Watch out for the mudghah on the sidewalk

Weirder. This is quite possibly the most stupid thing I have read yet on development from a creationist, from The Quran on Human Embryonic Development.

The next stage mentioned in the verse is the mudghah stage. The Arabic word mudghah means “chewed substance.” If one were to take a piece of gum and chew it in his or her mouth and then compare it with an embryo at the mudghah stage, we would conclude that the embryo at the mudghah stage acquires the appearance of a chewed substance. This is because of the somites at the back of the embryo that “somewhat resemble teethmarks in a chewed substance.”

Prepare to laugh or weep…here is the figure accompanying this pseudoscientific absurdity. I’ve tucked it below the fold to prevent fatalities; click through only if you are well-prepared and braced, aren’t elderly, infirm, or an infant, and have had all your vaccinations.

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A creationist pest

A certain creationist has been spamming me lately with these same questions over and over. I’ll answer them here, and I’ll send the link to JASE3217 and see if we can’t get him over here to “handle the truth.”

From: JASE3217
To: pzmyers@pharyngula.org
Sent: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 17:23:10 -0500
Subject: About evolution?

1. Is a theory a fact or a belief?

2. Where did the gases (big bang theory) come from?

3. After the water was formed, what was the first creature to come out of it?

4. Was it amphibious? Or did it run in and out of the water until it developed lungs?

5. If, yes why would it develop lungs under water?

6. What are the true mathematical odds (ask someone in your physics department) of something evolving? Of course you won’t because you don’t like the physics department, because they always prove biologist wrong.

7. If any of these questions are answered with a no, then using science they can not be facts at all!

This would make the cartoon completely hypocritical. You see if you just simply BELIEVE in evolution, then you have a religion! The religion maybe Darwinism, but if you answer I don’t know to any of the questions above then you have a faith based concept of how we as a planet came about. Not a fact based!

I would challenge you to answer these questions, and give me a reply! I doubt you will, because most of you people are only interested in your truth and not actual truth. Try reading LEE STROBEL, “A Case for Christ.”

I see you won’t answer my questions, but I figured you wouldn’t because most liberals can’t handle the truth.

Ho hum. I’ve put my answers below the fold.

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Rude and foolish Kansans

Kansas Citizens for Science has a troll who brought up a post of mine, and a reader asked for a clarification…so I made two short comments in reply. That prompted a comment here from someone named “Dave”.

Mr. Myers, at Kansas Citizens for Science we are fighting a tough battle to have the present school board replaced.

When you, and Robert Madison who invited you over (and who is an outspoken atheist) link your atheism to science, going beyond anything science can provide, you are playing in to the hands of our opponents.

The primaries here are coming up, and having atheists swarming our site will not, AT PRESENT, be helpful.

Your choice.

Shorter “Dave”: “Shut up, atheists.”

I guess Kansas is in an even more benighted state than I thought. This is a board for activists who want to promote good science teaching, and it’s infested with the likes of Salvador Cordova…yet the contributors they (if “Dave” is actually representative, and I am assured he is not) want to exclude are those who don’t buy into their religion.

He’s wrong.

Having atheists, who are sympathetic to their cause and perfectly willing to offer their expertise, contribute (uh, “swarming” is absurd hyperbole, I think everyone can see) to their site would be helpful, and I know there are freethinkers already working with them. Perhaps “Dave” would like to shoo them away, too? I think that more outspoken atheists are precisely what Kansas needs: rather than hiding them away or demonizing them or asking them to leave, they should be standing up and showing their neighbors that godless people are also decent human beings who may also like Kansas and want what’s best for the state and their children.

I’m afraid that a state that tolerates only good Baptist biologists is just as much a sinkhole of stupidity as one that tolerates only good Baptist anti-biologists. Oh, and I think a statewide organization dedicated to a goal of interest to all citizens that only included the godless would also be a damned dumb thing, too.

Nelson responds

Paul Nelson responds to Amanda Marcotte, who mentioned that the poor quality of his debate explains why Nelson thinks ID should not be taught in schools.

