The NY Times sent a reporter to the First Conference on Creation Geology, and came back with a discouraging tale of creationist blindness. The two stars are Kurt Wise, old school, and Marcus Ross, new school. Ross recently recieved a Ph.D. for his paleontological work on mosasaurs — marine reptiles from 65 million years ago — yet he also goes to creationist conferences and touts his belief that the earth is less than ten thousand years old. The dissonance does not disturb him at all.

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I mentioned that I should probably attend the odious John West’s talk at the U of Minnesota next Friday, and Rick Schauer has stepped up to the plate and provided compelling motivation.

To help make it easier for you to attend West’s talk, PZ…I’ll sponsor a
Pharyngula Fellowship event at the UM Campus Club.

I’m talking free-beer and munchies to you and any other Pharyngulaites
reading this from 5:30-6:45 at the Club. We then all walk from Coffmann to
Nicholson and confront the poor sap in unison. We’ll make more plans as
time passes.

Free beer? I thought this was a myth, a hoary legend of something truly impossible. Maybe there is a god.

Seriously, though, this is a brilliant idea. One of our disadvantages in these kinds of events is that the creationists will truck over church-loads of true believers, and the science side goes in outnumbered. Organizing a social event for skeptics beforehand is an excellent scheme to motivate a turnout that is more critically-minded — it doesn’t even require a generous philanthropist to host the fellowship, although we certainly won’t turn down free beer.

So yes, now I will definitely be there. I urge other Twin Cities Pharyngula readers to show up, too. If we come prepared with arguments against West’s thesis, that evolution dehumanizes society and Darwin is therefore responsible for the errors of eugenics, and share our perspectives in friendly conversation, we’ll also be more effective in the Q&A in the talk.

If you aren’t in the Twin Cities, but are having various creationists show up to harangue your citizenry, think about this simple idea as a model: host a pre-talk social event and get the science-minded locals to turn up. I’m not at all keen to go listen to another Discovery Institute liar, but the opportunity to bend an elbow with a group of smart people? Count me in.

It is best to wait until the person you are quote-mining is dead or senile, lest they notice what you’ve done and make a public dismissal. Denyse O’Leary seems to have forgotten this, and tried to use a paper by Brian Leiter — Brian Leiter! — to argue for the irrelevancy of evolution. Leiter seems to be neither dead nor senile, as he has noticed.

Sometimes the spectacle in the comments can be as fun as the articles. Here are a couple of examples loons trying to address the criticisms directed at their ideas on a couple of blogs.

Larry Moran attended a lecture by a creationist, Kirk Durston. The creationist pulled the usual stunt: cite a few of the multitude of science papers out there, and misrepresent it to support his fallacious claims. Not even Larry is able to have all those papers right there in his forebrain, which allows Durston to briefly pretend to be the voice of authority. Of course, later Larry looks it up and points out the misrepresentations. The fun part is that Durston joins the thread to argue. Durston also objects to having his argument for an omnipotent Intelligent Designer called a “god”.

There’s more fun along the same lines at Scientia Natura: Shalini has a geocentrist on the line. This is hilarious.

What’s particularly amusing is how much alike Durston and the anonymous geocentrist sound: both are completely convinced that the scientific evidence actually supports their ludicrous positions.

It’s a little odd to find myself cited in a Polk County, Florida newspaper as evidence that their pro-ID activities have received “national attention.”

Otherwise, it’s an article that testifies to the inevitability of a conflict. A majority of the school board members in Polk want to insert creationism into the curriculum, and they’ve got a few supporters in the schools.

…an eighth-grade science teacher at Union Academy in Bartow spoke in favor of intelligent design, a belief that living organisms are so complex that they must have been created by some kind of higher force.

“When you talk about laws in nature it shows some order or design,” said Lawrence Hughes, who has taught at the academy for 16 years. “The laws of nature don’t support change from one organism to another organism.”

