Fusty nonsense from a creationist loon

Michael Egnor must be fishing for traffic to the graveyard of rotting ideas that the Discovery Institute calls a blog. He claims to honestly want to understand what positive values the New Atheists have, so he posted a quiz for Larry Moran and invited the authors of various blogs — all of which get more traffic and are livelier than his, and also, by the way, allow comments, making his request rather disingenuous.

His questions are so far out of it that I’m not really interested in answering them. It’s like a particularly crusty and dogmatic alchemist stirring beneath the cobwebs of his dead discipline to query a 21st century scientist about chemistry, and all he can muster is quaint questions about platonic solids, the four elements, and the philosopher’s stone.

1) Why is there anything?
2) What caused the Universe?
3) Why is there regularity (Law) in nature?
4) Of the Four Causes in nature proposed by Aristotle (material, formal, efficient, and final), which of them are real? Do final causes exist?
5) Why do we have subjective experience, and not merely objective existence?
6) Why is the human mind intentional, in the technical philosophical sense of aboutness, which is the referral to something besides itself? How can mental states be about something?
7) Does Moral Law exist in itself, or is it an artifact of nature (natural selection, etc.)
8) Why is there evil?

My fast and flippant answers:

1) Nothing is unstable.
2) Nothing caused it.
3) We wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t.
4) Material & efficient. How bizarre to think Aristotle is even relevant, except as a historical factor, or that ancient categories are apposite.
5) An epiphenomenon of the fact of instantiation.
6) Because minds aren’t isolated, but a product of brain+environment.
7) It doesn’t.
8) Evil is simply anti-human, and most of the universe is against us.

Egnor claims to want to learn what New Atheists really believe. He’s lying. He also won’t learn it by simply imposing the cracked and cloudy lens of his superstition to views that are clear and unmarred, and mostly not even concerned with the nonsense that clutters his head.

Go ahead, you can answers his comments in this thread, too. Just keep in mind every time you do that if he were honestly interested, Egnor would have allowed you to comment over there.

Although, if you want to have fun, it might be more entertaining to summarize IDiots. Egnor also writes down his “New Atheism Cliff Notes”:

1) There are no gods
2) Theists are IDiots
3) Catholic priests molest children.

The best three-line summary of Intelligent Design creationists gets its own post with credit to the author.

Kentuckians! Have you got money in the L&N Federal Credit Union?

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.

It must be Obvious Day!

I know. You’re still trying to get over the shock of learning that little Billy Dembski admits to being a biblical literalist. Brace yourself for this one, then: Glenn Beck is also a creationist, and his reasons are really, really stupid.

You know, if you know so little about evolution that you think the fact that monkeys aren’t turning into humans is a credible argument, maybe you should have “MORON” tattooed across your forehead.

Evolution is an engine of diversity. It produces “endless forms most beautiful”, to quote the guy who thought it up. Asking why different species don’t all evolve into us is about as dumb as asking why every kaleidoscope doesn’t produce the same image every time you turn it.

Are we at all surprised?

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?

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 should make the Discovery Institute squirm

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.

I get email

Nathan Moran wrote to chastise me. I feel bad for him…I get these things all the time and the stream-of-consciousness reaction I have to them is never flattering to my correspondents. Maybe they should stop.

Kent Hovind & Your Point of View/Opinion

I would extremely promote you to debate Dr. Kent Hovind, when he is accessible [When he gets out of prison?]. I guarantee you, afterwards you won’t look very smart [Yeah, what would I be thinking, debating a lunatic ex-con with a mail-order degree?] PROFESSOR [Is there a salary raise with my promotion to ALL-CAPS PROFESSOR?] PZ Myers [He spelled my name correctly! I am stunned.]. Secondyly [What happened to firstyly? And can you at least give me a thirdyly?], if “there is no sign of a loving, personal god, but only billions of years of pitiless winnowing without any direction other than short-term survival and reproduction“, then who decides the rules and regulations of man [Woman. Definitely woman.]. Man alone cannot go 24 hours without doing something unexpected or unwanted [You’ve been watching The Simpsons too much.]. The fact is that man is far from flawless [Yes? Has someone been arguing otherwise?]. We are prone to fail [Says the fellow touting Kent Hovind. I know.] PROFESSOR [Emphasize it some more, non-professor.]. If you cannot agree with that [Huh? What? When? Where?], then the college or university that you graduated from should be condemned or demolished [The universities of Washington, Oregon, and Utah will be greatly relieved to learn that Nathan has no reason to demolish their facilities. Think of all the homeless PROFESSORS, wandering the streets of Seattle, Eugene, and Salt Lake City.]. By the way, if you honestly believe in the evolutionist view [Uh-oh. I actually do. What will Nathan demolish now?] intruding in our universities and destroying the faith of many young adults [I keep saying it does, thank you for your support.], then you should know that there is no reason to live [What about sex? How about brook trout almondine with wild rice and a fine glass of wine on the side? How about a stormy day on a wild and rocky shore? How about taking a nice deep breath and just feeling your heart beat and your blood sing? Nathan, Nathan, Nathan…there’s so much to live for, don’t do it!] since we came from nothing [Well, Nathan, you personally came from a spurty little dribble squirted from your father’s penis to slather over a tiny scrap that erupted bloodily from your mother’s ovary, but really, we shouldn’t hold anyone’s humble beginnings against them. Why, the fact that I worked my way from nothing to this sumptuously fleshy instantiation containing the complex residue of exploding stars is something I regard as a mark of considerable well-deserved pride.]. That is the underlying statement that evolution eventually leads to [“from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” Yes. Lovely, isn’t it?], causing citizens to commit suicide [What? Where? We should be swimming in the decaying corpses of dead biology PROFESSORS, then. This doesn’t seem to happen, you know.]. So save your pitiful blogs [I’ve only got the one.] about non-intellectual information [You’re reaching, Nathan. What is intellectual information? Does it wear tweed and pontificate sagely?] that could be taught by the “average joe” [Somehow, I’m not surprised that someone touting Kent Hovind believes just anyone can teach biology.] or Charles Darwin [Oh, bad news there! Charles Darwin didn’t know any genetics or molecular biology…he’d need a lot of remedial work before he could teach biology.].

