Isn’t this sweet? It’s a polite invitation from Pastor Dale in Ohio, which was also sent to a lot of other skeptics/atheists. It’s so polite and open-minded!

Greetings. I want to let you know about an upcoming project, and I invite any of you or your consumers to participate. I realize your viewpoint is drastically different from ours, but I firmly believe that we all stand to gain from honest open discussion with those who see the world differently from us, and that spending all our time with those of like mind creates intellectual inbreeding. We make no demands of participants except that all treat each other with civility. Thank-you for your consideration.

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On October 10, 2010 (2:00 PM Eastern/ GMT-5), Rev. Dr. Joel Heck of Concordia University, Austin will give a one hour presentation on the Book of Genesis, followed by a question and answer session. While the host congregation will be Shepherd of the Ridge Lutheran Church in North Ridgeville, OH, Dr. Heck will give his presentation from Austin via streaming Internet video. We will, in turn, broadcast this presentation live via our website, shepherdoftheridge.org. Anyone anywhere in the world with a broadband internet connection can watch live. We will also allow viewers to comment and ask questions via our chat boxes. The presentation will be recorded for those unable to watch live.

Following the event, we will begin an ongoing indepth study of Genesis. The discussion will take place on multiple levels and locations. We will meet live to discuss it in person on Sunday evenings at 7 PM (Eastern) at Shepherd of the Ridge Lutheran Church. The conversation will be streamed live, so anyone unable to be present can watch and join in the discussion via chat, Twitter, or Facebook. Those unable to watch live can either watch the recorded class or listen online via podcast or just read the questions online and discuss the questions in the comments section. We will also have forums to discuss tangential topics like the age of the earth, archaeology, and more.

Anyone interested is welcome to attend or participate in any way, regardless of beliefs, background, or location.

Get more information and sign up at http://shepherdoftheridge.org/bible_study/genesis for updates.

What a nice invitation. You’d almost think they were going to discuss the origin of the world seriously. But, you know, you can’t trust Christians who promise an “indepth study of Genesis”, because behind the polite and friendly mask of the happy reverend is the brain of a drooling idiot. I looked up Dr Joel Heck. He’s…unimpressive.

The first thing you should know about Heck is that he is a signatory to Answers in Genesis’ Affirmations and Denials Essential to a Consistent Christian (Biblical) Worldview. That is a marvellous document. You owe it to yourself to browse through it, just to see how deep into crazy our opposition is nestled. Most of it is general creationist assertions (There are no transitional fossils! The creation was in exactly 6 24 hour days! There was a global flood! Etc.) but my two favorite sections are the more general ones that lay out rules that are fundamentally anti-science, because they deny the possibility of any source of knowledge other than the Christian Bible. Remember these when some AiG young earth creationist tells you that they love science, as Ken Ham has done.

3. We affirm that the final guide to the interpretation of Scripture is Scripture itself. Scripture must be compared with Scripture to obtain the correct interpretation of a particular text, and clear Scriptures must be used to interpret ambiguous texts, not vice versa. We affirm that the special revelation of infallible and inerrant Scripture must be used to correctly interpret the general revelation of the cursed Creation.
We deny that uninspired sources of truth-claims (i.e., history, archeology, science, etc.) can be used to interpret the Scriptures to mean something other than the meaning obtained by classical historical-grammatical exegesis. We further deny the view, commonly used to evade the implications or the authority of Biblical teaching, that Biblical truth and scientific truth must remain totally exclusive from each other and that science could never agree with the Bible.

4. We affirm that no apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field, including history, archeology and science, can be considered valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record. We also affirm that the evidence from such fields of inquiry is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information.
We deny that scientific “evidence” used to “prove” millions of years is objective fact and not heavily influenced by naturalistic presuppositions.

Section 3 is clear: the only source of knowledge about Scripture is Scripture, and science and history that uses any other source of information cannot validly cross-check the Biblical accounts. Section 4 declares that any history or science that does not agree with Scripture is wrong. But at the same time, notice that at the end of Section 3, they announce that they deny that science and the Bible could ever disagree. Why? Because True Science always agrees with the Bible.

It’s a perfect closed loop. They have closed their eyes to the universe around them, and declared the Bible to be the Pole Star of all knowledge, perfect and consistent and uncontradicted by reality by definition. It’s actually extremely creepy to anyone not indoctrinated into their dogma.

So, does anyone expect the Shepherd of the Ridge discussion to be enlightening or interesting in anything other than a psychopathological way? You shouldn’t. It’s going to be a nightmare of ignorant people insisting that non-Biblical information may not contaminate their thinking. And I don’t give a damn how polite their invitation to the skeptical community was.

