I didn’t even have to get my hands dirty

That Egnor fellow believes that if minds are material, than “all of humanity’s notions of moral value and culpability are nonsense”—like most creationists, his arguments collapse into a rather pointless fallacy, the argument from consequences. It’s enough for me to just say that if I’m correct, then Egnor is the one who believes his morality is gone, not me. It’s a theme running through his latest bloviation, that truth is irrelevant if ideas are a product of the brain, to which I have to say, “so what?”

Anyway, I’m pleased to say that I don’t need to waste time with the babbling Egnor, since ck at Arbitrary Marks has taken him down for me, in a
three
part
series on “iron spikes and materialism.”

Now I want the rest of you to get cracking and slay a few creationists for me. I like this business of sitting back with a kind of imperial hauteur while the knights go out and skewer the dragons.

Adam was naked!

Wesley has the story, and you can get more details from Toledo TV news story and a Cincinnati Enquirer article — but the silly news is that one of the models for the Creation “Museum’s” Adam was a fellow named Eric Linden, who was associated with a site called the Bedroom Acrobat. The “Museum’s” video with Linden has been yanked, and Linden himself seems to be rushing to dissociate himself from the naughty web site, claiming now that he only bought the domain name.

I say there is nothing wrong with running a site about sexual activities; Linden should not be ashamed of it; it is disgraceful that Answers in Genesis should be so puritanical and sex negative that they don’t even want to use a short clip of someone merely known to have had sex; and if Adam had been real rather than a fictitious, mythical character, he probably would have been quite the bedroom acrobat himself, since he would have had to have fathered the entire human race.

I think the Creation “Museum” should bring back the video and increase the coverage of the Adam and Eve story. If they want to keep their visitorship up, I have a suggestion: more full frontal nudity, with an unabashed and open display of the importance of sexual activity in God’s fertile creation. And if attendance starts to flag, I have a two-word term for a bold plan that would grab the media’s attention again: animatronic genitalia. When Adam first meets Eve, a roar and a <sproingggg!> would be perfectly appropriate.

It would be OK, since it’s all in the Bible. I mean, if “dinosaur” is in there, I’m sure “erection” is too.

Behe’s The Edge of Evolution, part II

Behe has written a very bad book, so poorly supported that I don’t want to waste a lot of time taking apart every sentence, but I did want to say a few words about chapter 9, where he takes on evo-devo. I waited a bit because I knew that Sean Carroll was writing a review of the book for Science, and I expected he’d go gunning for chapter 9, too—but no, he didn’t. I guess he felt as I do, that since Behe’s fatally flawed premise was exposed in the first few chapters, there was little point to addressing his incompetent nit-picks later in the book. After all, when the construction crew has built a foundation of tissue paper in a pool of quicksand, by the time you get around to criticizing the roofers for using graham crackers for shingles, you’re about out of outrage.

I’ll briefly note the best parts of Carroll’s review, though, and I’ll try to gather up a few tired shreds of indignation and exasperation to critique some of the more ridiculous canards of Behe’s evo-devo chapter.

[Read more…]

Who needs science when you’ve got delusions?

What if they had a debate about evolution, and didn’t bother to invite any scientists? It would be unhinged and divorced from reality, and all the wheels would be spinning wildly, and they could come up with any ol’ crazy crap they wanted. This must be why the American Enterprise Institute sponsored a debate on Darwin and conservatives moderated by Ronald Reagan’s biographer, Steven Hayward, with John Derbyshire and Larry Arnhart defending evolution, and George Gilder and John West, two cranks from the Discovery Institute, criticizing it. Not one scientist in sight, and the account of the proceedings reflects that. The entire debate was about whether reality conflicts with the conservative point of view, and whether they can reinterpret evolution to conform to Wingnuttia.

Unbelievable, I know. Read Brad’s response for a point-by-point takedown.

Just for an example, though, here’s the kind of idea being advanced by evolution’s defenders at that meeting:

It’s a nice idea, but it too might have ended the discussion right then and there, except that Darwinism is once again being used by partisans of a particular political philosophy. This time the lucky philosophy is contemporary American conservatism, and the foremost proponent of the conservative-Darwinian dalliance is Arnhart. He offered a quick summary of his position, which has become popular among right-wingers of a libertarian stripe and has found its fullest expression in Arnhart’s book Darwinian Conservatism.

“Conservatives need Darwin,” he said. Without the scientific evidence Darwinian theory offers, conservative views would be swamped by liberal sentimentality. The left-wing view of human nature as unfixed and endlessly manipulable has led to countless disastrous Utopian schemes. Hard-headed Darwinians, on the other hand, see human nature as settled and enduring and stubbornly unchangeable, and conservatives can wield the findings of Darwin to rebut the scheming, ambitious busybodies of the left and their subversion of custom and tradition. (I’m paraphrasing, by the way.)

The only guy who said anything sensible was Derbyshire.

So Darwinism, viewed one way, can easily be considered morally disastrous. But, responded pro-Darwin Derbyshire, Is it true? “The truth value of Darwinism is essential,” he said. “The truth value always comes first.” If Darwinism is true-and its undeniable success in explaining the world suggests that it is-and if Darwinism undermines conservatism, as West had claimed, “then so much the worse for conservatism.”

And likewise, so much the worse for liberalism if it doesn’t fit reality. The way we ought to be managing our culture is by changing those bits of it that don’t jibe well with nature, rather than allowing ideology to run roughshod over the evidence.

Can we hope the poll is just wrong?

The latest USA Today/Gallup poll probably is valid, unfortunately — it’s not far off from my impressions. 44% of Americans think evolution is probably or definitely false, and two thirds think a god created human beings in the last ten thousand years. Those two numbers don’t quite fit together well — those who think a god created humans recently should also consider evolution false — but we can safely say that about half the country is ignorant or deluded about science, anyway.

We will now, of course, all close our eyes and pretend that religion has nothing at all to do with this catastrophic epidemic of stupidity.

Scott Hatfield hits the big time

I’m rather peeved and disappointed, too. The Discovery Institute Media Complaints Division posts a rebuke of bad bloggers and scientists who are mean to their shills, and there’s a link in there to Pharyngula…and I thought for sure it would be whining about something I said.

But no. The link is directly to one of Scott’s comments.

Poor guy. Now he’s going to have Casey Luskin squeaking at him. The rest of you are going to have to work at catching up by hurting the DI’s feelings badly enough that they point at you and cry. (You’re going to have to really work to beat me out, though—they have invoked my unholy, fearful name in their fundraising literature.)