Shame on Italy

This is absurd. The Italian National Research Council is sponsoring the publication of a creationist book, titled Evolutionism: The Decline of an Hypothesis. Right away, from the title alone, you can tell that the book has problems: evolution is not a theory in decline, no matter how much the creationists declare it so, but is guiding a thriving research program. The contents are something else, too: apparently, it declares that dinosaurs went extinct just 40,000 years ago, and that radiometric dating is wrong.

Wow. It’s not just a creationist book, but a young earth creationist book. Right away, we can make some predictions about the author. Roberto de Mattei: that he knows nothing about science, and that he’s a political creature.

Bingo.

De Mattei, a political appointee to CNR, teaches the History of Christianity and the Church at the European University in Rome and is president of the Rome- and Washington, D.C.-based Lepanto Foundation, a Catholic group.

You know, when you sponsor a book that proposes to throw out basic physics, chemistry, and biology, you really ought to make sure the author has some chops in those fields.

Awww, poor widdle Ken Ham’s feewings are hurt

Ken Ham is distressed that he gets no respect. This triggers a little litany of self-defense.

Guess what’s missing from Sunday’s Cincinnati Enquirer‘s (our main Cincinnati newspaper) long articles about local Christmas/holiday activities?

This long piece-plus other Christmas-related articles–appeared in the paper yesterday (Sunday). No mention of the Creation Museum and its Bethlehem’s Blessings Christmas programs–not even the free day on Thursday (the museum is open to the public for free for Christmas Eve), even though through our publicist, we sent two news releases to the paper about our Christmas activities.

Interesting, considering over 920,000 people have visited the Creation Museum–tens of millions of dollars has been brought into the community each of the past two years–hundreds of jobs created locally–already 7,500 people have visited the Creation Museum’s Live Nativity (five more dates for this spectacular event) and phenomenal garden light display. (By the way, we have submitted a letter to the paper to inquire about the omission of our major series of Christmas events that will attract over 15,000 people to a place that has won major tourism awards for advertising excellence–maybe there is some explanation for this oversight; while the paper’s reporters over the years have generally been fair towards us, we sometimes wonder why some of the editors seem to look at us differently–see a previous article of ours, for example.

There’s a reason the world looks at you differently, Ken.

It’s because you’re a gibbering nitwit. Your “museum” is a popular freakshow for ignorant yahoos, and it’s existence is an international embarrassment. You bring about as much prestige to the Cincinnati area as a combination leper colony and lunatic asylum; sure, it’s well-populated with the unfortunate afflicted, and it provides employment to local citizens, and the fact that you’ve turned it into a spectacle of stupidity for gawkers brings in tourist dollars, but it’s not something to be proud of. And unlike the leper colony/asylum, your institution provides no useful or charitable function for the community or its residents. Instead, you lie to children for money.

I suspect the omission was merely an oversight, because the American media tends to drool for money over principle, and one thing the phony “museum” has is buckets of money — for the same reason P.T. Barnum thrived — but one can always hope that the slight was intentional, and that someone at the Cincinnati Enquirer is aware that the presence of a Temple to Lunacy brings disrepute to the region.

You lie to children for money. You don’t get respect for that.

Do not vote for Pawlenty in 2012

I live in Minnesota; Tim Pawlenty is our governor, and he’s got his bland and uninteresting gaze fastened on the White House. Don’t be fooled. He’s just another Republican hack who has been drifting ever right-ward towards increasing lunacy. He was interviewed in Newsweek, and this will give you an idea of what kind of waffly worthless panderer he is.

Well, you know I’m an evangelical Christian. I believe that God created everything and that he is who he says he was. The Bible says that he created man and woman; it doesn’t say that he created an amoeba and then they evolved into man and woman. But there are a lot of theologians who say that the ideas of evolution and creationism aren’t necessarily inconsistent; that he could have “created” human beings over time.

The Bible doesn’t mention Tim Pawlenty’s parents, Eugene and Ginny, anywhere, either, and neither does it mention Tim Pawlenty, so apparently the question of Pawlenty’s origins are still open. This all fits with my theory that he is merely a recent conglomeration of mindless amoeboid slime.

A contest gets a winner: common creationist claims refuted

Once upon a time, in vague exasperation at a persistent creationist, I opened up two of his questions to the Pharynguloid horde in a contest to see who could answer them most clearly and succinctly. I shouldn’t have done this; I’m lazy, and this was too much like grading term papers. Still, there were a lot of good answers, so it was a worthwhile effort.

The winner, judged for clarity, brevity, and accuracy, was Calilasseia, an infrequent commenter here who clearly needs to increase his or her frequency. I’ve sent off an email in hopes of a reply with a mail address, or if Calilasseia notices this, maybe I’ll be sent one soon. Or not. The Prize in this contest is an appropriate and ironic one: a copy of Slaughter of the Dissidents, by the incredible Jerry Bergman. Only the first volume, though; he hasn’t finished writing the other dozen or so he says are in the offing.

