It’s only missing a fourth item: a cube of real butter to represent reality, the subject science studies, with all the dangerous deliciousness it stands for.
I know, they’re getting a little old. It’s just that we have this glaringly obvious monument to ignorance in our midst, one that is hard to just ignore, so everyone has to take a crack at it. This one does make a few interesting points, at least. For instance…
Of course, the Bible in no place says that it is to be interpreted literally. What is the “literalism” manifesto, then, if not interpretive? Here’s an example of how the literalism plays out, from the Museum literature. Ham’s children’s book, Dinosaurs of Eden, raises the specter of the “day-age theory”–the theory that each biblical “day” in Genesis actually represents an “age.” The advantage of this view for some believers is that it might fit rather well with evolutionary theory–better, at least, than the seven-day alternative. This is not the Museum’s view, although it has a long history within U.S. Christian fundamentalism (including a defense by fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan at the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial). Here’s what Ham’s book says about the theory: “God worked for six days and then rested for one. This is where our seven-day week comes from! If God created everything in six long periods (or millions of years), our week would be millions of years long! That wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever.”
“That wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever.” Isn’t that just the perfect phrase for most of Ken Ham’s turns of twisted logic?
Unfortunately, the article also ends with a tiresome cliche, considering how much like religion science is. At least the author says he thinks science is more than just another faith, but he still waffles over the idea of science as a kind of authoritarian tradition. Sorry, guy…if you don’t see science as a process that empowers questioning and change, you aren’t doing it right.
What a strange experience…I’m actually leaving Morris, Minnesota for a weekend and I’m bringing the Trophy Wife with me. She’s usually left behind (no doubt sighing with relief), but this time she’s coming along with me to Tempe, Arizona. It’s probably only because our daughter is there this summer, but I’ll take it.
Anyway, behave yourselves while I’m away. I should be able to check in and clean up after the trolls, but my net access may be a bit infrequent for a while.
Oh, and I’ll see some of you at Rúla Búla tonight!
When it’s got a squid in a top hat on it. I could wear this one to the ritziest of places.
This is a somewhat unconventional poll — the site lets you vote on issues, and they’ve set up one as creation vs. evolution. Vote for one or the other!
Creationism
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The religious belief that humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe were created in their original form by a deity.Â
Evolution
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A changes in the inherited traits of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. First published by a scientist Charles Darwin.
This poll has been up since March, and it tracks votes with a chart — maybe we can put a big downward glitch in the line.
The winner of the Molly Award for the month of April kept having the same thing said about him over and over: he was overdue, that people were voting for him month after month. Finally, persistence pays off: you can now refer to Bill Dauphin, OM.
Notice that it is now June — you need to tell me who should win it for May. Leave a comment below that says who your favorite commenter for the month just past was.
Simon Singh, the science writer who had the temerity to say that chiropractic treatment for ear infection was “bogus”, and who was found guilty by a British court of libel, has decided to appeal the decision. That takes real guts — libel law over there really stacks the deck in favor of frivolous complaints of libel — but if he wins it could help enable future open criticisms of quackery.
Sometimes, it just takes a little sharp humor to clarify our current situation.
Well, to understand the Sonia Sotomayor fracas you have to realize that the timespace confundulum has actually fractured into two frozen moments, one having to do with the sudden appearance of emotional, abrasive Latinas and their strange cuisine amid the eating clubs of Princeton, and the other having to do with ungrateful women of color getting named to positions where they can dole out their reverse-racist versions of “justice.” Yes, that’s right, it’s always 1972 and it’s always 1993–and at the same time.
I didn’t get admitted to anything in 1972. But in 1974, I was a freshman at Regis High School in New York, where I heard one of my more conservative classmates say, in the course of a discussion about affirmative action, that he had been the victim of reverse discrimination for too long. Exasperated to the point of flummoxation, I noted in reply that (a) affirmative action showed up only yesterday, (b) you’re thirteen years old, d00d, and (c) you’re attending an elite, tuition-free Jesuit high school that does not admit women. And the reason I remember that moment 35 years later is that it has never gone away: guys like Stuart Taylor and Fred Barnes are still thirteen years old, still the victims of reverse discrimination, and still questioning the credentials of smart women while campaigning for the protection of conservative white men under the Endangered Species Act. Taylor graduated from Princeton in 1970; Barnes from the University of Virginia in 1965. Neither of them had to compete with women for admission; Princeton started opening its doors to that half of the population in 1969, Virginia a year later. That’s why guys like these worry so much about the decline of standards in college admissions since 1970, you understand. Because things were tougher and people were smarter when white guys only had to compete with 44 percent of the population for admission to elite colleges, positions of power and influence, and so forth.
He also reminds us that Clinton caved in when faced with a similar situation during his presidency. Let’s hope Obama is made of sterner stuff.
One more joins the ranks of states on the side of goodness: the New Hampshire legislature has passed the last few bills needed to legalize gay marrriage in that state. Unfortunately, part of the compromise is a set of exemptions for religious organizations, who won’t need to do the right thing. Just remember, no one can point to the atheists and claim they tried to hinder civil rights here…we didn’t ask for the privilege to discriminate.
(via Digital Cuttlefish, who naturally has a poem to go with it)
