The stupid, it hurts......

The lack of understanding here is painful.

The Lies of David Attenborough

Hopefully I don't have to explain to you why this man is wrong....

Italy science council funds creationist book

"After hosting a panel earlier this year to discuss supposed flaws in evolutionary theory, Italy's science agency the National Research Council (CNR) reportedly put up thousands of dollars to help with the publication of a follow-up book, Evolutionism: The Decline of an Hypothesis. The move has vexed many scientists in the country where the Vatican recently came out in support of Darwin's ideas.

Authored by CNR's Vice President Roberto de Mattei, the book asserts, among other things, that scientific dating of rocks is inaccurate and that dinosaurs went extinct just 40,000 years ago (rather than some 65 million years ago, not accounting for modern birds, of course), according to the blog ScienceInsider. The American Academy for the Advancement of Science blog notes that an Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, is reporting that CNR provided 9,000 Euros (some $13,255) to help publish the book, which came out last month. "

This really is the last thing we need. Imagine if AAAS or the Royal Society was found doing this.

Source: Scientific American: Italy science council funds creationist book

Latest from the Tree Lobsters

Original here: #106 Science Cops 2: Sci Harder

Design vs Chance: PZ Myers

A debunking of the complexity argument for intelligent design. Which in PZ Myers opinion, leaves very little of ID left.

I caused a fuss!

I've been using Newsvine for a while now, for two reasons. The first is it acts like a storage facility for stuff from the press that I find interesting and would loose otherwise, the second is it produces an RSS feed of what I find interesting that I use on my site.

I haven't, until now, been particularly interested in its other features. An article I posted a while ago about creationism in the UK education system has gathered around 200 comments (that's roughly 200 more than any other article I've posted). This shows that the debate is alive and well.

So, shamelessly, here is a link to my Newsvine. You can even vote for my stories!

Northern Ireland Troubles

It seems like there are troubles brewing in Northern Ireland. Recently Sammy Wilson, DUP Environment Minister, claimed that climate change is not due to the influence of our species. Now his DUP colleague, Mervyn Storey, has threatend the Ulster Museum with legal action if it does not stage a creationist exhibition alongside its forthcoming exhibition on Charles Darwin.

digging a bit deeper into the shadowy world of Mervyn Storey we find that he has already tried to get intelligent design (read: creationism) taught in schools.

Hopefully this lunatic will disappear in a giant failure, but then again.

Ben Stein backs out

Ben Stein has backed out of the UVM date. A victory over creationism!

Denial of Darwin

I sometimes think that we have it easy compared to American scientists. I tend to think of the theory of evolution having near-universal acceptance in this country, with just a few religious extremists on the wrong side of truth.

Perhaps I was wrong.


One statistic that is very worrying is the 22% believing in creationism (I refused to place 'intelligent' design as a separate theory). 10% of people believing in young Earth creationism is tragic.

I admit that as scientists we need to engage more with the public, but the theory of evolution has been well explained by numerous authors.

I genuinely feel despaired.

Some good news from Texas

It seems that the Texan state curriculum for science will define it in a way that excludes creationism (including intelligent design).

Well done Texas!

Teachers and Creationism in the UK

A selection of links from Teachers' TV and The Guardian relating to a survey in which 29% of teachers said creationism should be taught as science. As a statistic this is truly appalling. James Randerson dives a little bit further into the statistics here.

Perhaps the best bit is this video, a must for all those teachers who are apparently unable to teach evolution well!

Just In Case You Were Complacent

For those UK readers who think that the problem of creationism entering the education system as science is an American phenomenon there is bad news. Such teaching is going on daily in the UK too, mainly thanks to Tony Blair's great belief in 'faith schools'.

What Not To Teach

The right to home-school your children is something that i find myself uneasy with. I kow some parents are more than capable, but it should not be used as a method of indoctrination. Being taught proper science, and being able to discuss the implications of ideas such as evolution, creationism, etc with their peers exposes children to the idea that not everybody believes the same things, and will hopefully cause them to turn to the evidence.

This article from the Telegraph highlights the problems when parents do the wrong thing. No child should have a link between 'The Wizard of Oz' and atheism, it is a FICTIONAL story, it says nothing about religion. The twisting of fictional fantasy to fatastical beliefs continues with Harry Potter 'the Lord is in charge of your life, and in Harry Potter the characters are interested in gaining power for themselves'.

But worse is yet to come...

