More attention for Ken Ham

Tonight on Anderson Cooper (CNN, 10pm ET), we’re apparently going to get a preview of Ken Ham’s shiny new pseudo-scientific creation “science” “museum”. Tune in for a good laugh!

(via DefCon Blog)

Gaaaah! I managed to watch it for 20 minutes before giving up on it. It was one big load of religious tripe, with all the emphasis given to glowing candles, bible verses, and fawning credulity over creationists, religionists, anyone who believes. They showed Ken Ham preaching lying, lots of shots of creepy animatronic dinosaurs, and countered it all with about 15 seconds of Michael Novacek of the AMNH pointing out that there was no evidence for any of it. They had someone from the Family Research Council and Americans for Separation of Church and State in a dueling heads argument — the FRC bot was hammering on ‘teach the controversy’, even if it is wrong; in the only effective skeptical moment, the fellow from ASCS grilled her on her personal beliefs about the age of the earth, and she ran away from the question. Anderson Cooper was useless, interested only in perpetuating the argument by giving the drone lots of slack.

I gave up when they built up to the “big scientist answers it all” moment, and it was … Francis Collins. Dear god, I’ve decided that man is an idiot.

Egnor’s latest kook-fests

Michael Egnor is the gift that keeps on giving. He’s been responding to criticisms from us sciencebloggers with more and more inanities — it’s like all you have to do is poke him and he starts puking up more and more transparently fallacious creationist talking points.
Mark Chu-Carroll schools him on his tired claim that selection is a tautology, something we’ve been hearing from creationists since at least the days of Gish. In response to Orac’s challenge, requesting examples of how ‘design’ has helped modern medicine, Egnor coughed up … Watson’s and Crick’s discovery of the structure of DNA? You’ve got to be kidding me. Orac sounds incredulous, too.

I had dinner with James Watson last January, and one of the topics of conversation was, of course, Intelligent Design creationism (it comes up a lot around me, for some reason). I can tell you with absolute certainty that Watson has nothing but contempt for those fellows; so much so that he considers arguing with them beneath him (which is true enough.) If you want to read his opinion of evolution, one place to look is in a book he edited, called Darwin: the Indelible Stamp(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). It’s a collection of four of Darwin’s books, with a foreword and introduction to each written by Watson. The work he and Crick did strengthened evolutionary theory, it was not independent of it, and to try and recruit the man’s work to the side of Egnor’s creationism is simply ridiculous.

Another example of creationist arrogance

One recurring theme I have going on here is that creationists aren’t necessarily stupid (although some are, very much so) — their problems are ignorance and arrogance. Those two traits reinforce each other; the ignorance allows them to think their pitiable store of knowledge is adequate and allows them to arrogantly assume they’re competent, while their arrogance drives them to refuse to consider correcting their ignorance. It’s an ugly spiral that locks them into what are genuinely stupid opinions.

Case in point: the creationist “For the Kids”, or FtK, who makes little drive-by comments here, at my daughter’s blog, and various other sites on the evolution/creation pseudocontroversy. There is now a whole, entertaining thread dedicated to FtK at Antievolution.org. She doesn’t talk science, she doesn’t understand it, but she sure likes to pretend that she’s knowledgeable. This one comment where she tries to belittle biology is a good example.

Biology certainly isn’t rocket science, and it doesn’t take a genius to understand it.

No, it’s not rocket science, but then rocket science isn’t rocket science either, in the sense of an extremely difficult subject beyond the ken of mere mortals. Both are difficult disciplines that require a fair amount of study to grasp; they may not require geniuses, but they do require some intelligence and a lot of hard work. FtK hasn’t done any of the work, and her arrogant presumption that she can master this ‘easy’ subject precludes her ever learning more.

She’s not alone, either. The only member of the intelligent design creationist cabal who has shown even the vaguest signs of comprehension of basic biology is Behe, and even he views it through the distorting lens of his creationist baggage and a lack of knowledge of the specific sub-discipline of biology, evolution, that would directly address his arguments.

Wells’ flagrantly false commentary on Hox complex structure

This evening, I am watching an episode of that marvelous and profane Western, Deadwood, as I type this; it is a most excellently compensatory distraction, allowing me to sublimate my urge to express myself in uncompromisingly vulgar terms on Pharyngula. This is an essential coping mechanism.

I have been reading Jonathan Wells again.

