-25; Exodus 20:11; Genesis 1; John 1:3).

Are dinosaurs in the Bible? Dinosaur-like creatures are mentioned in the Bible including “behemoth” and “tannin”. Perhaps the best example is in Job 40.

What were the dinosaurs like? Man and dinosaurs lived together and man were masters over all God’s wonderful creatures. (Gen 1:26, 28) In the first early days, all animals were friendly and under man’s control. None of the animals ate meat or killed. God provided for all. There was no sin, no death, no evil and no disease. It was after the flood that things changed.

What happened to the dinosaurs? The Bible says that a great flood covered the entire earth. All but those on Noah’s ark were killed, including dinosaurs.

Were dinosaurs on the ark? The Bible says one set of every air breathing land animal was on the ark. (Gen 6:12-20; 7:15-16). Young dinosaurs would be small and easier to care for than the full grown ones.

What happened after the flood? After the flood, the earth was very different and temperatures had changed. Some places were very hot and some very cold. Many parts of the world were too harsh for the dinosaurs to live and much harder to find food to feed their enormous bodies. It is not just dinosaurs that have become extinct. In the last 350 years alone, almost 400 species have disappeared. After the flood man also was responsible for killing many animals. The wooly mammoths and mastodons where wiped out by humans.

What about “millions of years old”? Just because something is fossilized does not mean it is millions or even thousands of years old. When conditions are right, a bone can become filled with minerals quickly. The main ingredients are quick burial, water and minerals. Conditions during the flood were ideal for creating fossils.

You can imagine how some people who had no idea felt; they’d been reading the articles to their kids, who are enthusiastic about dinosaurs, and suddenly, boom, they discover that the authors are idiots. And idiots with a religious agenda. There is nothing about any of this nonsense in their About page; similarly, Wikipedia and none of the other reviews on the web mention that this is a creationist attraction. Sneaky!

Behind all the sweet imagery of the animals willingly marching two by two into the Ark, there had to have been eight people going insane.

Casey Luskin has been at it again. The underwhelming squeak toy of the Discovery Institute, the good Christian kid with an undergraduate degree in earth sciences who couldn’t cope with reality so he went for a law degree instead, has written another of his uninformed screeds explaining evolutionary developmental biology to the masses, despite knowing nothing about the subject himself, except what Jonathan Wells shat into his cranium. And I’m not going to waste any more time with it; I’ve hammered home the stupidity of his comments often enough recently. He also wrote an appalling pile of ignorant nonsense about the Miller/Urey experiment, and I don’t need to write about, because Andy Ellington took care of it.

Ellington is a researcher into chemical evolution and mechanisms of abiogenesis in Texas; he recently testified to the Texas SBOE, and after Luskin vomited up his folly, was moved to write a thoroughly kick-ass summary of the significance of Miller/Urey, with good solid dismissals of the incompetence and futility of the Discovery Institute. Ellington vs. Luskin is like fierce Siberian tiger vs. anemic, dull-witted rodent.

(via Calamities of Nature)

Creationists are so far from being scientists that I’m frequently astounded at just how unaware they are — surely, if you’re being that crazy, you’ve got to realize that what you’re doing is nothing like what scientists do, right? I guess when you’re that nuts you don’t even know it.

The Intelligent Design creationists have been having a secret meeting in Italy, where they claim to be challenging Darwinian orthodoxies. Well, semi-secret: they brought in David Berlinski’s daughter to pretend to be a “journalist” and throw gentle little softballs in youtube interviews, but many of the attendees are anonymous, the meeting program is not available, and the place is stocked with devotees of religious orthodoxy who are singularly clueless about science. What it really is is a great big creationist circle jerk where everyone is free to say stupid things and not have one of those annoying evidence-based scientists in the audience asking difficult questions, and also avoid real journalists who might publicly expose their inanity.

Jeff Shallit has gleaned a little information about what’s going on at this ‘conference’ by looking at who is willing to be interviewed: it’s the usual Discovery Institute suspects. For example, this video of Paul Nelson is so revealing: everyone else in camera range fled lest they be exposed, and he’s got his excuse. They’re afraid of reprisals from the Darwinist mullahs! This is such an unhealthy situation! Dissenters are intimidated and their careers threatened!

Yes, their careers are in danger, because disciplines that value rigor and evidence and science are not going to be impressed at all by deluded cowards who hide in closets and whisper oft-debunked stupidities at one another. If you’ve got the goods, stand and deliver; show us your evidence, explain your reasoning, persuade people who disagree with you with the strength of your argument. They can’t, so they scurry off to picturesque villas in Tuscany, shoo away those difficult criticisms, and sit and reassure each other that they are very clever indeed while mangling information theory and biology.

My favorite quote from Darwin’s Origin is so appropriate here.

It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as the “plan of creation” or “unity of design,” &c., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory. A few naturalists, endowed with much flexibility of mind, and who have already begun to doubt the immutability of species, may be influenced by this volume; but I look with confidence to the future, to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality. Whoever is led to believe that species are mutable will do good service by conscientiously expressing his conviction; for thus only can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.

There was an orthodoxy in Darwin’s time, too, and it was the dogma of creationism. Darwin’s advice to young scientists was to conscientiously express their convictions, and to get out and publish, publish, publish their observations. That’s how science progresses, by wrestling with disagreement and confronting it with evidence and experiment.

Creationists do the opposite. They must, because their ideas have already been met and dismissed as wrong.