Virginia Tech on everybody’s mind

Here’s what the various ScienceBloggers are saying about Virginia Tech.

I’m not personally enthused about turning the whole ugly episode into a rallying cry for whatever cause you favor right now, but I do side with Dunford: of course this is a time you should express your positions. This is a good time, when events have made the concerns more immediate and when people are looking for answers. It’s not a good time to act on those positions, because emotions overwhelm sense, but they are also good indicators of what is important to people.

For instance, if you see this as an excuse to cage all the foreigners, I’d like to know so I can stay upwind of you at all times. If you’re concerned about what we can rationally do to prevent these tragedies in the future, even while distraught about the evil that has been done, then OK, I’ll try to remember that you are a fellow signee of our mutual social contract. So please, keep it civil, and remember that we are a community of civilized beings, not a mob of barbarians.

Fist vs. Chi — who will win?

This is an amusing (but somewhat violent) movie that is an apt metaphor for the strengths of science. It starts with a Kiai Master, one of those woo-woo martial artists who claims to have the power of knocking his opponents flat with his mystical chi—and it’s awfully funny how all these martial arts students come running up and do pratfalls when he waves his hands at them. Then, in a fit of hubris, derangement, or just plain stupidity, he challenges someone to come against him with ‘mere’ natural, physical combat skills. The results are predictable and a little bit cringe-inducing.

The woo sure looks impressive when it’s performed with a mob willing to play along, but it only takes a few seconds for reality to flatten “let’s pretend”. Keep that in mind, creationists: it’s easy to find obliging crowds in your churches, but the rest of the world isn’t going to play the game with you. When the United States deludes itself into thinking creationism is legitimate, we’re setting ourselves up for another nation to knock us down with a single punch of solid science.

State of shame: Indiana!

Kentucky has Ken Ham’s wretched creation “science” “museum”, but now Ligonier, Indiana is getting in on the act with their own version of a pseudoscientific parade of lies in the name of Jesus. At this point, they’ve just begun restoring a decrepit old building to house the monstrosity, but they promise lots of stupidity to come.

The Discovery Express History and Science Museum is about relating biblical truths to current culture through history and science.

Imagine learning how to identify the trees of northern Indiana and learning about the ways they are used…and then thinking, “I wonder how plants show that there is a God?” Maybe you will ask that question skeptically…or maybe because you really want to seek the One who created you. Either way, the answers will intrigue and encourage you.

The first floor of Discovery Express will be the home of “His Kids Preschool” for area preschool children. The first floor is dedicated to depicting local history and culture from the past to the present. There will also be a museum book store filled with great gifts and resources.

The second floor of Discovery Express will house a unique history and science museum. It will feature interactive exhibits designed for all ages. Guests will explore the days of creation, the “Garden of Eden,” Noah’s Ark, and the Tower of Babel. There will be opportunities to learn how science and history confirm that the Bible is trustworthy and accurate in all that it teaches.

Science and history confirm that the Bible is a collection of self-serving delusions, they mean. That’s why they need these fraudulent smoke-screens claiming that they are scientific — they need a big lie to prevent people from scrutinizing their claims carefully.

Dinobase!

Kids underfoot? Are they pestering you for entertainment? Tell them to go look up dinosaurs in Dinobase, and to come back when they’ve got them all memorized. I remember as a kid it was easy to wow the grownups by memorizing a few dozen genera, but now … whoa. There’s more minutia there than you’ll find in packs of baseball cards, that’s for sure.

The Tijuana Bibles of Jack Chick

Along with that copy of Imprint that I was sent yesterday, someone at the Bell (Scott? Was that you?) slipped in a copy of … oh, it was horrifying … a comic book. Not just any comic book, though, a Crusader Comic, one of Jack Chick’s line of full sized comic book style propaganda pamphlets (unlike the usual smaller sized tracts we usually see). This one was called “Primal Man?”. Yikes. It’s basically a colorized version of “Big Daddy?”, only instead of an evilutionist college professor getting outsmarted by a wise Christian student, it’s an evilutionist movie producer getting outsmarted by a Christian anti-evolutionist anthropologist. There aren’t many of those around, I can tell you, but since Chick is unconstrained by reality, he could just invent one.

