Religion & Law

Intelligent Construction

Posted on December 08, 2009
Ah, there's a new entry in creationism.We've had regular ol' Biblical literalism ("God told us so"); creation "science" ("God told us so and let's see if we can mangle science to fit what we think God said"); and Intelligent Design ("God told us so and let's see if we can mangle science to fit what we think God said without saying God told us so")...

Givin' 'Em Ideas

Posted on December 08, 2009
James McGrath of Exploring Our Matrix ... oh, and a Professor of Religion at Butler University and a real Bible scholar ... has an Op-Ed piece in The Christian Science Monitor on the terminally lame Conservative Bible Project instigated by the incredibly dense Andrew Schlafly, son of the indescribably incoherent Phyllis Schlafly, being carried out at Andy's laughably cretinous Conservapedia...

Carnival the Fourteenth, Elitist Bastards and All

Posted on December 07, 2009
The Carnival of Elitist Bastards XIV is up and running at Almost Diamonds.If for no other reason, go read it to see why Stephanie Zvan finds "There's no place better than the internet to be sick.":In addition to all the wonderful people, there is also the opportunity that's been provided to me to turn this mess into something worthwhile, something educational...

Selective Memories

Posted on December 07, 2009
Science, smiance!God will see us through![A] conservative Christian group released a report questioning the science, economics and theology surrounding calls to counteract global warming. ...[Calvin Beisner, national spokesman of the Cornwall Alliance] said "pretty much all of the scientists" warning about the dangers of global warming are "secular Darwinists" who believe the Earth came about by random chance...

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Damned If You Do

Posted on December 06, 2009
A thought:In many ways, [Stephen Jay] Gould's brilliance and success made him a target for fools and creationists, and turned him from merely a paleontologist into a media celebrity on par with Carl Sagan and Steven Hawking. Like Hollywood celebrities and other high-profile figures, Gould did not have as much privacy as he would have liked, dealt with the constant distraction of people demanding his time and attention, and everything he said or did was scrutinized...

Pearls Before ...

Posted on December 05, 2009
A 1.8 million year-old ground sloth skull was discovered near Beaumont, California, according to this story from the San Bernardino Sun, "Fossil find in Beaumont fuels earth age debate." The fossil dates from the Ice Age and is the first ground sloth to be discovered west of the Rockies...

Huh?

Posted on December 04, 2009
This may be the start of another run of posts where I wind up criticizing / making fun of David Klinghoffer. For some reason, probably having to do with his getting on a train of thought that causes him to address matters that interest me, my noticing him seems to run in spurts ...

Dungeon Master God

Posted on December 03, 2009
David Klinghoffer has a strange defense of his anti-scientism.It seems that religion fulfills for adults the role that Dungeons & Dragons fulfills for 8 year olds, like his son: it provides "enchantment."Science and reason, you see, suffers from "the dullness, the flatness, the aridity of the evolutionary picture of how the world works," while religion caters to "our intuitive sense that something else, something more, lies behind and somehow all around the façade of ordinary material reality...

Philosophical Malpractice

Posted on December 03, 2009
The Undiscovery Institute has been quick to exploit the fact that the London Times Literary Supplement has well-known philosopher, Thomas Nagel, nominating Stephen Meyer's book, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the evidence for Intelligent Design as a Book of the Year...

Strutting and Fretting an Hour Upon the Stage

Posted on December 02, 2009
PZ Megahertz has already deconstructed Andrew Parker's silly attempt at The Washington Post to match up the Genesis account of creation with present-day scientific knowledge. To me, such attempts don't reveal anything about the "almost scary" correlation between Bronze Age texts and what science has revealed; they are more on the order of the supposedly amazing similarities between the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy...

Guessing Game

Posted on November 30, 2009
Darrel Falk is at the Biologos Foundation's blog, Science and the Sacred, with an article that tries to explain how otherwise intelligent and accomplished people in the sciences can accept young-Earth creationism. How good the "explanation" is I will leave to the reader...

Motorizing the Ol' Goal Posts

Posted on November 29, 2009
It seems that Australians ... or at least a certain Matthew MacDonald among them ... are familiar with the old tradition of moving the goalposts:Not all discrimination is unjust and not all relationships are the same. Parents love their children ? including their adult ones ? but the law will not allow them to marry...

On Orthodoxy In Science

Posted on November 29, 2009
. A thought:The ranks of the Darwinians, it should be noted, underwent a series of changes during the 1860s as 'Darwinism' had to be redefined and purged of any unwanted metaphysical baggage, such as Haeckel's materialistic monism. Individuals who had originally been a part of the Darwinian crew were dropped in the late 1860s for their sins?Alfred Russel Wallace for his spiritualism, and Asa Gray for his attempt to preserve a concept of design in evolution...

Beware!

Posted on November 27, 2009
Remember that YouTuber who claimed there is Biblical evidence that Barack Obama is the Antichrist? If not, I'll wait while you review ...Professor James McGrath, who previously showed that, in fact, the Bible compares President Obama favorably with Jesus, has now uncovered clear scriptural evidence that Sarah Palin is actually Satan (okay, coals to Newcastle, but still ...

Dilemmas of the Two-Faced

Posted on November 25, 2009
Here is more from the Ministry of Misinformation on the American Freedom Aliance's suit against the California Science Center because of its cancellation of the AFA's screening of the Dishonesty Institute's propaganda film, Darwin's Dilemma.As I suspected, the CSC (at least allegedly) relied on the provision of their agreement that all promotional materials had to be submitted to CSC for review and approval prior to printing or broadcast as grounds for canceling the event...

