It must be Obvious Day!

I know. You’re still trying to get over the shock of learning that little Billy Dembski admits to being a biblical literalist. Brace yourself for this one, then: Glenn Beck is also a creationist, and his reasons are really, really stupid.

You know, if you know so little about evolution that you think the fact that monkeys aren’t turning into humans is a credible argument, maybe you should have “MORON” tattooed across your forehead.

Evolution is an engine of diversity. It produces “endless forms most beautiful”, to quote the guy who thought it up. Asking why different species don’t all evolve into us is about as dumb as asking why every kaleidoscope doesn’t produce the same image every time you turn it.

Are we at all surprised?

I have to commend him on his honesty: William Dembski has come right out and plainly said that he believes in a ‘literal’ interpretation of the bible, and that his god actually created the earth in 6 days culminating in the conjuring into existence of Adam and Eve.

In writing The End of Christianity today, I would also underscore three points: (1) As a biblical inerrantist, I accept the full verbal inspiration of the Bible and the conventional authorship of the books of the Bible. Thus, in particular, I accept Mosaic authorship of Genesis (and of the Pentateuch) and reject the Documentary Hypothesis. (2) Even though I introduce in the book a distinction between kairos (God’s time) and chronos (the world’s time), the two are not mutually exclusive. In particular, I accept that the events described in Genesis 1- 11 happened in ordinary space-time, and thus that these chapters are as historical as the rest of the Pentateuch. (3) I believe that Adam and Eve were real people, that as the initial pair of humans they were the progenitors of the whole human race, that they were specially created by God, and thus that they were not the result of an evolutionary process from primate or hominid ancestors. (William A. Dembski)”

So, yes, he is an honest lunatic.

I wonder if he’ll be coming out with a mathy book dissecting the likelihood of that particular scenario?

Along these same lines, take a look at the program for this creationist conference, Vibrant Dance, which purports to bring together religion and science. It’s all church groups and old school creationists and gibbering nitwits like Dinesh D’Souza and, of course, the Discovery Institute gang, all wallowing in Jebusism.

Oh, and just for another non-surprise, look who else is represented in the program: BioLogos.

It’s easy to forget about DonorsChoose

Especially if you’ve got adblock in place, because the big banner on the left asking you to donate will disappear…but yes, we are still trying to raise money for science education, and if you’ve got a few dollars to spare, go to my challenge page and pick a project you like and help them out. One of the nice things about the way DonorsChoose is that you actually put your money in the hands of teachers who are doing work that you like.

Now I know, we’re all evil atheists here, and we’d never do something just because it was good and nice. If cutthroat competition is a better motivator to your mind, we’re also having a little contest with some of the other science blog networks, and we have a leaderboard for the science bloggers. Scienceblogs is ahead right now, but those nefarious rascals at Discover and Scientopia are breathing down our necks. Help us simultaneously crush the others and help school teachers!

The students have been slacking!

But then, so have we all. I hit my developmental biology students with the first evil exam of the term last week (I give them a couple of broad questions where we don’t have all the answers, and send them off to write a longish essay on their own time. It’s definitely the kind of test where regurgitation doesn’t work at all). Then also the last few days have been our Fall Break, a short interval with no classes which were added to allow the faculty a chance to catch up on their work and sleep, but which I squandered by gallivanting off to London where I got almost no sleep.

But they’ve got some stuff online.

I’ll crack the whip in class some more today and tell them to provide more blog fodder. If I don’t fall asleep mid-session, that is.

Is this an evolution game?

I don’t know, because my eyes kind of glazed over as this review explained all the rules for Dominant Species.

It doesn’t exactly look elegant in its implementation — it’s more for hardcore board-gamers than a family fun night, if you ask me — but at least it seems to be taking an ecosystem approach to modeling evolution which is far different than the usual ‘battling individuals’ concept you usually see in games.

Catholics outdo the Mormons in crazy

Mormons go around baptizing the dead into their church, but at least dead people were once real…the official Vatican newspaper has just announced that Homer and Bart Simpson are Catholic. It’s not clear whether they didn’t mention Marge, Lisa, and Maggie because they lack the sacred Y chromosome of Jesus that is required to be a true Catholic, or if it’s because, perhaps, they are apostate Presbylutherans.

For people who worship the constitution, they sure don’t know what is in it

Video is not Christine O’Donnell’s friend — every time she opens her mouth she exposes her ugly, ignorant side. The latest faux pas comes from here performance in a debate with her opponent in which she reveals she hasn’t read the first amendment, and is surprised by what’s in it.

