Somebody has seen Expelled!

Hey! Dan Whipple got to see a preliminary screening of Ben Stein’s silly movie, Expelled!

Read the review — it makes the point that the movie doesn’t even bother to explain what ID and evolution are before taking sides, and it defends its position incompetently. The movie is “so intellectually garbled it’s hard to summarize,” which is about what we all expected.

There’s no mention of my role, but I expect it would be a tiny part anyway; no mention of Eugenie Scott, either. Dan Whipple, if you see this — there are a lot of us who’d like to know more details about how our interviews were chopped up for this movie!

So that’s what the ICR is up to

So that’s what the ICR is up to

If you’ve been wondering what’s up with that attempt by the Institute for Creation Research to get accredited by the state of Texas, Texas Citizens for Science has dug up some suggestive information: the ICS is trying to trade up from their past worthless accreditation by an evangelical accreditation board, and they’re hoping to tap into some secular legitimacy.

The story is below the fold.

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Bad news: atheists can be good people

A recent poll of bigotry among religious groups managed to expose another level of bigotry in a certain unthinking tool, one David Briggs, who reported on it. It’s fine that they’re examining the problem of prejudice, but the last sentence at the end of this quote makes it clear that the virtue isn’t seen in terms of ending prejudice, but in promoting religious adherence.

A new study by Michigan State sociologist Ralph Pyle presented at this month’s joint meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Religious Research Association in Tampa, Fla., shows how all sides in the conservative-liberal religious divide have work to do in combating prejudice and promoting tolerance.

Pyle measured nearly 3,000 responses from General Social Survey data from 1998-2004 on several issues such as openness to racial intermarriage and racially mixed neighborhoods and ranked religious groups on a scale of anti-black and anti-immigrant attitudes.

He found that moderate Protestants held the strongest anti-black attitudes. The next most prejudiced group? Liberal Protestants.

As expected, black Protestants were the least prejudiced against blacks. But they were the most prejudiced against immigrants. Conservative Protestants were the second most prejudiced group against immigrants. Jews, Catholics and other religious groups showed less prejudice to both groups, being particularly open to immigrants.

The good news for religious groups: People who go to church regularly were less likely to be prejudiced, Pyle said. The bad news is people with no religious affiliation were also much less likely to be prejudiced than individuals showing modest levels of commitment to their faith, those who attend services monthly or less.

Whoa. It’s “bad news” to discover that atheists and agnostics are more tolerant than modest church-goers? I guess it’s bad news for the church that’s trying to pretend they have the one true path to righteousness and goodness, but it sounds like good news for the people who are being discriminated against that there are many ways people can reduce their biases.

That is the goal, right?

A lesson in risk management

The first part of this video bugged me — it sounded like Pascal’s Wager for global warming warriors — but hang in there. He admits that treating the alternatives as equal in probability is bogus, and what you need to do is rational risk assessment, and it makes a lot more sense.

Joe Haldeman writes a letter

And it’s a good one, too.

I was dismayed to read that MIT has decided, after a hundred years without, that it needs a chaplain.

MIT is about science and engineering and mathematics. There is no place for belief in those disciplines. Only doubt: we accept evidence but constantly test it.

Our students, especially the ones from America, have grown up in cultures saturated with religiosity. We should give them a little break from it while they’re here.

MIT needs religion like a bull needs mammaries.

Sincerely,

(Professor) Joe Haldeman

I have to take exception to that last line, though. I can think of many situations where male contributions to nursing would be useful. I don’t see that believing in baseless superstitions has any virtue at all in modern civilizations, so Haldeman is being too generous in his assessment.

Survival of the Silliest

Larry Moran has had a couple of articles up lately on Dr Sharon Moalem, a fellow who has a book out called Survival of the Sickest, and who also has a blog. Larry noticed a couple of things: he’s writing utter tripe about junk DNA, he’s editing and deleting comments about his science from his blog, and he’s been misleading about his credentials — although, to be fair, Moalem does plainly and accurately list his background on the endflaps of the book (some of this has come from a student blog that has been dissecting his dubious claims).

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Creation “Museum” honored

This month’s Mad magazine (I know, I’m probably the only person over 14 who doesn’t like vomit jokes who ever cracks the magazine open) has a feature on the the 20 dumbest people, events, and things of 2007, and guess what won a slot on the list?

i-a93bf3034e69ea656f232d2893657b09-night_at_creation_museum.jpg
(click for larger image)
Finally there is compelling evidence that the theory of evolution is wrong! For proof positive that man’s intelligence has not evolved in eons, consider the Cro-Magnon brained imbeciles behind the recently opened Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. The museum’s exhibits don’t merely challenge science, they ignore it completely! It’s the only place in the world you can see man riding bareback on a dinosaur — except, of course, in an old episode of The Flintstones.

Too bad it only made #14. Ken Ham needs to try harder and bring on the dumbth.

(Coming in ahead of the Creation “Museum” are Michael Vick, GW Bush, Don Imus, Britney Spears, the Walter Reed Army Hospital, the Anna Nicole Smith paternity trial, Paris Hilton, Lisa Marie Nowak, toy recalls, Isaiah Washington, Keith Richards, Scooter Libby, and the Sopranos finale. I admit that the competition at the top is awfully fierce, but it should have placed higher than 14.)