Joshua Joscelyn is a fellow who, once upon a time, worked within Kent Hovind’s creation science ministry. No more, though; he has just posted his resignation letter on facebook. Has he finally seen the light of science? Has he at last seen through the fact that Kent Hovind was a deluded and not-very-bright con artist? No, of course not. He’s still a true believer.

I first came to work with CSE in mid 2007 as a park guide at Dinosaur Adventure Land, swiftly moving into my roles as head of publications and the apologetics departments as well as producer for the popular series, Creation in Common Sense. This was shortly after Dr. Kent Hovind, a personal hero of mine from the time I was a child, had been unjustly sentenced to a despicable sentence of ten years by a kangaroo court at the hands of an evil woman who pretended to be a judge of the law. I managed Dr. Hovind’s blog through those years, and communicated frequently with him. He is a Godly man. But from the time I had begun there, I had noticed a subtle attitude of disagreement with and even scorn for many of Dr. Kent Hovind’s beliefs and methods for managing the ministry.

Hovind’s trial was an open and shut case; he hadn’t been paying taxes, was paying all of his employees cash under the table, and Hovind himself tried to defend his actions by accusing the court of “subornation of false muster”, insisting that the IRS had no jurisdiction in a case of tax fraud.

But apparently loony Joshua thought all that stuff was just great. He’s very unhappy with the new Creation Science Evangelism because they have bowed down to Mammon and done things like reincorporate as “God Quest, Inc.”, and actually tried to obey the law.

I stood by and curiously watched as God Quest, Inc. signed my checks and withheld federal income tax as well as social security, etc. I grieved when I had to assist in overseeing the gutting process whereby the Seminar Series and College Series were stripped of so much that was deemed “controversial” or “irrelevant.” The idea was to remove all content that might seem radical or offensive. His father’s longstanding policy to never ask for money (since God always provided anyway) was overturned, and marketing and fundraising became more and more commonplace.

CSE is impure. They no longer insist on the absolute literal truth of the King James Version of the Bible over all others (all others are “false and corrupt”), they pay taxes, they allow Calvinists to appear on their programs, they didn’t pay Joshua enough for his work, and they aren’t sufficiently dedicated to the cause, favoring money over all.

It’s a bizarre and fascinating rant. Kent Hovind was a fast-talking yokel, a racist moron with a fake degree and a head full of lies, yet he was somehow persuasive to a lot of really stupid people…and still is, actually, with his videos still being distributed and watched. I’d seen him perform live, and didn’t get it: he’s an odd speaker with some strange affectations who raced through a hodge-podge of slides at a ridiculously rapid rate, so fast that he’d never dwell on a point for more than 10 or 20 seconds, and his one skill was the ability to babble with unthinking confidence.

He didn’t so much pass information to his audience as stand at the front of the room and yell “I’m right, I’m right, I’m right” so fast that no one could get a word in edgewise. It worked, I guess; some people are still under his spell. It’s weird, because if anything, he radiated anti-charisma — it was as if someone gave the village idiot a few pounds of crystal meth and put him on stage. It says something about a person when they regard that as noble and heroic.

Jerry Coyne is being berated once again for daring to speak out against the folly of religion. This time, it’s a complaint by Michael Zimmerman, instigator of the clergy letter project, claiming that all those positive atheists are driving away the religious people who would support the teaching of evolution.

Like religious fundamentalists, Coyne is arguing that people must choose between religion and science, that they can’t accept both. There are, I believe, two problems with this position. First, pragmatically, studies have clearly suggested that in the United States, when people are given this choice, they will more often than not opt for religion. Now, I’m not suggesting that Coyne, or any of us who care deeply about science, should pervert our understanding of the discipline simply to make converts. No, I’m arguing that there is a way to promote the principles of scientific inquiry fully while not alienating many who are likely to be supporters by belittling their sincerely held beliefs

Coyne addresses it well, better than I would, because I’d hit that first phrase comparing us to religious fundamentalists and have to whip out the cyberpistol and switch on the agonizer. I’ll refrain from repeating the familiar arguments that you can find on Jerry’s post and cut to the chase.

The clergy letter project isn’t helping. This refusal to tell people they’re wrong when they are isn’t helping. This craven surrender to nonsense out of fear isn’t helping.

How do I know? I’ve read the goddamned sermons. They’re uniformly awful. The entire enterprise isn’t about encouraging people to think thoughtfully about the science, it’s about allowing priests to babble on about creationism and intelligent design and make their pious lies with the pretense of promoting science.

I haven’t read them all, because I can’t get through more than 2 or 3 at a sitting before I have to puke, so maybe there are a few gems in there where they actually promote, you know, reason, critical thinking, and science, but I haven’t found them yet and am disinclined to dig further.

So Susan Andrews preaches on evolution Sunday, and what does she promote? Intelligent Design.

I have come to believe, in my own journey of faith, that God lives in the questions. I believe that seeking understanding with my mind is the preparation I need to trust with my heart. I believe that faith is the frontier beyond the limits of knowledge. I have started looking for portents – in the sky, in the newspaper, in the textbook, in the science lab, in the hospital room, in the darkness as well as the light. Yes, I have started looking for those signs of a God who is trying to do a new thing. And I have discovered that it is in the process, and in the journey, and in the questions that new knowledge and new understanding is usually found. Specifically in this peculiar American controversy about intelligent design, I have come to believe that evolution is intelligent design. And that the Intelligent Designer is the One whom I call God.

Rabbi Friedland preaches on the Sabbath, and what does he promote? Biblical creationism.

After billions of years chemicals were combined to create the first stirrings of life. This developed into human life. What impetus brought those first living cells together? The Torah teaches us it was the Divine Force or Will of God. The sustaining force we call God is what brought it all about.

