Be afraid

Perhaps you thought Texas’ malign influence was confined to corrupting science teaching in their own state. It’s far, far worse than that.

Until recently, Texas’s influence was balanced to some degree by the more-liberal pull of California, the nation’s largest textbook market. But its economy is in such shambles that California has put off buying new books until at least 2014. This means that McLeroy and his ultraconservative crew have unparalleled power to shape the textbooks that children around the country read for years to come.

Read the rest and tremble. It’s not just evolution, it’s all of science and history that they want to remake in the image of their vicious, petty god — and they’ve got a team of ideologues who will engage in all kinds of dirty tricks to get their way.

A sudden influx of Young Earth Creationists

I’ve been hearing a few complaints lately that there has been a shortage of creationist cretins around here — you all need an occasional fool to gnaw on to keep your fangs sniny and your pelts glossy, I know. Well, aren’t you lucky: Carl Wieland, head of the Australian contingent of global wackaloons, put up an irate reply to the atheist rejection of his offer to debate us. We’re getting a sudden surge because it included this summary of my dismissal:

PZ Myers’ “in your face, Christians” response

PZ Myers, however, while not giving the courtesy of a direct reply, did so firmly and unmistakably on his widely accessed blog. Not surprisingly, it, too, involved a rejection of the invitation to debate, with all the usual excuses trotted out. Readers who are not used to some of the anti-Christian vitriol on such sites need to be warned, but we think seeing the response may be useful for some of you who may have thought that this issue is primarily about science—it’s not. That much should be obvious just from the emotionalism of this response alone. There is a palpable disdain, even hatred, of Christianity and the Bible. Myers concludes his rejection with a “Here’s my answer to Carl Wieland … “, followed by an image which has a common depiction of the Lord Jesus, with the image of the hand manipulated so as to be giving a rude gesture. For the whole response by PZ Myers, bearing all the warnings in mind for younger members of the family in particular, you can see

scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/a_reply_to_carl_wieland.php

Curiously, although I’m not shy about expressing my contempt for all religions, that particular post doesn’t say anything rude about Christianity at all — it does plainly state that Young Earth creationists are not worth wasting time on.

Anyway, it has drawn in some fresh meat. Enjoy it while you can — the new kooks will turn tail and run away soon enough, if experience is any guide.

California crazy

Two distressing news stories out of that wealthy western state:

  • Berkeley High School has a serious problem: it’s a good, relatively well-funded school, but black and latino students aren’t doing as well as white students. Their solution: kill those expensive science labs and redirect the money to remedial classes. Science classes with no labs? Inconceivable! That’s what a body of earnest, well-meaning, and apparently scientifically illiterate parents and teachers have decided to do.

    You cannot learn about science without doing science. It’s like deciding to continue to teach theater and music, but without that troubling and time-consuming business of performing. Or like having a football program that never plays any games (I know, that one is pure fantasy…discontinuing a football team is much, much harder than simply shutting down teaching labs).

    I’m also surprised at the casual bigotry in the proposal. Demolishing their science program won’t hurt black and Latino students? Right. When I taught at Temple University, the biology labs were full of ambitious black students scrambling to pick up those essential, basic lab skills that they needed to be doctors and nurses someday…skills that were not taught in the impoverished urban schools of North Philadelphia. Is Berkeley training their minority students to be part of the cutting edge of science and technology and medicine, or are they more interested in turning out service workers for Taco Bell?

  • Here’s another tricky situation: the California Science Center is being sued for turning away the showing of an intelligent design creationism movie. It’s a tough case, because public institutions should be interested in presenting arguments for issues in science — even if it is a controversial story, the answer to abuses of free speech is more free speech.

    However, there are other parts of this story that mean I can’t just jerk the ol’ free speech knee. One key point is that what the movie was presenting was not a scientific controversy at all—seriously, any movie that tries to present the Cambrian as a serious problem that makes evolution impossible is celluloid trash. Because the venue can be leased should not imply that the CSC is open to anyone showing home movies, or to the latest porn impresario from the San Fernando Valley using it for the premiere of his latest flick. I would think a science center would have a vested interest in protecting its reputation for showing science.

    And of course, the creationists know about that reputation. That’s why they try to book prestigious places of science, like the Smithsonian, your local museum, or as we see all the time at the University of Minnesota, the physics auditorium, to show off their bogosity in the reflected luster of science. The reverse is also true: scientists don’t rush to unveil their latest discovery at the nearby church.

    The science center also had clear grounds for canceling the showing: the creationists tried to imply in promotions that the movie showing was a Smithsonian-endorsed event, which it was not — they were merely a gang of bozos who had the cash to lease the room. The center also had a clause in their agreement to prevent that kind of credibility-theft, requiring promotional materials to be screened before release.

