Want to see some real science? An article in the NY Times summarizes research in the evolution of glucocorticoid receptors. This is really cool stuff, where the investigators do step-by-step changes in the protein structure to determine the likely sequence of evolutionary changes — it really does describe the path of evolutionary history for a set of proteins at the level of amino acids.

Now, if you want to see some junk science, Michael Behe flounders disgracefully to try and dismiss the work. This is a genuine embarrassment: Behe is a biochemist who has done legitimate work in protein structure, and this kind of research ought to be right up his alley, where he could make an informed analysis. Instead, it’s ugly and sad. A sensible creationist would simply admit that sure, here’s one case of the evolution of a receptor that is solidly made, but hey, look, over there — here are all these other proteins that haven’t been analyzed to the same level of detail. It would be pathetic and avoiding the issue, but Behe has a different and worse strategy: he denies the work shows anything at all. Because the researchers intentionally inserted mutations into the gene, they can’t argue that natural processes of mutation could have done the same thing. But of course we do know — point mutations happen all the time.

Behe continues his long slide into tendentious irrelevance and lunatic obsessions. Jason Rosenhouse digs into this step in Behe’s descent into unreason in much more detail.

And he’s so getting spanked for this. He suggests that perhaps Texas isn’t doomed after all, because a significant majority of the Texas Board of Education has come out saying that they don’t want to remove evolution from the curriculum, and they don’t want to include Intelligent Design.

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Oh, gosh … this Expelled movie is going to be ghastly. Check out this interview with Walt Ruloff, the executive producer. Ruloff’s credentials on this issue are that — get ready for it — he was a software engineer. We get a good feel for the tack the movie is going to take: biologists don’t ask interesting and productive questions, they are defined by the Darwinist orthodoxy, and they actively suppress any questioning. It is, of course, a lie from word one.

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I knew the creationists were obtuse, but this is going a little far. Denyse O’Leary is twittering about all these paranoid suspicions that Richard Dawkins or I are planning to sue to block the release of that silly creationist movie, Expelled, in a post titled Darwinist threat to sue pro-ID filmmakers? Friend of the studio thinks they have no case. It’s a bit bizarre. Neither of us have even made any faint noises to that effect. In my post on the subject, I wondered who funded it, why it was being favored by the DI since it was endorsing the religious nature of ID, and why they had to be dishonest in asking for the interview — and concluded by saying I was looking forward to seeing it and shredding its arguments. How is that to be interpreted as a threat to sue to prevent the release of the movie?

Furthermore, I made a rather unambiguous clarification in the comments:

Let me clarify something. I’m not going to sue. I have no interest in suing.

Is there a way to say that more plainly? Because it’s obviously too convoluted and difficult for a creationist to comprehend.

So let me reiterate once again for the stupid, the deluded, the conspiracy nuts, and the illiterate hacks (i.e., Denyse): not even in my private conversations with Dawkins and Eugenie Scott about this movie has anyone even brought up the possibility of suing or somehow interfering with the release. It’s not the way our brains work, perhaps sometimes to our detriment. My interest is in seeing the movie so I can give the transparently bad ideas behind it an enthusiastic ripping.

Now though, here’s the really ironic part. First comment on O’Leary’s bogus accusations:

They can’t help it. It is part of the natural authoritarian bent of athiests. They can’t win the battle of ideas so their only hope is to silence opposing ideas by legal action.

Not only is the argument patently false, but you have to notice that O’Leary also gloated over the Pivar lawsuit, in which she’s pleased that her pal Stuart is suing me to compel my silence.

These kooks are all about the projection, aren’t they?

Here, everyone, go have fun with this brand new creationist blog that has a grand total of one post so far … but that post is ripe with hilarious promise. This one is an atheist science denialist (someone was wondering if there were any atheist ID proponents a while back, so here’s one). He’s got the air of an affronted conspiracy theorist — scientists are all shallow-minded Darwinists — and he also dislikes the taint of religion behind all the arguments of the Intelligent Design creationists.

Nobody is going to like him. Boo hoo.

Now why would someone who doesn’t believe in god(s) like the idea of ID? He’s got a different kind of evidence.

I’m talking about the evidence for extraterrestrial design in our planet. Like the pyramids, Stonehenge, Nazca lines. We have been visited, and designed by aliens. Of course people like Myers suppress this evidence in favor of their own puny experiments in order to get funding for their “research” that never finds anything new…other than evidence against evolution, which they conceal very quickly.

Bwahahahahaha! He’s a Dänikenite! This could be fun.