But wait…so far this is all guilt by association. Maybe Joel Heck got hoodwinked into signing AiG’s stupid document, and he’s really going to make a less exclusive, rational argument.

No, sorry. One of Heck’s lectures has been recorded, and I listened to part of it before the inanity became too overwhelming. He argues for a strictly literal interpretation of the book of Genesis, and his ‘logic’ is perfectly consistent with the Affirmations above. Here are two of the arguments I heard him make:

1. In parts of the New Testament, the authors clearly announce when a story being told is an allegory or parable. Nowhere in Genesis does the author say, “This is an allegorical account of creation”, therefore, it is literally true.

   That should leave you flabbergasted for a bit. Think about it. I have noticed that neither Banks’ Consider Phlebas nor Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings nor Melville’s Moby Dick include declarations in the text that the stories are fictional tales, therefore, we should seriously consider the possiblity of shape-shifting Balrogs on an epic quest to hunt down a space-whale.

   That’s the kind of logic we’re working with here: the bloody literal-minded smallness of a ‘scholar’ who needs blinking neon lights in the text to figure out the damned obvious.

2. His other argument was another familiar one from the young earth creationist crowd: if the story of Genesis isn’t literally true, than other parts of the Bible that refer to it collapse into falsehood, too.

   Sin entered the world with the fall of Adam…If evolution is true…then you have death long before you have the first human being, and that makes Paul’s statement in Romans false.

   Well, yes. If it is an article of your faith that nothing died before 6,000 years ago, and someone finds a bone from an animal that died 7,000 years ago, then your belief has been falsified, and all inferences from your failed premise are called into question. The fact that you really, really like that inference that you’ll go to Jesusland after you die is simply not a factor in determining the truth status of the Jesusland assertion.

   But don’t forget the AiG escape clause! The bone can’t be 7,000 years old because that would contradict the Bible, therefore all such uncomfortably disagreeable evidence should be discarded.

I might listen in on the freakish conversation in October, but I doubt that I’ll be able to last long — listening to Heck’s horrible recorded lecture inspired simultaneous somnolence and rage, which is a weird combination not to be courted often. Also, the AiG declaration is extremely limiting, not at all open to discourse about real ideas or evidence, so I can’t imagine what they could actually talk about — I’d be curious to see how the audience manages it.

Some readers here may be familiar with the grad school journal club tradition, where every week a paper is subject to critical examination, and people come prepared with other sources to either savage or reinforce the lessons of the experiments. Do not expect that at Shepherd of the Ridge. Expect the antithesis of that. I admit to some curiosity about what the opposite of a scientific discussion would look like, and here’s an opportunity.

And of course it will be very polite and not rude at all. Some will consider that a virtue to make the whole exercise worthwhile.

Bernadette Barton provides an interesting perspective on Ken Ham’s wretched little palace of ignorance. The Creation “Museum” is not a happy place.

Particularly nerve-wracking were signs warning that guests could be asked to leave the premises at any time. The group’s reservation confirmation also noted that museum staff reserved the right to kick the group off the property if they were not honest about the “purpose of [the] visit.”

Because of these messages, Barton said, the students felt they might accidentally reveal themselves as nonbelievers and be asked to leave. This pressure is a form of “compulsory Christianity” that is common in a region known for its fundamentalism, Barton said. People who don’t ascribe to fundamentalism often report the need to hide their thoughts for fear of being judged or snubbed.

At one point, Barton reported in her paper, a guard with a dog circled a student pointedly twice without saying anything. When he left, a museum patron approached the student and said, “The reason he did that is because of the way you’re dressed. We know you’re not religious; you just don’t fit in.” (The student was wearing leggings and a long shirt, Barton writes.)

The pressures were particularly tough for gay members of the group, thanks to exhibits discussing the sinfulness of homosexuality and same-sex marriage. A lesbian couple became paranoid about being near or touching one another, afraid they would be “found out,” Barton writes. This “self-policing” is a common occurrence in same-sex relationships in the Bible Belt, Barton said.

I felt it when I was there. I didn’t fit in, either, and having guards with dogs wandering about isn’t exactly welcoming. I suppose if you were a fundamentalist Christian with a finely honed persecution complex, you might appreciate visiting an armed camp where conformity is enforced, but it really wasn’t my favorite atmosphere.

The article does get the creationist’s side of the story.

The signs and warnings, he said, are because people will occasionally come to the museum to hand out anti-Creationist materials, disturbing other visitors.

