Edmondson is one of the creators of the “Beware the Believers” video, and this interview continues the pattern—he’s intriguingly ambiguous.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Edmondson is one of the creators of the “Beware the Believers” video, and this interview continues the pattern—he’s intriguingly ambiguous.
What a vile little man. I sincerely hope that his career is dead now … and that the rest of his life will be spent eking out speaking fees at Christian fundamentalist conventions, before audiences who will cheer him while dreaming of the day the Jews are exterminated or converted, bringing on Armageddon.
(If this isn’t enough punishment for you, the complete, unedited interview on TBN is here.)
This is some email I suspect a lot of you have already received; look at it through new eyes, though.
That former blot upon the fine educational system of Minnesota has ended up at “Harding University, a private Christian school in Searcy, Ark. She’ll be the dean of graduate programs and an associate professor of education.”. Good for her, and at least now her damage is limited to only 6,000 students at a time, rather than a whole state’s worth.
You know how we all love to screw up online polls … here’s another one. Scroll down to just below “What others are saying”, on the left, where the poll question is:
Do you think the theory of Intelligent Design should be taught in our education system?
“Yes” is currently leading by about 3:1. If everyone goes over there and votes “no”, it will raise Mark Mathis’s blood pressure a few points.
(via Skippy)
The recommendation I noted before has been officially and finally followed by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board: the Institute for Creation Research’s application to offer an online master’s degree program in creationist bullshit has been rejected. Bravo!
The ICR has said they will probably appeal. Don’t slack off, Texas, and keep the pressure on.
Taurus: Great news! Soft drink executives are planning to market a new energy drink made from your urine, on the basis of vague, unfounded rumors of your vitality. This is not such happy news for the rest of us, however.
Mark Mathis does not come off as a nice man in interviews. You may have listened to the SciAm interview, a truly painful experience in which he made claims about evolution and then backtracked when confronted with his mistakes…and admitted that he knew nothing about the subject. He’s done it again in an interview with a Detroit weekly (scroll down to the “Unevolved” article on that page).
I confront Mathis with this point, and he counters that evolutionary theory is also untestable. This is patently untrue—to give just one example, scientists have witnessed speciation, the arisal of a new species from an old one.
When I point this out, he interrupts me immediately: “Whoa! Wait a minute! Please send me whatever material you have that demonstrates that we can observe speciation because I have not seen anything. I’ve never heard anyone even claim that!”
Is he serious? He’s just produced a film about evolution, and he’s never heard of the fact that speciation has been observed and thoroughly documented in the scientific literature? I’m stunned. I send him peer-reviewed research confirming this fact via e-mail, and he later responds, “This isn’t an important argument for me.”
So I ask him about falsifiability. Clearly, evolution could potentially be disproved, but how could one ever disprove the existence of a deity? He laughs. “You can’t apply falsifiability to Darwinian evolution. How is it falsifiable?”
I respond by quoting the biologist J.B.S. Haldane: “Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian.” One instance of fossils appearing in the wrong strata would disprove current evolutionary theory in an instant. Mathis pauses before saying, “If you want to get into the science…” He then trails off and mutters something irrelevant before finally confessing, “Look. You can get into the intricacies of the science on both sides. And I am not qualified.” On that point, we can both agree.
It’s really easy to find descriptions of speciation events on the web, there are thousands of papers on the subject, and there are even whole books discussing it (with difficult, hard-to-find titles like Speciation, which must be why Mathis couldn’t find them). It is cute how the poor man melts down when he meets anyone with even a hint of scientific knowledge. I don’t think “Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian” counts as a scientific intricacy, at least not in the circles I hang out in, where it’s more of a glib quickie. But then, even that level of science probably leaves poor Mathis floundering and lost.
You’ll have to read the rest to find out what he says about me, personally. I guess calling him the ass-prod was an insult that really stung.
Sagittarius: Uh-oh. A Republican is going to notice that you are a man-animal hybrid today. Expect vicious denunciations on the steps of the Capitol; beware of federal agents in white lab coats.
You have rarely seen me say this, but…Texas did a good thing. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has voted against, I repeat, against approving the application from the Institute for Creation “Research” to issue degrees in Texas. The ICR will not be handing out Master of Science degrees in Texas.
Good work, Texans!
Uh-oh. They pissed off Yoko Ono.
Yoko Ono, son, Sean Ono Lennon, and Julian Lennon, John Lennon’s son from his first marriage, along with privately held publisher EMI Blackwood Music Inc filed suit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan seeking to bar the filmmakers and their distributors from continuing to use “Imagine” in the movie.
They are also seeking unspecified damages.