Amanda, Sahotra and I spent three hours talking at an Austin bar the night before the debate. I reiterated to him what I’ve said for years: I’m not interested in getting ID into the public schools. He allowed as much in his spoken remarks (which should be available soon as streaming video from the UPA), but still stood up a straw-man ID bad guy. What’s funny is Sahotra and I have been debating/discussing design since we met in 1985, and in that whole time I’ve consistently told him that it doesn’t much matter to me if design is taught in public schools. We push that issue out of the way and move on to empirical and philosophical particulars.

Hmmm. Let’s take a look at the Wedge document, shall we?

Phase I of the wedge was supposed to be about research, writing, and publication. They were supposed to have a group of scientists doing pioneering work to “crack the materialist edifice”. This hasn’t worked out so well—nobody is actually doing any ID science—but let’s be charitable and assume that Nelson thinks his lecturing and debating and philosophizing is part of this phase.

What about Phase II? That’s titled “Publicity & Opinion-making”, and includes in its activities teacher training, as well as putting together apologetics seminars (revealing in its title, eh?) and television programs. Maybe Nelson isn’t thinking about getting this stuff in public schools, but his fellow travelers are—it’s in the plan. The DI must think they’re in Phase II, since they’re also publishing Teacher’s Guides for high school and undergraduate instructors. That awful textbook, “Of Pandas and People”, is intended for high schools and is clearly an ID-friendly book, even if it is nominally disavowed by the DI.

Phase III is “Cultural Confrontation and Renewal”. The DI plans to “pursue possible legal assistance in response to resistance to the integration of design theory into public school science curricula“. That’s blatant, I think. Since several prominent members (Behe and Minnich, for instance) of the DI provided legal assistance in response to the recent resistance in Dover, at least some part of the DI is ready to push ID into the schools.

Maybe Nelson doesn’t himself want ID taught in the public schools right now. But it is disingenuous to pretend that that isn’t the goal of the movement he is fronting.

I’d add that since he is completely lacking in “empirical” particulars, and his philosophy is painfully shallow and goofy, it’s awfully hard to figure out what exactly he is trying to accomplish. We’ll have to be forgiven if we speculate on the basis of the actions his backers are carrying out in the absence of plausible statements about their goals…it sure looks to me like they’re trying to peddle pseudoscience to the gullible, with Nelson’s assistance.

Some more Sarkar-Nelson

Attendees of the Sarkar-Nelson debate are speaking up at Pandagon and The Ethical Werewolf. As I expected, it sounds like it was a bit of a farce, and that Sarkar did a fine job.

I’m getting a little tired of making this concession every time I speak of him, so let’s get it over with. Paul Nelson is a nice guy. But—and this is a huge “but”—he’s peddling a falsified ideology as science, and he and his fellow travelers at the Discovery Institute are doing their best to screw up education in this country. I’m beginning to think that his only saving grace is that he’s so darned bad at it.

Ark inanity, yet again

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Lots of people have been emailing me with this story of yet another Ark expedition. It’s a routine lunacy that comes up all the time—probably the most irritating part of it all is the way MSNBC filed it under their tech/science section. It’s nothing of the kind: it’s mere pareidolia, the product of a loon biased by a desire to confirm a silly story from the Bible, a misplaced myth that claims a big boat landed on Mt Ararat, and a willingness to stare at satellite photos of rock and ice formations until one convinces oneself that a piece looks like a big boat. It also helps if one is willing to draw the shape of a boat in big red crayon on top of the random rock formation.

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I wrote about this before, with the same dismissive tone of disgust. These people are fools; this is practically a yearly ritual with a series of indistinguishable fundamentalist kooks trotting off to Turkey, wandering about cluelessly on some hills, and coming home with handwaving testimonials to sell to the faithful and raise more money to troop off to the same sere brown mountains the next year.

Just read archy. He summarizes the whole crazy nonsense well enough. The ark story is one of those things that is so painfully stupid that it makes me lose all hope in humanity.