I'm from Missouri

New category for religious attiitude toward evolution:secularism

2011-06-05T09:01:00.000-07:00

Religious attitudes towards evolution go by various names--theistic evolution,creationism ,New atheism, accommodationism, agnosticism , etc. Now I propose a new category ,secularism, that represents the complete absence of any religious attitude towards evolution (even agnostics have some kind of attitude towards the relationship between religion and evolution). I always wanted evolution and intelligent design to be like that

LSEA repeal effort fizzles

2011-06-05T04:27:00.001-07:00

Louisiana's Senate Bill 70, which would have repealed the state's antievolution law, was shelved on a 5-1 vote by the Senate Education Committee on May 26, 2011, despite the wide support for it from the scientific and educational communities — including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Louisiana Science Teachers Association, and forty-three Nobel laureate scientists. Harold Kroto, a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1996, was quoted as comparing a vote against the repeal to "requiring Louisiana school texts to include the claim that the Sun goes round the Earth."

I think it is a result of a growing distrust of scientists

Sadly, the New Orleans Cty Council favors repeal of LSEA

2011-05-10T20:49:00.000-07:00

See this article on the NCSE blog.

However ,at the end of the day, the majority of thepublic still favors teaching both the strengths and weaknesses of evolution. Who on the New Orleans City Council represents these people? No one.

Yeah,yeah, yeah, I have heard the trite expression, "science is not a democracy," a million times , But the New Orleans City Council is supposed to represent a democracy.

The supercilious trolls here will of course applaud this action. But suppressing reasonable scientific criticisms of evolution is extremely anti-science. and anti-intellectual. Being forced to confront these criticisms enhances our understanding of evolution and biology in general. If these criticisms raise doubts of the validity of evolution theory, well,that's too bad, isn't it? People who think that evolution theory has no weaknesses are not inclined to seek such weaknesses or study them. Consider co-evolution, for example. Many people just dismiss it as mere "mutual evolutionary pressure," presenting no special problems. But these people don't understand co-evolution at all. The articles in this blog's two post label groups on Non--ID Criticisms of Evolution (see left sidebar) show that co-evolution is much more complicated than this.

Are scientists and scientific societies "protestng too much" against "critical analysis"laws ?

2011-05-06T18:39:00.000-07:00

The NCSE website says,

Support for the effort to repeal Louisiana's antievolution law is mounting. The American Institute for Biological Sciences, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the American Society for Cell Biology, the Louisiana Association of Biology Educators, the Louisiana Science Teachers Association, the National Association of Biology Teachers, and the Society for the Study of Evolution together with the Society of Systematic Biologists and the American Society of Naturalists have all endorsed Louisiana's Senate Bill 70, which if enacted would repeal Louisiana Revised Statutes 17.285.1, which implemented the so-called Louisiana Science Education Act of 2008

Additionally, the Repeal Creationism website — run by Zack Kopplin, the Baton Rouge high school student who is spearheading the repeal effort — now lists the endorsement of a number of prominent scientists and educators: Francisco Ayala, Niles Eldredge, Susan Epperson (the plaintiff in the 1968 Supreme Court case Epperson v. Arkansas, which established the unconstitutionality of bans on teaching evolution), Paul R. Gross, Lawrence S. Lerner, Kenneth R. Miller, Neil Shubin, John Sulston (the forty-third Nobel laureate to support the repeal effort), and Tim White.

Certainly many laypeople must think that the real reason for scientists' opposition to these "critical analysis" laws is a belief that many scientific arguments against evolution are good, not a fear of the introduction of religious ideas into science classrooms. Those fears are adequately addressed by disclaimers in the laws. This opposition to these laws is creating a backlash of heightened public distrust of scientists.

Why isn't heliocentrism as controversial as evolution?

2011-05-04T17:42:00.000-07:00

There are two reasons--(1)heliocentrism is far more credible than evolution; (2)heliocentrism is based on what is seen to be happening now, whereas evolution theory is mostly based on circumstantial evidence of events that no one was here to witness.

And we can forget about the flat earth theory, a popular Darwinist straw man -- this has been exposed as a gigantic hoax.[1][2 ]

Awake! magazine, published by Jehovah's Witnesses --often critcizes evolution theory , but the criticisms I have seen there were mostly based on science -- usually incredulity that evolution could produce things of such great complexity or sophistication. In fact, there is a regular column titled, "Was It Designed?" I never saw the following arguments against evolution: (1)that it is wrong solely because it conflicts with the Bible ( though Awake! might incidentally point out that the theory conflicts with the Bible) ; or(2)no one was here to see evolution take place.

Darwinists' insistence that religion is the only reason for questioning evolution theory is very disingenuous.

Is evolution theory science -- or a worldview?

2011-05-02T21:05:00.000-07:00

The NCSE website says,

NCSE is pleased to offer a free preview (PDF) of Christopher Wills's The Darwinian Tourist: Viewing the World Through Evolutionary Eyes (Oxford University Press, 2010). The excerpt, chapter 1, takes a dive in Indonesia's Lembeh Strait as the chance to introduce the concept of common descent. Wills writes, "Surely no two organisms could be more dissimilar than the ingenious and graceful water-breathing cuttlefish and its clumsy air-gulping human observer. But in fact, even though present-day cuttlefish are expert shape-shifters and we are not, we had a common ancestor. And, at the time of that common ancestor, a far more astonishing shape-shift took place, one that had enormous evolutionary consequences."

WHAT? "A far more astonishing shape-shift"? I thought.that Darwinists believed that evolution was gradual.

The NCSE continues,

The publisher writes, "In The Darwinian Tourist, biologist Christopher Wills takes us on a series of adventures — exciting in their own right — that demonstrate how ecology and evolution have interacted to create the world we live in. ... With his own stunning color photographs of the wildlife he discovered on his travels, Wills not only takes us to these far-off places but, more important, draws out the evolutionary stories behind the wildlife and shows how our understanding of the living world can be deepened by a Darwinian perspective. ... The reader comes away with a renewed sense of wonder about the world's astounding diversity, along with a new appreciation of the long evolutionary history that has led to the wonders of the present-day."

Darwinists are always talking about how evolution theory enhances their wonder at nature and their belief in God (for those of them who believe in God). But believing that living thing are too complex to have evolved can have the same effects! Also, "our understanding of the living world" can also be "deepened" by criticisms of evolution theory.

Also, it is amazing that Darwinists can talk so casually and matter-of-factly about things that are very controversial. Also, Darwinists often talk about evolution theory with a fervor resembling that of bible pounding, holy rolling evangelists.

Browsing the archives

2011-04-30T18:37:00.000-07:00

This blog has 1270 posts. I suggest that visitors here --especially new visitors ---select a topic of interest to them from the list of post labels in the left sidebar of the homepage, and then browse the posts under that topic. I often do this myself sometimes ---I am surprised at how much well-researched stuff there is on this blog. There are many trolls that scoff at this blog out of sheer jealousy-- because they are unable to write a blog anywhere near as good as this one.

How about"intelligent evolution"?

2011-04-30T17:19:00.000-07:00

Or maybe we could call it"non-random evolution"? A more popular name is"frontloading." PZ Myers discusses frontloading in the preceding post, and tacitly admits that it is a possibility, despite his denial.

Another blogger on Panda's Thumb,Jack Scanlan, says,

(quoting article)--
ID predicts that the prevalence of functional protein folds with respect to combinatorial sequence space will be extremely small.

This prediction is related to the irreducible complexity one above, in that it could be invoking IBE as its justification. But if not, it doesn’t fare any better. What Jonathan is referring to is the work of Douglas Axe, a pro-ID biochemist who has conducted experiments that, he and the ID movement claims, prove that protein evolution is impossible. Thinking clearly about this for a while leads one to a single question: irrespective of the legitimacy of Axe’s conclusions about his research, why would ID predict that protein evolution is impossible? Life could have been designed by a Designer with the ability to evolve - this possibility is at least as probable as the opposite scenario, that life was designed not to evolve. But without any knowledge about the Designer, how can one scenario be given more probabilistic weight than the other? This prediction, like the others above, doesn’t follow from ID.(emphasis added)

The statement, "Life could have been designed by a Designer with the ability to evolve," -can be considered to be a description of frontloading. An alternative to frontloading is instantaneous creation. If there was neither frontloading nor instantaneous creation, then we know that life must have evolved by random mutations, and what Scanlan erroneously calls the "opposite scenario" - that life was designed not to evolve --becomes an impossibility.

Also, why is it necessary to know anything about the Designer in order to determine the probability of frontloading?

Also, even frontloading presents special problems in the case of co-evolution of mutualism (interspecies co-dependence) -- there often needs to be a way of simultaneously triggering mutations in both kinds of organisms.

Also, it is hypocritical of Scanlan to condemn ID proponents for allegedly using a"best explanation"argument when this argument is so often used by Darwinists.

Afso, I feel that it is not necessary for scientific theories to make predictions ---making good explanations is enough. When there is too much pressure to make predictions , a lot of explanations are redefined as predictions. A lot of this redefinition is what I call contrived serendipity -- as in"well,well,well, looky here.Our theory explains this too. We predicted that our theory has great explanatory power."

Yet another fallacy is that evolution theory should not be criticized without offering a reasonable alternative explanation in its place. If the result of criticizing evolution theory is being left with no explanation at all, that would merely be the same situation that Thomas Edison found himself in when he was accused of not making progress in his efforts to invent a practical electric light: "I've made lots of progress -- I now know lots of things that won't work."

BTW, Scanlan also says,

(Note that I won’t be touching on the two astronomical/cosmological predictions Jonathan gives, as they don’t have anything to do with biological intelligent design, which is what I focus on. Cosmological ID and biological ID are not related and shouldn’t be conflated, as doing so makes things confusing.)

Not related? Has Scanlan never heard of the "fine-tuned universe," the idea that physical matter and physical constants appear to be specially designed to make life possible (as discussed in the book The Privileged Planet)?

It is apparent why I was kicked off of Darwin's Thumb and other Darwinist blogs --- because I make too much sense, and I don't feel I am immodest in saying so. In contrast to those blogs, I often bend over backwards to accommodate dissenting comments, complaints to the contrarry notwthstanding And remember, unlike many other bloggers , I have to answer most dissenting comments myself (thanks, Jim Sherwood and a few others,for helping me).

Sleazy PZ Myers begs the question about truth of evolution

2011-04-28T09:47:00.000-07:00

Sleazy PZ Myers wrote,

If we were looking for evidence for evolution, we might as well stop here. The existence of gene families, for cryin' out loud, is evidence for evolution. This paper is far beyond arguing about the truth of evolution — that's taken for granted as the simple life's breath of biology — but instead asks a more specific question: when did all of these genes arise? And they have a general method for estimating that.

(emphasis added)

So there you have it --brazenly begging the question.

BTW, "for crying out loud," also a favorite of Fatheaded Ed Brayton, is a minced Christian oath, where somene starts to say , "for Christ's sake."

PZ alsosays

One of the creationist summaries is by an intelligent design creationist. He looks at the paper and claims it supports this silly idea called front-loading: the Designer seeded the Earth with creatures that carried a teleological evolutionary program, loading them up with genes at the beginning that would only find utility later. The unsurprising fact that many gene families are of ancient origin seems to him to confirm his weird idea of a designed source, when of course it does nothing of the kind, and fits quite well in an evolutionary history with no supernatural interventions at all.

Well, PZ, if these genes are of ancient origin and not the result of random mutation, then how did they get there in the first place? PZ is really talking through his hat here. He has no credibility at all.

BTW -- the paper that PZ discusses is just a big just-so story.

The"bad design"argument against ID

2011-04-24T10:03:00.000-07:00

Ironically, proponents of Intelligent Design try to stick to scientific arguments whereas the critics of ID often resort to arguments of a religious or theological nature. One of the favorite such arguments of ID critics is that a good, benevolent, unerring, and all-powerful "intelligent designer" would not have made the bad designs that we often see in nature. The appendix is often cited as an example. However, I think that the overall design is so bad that it might be better to just start over with a clean slate. Let's start with immortality. I have thought that immortality would be as terrifying as death -- we would keep doing the same things over and over again until the boredom became inbearable --- so maybe a lifespan of, say,10,000 years would be better But then I thought that there are some things that I never tire of doing, and there are so many things to do in the world that by the time I finished doing all of them and had to start over doing old things again, those old things will be so far in the past that I will have forgotten them and they will seem like new things again, so I will never get bored. So I have concluded that good design would include immortality.

Is Intelligent Design a belief system, or a scientific field of study?

2011-04-22T19:08:00.000-07:00

It can be either. ID can be the belief that living things are too complex to have evolved by Darwinian mechanisms or to have spontaneously appeared in the first place. It can also be the study of the extent to which that belief can be scientifically supported. Too many people ignore or fail to see this difference. Also, it is extremely unscientific and anti-intellectual to assume in advance that that belief cannot be scientifically supported.

"Children's crusade" seeks repeal of Louisiana "academic freedom" law

2011-04-22T10:22:00.000-07:00

Mascot Zack Kopplin, a mere high school senior, is being paraded as a co-leader, if not the main leader, of a campaign to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act, in order to give the false impression that this is a grassroots campaign and not something driven by evil godless college professors.{1]

Zack's blog says.{2] .

The LSEA ”employs code language like ‘critical thinking’ and ‘teaching the alternatives’ in order to pretend to be promoting something noble,” wrote Zack Kopplin in the Huffington Post earlier this year.

Zack lied-- the term "alternative(s)" appears nowhere in the LSEA, obviously because creationism is one of the most obvious alternatives to evolution.

Zack gives the usual "the-sky-is-falling" arguments about LSEA "killing jobs." Many tech companies are not into biology at all. Very few tech businesses use evolution at all, and those that do use microevolution, not macroevolution. Even creationists accept microevoultion.

How many oil-drilling companies are leaving Louisiana because creationists do not believe in modern geology?

When considering locating in Louisiana, companies would consider things like tax breaks and infrastructure, not the LSEA.

There are 64 parishes(equivalent to counties) in Louisiana -- so far only two have tried to introduce creationism in the public schools.

Where are Louisiana's tech-field professors? Why aren't they saying that they want tech companies and tech societies to come to the state, LSEA or no LSEA?

In 2008 LSEA was passed unanimously by the Louisiana state senate, was passed by the state House by a vote of 93-4, and was signed by the governor.[3] I think that the government would look very foolish if it repealed the law.

The different kinds of design

2011-04-10T21:37:00.000-07:00

There is not just "intelligent design." There is also"unintelligent design."Some people may interpret "unintelligent" as meaning resulting from random causes --e.g., Darwinian evolution. But a better name for that woud be "non-intelligent design" or"non-sentient design."(however,"non-intelligent design" can be misinterpreted as meaning "bad design" resulting from stupidity or carelessness).."Unintelligent design" can also mean bad design. Bad design can result from stupidity or carelessness, or even deliberateness(as by an evil creator who wants us to suffer from bad design). So I think that design should be divided into two categories: "sentient design" and "non-sentient design" ---both types can be good or bad. And the overall term shouldbe "apparent design."

Bad design has been used as an argument against so-called "intelligent design"---so I think the term "sentient design" should be used instead. And the study of "sentient design" is not the same as creationism -- it could just be the study of the extent to whicht things give the appearance of being sentiently designed

Darwinist snow-job consisting of esoteric high-falutin gobbledygook

2011-04-10T19:03:00.000-07:00

An abstract of a scientific paper said,

A scenario for the evolution of a simple spherical multicellular organism from a single eukaryotic cell is proposed. Its evolution is based on environmentally induced alterations in the cell cycle, which then, by the Baldwin effect, become autonomous. Further patterning of this primitive organism--a Blastaea, could again involve environmentally induced signals like contact with the substratum, which could then become autonomous, by, perhaps, cytoplasmic localization and asymmetric cell division. Generating differences between cells based on positional information is probably very primitive, and is well conserved; its relation to asymmetric cell division is still unclear. Differentiation of new cell types can arise from non equivalence and gene duplication. Periodicity also evolved very early on. The origin of gastrulation may be related to mechanisms of feeding. The embryo may be evolutionarily privileged and this may facilitate the evolution of novel forms. Larvae are secondarily derived and direct development is the primitive condition as required by the continuity principle

The problem with critics of evolution theory is that they are too dumb to understand this stuff.

One of the advantages of evolution theory was the elegance of its simplicity --natural selection operating on random mutations. Now it looks like the evolutionary process itself is so complex that it was "intelligently designed" ---so we are back to the idea of ID

True morality comes from self-interest,not religion,science, or the evolutionary process

2011-04-07T22:34:00.000-07:00

There is a big debate going on as to whether morality originated in religion,science or human evolution. None of these , I believe -- I believe that morality is based on the self-interest of creating a better society for ourselves as well as others. If we all followed the Golden Rule -- do unto others as you would have them do unto you --the result would be a better society for everryone. To me,the bigger question is whether science created immorality - as in the Darwin-to-Hitler link.

ID in Awake! magazine

2011-04-07T17:04:00.000-07:00

The April 2011 edition of Awake!-- a magazine of Jehovah's Witnesses -- has an article ( page26 ) describing a special glue secreted by the sandcastle worm that the worm uses to build its tubular house of particles of sand and shell. The glue hardens quickly underwater. Synthetic versions of the glue are also discussed.

The article then asks "did the sandcastle worm's unique glue come about by chance? Or was it designed?"

Of course, many ID arguments are much more sophisticated than this. But JW's are mostly creationists and therefore tend to be easily persuaded by ID arguments (probably many JW's consider ID arguments to be blasphemous because these arguments imply doubt of God's word --to hell with Dover Judge"Jackass" Jones' ruling that ID cannot"uncouple" itself from creationism) In a recent opinion poll --only 8 percent of JW's agreed with the statement,"evolution is the best explanation for the origins of human life on earth."

And JW is not a minor sect -- I see Kingdom Halls all over the place. Yet Darwinists tend to ignore JW --and 7th Day Adventists and Mormons --when claiming that large Christian sects accept evolution.

If an animal gives birth to a new species, can that initiate the new species?

2011-04-07T09:18:00.000-07:00

The new species would need to find a mate (or mates) ---maybe a littermate (unlikely in general, impossible if there is no litter). Or maybe the new species could hybridze with a related species - but some of the new traits could be lost or compromised and many hybrids are sterile. It is like the question of where did Cain's wife come from. Yet another dilemma for Darwinian evolution

IMO best poll choices are OEC and "not sure"

2011-03-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

Public opinion polls on origins usually allow the folllowing choices--

unguided evolution -- -some supporting evidence, a lot of opposing evidence

old--earth creationism-- a lot of evidence for an old earth and "changes through time"

young-earth creattionism -- little supporting evidence, no opposing evidence other than a lack of supporting evidence. The appearance that the earth is old could be an illusion

So,
IMO best poll choices are OEC and "not sure"

I got it! Instead of "Intelligent Design," how about "Apparent Design"or"Seeming Design"!

2011-03-24T18:40:00.000-07:00

Advantages of terms "AD" and "SD"-

No intelligent designer needed

Bad design as well as good design allowed

Unintelligent causes as well as intelligent causes allowed

Even if evolution is true -- discussing criticisms of it enhances understanding of it and biology in general

2011-03-22T17:37:00.000-07:00

The taboo against criticizing evolution is extremely anti-science and anti-intellectual.

I have been banned from many Darwinist blogs because my arguments against evolution were too persuasive. In contrast, the Panda's Thumb blog now has two creationist trolls, FL and IBELIEVEINGOD, who submit really nonsensical comments, but these trolls are allowed to stay in order to (1) give a false image of tolerance and open-mindedness and (2) give the false impression that opposing arguments are weak.

