The IDists love to quote me, because I am rather militant in my opposition to their lies. They are particularly fond of one particular quote* that they’ve even used in their fund-raising literature. They think it’s damning; some of my fellow anti-creationists swoon and protest when they hear the words, but they tend to be faint-hearted anyway. But here’s what’s really amusing.
This one has been around for almost a year now, but if you’re getting tired of Conservapedia, take a stroll through the CreationWiki. It doesn’t generally have that tone of having been written by a gang of third-graders, but there’s plenty of stupid on display.
(via Unscrewing The Inscrutable)
Many will argue with the conclusion of my title, but there are so many examples of outright intellectual vacuity from people who anoint themselves with the title “conservative” that it is fast becoming a synonym for “ignoramus”. We’ve lately been laughing ourselves silly at the absurdity called Conservapædia, but here’s another flabby, nutritionally empty scrap of junk food to chew over: a site called The Intellectual Conservative. In particular, I call your attention to yet another right wing rejection of a valid, well-established science by someone completely oblivious to either the principles or the evidence, in an article asking whether biology has a “Rational Evolutionary Hypothesis?” The author doesn’t seem to know anything at all about biology, but he has heard two names — Darwin and Dawkins — and no, sir, he doesn’t like ’em. He dislikes ’em so much that he’s willing to lie about them.
State senatory Raymond Finney of Tennessee (a retired physician—hey, we’ve been making Orac squirm uncomfortably a lot lately) has just filed a resolution that asks a few questions. Actually, he’s demanding that the Tennessee Department of Education answer these questions within a year or … well, I don’t know what. He might stamp his foot and have a snit.
This fellow Mike up around Toronto asked me for assistance a while back—he was planning to attend the Bible Skeptics Conference, an event put on by the Institute for Creation Research. I couldn’t say much, but I did suggest he get in touch with Larry Moran at the U Toronto.
Well, he attended and survived. It’s a good summary of the usual combination of drivel and lunacy that comes out of these events. He also attended a second talk by Bruce Malone. Malone, by the way, was the fellow who was speaking in the Twin Cities last week, to whose talk on Mt St Helens as evidence for a young earth I was invited by a creationist. This is the instance where I begged off by saying I wasn’t a geologist…and, amusingly, the creationist admitted that was OK, since the speaker wasn’t, either.
There’s going to be a third write-up soon. I’m pretty sure his sanity survived the harrowing, although I do have one concern. Mike told me in email that Larry Moran was a “nice guy”—I’m suspecting that there might have been some residual impairment of his mental facilities. Everyone knows that Larry is godless curmudgeon.
Let this be a lesson to you: being a moderate will not spare you from the reactionary criticisms of the lunatic right. Chris Mooney is an unbeliever, but he’s also one of those softies who thinks atheists ought to be less vigorous in their assault on the public sphere (I recall arguing with him a few times about that). I confess to feeling a little schadenfreude that now the Discovery Institute pillories him for daring to be a secular humanist. The DI doesn’t like theistic evolutionists either, though, so it’s not like it’s a big surprise that they’d have the vapors over a secular humanist.
Also, it’s Casey Luskin, attack mouse, leading the charge. It’s hard to get too worked up over a squeak from that incompetent joke.
He’s baaaack. That creationist surgeon, Michael Egnor, keeps flaunting his ignorance — and his verbosity — in the comments.
Your assertion that you answered my challenge ‘perfectly’ is, well, not perfect. I asked for a measurement of new information, not anecdotes about new functions. You and Nick have managed to generate molecular ‘just-so’ stories, anecdotes without actual quantitative measurement, for your central hypothesis that Darwinism can account for biological complexity. I guess ‘just-so’ stories are in your genes.
It seems to be a theme here lately: people with serious credentials in science and medicine who then profess their belief in gods and magic and make public asses of themselves. Next up: Brad Harrub.
Dr Harrub has a Ph.D. in neurobiology and anatomy from the College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee. He is a member of the Church of Christ, director and founder of Focus Press, Inc., co-editor of ‘Think’ magazine, and a featured writer in various Christian journals. Books he has co-authored include ‘Diamonds in the Rough: Nuggets of Truth from God’s Word’, ‘Investigating Christian Evidences’, and ‘The Truth About Human Origins’.
Now listen to an interview with him on Radio NZ. He’s a young earth creationist of the most pathetic kind, believing in a literal world wide flood (with dinosaurs on the ark!), that the earth is less than ten thousand years old, that mammals evolved from dinosaurs (therefore the fossils prove evolution false), and a whole succession of silly ideas. The interviewer, Kim Hill, does an excellent job of drawing out all the nonsense from this degreed clown.
The other day, the Time magazine blog strongly criticized the DI’s list of irrelevant, unqualified scientists who “dissent from Darwin”, and singled out a surgeon, Michael Egnor, as an example of the foolishness of the people who support the DI. I took apart some of Egnor’s claims, that evolutionary processes can’t generate new information. In particular, I showed that there are lots of publications that show new information emerging in organisms.
Egnor replied in a comment. He’s still completely wrong. The Discovery Institute has posted his vapid comment, too, as if it says something, so let’s briefly show where he has gone wrong.
Greg Laden reminds me that today’s Science Friday will feature Ed Humes and Randy Olson talking about educating people about evolution—tune in!