Here’s the relevant part:

“Let me just clarify,” O’Donnell pressed. “You’re telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?”

“The government shall make no establishment of religion,” Coons said, summarizing the gist of the specific words in the First Amendment’s establishment clause.

“That’s in the First Amendment?” O’Donnell asked again, eliciting further laughter from the room.

This is a fairly common talking point among lunatics of the far right. It is literally true that the phrase “separation of church and state” is not in the constitution, but the first amendment is still quite clear: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” means you don’t get to use the influence of government to help promote your cult. It also promises not to get in the way of your evangelizing, but that the state itself is going to be neutral.

We also have a lunatic running for secretary of state in Minnesota who has been saying the same thing as O’Donnell.

Quite often you hear people say, ‘What about separation of church and state?’ There is no such thing. I mean it just does not exist, and it does not exist in America for a purpose, because we are a Christian nation. We are a nation based on Christian principles and ideals, and those are the things that guarantee our liberties. It is one of those things that is so fundamental to the freedoms that we have that when you begin to restrict our belief and our attestation to our Christian values you begin to restrict our liberties. You simply cannot continue a nation as America without that Christian base of liberty.

It seems rather obvious to me. The constitution saying that no state religion shall be established is in direct contradiction with anyone claiming that Christianity is our state religion.

Underwhelmed is putting it mildly

Oh, jebus. Josh Rosenau has another post where the whole point sails over his head. He’s basically thrashing away again at the whole accommodationist/confrontationist conflict with more of his imaginary pragmatism and his weasely approach to the truth. If he had the slightest inkling of comprehension about the Gnu Atheist position, he simply wouldn’t bother saying stupid things like this:

The point being, it’s impossible to constantly be telling “the whole truth,” and no audience really wants you to do that. You pick and choose which truths (as you see them) you want to expound. Part of the way you do that is by thinking about how much of the truth you can express without driving your audience insane. Hopefully you also select your slice of the truth based on what will convince your audience that your central point is, in fact, true. Omitting parts of the truth that will drive your audience away (or insane) is not dishonest, and may well be the best service you can do for the truth.

Listen, Josh baby. Pay attention.

I don’t claim to possess the whole and complete truth. I don’t claim that science has the whole truth, but only that we have tools that allow us to work towards the truth.

But I do know what I hold to be true, and I will not be dishonest to myself and pretend to be something else, simply to make other people comfortable. If the free expression of ideas drives some people insane, then so be it; those who can’t cope with reality are better off in the asylums than running the country, anyway.

And I’m very sorry to break this news to you, but pandering to your audience and hiding the truth is lying to them, and in someone supposedly trying to promote science education, represents intellectual cowardice and a lack of integrity. I’m not going to do it. That you actively advocate it is shameful.

Jason Rosenhouse has a lovely long reply to Rosenau’s ridiculous pseudo-pragmatic approach. And by pseudo-pragmatic I mean not practical at all; if you are fighting for an idea, it is counterproductive to embrace facile strategies in which you deny the idea to avoid offending people, simply because various psychological studies show that people don’t like to be offended. Well, la-de-dah.

In defense of the New Atheist strategy of creating tension and making atheism visible we have a body of research on advertising that shows that repetition and ubiquity are essential for mainstreaming an idea. We have the historical examples of social movements that changed the zeitgeist by ignoring the people urging caution, and by working around the people whose value systems put them in opposition to their goals. We know that hostility towards atheists was at a fever pitch well before the NA’s arrived on the scene, a time during which accommodationist arguments were common but vocal atheism was not. And we have the all-important verdict of common sense, which says that you don’t mainstream your view by getting down on your knees and pleading with people to treat you nicely.

Against this Josh has a few papers breathlessly reporting that people don’t like it when you offend them. It is on this basis that he gives smug lectures about communications strategies.

I am underwhelmed.

I am unconvinced by these feeble appeasement tactics that don’t really advance the ideas, but do leave people unperturbed from their comfortable positions of ignorance. But here’s something else to consider, if the marshmallows of accommodationism are still committed to convincing me otherwise. Even if Rosenhouse’s argument wasn’t valid, if there were a thousand concrete empirical studies demonstrating that my approach was turning people into fundagelical Christians faster than a tent revival, it wouldn’t matter. I’d still be me. I’d still express myself as I do, as I want, because that is all I ever do here — I have never considered myself to be competing in a popularity contest.

It’s actually rather revealing that these guys would think that what their opponents say is somehow calculated to optimize positive reactions in the broadest possible demographic. They really don’t have a grasp of this mysterious truth thing.