"Academic freedom" bills protect objective teaching of co-evolution

2011-03-20T22:59:00.000-07:00

Co-evolution presents one of the biggest challenges to evolution theory. For example, some parasites do not just kill or paralyze their hosts but make dramatic changes in the host's behavior. Multi-host parasiticrelationships have no apparent evolutionary pathway. Using wasp sex pheromones for attraction, a species of orchid is pollinated by only one species of wasp. Some mutualistic relationships require simultaneous mutations(sometimes whole groups of mutations in each species)in two different species at the exact same time and place. Co-evolution represents the most complex and most unlikely adaptations in nature. For more details, click on the two blog post label groups on Non-ID Criticisms of Evolution---the original such group and the new #1 such group (Post label groups are listed in the left sidebar of the homepage)

Majority of public wants scientfic and even pseudoscientific criticisms of evolution taught in public schools

2011-03-20T20:24:00.000-07:00

The website of the National Center for Science Education describes several state "academic freedom" bills. Why shouldn't these bills pass ? They are constitutional as written and they represent the wishes of the majority. We have all heard that "science is not a democracy"-- but constitutional education policy is.

Wesley "Ding" Elsberry puts foot in mouth

2011-03-15T10:50:00.000-07:00

"Ding" wrote of a Florida bill,

Floridians should tell their representatives that there’s too little time and definitely too little money in our education system to spend any of either telling kids narrow sectarian religious antievolution lies. The folks pushing hardest for this are not generically for religion; they are for an exclusionary view that aims to undercut not just atheism and agnosticism, but also any Christian denomination that accepts “theistic evolution” or “evolutionary creationism”.

"The folks pushing hardest for this are not generically for religion"? I thought that they were all supposed to be a bunch of fundy crackpots.

Why are "theistic evolution” and “evolutionary creationism”kosher while "intelligent design" is not? TE and EC are explicitly religious while ID is not. ID can be defined as the study of the extent to which things in nature appear to be intelligently designed rather than being products of blind chance.

Evokution is NOT central to biology

2011-03-08T04:31:00.000-08:00

We keep hearing that tired old refrain that evolution is"central" to biology, or some such drivel. That is like saying that because manufacturing is the origin of engineered things, manufacturing engineering is central to engineering. Other engineeering disciplines -- e.g.mechanical,electrical, and chemical -- are needed to understand and design those things.

Did Kitzmiller decision help inspire "academic freedom" bills?

2011-02-20T06:41:00.000-08:00

The National Center for Science Education reports that the seventh "anti-evolution" bill has been introduced in a state legislature in 2011, and that this bill is also the second such bill introduced in Tennessee (actually, it looks like it might be just a companion bill to a bill introduced in the other house of the legislature). The Darwinists seem to be surprised by these bills, but what I find surprising about these bills is that there are not more of them being introduced and not more of them being enacted into law -- after all, these bills merely reflect the majority opinion that both the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of evolution should be taught in the public schools. I cannot help but feel that these bills are partly a response to the censorious Kitzmiller v. Dover opinion, which says,

. . . we will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID.

Though the above statement only prohibits requiring teachers to criticize evolution theory, the ruling must certainly also have the effect of deterring teachers from criticizing evolution theory on their own. These so-called "anti-evolution" or "academic freedom" bills are partly attempts to make "lawsuit-proof" laws that would counter such intimidation. Kitzmiller was a Pyrrhic victory that has really backfired on the Darwinists.

As I pointed out before, the Darwinists are victims of their own "Red Queen hypothesis" -- they must run hard just to stay in place.

Massive effort by Darwinists barely derails "academic freedom" bill

2011-02-18T15:16:00.000-08:00

The Darwinists are of course crowing about their recent "defeat" of an "academic freedom" bill in New Mexico. But despite a massive effort, the Darwinists merely won by the skin of their teeth -- a committee voted by a bare majority of 5-4 to table the bill. The website of the National Center for Science Education says,

Members of NCSE, NMSR, the New Mexico Academy of Sciences, and the Coalition for Excellence in Science and Math Education were on hand at the committee meeting to express their concern about the bill. Also, a legislative analysis reported (PDF) that the state Attorney General's office described HB 302 as "vulnerable to legal challenge on grounds that its definitions and application are unconstitutionally vague" and the Administrative Office of the Courts warned, "If enacted, HB 302 may result in litigation if the law is interpreted to provide teachers with the latitude to advance certain concepts, such as creationism or intelligent design, as science."

The Panda's Thumb also has an article about this.

After all these years, the Darwinists have made no headway against the fundies and other critics of evolution theory. The Darwinists are victims of their own "Red Queen hypothesis" -- they have to run hard just to stay in place.

Darwinist fallacies

2011-02-03T19:46:00.000-08:00

This blog has become nearly inactive while the evolution debate has continued virtually unabated at other blogs and websites -- e.g., Panda's Thumb, Uncommon Descent, Why Evolution is True, National Center for Science Education, Evolution News & Views, etc.. I have mostly lost interest in the debate because I feel that the Darwinists are not debating the real issues. I feel that a large part of the debate is based on fallacies promoted by the Darwinists. These fallacies are:

Darwinists claim that there is no credible or plausible scientific evidence against evolution. So Darwinists claim that the only arguments against evolution are that (1) no one was there to see it and (2) evolution theory conflicts with Genesis and other religious stories of creation. Therefore, Darwinists claim that religion is the only basis for doubting evolution theory. Darwinists think that therefore all they have to do is persuade the clergy to accept evolution, and then the clergy's congregations would follow like sheep. I am tempted to puke on the shoes of the clergy just to show that I don't give a flying fig about what they think about evolution.

Darwinists claim that those who question evolution just don't "understand" it, so think that educating more people about evolution would increase public acceptance of it. But many of evolution's biggest critics understand evolution very, very well. And "understanding" evolution is a two-edged sword -- it can increase doubts about evolution as well as decrease them. For example, learning about co-evolution greatly increased my doubts about evolution.

Darwin Day again -- argh!

2011-01-29T17:15:00.000-08:00

Darwin Day is here again! [1] [2] The Darwin-Lincoln essay contests! The Evolution Sunday sermons! The parties with the Darwinian birthday cakes! Ugh!

Hypocritical Wes "Ding" Elsberry complains about censorship

2011-01-22T18:53:00.000-08:00

On the Panda's Thumb blog, Wes "Ding" Elsberry barfs,

The “intelligent design” creationists over at the Discovery Institute have long maintained a hypocritical stance. For public consumption, they say that they favor “teaching the controversy”. However, almost any time they control the forum, they pretty ruthlessly make it impossible for one to hear anything but their own spin on a topic. Now, they are asking for comments . . . . . .

. . . . . In the past, the DI’s “Evolution News and Views” (EN&V) blog has dispensed entirely with the concept of comments. However, a post there indicates that the DI is posed to break with their tendentious tradition, to at least some degree:

Of course, you might want to discuss it with the scientists and scholars themselves. To that end, comments will be allowed on selected articles. All comments are held for moderation. The debate over evolution and intelligent design attracts all kinds, including those who detract from the conversation by their obnoxious behavior. In order to maintain a higher level of discourse, we will not publish comments that use foul language, ad hominem attacks, threats, or are otherwise uncivil.

Given their past history in moderation practice, though, I’d recommend that you compose any comments destined for EN&V in a text editor so that you can hang on to your work, without assuming that they will post and archive it on their site.

Well, Ding, the National Center for Science Education's blog still does not accept any comments at all.

When I complained about having technical difficulty in posting a comment on Ding's personal blog "Austringer," Ding answered, "that is so-o-o-o not my problem," and refused to post the comment for me.

Also, the Darwinists like to brag about how many Darwinist blogs have banned me. I guess they found my ideas about co-evolution to be too threatening (see the post-label group titled, "Non-ID criticisms of evolution").

Merry Kitschmas: Darwinists still crowing about Kitzmiller decision

2010-12-21T20:50:00.000-08:00

Five years later, Darwinists are still crowing about their Pyrrhic victory in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. So far as I know, never before has so much weight been given to the opinion of a single judge. Furthermore, Judge Jones is a crackpot activist judge who said in a Dickinson College commencement speech that the decision was based on his cockamamie notion that the Founders based the Establishment Clause upon a belief that organized religions are not "true" religions -- here is what he said:

. . . . . this much is very clear. The Founders believed that true religion was not something handed down by a church or contained in a Bible, but was to be found through free, rational inquiry. At bottom then, this core set of beliefs led the Founders, who constantly engaged and questioned things, to secure their idea of religious freedom by barring any alliance between church and state.

There is no way that the above interpretation can be derived from the Establishment Clause, which says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Ironically, when Judge Jones gave the commencement speech, he was standing behind the Dickinson College seal -- designed by USA Founders Benjamin Rush and John Dickinson -- containing a picture of an open bible and the Latin-language Dickinson College motto which translates, "Religion and learning, the bulwark of liberty."

Unfortunately, the speech is no longer posted on the Dickinson College wesite.

In contrast to their harping on the Dover decision, the Darwinists have been mostly silent about the Comer decision. That is not too surprising -- in the Comer case, all four federal judges who heard the case -- the district court judge and the three appeals court judges -- ruled against Chris Comer. The Comer decisions showed that there is a limit to how far judges are willing to go in opposing criticism of evolution in public schools. Now we have the "Comer trap" in addition to the "Dover trap"! LOL

Gunman fires upon local school board in Florida -- but apparently it wasn't about evolution in the state science standards

2010-12-15T11:05:00.000-08:00

A news article said,

The gunman, Clay A. Duke, opened fire on Husfelt [the local superintendent of schools] at a school board meeting Tuesday night in Panama City, but nobody was hit. A security officer, Mike Jones, exchanged fire with Duke, wounding him. Duke, a 56-year-old ex-convict, then fatally shot himself with a 9-mm handgun and was the only casualty of the violence caught on videotape.

. . . . . . . Police wouldn't comment on a motive, but reports said Duke was angry because, he said, the school district had fired his wife.

My first thought was that the gunman was upset about the Florida state science standards' statement that "evolution is the fundamental concept underlying all of biology." Darn -- no such luck.

Judge Jones is hypocritical about "judicial independence"

2010-11-30T08:51:00.000-08:00

It may seem hard to believe, but five years after the Kitzmiller v. Dover ruling, Judge John E. "Adolf" Jones III is still on the lecture circuit. Here is a recent lecture by Jones hypocritically titled, "From Scopes to Kitzmiller and beyond: lessons in judicial independence." I know that this lecture is recent because Jones said that the Kitzmiller trial testimony had concluded five years previously (my, how time flies). I say that the lecture was hypocritical because his blatant chumminess with the Kitzmiller plaintiffs' representatives -- e.g., plaintiffs' expert witness Barbara Forrest and plaintiffs' attorney Richard Katzke -- is not consistent with the idea of "judicial independence."

Judge Jones has falsely characterized criticism of his decision as just an issue of "judicial independence" -- as I have previously pointed out, some of his biggest critics have been Darwinist, atheist, or neutral.

Darwinists still missing the point regarding the "plagiarism" charges against Judge Jones

2010-11-24T18:50:00.000-08:00

On Panda's Thumb, Timothy Sandefur writes,

Y’all remember how, years ago, Casey Luskin and the boys were calling Judge Jones a plagiarist because the final decision in Kitzmiller drew a lot of language from the briefs? I pointed out at the time that, well, that’s what briefs are for. Now here’s an article in Political Research Quarterly that uses software to find that even the U.S. Supreme Court draws a lot of language from the briefs filed by the parties in any particular case,

But the "plagiarism" charges against Judge Jones were not based on just the copying, but were based on the extreme one-sidedness of the copying. Larry Moran, a hardline Darwinist himself, summed it up nicely:

Any junior clerk could have copied the material in a single afternoon, making some minor changes of wording. This is not a case of picking and choosing from both sides and writing a summary that incorporates a few phrases here and there. It's wholesale copying, the order is the same and entire paragraphs are copied for 34 pages.

Ironically, Sandefur also says, "For most of us, it’s nice to know that court opinions show the judges actually read the briefs." On the contrary, the Kitzmiller opinion shows no evidence that Judge Jones actually read the ID-as-science sections of the defense briefs, because the opinion did not quote or cite those sections, directly or indirectly.

I think that a major reason for the one-sidedness in the Kitzmiller opinion was that Judge Jones felt fairly safe in ignoring the defense briefs' arguments because an appeal was not expected because of the changeover in the school board membership.

Nick Matzke is a dodo

2010-11-21T12:55:00.000-08:00

Nick Matzke is a former Public Information Project Director of the National Center for Science Education and was an advisor to the plaintiffs in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. In a recent post on Panda's Thumb, he wrote,

To a first approximation, if evangelicals become OK with evolution, then the evolution fight will be over and the evolutionists will have won, in the Western world, at least.

Sheeeesh

What? Birds are "living dinosaurs"?

2010-11-05T12:52:00.000-07:00

In his new book Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature", Brian Switek wrote, "If you want to see living dinosaurs, you don't have to trek to a steaming jungle or isolated plateau. All you have to do is put up a bird feeder and look out the window." Now I have heard everything. Sick, sick, sick.

Not surprisingly, this stupid book has been endorsed by the National Center for Science Education.

Supreme Court won't review ACSI v. Stearns (fundy schools v. UC)

2010-10-26T03:32:00.000-07:00

Anticlimactically, the Supreme Court denied certiorari for Association of Christian Schools International v. Stearns. [1] [2] [3] In that case, the lower courts rejected a lawsuit charging that the University of California's refusal to accept particular Christian-oriented high-school courses as counting towards admission requirements is a violation of the religion clauses of the First Amendment. This blog has a post label group of articles about the case. Some documents of the case are here. The denial of certiorari was really no surprise -- getting review by the Supreme Court is a longshot (only a tiny fraction of submitted cases are accepted for review) and ACSI v. Stearns was not even a published opinion, greatly hurting the chances of getting Supreme Court review. I myself opposed the lawsuit, at least in regard to the biology texts; I previously wrote [4] ,
.

IMO the Bob Jones University biology text (a 2-volume set) went too far when it said in the introduction, "If the conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong, no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them." IMO that statement discourages critical thinking and smacks of brainwashing, and I cannot condone that statement when one of my main reasons for supporting the teaching of scientific and pseudoscientific criticisms of evolution is to encourage critical thinking. IMO the statement is just as bad as the new Florida science standards' statement that "evolution is the fundamental concept underlying all of biology."

Unlike many Darwinists, I try to be consistent in my thinking and avoid knee-jerk opinions. For example, many Darwinists blindly supported Chris Comer without considering the details of her case. She apparently lost a lot of support as more and more people understood the details of her case, but diehards like the National Center for Science Education continued to support her.

The Supreme Court's official announcement of denial of certiorari said,

09-1461 ASSN. CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS, ET AL. V. STEARNS, ROMAN, ET AL.
The motion of Catholic League, et al. for leave to file a brief as amici curiae is granted. The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.

The Catholic League's filing of a motion for leave to file an amicus brief implies that at least one of the parties to the case withheld consent for the brief, and I wonder why. Supreme Court Rule 37 says that amicus briefs are automatically accepted if all parties give written consent --

2. (a) An amicus curiae brief submitted before the Court's consideration of a petition for a writ of certiorari, motion for leave to file a bill of complaint, jurisdictional statement, or petition for an extraordinary writ, may be filed if accompanied by the written consent of all parties, or if the Court grants leave to file under subparagraph 2(b) of this Rule . . . . . .

(b) When a party to the case has withheld consent, a motion for leave to file an amicus curiae brief before the Court's consideration of a petition for a writ of certiorari, motion for leave to file a bill of complaint, jurisdictional statement, or petition for an extraordinary writ may be presented to the Court . . . . . . . Such a motion is not favored.

IMO this blog has the Internet's best coverages of some prominent lawsuits -- ACSI v Stearns, Caldwell v. Caldwell, and Comer v. Scott (see sidebar for post-label groups for these cases). I am very disappointed that this blog does not get more traffic.

NCSE moans that "only" about 10% of class time is devoted to evolution

2010-10-19T06:04:00.000-07:00

In an article in the Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, staff members of the National Center for Science Education (National Center for Selling Evolution?) whine,

. . . . . . the average amount of time devoted to evolution was only 13.7 h.. Because states typically require approximately 120–150 h of instruction for high school classes, only approximately 10% of the average high school biology class is devoted to a principle without which, in Theodosius Dobzhansky's famous phrase, nothing in biology makes sense.

The Darwinists have gone far beyond merely suppressing criticism of evolution and have been grossly and shamelessly exaggerating evolution's importance and relevance. Unfortunately, the science education standards of some states really hoke up evolution -- for example, the new Florida state standards call evolution "the fundamental concept underlying all of biology" and misdefines "theory" as being "well-supported and widely accepted"(there are strong theories and weal theories). What sane people should do is fight back at the local level -- local school boards, individual schools, and individual teachers -- to discourage implementation of such crackpot state standards.

Paranoid Darwinist academicians

2010-10-15T20:03:00.000-07:00

Some Darwinist academicians have a paranoid fear that anti-evolutionists are conspiring to advance anti-evolution by exploiting the prestige of academic institutions. Ironically named Dr. Mark Chancey (chancey like random mutation), chair of the Department of Religious Studies (!) at Southern Methodist University, said in an article in the campus newspaper,

Unfortunately, the Discovery Institute has a track record of using SMU's prestige and academic reputation to bolster its own claims to legitimacy. Consider this quote from Phillip E. Johnson, a chief ID architect: "The movement we now call the Wedge made its public debut at a conference of scientists and philosophers held at Southern Methodist University in March 1992."

Actually, there are very good practical reasons for holding ID conferences and lectures on university campuses: (1) Universities are centers of intellectual activity, with many students and faculty members who are interested in discussions about ID; and (2) universities have large auditoriums for presenting conferences and lectures. So there is no conspiracy. ID conferences and lectures are presented on campuses for the same sort of reason that robbers rob banks, i.e., robbers rob banks because that is where the money is.

Chancey continues,

Johnson goes on to characterize that conference as "a respectable academic gathering." This language implies that SMU sponsored an academic conference in which ID proponents participated as full-fledged scholars. In fact, the 1992 event, too, was sponsored not by any academic unit of the university but by a campus ministry-a detail conspicuously absent from Johnson's description.

What? How does that language imply that SMU sponsored the conference?

Chancey's article is the subject of a Panda's Thumb post by Wesley "Ding" Elsberry.

Predictably, NCSE's Eugenie Scott is still peddling the "all anti-evolutionism is based on religion" nonsense

2010-10-03T19:00:00.000-07:00

In a previous interview, Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, said, "antievolutionism is uniformly the product of religious opposition," and of course she continues to repeat this nonsense.

A Los Angeles Times article said,

In his Academy Award-nominated 1960 drama, "Inherit the Wind," director Stanley Kramer offered a fictionalized depiction of the famed Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, in which Tennessee high school instructor John Scopes was tried for violating the state's Butler Act, a law prohibiting the teaching of evolution.

Fifty years after its initial release, with activists on the political right and left still bitterly divided over social issues, the film remains sharply relevant, something the Malibu Film Society hopes to underscore with a special anniversary screening and panel discussion Sunday . . . .

. . . . "I always tell people, 'Don't look at it as a movie reporting on the Scopes trial,'" she [Eugenie Scott] said. "It does capture a very important mood that reflects the anti-evolution movement, [which contends that] evolution is not biblical, so it should be opposed."

