Creationists, you’re going to hell—you’re pagan!

Uh-oh. Those Catholic creationists had better watch out: the Vatican thinks they’re pagans.

Believing that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed yesterday.

Brother Consolmagno, who works in a Vatican observatory in Arizona and as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Italy, said a “destructive myth” had developed in modern society that religion and science were competing ideologies.

He described creationism, whose supporters want it taught in schools alongside evolution, as a “kind of paganism” because it harked back to the days of “nature gods” who were responsible for natural events.

Yes, I can see how the major monotheistic religions might take offense at the “God of the Gaps” and Designer gods—they are attempts to shift the deity from the cosmic and the abstract to the mundane and the petty, and also to put those gods in the realm of the testable.

I can’t say that I agree entirely with Consolmagno, though.

“Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism—it’s turning God into a nature god. And science needs religion in order to have a conscience, to know that, just because something is possible, it may not be a good thing to do.”

No, we don’t need religion for that. Atheists can have a conscience, too, and we are aware that there are human limits to what we should do. Too often, religion is used as a justification for doing the inhuman to heretics and unbelievers…and to pagans. It’s a piss-poor substitute for morality, unless you think propping up the obscenely rich or damning people for what they do with their genitals is “morality” (and isn’t that also an awfully petty concern for their majestic deity?).

No, not at my University of Oregon!

Noooooo! I’m a proud graduate of the University of Oregon, and I think Eugene is a wonderful place…and now I learn that damned dumb creationists were drooling stupidly in the student union. Three creationists lectured on their nonsense there.

There was Tom Alderman.

There is “a mountain of evidence that the universe was designed,” he said.

“Design has been proven to an extreme probability,” he said.

No, there is no evidence for design, let alone “proof” of design—even the fact that he is talking about proof shows that he knows nothing about how science works.

At least he nakedly revels in the religious foundation of Intelligent Design creationism.

“I’m confident that Genesis is true,” he said. “God’s deity and power are revealed in the cosmos.”

Alderman said that the Big Bang must have had a cause that is timeless and immaterial.

“It sounds like the God from the Bible,” he said.

Alderman’s qualification to pontificate on this subject is that he’s a lawyer. A Republican lawyer. Surprised?

Then there’s Geoffrey Simmons.

Simmons said many animals, such as giraffes and blue whales, have no fossils on record or any record of species from which they could have evolved. Simmons said intelligent design supports the theories of natural selection and survival of the fittest, but neither of those theories proves evolution.

“Billions of years isn’t enough time,” Simmons said. “Nobody has shown that a dog can become a cat.”

Evolution of whales? No fossil giraffes? Jebus, do I even need to mention that this bs about dogs evolving into cats is insane? This guy is totally out to lunch.

His qualifications? He’s an MD (Sorry, Orac.) If I ever visit Eugene again, I’m going to try and stay very healthy.

Next up, Jim Long. A professor at UO! Fortunately, he doesn’t say anything nearly as stupid as the other two guys, but man, he ought to be embarrassed by the company he is keeping; could he at least have had the integrity to point out that his fellow speakers were making up nonsense?

Long said that he does not include evolution in his curriculum; instead, he teaches that a creator designed the cell with impressive power and subtlety.

He’s an emeritus professor of chemistry who seems to be teaching a bit of general and organic chemistry. I doubt that he has much opportunity to teach that baloney about cells—cells and evolution wouldn’t be in his purview.

There are only a few comments on the article at the Daily Emerald site, but at least they’re all pointing out that these speakers were full of it.

Wilkins takes apart the pathetic trio piece by piece, and I’m informed that the honor of the UO is saved by the fact that Eugenie Scott will be giving two lectures there next week, and Bruce Alberts will be lecturing on the teaching of evolution the week after that.

The “I.D.” Code

The following missive was slipped over my transom in the dead of night. It reveals a dark secret, a clandestine society that has been working for years to hide their origins and true purpose. It begins with a murder and wends its way through a series of codes that are, as it turns out, reducible and simple, to reach a shocking conclusion.

I know who the author is, but I’m not telling. I will say that it is not Dan Brown (fortunately!).

[Read more…]

Cohen misses the point

You know I’m no fan of Richard Cohen. He’s not the person I’d go to for some sharp insight or even for the ability to recognize humor, so it should be no surprise that he failed to see the humor in Stephen Colbert’s performance at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. Comedy is a matter of taste, so that Cohen didn’t find it funny is no big deal…but this comment shows off Cohen’s typical obliviousness and tin ear.

In Washington he was playing to a different crowd, and he failed dismally in the funny person’s most solemn obligation: to use absurdity or contrast or hyperbole to elucidate — to make people see things a little bit differently. He had a chance to tell the president and much of important (and self-important) Washington things it would have been good for them to hear.

Huh? What would have been good for them to hear? I heard pointed comments about the war, the economy, Bush’s unpopularity, privacy and civil rights, and most importantly, the spinelessness of the Washington media. In fact, that’s exactly what Colbert did: he used absurdity and contrast and hyperbole (which Cohen did not find funny, but so what?) to point out a great many hard truths. Even if he wasn’t funny to some people, he used his opportunity to tell these guys some important things. He met his “most solemn obligation.”