If you’re familiar with Wells and with Deadwood, you know what I mean. You’ll just have to imagine that I am Al Swearingen, the brutal bar-owner who uses obscenities as if they were lyric poetry, while Wells is E.B. Farnum, the unctuous rodent who earns the contempt of every man who meets him. That imagination will have to hold you, because I’m going to restrain myself a bit; I’m afraid Wells would earn every earthy sobriquet I could imagine, but I’ll confine myself to the facts. They’re enough. The man completely misrepresents the results of a paper and a whole discipline, and does it baldly on the web, as if he doesn’t care that his dishonesty and ignorance leave a greasy, reeking trail behind him.

Let’s start with Wells’ own words.

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Doctors and engineers aren’t creationists!

We’re building up a biased sample that damns an entire profession — Dr Guliuzza, Dr Egnor (who seems to be adopting a more traditional creationist stance), and now Dr Keith Holmes (submitted by Transcription Factor), and so many more — and I thought maybe I should correct that by inviting everyone to name M.D.s and other health care professionals who are not creationist loons. I suspect the majority of doctors (and engineers!) are sensible, intelligent, educated people who have no problem with good science and think creationism is crackpottery.

Let’s have an open thread where the doctors and health care professionals and engineers can proudly deny the creationist spirit. Think of it as a reference and reality check next time someone feels like groaning over yet another creationist M.D.

An MD/engineer/theologian/creationist on local turf!

I’ve got a copy of the student paper for Ridgewater College, the Ridgewater Review, volume 11, number 5, which contains an announcement:

Can anyone know for certain how the earth began?

Ridgewater’s Christians in Action student club is sponsoring talks by Dr Randy Guliuzza exploring this topic and more on Wednesday, April 11th in the Ridgewater College Hutchinson campus commons area at 11:00 am and 5:30 pm.

By golly, I am so tempted to attend. The earlier talk conflicts with one of my classes, but I might be able to get away in time to catch the evening session. It might be interesting — this fellow certainly is qualified.

Guliuzza received his medical degree from the University of Minnesota and his Masters in Public Health from Harvard University.

He holds a B.S. in engineering from South Dakota School of Mines and a B.A. in theology from Moody Bible Institute.

Whoa. Degrees in medicine, engineering, and theology — it’s like a creationist trifecta. Too bad there’s nothing in his background to suggest much knowledge of evolutionary biology, but that’s typical of this sort. He’s also affiliated with the Institution for Creation Research.

Anyone up for field trip to Hutchinson next week, to spot the wild creationist making his public display?

It’s April 2nd!

Yesterday, the Panda’s Thumb revealed that Michael Egnor had only been pretending to be a creationist. They even linked to his confession at Evolution Views and News. I chimed in, defending our prior work on Egnor’s absurd claims with argument that “the line between creationist parody and creationist reality is drawn awfully fine”.

It was an April Fool’s joke, of course. Egnor hasn’t been kidding — he really is that kooky. Or is he? His real April Fool’s Day post was remarkable in its hypocrisy and religious credulity.

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We should have known better—Egnor fooled us all

A world-class neurosurgeon couldn’t possibly have been as stupid as Michael Egnor — the denial of even the most basic and medically relevant evidence of evolution in bacteria, the outright denial of the importance of the scientific literature, dismissing it as “chaff”, the obtuse insistence on self-contradictory definitions of information — it should have told us long ago that our leg was being pulled. We put a lot of effort into debunking arguments that only a purblind ignorant creationist could have fallen for, and we should have noticed that Egnor was just a little too far over the top.

As the Panda’s Thumb reveals, those wacky fellows at the DI have carefully set us up with a well-built-up foundation for an April Fools prank, establishing Egnor as a believer in ideas so outrageously inane that not even Casey Luskin could possibly have fallen for it. I blush to admit that I did think it was possible a well-trained surgeon might hold notions as foolish as those expressed by the clownish Egnor persona. It just goes to show that the line between creationist parody and creationist reality is drawn awfully fine.

Now that the trick has been played, though, I do hope the Discovery Institute goes back through Egnor’s postings that were put up to establish his fake creationist bona fides, and edits them or adds disclaimers. There’s a lot of material he’s put up in the last month that’s going to have to be labeled with big bold THIS IS A JOKE! stickers, lest others also be fooled into thinking the DI supports that kind of blatantly backwards old-school creationism.

How not to teach biology

Almost two weeks ago, I wrote about that creationist teacher who was fired in Sisters, Oregon — Kris Helphinstine had been showing his freshman biology class some PowerPoint presentations designed to cast doubt on biology, rather than to inform the students about the facts and evidence. Now a Bend newspaper has given a few more details of the grounds for firing, and most entertaining of all, has put up copies of the PowerPoint presentations! Aficionados of both bad creationism and bad PowerPoint will savor these.

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