She has no credibility.

The article notes that the screening was held at the Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue. This may unfortunately reinforce the false stereotype that Jews, because of their tendency to support the so-called "separation of church and state," generally support the dogmatic teaching of evolution in the schools. The fact is that many Jews -- particularly orthodox Jews -- are critical of evolution theory.

Creationist rap music

2010-09-16T15:29:00.000-07:00

This amusing website has creationist rap music. Here are some of the lyrics, misspellings included:

SONG: REMEMBERED AS DRAGONS

SO TAKE YOUR RADIOMETRIC DECAY
AND YOUR CARBON 14 AND JUST PUT AWAY
WE WONT BE SWAYED FROM THE TRUTH BY YOUR NONSENSE
WE WILL PROTEST AND REQUEST YOU CHANGE CONTENTS
AND RECOGNIZE THAT YOU BUILT YOUR CLAIMS ON PRETENSE
AND ADMIT THAT EVOLUTION IS A MYTH OF PSEUDOSCIENCE
SOME SCIENTISTS WONT ADMIT THAT BEING ATHEIST
COULD MAKE THEM BIASED WHEN INTERPRETING THE EVIDENCE
THEY THINK WERE ACCIDENTS THERE INTELLECT IS ARROGANT
MANY DISMISS AND NEGLECT WHAT IS RELEVANT
LIKE THE DISCOVERY OF COELACANTH
THIS LIVING FOSSIL IN A FISH MARKET
TORE IN HALF THE FOSSIL RECORD
INCONVENIENT FOR THE SEASONED PROFESSIONALS
LIKE PROFESSORS AND PROFESSED INTELLECTUALS
THERE OBSERVATIONS GOTTA FIT PREVAILING PARADIGMS

SONG: THE PLANET OF THE APES

WHATa€™S YOUR SPECIES? WHATa€™S YOUR ORIGIN?
WE OWE OUR LIVES TO GOD BUT WERE IGNORING HIM
WHAT DO WE EXPECT WHEN THE WHOLE HUMAN RACE
THINKS WERE JUST A MISTAKE LIKE THE PLANET OF THE APES?

- - - - - - -

ARE WE JUST A ZOO FULL OF PEOPLE CONVINCED THAT WE ARE EQUAL
TO AN ANIMAL LEVEL THATa€™S EVIL STRAIGHT FROM THE DEVIL
YOU CAN SEE IT UNRAVEL LIKE THE TOWER OF BABEL
TELL US WERE KNUCKLE DRAGGIN MONKEYS LIKE ON ANIMAL PLANET
WERE JUST EXAMPLES OF MAMMALS ALTHOUGH EXTRAVAGANT SAMPLES
THEY TRAMPLE OVER TRUTH JUST LIKE A TRAMPLING MAMMOTH
ARE YOU AMAZED BY THIS EVOLUTION CRAZE?

LOL

To play the song, click on one of the triangles preceding the song title (the first triangle is "lo-fi," presumably for modem connections, and the second triangle is "hi-fi," presumably for broadband connections). It sounds just like gangsta rap.

Darwinist roots of the Holocaust

2010-09-05T23:27:00.000-07:00

The minutes of the infamous Wannsee Conference say,

Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes. The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as a the seed of a new Jewish revival (see the experience of history.)
(emphasis added)

But the holocaust "experts" say that there is no evidence whatsoever that Darwinism influenced the Nazis. Nosirree.

Why this blog has been slowing down

2010-09-05T00:19:00.000-07:00

This blog has really been slowing down lately. When I started out, I tried to post an article about once every one or two days -- now I post only about 2-3 articles per month. The main reason for that is that I have run out of things to say on the subjects I have been blogging about -- mostly the evolution controversy and the holocaust. This blog was created mainly to present my unorthodox views on these subjects because I was banned and censored on so many other blogs. I don't have a lot to say about these subjects because I try to reduce the debates to the simplest terms. For example, on the subject of evolution v. religion, I have just one simple question for Darwinist cafeteria Christians: Considering that the bible's creation story makes much more sense than the gospel, why do you take the gospel literally while not taking the creation story literally? The creation story is fairly straightforward whereas the gospel is full of illogic, ambiguities, inconsistencies, and unintelligibility, and the creation story is consistent with the idea of an all-powerful god whereas the god of the gospel is a weak, limited god who must struggle against Satan for control of the world. I feel that unless the Darwinist cafeteria Christians can satisfactorily answer that question -- and I don't think they can -- or at least admit that they cannot satisfactorily answer it, then to me they have no credibility, and I therefore have no desire to debate them further. However, the debates about evolution v. religion go on endlessly on other blogs. My comments about the holocaust have also been an attempt to present issues in very simple terms -- my main argument has been that a "systematic" holocaust was impossible because the Nazis had no objective and reliable way(s) of identifying Jews and non-Jews. My main criticism of evolution theory has been about co-evolution (i.e., adaptation to other organisms as opposed to adaptation to the physical environment -- co-evolution is sometimes defined as mutual adaptation between organisms) -- I have argued that co-evolution is a big problem for evolution theory even where there is no doubt that the individual co-dependent traits are not "intelligently designed" and can arise through random mutation. I argue that in co-evolution, unlike in evolutionary adaptation to widespread fixed physical features of the environment, e.g., air, water, and land in its various forms, there may be nothing to adapt to because the corresponding co-dependent trait in the other organism is likely to be initially absent. Thus, I can avoid the issue of intelligent design altogether. However, a lot of people seem to think that ID is the only criticism of evolution theory.

A lot of trolls claim that my arguments were refuted a long time ago, whereas the truth is that many of my arguments are practically unheard of.

I will try to continue posting articles from time to time. Getting into new subjects will help.

Ahmadinejad is right about Holocaust dogma

2010-08-14T20:42:00.000-07:00

I often think that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be put on trial for crimes against humanity. However, I do think that he is right about the Holocaust. A news article reports,

"The West made a claim - about the Holocaust - and urges all the people in the world to accept it or otherwise go to prison," Ahmadinejad told a group of Islamic scholars Thursday in Nigeria, where he attended a summit of the Developing Eight, a group of countries with large Muslim populations.

"The West allows everybody to question prophets and even God but not to pose a simple question and open the black box of a historic event," he charged.

Ahmadinejad had earlier sparked international fury by calling for the eradication of Israel from the Middle East and its relocation to Europe or North America and by describing the murders of 6 million European Jews by Germany's Nazi regime as a "fairy tale."

Because of Israel's hardline policies, Arabs and Moslems are especially receptive to holocaust denial and revisionism. Scoffing at holocaust denial and revisionism is generally ineffective, but is especially ineffective on these people.

I myself have argued that a "systematic" Jewish holocaust was impossible because the Nazis had no objective and reliable ways of identifying Jews and non-Jews. An attempt to have a "systematic" holocaust would have been a Reign of Terror where anyone suspected of having Jewish ancestry would have been at risk of being sent to a death camp. I doubt that even the most virulent anti-Semite would have supported such a program.

Unscrupulous ScienceBlogs bloggers getting their comeuppance

2010-08-06T02:03:00.000-07:00

As I pointed out, ScienceBlogs is home to some of the worst arbitrary censors on the Internet, e.g., Fatheaded Ed Brayton and Sleazy PZ Myers. Now the New York Times has a scathing article attacking ScienceBlogs -- the article says,

Clearly I’ve been out of some loop for too long, but does everyone take for granted now that science sites are where graduate students, researchers, doctors and the “skeptical community” go not to interpret data or review experiments but to chip off one-liners, promote their books and jeer at smokers, fat people and churchgoers? And can anyone who still enjoys this class-inflected bloodsport tell me why it has to happen under the banner of science?

Hammering away at an ideology, substituting stridency for contemplation, pummeling its enemies in absentia: ScienceBlogs has become Fox News for the religion-baiting, peak-oil crowd. Though Myers and other science bloggers boast that they can be jerky in the service of anti-charlatanism, that’s not what’s bothersome about them. What’s bothersome is that the site is misleading. It’s not science by scientists, not even remotely; it’s science blogging by science bloggers. And science blogging, apparently, is a form of redundant and effortfully incendiary rhetoric that draws bad-faith moral authority from the word “science” and from occasional invocations of “peer-reviewed” thises and thats.

Under cover of intellectual rigor, the science bloggers — or many of the most visible ones, anyway — prosecute agendas so charged with bigotry that it doesn’t take a pun-happy French critic or a rapier-witted Cambridge atheist to call this whole ScienceBlogs enterprise what it is, or has become: class-war claptrap.

Fatheaded Ed's blog "Dispatches from the Culture Wars" is not even "science blogging" -- most of his posts are about political and social issues.

I am very proud that I am still first on Sleazy PZ's "Killfile Dungeon" list of banned commenters.

Other comments about the New York Times article are here and here.

There we go again with that stupid crap that "evolution is the unifying principle of all biology"

2010-08-02T05:46:00.000-07:00

Nothing raises my hackles like stupid statements that evolution is "the unifying principle of all biology," is "central to all biology," etc.. Simply, such statements are totally and unequivocably false, and anyone who seriously makes such a statement is completely lacking in credibility.

Panda's Thumb says,

Lucky for us, there is also a growing body of literature on the most effective ways to teach what has been dubbed “tree-thinking”. I have summarized this literature in a review due to be published in the journal Evolution: Education and Outreach (doi:10.1007/s12052-010-0254-9). The full text of the article is available at that link, and I have reproduced the abstract below.

Evolution is the unifying principle of all biology, and understanding how evolutionary relationships are represented is critical for a complete understanding of evolution . . . . .

In contrast, it is a true statement that Fourier's Law is central to the analysis of heat conduction in solids.

Hypocritical Scienceblogs bloggers

2010-07-30T07:03:00.000-07:00

Some Scienceblogs bloggers are all upset because of a new commercial Scienceblogs blog by Pepsico -- some have even quit Scienceblogs in protest [1] [2] . These bloggers feel that a commercial blog compromises the integrity of Scienceblogs. These bloggers are very hypocritical -- Scienceblogs has or has had some of the worst arbtirary censors in the blogosphere: Fatheaded Ed Brayton, Sleazy PZ Myers, Carl Zimmer, and Jason Rosenhouse.

Eugenie Scott v. Adolf Hitler

2010-07-22T23:42:00.001-07:00

EUGENIE SCOTT, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL CENTER FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION

===============================================================

Jerry Coyne calls theistic evolution "bastardized hybrid theory"

2010-07-15T23:03:00.000-07:00

Jerry Coyne said,

. . . . more Americans accept theistic evolution than they do real (i.e., purely naturalistic) evolution: recent polls show that when Americans are asked how they account for the existence of humans, around 50% say that God created us directly, 30% say that we evolved but that God guided this process, and only 15% say that we appeared via unguided evolution.

So if we tell Christians that this is a way to reconcile science with their faith, we have to admit that we’re offering a bogus, nonscientific solution. Theistic evolutionists don’t really accept evolution, at least not the way scientists see it. They’re buying a bastardized hybrid theory that is rejected by virtually all working biologists. Can we really count those 30% of theistic-evolutionist Americans as being on our side?

Amen. And as I have pointed out many times, the bible's creation story actually makes much more sense than the gospel.

At long last, Chris Comer loses appeal

2010-07-04T23:11:00.000-07:00

The National Center for Science Education's website says,

In a decision issued on July 2, 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a lower court's decision that the Texas Education Agency's policy requiring "neutrality" of its employees when "talking about evolution and creationism" is not unconstitutional. The case, Comer v. Scott, was filed by Chris Comer, the former director of the Texas Education Agency, who was forced to resign from her post in November 2007 after she forwarded a note announcing a talk by Barbara Forrest

This blog has several articles about the Comer case, in a post-label group listed in the side-bar of the homepage.

The appeals court decision has been almost unnoticed because Comer has such a weak case.

Here are my points about the case:
.
1. The subject of "evolution and creationism" is especially sensitive because many people claim that any criticism of evolution is creationism. Also, the question of which criticisms of evolution should be considered creationism is a subject of debate.

2. In some circumstances, it is OK for government agencies to follow policies of neutrality or silence even when such policies interfere with the enforcement of laws or constitutions. For example, the US Census Bureau is prohibited by law from sharing personal census information with anyone outside the bureau, including law enforcement agencies.

3. Constitutional issues are entitled to the same neutrality policy as all other issues.

4. Comer essentially took it upon herself to appoint Barbara Forrest as a spokesperson for the Texas Education Agency.

5. The TEA's neutrality policy is a general policy covering all issues under consideration by the state board of education and was not aimed specifically at the evolution issue. Hence, any constitutional violation is unintentional and incidental.

6. If Comer thought that the neutrality policy was unconstitutional, she should have tried to change the policy through the proper channels. Instead she took it upon herself to violate the policy.

7. The play "A Man for All Seasons" has the following exchange about interpreting silence:

Thomas More: The maxim of the law is, "Silence gives consent." If, therefore, you wish to construe
what my silence betokened... .. you must construe that I consented, not that I denied.

Master Secretary: Is that in fact what the world construes from it? Do you pretend that is what you wish the world to construe from it?

Thomas More: The world must construe according to its wits. This court must construe according to the law.

8. Basically, Comer's claim that the TEA's neutrality policy is an "endorsement" of teaching creationism is absurd.

However, I feel that forcing Comer to resign was a mistake because it has turned her into a Darwinist martyr. I think it would have been better just to make her TEA job miserable.

The court decisions in Comer v. Scott are sort of victories for critics of Darwinism. The courts are now showing that there is a limit to how far they are willing to go in enforcing the so-called "separation of church and state" in "monkey trials." The Darwinists can no longer brag that they have won every court case since the Scopes trial.

Darwinists fabricate a controversy in order to declare a showy victory

2010-06-19T12:31:00.000-07:00

The National Center for Science Education has the story here. Rober Crowther comments on Evolution News & Views,

No news continues to make news. Or maybe it's agenda driven reporting making up news? Either way, this article trumpets the fact that Nebraskans need not worry that evolution will be replaced with intelligent design in science classes. Of course, that wasn't being suggested and discussed anyhow. So, here's a case of the media taking no news and goosing it into a "news" story.

Three members of the Nebraska Board of Education say they're not aware of any effort by board members or the public to include intelligent design in Nebraska's new science standards.

"I've had zero contact from anyone," said board member Robert Evnen of Lincoln, who is on a committee reviewing the standards.

Why is not being asked to do something that nobody is talking about doing worth reporting on?

I have news for those members of the Nebraska Board of Education: even in those hotbeds of creationism, Texas and Kansas, there were no organized attempts to add the words "intelligent design" to the curriculum. Instead, there were efforts to add terms like "strengths and weaknesses." Only in Dover, PA, did a naive school board offcially use the term "intelligent design." That term needs to be avoided because people immediately start asking "who is the intelligent designer," "what does the intelligent designer look like," etc..

I propose the following sensational news headline:

No Angry Mob of Bible-Pounding, Holy-Rolling Creationist Fundies with Pitchforks March on Nebraska Board of Education Demanding that Evolution be Replaced with Biblical Creationism

"Systematic" holocaust would be impossible even with DNA testing!

2010-06-05T13:03:00.000-07:00

I have long contended that a "systematic" Jewish holocaust was impossible because the Nazis had no objective and reliable way of identifying Jews and non-Jews. This claim is often pooh-poohed with examples of how supposedly easy it was for the Nazis to objectively and reliably identify Jews. The stories go something like this: Nazis raiding a synagogue find the rabbi there. They torture him, forcing him to reveal the synagogue's membership list. The Nazis then hunt the members down one by one.

I have speculated about whether the Nazis could have objectively and reliably identified Jews and non-Jews by means of DNA testing, which of course was not a available to them. This study shows that the answer to that question is no.

What is so great about "separation of church and state"?

2010-05-21T12:38:00.000-07:00

I was once a strong supporter of the so-called separation of church and state, as codified in the establishment clause of the Constitution. No more -- the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision has turned me against this clause. If it was just a matter of a single crackpot activist judge, I could overlook this decision, but I am disturbed by the widespread praise the decision and its author, Judge John E. Jones III, have received. Judge Jones has received all kinds of honors and awards (including honorary degrees), just as a result of this single decision.

In a Dickinson College commencement speech, Judge Jones said that his Kitzmiller decision was based on his cockamamie notion that the Founders based the establishment clause upon a belief that organized religions are not "true" religions -- he said,
.

. . . . . this much is very clear. The Founders believed that true religion was not something handed down by a church or contained in a Bible, but was to be found through free, rational inquiry. At bottom then, this core set of beliefs led the Founders, who constantly engaged and questioned things, to secure their idea of religious freedom by barring any alliance between church and state.

There is no way that the above statement can be derived from the establishment clause, which says simply, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

He also arbitrarily ruled in Kitzmiller v. Dover, "ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents." This is like Adolf Hitler saying that people with Jewish ancestors cannot uncouple themselves from their Jewish ancestry. Judge Jones is the poster boy of crackpot activist judges.

I am also greatly disturbed by the widespread praise that his supporters -- e.g., Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education -- have received (Scott has already received eight honorary degrees).

The establishment clause is one of the main reasons why Darwinists -- even if they know better -- insist that all criticisms of evolution are based on religion.

If the price of the establishment clause is the suppression of scientific (or pseudoscientific) criticisms of evolution in the public schools, I feel that price is too high, regardless of what benefits the establishment clause might have, which are not many. And proponents of the clause often use biased, one-sided examples to illustrate the supposed benefits of the clause, e.g., they cite the Taliban and the religious police of Saudi Arabia, but ignore the fact that Great Britain, for example, has a state religion. Yet are the British less free than we are? Indeed, with respect to the freedom to criticize evolution in the public schools, they are more free than we are. The proponents of the clause must often go back to the Middle Ages to find examples -- e.g., the Crusades and the Inquisition -- of the disadvantages of the establishment of a state religion The atheists and agnostics have claimed Thomas Jefferson as one of their own, but the inscriptions of Jefferson quotes on the Jefferson Memorial are full of religious statements.

And the establishment clause does nothing to fight some of the greatest religious scourges of our time, Islamofascism, Islamoterrorism, and Zionist imperialism.

Of course, the chances of the establishment clause ever being repealed are virtually nil -- constitutional amendments, even trivial ones, are very rare, and the Bill of Rights, of which the establishment clause is a part, has never been amended. So, in the hope of helping to prevent future Dover decisions, the only thing I can do is to oppose all establishment clause lawsuits, regardless of their individual merits. So far as my support of the establishment clause is concerned, the supporters of the Dover deicision have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs.

Fatheaded Ed is name-dropping again

2010-05-04T10:40:00.000-07:00

Fatheaded Ed Brayton has again familiarly referred to Eugenie Scott as "Genie" Scott. In a post titled "Congratulations, Genie Scott," he said,

My friend Genie Scott of the National Center for Science Education was awarded this week with the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences for "championing the teaching of evolution in the United States and for providing leadership to the National Center for Science Education."

And, of course, "Genie" Scott continues to get awards that she does not deserve. She is just a propagandist who claims that all criticisms of evolution are based on religion.

Evolution is religion

2010-04-26T19:44:00.000-07:00

Larry Moran's Sandwalk blog has the following excerpt from a talk given by Darwinist cafeteria Christian Francis Collins:

Here's a video of a talk he gave last October at The Veritas Forum in California. All of it is really interesting but the punchline comes at 50 minutes when he gives a short summary of his beliefs.

[First Slide] Almighty God, who is not limited in space and time, created a universe 13.7 billion years ago with its parameters precisely tuned to allow the development of complexity over long periods of time.

