SMU ‘Darwin vs. Design’ conference is coming soon, and the creationists are flustered

The ID creationists are having one of those ludicrous “Darwin vs. Design” conferences, in which they rehash assertions and nonexistent evidence and practice propaganda and rhetoric, at Southern Methodist University this week. They seem a little nonplussed at the opposition they’ve encountered. Hey, it’s Southern Methodist University — it’s got a religion in its name! — and it’s Texas, aren’t they all ignorant bible-thumping yahoos down there who ought to chow down happily on any Design story they spin? No, they aren’t, and good, legitimate scientists are on the staff at SMU, and suddenly, the creationists are getting criticized.

Advocates of intelligent design at the Discovery Institute have been rattled by the strong showing of scientists at Southern Methodist University who called their bluff, and questioned SMU for hosting an ID conference this week. SMU’s officials pointed out they were just renting out facilities, and not hosting the conference at all.

The ID conference, with special religious group activities preceding it, is scheduled for April 13 and 14 at SMU. It is a rerun of a similar revival held in Knoxville, Tennessee, last month. The conference features no new scientific research, no serious science sessions with scientists looking at new research, or new findings from old data.

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What’s the creationist position on ‘framing’?

The proper answer to that question is “Who cares?”, but just in case you’re morbidly curious, Bill Dembski weighs in:

The authors of “Framing Science” (see below), which appeared in Science, are world-renowned scientists and therefore know whereof they speak. Well, not exactly. Matthew Nisbet is a professor of communication and Chris Mooney is a correspondent for the atheist magazine Seed. (Nisbet’s blog is also hosted by Seed.) Nisbet and Mooney are both outspoken defenders of Darwinism and critics of ID — which is no doubt why the American Association for the Advancement of Science (publisher of Science) regards them as qualified to “frame” science.

The man is a bitter, seething mass of envy, isn’t he? It takes some chutzpah for a fellow of the Discovery Institute, that nest of lawyers, bad philosophers, and theologians, to complain about the scientific qualifications of others. If Dembski is world-renowned as anything, it’s as an incompetent hack and promoter of anti-scientific nonsense, so I don’t think he should be whining about credentials.

As for that “atheist magazine Seed” … I’ve read every issue, and the magazine as a whole does not take any noticeable position on atheism or religion; some of the interviews have been a little too conciliatory for my taste (but then my taste does not dictate content in any way, or he would have grounds fro calling it an atheist magazine!) Neither is scienceblogs in any way a host that favors atheism, and that is not a criterion used in selecting blogs to join the mob. My little corner here may be a vicious hotbed of brutal, humorless, militant atheism, but Pharyngula is not scienceblogs (it isn’t even particularly well liked by a great many of the sciencebloggers here) and it is especially not Seed.

But then, accuracy and honesty are not what we expect of Dembski…

Jesus won’t bring you any presents!

I don’t know whether this is staged or not, but it’s bizarrely amusing: someone video taped his mother’s reaction to learning he is an atheist. Mom throws a hissy fit. After a bit of denial, she brings the big guns to bear on the poor guy: if he’s an atheist, he’s not going to get any presents for Christmas, because it’s all about Jesus.

After crushing him with that overwhelming threat, what’s she going to do to punish him when she finds out he posted her tirade on Youtube? It’s good parenting skills to know you don’t launch the thermonuclear missiles with the first offense, because you won’t have any credible escalation options left when you discover the really awful thing the kid has done.

The video has been pulled from youtube, but you can still find it here.

Turning science into a party

Lucky Cambridge: a whole bunch of organizations, including Harvard, MIT, and the Cambridge public schools and libraries are collaborating to put on the Cambridge Science Festival—9 days of science activities around the town. That is exactly the kind of broadly supported activity in the service of science education that can make a difference in public perception. It’s an excellent idea…now if only more communities had that kind of concentration of scientific organizations to make that kind of sustained activity possible.

(via Science Made Cool)

It’s all about the context

Hey, maybe this fits into the framing debate. The famous violinist Joshua Bell stood in a Washington DC subway station, playing Bach on his Stradivarius, in a test to see how many commuters would stop and appreciate the magnificent music.

A few people stopped, but no crowd formed, and he got a total of $32.17 tossed into his violin case. That actually isn’t bad for 45 minutes of playing, but I suspect he isn’t going to give up his day job.

Johnny Hart is extinct

My uncle Ed, my fun uncle who took a long, long time to grow up, had two favorite comics on the funny pages: The Wizard of Id and B.C. I liked them, too, and we followed them regularly. Of course, that was in the 1960s and early 70s, and I’m afraid they were afflicted with that syndrome common to long running strips: fading relevancy, recycled humor, the growing impression that the caroonist was phoning it in and didn’t really care anymore, as long as he got his syndication check. Johnny Hart, the creator of those strips, was a particularly sad case, because compounding the problem of staleness was an especially annoying and intrusive simple-minded religious stupidity. And now he’s gone. It’s unfortunate, in part because I regret any death, but also because he wasted so many of his last years cranking out crap and soiling his reputation.

I’ll forget about his religion, and remember instead my uncle chuckling over the Sunday funny pages.

Welcome Shifting Baselines!

We have a new scienceblog here, Shifting Baselines, authored by Jennifer Jaquet and associated with Randy Olson’s Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project. She has already opened up shop with an absolutely horrible, conflicting argument:
Should We Continue to Eat Seafood?

“But it tastes so good,” I whimper.

Al Gore slaps me to the floor and kicks me in the ribs a few times. “But it’s bad for overfished oceans!”

I don’t know what to do. I’d have fish or some nice marine invertebrate every night for dinner, but I have a different constraint: my wife and daughter are not fans. About the only time I have seafood is on those rare occasions I go out for dinner without the family, and since I’m not giving them up, I guess I’m effectively adopting Jennifer’s position and, if not giving it up absolutely, at least cutting back consumption greatly.