Another creationist serial litigator goes down in flames

Larry Caldwell has a history of suing in California courts for creationist causes. Mike Dunford has some material on the latest attempt to claim that leaving out Christian myths was “viewpoint discrimination”, and in particular on their interesting choice of a star witness.

The Christian schools hired Dr. Behe (for $20,000) as an expert in “biology and physics.” (That second part should make Chad and Rob’s heads explode, given that Behe has absolutely no physics experience of any kind.) To earn his fee, Dr. Behe prepared a report that said, basically, that the Christian textbooks are excellent works for high school students. He also defended that view in a deposition that was taken back at the end of May.

Wooeee, that Behe fella has a real racket going. No wonder he’s so committed to his absurd version of creationism — there’s profit in it.

Anyway, Chad and Rob can break out the superglue and reassemble their crania now, and use a pastry gun to reinject their splattered brains. The case has been dismissed.

I’m sure Mr Caldwell will be back next month, filing another frivolous lawsuit. I’m also sure the Discovery Institute will be very, very quiet about this new failure in their history of legal shenanigans.

Oops. Behe was testifying in a different case in California. How many suits are the creationists involved in, anyway? Wesley has the rundown on the correct legal case.

On the utility of mice

I’m soon to run off to a class in which we’re going to discuss 16th-17th century science (Vesalius, Bacon, Harvey, Hooke, etc.), and there’s an amusing passage in J.A. Moore’s book that I have to share. It’s a description of a bestiary by Edward Topsell that explains the importance and usefulness of various animals, including mice. Mice seemed to do everything.

A mouse can be skinned, cut in two, and placed over an arrow wound to help the healing process; if a mouse is beaten into pieces and mixed with old wine, the concoction will cause hair to grow on the eyelids; if skinned, steeped in oil, and rubbed with salt, the mouse will cure pains in the lungs; sodden mice can prevent children from urinating too much; mice that are burned and converted to powder are fine for cleaning the teeth; mouse dung, prepared in various manners, is useful for treating sciatica, headache, migraine, the tetters, scabs, red bunches on the head, gout, wounds, spitting of blood, colick, constipation, stones, producing abortions, putting on weight, and increasing lactation in women.

One does wonder if there was a plague of people running around with hairy eyelids in 1607, and I’m almost tempted to try the pulped mouse in wine for the effect. The toothpaste recipe…eh, only if I never wanted to be kissed again.

In honor of 9/11…

The appropriate testimonial would be to disband the thugs at TSA.

While we’re at it, impeaching Bush/Cheney and repealing their damage to our civil liberties would also be a good start.

I’m not impressed with moments of silence or candlelight vigils or noble rhetoric about this event. If you want to do something to remember that tragedy, the best thing to do is to simply stop living your life in fear.

More lawyer games from creationists

A couple of graduate students have a group called Extant Dodos Productions that uses YouTube to rip into creationist claims. In particular they’ve used some of Kent Hovind’s materials to dissect his arguments. It’s a clever idea — they take creationist videos and edit them to insert rebuttals to each argument as they are made.

Apparently, though, Creation Science Evangelism doesn’t like the fact that their claims are being popularly weighed, analyzed, and pulverized, and they’re now trying to strong-arm Extant Dodos Productions with intimidating letters that say they are infringing on their copyright by using their videos. It seems to me that this work certainly ought to fit under the conventions of fair use, but they have an even stronger case: the videos they used all come with a formal waiver of copyright with the stipulation that the material not be sold.

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Local training camp for fascist god-bots

The Minnesota Family Council is a spawn of Dobson (it’s got “family” in the title, so you know it’s got to be evil), and it’s usually one of those organizations that lobbies to get legislative support for their hatred of women and gays. They are not nice people. If you’re ever in this state and want to see some splendid examples of calcified brains, this is the group you want to track down.

Anyway, they’re starting a new training program: the Minnesota Worldview Leadership Project. It’s the weirdest thing. Apparently, it’s a seminar and discussion series that is supposed to turn you into an even more fervent theocrat, ready to shape the United States into a more Christian nation. And, as you might guess, they don’t like evolution. They’re reading Nancy Pearcey, and John West is flying in to give a seminar…wait a minute, I thought Intelligent Design was a secular theory? Nah, never mind.

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But he’s not even agnostic!

Richard Colling is in big trouble. He’s a biology instructor who is getting slapped down by his college and his community.

Colling is prohibited from teaching the general biology class, a version of which he had taught since 1991, and college president John Bowling has banned professors from assigning his book. At least one local Nazarene church called for Colling to be fired and threatened to withhold financial support from the college. In a letter to Bowling, ministers in Caro, Mo., expressed “deep concern regarding the teaching of evolutionary theory as a scientifically proven fact,” calling it “a philosophy that is godless, contrary to scripture and scientifically unverifiable.” Irate parents, pastors and others complained to Bowling, while a meeting between church leaders and Colling “led to some tension and misunderstanding,” Bowling said in a letter to trustees.

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Schism!

In case you’d been wondering why Scientology is such a silly crock, you should know — it wasn’t. Before it was corrupted by the people running the show, Lafayette Ron Hubbard’s technology and philosophy actually worked. We just need to return to the primal purity of the original Scientology vision. And that’s why Freezone has split from the Church of Scientology™, and proudly displays a picture of a goofy fathead in a nautical cap on their web page.

It’s going to be interesting to see how the fascist goons of
the Church of Scientology™ deal with heresy. If it cuts into their profits, anticipate a religious war.

I thought UNC-Chapel Hill was a great school…

…but there it is, hosting a major young-earth creationism advocacy site. How humiliating! David A. Plaisted is a computer science professor who has accumulated piles of raving nonsense to support his creationism, and I would think the university would find it a bit of an embarrassment to see one of their faculty flaunting their stupidity in such an awful way, especially now that the Chronicle has picked up on it, and a Duke grad student has rubbed their noses in it.

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When did ‘framing’ become a synonym for religiosity?

I have been chastised for hating framing and shown an example of “framing” done right. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like framing at all, at least not the kind Nisbet has been pushing, and what I actually hate is the way framing is being used as a stalking horse for irrelevant atheist-bashing.

The example is exemplary. Carl Safina took a group of evangelicals to Alaska to show them first-hand the ecology of the area and the effects of climate change. This is great stuff, and a beautiful instance of public outreach and education, and I am all in favor of it. Do more! However, it’s not framing. It doesn’t resuscitate Nisbet/Mooney’s argument — it says more about the importance of engagement between scientists and the community. The power of the lesson isn’t that Safina spins it to suit a political agenda, or that he panders to the biases of his guests (although he does do that), it’s that he shows them directly what they will lose if people don’t act to preserve the environment. The learning comes from the experience and the reality, not the “frame” he throws around it.

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