[Second Slide] God's plan included the mechanism of evolution to create the marvelous diversity of living things on our planet. Most especially, that plan included human beings.

[Third Slide] After evolution, in the fullness of time, had prepared a sufficiently advanced neurological "house" (the brain), God gifted humanity with free will and with a soul. Thus humans received a special status, "made in God's image."

[Fourth Slide] We humans used our free will to disobey God, leading to our realization of being in violation of the Moral Law. Thus we were estranged from God. For Christians, Jesus is the solution to that estrangement.

That's it. A very simple but, I think, entirely compatible view that does no violence either to faith or to science. And puts them in a harmonious position ...

So Collins leaves no question that evolution is part of his religious beliefs. Furthermore, he appears to be arguing that evolution must be true because it is the method that God chose for creating living things. In contrast, most or many advocates of Intelligent Design are very careful to avoid religious arguments. So, why is teaching Intelligent Design in public schools a violation of the "separation of church and state" whereas teaching Collins' evolution is not? The answer, of course, will be that evolution can be taught without mention of religious beliefs, but the same is true of ID. William Jennings Bryan said, "If those who teach Darwinism and evolution, as applied to man, insist that they are neither agnostics nor atheists, but are merely interpreting the Bible differently from orthodox Christians, what right have they to ask that their interpretation be taught at public expense?"

This jerko Collins is a darling of the hypocritical accommodationist National Center for Science Education, one of the biggest opponents of teaching criticisms of evolution in the public schools. Furthermore, this jerko Collins was appointed by Pres. Obama to be head of the National Institute of Health, probably a political appointment based on Collins' beliefs about evolution.

Jerko teacher wants to teach program on Darwin and Lincoln!

2010-04-17T12:08:00.000-07:00

A news article about a teacher in Connnecticut said,

Mark Tangarone, who teaches third, fourth, and fifth grade students in the Talented and Gifted (TAG) program at Weston Intermediate School, said he is retiring at the end of the current school year because of a clash with the school administration over the teaching of evolution.

“Under normal circumstances, I would have retired in two more years. However, I feel that because of an unacceptable administrative action, I can no longer continue teaching in Weston,” Mr. Tangarone said.

Mr. Tangarone, a 17-year veteran of the Weston school system, claims that a program he wanted to teach about Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln was rejected by the school administration because it involved teaching evolution — the scientific theory that all life is related and has descended from a common ancestor.

To me, the big problem is not about teaching evolution -- it is about teaching about Darwin and Lincoln in the same program! The only thing that the two men have in common is that they share the same putative birthdate -- and we are not even sure about Lincoln's birthdate because he was born on the frontier, where people tended to lose track of dates.

Fatheaded Ed Brayton also has an article about this.

The clueless National Center for Science Education

2010-04-13T17:47:00.000-07:00

A news article by the National Center for Science Education says,

A section describing survey results about the American public's beliefs about evolution and the Big Bang was removed from the 2010 edition of Science and Engineering Indicators. According to a post on the AAAS's Science Insider blog (April 8, 2010) and a subsequent report in Science (April 9, 2010; subscription required), although survey results about evolution and the Big Bang have regularly appeared in the National Science Board's Science and Engineering Indicators, its biennial compilation of global data about science, engineering, and technology, they were absent from the 2010 edition.

NCSE's Joshua Rosenau decried the decision, saying, "Discussing American science literacy without mentioning evolution is intellectual malpractice ... It downplays the controversy." . . .

. . . . . Officials at the National Science Board defended the decision. Louis Lanzerrotti, chair of the board's Science and Engineering Indicators committee, told Science that the questions were "flawed indicators of science knowledge because the responses conflated knowledge and beliefs."

"Responses conflated knowledge and belief"? "Belief" probably refers to religious belief. Another commenter said,

George Bishop, a political scientist at the University of Cincinnati who is familiar with the difficulties of polling about evolution, regarded that position as defensible, explaining, "Because of biblical traditions in American culture, that question is really a measure of belief, not knowledge."

Many people have the misconception that "belief" is defined as being religious only.

If the survey had only partly concerned the evolution v. religion issue, the survey probably would not have been deleted from the report, because the title of the report is very general, "Science and Engineering Indicators." Those who decided to delete the survey from the report probably assumed that the survey was only about religion (that's still not a good reason to delete it, but I am only trying to guess these people's thinking). And guess who is one of the biggest promoters of the idea that all opposition to evolution is religious? The NCSE. NCSE's Director Eugenie Scott said, "antievolutionism is uniformly the product of religious opposition," and NCSE "Faith Project Director" Peter Hess even went so far as to call opposition to evolution "blasphemous."

"Friend of Hitler" award was stroke of genius

2010-04-07T10:15:00.001-07:00

The exposure of the asininity of the National Center for Science Education's "Friend of Darwin" award produced a tremendous response. It was a great spoof, among other things.

Don McLeroy's "Friend of Jefferson" Award

2010-04-06T16:38:00.000-07:00

I got a whole bunch of comments today, mainly as a result of Fatheaded Ed Brayton posting an article about my "Friend of Hitler" and "Friend of Jefferson" awards, so rather than go through them all, I decided to just post them all indiscriminately, starting with the last unreviewed comment.

Several of these comments were critical of my giving the "Friend of Jefferson" award to Don McLeroy, considering that he helped remove Jefferson from the Texas state standards for education. McLeroy received the award because of his efforts against censorship of criticism of evolution in the public schools. That is a priority with me because the courts have been censoring that criticism. No jackass judge has tried to censor the study of Jefferson in the public schools, so I decided to overlook McLeroy's efforts to remove Jefferson from the Texas state standards.

NCSE's Eugenie Scott said, "antievolutionism is uniformly the product of religious opposition"

2010-04-01T11:34:00.000-07:00

No, this is not an April Fools Day joke. Here is the quote in context:

To some Americans, teaching evolution is offensive to their religion, so they try to get it removed from the curriculum, or “balanced” with some form of creationism, or denigrate it as something not to be taken seriously (“theory, not fact”). To other Americans, doing any of these things promotes a sectarian religious view, and should be avoided. Courts universally have sided with the latter, properly, in my opinion, since antievolutionism is uniformly the product of religious opposition.

Creation story makes more sense than the rest of the Bible

2010-03-27T13:23:00.000-07:00

Francisco Ayala said,

"As I see it, scientific knowledge is consistent with a religious belief in God. More so than the 'creationists[']' assertion that everything in the world has been precisely designed by the Creator. Because, then, how to account for human crimes and sins (including the Biblical Fall) and for all the catastrophes that pervade the natural world?"

Well, Francisco, if you cannot answer that question, why do you expect the creationists to be able to answer it? The question of why the world is imperfect is beyond the scope of biblical creationism. According to the Bible, the world as it was originally created was perfect -- for example, there was a Garden of Eden and even the snake had legs.

As I have discussed before, the Bible's creation story actually makes much more sense than some other parts of the Bible, such as the gospel. The creation story is fairly straightforward whereas the gospel is full of illogic, inconsistencies, contradictions, ambiguities, and unintelligibility. And the creation story is consistent with the idea of an all-powerful god whereas the god of the gospel is a weak, limited god who must struggle against Satan for control of the world.

Anyway, to me the big problem is that the Darwinists ignore fair scientific criticisms of Darwinism and pretend that science vs. religion is the only issue in the evolution debate.

U. of Wisconsin student newspaper censors holocaust-revisionist ad

2010-03-19T11:08:00.000-07:00

The story is on Bradley Smith's "One Person With Proof" blog.

The newspaper's board of directors' reaction is political correctness run amok. The board had a golden opportunity to support freedom of expression, and blew it. The board members should be ashamed of themselves.

The ad made no incitement to anti-Semitism and Bradley Smith is not responsible for threatening or hateful anti-Semitic comments that were made in response to the ad.

It is obvious that the biggest purpose of condemning holocaust denial/revisionism as anti-Semitic is to attempt to suppress debate on the subject.

My own view of the holocaust is that whereas there was persecution of Jews and atrocities were committed against Jews, a "systematic" Jewish holocaust was impractical because the Nazis had no objective and reliable way(s) of identifying Jews and non-Jews. What is anti-Semitic about that viewpoint?

If the newspaper receives financial support from the university, which is a public university, then I think that Bradley Smith has grounds for a lawsuit over the board's declaration of refusal to publish the ad in the future.

In public opinion polls, only 12-14% accepted unguided human evolution

2010-03-15T15:43:00.000-07:00

In discussing a recent public opinion poll in Texas, the NCSE said,

Among the questions on the poll was the standard Gallup question — "Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings?" — with the choices (1) "Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided the process"; (2) "Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, and God had no part in the process"; and (3) "God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago."

In the Texas poll, 38% of respondents chose (1), 12% chose (2), 38% chose (3), and 12% chose a fourth option, "Don't know." Comparing the results with a national Gallup poll conducted in 2008, in which 36% of respondents chose (1), 14% chose (2), 44% chose (3), and 5% offered a different or no opinion, it might seem as though Texans are slightly less inclined to creationism than the nation at large — but the explicit presentation of a "Don't know" option in the Texas poll and not in the Gallup poll is probably responsible for the discrepancy. (Also, the Texas poll was only of registered voters.)

I think that the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision by a crackpot activist judge has gone to Darwinists' heads, giving them the impression that the fundies and other critics of evolution are pushovers. These opinion poll results certainly show that such an impression is utterly false -- the Darwinists are the ones who are behind the 8-ball.

Favorite Kitzmiller-related quotes

2010-03-11T14:39:00.000-08:00

Here are some of my favorite quotes that are related to Kitzmiller v. Dover:

The court offers convincing evidence that some members of the Dover school board would have been delighted to promote their old time religion in the classroom. These board members apparently accepted intelligent design as a compromise, the nearest they could come to their objective within the law. . . . The court seems to declare, "Because we find that you would like something you can't have, we hold that you can't have anything."
-- Albert Alschuler

Although there was general jubilation at the ruling, I think the joy will be short-lived, for we have affirmed the principle that a federal judge, not scientists or teachers, can dictate what is and what is not science, and what may or may not be taught in the classroom. Forgive me if I do not feel more free.
-- J. Scott Turner

. . . if one judge can practice philosophy of science, what is to stop others from doing the same? Perhaps the next judge to hear an ID case will decide that science simply means "the process of searching for the best logical explanations for observed data." In that case, schools might be allowed to teach … ID…
-- Jay Wexler

If those who teach Darwinism and evolution, as applied to man, insist that they are neither agnostics nor atheists, but are merely interpreting the Bible differently from orthodox Christians, what right have they to ask that their interpretation be taught at public expense?
-- William Jennings Bryan

New awards: "Friend of Hitler" and "Friend of Jefferson"

2010-03-11T14:05:00.000-08:00

In response to the National Center for Science Education's ridiculous "Friend of Darwin" and "Upchucky" awards, I have decided to institute the "Friend of Hitler" and "Friend of Jefferson" awards.

"FRIEND OF HITLER" AWARD

Awarded for outstanding contributions to the suppression of freedom of expression and freedom of thought.

"FRIEND OF JEFFERSON" AWARD

Awarded for outstanding contributions to the promotion of freedom of expression and freedom of thought. Named in honor of Jefferson's famous statement, "I have sworn eternal hostility . . . . against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

FIRST RECIPIENTS OF "FRIEND OF HITLER" AWARD

Judge John E. "Jackass" Jones III, Eugenie "Evil Genie" Scott, Fatheaded Ed Brayton, Stupid Steven Schafersman, Sleazy PZ Myers, Wesley "Ding" Elsberry, Brandon "Haughty" Haught, Josh Rosenau, Kevin Padian, Jerry Coyne, Chris Mooney, Chris Comer, Carl Zimmer, Ken Miller, Francis Collins, National Center for Science Education, Florida Citizens for Science, Texas Citizens for Science, Texas Freedom Network.

FIRST RECIPIENTS OF "FRIEND OF JEFFERSON" AWARD

Jim Sherwood, David Berlinski, Casey Luskin, John West, Don McLeroy, Bill Buckingham, Cornelius Hunter, Discovery Institute.

I welcome the names of nominees for these awards.

NCSE's "Friend of Darwin" awards conferred at annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science!

2010-03-10T14:06:00.000-08:00

The website of the National Center for Science Education says,

NCSE is pleased to announce the winners of the Friends of Darwin award for 2010: David Hillis, Gerald Skoog, and Ronald Wetherington, all scientists in Texas who have fought for the integrity of science education in the Lone Star State. Hillis, Skoog, and Wetherington received their awards in San Diego, on February 12, 2010, during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Scientific American's Steve Mirsky emceed the ceremony.

That's ridiculous -- the "Friend of Darwin" award is much too controversial to be conferred at a meeting of a general organization like the AAAS.

Also, there appears ot be a double standard here -- controversial people like Judge Jones and NCSE Director Eugenie Scott have received honorary degrees from universities, but the University of Vermont offered an honorary degree to Ben Stein and then withdrew the offer because he is considered to be too controversial.

Notorious Nazi Dr. Mengele was a Social Darwinist

2010-02-24T12:09:00.001-08:00

An article in Haaretz says,

A diary and a revealing letter written by notorious Auschwitz death camp Dr. Josef Mengele were put on auction in the United States last month. Mengele was the SS officer who supervised the selection of prisoner transports arriving at Auschwitz and performed bizarre medical experiments on camp inmates.

The Haaretz article continues,

Unless the world adopted breeding programs like those he pursued in Auschwitz, "mankind is doomed, even without war," he writes.

Referring to morality, aesthetics and genetics, Mengele writes: "The real problem is to define when human life is worth living and when it has to be eradicated."

"There's only one truth and one true beauty ... There's no 'good' or 'bad' in nature. There's only 'appropriate' or 'inappropriate' ... Both sides receive equal chances. Nevertheless, nature provides a strainer. Things that are 'inappropriate' fall through since they lose in the struggle for survival."

Discussing the Indian caste system, Mengele notes, "Brahmans are built nicely; some of them even have blue eyes. They have small, straight noses and they're in general high quality human beings. And this is because the Brahmans used the highest caste to preserve their noble blood. They are the descendants of Nordic peoples who once conquered and ruled India."

Mengele discusses how to create an upper class: "It can only be done by selecting the best."

"Everything will end in catastrophe if natural selection is altered to the point that gifted people are overwhelmed by billions of morons," he warns, predicting that 90 percent of humans will starve due to stupidity and the remaining 10 percent will survive "like reptiles survived. The rest will die, just like the dinosaurs did ... we have to prevent the rise of the idiot masses," he writes.

"The feeble-minded person ('village idiot') was separated from farmers because of his social status and low income," he writes.

"This separation is no longer the case in the age of technology. He is now on the same level with the farmer's son who went to the city.

"We know that selection rules all nature by choosing and exterminating ... Those who were unfit had to accept the rule of more accomplished human beings, or they were pushed out or exterminated. Weaker humans were excluded from reproducing. This is the only way for human beings to exist and to maintain themselves."

He says "inferior morons" should be exterminated, adding, "We have to make sure that nature's suspended eradication will continue through human arrangements ... birth control can be done by sterilizing those with deficient genes."

Mengele goes on to advise Germany to abandon feminist ideology and control childbirth. "Biology doesn't support equal rights. Women shouldn't be working in higher positions. Women's work must depend on filling a biological quota. Birth control can be done by sterilizing those with deficient genes. Those with good genes will be sterilized after the fifth child."

Jews deeply divided over evolution

2010-02-22T10:06:00.000-08:00

Judge "Jackass" Jones, who has said that judges should not be influenced by public opinion, nonetheless bragged that his Kitzmiller decision was supported by Jews. I have news for him -- if, for example, he visited Jerusalem, the ultra-orthodox Jews there would probably riot in protest.

The National Center for Science Education said,

The chief scientist in Israel's ministry of education, Gavriel Avital, "sparked a furor" by questioning the reliability of evolution and global warming, leading to calls for his dismissal, according to Haaretz (February 21, 2010). "If textbooks state explicitly that human beings' origins are to be found with monkeys, I would want students to pursue and grapple with other opinions. There are many people who don't believe the evolutionary account is correct," he was quoted as saying. "There are those for whom evolution is a religion and are unwilling to hear about anything else. Part of my responsibility, in light of my position with the Education Ministry, is to examine textbooks and curricula."

. . . . . . . . Unfortunately, Avital's views on evolution may be shared by a sizable segment of the Israeli public. A 2006 survey of public opinion in Israel by the Samuel Neaman Institute found that "a minority of only 28% accepts the scientific theory of the evolution [sic], while the majority (59%) believes that man was created by god," while according to the 2000 International Social Survey Programme, a total of 54% of Israeli respondents described "Human beings developed from earlier species of animals" as definitely or probably true, placing Israel ahead of the United States (46%, in last place) for its public acceptance of evolution, but behind twenty-three of the twenty-seven countries included in the report.

Kitzmiller decision violated Federal Rules of Evidence

2010-02-13T12:28:00.000-08:00

Casey Luskin said,

During the Dover trial, plaintiffs’ expert witness, biologist Kenneth Miller, testified that he presented Judge John E. Jones with “more than three dozen scientific studies showing the origin of new genetic information by these evolutionary processes.” The plaintiffs’ attorneys, working with the NCSE, successfully convinced Judge Jones to parrot Miller by stating in the Kitzmiller v. Dover ruling that Miller had “pointed to more than three dozen peer-reviewed scientific publications showing the origin of new genetic information by evolutionary processes.”

Federal Rules of Evidence Rule 803(18) says,

Learned treatises: To the extent called to the attention of an expert witness upon cross-examination or relied upon by the expert witness in direct examination, statements contained in published treatises, periodicals, or pamphlets on a subject of history, medicine, or other science or art, established as a reliable authority by the testimony or admission of the witness or by other expert testimony or by judicial notice. If admitted, the statements may be read into evidence but may not be received as exhibits. (emphasis added)

The above publications presented by Ken Miller were apparently "received as exhibits" instead of being "read into evidence," in violation of the above FRE rule (what Miller did is sometimes called "bibiliography bluffing"). This rule was also violated when a stack of publications was dumped in front of defendants' expert witness Michael Behe.

The scientific questions in the case should have simply been declared to be "non-justiciable." A question is considered to be non-justiciable when there is a "lack of discoverable and manageable standards for resolving the question" (Vieth v. Jubelirer).

Godwin's Law

2010-02-01T00:56:00.000-08:00

Wikipedia describes Godwin's Law as follows:

Godwin's Law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies or Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies) is a humorous observation made by Mike Godwin in 1990 which has become an Internet adage. It states: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

Godwin's Law is often cited in online discussions as a deterrent against the use of arguments in the widespread reductio ad Hitlerum form. The rule does not make any statement about whether any particular reference or comparison to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis might be appropriate, but only asserts that the likelihood of such a reference or comparison arising increases as the discussion progresses. It is precisely because such a comparison or reference may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin has argued that overuse of Nazi and Hitler comparisons should be avoided, because it robs the valid comparisons of their impact.

Godwin's law is so strong that even supporters of Prop. 8, the California ballot proposition that banned gay marriage, have been using Nazi-Hitler analogies, even though it is well known that the Nazis were extremely homophobic. A video titled "Hitler enraged at Yes on 8 Victories in California" is especially amusing. On a more serious note, Ed Brayton's blog has an article with a video of a speech that Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, gave at a pro-Prop. 8 rally. The article has the following excerpt from the video:
.