Wait…no closing line? No “Regards, Nathan” or “Love, Nathan” or “In Jesus’ Name, Nathan”? I guess he really must be angry with me.

Michael Behe’s son has a surprise

He’s come out: Behe’s son has abandoned Catholicism and is an atheist.

It’s actually a bit sad: he comes right out and says that he’s an anti-theist, but that he’s never told his parents (I guess the news is out now!). It also sounds like he’s a bit estranged from his father, saying “I really dislike my father”. He’s still living with them, but is “quarantined” in the basement so he doesn’t contaminate his brothers and sisters with his weird godless ideas.

It’s a very interesting discussion, but I just have to say that seeing fathers and sons unreconciled, even if the father is a bit squirrely, is rather depressing to me. I simultaneously want to praise the younger Behe for being smart and articulate, and also urge him to make peace with his family while he can.

Illinois governor race simplified

Now you know who not to vote for: Bill Brady. Brady favors teaching creationism in the schools.

It’s always helpful when the ninnies declare themselves like that. Although, it’s also true that he declares himself a Republican, which nowadays is also grounds for voting against him.

However, I also take exception to the newspaper article. This is not right:

“My knowledge and my faith leads me to believe in both evolution and creationism,” he said. “I believe God created the earth, and it evolved.”

Creationism generally teaches that the Bible is historically and scientifically accurate, and the earth is less than 10,000 years old.

There are many flavors of creationism, and they don’t all teach that the earth is that young; this young earth nonsense has only relatively recently (since the 1960s) come to dominate the discussion. All this kind of misinformation does is give the guilty ones an out — Brady is probably an old earth creationist from the quotes I read, and now he can protest that he isn’t a creationist, as defined by the Chicago Sun Times.

Catching up with old news

Some people are in the news that I’ve covered before. Let’s do a quick update.

The science media make my head hurt

First, read this parody of science journalism. It’s the template for just about every science story you’ll find in a newspaper, and it’s so depressing.

Second, imagine something even worse. Hint: it’s the media’s coverage of every scientific “controversy” you might think of. It takes a few of the tropes mentioned in the parody, like “shift responsibility for establishing the likely truth or accuracy of the research findings on to absolutely anybody else but me, the journalist” and “quotes from some fringe special interest group of people who, though having no apparent understanding of the subject, help to give the impression that genuine public ‘controversy’ exists.” and “Special interest group linked to for balance” and expand those to fill the allotted space. There is no possibility that a journalist will actually examine the evidence and show which side is clearly bonkers.

For an example of this phenomenon in action, examine this article about a teacher in Modesto, Mark Ferrante, declaring that he will teach intelligent design in biology classes. It’s a moist sopping wallow in the so-called middle ground, getting quotes from teachers on both sides of the issue, and making special care to include a theist teacher mumbling platitudes about “Let science tell us what and how. Let religion tell us who and why.”

And of course, they go to the Discovery Institute for their story about ID, and set them against the NCSE, as if these two groups have an equal investment in the scientific truth. They do not. Intelligent Design has no credibility, no empirical support, and no reasonable proposals for scientific investigation. When will the media wake up and realize that their constant pushing of a false equivalency is a major factor in feeding this pseudo-controversy?

To top it all off, then they do something quite common that the media parody forgot to include: they included a poll. Of course they did, because that’s how you settle an issue in modern journalism…whatever view the majority holds must be true.

Should “intelligent design” be taught in public schools?

Yes, it should be taught in science classes 37%
Yes, but only in religion or culture classes, not in science 18%
No 44%

The school district is taking the correct route and has declared that ID will not be taught. Why can’t the local newspapers recognize reality?