Life continues as a pattern. The Torah’s version is first earth and sky and water and planets and eventually life forms. Less to more, simple forms to more complex forms. plants to animals to humans. Humans most complex created b’tzelem Elokim.

Hub Nelson preaches on evolution Sunday, and what does he promote? Well, first he praises Rick Warren and The Purpose Driven Life, then he bashes Richard Dawkins and The God Delusion, and he wraps it all up by telling us his god provides meaning and beauty.

Unsurprisingly, everything in those sermons pushes a pro-religious agenda and wraps the science of evolution in a gushy, goofy package used to endorse religion, not science. I’d be more impressed with Michael Zimmerman’s claim that Coyne was undermining efforts to educate the faithful in good science if Zimmerman’s project was actually doing that. But it’s not. The Clergy Letter project is actually encouraging more fuzzy, sloppy thinking and reinforcing religious authority. And if Coyne is making his job harder, more power to Jerry.

The big overpriced embarrassment in Kentucky gets all the attention, but the creation ‘museums’ are sprinkled all over our country, like flyspecks on a sugar cookie. Mmm-mmmm.

Here’s an account of visiting the one in Glen Rose, Texas, run by the big-haired Carl Baugh. Every once in a while I’ll tune him in on the TV — he’s got a regular creationism show on the Trinity Broadcasting Network — but he’s kind of hard to take for very long.

There is an astonishing revelation in the article that I didn’t know, and really impels me to visit that place. Guess who looms over the interior of the ‘museum’ in the form of monumental statuary? It isn’t Jesus. Hint: the museum is in Texas.

Christopher Booker is whining. He went to a meeting of “scientists” and writes up the usual collection of creationist conspiracy theories: they’re oppressed, evolution is in a state of collapse, Darwin himself raised objections to his theory (never mind that he also answered them), complexity, complexity, complexity, famous scientists reject evolution, the scientific establishment is a gang of Lysenkoist bastards, oh, and by the way, global warming is a hoax and smoking isn’t that bad for you. Boring claptrap, all.

The one thing that stood out in his parade of cliches was the fact that he kept quoting these “very bright scientists”, but didn’t name a single one. They were at some secret meeting organized by “a thoughtful and youngish billionaire”…and even he isn’t named. It can’t be fear of retribution in that case — a non-scientist billionaire is simply untouchable by the Science Gestapo, and has no cause for worry at all. He could claim that he was the Emperor of Mars and that he pissed champagne, and the money would still keep rolling in. There is one thing they’re all afraid of, although they won’t come out and admit it.

Laughter.

That’s all it is. The people who come out in favor of such silliness as ID haven’t been oppressed at all, we just stop taking them seriously as scientists, and for good reason. I’d love to know who this billionaire benefactor is, not because I’ll send ninjas after him, or because I’ll somehow wipe out his investments out of spite, but simply because I’d like to point and giggle at the overpaid fool.

Do us all a favor and yank it out and invest it elsewhere. L&N is partnering with the Creation “Museum” in a 5K run. I have no objection to Ken Ham endorsing healthy exercise — presumably being a creationist dolt doesn’t interfere with the functioning of your limbs — but jebus, respectable businesses should be embarrassed to be associated with those kooks.

I have to commend him on his honesty: William Dembski has come right out and plainly said that he believes in a ‘literal’ interpretation of the bible, and that his god actually created the earth in 6 days culminating in the conjuring into existence of Adam and Eve.

In writing The End of Christianity today, I would also underscore three points: (1) As a biblical inerrantist, I accept the full verbal inspiration of the Bible and the conventional authorship of the books of the Bible. Thus, in particular, I accept Mosaic authorship of Genesis (and of the Pentateuch) and reject the Documentary Hypothesis. (2) Even though I introduce in the book a distinction between kairos (God’s time) and chronos (the world’s time), the two are not mutually exclusive. In particular, I accept that the events described in Genesis 1- 11 happened in ordinary space-time, and thus that these chapters are as historical as the rest of the Pentateuch. (3) I believe that Adam and Eve were real people, that as the initial pair of humans they were the progenitors of the whole human race, that they were specially created by God, and thus that they were not the result of an evolutionary process from primate or hominid ancestors. (William A. Dembski)”

So, yes, he is an honest lunatic.

I wonder if he’ll be coming out with a mathy book dissecting the likelihood of that particular scenario?

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Along these same lines, take a look at the program for this creationist conference, Vibrant Dance, which purports to bring together religion and science. It’s all church groups and old school creationists and gibbering nitwits like Dinesh D’Souza and, of course, the Discovery Institute gang, all wallowing in Jebusism.

Oh, and just for another non-surprise, look who else is represented in the program: BioLogos.

Scotland now has its very own outpost of inanity, the Centre for Intelligent Design. It’s wonderfully revealing. The Discovery Institute takes great pains to hide their roots in evangelical Christianity — they want you to believe that their ideas are objective and secular, unwarped by religious ideology — but as soon as they leave the nest in Seattle, the mask seems to get lost at the airport and what emerges is simply Old Time Religion. This happened in Dover, where the creationists on the ground were simply using the rationalizations of Intelligent Design creationism to cover their fundamentalism, and now it’s happening in Scotland.

The article is hilarious. All the organizers of this new institute proudly put their evangelical Christian credentials front and center, and then they define ID:

Generally, proponents of intelligent design think a god created living matter and established the rules of the universe to guide its development.

Meanwhile, backstage, Stephen Meyer and Philip Johnson and all the other lyin’ rascals at the DI are flapping their hands frantically and going, “Shhhh, shhhh, shhhhh!” to get their European friends to shut up and stop giving away the game. They would never accept that definition, because they’re desperate to hide the fact that their entire movement is religiously motivated.