There was another time in history when people, when the bell tolled. And the question was whether or not they were going to hear it. The time was during Nazi Germany with Adolf Hitler. You see he brought crowds of clergy together to assure them that he was going to look after the church. And one of the members, bold and courageous, Reverend Niemoller made his way to the front and boldly said "Hitler, we are not concerned about the church. Jesus Christ will take care of the church. We are concerned about the soul of Germany." Embarrassed and chagrined, his peers quickly shuffled him to the back. And as they did Adolf Hitler said, "The soul of Germany, you can leave that to me." And they did, and because they did bombs did not only fall upon the nation of Germany, but also upon the church and their testimony to this very day. Let us not make that mistake folks. Let us hear the bell! Vote on Proposition 8!

Brad Dacus's above analogy is completely inapposite. If Proposition 8 concerns the fate of the soul of America or the souls of Americans, Prop. 8 did not ask voters if they wanted to leave that fate in the hands of a dictator -- Prop. 8 gave the voters the opportunity to determine that fate themselves.

I am especially disappointed in Brad Dacus's speech because the Pacific Justice Institute helped represent the plaintiffs in Caldwell v. Caldwell, a lawsuit that I very strongly supported (it was an establishment clause lawsuit against the Univ. of Calif. and the National Science Foundation for sponsoring a website that endorsed one-sided religious views supporting evolution theory -- this blog has a post-label group of articles about the case).

BTW, I am not a supporter of gay marriage (I support civil unions or domestic partnerships). One of the reasons why I do not support gay marriage is -- ironically -- that I feel that public support for gay marriage is not strong enough to create uniform availability of gay marriage in all the states, and the result is that some gays -- those who live in the states offering gay marriage -- are more equal than the gays in states that do not offer gay marriage.
.

9th Circuit upholds UC's rejection of Christian high-school textbooks (ACSI v. Stearns)

2010-01-18T19:14:00.000-08:00

The 9th Circuit federal appeals court has upheld the district court decision favoring the University of California in ACSI v. Stearns, a lawsuit which challenged UC's denial of accreditation to some Christian high-school courses which used Christianity-oriented textbooks which were rejected by UC. This blog has a large post-label group of articles about the case. The appeals court's decision is discussed on the Religion Clause blog, the NCSE website, and Ed Brayton's Dispatches from the Culture Wars blog.

I am not surprised by the appeals court's decision.

The NCSE article says,

Of particular interest in the preparation from the appeal was the California Council of Science and Technology's amicus curiae brief. Coauthored by attorneys from Pepper Hamilton LLP who were part of the legal team representing the plaintiffs in Kitzmiller v. Dover, the 2005 case over "intelligent design" creationism, the brief argued, "Students educated with these textbooks will not be adequately prepared for science courses."

However, an ACSI report of a meeting with UC personnel says,

When asked whether poor college performance by students from religious schools prompted the rejection of the textbooks, UC representatives responded negatively. They also acknowledged that UC did not have any objective evidence that students from religious schools are deficient in science when they arrive for their freshman year of college .....

IMO one of the main reasons why the fundy students are not unprepared to study college science is that most science does not conflict with the bible.

The California Council of Science and Technology's amicus brief is here.

The Darwinists, in their exultation over the decision, probably failed to notice that the opinion says at the top, "not for publication." Under the new FRAP (Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure) Rule 32.1, federal courts cannot prohibit or restrict citation of unpublished opinions issued after Jan. 1, 2007 (the 9th Circuit still restricts citation of unpublished opinions issued before that date), but unpublished opinions carry a lot less precedential weight than published opinions. Though the opinion is not going to be published, tremendous amounts of time and effort were spent on this case -- there were many plaintiffs, several expert witnesses, long court hearings, and a tremendous amount of evidence submitted (ACSI claimed that UC submitted 350,000 pages of documents). Here is a list of some of the documents that were filed in the case.

9th Circuit Rule 36-3 says,

Circuit Rule 36-3. Citation of Unpublished Dispositions or Orders

(a) Not Precedent. Unpublished dispositions and orders of this Court are not precedent, except when relevant under the doctrine of law of the case or rules of claim preclusion or issue preclusion.

(b) Citation of Unpublished Dispositions and Orders Issued on or after January 1, 2007. Unpublished dispositions and orders of this court issued on or after January 1, 2007 may be cited to the courts of this circuit in accordance with FRAP 32.1.

(c) Citation of Unpublished Dispositions and Orders Issued before January 1, 2007. Unpublished dispositions and orders of this Court issued before January 1, 2007 may not be cited to the courts of this circuit, except in the following circumstances.

(i) They may be cited to this Court or to or by any other court in this circuit when relevant under the doctrine of law of the case or rules of claim preclusion or issue preclusion.

(ii) They may be cited to this Court or by any other courts in this circuit for factual purposes, such as to show double jeopardy, sanctionable conduct, notice, entitlement to attorneys' fees, or the existence of a related case.

(iii) They may be cited to this Court in a request to publish a disposition or order made pursuant to Circuit Rule 36-4, or in a petition for panel rehearing or rehearing en banc, in order to demonstrate the existence of a conflict among opinions, dispositions, or orders.

FRAP Rule 32.1 says,

FRAP 32.1. Citing Judicial Dispositions

(a) Citation Permitted.

A court may not prohibit or restrict the citation of federal judicial opinions, orders, judgments, or other written dispositions that have been;
(i) designated as “unpublished,” “not for publication,” “non-precedential,” “not precedent,” or the like; and

(ii) issued on or after January 1, 2007.

Publication of the opinion can be requested under the following circuit rule, but the judges have probably already considered and rejected the idea of publication:

Circuit Rule 36-4. Request for Publication

Publication of any unpublished disposition may be requested by letter addressed to the Clerk, stating concisely the reasons for publication. Such a request will not be entertained unless received within 60 days of the issuance of this Court’s disposition. A copy of the request for publication must be served on the parties to the case. The parties will have 14 days from the date of service to notify the Court of any objections they may have to the publication of the disposition. If such a request is granted, the unpublished disposition will be redesignated an opinion. (Rev. 12/1/09)

In contrast, both the appeals court and district court opinions were published in Caldwell v. Caldwell (which also has a post-label group of articles on this blog), as noted in that case's petition for certiorari, even though Caldwell v. Caldwell was a much smaller case.

Here is a summary of my views about the case:

(1) IMO the Bob Jones University biology text (a 2-volume set) went too far when it said in the introduction, "If the conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong, no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them." IMO that statement discourages critical thinking and smacks of brainwashing, and I cannot condone that statement when one of my main reasons for supporting the teaching of scientific and pseudoscientific criticisms of evolution is to encourage critical thinking. IMO the statement is just as bad as the new Florida science standards' statement that "evolution is the fundamental concept underlying all of biology."

(2) For the following reasons, our courts should not be turned into textbook accreditation agencies: (i) judges often lack the specialized knowledge required to evaluate textbooks; (ii) questions of justiciability are raised; and (iii) textbook evaluation can be very time-consuming, taking time away from other cases.

(3) To me, the best way to avoid "viewpoint discrimination" is to require that specific viewpoints be presented only in supplemental materials and not be presented in main textbooks.

(4) The claim that denial of course accreditation meant that the students had to be in the top 2-4% of high school grads -- instead of the 12½-15% normally required for UC admission -- was false, because the students could have gotten credit for the courses just by getting satisfactory scores in subject or advanced-placement tests.

(5) The education of some Christian-school students is too narrowly focused on Christianity -- they study Christian-this and Christian-that. They are like the ultra-orthodox yeshiva students of Israel -- they are not being broadly educated for living in the real world.
.

Even atheists and Darwinists have attacked Dover decision

2010-01-11T01:30:00.000-08:00

Judge "Jackass" Jones and his supporters want you to believe that all the critics of his Kitzmiller v. Dover decision are holy-rolling, bible-pounding fundy-type creationist crackpots. However, that decision has recently come under heavy criticism from two atheists, Thomas Nagel [link] {link] and Bradley Monton [link]. Previously, the Dover decision was criticized by three Darwinists: Jay Wexler and J. Scott Turner [link], because they felt that Judge Jones should not have ruled on the issue of ID-as-science, and Larry Moran [link], who agreed with the opinion's ID-as-science section but was disturbed that it was merely copied nearly verbatim from the plaintiffs' opening post-trial brief. I certainly don't agree with all the views of these atheists and Darwinists, but I am happy that their criticisms of the decision are a source of great embarrassment to Judge Jones and his supporters.

Casey Luskin wrong about Tiktaalik but article raises some good points

2010-01-10T03:14:00.000-08:00

In an article in Evolution News & Views, Casey Luskin said,

. . . this week, Tiktaalik's status as an actual transitional fossil between fish and tetrapods has been called into question by the discovery of unambiguous footprints (with digits) of a full-fledged tetrapod that were made about 20 million years before Tiktaalik.

I disagreed with Luskin's contention that this earlier tetrapod -- 397 million years ago -- calls into question Tiktaalik's status as an actual transitional fossil. I dismissed this as perhaps just a case of "convergent" evolution -- the appearance of similar features in different lines of descent. However, Sleazy PZ's diatribe against Luskin's article prompted me to give Luskin's article a second look to see if it has anything of value. I decided that the important point raised by Luskin's article was the apparent failure of science to predict the discovery of this 397 million year-old fossil despite science's success at predicting discovery of the later Tiktaalik fossil -- I think that deserves some explanation. Finding Tiktaalik was touted as a triumphal demonstration of the predictive power of evolution theory -- scientists predicted where a fossil like Tiktaalik would be found (somewhere in the Arctic) and went there and found it. And what line of descent does this older 397 million year-old fossil fit into? As Luskin's article shows, many questions are being raised -- many of them by presumably Darwinist biologists.

Urban myth that Texas has "outsized influence" over textbooks adopted elsewhere

2010-01-09T09:48:00.000-08:00

An article in the Washington Times repeated the urban myth that the Texas state board of education has "outsized influence" over the content of textbooks adopted in other states:

Battles over textbooks are nothing new, especially in Texas, where bitter skirmishes regularly erupt over everything from sex education to phonics and new math. But never before has the board’s right wing wielded so much power over the writing of the state’s standards. And when it comes to textbooks, what happens in Texas rarely stays in Texas. The reasons for this are economic: Texas is the nation’s second-largest textbook market and one of the few biggies where the state picks what books schools can buy rather than leaving it up to the whims of local districts, which means publishers that get their books approved can count on millions of dollars in sales. As a result, the Lone Star State has outsized influence over the reading material used in classrooms nationwide, since publishers craft their standard textbooks based on the specs of the biggest buyers. As one senior industry executive told me, “Publishers will do whatever it takes to get on the Texas list.”

Until recently, Texas’s influence was balanced to some degree by the more-liberal pull of California, the nation’s largest textbook market. But its economy is in such shambles that California has put off buying new books until at least 2014. This means that McLeroy and his ultraconservative crew have unparalleled power to shape the textbooks that children around the country read for years to come.

This post and this post debunk this idea that Texas has "outsized influence" over textbooks adopted elsewhere. And even in Texas, local school boards are free to choose state-unapproved textbooks if the boards pay for them. And BTW, California does not have statewide textbook adoption at the high-school level.

Why can't reporters be better informed and/or more honest?

The evolution controversy: Telling it like it is

2010-01-07T06:49:00.000-08:00

The introduction of a new book titled "The Altenberg 16: An Exposè of the Evolution Industry," by Suzan Mazur, says,

Evolutionary science is as much about the posturing, salesmanship, stonewalling and bullying that goes on as it is about actual scientific theory. It is a social discourse involving hypotheses of staggering complexity with scientists, recipients of the biggest grants of any intellectuals, assuming the power of politicians while engaged in Animal House pie-throwing and name-calling: "ham-fisted", "looney Marxist hangover", "secular creationist", "philosopher" (a scientist who can’t get grants anymore), "quack", "crackpot". . .

Eugenie Scott: Still crazy after all these years

2009-12-28T20:26:00.000-08:00

The smarmy grin of a high-priestess of what Harun Yahya (Adrian Oktar) has called "the shamanistic religion of Darwinism."

======================================================

An article on the website of the National Center for Science Education says,

Now available on NCSE's YouTube channel: Eugenie C. Scott's "Creationism: Still crazy after all these years," a presentation at the 2009 Atheist Alliance International conference in Burbank, California. Scott describes the evolving history of the antievolution movement in the United States, from attempts to balance the teaching of evolution with "creation science" or "intelligent design" to the present spate of stealth creationist tactics such as "academic freedom" and (in Texas) "all sides of scientific evidence." A question-and-answer session followed, introduced by Richard Dawkins, who commented, "I must say, it's a very good feeling to have Genie Scott and her gang on our side in this battle." NCSE thanks the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science for permission to post the video on the NCSE YouTube channel.

Here the hypocritical, two-timing Eugenie Scott reveals her fundamental disdain for people of faith. She is tolerant of people of faith only if their beliefs are inconsistent -- i.e., if they are Darwinist Cafeteria Christians (e.g., Francis Collins and Ken Miller) instead of creationists, even though (1) there is a lot of scientific evidence against Darwinian evolution and (2) the bible's creation story makes much more sense than the gospel. The creation story is fairly straightforward whereas the gospel is full of illogic, inconsistencies, ambiguities, and unintelligibility. Also, the creation story is consistent with the idea of an all-powerful god whereas the god of the gospel is a weak, limited god who must struggle against Satan for control of the world. Many Darwinist Cafeteria Christians refuse to even admit that their beliefs are inconsistent.

The Darwinist Cafeteria Christians and the Accommodationists cheerfully serve as each others' mascots and useful idiots. They deserve each other. I join PZ Myers in metaphorically puking on the shoes of both of them.

Another NCSE crackpot

2009-12-28T00:47:00.000-08:00

I already know a number of crackpots in the National Center for Science Education: Eugenie Scott, Kevin Padian, Nick Matzke, Peter Hess, Glenn Branch, and Josh Rosenau. These dudes are so bad that they have even been criticized by Darwinists, particularly for the NCSE's coddling "accommodationism" towards Darwinist Cafeteria Christians who scoff at the bible's creation story while taking the far more illogical gospel literally. Now I have found another NCSE crackpot: Steven Newton, the NCSE's public information project director. He wrote in an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer,
.

Creationists are unmoved by the wealth of fossil, molecular, and anatomical evidence for evolution.

That may be true of biblical creationists, but some critics of evolution theory have been influenced by those things -- for example, Michael Behe accepts common descent. On the other hand, Darwinists are unmoved by the evidence against Darwinian evolution. It is the Darwinists who cherry-pick their evidence.

As long as scientists must squander their time defending their work from denialism, we will fall behind on our fundamental responsibilities.

Imagine -- scientists are falling behind on their "fundamental responsibilities" because they "must squander their time defending their work from denialism"! What bullshit.

As the great physicist Richard Feynman noted, "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."

I'll be sure to remember that quote the next time I see Texas board of education member and former chairman Don McLeroy being condemned for saying, "someone's got to stand up to experts."
.

Yet another legal scholar pans Kitzmiller v. Dover

2009-12-20T19:07:00.000-08:00

I wonder why people are still debating the Kitzmiller v. Dover opinion. The opinion is practically worthless, because: (1) -- it is just a judicially unreviewed decision of a single judge, who also happens to be a crackpot activist judge; (2) it is binding only on the Dover Area School District; and (3) Judge "Jackass" Jones probably showed a lack of restraint because he knew that an appeal was unlikely becaues of the changeover in the membership of the school board.

David Opderbeck, a law professor at Seton Hall University School of Law, says in an analysis of Kitzmiller,

Without some demarcation of what can be taught as "science" in the public schools, aren't we opening the floodgates to the teaching of all sorts of pseudo-science, such as astrology and young earth creationism? I think this is a valid concern. For this and other reasons, I personally don't agree with the "teach the controversy" approach promoted by many ID advocates. If I were to serve on my local school board, I would not vote in favor of introducing ID materials into the science curriculum, primarily because I don't believe the ID program has generated sufficient results to reach the public schools. Like the courts, the public schools lack the time and resources to address views that fall far outside the scientific mainstream . . . .

. . . .I don't believe Judge Jones should have ventured a broad definition of "science" in the Kitzmiller case, as though such an exercise necessarily ends the discussion of constitutionality. Under the applicable standards for establishment clause cases, the proper inquiry is into purposes and effects: was the government's purpose "secular" and was the primary effect of the government's decision to advance or inhibit religion or to produce an excessive entanglement of government and religion? Whether an idea is labeled "religion" or "science," in itself, is irrelevant to the constitutional question.

There can be good secular reasons for teaching "bad" science in science classes: broadening students' education, encouraging critical thinking, increasing student interest, preventing and correcting misconceptions, and helping to ensure that sophisticated scientific (or pseudoscientific) ideas are taught only by qualified science teachers (many Darwinists complain that scientific -- or peudoscientific -- criticisms of evolution are misleading students, yet some of these same Darwinists want these criticisms to be taught by unqualified people). A Darwinist blogger argued that ID should be taught for the purpose of refuting it. There is no constitutional principle of separation of bad science and state.

Opderbeck says,

. . . I don't believe Judge Jones played the role of "activist judge" in Kitzmiller, even though I am critical of the opinion.

.
Judge Jones is not an "activist" judge? He is the poster child of activist judges. For example, he said that his Kitzmiller decision was based on his cockamamie notion that the Founders based the establishment clause upon a belief that organized religions are not "true" religions [link]. Judge Jones has complained that the critics of his Kitzmiller opinion lack respect for "judicial independence," "precedent," and "the rule of law." [link].

Ironically, Prof. Opderbeck discusses Kitzmiller in terms of Daubert v. Merrill Dow Pharmaceuticals, even though Judge Jones assumed -- falsely, in my opinion -- that Daubert applies only to jury trials and therefore does not apply to Kitzmiller [link -- BTW, I held Judge Jones solely to blame for ignoring Daubert, but IMO the attorneys -- especially the defense attorneys -- were also to blame for ignoring Daubert].

Wesley "Ding" Elsberry made a feeble attempt to counter Prof. Operbeck's criticisms of Kitzmiller [link] [link] [link]. "Ding" said,

Let me explain what I am taking as connotations for “key” and “central” just so we can make sure that we are on the same page in the discussion. A “key” element of the decision would be one that if not addressed appropriately could result in overturning the decision at an appellate level. There are lots of components of the Kitzmiller decision that can be called “key” in that context. A “central” element, though, would be the one that was the primary finding in the decision. The primary finding, though, was that concerning the “endorsement test”, and it rested on four separate considerations of which the “is ID science?” consideration was just one.[link]

My sense of “key” is any argument that could have caused a higher court to overturn the decision, which means that a great many “key” arguments may exist in a decision. This is quite readily distinguishable from your sense of “central”, of which there can be only one such issue in the decision.[link]

"A 'central' element . . . would be the one that was the primary finding in the decision"? That's ridiculous -- there can be more than one "central" issue, and there can even be more than one "primary" issue. And the words "key" and "central" are close synonyms here -- Elsberry's attempt to distinguish them is silly.

"Ding" Elsberry also says,

In order to argue that the defense failed in its claim to having a secular purpose, Jones had to rely upon existing agreement upon what necessary attributes of science “intelligent design” did not encompass. This neither is an effort to define science himself nor to resolve the demarcation problem in the philosophy of science.[link]

WHAT "existing agreement upon what necessary attributes of science 'intelligent design' did not encompass"? And there is not even an "existing agreement" about what the "necessary attributes of science" are.