    It’s all part of a growing problem: creationists know that their institutions have no scientific credibility at all, and they desperately want to borrow some authority for their lies from real science.

Some things never change

Zeno has posted the complete text of a long creationist screed published in the Sacramento Bee. It’s got everything: the second law of thermodynamics, the fallacy of the excluded middle, the ‘law’ of biogenesis, mysterious barriers between species, and of course, the Imminent Death of Darwinism. It’s tediously familiar, and you’ve probably heard it all many times before. Only two things make it interesting.

It was published in 1981, and it’s mostly indistinguishable from creationist rhetoric in 2009. Which is rather depressing, if you think about it.

The author is someone who also defends geocentrism. The creationists have mostly given that one up, so there are some signs of progress.

Shame on Italy

This is absurd. The Italian National Research Council is sponsoring the publication of a creationist book, titled Evolutionism: The Decline of an Hypothesis. Right away, from the title alone, you can tell that the book has problems: evolution is not a theory in decline, no matter how much the creationists declare it so, but is guiding a thriving research program. The contents are something else, too: apparently, it declares that dinosaurs went extinct just 40,000 years ago, and that radiometric dating is wrong.

Wow. It’s not just a creationist book, but a young earth creationist book. Right away, we can make some predictions about the author. Roberto de Mattei: that he knows nothing about science, and that he’s a political creature.

Bingo.

De Mattei, a political appointee to CNR, teaches the History of Christianity and the Church at the European University in Rome and is president of the Rome- and Washington, D.C.-based Lepanto Foundation, a Catholic group.

You know, when you sponsor a book that proposes to throw out basic physics, chemistry, and biology, you really ought to make sure the author has some chops in those fields.

Awww, poor widdle Ken Ham’s feewings are hurt

Ken Ham is distressed that he gets no respect. This triggers a little litany of self-defense.

Guess what’s missing from Sunday’s Cincinnati Enquirer‘s (our main Cincinnati newspaper) long articles about local Christmas/holiday activities?

This long piece-plus other Christmas-related articles–appeared in the paper yesterday (Sunday). No mention of the Creation Museum and its Bethlehem’s Blessings Christmas programs–not even the free day on Thursday (the museum is open to the public for free for Christmas Eve), even though through our publicist, we sent two news releases to the paper about our Christmas activities.

Interesting, considering over 920,000 people have visited the Creation Museum–tens of millions of dollars has been brought into the community each of the past two years–hundreds of jobs created locally–already 7,500 people have visited the Creation Museum’s Live Nativity (five more dates for this spectacular event) and phenomenal garden light display. (By the way, we have submitted a letter to the paper to inquire about the omission of our major series of Christmas events that will attract over 15,000 people to a place that has won major tourism awards for advertising excellence–maybe there is some explanation for this oversight; while the paper’s reporters over the years have generally been fair towards us, we sometimes wonder why some of the editors seem to look at us differently–see a previous article of ours, for example.

There’s a reason the world looks at you differently, Ken.

It’s because you’re a gibbering nitwit. Your “museum” is a popular freakshow for ignorant yahoos, and it’s existence is an international embarrassment. You bring about as much prestige to the Cincinnati area as a combination leper colony and lunatic asylum; sure, it’s well-populated with the unfortunate afflicted, and it provides employment to local citizens, and the fact that you’ve turned it into a spectacle of stupidity for gawkers brings in tourist dollars, but it’s not something to be proud of. And unlike the leper colony/asylum, your institution provides no useful or charitable function for the community or its residents. Instead, you lie to children for money.

I suspect the omission was merely an oversight, because the American media tends to drool for money over principle, and one thing the phony “museum” has is buckets of money — for the same reason P.T. Barnum thrived — but one can always hope that the slight was intentional, and that someone at the Cincinnati Enquirer is aware that the presence of a Temple to Lunacy brings disrepute to the region.

You lie to children for money. You don’t get respect for that.

Do not vote for Pawlenty in 2012

I live in Minnesota; Tim Pawlenty is our governor, and he’s got his bland and uninteresting gaze fastened on the White House. Don’t be fooled. He’s just another Republican hack who has been drifting ever right-ward towards increasing lunacy. He was interviewed in Newsweek, and this will give you an idea of what kind of waffly worthless panderer he is.

Well, you know I’m an evangelical Christian. I believe that God created everything and that he is who he says he was. The Bible says that he created man and woman; it doesn’t say that he created an amoeba and then they evolved into man and woman. But there are a lot of theologians who say that the ideas of evolution and creationism aren’t necessarily inconsistent; that he could have “created” human beings over time.

The Bible doesn’t mention Tim Pawlenty’s parents, Eugene and Ginny, anywhere, either, and neither does it mention Tim Pawlenty, so apparently the question of Pawlenty’s origins are still open. This all fits with my theory that he is merely a recent conglomeration of mindless amoeboid slime.