I feel a little guilty. That’s like going on a game show, picking door #2, and discovering that your prize is a goat. In this case, it’s a GOAT ON FIRE, which helps a little bit, but still…I’ll also slip in a surprise book of a more worthy nature if Calilasseia gets back to me.

Here are the two questions and the winning answers. I repeat, these aren’t the only good answers—go back to that thread and browse and there are plenty of well written short replies.

Was evolution a significant and essential factor in guiding Nazi thought?

No. First of all, as has already been established courtesy of searching through Mein Kampf in detail, Hitler’s assorted eructations on nature reproduce well-known creationist canards, including the static species fallacy, and Hitler also asserted that fertile, viable hybrids were inpossible, which is manifestly refuted by this scientific paper (among many others):

Speciation By Hybridisation In Heliconius Butterflies, by Jesús Mavárez, Camilo A. Salazar, Eldredge Bermingham, Christian Salcedo, Chris D. Jiggins and Mauricio Linares, Nature, 441: 868-871 (15th June 2006)

Also, even an elementary search of Mein Kampf reveals the following statistics. The number of instances of key words are as follows:

“Darwin” : ZERO

“Almighty” : 6

“God” : 37

“Creator” : 8

Hitler was inspired by the anti-Semitic ravings of one Lanz von Liebenfels, who was a defrocked monk, and whose magnum opus bore the Pythonesque title of
Theozoology, Or The Account Of The Sodomite Apelings And The Divine Electron. This was in effect a warped Biblical exegesis, which rewrites the Crucifixion story, and also contains a mediaeval bestiary replete with instances of Liebenfels’ florid imagination.

Additionally, the Nazis placed textbooks on evolutionary biology on their list of seditious books to be burned, as illustrated nicely here, where we learn that in 1935, Nazi guidelines with respect to seditious books included:

6. Schriften weltanschaulichen und lebenskundlichen Charakters, deren Inhalt die falsche naturwissenschaftliche Aufklärung eines primitiven Darwinismus und Monismus ist (Häckel).

Translated into English, this reads:

Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Häckel)

The evidence is therefore conclusive. Nazism was not inspired by evolution, and indeed, much of Hitler’s own writings are creationist in tone. The Nazis destroyed evolutionary textbooks as seditious (much as modern day creationists would love to), and the Nazi view of the biosphere is wholly at variance with genuine evolutionary theory, involving fatuous views of race “purification” by the establishment of monocultures that are the very antithesis of genuine evolutionary thought, which relies upon genetic diversity.

Can natural processes produce an increase in complexity?

The overwhelming evidence from the scientific literature is yes. Appropriate papers include:

Evolution Of Biological Complexity by Christoph Adami, Charles Ofria and Travis C. Collier, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 97(9): 4463-4468 (25th April 2000)

Evolution of Biological Information by Thomas D. Schneider, Nucleic Acids Research, 28: 2794-2799 (2000)

Indeed, in the latter paper, Schneider establishes that selection processes cause the amount of information in the genome to increase to a maximum.

Likewise, instances of this taking place in real world organisms are well documented in the scientific literature. Such as Lenski’s landmark paper on historical contingency in Escherichia coli, the literature centred upon nylonase, and the evolution of antifreeze glycoproteins in Antarctic Notothenioid fishes. From the world of aquarium fishes, there is also a well documented mutation known as the double tail mutation, which results in indivduals of Betta splendens inheriting the mutation developing two complete tail fins, a mutation that moreover, obeys single-factor Mendelian inheritance. This constitutes an example of increase in organismal complexity, that comes about as close to realising creationist canards with respect thereto, as any observed instance in Nature is ever likely to.

More to the point, there exist numerous papers covering de novo origination of genes, of which:

De Novo Origination Of A New Protein-Coding Gene In Saccharomyces cerevisiae by Jing Cai, Ruoping Zhao, Hifeng Jiang and Wen Wang, Genetics, 179: 487-496 (May 2008)

is merely one of the more spectacular instances. Surely the emergence of a gene where previously there was none, constitutes an increase in complexity by any reasonable measure? Particularly as the instance in the above paper arose from a previously noncoding DNA sequence?

I get email

I am often chided by morons.

Consistent

Dear Mr. Myers,

To be wrong is always acceptable, because we are human. But, to be consistently wrong, especially when you call yourself a Professor, is going way beyond the bounds of good sense. Anyone who even gives ear to people such as Dawkins and Kitchens is no less than a fool. There is nothing wrong with being a fool, but teaching others to be one is unacceptable and irresponsible, at the very least. Furthermore, to have a degree or degrees in biology and to still believe in Darwinian theory, shows ignorance in the worst degree. Macro evolution is founded on absolutely nothing but blind faith. No evidence has ever been provided for it. Several hokes and false attempts, but no real evidence. A large group of sciences, including biologists, have concluded that the theory is false. Why, other than you can make a living no way else, that a professional biologist would continue on with such a shenanigan, is beyond comprehension. It is a poison to society and you are one who doses it out. As common as a drug dealer. I hope you will come to your senses, as a thinking rational man, before too long. If it is the result of bitterness about something in your past…get over it.