And David Opderbeck told Elsberry what I have been saying for a long time [link] -- that Judge Jones was not obligated to rule on the ID-as-science question just because both sides asked him to:

You seem to think that a Judge must passively hear and decide everything the parties throw at him or her, but that simply is not the case . . . . .even when a trial court allows evidence at trial on an issue, the court is not compelled to deal with it at length in a written opinion.
[link]

Also, the Panda's Thumb blog has some comments about Opderbeck's and Elsberry's articles.
.

Proposed principle of "judicial objectivism": Judges should try to avoid basing judicial opinions on personal opinions

2009-12-12T09:52:00.000-08:00

JUDGE "JACKASS" JONES, POSTER CHILD OF JUDICIAL ACTIVISM

=================================================

My proposed principle of "judicial objectivism" is that judges should try to avoid basing decisions on their own biased personal opinions and should try to use reasoning that is so airtight that no reasonable person could find fault with it. I call it "judicial objectivism" to distinguish it from the general philosophy of "objectivism" and the "objectivism" of Ayn Rand in particular, though my "judicial objectivism" is related to those other philosophies' idea that there are truths or realities that are independent of individual perceptions. IMO the principle of "judicial independence" is actually harmful when it encourages -- as it did in the case of Judge "Jackass" Jones -- judges to base their decisions on their own biased personal opinions. Judges should have the humility to recognize that their personal opinions, even if valid, might be in disagreement with one or more other valid opinions. This proposed principle of "judicial objectivism" -- like my proposed principles of "non-justiciability" and the "compelling reason" test for non-literal interpretations of the Constitution -- is aimed at eliminating or reducing the courts' arbitrariness, capriciousness, "activism," and "legislating from the bench."
.
"Opinion," like "theory," is a term that has a technical definition that differs from the everyday, colloquial definition. The technical definition of "opinion" in the law is, according to my Webster's New World Dictionary, Third Collegiate Edition, "the formal statement by a judge, court referee, etc. of the law bearing on a case." One of this dictionary's colloquial definitions is: "(1) a belief not based on absolute certainty or positive knowledge but on what seems true, valid, or probable to one's own mind, judgment." In comparing "opinion" to several synonyms, the dictionary also says, "opinion applies to a conclusion or judgment which, while it remains open to dispute, seems true or probable to one's own mind . . ." My "judicial objectivism" idea is aimed at eliminating or reducing the openness to dispute. As for "theory," maybe the Darwinists should hire process servers to serve process on governments in lawsuits charging that the government officially uses the term "evolution theory" even though the technical meaning of "theory" is different from the colloquial or everyday meaning.

The statement "ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents," in the conclusion section of Judge Jones' Kitzmiller v. Dover opinion, is a good example of a statement that violates this principle of judicial objectivism, because reasonable people can easily find fault with that statement. For example, many reasonable people believe that ID "uncouples" itself from creationism by strictly using only scientific arguments and avoiding religious sources. For example, intelligent design can be defined as the scientific study of the extent to which some living things appear to be designed rather than appearing to be a product of unintelligent causes, or can be defined as a scientific determination of the probability that living things could have arisen solely from natural genetic variation and natural selection.

IMO a good example of a ruling that satisfies "judicial objectivism" is the ruling in Romer v. Evans that particular groups of people cannot be barred from seeking the aid of the government, which Colorado's Proposition 2 did in effect (Proposition 2 prohibited all laws and regulations aimed at protecting homosexuals from discrimination). The majority opinion said,

Central both to the idea of the rule of law and to our own Constitution's guarantee of equal protection is the principle that government and each of its parts remain open on impartial terms to all who seek its assistance. . . . . . A law declaring that in general it shall be more difficult for one group of citizens than for all others to seek aid from the government is itself a denial of equal protection of the laws in the most literal sense.

There was a lot of moaning and groaning that the courts, by striking down a proposition approved by the voters, had overturned the "will of the people," but IMO there is no reasonable argument against the above reasoning. The only counterargument that dissenting justice Antonin Scalia could raise was the feeble argument that this reasoning appears (in his opinion) to be new:

The central thesis of the Court's reasoning is that any group is denied equal protection when, to obtain advantage (or, presumably, to avoid disadvantage), it must have recourse to a more general and hence more difficult level of political decisionmaking than others. The world has never heard of such a principle, which is why the Court's opinion is so long on emotive utterance and so short on relevant legal citation. It is ridiculous to consider this a denial of equal protection, which is why the Court's theory is unheard of.

Well, Antonin, there is a first time for everything, and the next time the principle is raised you certainly won't be able to argue that "[t]he world has never heard of such a principle."

I find other arguments of the majority to be unpersuasive -- for example, the majority said that Proposition 2 shows animus against homosexuals. But a lot of legitimate government laws and regulations arguably show animus -- for example, laws against gay marriage arguably show animus against homosexuals.
.

Judge Jones' constitutional interpretation fails proposed "compelling reason" test

2009-12-01T22:09:00.000-08:00

Judge "Jackass" Jones' "true religion" interpretation of the Constitution's establishment clause fails a new test that I am proposing, which I call the "compelling reason" test. I am defining this test as follows: when a constitutional interpretation cannot be derived explicitly or implicitly from the language of the Constitution, such an interpretation is valid only if it serves a truly compelling purpose. An example of such an interpretation is the prohibition on shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre -- such a prohibition is not explicit or implicit in the freedom of speech clause. I am using the word "interpretation" here very loosely, since the word usually means an explanation or clarification of the meanings of some words but here there are no words to interpret -- I am using the word "interpret" in the second sense given in the AOL's online dictionary: " 2. to conceive in the light of individual belief, judgment, or circumstance : construe." I also propose the following rules: (1) the "compelling reason" test should not be strictly applied to constitutional interpretations that are not used as the basis for a court decision, and (2) the test should apply only to general principles and not to how those principles apply to a specific situation (IMO there should be some allowance for differences of opinion as to how a "compelling reason" principle applies in a specific situation). I propose this "compelling reason" test for the purpose of helping to reduce arbitrariness, capriciousness, subjectivity, and general "activism" and "legislating from the bench" in judicial opinions. Judges are merely told that they should not be "activists" or should not "legislate from the bench," without being given a set of principles or guidelines that they should follow to avoid those things.

As I noted above, an example of a judicial principle that satisfies the "compelling reason" test is the famous prohibition on shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre. This prohibition cannot be expressly derived from the freedom of speech clause of the 1st amendment but is obviously necessary for compelling reasons. Another example of a judicial principle that satisfies the "compelling reason" test is the so-called "dormant commerce clause." The Constitution grants Congress the power to impose burdens on interstate commerce but does not expressly prohibit the states from imposing such burdens without the permission of Congress, so the courts, realizing that allowing states an unrestricted right to burden interstate commerce would result in chaos, invented a "dormant commerce clause" which denies such an unrestricted right. Another judicial principle of the courts allows -- for truly compelling reasons -- exceptions to the dormant commerce clause.

Judge Jones' "true religion" interpretation of the establishment clause fails this proposed test -- the interpretation cannot be derived from the language of the establishment clause, and there was no compelling reason for the interpretation, even if it is supposed that maintaining the separation of church and state is truly compelling. Judge Jones showed extreme prejudice against intelligent design and the Dover defendants by saying in a Dickinson College commencement speech that his Kitzmiller v. Dover decision was based on his cockamamie notion that the Founders based the establishment clause upon a belief that organized religions are not "true" religions [link]:

Ironically, but perhaps fittingly for my purposes today, we see the Founders' ideals quite clearly, among many places, in the Establishment Clause within the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. This of course was the clause that I determined the school board had violated in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. While legal scholars will continue to debate the appropriate application of that clause to particular facts in individual cases, this much is very clear. The Founders believed that true religion was not something handed down by a church or contained in a Bible, but was to be found through free, rational inquiry. At bottom then, this core set of beliefs led the Founders, who constantly engaged and questioned things, to secure their idea of religious freedom by barring any alliance between church and state.

Unfortunately, the original speech is no longer posted on the Dickinson College website.

Ironically, Judge Jones gave the speech while standing behind the Dickinson College seal, which was designed by USA Founders Benjamin Rush and John Dickinson and which contains a picture of an open bible and the college motto, in Latin, which translates, "religion and learning, the bulwark of liberty." Also, Judge Jones has claimed that the work of judges is "workmanlike," but there is nothing workmanlike about his "true religion" interpretation of the establishment clause.

Believe it or not, some trolls -- Kevin Vicklund and others -- claimed that I misinterpreted Judge Jones' above statement. But no statement could be clearer --"church" and "Bible" represent organized religions, and Judge Jones said that "true religion was not something handed down by a church or contained in a Bible." Under the principles of Social Darwinism, these trolls would be euthanized to protect themselves and others from the possible consequences of their own stupidity, or at least would be sterilized to prevent them from transmitting their mental defectiveness to future generations.

Law professor Robert Tsai, in a post on the Volokh Conspiracy blog, comments about his book Eloquence and Reason:

Because the text of the First Amendment has never changed, those interested in constitutional transformation have always used text instrumentally to secure a hegemony of preferred values, outlooks, and modes of talking about the provision. Whether insiders admit it or not, the task of judging involves sorting through competing claims to determine which cultural and political perspectives ought to be validated and which ones should be resisted. Judges have always played a role in this social process, even if theirs is rarely the last word on a subject. There is no such thing as neutral interpretation; there is only how transparent an interpreter chooses to be about her methodologies and substantive commitments.

"Eloquence and Reason" examines historical episodes in which activists, lawyers, and presidents such as FDR and Ronald Reagan worked to dislodge reigning constitutional ideas and reshape our understandings of free speech and religious freedom . . . .

A second episode has to do with the Anti-Establishment Clause. The “wall of separation” metaphor appeared as part of an official post-war strategy to keep the peace. As originally conceived, Justice Black’s version of the boundary idea conveyed liberalism’s commitment to equal respect, to the protection and empowerment of religious minorities, and to guaranteeing a strong state uncorrupted or divided by religious strife.

Over time, these connotations were consciously reconfigured through litigation, activism, and the electoral process. Through a process of composition, reaction, adaptation, and dissolution, the wall of separation began to acquire negative connotations. Those outside of the courts began to say that the wall signified hostility or discrimination, oppression of religious minorities, and a state weakened by the alienation of its citizens. Eventually judges endorsed this way of describing the wall of separation, shunning it as a trope and divorcing it from their analyses of the controversies that arose.

The title of the book, "Eloquence and Reason," is a misnomer -- what the book criticizes is not reasonable or eloquent (of course, it would be hard to be both unreasonable and eloquent).
.

"Climategate" puts big dent in credibility of "experts"

2009-11-29T21:28:00.000-08:00

I am delighted that the "Climategate" scandal has seriously impaired the credibility of so-called "experts." The New York Times has the story here. Laypeople have been pushed around by the "experts" for far too long. As Texas board of education member and former chairman Don McLeroy said, "someone needs to stand up to the experts." Actually, we need to have a lot of people stand up to the experts.

I was actually starting to believe the global-warming stories. For example, glaciers and polar ice have been shrinking drastically, so there does appear to be something going on.

If the Jewish people are an invention, maybe the holocaust is an invention, too

2009-11-29T20:28:00.000-08:00

A review of a book titled "The Invention of the Jewish People" says,

Shlomo Sand clearly intended his book as an explosive device, a big bang demolishing the myths of Jewishness on which both communal identity and Israeli state policies rest.

His hostile critics react as if it were a deadly bomb, a kind of literary-political terrorist attack . . . . .

. . . . . Almost none of those assailants, naturally, has any discernible expertise in any of the fields Sand touches on. Barely less depressing is the extent to which responses are so utterly predictable according to the critic's political views, so evidently fixed in advance and unaltered by any actual reading.

Conventional ideas about Jewishness hold that Jews are a single ethnic group (or nationality) with substantial shared biological ancestry going back to the biblical kingdom of Judea, from which they were exiled in waves to scatter widely across the Mediterranean world, then far beyond. The core of Sand's historical case is that the whole story is a myth: a very elaborate fiction, supported by hordes of eminent scholars, which became foundational and essential for the state of Israel, but mostly a very recent fabrication without much evidence. Ironically, the idea of the Jews as quintessential people of exile and dispersal was in origin a specifically Christian and even anti-Semitic story: displacement as a punishment for denying Jesus. Yet it was enthusiastically adopted by pioneer 19th-century Jewish historians, partly under the influence of Germanic nationalism, and then by the founders of Zionism.
.
Sand's counter-story is that very few of those now calling themselves Jews have any connection other than the religious to ancient Levantine Jewish kingdoms. The latter, if they existed at all, were anyway small, disunited and unimportant: the biblical story of a mighty kingdom of David is another groundless myth composed long after the event. Sand argues that the rapid growth of Jewish communities in the Roman Mediterranean world, and later in North Africa, Arabia and south-central Asia, came from mass conversion, not dispersal out of Palestine. Probably the most important wave of conversion was among the Khazars of Russia's Volga-Don steppe. European or Ashkenazi Jews – later the main basis both for America's or Britain's Jewish populations and for Israel's foundation – are mainly descended from them.

No doubt that phony jerk Abe Foxman of the ADL is among the book's biggest critics.

If the Jewish people are an invention, maybe the Jewish holocaust -- or, at least, a "systematic" Jewish holocaust -- is an invention, too. I have long contended that a "systematic" Jewish holocaust was impossible because the Nazis had no objective and reliable ways of identifying Jews and non-Jews. Ashkenazi Jews have been found to have some genetic similarities, and the Tay-Sachs disease, for example, is a genetic disease that is more prevalent among Ashkenazi Jews (as well as French Canadians). But genetic testing was not available to the Nazis.
.

The Darwinian death cult

2009-11-20T07:19:00.000-08:00

The original picture is on a webpage of Harun Yahya. I was unable to copy the original picture because it contains an embedded video of a Hitler harangue.

==============================================

David Klinghoffer makes some good points in his article "Do Ideas Have Consequences Only When They're Associated with Radical Islam?," posted on Beliefnet and on Evolution News & Views. He says,

Why do so many writers who insist on emphasizing the consequences of radical Muslim belief tend to ignore the social consequences of other belief systems -- for example, Darwinism?

My question is prompted by reflections that are being published about the Fort Hood massacre. Darwinist blogger PZ Myers is among many voices to be raised in protest that shooter Nidal Hasan's Islamic beliefs are getting too little attention: "Unfortunately, there's [a] factor that seems to be getting minimized in the press accounts: [Hasan] was also a member of an Abrahamic death cult" (i.e., Islam).

Well, PZ, there is also a Darwinian death cult. Make no mistake -- Darwinism is a cult. The Darwinists claim that Darwinism is only science and so should not be blamed for any possible negative social or political consequences that it might have. But the Darwinists don't treat Darwinism as just a science -- they treat it as a worldview and a cult. There are Darwin Day celebrations, "I love Darwin" stickers and knick-knacks, Darwin sermons, Darwin parties, "Friend of Darwin" certificates, Darwin-Lincoln essay contests, even Darwin parodies of Christmas carols. There is the ridiculous, often-repeated notion that "evolution is the fundamental concept underlying all of biology" (as expressed in the new Florida state standards for science education). Darwinists are intolerant of those who disagree with them and censor criticisms of evolution. I should know about the censorship -- I have been banned from several Darwinist blogs, even though my comments on those blogs have been polite and serious. And you yourself, PZ, along with Eugenie Scott, Ken Miller, and other Darwinists fit the image of the "mad scientist." Judge "Jackass" Jones is a "mad judge."

Klinghoffer also says,

PZ Myers is among those who can be relied on to dismiss every attempt to point out the social consequences of Darwin's famous idea. So too biologist and blogger Jerry Coyne, who mocks what is actually a pretty interesting article in the London Sunday Times by Dennis Sewell on the theme . . . . The piece is worth reading, even though Sewell singles me out for criticism:

The connection between Darwin's ideas and the Holocaust remains hugely controversial, not least because many creationists try to reduce it to a crude blame game. The writer David Klinghoffer, an advocate of intelligent design, which many regard as creationism in disguise, claims: "The key elements in the ideology that produced Auschwitz are moral relativism aligned with a rejection of the sacredness of human life, a belief that violent competition in nature creates greater and lesser races, that the greater will inevitably exterminate the lesser, and finally that the lesser race most in need of extermination is the Jews. All but the last of these ideas may be found in Darwin's writing."

But the last of those ideas, "that the lesser race most in need of extermination is the Jews," is an extraordinary leap and requires some explanation. Under Social Darwinism, "lesser" normally means physically and/or mentally defective, but the Nazis never claimed that the Jews as a group were physically and/or mentally defective. In fact, the first Jews targeted by the Nazis were highly mentally fit Jews -- Jewish managers in civil service and Jewish professionals. So I concluded that Social Darwinism's contribution to Nazi anti-Semitism was promotion of the idea that it is morally OK to get rid of undesirables.

Also, David Klinghoffer is unfortunately a hypocrite -- he condemns others for being closed-minded but is closed-minded himself. When I met him at a screening of the film "Darwin's Dilemma," I invited him to visit my blog but warned him that my blog contains holocaust revisionism. I warned him not because I wanted to change his opinions about the holocaust but because I did not want him to hold my holocaust revisionism against me. He then became very hostile, saying that holocaust revisionism is evil and that I had discredited myself and he refused to have any further discussions with me. My basic views about the holocaust are the following: (1) a "systematic" Jewish holocaust was impossible because the Nazis had no objective and reliable ways of identifying Jews and non-Jews, and (2) as stated above, Nazi anti-Semitism was not -- strictly speaking -- a Social Darwinist idea, because the Nazis targeted fit Jews as well as unfit Jews. There is nothing anti-'Semitic about those ideas.
.

Darwinists still celebrating Pyrrhic Dover victory

2009-11-16T09:13:00.001-08:00

You won in Dover, Darwinists, but it was just a Pyrrhic victory, so it is high time that you got over it. It has been four years since the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision, and the plaintiffs' team is still holding an annual reunion [link] [link] [link]. They were even entertained by a Darwinian rap song. "Friend of Darwin" certificates were handed out at a previous reunion [link] [link]. This latest reunion was attended not just by local people -- some people traveled great distances to attend. The Kitzmiller decision is hardly worth celebrating. It is only a judicially unreviewed decision by a single judge and has almost no precedential value -- it is binding only on the Dover Area school district. Furthermore, the badly flawed opinion has been widely panned, even by critics who are pro-Darwinist and anti-ID, e.g., legal scholar Jay Wexler, who thinks that Judge Jones should not have ruled on the scientific merits of ID (for other experts' opinions, see articles in this blog's post-label group Expert opinions about Kitzmiller -- post labels are listed in the sidebar of the homepage). Judge "Jackass" Jones is the poster child of crackpot activist judges. He showed extreme prejudice against ID and the Dover defendants by saying that the decision was based on his cockamamie notion that the Founders based the Constitution's establishment clause upon a belief that organized religions are not "true" religions. He has whined that the critics of the decision have no respect for "judicial independence" and "the rule of law." I think that the decision actually backfired on the Darwinists by alarming and galvanizing people who now think that the courts have gone too far in the application of the establishment clause to the evolution controversy.

Jerry Coyne's demagoguery

2009-11-13T21:39:00.000-08:00

In an article with the sensational title, "Axis of evil: Discovery Institute + Harun Yahya," Jerry Coyne said,

According to yesterday’s (Nov. 8) Washington Post, there seem to be some ties forming between the Turkish creationists, headed by Harun Yahya (aka Adnan Oktar), and the Disco ‘Tute. This is truly an unholy alliance . . . .

