I sniped at Jim Drummond for his odd demotion of evolutionary biology the other day — his colleague at the University of Toronto,
Larry Moran, tried to get to the bottom of it.

I contacted Drummond by email to see if he really was an IDiot. Prof. Drummond claims he can’t remember exactly what he said because the interview was a long time ago. He says that what he meant was that global warming was just as certain as evolution. When asked if he was a Creationist or a fan of intelligent design, he avoided the question and emphasized the problem of global warming.

The impression I get is that he has some personal doubts about the validity of evolution and that may explain the quoted remark.

That’s not exactly reassuring. If I were accused of making an easily misinterpreted comment, I’d try much harder than that to be unambiguous.

Steve Reuland follows up on that strangely repeated claim that Ken Ham’s creationist museum is within 6 hours of 2/3 of the population of the US. Short answer: NO WAY, DUDE. He did make an interesting suggestion, though.

If you wanted the museum to be close to a lot of people, shifting it to the northeast by a couple of hundred miles would have been the smart thing to do.

Look at a map. A few hundred miles northeast of Cincinnati? It’s the perfect location.

Dover, PA.

Lord J-Bar is much, much more optimistic than I am.

Even considering how clever ID advocates have been, all it takes is knowledge to defeat ID. Once a person understands science, it’s easy to see ID for what it is: theology. Plus, the public needs to know why ID came to be. It doesn’t come any clearer than the Discovery Institute’s document, “The Wedge Strategy” (you can see it here), where they proclaim that the purpose of ID is “nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies” (“The Wedge Document,” Introduction). Once the public realizes this, ID will no longer be an issue and will go by the wayside. However, one can never let down their guard. ID supporters have proven time and again just how effective they are at influencing an ignorant public.

There’s an important ingredient of the recipe missing there: in addition to understanding that ID is theology, they have to understand that that is a bad thing. I suspect the majority of the IDists already know that it is a strategem to grant a god the privilege of being scientifically credible…the only issue is that they know you’re not supposed to admit it.

If you’re interested in the DVD that that the creationist Truth in Science group sent out to every teacher in Britain, someone has accidentally made it available as a bittorrent file.

On Saturday and Sunday, 17-18 February, it’s the Twin Cities Creation “Science” Association’s Science Fair…held that week in honor of Charles Darwin’s birthday, I’m sure. Unfortunately, I’m making the drive to Minneapolis twice that week already, so I’m going to have to pass on making a third trip.

Besides, it just makes me sad to see kids told they have to put bible verses on their science projects.

Last week, the Star Tribune published an article on global warming that included this foolish statement:

“If we compare the debate over the theory of evolution with the debate over the theory of global warming — global warming’s a whole lot more certain at the moment,” said Jim Drummond, a University of Toronto physics professor and chief investigator for the Canadian Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Change.

I’m sure Dr Drummond is a credible authority on climate, but reading that reminded me that even senior scientists can be pompous asses when speaking well outside their expertise. He’s completely wrong: there is no credible debate over the theory of evolution, and it’s as well-established if not more so than global warming. It’s simply absurd to argue otherwise.

When I saw that, I sort of groaned inwardly and predicted to myself that there’s a quote we’ll see repeated over and over again in the creationist literature. I didn’t realize it would take a mere five days.

That’s how long it took Doug Tice, former editorial writer at the Pioneer Press, current political editor at the Star Tribune, and religious apologist, to turn it into part of an anti-evolution screed. You can tell he’s rather giddy with delight, overjoyed to have a scientist casually belittling evolution.

What’s most intriguing here is not what Drummond says about global warming. It’s what he says about evolution.

The theory of global warming is “a whole lot more certain” than the theory of evolution? Is the theory of evolution not certain?

Are there doubts about evolution among scientists like Drummond? Haven’t courts ruled, for practical purposes, that’s it’s unconstitutional for American science teachers to suggest to students that there are scientifically credible doubts or alternatives where biological history is concerned? Don’t those making sport of evolution’s critics routinely liken the status of the theory of evolution to the status of the theory of gravity?

No.

Scientifically credible arguments are good things that should be presented in science classes, where they fit into the curriculum and don’t distract from the important business of learning the basics. The objection to Intelligent Design or “Scientific” creationism isn’t that they’re alternative theories—it’s that they aren’t theories at all, they are unsupported unscientifically, and what they are actually rooted in is good ol’ old-time religion.

