Creationists are so far from being scientists that I’m frequently astounded at just how unaware they are — surely, if you’re being that crazy, you’ve got to realize that what you’re doing is nothing like what scientists do, right? I guess when you’re that nuts you don’t even know it.

The Intelligent Design creationists have been having a secret meeting in Italy, where they claim to be challenging Darwinian orthodoxies. Well, semi-secret: they brought in David Berlinski’s daughter to pretend to be a “journalist” and throw gentle little softballs in youtube interviews, but many of the attendees are anonymous, the meeting program is not available, and the place is stocked with devotees of religious orthodoxy who are singularly clueless about science. What it really is is a great big creationist circle jerk where everyone is free to say stupid things and not have one of those annoying evidence-based scientists in the audience asking difficult questions, and also avoid real journalists who might publicly expose their inanity.

Jeff Shallit has gleaned a little information about what’s going on at this ‘conference’ by looking at who is willing to be interviewed: it’s the usual Discovery Institute suspects. For example, this video of Paul Nelson is so revealing: everyone else in camera range fled lest they be exposed, and he’s got his excuse. They’re afraid of reprisals from the Darwinist mullahs! This is such an unhealthy situation! Dissenters are intimidated and their careers threatened!

Yes, their careers are in danger, because disciplines that value rigor and evidence and science are not going to be impressed at all by deluded cowards who hide in closets and whisper oft-debunked stupidities at one another. If you’ve got the goods, stand and deliver; show us your evidence, explain your reasoning, persuade people who disagree with you with the strength of your argument. They can’t, so they scurry off to picturesque villas in Tuscany, shoo away those difficult criticisms, and sit and reassure each other that they are very clever indeed while mangling information theory and biology.

My favorite quote from Darwin’s Origin is so appropriate here.

It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as the “plan of creation” or “unity of design,” &c., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory. A few naturalists, endowed with much flexibility of mind, and who have already begun to doubt the immutability of species, may be influenced by this volume; but I look with confidence to the future, to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality. Whoever is led to believe that species are mutable will do good service by conscientiously expressing his conviction; for thus only can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.

There was an orthodoxy in Darwin’s time, too, and it was the dogma of creationism. Darwin’s advice to young scientists was to conscientiously express their convictions, and to get out and publish, publish, publish their observations. That’s how science progresses, by wrestling with disagreement and confronting it with evidence and experiment.

Creationists do the opposite. They must, because their ideas have already been met and dismissed as wrong.

Oh, man, Casey Luskin is such an embarrassing spokesperson for the intelligent design creationists — I hope they keep him employed forever. His latest tirade against me is a cacophany of inanity. His primary point is that creationists like Jonathan MacLatchie have forced me to make concessions to creationism when I say that there are differences between vertebrate embryos. It is no concession to anything other than reality: the differences have been known for a long time. My first laboratory experiences as a graduate student were doing work on frog embryos with Phil Grant at the University of Oregon; my second were working with zebrafish embryos with Chuck Kimmel. Guess what: I could tell them apart, easily, as a first year grad student. I can also tell the difference between a zebrafish and medaka embryo! So this is a stupid claim on his part.

Here’s his second major absurdity:

If PZ is correct that evolutionary biology predicts both similarities and differences among embryos, then evolutionary biology makes no predictions and is unfalsifiable regarding the similarities and differences in vertebrate development. According to PZ, evolutionary theory predicts whatever it predicts, conserves whatever it conserves, and modifies whatever it modifies. Some theory.

Look at a cat and a dog. They are different animals; they have different forms and behaviors. However, they also have deep similarities: they are mammalian carnivores, they have the same basic bone structure, they have very similar physiologies. Any theory that purports to explain the existence of these two organisms must account for both the similarities and differences. Evolution would be falsified if it predicted that every organism was exactly the same, or if it predicted that every organism was completely different, because that isn’t what the real world looks like.

Go back to third grade, Casey. You are a very silly, ignorant fellow.

If you’re really interested, that Cretinist Jerry Bergman is going to be on some weird “Ask the Expert” show at Creation Conversations, a site I’m going to have to browse more often because it is one of the lamest creationist web sites I’ve seen yet — it’s all young earth creationism presented with the goofiest arguments, like that vestigial snake limbs disprove evolution.

One warning: in order to access everything on the site, they insist that you fill out a little questionnaire with your date of birth, home town, etc., and one of the questions is “Who created the world?” You don’t get to leave it blank; Allah, Jehovah, and No One are not acceptable answers, and it only let me through when I typed “Jesus”. Way to stack your audience with clown clones, guys! Since I was honest with all the other answers, unfortunately, I doubt that they’ll approve my application.

By the way, here’s how they describe Bergman:

Ask the Expert is all new with Jerry Bergman, PhD. He has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology on the college level for over thirty years.

I genuinely pity the students who’ve had him as an instructor. Thirty years of an incompetent dilettante miseducating students…it’s tragic.

New and digitally remastered with enhanced sound! Here’s the Bergman/Myers debate again, all in one single file for your convenience in being driven insane by the futility of arguing with that loon.

Should math be taught in the schools?

(Obviously inspired by the Miss USA question.)

Kent Hovind has been transferred to a new prison, Florence Admax.

The United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) is a supermax prison for men that is located in unincorporated Fremont County, Colorado, United States, south of Florence. It is unofficially known as ADX Florence, Florence ADMAX, Supermax, or The Alcatraz of the Rockies. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. ADX, a part of the Florence Federal Correctional Complex (FCC), houses the prisoners who are deemed the most dangerous and in need of the tightest control of all the prisoners within the United States Federal Prison System.

Whoa. Somebody doesn’t like him, or he’s been up to mischief.

By the way, another strange thing: Hovind used to get letters out that would be transcribed to a blog at the Creation Science Evangelism site. These were bizarre ravings in which he’d recount how God was telling him just last night how good and wonderful and important Kent was. Now those are all gone, and CSEblogs.com just redirects to Eric Hovind’s version of the site, and while Kent Hovind is still listed as an “author”, all of the missives from jail have been purged, and instead, there are only what look like excerpts from his past talks, presented as current.

I think there is a personal tragedy playing out here. We’re not seeing the full story, but there are hints that something has gone even more wrong in Hovind’s life.

Hang on, there’s more info on the prison.

The Administrative Maximum (ADX) facility in Florence, Colorado, houses offenders requiring the tightest controls. It is part of the Florence Federal Correctional Complex (FCC). The ADX supervises a minimum security satellite prison camp (outside the secure perimeter of the ADX) that houses male offenders.

Presumably, then, he’s in the minimum security camp rather than hanging out with the father-rapers in the big house.

That was quick. Here’s the video of that ancient debate. It’s in five parts because that was the way it was organized on the DVD.