Coyne's evidence of an "unholy alliance"? The Washington Post article said,

The Discovery Institute of Seattle, which researches and promotes intelligent design as an alternative to creationism and evolution, . . . . sent speakers to Turkey after being invited by the Istanbul municipal government in 2007. President Bruce Chapman said the institute helped bring Turkish evolution critic Mustafa Akyol to a 2005 Kansas school board hearing on teaching critiques of evolution.

However, Harun Yahya (Adrian Oktar) has denounced ID and the Discovery Institute:
.

In order to alienate people from true religions, Masons have devised many false religions of complex description assembling them all under the heading New Age.

Their purpose in this is to inculcate in that large segment of people who are abandoning materialist ideas, a new way of living and thinking. They want to establish a new system ornamented with metaphysical language and totally divergent from the true religion and faith in Allah (God) as revealed in the Qur’an. It is an irresponsible system with nothing to offer . . . .

. . . In order to alienate people in Islamic countries from true religion, Masons are intent on offering the idea of intelligent design as the most appropriate alternative in these countries . . . . .

. . . . . the Discovery Institute . . . represents this movement . . .

Salman Hameed, an expert on Islamic views on evolution, said in a comment under Coyne's article,

Actually, Disco institute tried to work with one of Yahya’s former disciples, Akyol. However Akyol now seems to have backed away from ID (he is now a fine-tuner). Yahya on the other hand hates ID – partly because of his early messy split with Akyol. He even links ID proponents with the free masons (hey – why not?).

This was not the first attempt to try to paint the Discovery Institute as being in league with Islamic extremists -- the Little Green Footballs blog also made such an attempt [link].
.

Things that drive people "bats"

2009-11-11T09:04:00.000-08:00

In a Panda's Thumb article titled "One of the (many) things that drive me bats," Richard Hoppe says,

From Nova’s Becoming Human, Part 1 at -9:00 (Nova uses a countdown timer). Discussing the hypothesis that short-term (hundreds to thousands of years) extreme climate variability drove human evolution, and particularly increases in brain size, in the ramp-up from 400 cc or so to Homo habilis’s 600 or 700 cc, and maybe on to larger brained successors, the film says:

Narrator: “This observation led [Rick Potts] to an amazing new idea: Rapid [climate] change as a catalyst for our evolution.”

Rick Potts: “And I began to think that well maybe it’s not the particular environment of a savanna that was important, but the tendency of the environment to change.”

[Here it is]

Narrator: “Could it be that the need to survive violent swings of climate made our ancestors more adaptable?”

Right. And it was the need of giraffes to reach higher branches with yummier leaves that made them grow longer f***ing necks. Gaaaaah!!! Lamarck is dead! And so is Bergson.

That locution, that phraseology, that notion that a “need” somehow drives evolution, drives me bats. “Needs” don’t make populations evolve anything. Now, properties of an environment may select for traits in a population if appropriate variants occur, and as a result of that selective process the population may be more adapted to that selective environment.

Actually, the term "more adaptable" is ambiguous here. It of course does not mean a greater ability to make genetic changes that adapt to "violent swings of climate," but can mean the ability to make physical changes that adapt to "violent swings of climate" -- for example, perspiration is an adaptation to hot weather, so the ability to perspire has made humans more adaptable to hot weather. But many human adaptations to severe weather are technological and cultural rather than physical and purely genetic: e.g., wearing clothing and using blankets, making fires, living in caves and thick-walled buildings, and air-conditioning (some of the technological adaptations do reflect the possibility of evolution of high intelligence). The narrator might have just been some dumb Darwinist cafeteria Christian who was a little overenthusiastic about evolution, as a result of having been brainwashed by such ideas as "evolution is the fundamental concept underlying all of biology" (in the new Florida state standards for science education). BTW, some Darwinists have no qualms about saying things that drive critics of Darwinism -- and even pro-Darwinist and neutral people -- "bats," e.g., the statement that "evolution is the fundamental concept underlying all of biology" (or equivalent statements, e.g., evolution is "central" to biology or is the "foundation" of biology) and using the term "intelligent design creationism." Even people who accept evolution can be offended or annoyed by such statements. One doesn't have to be a fundy to be offended by such statements. One of the most irritating things about those statements is the Darwinists' smug belief that they are sitting so pretty that they don't have to worry about being discredited by such statements. If I were a Darwinist, I certainly would be pissed off by Darwinists' statements that tend to discredit Darwinism.
.

Darwinists in denial about Darwinism's negative social and political influences

2009-11-10T03:51:00.000-08:00

Jerry Coyne says on his "Why Evolution is True" blog,

Whoever Dennis Sewell is, he has, as the Brits say, “gone badly wrong.” Check out what seems to be a precis of his book, The Political Gene: How Darwin’s Ideas Changed Politics, in the online Times of London. The paper has published an article that, in essence, holds Darwin responsible for not only the Columbine massacres and the Nazi Holocaust, but also the decline of morality in today’s world . . . .

. . . . Shame on the Times for publishing tripe like this. I’d expect to see this flatulence in a creationist pamphlet, but not in a reputable newspaper.

"Shame on the Times for publishing tripe like this"? I agree that the Times article exaggerates in some places, but a lot of material in the article is factual and not just opinion. Darwinists are in a state of denial about the negative social and political influences of evolution theory. For example, evolution theory helped inspire American eugenics programs which helped inspire the Nazis. Some evidence: In 1920, the Eugenics Record Office merged with the Station for Experimental Evolution to form the Carnegie Institution's Dept. of Genetics.
.
Some students are not just taught evolution -- they are brainwashed into thinking that evolution is the greatest thing since sliced bread (or, since evolution theory predated sliced bread by many years, maybe I should have said that sliced bread is treated like the greatest thing since evolution). For example, the new Florida state standards for science education have the absurd statement that evolution "is the fundamental concept underlying all of biology." Does teachers' excessive enthusiasm for evolution encourage students to act out natural selection?

Nazi anti-Semitism was not Social Darwinism per se, because the Nazis targeted fit Jews as well as unfit Jews. IMO Social Darwinism's main contribution to Nazi anti-Semitism was promotion of the idea that it is morally OK to get rid of undesirables. To my knowledge, the Nazis never claimed that Jews were genetically inferior.
.

Long-overdue symposium on "Intelligent Design and the Constitution"

2009-11-09T20:27:00.000-08:00

Casey Luskin posted on Evolution News & Views,

Tomorrow, Tuesday November 10th, University of St. Thomas School of Law is hosting a legal symposium titled “Intelligent Design and the Constitution.” Participants include Peter M. J. Hess (NCSE), David DeWolf [not listed on website] (Professor of Law, Gonzaga University; senior fellow, Discovery Institute), Josh Rosenau [not listed on website] (NCSE), Thomas D. Sullivan (Aquinas Chair in Philosophy and Theology, University of St. Thomas), Patrick Gillen (Lead Defense Counsel, Kitzmiller v. Dover), Russell Pannier (Emeritus Professor of Law, William Mitchel College of the Law), and myself. The title of my talk will be “The Constitutionality and Pedagogical Benefits of Teaching Evolution Scientifically.” According to the website:

The symposium, free and open to the public, will bring together scholars to debate and analyze various constitutional and philosophical issues surrounding evolutionism and intelligent design, particularly as they affect U.S. public schools.
For details, visit here.

IMO this symposium is long overdue -- a lot of issues need more airing. There has been too much misrepresentation of the issues -- such misrepresentation is epitomized by the Darwinist epithet "intelligent design creationism."
.
I am as opposed as anyone to the outright teaching of religion-based creationism in public school science classes. However, to me it does not matter whether or not intelligent design or other scientific (or pseudoscientific) criticisms of evolution theory are "good" science, because there are good secular reasons for teaching criticisms of evolution that are bad science. Some such reasons are: (1) encouraging critical thinking, (2) broadening students' education, (3) preventing and correcting misconceptions, (4) increasing student interest, and (5) helping to assure that criticisms of evolution are taught by qualified science teachers (the Darwinists complain that these criticisms "mislead" students but want these criticisms to be taught only by unqualified teachers!). There is no constitutional principle of separation of bad science and state. The Constitution's establishment clause is being misused to suppress scientific criticisms of evolution theory.

I look forward to the results of the symposium.
.

Allahu akbar! Darwin-doubting widespread among Moslems

2009-11-07T22:12:00.000-08:00

In order to alienate people from true religions, Masons have devised many false religions of complex description assembling them all under the heading New Age.

Their purpose in this is to inculcate in that large segment of people who are abandoning materialist ideas, a new way of living and thinking. They want to establish a new system ornamented with metaphysical language and totally divergent from the true religion and faith in Allah (God) as revealed in the Qur’an. It is an irresponsible system with nothing to offer . . . .

In order to alienate people in Islamic countries from true religion, Masons are intent on offering the idea of intelligent design as the most appropriate alternative in these countries.

-- Adrian Oktar (pen name Harun Yahya), prominent Islamic creationist [link]

. . . ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.

-- from Kitzmiller v. Dover opinion by Judge John E. "Jackass" Jones III

=========================================

There are some new articles about the evolution controversy among Moslems, both Moslems in predominantly Moslem countries and Moslems in predominantly non-Moslem countries. [link] [link] [link] All indications are that Darwin-doubting is strong among Moslems, which I find to be very encouraging after being pushed around so much by Darwinists (e.g., getting arbitrarily kicked off of many Darwinist blogs and having this blog sabotaged by lousy Darwinist trolls).

There are some nice things about Islamic Darwin-doubting. For one thing, many of these Moslems are in foreign countries where they are beyond the reach of jerks like Judge "Jackass" Jones and Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education. Also, Islam has hundreds of millions of adherents, blowing a big hole in Darwinist claims that the overwhelming majority of religious people see no conflict between evolution and religion.

The Boston Globe said,
.

Americans familiar with the long and bitter battle over the teaching of evolution in our schools likely have a set of images of what creationism looks like: from the Scopes trial, and its dramatization in “Inherit the Wind,” to more recent battles over textbooks on school boards in Kansas and Georgia and in federal court in Pennsylvania. . . . .

. . . . But there is another creationist movement whose influence is growing, and which is fueling challenges to science in countries where Christianity has little sway: Islamic creationism. Campaigners in countries like Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, and Indonesia have fought the teaching of evolution in schools there, sometimes with great success. Creationist conferences have been held in Pakistan, and moderate Islamic clerics are on record publicly condemning Darwin’s ideas. A recent study of Muslim university students in the Netherlands showed that most rejected evolution. And driven in part by a mysterious Turkish publishing organization, Islamic creationism books are hot sellers at bookstores throughout the Muslim world . . .

“[T]he next major battle over evolution is likely to take place in the Muslim world,” Salman Hameed, a Pakistani-born astronomer at Hampshire College who has dedicated himself to researching Islamic creationism, wrote in an article in Science last December . . . .

. . . While Islamic creationists borrow from the literature of their Christian counterparts, their concerns are not always the same. Without a Book of Genesis to account for, for example, Muslim creationists have little interest in proving that the age of the Earth is measured in the thousands rather than the billions of years, nor do they show much interest in the problem of the dinosaurs . . . .

However, there are also many non-Moslem critics of evolution who are not young-earth creationists.

The irony here is that Darwinists in the USA have been trying to associate all criticism of evolution -- particularly intelligent design -- with young-earth creationism in order to argue that these criticisms are solely religious in nature.

The Boston Globe continued,

Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a professor of religious studies at George Washington University, has written that evolution “survived to this day not as a theory but as a dogma{hellip}a convenient philosophical and rationalistic scheme to enable man to create the illusion of a purely closed universe around himself.”

.
The New York Times said,

Dr. Hameed said a negative reaction to evolutionary theory could reflect a struggle to retain cultural traditions and values against Western influences, even though Islamic creationists readily borrowed many of the arguments from Western creationists, just removing the young-Earth aspects.

Where's the mystery? The Islamic creationists are borrowing what they want to borrow -- duh.

There is now a big new post-label group, "Islam and evolution" (listed in the homepage's sidebar).
.

Eugenie Scott the Darwinist crackpot

2009-11-06T09:14:00.000-08:00

Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education (familiarly called "Genie" by name-droppers like Fatheaded Ed Brayton), wrote in the US News and World Report,

Anyone who honestly examines the data supporting evolution — even a young-earth creationist — concludes that the science is strong. If you reject evolution, you are doing it for religious reasons. You're entitled to your religious opinions — but not to your own scientific facts.

I find it hard to believe that even she would say something like that: "If you reject evolution, you are doing it for religious reasons."

There is little or no dispute over "scientific facts" -- most of the dispute is over interpretation of scientific facts.

It is sad that Eugenie Scott is probably the most honored Darwinist activist, receiving honorary degrees and other awards. Darwinist activists like Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers generally don't get awards but IMO are far more honest.
.
The NCSE has a paid "faith project director" but is actually a very poor, one-sided source of information about the conflict between evolution and religion. For example, the NCSE website does not tell the following facts: (1) That the major Christian sects Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, and to a lesser extent the Mormon Church have taken official positions against evolution theory; (2) a Pew Forum survey showed that only 8% of Jehovah's witnesses "agree that evolution is the best explanation for the origins of human life on earth"; (3) Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams called evolution theory "pseudoscience" [link] [link]; and (4) Cardinal Christophe Schönborn, former chief editor of the Catholic catechism, favors intelligent design. The NCSE website's one-sidedness on the evolution v. religion controversy was even part of the cause of action of an establishment clause lawsuit, Caldwell v. Caldwell (in the homepage sidebar's list of post-label links).
.

Stupidity of the term "intelligent design creationism"

2009-10-30T00:06:00.000-07:00

Nick Matzke wrote on Panda's Thumb,

Just last week over at the Thinking Christian blog there was a huge stink raised over the alleged inappropriateness of linking ID to creationism. After much argument the anti-linkage people more or less conceded that there were some good reasons to link ID to a somewhat generic definition of creationism (relying on special creation), but still protested loudly about how inappropriate it was to make the linkage, because most people (allegedly) would assume that creationism = young-earth creationism, and linking ID to young-earth creationism was oh-so-wildly unfair.

No, the "huge stink" was not "over the alleged inappropriateness of linking ID to creationism" -- the huge stink was over the term "ID creationism," which represents the notion that ID and creationism are so intimately linked that ID cannot or should not be mentioned without also mentioning creationism in the same breath. Tom Gilson wrote on his Thinking Christian blog,
.

Several times in the last few days the term “Intelligent Design Creationism” has crossed my line of sight. It’s a misnomer, a duct-taped concatenation of concepts that overlap somewhat, but not enough to merit being stuck together the way ID opponents have done. Robert Pennock is perhaps the worst, but Barbara Forrest, Richard Dawkins, and P.Z. Myers are also frequent offenders.

Gilson did not say that ID and creationism are not linked -- he said that they are "concepts that overlap somewhat, but not enough to merit being stuck together the way ID opponents have done." Evolution has been linked to atheism, sometimes by evolutionists themselves (Richard Dawkins said that evolution theory made it possible to be an "intellectually fulfilled atheist"), but people do not regularly use the term "evolution atheism" or something similar. The term "intelligent design creationism" is just plain asinine.

I don't know if Judge "Jackass" Jones actually uses the term "ID creationism," but he should be added to the list of offenders because he ruled in Kitzmiller v. Dover that "ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents."
.

Incredibly stupid inference

2009-10-23T01:40:00.000-07:00

Richard Hoppe wrote on the Panda's Thumb,

In spite of the Disco ‘Tute’s [Discovery Institute's] recent efforts to imply that the Smithsonian Institution is somehow sympathetic to anti-evolutionist films, the stodgy old place persists in being a place where evolution education is important. Most recently it has announced (pdf of press release) the upcoming opening of a new exhibition hall devoted to human origins.

And what exactly are these "recent efforts" to "imply that the Smithsonian Institution is somehow sympathetic to anti-evolutionist films"? In another article, Hoppe describes these efforts as a mere statement describing the original contracted screener of the film, the California Science Center, as a "west coast affiliate" of the Smithsonian Institution! And Hoppe said, "In its glee about the showing, the ‘Tuters issued a press release that strongly implied that the Science Center and Smithsonian are somehow involved in the film’s premiere"! Actually, the "'Tuters" accused the Smithsonian of putting pressure on the Science Center to cancel the premiere and accused the Science Center of caving in to the pressure, and how did those accusations imply "that the Science Center and Smithsonian are somehow involved in the film’s premiere" and "that the Smithsonian Institution is somehow sympathetic to anti-evolutionist films"?

BTW, the premiere has been moved to the University of Southern California, which is right in my neighborhood, so I am planning on attending (the California Science Center is also in my neighborhood). Following the screening will be a panel discussion that will include well-known ID proponents David Berlnski and Jonathan Wells (Berlinski is not listed in the DI's announcement but is scheduled to participate).

Why Darwinist cafeteria Christians are "implacable foes" of ID

2009-10-21T20:14:00.000-07:00

William Dembski wrote,

Howard Van Till’s review of my book No Free Lunch exemplifies perfectly why theistic evolution remains intelligent design’s most implacable foe. Not only does theistic evolution sign off on the naturalism that pervades so much of contemporary science, but it justifies that naturalism theologically -- as though it were unworthy of God to create by any means other than an evolutionary process that carefully conceals God’s tracks.

Here are some reasons why Darwinist cafeteria Christians -- people who take the gospel literally but do not take the bible's creation story literally -- are "implacable foes" of ID:

(1) They are bending over backwards to try to appease the atheistic Darwinist establishment.

(2) They try to justify their inconsistency -- i.e., the inconsistency of accepting the gospel while rejecting the creation story -- by claiming that they are obliged to reject the creation story because the scientific evidence for evolution is airtight. With this position, they cannot afford to admit that evolution has any scientific weaknesses at all.

Darwinists still belittling "Expelled"

2009-10-17T22:51:00.000-07:00

The Framing Science blog gleefully reported that Michael Moore's new film Capitalism: A Love Story has moved past Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed to become the 5th highest grossing political documentary. It is not fair to compare Michael Moore and Ben Stein. Michael Moore is by far the world's most successful producer of documentary films and his name has far more box office recognition than Ben Stein's. Ben Stein's "Expelled" either is -- or is very close to being -- the most successful documentary produced by someone other than Michael Moore. "Expelled" did quite well, everything considered.

Debate over term "intelligent design creationism"

2009-10-13T21:10:00.000-07:00

The oxymoronic term "intelligent design creationism" is one of my pet peeves. I don't know who coined the term, but it took a pretty sick mind to do it. The term is now being debated on the "Thinking Christian" blog -- here is my first comment in that debate (I have since added other comments):

Creationism is not inherent in ID -- creationism is just a philosophical implication of ID. In actual practice, ID is just the study of the probability that the complexity and diversity of living things could have arisen by random genetic variation and natural selection only.

I never liked the term "intelligent design" because it implies the existence of an intelligent designer, and such implication is not necessary in the study of ID. But as Juliet said in Romeo and Juliet, "what's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

Nick Matzke's first comment is telling: "Two words: cdesign proponentsists." There is a hell of a lot more to this debate than just that typographical error. Nick's arguments are based on stereotyping and guilt-by-association.

Ironically, many religious creationists reject intelligent design. One of the reasons why they reject ID is that they feel that god's word does not need scientific evidence to support it. Some creationists feel that it is blasphemous to even imply or suggest that god's word needs scientific evidence to support it. [link]

One of the main reasons why Darwinists insist that ID is creationism is to have a basis for using the Constitution's establishment clause to attack ID.

Also, many people make the mistake of assuming that ID is the only scientific (or pseudoscientific) criticism of evolution theory. For example, coevolution can be a big problem for evolution even if irreducible complexity is not. [link]

Here is another one of my comments in that thread:
.