I should also point out that while Drummond actually is a scientist, he has very little authority and at this point zero credibility in the discipline of biology. He’s a physicist. This is an extremely difficult point to get across to creationists, but physicists usually take no biology classes at all in their academic career, and may not even have any interest in biology (hard to believe, but it’s true). Similarly, biologists typically take very little physics, and I wouldn’t understand nine tenths (speaking generously) of what Drummond does for a living. His word on evolution has about as much authority as my word on string theory.

I was going to say I know a guy at U Toronto who could take Drummond over his knee, but he already has his comeuppance. Doug Tice didn’t stop with crowing over the expression of doubt about evolution…he goes on to say that if evolution is dubious, then maybe this global warming stuff is all a crock, too. In fact, Tice sneers quite a bit at Drummond, and lumps him with former University of Minnesota president Ken Keller, who had argued that it was foolish to argue against a solid scientific theory like evolution.

But there is an unbecoming sloppiness, almost a bullying quality, about polemical flourishes like Drummond’s and Keller’s. They seem a little like warnings that anyone who questions anything about othodoxies like global warming theory or evolutionary theory runs the risk of being labeled a kook. They seem, in a word, dogmatic.

It’s not dogmatic to point out that an ignorant person quarreling with a scientific theory on the basis of his religious beliefs is a kook, pretty much by definition. You can question scientific ideas all you want — that’s pretty much an operational definition of doing science, actually — but unless you’re doing it on a foundation of knowledge, if you’re just denying a scientific idea because it makes you uncomfortable, or clashes with the words of some long dead patriarch from your holy book, then sure, you’re a kook. A kook like Doug Tice.

Ken Ham is in the news again, and he knows exactly what he’s doing, the cunning little rat.

While foreign media and science critics have mostly come to snigger at exhibits explaining how baby dinosaurs fit on Noah’s Ark and Cain married his sister to people the earth, museum spokesman and vice-president Mark Looy said the coverage has done nothing but drum up more interest.

“Mocking publicity is free publicity,” Looy said. Besides, U.S. media have been more respectful, mindful perhaps of a 2006 Gallup Poll showing almost half of Americans believe that humans did not evolve, but were created by God in their present form within the last 10,000 years.

Creationists really aren’t stupid—they’re clever in getting the support they need to protect their ignorance.

Looy said supporters of the museum include evangelical
Christians, Orthodox Jews and conservative Catholics, as well
as the local Republican congressman, Geoff Davis (news, bio, voting record), and his
family, who have toured the site.

Everyone knows now not to ever vote for Geoff Davis, right?

They also repeat this weird claim that I have read in every single frickin’ article about the AiG creationist museum…

The museum’s rural location near the border of Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana places it well within America’s mostly conservative and Christian heartland. But the setting has another strategic purpose: two-thirds of Americans are within a day’s drive of the site, and Cincinnati’s international airport is minutes away.

It really isn’t that close to the bulk of the country. It makes one wonder about the quality of the reporting going into these stories when no one even bothers to look at a map.

Now we also get a dose of the persecution complex:

The project has not been without opposition. Zoning battles with environmentalists and groups opposed to the museum’s message have delayed construction and the museum’s opening day has been delayed repeatedly.

The museum has hired extra security and explosives-sniffing dogs to counter anonymous threats of damage to the building. “We’ve had some opposition,” Looy said.

That’s just weird, and not at all fitting with the attitudes I’ve heard. Even the most fervent evilutionists I’ve talked to respond to the news of this “museum” with laughter, and look forward to visiting it and mocking it. They say now that even bad reviews are still good publicity, but I don’t think that will last long after they’ve opened: unremitting mockery is not going to help their cause in the long run. There will be a surge of interest when it first opens, followed by a steady decline in attendance.

Hey, I’m the wild-eyed creationist smasher in this family. So why are all the lame creationists doing their stupid act in my daughter’s blog? She’s actually getting comments like this, intended to refute evolution:

why is it that nothing today is evolving and why is it (if we did come from apes)that they haven’t all turned into humans?

Dogs are not evolving. different kinds of dogs yes but not dogs becoming cats

It’s pathetic and creepy how they think they can get their arguments past the 16 year old girl instead of the curmudgeonly old college professor—and she and her friends are still kicking their butts.

Oh, and this “For the Kids” character is really repellent. Concern trolls are even slimier when they go after your kids…but again, Skatje’s pretty good at handling herself.