One more thing!

I almost forgot: there was another comment in the Karen Armstrong interview that I found irksome…but my complaint is mainly with the interviewer. Here’s one question he asked her, and her answer.

But certainly there are a lot of people — both scientists and religious people — who speculate about whether there’s some cosmic order. For the evolutionary biologists, the question is whether there’s some natural progression to evolution.

Who knows?

Her answer is a kind of weak cop-out, but it’s acceptable…avoiding a question on which you are ignorant is not a problem. The question, though…jebus.

For evolutionary biologists, that isn’t the question at all. We have a darned good mechanism that doesn’t involve teleology, and while some may speculate, there’s no supporting evidence for any kind of purpose or progress (in the sense of change towards a goal) in evolution. Biologists don’t even ask that kind of question.

Note that this is not the same as saying we avoid the issue: it’s that there hasn’t been any reason to invoke teleology in evolution. Explanations are thought up to explain observations, not the other way around, and there aren’t any observations yet that require purpose in an explanation. All I can imagine here is that the interviewer has some weak and muddled view of the Intelligent Design creationists having some legitimacy, and that kind of dribbled out into his question.

“Here in the North there is no such thing as monkeys.”

OK, Canadians, ‘fess up. I know you guys are so danged nice and polite…this is just an attempt to make your Southern neighbor feel less uniquely stupid, isn’t it? You put up some obliging Québécois Inuit Pentecostals to pretend to be as dumb as a Kansas preacher, didn’t you?

“If the town complains and says no, the committee can ask the principal or the director of teachers to approach the teacher and say, ‘Look, this is not the subject to be taught here in this town, or in this place, because we know we have been humans from the beginning, ‘” said Molly Tayara.

“I don’t personally accept my children being taught that they came from some species from Africa somewhere.

“Here in the North there is no such thing as monkeys.”

(via Josh)

Pig pile on Robert Bazell!

Bazell wrote an irritatingly obtuse commentary on Intelligent Design creationism, and I dawdled about expressing my dislike for it…but Tara and Orac and John Pieret and even non-scientific humorists (and I’m sure there are others I’ve missed) have all chimed in now, so you’d think I could just let it pass. But no! This is the blogosphere! We will all shout out our condemnations!

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mturner turns his molasses-thick wit on me

A reader who has been stymied by TypeKey (I wish I could fix that bug) informs me that mturner, one of the creationists at the ARN message board, thinks he has rebutted my post on whale limb evolution, claiming that Thewissen et al. have actually found evidence for Intelligent Design creationism. It’s fairly typical nonsense from the ARNies, but it’s so amusing I had to rebut his rebuttal.

ARN is a weird place. There are several patient, intelligent people working it to correct the babble that the flaming idiots who dominate the board put up. I am not that patient, so I can’t stomach the fools who frequent it, and mturner is one of the nastiest and dumbest of the lot. You can read his comments at ARN, or just go below the fold here—I’ve put the full text in this post.

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Don’t worry, Skeptico

It seems that Skeptico has a copy cat—a guy who goes around posting under the name Skeptico, and who has started a blog of his own at skeptico.blogspot.com—but I don’t think anyone will confuse the two. This new Skeptico is an evolution denier and global warming denier, and is your typical run-of-the-mill dumbass reactionary. He’s more of an anti-Skeptico…no, a mini-anti-Skeptico.

I took a look at the work of the pseudo-Skeptico, and was surprised at his ignorance.

Well, it so happens that I am quite new to the ID-EVO debate, indeed to ID literature itself (although the controversy has intrigued me for many years). I’ve just only recently finished Behe’s “Darwin’s Black Box.” This whole intriguing field of microbiological complexity, replete with innumerable individual irreducible complexities, is very fascinating. And I am sure that not a few level-headed people, upon reading that book, must have thought it nothing short of a succinct and irrefutable refutation of neo-Darwinism. For, indeed, that is precisely what it is.

Nevertheless, how many hardcore Darwinists will change their positions as a result? Few, I daresay. Very few. Because, at the end of the day, to relinquish this cherished theory requires an act of will that unavoidably involves a whole phalanx of personal vested interests with philosophical, moral, religious, teleological, and most emphatically social ramifications (friends could be lost, you see, or maybe even a mentor). “Science”–howsoever many times that encumbered shiboleth be invoked, howsoever sanctimoniously, howsoever shrilly and desperately–is not the issue here. Not for them. Not for the believer. Not now. Not ever.

There’s an admission that he’s new to the debate, and has only just now read Behe’s crappy little book, and now he thinks the debate is all over. He expects, though, that scientists will refuse to give up their tired old ideas because, unlike him, they aren’t open-minded and are tied up in the establishment. Everything he says is wrong. The book is not irrefutable; quite the contrary, I know a few biologists who have read it (not many, though, since the book’s cheesy reputation precedes it), and they remain unconverted because the science in the book is badly done. Irreducible complexity is a crock. Behe’s testimony in Dover was a farce. His attempts to ‘disprove’ evolution since have been laughable.

The science is against him, which makes that last paragraph I quoted above a fascinating example of creationist projection.

Department of cluelessness

Clear off a space on the floor near you, because soon you’ll be rolling around laughing on it.

You may recall that John A. Davison, infamous advocate of Intelligent Design, started a blog of his own, titled Prescribed Evolution, back in November of 2005. It generated a lot of hilarity because it consisted of one post. This is it.

I have my own blog now, only because I have been banned from just about all the others. Since I am computer illiterate, don’t expect very much from me. I welcome any comments about my published papers including my unpublished “An Evolutionary Manifesto: A New Hypothesis For Organic Change.” I will tend to ignore any denigrations either of myself or my distinguished sources. I will also not take seriously comments from anonymous posters although I will respond provided they are civil.

There follows a comment thread. It’s up to 847 comments now; it consists of Davison wondering where all the commenters are, lots of bickering, Davison threatening to ban DaveScot, DaveScot threatening to ban Davison from his blog, waa waa waaa, on and on. If I were trying to parody the inanity of the Designists, I couldn’t have topped this.

But Davison could.

He has started a new blog, New Prescribed Evolution. Again, it consists of one post.

The original Prescribed Evolution blog got pretty cluttered so I am starting a new one. Hopefully I will be able to better manage this one than the original.

<snort>

That post has 157 comments right now. Almost all of them are by…John A. Davison.

This is hilarious.