…and I didn’t even get a lousy t-shirt. Professor Steve Steve,
Jason, Tara, and Wesley, along with quite a few others, all took the grand tour last week. I’m glad they went, but it’s becoming obvious there isn’t a heck of a lot going on there — it’s the same old tripe in every report at this point — and I think I can skip ever going myself.
Jason Rosenhouse has dug into the details of the evo-devo chapter of Behe’s The Edge of Evolution and found some clear examples of dishonest quote-mining (so what else is new, you may be thinking—it’s what creationists do). I’ve warned you all before that when you see an ellipsis in a creationist quote, you ought to just assume that there’s been something cut out that completely contradicts the point the creationist is making; Rosenhouse finds that Behe gets around that little red-flag problem by simply leaving out the ellipses.
I just want to expand a little bit on one point Behe mangles and that Jason quotes. It turns out I actually give a lecture in my developmental biology courses on this very issue, the mathematical modeling antecedents to insect segmentation, so it’s simply weird to see Behe twisting a subject around that is so well understood in the evo-devo community, and that was actually well explained in Sean Carroll’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful.
I guess I’d always thought Wingnut Daily would at least put up a pretense of rationality (it’s a paper-thin pretense, obviously, draped over a great massive lump of lunacy), but no—they’ve just published a hoary old heap of old-school creationist apologetics. It’s all about Barry Setterfield’s long-disproven claim that the speed of light has been detectably decreasing in recent history. This is completely bogus: here’s a short refutation, or you can go for the longer dismantlement. This stuff is over 25 years old, and it’s pure garbage…but that’s no obstacle to being eternally perpetuated in the great Church of Scientific Ignorance.
One of those annoying habits creationists organizations have is the appropriation of legitimate scientific research to ‘support’ their claims. They almost never do, actually—the creationists have to misrepresent the science, and often they even offer interpretations flatly contradicted by the contents of the paper. For an excellent example, here’s the author of a paper on ERVs complaining that Reason To Believe’s use of her work was unjustified.
I eventually decided to reclaim my research from the people who have consistently tried to distort the science to support their own agenda. I checked a few months ago and found my paper in the RTB archives. I emailed the website’s creators, explained that they had misunderstood the meaning of my paper, that it actually provided evidence in support of evolution, and politely asked if they could please remove it from their site. I repeated my request a couple of times. I never received more than a bland message in reply saying that they would look into it.
She has also posted a summary of her work that shows she was testing evolutionary predictions, and that the evidence fit the predictions of evolutionary biology, not the ones Reason To Believe (an old-earth creationist group) wanted.
You know, I’ve seen a fair number of creationists misrepresenting scientist’s work to fit their conclusions, but I’ve never seen the reverse, where a scientist grabs some creationist’s hard-earned data and claims it supports evolution. I wonder why?
Oh … I forgot. It’s because the creationists don’t have any data! Silly me.
Aaron Kinney tells me that Egnor is still going on and on about dualism. He’s still floundering; are you surprised?
Get ready for it: the next battle will be over Stupid Design.
All the little details are perfect, like the mangled “facts” they’ll use to support it, the arguments from consequences, and the scientists conceding legitimacy in some domain to it.
Here’s another sample of strange creationist email. This one spares the freaky fonts and excessive style changes, and instead we get an abrupt opening with no explanation, and a healthy dose of paranoia.
I told you that Answers in Genesis was trying to hire a geologist. You’ve blown it now, they’ve gone and hired a real pro.
The addition of Dr. Snelling confirms AiG’s continued efforts to meet the highest standards in its research in creation studies, according to AiG President Ken Ham. “Dr. Snelling’s stature among the scientific community should be an unequivocal sign to the academic world and the media that serious research is being conducted at AiG and its museum,” Ham said.
Oh, sure: “Snelling’s stature among the scientific community” is a significant indicator. Let’s see…
Creationist geologist who worked for Ken Ham in Australia
Has been working for the Institute for Creation Research for the past several years
Believes the earth is only 6,000 years old
Has had his work characterized as “sloppy” by real geologists
Oh, my gosh—Ken Ham was telling us the truth! This is a sign to the academic world and the media about what kind of serious research they’re doing!
This is perfect: a crossword puzzle, with the answers filled in as a scientist would, and then as a creationist would. Very cute—the creationist answers don’t fit!
They will argue, of course, that the problem is our metaphysical insistence on using words that fit the grid and address the clues.
The Council of Europe has put up a wonderful motion for a recommendation. Can anyone imagine this being discussed in the American senate or house of representatives? The Republicans would howl in fury against it, and the Democrats would rush to bury it, lest they offend the Republicans and annoy the ignorant members of their electorate. (The Council of Europe, by the way, is not the same thing as the Council of the European Union or the European Parliament, so it’s not really comparable to our congress. Europe says some very sensible things, but Europe is also very confusing.)