Suing Science

Posted on November 24, 2009
You may remember the Undiscovery Institute's attempt to trade on the name of the Smithsonian Institute (once again) by screening its propaganda piece, Darwin's Dilemma, at the California Science Center, which has the nifty sounding position as a "Smithsonian Institution Affiliated Science Center" that is, in fact, less exalted than it sounds...

Originality

Posted on November 24, 2009
.A thought (on a particular anniversary):ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES was published in London on 24 November 1859, while Darwin was taking the water-cure at Ilkley. It was a very ordinary-looking volume bound in sturdy green cloth, 502 pages long, and somewhat expensively priced at fourteen shillings, not nearly as gaily decked out as Murray's red-and-gilt version of Darwin's earlier Journal of Researches and nothing like the pocket-sized duodecimo Darwin had at first proposed...

TruthTM

Posted on September 30, 2009
To continue with Nick Smyth's response to criticisms, Nick asks:I have come to accept that we shouldn't dwell on the semantics of the prefix "pseudo", here, but rather that we should just ask ourselves how we would feel if we were the target of this kind of accusation...

Constitutionally Ignorant

Posted on September 29, 2009
Well, the long anticipated response of Nick Smyth to criticisms of his article at 3Quarks Daily is up at his own blog and I can't muster much enthusiasm for another round of discussion about it. There's not much new there and what there is, at least in the case of my criticisms, suffers from a lack of understanding of the original critique...

We're Gonna Be Here a While

Posted on September 29, 2009
There's nothing like a challenge to get me moving. Nick Smyth showed up here and laid some snide on me:I can't help but suspect that you can't think of ways to respond to my specific critiques aimed at your points. I made three (three!) in the new response and there is nothing about them here...

Stone-Cold Winner

Posted on September 28, 2009
Double Woo Hoo!Brian Switek of Laelaps and Dinosaur Tracking has announced that his first book, Written in Stone, will be coming out next year:In it I tell the stories of some of the most magnificent evolutionary transitions in the vertebrate fossil record, such as the evolution of birds from feathered theropod dinosaurs and whales from land-dwelling ancestors, and I use the history of science to sketch our changing understanding of these major events in vertebrate evolution...

Save the Planet ... Believe in a Fuzzy God

Posted on September 28, 2009
Robert McCredie May, Lord May, the president of the British Science Association, a former President of the Royal Society and a former British Government chief scientific advisor thinks the world is on a "calamitous trajectory" because of its failure to coordinate measures against global warming ...

Designing Science

Posted on September 28, 2009
In something that may be related to the dustup with Nick Smyth, I present the Intelligent Alien Intervention Institute!______________________________Via John Lynch .

Carnival of the Elitist Bastards XVII

Posted on September 28, 2009
.The Elitist Bastard has sailed again, proudly sporting its new bumper sticker (I didn't even know ships had bumpers!)..

Dust's Up!

Posted on September 27, 2009
Nick Smyth has been continuing the discussion of my criticism of his article at 3 Quarks Daily, entitled "Science, Pseudoscience and Bollocks," in the comments here.The gist of his claim is that "science" is impossible to define and, therefore, there is no basis for denying anyone the right to call whatever activity they want "science...

Misguided Missal

Posted on September 26, 2009
The Dishonesty Institute has released a "College Student's Back to School Guide on Intelligent Design."All you need to know about this piece of crap is that, within two short paragraphs, it perpetrates a quote mine of Darwin:Part I: Letter of Introduction: Why This Student's Guide?Welcome to College, Goodbye to Intelligent Design?The famous Pink Floyd song that laments, "We don't need no education / We don't need no thought control," is not just the rant of a rebellious mind; it is also a commentary on the failure of education to teach students how to think critically and evaluate both sides of controversial issues...

Specific Density

Posted on September 25, 2009
Whew!Jerry Coyne is not only somewhat crippled in his ability to address the subject of religion rationally, he seems to lose his ability to comprehend the English language when the subject comes up. His latest is dubbing the following from Josh Rosenau as part of some "Hall of Shame":If the goal of this blog is to be at all educational, one hopes that a vigorous defense of analogy will serve some salutary effect in the difficulties people have with analogical thinking, whether they be religious fundamentalists bent on Biblical literalism, or atheists bent on insisting that literalism is the true form of religion...

Bozo Goes to College

Posted on September 24, 2009
In another sign of the coming Apocalypse, there is an actual indication that Ray Comfort can learn ... or else yet another creationist is lying through his teeth depending on what audience he is speaking to, which would be a sign that everything is normal...

There's Bullocks In Philosophy, Too!

Posted on September 24, 2009
Nick Smyth has posted an article at 3 Quarks Daily, entitled "Science, Pseudoscience and Bollocks," that John Wilkins calls "infuriating but thought-provoking." I confess that I find it mostly confusing. Smyth wants to replace any talk about a demarcation between science and non-science/pseudoscience with a demarcation between "truth" and "bollocks...

This Is a Tribulation?

Posted on September 22, 2009
PZ Myearshertz on the aftermath of the Rapture:Have any Christian friends or neighbors? Go knock on their door. If no one answers, they're in paradise ? help yourself to their house, their car, their jewelry, that nice TV in their living room. Traffic on your commute should be a little lighter in the morning...

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