Yesterday, I was reading a good article in the October 2004 issue of Wired: “The crusade against evolution”, by Evan Ratliff. It gives far more column space to the voices of the Discovery Institute than they deserve, but the article consistently comes to the right conclusions, that the Discovery Institute is “using scientific rhetoric to bypass scientific scrutiny.” Along the way, the author catches Stephen Meyer red-handed in misrepresenting Carl Woese (by the clever journalistic strategem of calling Carl Woese), and shows how the DI’s favorite slogans (“Teach the controversy” and “academic freedom”) are rhetorical abuses of the spirit of the ideas behind them. It’s darned good stuff. I should probably say more about the good article, but I’m still picking magma out of my ears after reading a one page insert in the article — a ghastly, ignorant broadside by George Gilder that prompted a personal eruption. I’ve calmed down now, so I can tear it apart more delicately than I might have yesterday.

I’m still a bit peeved at the fool, so I’m going to remonstrate against him first—but maybe later I’ll say more about the Ratliff article.

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What else can you say to this story of a Dutch creationist building a model of Noah’s ark? The story is titled “New Noah’s Ark ready to sail”, but I rather doubt that this goofball project in deranged carpentry is capable of going to sea at all, even though it is only one fifth the size of the silly boat described in the Bible; it’s actually evidence against the accuracy of the old fable, since it should demonstrate the lack of seaworthiness of the ark.

Also, they’re going to fill it with models of animals. No word if they’re also going to stock it with massive quantities of manure that need to be shoveled overboard every day.

Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron are two of the very dumbest creationists you will find — and they were upset at the Blasphemy Challenge, so they demanded a chance to debate. And of course, since they are the dumbest, most inane, silliest creationists around, television executives jumped at the chance.

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Did you also attend this Intelligent Design quackery talk by John Marshall? Report in, please, and let us know how stupid it was (there is no doubt that it was stupid, we’re just interested in measuring the degree.)

Marshall is yet another M.D. who became a creationist because he looked objectively at the evid… oh, wait, no. None of them do that. It’s because:

But Marshall began to look into what he said were holes in the theory. And after becoming a Christian, Marshall found it hard to reconcile evolutionary theory with Genesis, the biblical account of how God created the earth and everything on it in six days. Marshall has since become a proponent of the view that there are some natural systems that cannot be adequately explained by natural forces, and therefore must be the result of intelligent design, or ID.

Isn’t it curious how religion is such a powerful force for inoculating people with appalling inanity?

The core value of creation science is dishonesty. I was reminded of this yet again by an account by Todd Feeley of a RATE conference. RATE means “Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth”, and they are an excuse for creationist frauds to get together and spout off misleading pseudoscientific babble to a gullible audience. There’s always trouble when someone who is not gullible and actually knows something about a subject attends, as in this case. Feeley asks the organizer a question:

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Awww, Kent Hovind’s appeal has been denied. I feel a bit sorry for his wife, the poor dupe, but Kent will just have more time to convert “lost souls” in jail, so he can’t complain. Well, except for the fact that Satan is in bunk #22. That must be awkward.

(via The Austringer)

In addition to being a contemptible ghoul who uses a tragedy to attack an unrelated concept, evolutionary biology (we are all on the same page, right? The evidence so far is that the Virginia Tech killer was a mentally ill young man with a confused Christ complex, not a ruthless atheist proponent of evolution who was following the advice of Charles Darwin’s ghost), this “full time creation evangelist” Grady McMurtry makes a revealing admission:

Therefore, he [McMurtry] asserts, people should not be surprised when mass shootings occur, such as the one on the Blacksburg university campus on Monday. “And at Virginia Tech, what do we have?” he asks rhetorically. “We have a person who, unfortunately, thought that humans had no more value than cats and dogs — and unfortunately, I think, probably felt the same way about themselves.”

The creationist continues explaining his premise. “And so what happens? If we are nothing but thinking animals, [and] if you have excess people, then you can just put them in a bag, throw them in the river the way you would too many kittens or too many puppies.”

What was that last line? Being an evolutionist means you’re as casual about human deaths as creationists are about killing kittens and puppies?

CREATIONISTS DROWN PUPPIES!!?!

Puppies?

And kittens?

I dare not contemplate what they would do to the cute little ducklings. And think of the bunnies! Dear god, don’t let the creationists near the adorable baby bunnies!

I have to go lie down, I’m so distraught.