“We know that the nature of the subject is controversial,” Lisle said in a telephone interview. “It’s just one of the things that we have to deal with in a fallen world.”

Lisle defended the anti-gay messages in the museum as part of the museum’s goal to stay true to Biblical teachings.

Funny, isn’t it…creationists come to real museums all the time, hand out their literature, even lead tour groups through and babble stupidly against the message of the exhibits, and no one patrols the place with police dogs to suppress the free expression of dissent. I wonder why?

I knew this was coming. There was an interesting taxonomic consolidation recently: Torosaurus is accused of being simply an older Triceratops, so those two taxa are being lumped into one, Triceratops. Jack Horner is suggesting that Nanotyrannus was simply a juvenile T. rex. These kinds of adjustments of the taxonomy happen all the time, both as more data becomes available, and as lumpers make more noise than splitters (a process that can be reversed, of course). It is not a big deal.

Except to creationists, who are overjoyed that combining two species into one means that “the Ark cargo was even lighter than previously thought”. There’s also some crowing about those arrogant scientists being wrong wrong wrongity-wrong wrong ding-dong! Gloating over an occasional error would be much more impressive if they also ever acknowledged the many times scientists have been right, and the creationists wrong.

Like this time: a little taxonomical shuffling does not salvage the story of God and the big boat. Triceratops/Torosaurus are still 70 million years old, and the fact that dinosaurs underwent morphological changes as they matured deep in the Cretaceous does not suddenly make the idea that they were living in the Middle East 6000 years ago and taking a year long cruise any more plausible.

Maybe they’re just hoping that if the paleontologists keep consolidating taxa they’ll eventually get to the point where all the dinosaurs are lumped into one species called Behemoth. That’s not going to happen either.

Via Sandwalk, here is Stephen Meyer explaining the central concepts of his theory: it’s all about the origin of information.

It’s a ridiculous argument. He constantly repeats this mantra of “digital information”: I don’t think he knows what he’s talking about. He also likes to claim that he’s using an accepted scientific argument, of using only known, extant processes and extrapolating to the past; which is fine, except that he pretends ignorance of the fact that we know of natural processes that increase the amount of information in the genome without intervention by any intelligent agent.

He has this silly syllogism that he trumpets in his book, Signature in the Cell:

1. Despite a thorough search, no material causes have been discovered that demonstrate the power to produce large amounts of specified information.

2. Intelligent causes have demonstrated the power to produce large amounts of specified information.

3. Intelligent design constitutes the best, most causally adequate, explanation for information in the cell.

Point #1 is false, except for the trivial loophole of “specified” information, a term he never defines. Point #2 is true. However, Point #3 fails because he hasn’t shown that his first premise is true.

This is all the Discovery Institute has got: blindly repeating the same lies over and over again.

I was sent a link to an excerpt from a brand new creationist book, and I expected yet another twisty bit of dishonest weirdness of the sort that the Discovery Institute has conditioned me to see. But then I saw the title, The Death of Evolution, and felt a twinge of deja vu — as Glenn Morton says, the imminent demise of evolution is the longest running lie in creationism. And then there was the blurb: “A growing number of respected scientists are defecting from the evolutionist camp purely on scientific grounds.” Wow, that’s gotta be like the second oldest lie by creationists. I haven’t even opened the cover, and it’s already boring me!

Open it, and you discover it begins with a series of quotes — again, an old game the creationists have been playing for years, trotting out a series of authorities, some of them quote-mined, some of them from creationist nobodies, some of them from the turn of the last century.

And then you get to the first chapter. It opens with the bombardier beetle! And then it declares that evolution is in violation of the second law of thermodynamics! Both claims are ridiculous. The bombardier beetle is an animal that farts caustic substances, all of which have evolutionary precursors, but creationists are fond of claiming it couldn’t have evolved, because it would have exploded during the intermediate steps. The second law of thermodynamics gets trotted out because they don’t understand it and claim that it means everything has to be getting worse and running downhill. I hadn’t even gotten to page 10 and I could tell this was antiquated, useless crap.

These are arguments that were made by creationists in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. It’s a book full of recycled stupid. It’s a sign that creationism, not evolution, is dying when they have to resort to dredging up old dead arguments that were unconvincing targets of derision when Duane Gish was on the creationist talk circuit.

But then I look in the acknowledgments: the author, some right-wing kook named Jim Nelson Black, thanks West, Dembski, Meyer, Richards, and Bohlin of the Discovery Institute. Isn’t that sweet? I think I know what they must be doing in their ‘research’ arm of the Biologic Institute: they are trying to reanimate the moldy corpse of George McCready Price in order to get some fresh ideas.