One of the problems is that many people interpret the term "intelligent design" literally -- they start asking, "who is the intelligent designer?" "What does the intelligent designer look like?" etc. But there are many figurative or idiomatic terms and expressions that do not really mean what they appear to literally mean. "Intelligent design" could be defined as the study of whether living things have the appearance of being intelligently designed, i.e., whether it appears that it is unlikely that they could have arisen from unintelligent causes such as random genetic variation and natural selection. Describing the identity and/or characteristics of an imaginary "intelligent designer" is beyond the scope of ID, just as describing the origin of life is beyond the scope of evolution theory, but critics of evolution theory do not keep insisting that evolutionists describe the origin of life. As for whether or not ID is "good" science, there is no constitutional principle of separation of bad science and state.

And here is part of another comment:

Wheels said (#87),
Ken Miller, Catholic and biologist, is a well-known opponent of ID because he recognizes that there isn’t any science involved, that it’s just bad and recycled arguments from earlier anti-evolution efforts, and that it’s not compatible with his own faith regarding Creation and understanding of the world.

Regarding the statement, “it’s not compatible with his own faith regarding Creation and understanding of the world,” William Jennings Bryan had a good answer for that:

If those who teach Darwinism and evolution, as applied to man, insist that they are neither agnostics nor atheists, but are merely interpreting the Bible differently from orthodox Christians, what right have they to ask that their interpretation be taught at public expense?

As for the term “intelligent design creationism”: it is clear that the intent of the users of this term is to obfuscate. They are playing with words, trying to take advantage of the ambiguity of the term “creationism.” Nothing that they say will change that fact.

Even if intelligent design is a part of creationism, what purpose is served by adding the qualifier “creationism” to the term “ID”? If ID is unique to creationism, then wouldn’t just “ID” alone be a sufficient description? Adding that qualifier implies that ID is part of other things as well — how about “intelligent design science”?

Yeah, I should have said, "what other kinds of ID are there"? LOL

There is also a debate on Panda's Thumb.
.

"Creationist" Floridian seeks US Senate seat

2009-10-11T22:11:00.000-07:00

The popular Little Green Footballs blog and Fatheaded Ed Brayton have called former Florida House Speaker Mario Rubio, who is challenging Florida Governor Charlie Christie in the primary election for the Republican nominee for a Florida seat in the US Senate, a "creationist." [link] [link] A news article last year reported Rubio's reaction to the new Florida state standards for science education:

TALLAHASSEE (FBW) – An evolution compromise approved on Feb. 19 [2008] by the State Board of Education was the best that could be achieved in that body but legislative action to protect academic freedom of teachers offering criticisms of Darwinian evolution is possible, House Speaker Marco Rubio told Florida Baptist Witness in a Feb. 20 interview.

Rubio said the Board of Education’s addition of “scientific theory of” before each reference to “evolution” in new science standards for Florida’s public schools was “the best fix available” with “the way those votes were lining up.”

Although he and other House leaders supported the theory compromise in a Feb. 19 letter to members of the Board of Education, Rubio said critics who believe explicit language protecting academic freedom is necessary “may be right.”

At the Feb. 19 BOE meeting, opponents of the science standards uniformly opposed the theory compromise, arguing instead for an “Academic Freedom Proposal” which would have added a clause to the standards permitting teachers “to engage students in a critical analysis” of Darwinian evolution.

John Sullivan, executive director-treasurer of the Florida Baptist Convention, in a Feb. 17 letter urged the BOE to oppose the theory compromise in light of the standards’ “silence about teaching scientific criticisms of evolution.”

Sullivan said both strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian evolution should be taught and said the standards should “honor and encourage the academic freedom of teachers and students on an issue of fundamental importance and ongoing scientific controversy.”

Asked if the legislature would be open to academic freedom legislation, Rubio told the Witness, “I think so. Sure. Well, I think the Florida House would. I can’t speak for the Senate.”

Although a vote count had not been taken on the issue, “we may have sufficient votes on that in the Florida House,” he added.

Rubio said there also could be activity in the legislature by evolution proponents who wish to remove the theory compromise language.

“I think there’s still going to be folks out there talking about this – on both sides. … I think this will be a battle that will go on for quite some time,” he said.

The “crux” of the disagreement, according Rubio, is “whether what a parent teaches their children at home should be mocked and derided and undone at the public school level. It goes to the fundamental core of who is ultimately, primarily responsible for the upbringing of children. Is it your public education system or is it your parents?”

Rubio added, “And for me, personally, I don’t want a school system that teaches kids that what they’re learning at home is wrong.”

I disagree with Rubio's statement that he doesn't "want a school system that teaches kids that what they’re learning at home is wrong." Depending on the circumstances, I think it is OK for public schools to do this.

It is not clear whether Rubio is really a "creationist" -- he might just merely be in favor of "academic freedom" to teach scientific criticisms of evolution in public schools. I think that evolution should be taught in the public schools but I also feel that scientific -- or pseudoscientific (I added that for the benefit of the Darwinists who keep moaning that there are no scientific criticisms of evolution) -- criticisms of evolution should also be taught in the public schools. And the following recent additions to the Florida state science standards really need to be removed:

(1) -- the statement that evolution is "the fundamental concept underlying all of biology." That statement simply is not true. In fact, in a recent national survey of science teachers, 13% of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that an "excellent" biology course could exist that does not mention Darwin or evolution at all, and even I don't agree with that statement.

(2) -- defining scientific theories as "well-supported" and "widely accepted." That's ridiculous -- there are strong scientific theories and weak scientific theories. No standard dictionary that I have seen defines scientific theories in that way. Darwinists are creating confusion by coming up with new definitions of "scientific theory" just to suit the Darwinist agenda.

IMO the above two statements in the new Florida standards definitely "mock" and "deride" what some parents tell their kids about evolution and creationism. The Darwinists seem to have the badly mistaken idea that a ruling by a crackpot activist judge in Pennsylvania gave them carte blanche to nationally tyrannize our public schools by means of dogmatic teaching of evolution.

I am particularly sensitive about the evolution controversy in Florida because the so-called Florida Citizens for Science blog has banned my arguments about coevolution. [link] [link]

I have no idea where Rubio's opponent in the primary, Gov. Charlie Crist, stands on evolution education. I hope that evolution education will be an issue in Florida's primary and main elections for the US Senate.
.

Richard Dawkins the accommodationist

2009-10-09T10:37:00.000-07:00

There is now a big dispute going on over whether Richard Dawkins is really an "accommodationist." Dawkins said in a Newsweek magazine interview that he mainly targets creationists and not theistic evolutionists -- he said, "I think there is a certain justified irritation with young-earth creationists who believe that the world is less than 10,000 years old. Those are the people that I'm really talking about." That statement is accommodationist towards theistic evolutionists. He also called Darwinist cafeteria Christian Francis Collins an "intelligent evolutionary scientist." That is also accommodationist towards theistic evolutionists. So how is Dawkins not an accommodationist?
.
Josh Rosenau says, "It will be interesting to see whether the usual suspects go after Dawkins with quite the same vehemence that has met others advancing similar lines of argument." One of those "suspects," of course, is Sleazy PZ Myers, who said that he "metaphorically puke[s] on the shoes" of those who make the "goofy" argument that "if you don't be nice to god belief, the churchy scientists will take their ball home." So far, PZ has not made one peep of criticism of Dawkins' accommodationist statements.

Please don't get me wrong -- I have no sympathy for the accommodationists or their useful-idiot mascots, the theistic evolutionists. As I have said many times, the Darwinist cafeteria Christians have it reversed -- the bible's creation story actually makes more sense than the gospel. Both the creation story and the gospel require belief in the supernatural, but the creation story is fairly straightforward whereas the gospel is full of illogic, inconsistencies, ambiguities, and unintelligibility. Also, the creation story is consistent with the idea of an all-powerful god whereas the god of the gospel is a weak, limited god who must struggle against Satan for control of the world.
.

The breathtaking inanity of Eugenie Scott

2009-10-09T02:33:00.000-07:00

When Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, was asked, "are science and religion compatible?", she answered,

I don't have to address that as a philosophical question, I can address that as an empirical question. It's obvious that it is. Because there are many people who are scientists who are also people of faith. There are many theologians whose life it is, whose job it is to think about religious issues, who are enthusiastic accepters and supporters of science and who are excited by the things scientists discover. So it's empirically obvious that there's no necessary conflict between science and religion.

So she said that "it's obvious" that science (here mainly meaning "evolution") and religion are compatible because some scientists and theologians say or think that the two are compatible. What an idiot.

The National Center for Science Education presents a completely one-sided view of the evolution vs. religion controversy. The NCSE ignores or denies the existence of (1) Darwin-doubting that is based on science instead of religion and (2) people and religious organizations that believe that evolution and religion are not compatible. The NCSE is so one-sided on this issue of evolution and religion that the Univ. of Calif. Berkeley was sued -- in Caldwell v. Caldwell -- for allegedly violating the Constitution's establishment clause by posting an evolution-education website that linked to the NCSE website (the case was dismissed on the phony grounds that the plaintiff -- a parent of a student in the public schools -- lacked standing to sue).

Anti-Defamation League's Darwin problem

2009-10-04T14:55:00.000-07:00

An article titled "Richard Dawkins's Jewish Problem," posted by David Klinghoffer on Evolution News & Views and his Kingdom of Priests blog on Beliefnet, says,

The Anti-Defamation League, the country's leading group dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism, is rightly sensitive to the offense of trivializing the Holocaust. Why, then, has the ADL said nothing in protest against the Darwinian biologist and bestselling atheist author Richard Dawkins and his comparison of Darwin doubters to Holocaust deniers?

The ADL has objected to attempts to inject Nazi imagery into the health-care reform debate ("Such statements only serve to diminish and trivialize the extent of the Nazi regime's crimes against humanity"), the abortion debate ("Such analogies can only trivialize and diminish the horror"), the animal-rights debate ("the issue should stand on its own merits, rather than rely on inappropriate comparisons that only serve to trivialize the suffering of the six million Jews"), and in many other contexts.
.
But if Rush Limbaugh, for example, used "outrageous, deeply offensive and inappropriate" Nazi comparisons to stigmatize sponsors and supporters of health-care reform, why is it no less outrageous to compare people (like the late Irving Kristol, for example) who doubt Darwinian evolution to the moral cretins who deny the Holocaust? In his new book, currently the #22 best seller on Amazon, The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, Dawkins calls Darwin critics "history-deniers" and dwells on the comparison, even remarking that "The evidence for evolution is at least as strong as the evidence for the Holocaust, even allowing for eye witnesses to the Holocaust."

David Klinghoffer is completely clueless here. What we have here has nothing to do with "trivializing" the holocaust, David. To the ADL, "trivializing" the holocaust means cynically exploiting the holocaust to further a political agenda, and by that standard, the hypocritical ADL "trivializes" the holocaust as much as anyone. The "trivialization" issue is just a pretext cooked up by the ADL. What the ADL does in regard to Darwinism is try to show it in the most favorable light. The ADL is rabidly pro-Darwinist for the following reasons: (1) Darwinism is opposed by Christian and Moslem fundies, who are despised by the ADL, and (2) the ADL fears that teaching criticisms of Darwinism in the public schools threatens the principle of church-state separation. The ADL went so far as to call the Kitzmiller decision a "victory for students." ADL national director Abraham Foxman angrily denounced the Darwin-to-Hitler message of the Coral Ridge Ministry's TV documentary "Darwin's Deadly Legacy" and an accompanying book, saying, "Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people." However, when Ben Stein's movie "Expelled" also carried a Darwin-to-Hitler message, the ADL was faced with a problem: Ben Stein is Jewish and the movie includes two prominent Jewish supporters -- David Berlinski, an agnostic Jew, and Gerald Schroeder, who even wears a yarmulke in the movie. The ADL initially "solved" the problem by pulling the article denouncing the Coral Ridge Ministry but finally bit the bullet by reinstating that article and adding an article denouncing "Expelled."

Of course, I am very disturbed that Klinghoffer refers to holocaust deniers as "moral cretins," but that is another issue.
.

Judge "Jackass" Jones should be disqualified

2009-10-02T10:01:00.000-07:00

Judge John E. "Jackass" Jones III should be retroactively disqualified from deciding the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. The Kitzmiller decision has little precedential value to begin with, but the whole decision should just be declared to be null and void. It was bad enough when Judge Jones said in a Dickinson College commencement speech that the decision was based on his cockamamie notion that the Founders based the establishment clause upon a belief that organized religions are not "true" religions. But now Judge Jones is scheduled to participate in a five-person panel discussion titled, "Overcoming Resistance to the Reality of Evolutionary Change in Nature." What is worse, Jones is scheduled to receive the 2009 President's Medal from one of the two sponsors of the panel discussion, the Geological Society of America (the other sponsor is the Paleontological Society). What stronger indications of bias are possible? Also, Judge Jones has many times broken his pledge to not speak about the Kitzmiller case directly.

The title of the panel discussion, "Overcoming Resistance to the Reality of Evolutionary Change in Nature," is of course very condescending. And the announcement for the discussion again shows that the Darwinists overestimate the importance of religion and underestimate the importance of the scientific evidence as factors that cause many people to question evolution theory:
.

. . . . less than 40% of Americans are convinced of the reality of biological evolution. In one study, 31% of respondents said that humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.

These studies show that a majority of Americans accept or deny evidence of evolution, geologic processes and the age of the Earth to the extent that they can be reconciled with their religious or other core beliefs. All too often many people, including scientists, accept what they want to believe about the world.

Jerry Coyne is right -- in twenty-five years, the Darwinist cafeteria Christians and their accommodationists have not made a dent in the size of the Darwin-doubting percentage of the public.

A few definitions:

Darwinist Cafeteria Christians: These Darwinists believe that evolution and religion are compatible. These Darwinists take the gospel literally but expressly reject the bible's more credible creation story (the creation story is fairly straightforward whereas the gospel is full of illogic, inconsistencies, ambiguities, and unintelligibility). Examples are Ken Miller and Francis Collins.

accommodationists: Darwinists who are not Cafeteria Christians but who have a policy of coddling them. Examples are the National Center for Science Education, NCSE director Eugenie Scott, and Chris Mooney.

new atheists: These atheists refuse to accommodate Darwinist Cafeteria Christians. Examples are PZ Myers, Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins

Thoughts for the day:

If those who teach Darwinism and evolution, as applied to man, insist that they are neither agnostics nor atheists, but are merely interpreting the Bible differently from orthodox Christians, what right have they to ask that their interpretation be taught at public expense?

-- William Jennings Bryan link

Unfortunately, some theologians with a deistic bent seem to think that they speak for all the faithful. . . . . The reason that many liberal theologians see religion and evolution as harmonious is that they espouse a theology not only alien but unrecognizable as religion to most Americans.

-- Jerry Coyne in the New Republic magazine link
.

The breathtaking inanity of Kitzmiller v. Dover

2009-09-27T20:18:00.000-07:00

The Kitzmiller v. Dover case is in the news again. Southern Methodist University recently held a series of events concerning the case. The first lectures and a panel discussion are apparently very one-sided, with only supporters of the decision:

The programs begin Sept. 24 with a 10 a.m. reception and 10:30 a.m. lecture at DeGolyer Library, featuring Paula Apsell (right), senior executive producer, and Melanie Wallace, senior series producer of NOVA's documentary, "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" . . . . .

A panel discussion on legal, ethical and journalistic issues surrounding the making of the film will follow from 7 p.m.-8:30 p.m. in Caruth Auditorium, Owen Arts Center. Panelists will include Judge Jones, documentary producers Apsell and Wallace, plaintiff's council Eric Rothschild and Lauri Lebo, author of The Devil in Dover.

BTW, Judge Jones, who was scheduled to appear in the above panel, only recently was a featured speaker at Bridgewater College (Sept. 17).

Another SMU panel discussion appears to be more even-handed -- it includes an attorney from Liberty Legal Institute, which looks like it would disagree with the decision:

On Sept. 25, from 10-11:30 a.m., First Amendment issues will get closer scrutiny in a panel discussion at SMU's Dedman School of Law. Jones, Rothschild (now in private practice), Liberty Legal Institute attorney Hiram Sasser and Dedman School of Law Professor Lackland Bloom will trade ideas and opinions in Karcher Auditorium, Storey Hall.

Also, the 3quarksdaily blog has an article that is highly critical of the Kitzmiller opinion.
.
The Kitzmiller decision has received far more attention -- and certainly far more praise -- than it deserves. It is, after all, just a decision of a single judge and is binding only upon a small school district. And much worse, it is a decision of a crackpot judge who is the poster child of activist judges. The Kitzmiller opinion is a piece of junk, not the masterpiece that the Darwinists claim it is. Kitzmiller was decided over three years ago and we really need to get the opinions of other judges, but no such opinions are on the horizon. And I have seen cases stalled in the lower courts for three years or more -- examples are Caldwell v. Caldwell and Association of Christian Schools Intl. v. Stearns. The best chance to get other opinions was lost when the Cobb County school district took a dive by settling out of court in Selman v. Cobb County -- the school district was actually in a very strong position because the appeals court panel indicated that it was leaning towards reversal before the panel remanded the case because of missing evidence. New court cases would also give us an opportunity to apply what we have learned from the mistakes that the plaintiffs made in the Kitzmiller case.

Judge Jones showed extreme prejudice against intelligent design and the Dover defendants -- regardless of whether or not ID is a religious concept -- by saying in a Dickinson College commencement speech that his Kitzmiller decision was based on his cockamamie notion that the Founders based the Constitution's establishment clause upon a belief that organized religions are not "true" religions -- he said,

. . . . this much is very clear. The Founders believed that true religion was not something handed down by a church or contained in a Bible, but was to be found through free, rational inquiry. At bottom then, this core set of beliefs led the Founders, who constantly engaged and questioned things, to secure their idea of religious freedom by barring any alliance between church and state.

He ruled that evolution is compatible with religion, a question that is completely inappropriate for judges to answer -- the opinion said,

Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs' scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.

The question of the compatibility of evolution and religion is non-justiciable. Questions are non-justiciable when there is “a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving the question.” Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U.S. 267 (2004).

He arrogantly assumed that he knows the answers to questions that have perplexed generations of scientists and philosophers. He dodged the crucial question of whether ID serves the genuine secular purpose of encouraging critical thinking:

Accepting for the sake of argument its proponents', as well as Defendants' argument that to introduce ID to students will encourage critical thinking, it still has utterly no place in a science curriculum. . . . .The goal of the IDM is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID.

Judge Jones contradicts himself here -- why would the IDM (intelligent design movement) not have a goal to encourage critical thought if, as Jones accepted for the sake of argument, introducing ID to students will encourage critical thinking? And Jones nowhere states an opinion on whether ID encourages critical thiniking.

Without stating exceptions, he said that critics of the Kitzmiller decision had no respect for "judicial independence" and "the rule of law" (some of the opinion's biggest critics are hardcore Darwinists Jay Wexler and Larry Moran). And the whole Kitzmiller decision is badly tainted because Judge Jones likely showed a lack of restraint because an appeal of the decision was not expected because of the changeover in the school board membership. For example, the opinion's ID-as-science section was copied virtually verbatim from the plaintiffs' opening post-trial brief while ignoring the defendants' opening post-trial brief and both sides' answering post-trial briefs -- it is doubtful that Jones would have done this had he anticipated an appeal, for then the opinion would have gone to the appeals court with no answers to the defendants' points about ID-as-science. The opinion is best described by the words it used to describe the defendants -- "breathtaking inanity."
.