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A better way

In my mail today, I received a copy of the Bell Museum’s quarterly, Imprint, which contained a fine article on the Bell’s strategy for addressing the creationists. After summarizing some of the museum’s efforts and recent national events, it concludes this way:

Bell Museum programs are one way that University of Minnesota scientists are reaching the public–not through spin, but through thoughtful presentations about science and research, such as the lively Café Scientifique discussion held recently on the subject of evolution. To support science educators, Borrello, Lanyon, and several other scientists have teamed up with local parents to found Minnesota Citizens for Science Education (www.mnscience.org), which provides resources for teachers, students, and parents. “As a society,” says Lanyon, “we can’t afford to let a religious argument dominate the critical subject of how we teach science in our schools. The fact is, life evolves. We ignore–or choose to deny–this scientific fact at our own peril.”

After all this discussion of “framing”, I find that so refreshing and reassuring. There is a slow change occurring in the scientific community, a growing recognition that stepping out of the lab and engaging the public in open and entertaining discussions about their research is an important activity. We don’t need to spin the story, we don’t need to dumb things down or hide the troubling implications — what we can do instead is meet with people and talk and explain. Not just lecture at them, but take questions on the spot and try to deal interactively with their concerns. That’s what Café Scientifique is about, for instance: informal discussions in a casual setting where people can just ask any question that pops into their head. Citizens for Science Education groups are also organizations that aren’t about dunning people with facts, but about outreach and providing resources to concerned teachers and parents.

We don’t need any new jargon or buzzwords to do that. Just talking. Informing. Educating. Being honest about our positions and letting people say what they think, too. That’s an approach that will feel natural to scientists, far better than artificially hedging our words and trying to say what other people want to hear, rather than stating what we actually think.

That’s what I want to do, and that’s what I will do. If others want to practice spinning and pandering, feel free. I doubt that you’ll find many scientists who want to join in that game, though.

Contemptible ghoul

First commentator to tie the Virginia Tech shootings to Muslims, without a lick of evidence: Debbie Schlussel. And if it isn’t connected in any way to Islamic terrorism?

Even if it does not turn out that the shooter is Muslim, this is a demonstration to Muslim jihadists all over that it is extremely easy to shoot and kill multiple American college students.

She’ll connect it anyway.

The killer was Chinese. With the anticipated satisfaction, Schlussel sees that as a vindication — kick out all the foreign students!

We will not go quietly

I’m willing to read books by Simon Conway Morris, Ken Miller, and Francis Collins. I think they’re dead wrong on the religion issue, but they are smart guys who contribute positively to the debate in other ways. I will also read Behe and Dembski and <gack, hack> Wells; they are not smart people, and they’re wrong all across the board, but at least they’re not trying to pretend they’re my friend and are trying to help me, and I think it’s a good idea that we should know the enemy. One fellow who infuriates me, though, and whose point of view I find difficult to comprehend, is Michael Ruse (he’s pulled some weird stunts before, too). I can’t read any of his work anymore without feeling extreme exasperation.

Larry Moran explains why. Ruse is not a friend of science, not someone who wants to improve people’s understanding of the real world; instead he poses as our pal while accusing us of “evolutionism”. He pretends to be a fair and neutral broker mediating a conflict while obligingly demanding a complete surrender of anyone who advocates godlessness. He continues to promote this schism between “Chamberlain appeasers” and “Churchillian atheists” (ugh, but I detest those terms) because it suits his ends, which is to use the division to demand that the atheists sit down and STFU. That’s plainly his strategy in a recent article in the Skeptical Inquirer, which Moran rebuts.

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