Sincerely,
Michael Aprile

I’ve split half-billion year old stones to expose the shells of trilobites, I’ve seen the bones of Tiktaalik, I’ve held in my hands the skull of Neanderthal. I’ve compared the genes of mice and flies, I’ve studied the embryos of grasshoppers and fish, I’ve read thousands of papers produced by a scientific community that values curiosity over money. I’ve also read dozens of books by creationists, and I can say with complete confidence that they, and you, Mr Michael Aprile, are full of shit.

You write chastising email built out of condescending ignorance, and can’t even be troubled to check the spelling and grammar. You claim there is no evidence for evolution, when you haven’t even looked. All those people with degrees in biology know genetics, molecular biology, anatomy, physiology, and ecology — what do you know, Mr Aprile? The science points ineluctably to evolution as a fact, as the mechanism for biological change over time. The only people who argue otherwise, and that includes those ‘sciences’ [sic] you claim have concluded that the theory is false, are ideologues who have had their brains addled by non-scientific presuppositions, and who have decided that their fallacious traditional myths must supersede observation and evidence.

The professional biologists whose work you do not comprehend are not spreading poison or drugs: they are sharing knowledge. I know you find that anathema, since it directly displaces the ignorance you and your religion thrive on, but I do not concede an iota of respect to your stupidity, and will be spending the rest of my life opposing it.

I get email

Keep that recent xkcd in mind when you read this one. This is from a creationist who is convinced all those biologists have it completely wrong, because Clovis points are beautiful artifacts.

Im digging in Ancient mans kitchen

Why is it that the deeper I Dig , the more brilliant the artifacts become… Isn’t that opposite of the Darwin view? Clovis, First view, Plainview,… these guys were far advanced when it came to the quality of life.. I always was taught the older man was the dumber he was.. That’s not accurate in my pea brain view of what I am personally researching… My digging buds discovered written stones in association with Clovis man back in the 80’s.. the local “professionals” would not acknowledge our finds. They then proceeded (over the next 20 years) to claim our site for themselves and as recently as this year have come out and said, “We must rethink the intelligence of early man” da……….Ask Dr. Mike Collins, a Texas archeologist, about David Olmstead’s inscribed stones found in association with Clovis.. bet he doesn’t have much to say… over one hundred such stone were found at the Gault Site in Texas, where we used to dig…You will never convince me that early man wasn’t brilliant and by design. .. read the Bible man…are you afraid? Are you so “professional” you will not even look at another view? I hurt for you brainyacks.. thank God he has kept me simple that I might understand the leap of faith I have taken. He loves you to ya know… after all, He knew you before you were born….John Bishop

Well, this guy has a few misconceptions. Clovis doesn’t represent “ancient man”: these are artifacts on the order of 10,000 years old. It’s still far older than the standard creationist idea of the age of the entire universe, but they are still relics of relatively modern Homo sapiens.

Mr Bishop should stop listening to creationists. I don’t know of any biologists who claim that the older Homo sapiens are dumber than the more recent examples.

Clovis points are spectacular and beautiful, and I certainly don’t have the skill to make one. But I’d hold up an iPhone next to a chipped spear point and argue which is more “brilliant”. Our technology has progressed to an amazing degree, and Mr Bishop is simply in denial.

I also detect some anger. I suspect he found some stones with scratches on them and has decided that they are relics of ancient writing (see Ed Conrad for another example of grandiose misinterpretation), and is miffed that the professionals disagree with him. You can see some of these engraved stones — they’re interesting, but they aren’t Dickens.

Note also the typical pretense to modesty in the letter: he’s “simple,” he has a “pea brain,” yet he also thinks he so much smarter than those “professionals” and “brainyacks”.

The bad grammar and the bizarre punctuation, together with the inane god-walloping, are just the icing on the idiot cake.

It couldn’t happen to a sleazier guy

When Ray Comfort published his own version of Darwin’s Origin, he had to come up with some original content for the introduction. He couldn’t. Instead, he stole the first three pages outright from an essay by University of Tennessee professor Stan Guffey — those are the only reasonable pages in his 50 page contribution — and the rest is a mish-mash of standard creationist arguments that you can find on the internet. It’s actually kind of impressive that he reached so low on the stupid scale with this one; there isn’t one creative thought in the whole sloppy, plagiarized piece of work.

Now the good news: Stan Guffey is considering legal action. I hope he does, in that he really does have an open-and-shut case that Comfort copied his work. The one glitch, it seems to me, is that Comfort purportedly made no profit from his effort, and Guffey lost no income from use of an essay he gave away, so I’m not sure what kind of recompense he could get for the theft. Maybe some lawyers can weigh in here.