What utter tripe. What we see in nature is that the boundaries are extremely fuzzy, and that there are no “laws of nature” that block change. Perhaps Mr Hughes would like to state what these laws are, exactly?

A few people are arguing strongly on the side of reason, but one gets the impression that the creationists have made up their minds and are spoiling for a fight.

Once upon a time, a company named XVIVO put together a beautiful computer animation of molecular activity in the cell — you may have already seen it. I have some quibbles with it — there is no water shown, and the behavior of the molecules is too simplistic, without enough noise (molecular behavior at the scale shown ought to be rich with Brownian phenomena) — but it’s dramatic and spectacular, which was the intent. The whole thing was made to inspire and inform Harvard biology students, so it’s actually owned by Harvard and XVIVO.

Now for the curious and nefarious part of the story. Fellows of the Discovery
Institute love this video. It shows the complexity of the cell, and that there are all kinds of specific functions going on within it, so to them, ignorant as they are of the evolutionary history of any of the molecules involved, it seems to support their contention that cells are full of arcane molecular machines that must have been designed. Never mind that these are proteins and other molecules; never mind that we have identified gene families and patterns of descent within these molecules; never mind that complexity is a hallmark of evolutionary processes and products. This is a movie they can show the rubes and say “Wow! I don’t understand that (always true)! You don’t understand that (usually true)! Therefore, JEEEZUS!” That’s their goal.

So what would a group of good Christians with the aim of renewing American culture do? Simple. Steal the video. They’ve grabbed the video, retitled it, removed the biological explanations for the phenomena, dubbed in a really bad, unprofessional narration on top of it, and stripped off the credits. Now, in their various traveling patent medicine shows, they flaunt this unattributed, modified video ripped off from Harvard Biology, and use it in their generic argument from ignorance for anti-evolutionism.

They are shameless thieves.

ERV has documented one example — Dembski used it in his talk at the University of Oklahoma, at which he profited to the tune of about $10,000. If you find yourself at a DI event and see the video played, you might want to take note and let her know.

I mentioned last week that the Discovery Institute misrepresented the Minnesota state science standards, pretending that they endorsed “teaching the controversy”. Now Dave Thomas goes through the other 3 (or 4? The DI can’t count) states that the Discovery Institute slandered, and guess what? They don’t support creationism either.

It may be our next trouble spot. They have a creationist majority on the school board, and they’re saying stuff like this:

Despite the Pennsylvania case, some school board members want both intelligent design and evolution taught in Polk schools. They say they have received numerous e-mails and phone calls in support of intelligent design.

“My tendency would be to have both sides shared with students since neither side can be proven,” Tim Harris said.

Tim Harris, you’re a moron. You need to recognize this fact soon, so that your self-confident ignorance doesn’t lead your school district into a catastrophic law suit that will make you a poster boy for the taxation and education problems that will ensue. Look at Alan Bonsell. That could be you.

“Those who are unaware of history are doomed to repeat it” is really true here. I say this as a friend and fan of public schools—thinking that you are serving a pious community by trying to sneak religion into your schools is a formula for disaster.

Sensible residents of Polk County: I have a suggestion. You should get together and buy each board member a copy of Humes’ Monkey Girl, and tell them to read it…and that they’ll be tested on it. If your school board members are functional illiterates, make them watch the PBS documentary on Judgment Day. The clear message of the trial is how the hubris of certain school board members led the whole district into folly and financial ruin. Another message is that the people they think are their friends, the fellows of the Discovery Institute, will abandon them at the first hint of trouble, and that those who stay you might wish had left, since in the case of the Dover trial it was Behe and Minnich who helped kill the case.

And to people everywhere: if you can, run for your local school board. These small groups of people have tremendous influence on American education, and yet you will find the most remarkably stupid people seated on them, people who campaign on a platform of destroying public education. You will receive no glory and no fame and the power you exercise will not be appreciated by the students it benefits, but we need hundreds of thousands of smart people to take those seats and steer education in a rational direction. If you don’t, there are a million Tim Harrises waiting in line to run it into the ground.