Oddly enough, Cohen did not say what he thinks would have been good for the audience to hear. Which fork to use for the salad? A joke about airline food? A riff on the uselessness of algebra?

Needs pygmies

Various science-deniers at the ID websites were unhappy with me because I said belief in ID was an indicator of incompetence, and that I wouldn’t vote to to support tenure and promotion for one of their guys. I think they ought to adopt Florentino Floro as a cause.

“They should not have dismissed me for what I believed,” Florentino Floro, a trial judge in the capital’s Malabon northern suburb, told reporters after filing his appeal.

Floro was sacked last month and fined 40,000 pesos ($780) after a three-year investigation found he was incompetent, had shown bias in a case he was trying and had criticized court procedure, a ruling showed.

The poor man! Martyred for merely believing in something!

A Philippine judge who claimed he could see into the future and admitted consulting imaginary mystic dwarfs has asked for his job back after being fired by the country’s Supreme Court.

In case you were wondering, the dwarfs were named Armand, Luis and Angel.

He’d still have his job if they’d been named Jesus or Mohammed or JHWH.

(via Exploding Aardvark)

Cole vs. Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens is one of those guys who sometimes takes your breath away with his strong writing, but then a moment later you want to retch as he goes haring off on some sodden militaristic crusade. It’s with some sadness that I see that he deserves to be minced by Juan Cole. Although when Cole has him writhing on the ground and turns around to put the boot in…well, maybe that’s a bit harsh.

Nah, he deserved that, too. Kick him again, Juan! Harder!

And South Carolina must be the most blessed state in the whole blessed union

Speaking of too incredibly stupid to be believed, here’s a candidate for Lieutenant Governor of the fine state of South Carolina.

“I think everything ought to be taught … and let people decide for themselves. There is no science to support trans-species changes, in other words, a monkey becoming a man,” the Republican said in an interview Monday with The Associated Press.

“A bunch of amoebas didn’t get together and design all this,” Jordan said, referring to the human body. “We’d be operating on people … looking at their hearts, their liver and their lungs, I’d tell the techs, ‘Can you believe those little amoebas figured all this out?’

“I mean you’ve got to be stupid to believe in evolution, I mean really,” he said.

He’s a medical doctor, as you can tell, and you can also tell from that middle paragraph that he’s so full of Shinola that his eyeballs squeak when he blinks. Who in their right mind would think that evolution proposes that the human body was assembled by the planned, conscious action of protists? It’s revealing of a limited mind that he can only myopically imagine evolution as a kind of design by the miniscule, instead of design by nonexistent vapor.

And what is it with creationists and amoebae? The amoeba is a general form found in diverse groups, and it’s yet another indictment of their etiolated imaginations and scant scholarship that they can only think of amoebae when they need to come up with a word for that vast domain of the single-celled.

Dr Jordan seems to be wingnuttily deranged all the way down to his core. Tell me, SCarolinians, that this guy doesn’t stand a chance of getting elected.

“There are only two nations I know of that have been supernaturally blessed: Israel, because God chose them … and the other is the United States,” Jordan said.

Oh, yay. Go us.

I’d really like to hear his opinion on the Civil War, too. Was the Unpleasantness that kept the nation intact a blessing, too? Or was the sanctity the sole position of the Confederacy?

A query from New Mexico

Not all my mail is from cranks and ravers; I actually get some nice and friendly and interesting mail, too. Like this one, from Hank Alme, who asks a good question:

To what extent does intellectual honesty require me to also read guys like Behe and Dembski, and to understand their arguments?

That’s an easy one: intellectual honesty doesn’t require that you read any of their crap. One of their great successes is that they’ve managed to convince many people that it’s only fair to read their books, often reading them instead of good science. It’s not true! You are far better off reading a solid science text than wasting it on their drivel.

The only reason to read any of their work is not because it’s the honest thing to do—if we carried that reasoning to its logical conclusion, I’ve got a library of stuff you need to read first—but because it will prepare you better to deal with their arguments. It takes the edge off that first moment of shock, when they say something so awesomely stupid that you find it incredible that anyone would even suggest such a thing. I’ve experienced that moment: your eyes focus on infinity, your lips move involuntarily as you try to parse the absurdity, your brain spins its wheels for a while as you mentally downshift, trying to get yourself in the proper frame of mind to handle the curious words of the deranged person in front of you. Otherwise, though, there isn’t much point to wading through the dreck.

So no, don’t read Behe and Dembski. Read Carroll and Dawkins and Gould. Understanding the science is all the preparation you need.

By the way, I’ve noticed that commenting is way down. It could be you’re all bored with me, or that it’s my fault since I’ve been distracted with grading and exam preparation, or most worrisome, the TypeKey requirement has stymied potential commenters, or at least discouraged them. Let me know if there’s a problem— the comments contribute much to the site, and I’d hate to see them chased away.