'We don't want people teaching our children that they come from monkeys,' says Michelle McKissick, 40, from Houston, who teaches her four children at home. What happens in biology classrooms is 'a lie', she says, before instructing me in the 'correct' view: Genesis 1.11 – not a metaphor, or a story, but fact. She firmly believes that the world is only 6,000 years old and that, consequently, man and dinosaurs (created on Day Six, along with Adam and Eve) once lived together quite happily – the creationist view of the universe. 'Dinosaurs weren't all these great big huge monstrosities,' she smiles, 'and they weren't all ferocious. Probably most of them were, in fact, plant-eaters.' It is Noah's flood, she points out patiently, that is responsible for the existence of fossils. And as for the vexing question of how Noah got a brachiosaurus, an animal that could have weighed up to 33 tons and eaten 3,000lb of green plants a day on to the Ark – 'He took the young ones. That would make the most sense.'

Why would herbivorous animals have teeth perfectly designed for tearing into animal flesh and practically useless for chewing plants? Perhaps she should be denied the right to decide what makes 'the most sense'?

Press Release regarding Expelled

This came to me via the British Centre for Science Education

Expelled flunks the test

www.ExpelledExposed.com finds new creationist “documentary” lacking accuracy on many levels

Oakland, California, April 15, 2008 — Millions of dollars have been spent promoting Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed to fundamentalist church groups, but that money would have been better spent on fact checkers. www.ExpelledExposed.com, a website launched today by the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), reveals the truth behind the creationist movie’s misrepresentations.

“Creationists have been making the same arguments for decades,” says Eugenie C. Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education. “They’ve gotten better at marketing these claims, but they’re no more valid now than during the Scopes trial of the 1920s. Creationists have been predicting the death of evolution for over a century, yet it is constantly affirmed by evidence from fields Darwin could never have imagined.” Given the damning assessment at www.ExpelledExposed.com, Scott adds, “Perhaps the filmmakers should have spent more time hitting the books, instead of beating up on hardworking scientists.”

Throughout the movie, Ben Stein claims that “Big Science” represses intelligent design to advance an atheistic agenda, but Peter Hess, from NCSE’s Faith Outreach Project, doesn’t buy it. “There are many successful evolutionary biologists who are also people of faith,” he observes, “and a host of people of faith who regard intelligent design as a misconceived and harmful rejection of science. In attempting to pit Christianity against science, Expelled misrepresents both.”

“We reviewed public records and reports on the intelligent design promoters who were supposedly discriminated against, and we discovered that the claims that they lost their jobs over intelligent design are unsupported,” explains Josh Rosenau, a biologist at NCSE. “That said, professors who aren’t making advances in their field, editors who disregard their journal’s established practices, and lecturers who repeat creationist falsehoods shouldn’t be surprised if they have trouble holding jobs. These people weren’t expelled; they flunked out.” www.ExpelledExposed.com contains information about the “martyrs” from Expelled, and also of real scientists who successfully challenged established science. “The difference,” NCSE researcher Carrie Sager observes, “is that real scientists back their challenges with experimental results. Results are what changed minds, forced textbook revisions, and earned Nobel Prizes.”

More insidious are the movie’s attempts to link evolution to the Holocaust. Susan Spath, a historian of science at NCSE, comments: “The implication that Darwin led to Nazism and the Holocaust is an irresponsible misrepresentation of a terrible history. Hitler abused many things, including science, and Expelled is wrong to shift blame off his shoulders and onto evolution.” www.ExpelledExposed.com quotes the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman, who described similar claims in a previous creationist movie as “an outrageous and shoddy attempt ... to trivialize the horrors of the Holocaust.”

The National Center for Science Education is a non-profit organization dedicated to defending the teaching of evolution in the public schools. The NCSE maintains its archive of source material on the history of creationism at its Oakland, California, headquarters. On the web at www.ncseweb.org. www.ExpelledExposed.com is a resource for journalists, teachers, and curious moviegoers who want the full story behind Expelled.

Contacts:

Eugenie C. Scott, scott@ncseweb.org, 800-290-6006

Josh Rosenau, rosenau@ncseweb.org, 800-290-6006

Susan Spath, spath@ncseweb.org, 800-290-6006

Carrie Sager, sager@ncseweb.org, 800-290-6006

Confused by Reality?

I am amazed by the number of people I have seen posting on the internet about things such as creationism vs evolution who get the science totally wrong. I was reminded of this by the same podcast as I mentioned yesterday, which I downloaded again to check a few things out.

The most striking thing said was that it may take a scientist hours, or even days to properly explain why the pseudo-science spouted by a preacher is incorrect. The incorrect use of scientific language in these speeches lends an unwarranted authority to the words of these preachers, and makes them more believable to the lay religious citizen.


I wish I could say that I thought these preachers were just misguided. But I think it is more sinister. Backed up with authoritatively delivered, despite incorrect, words and concepts bastardised from the world of science these preachers set out to deceive their congregations and get them to believe in their own world view. Whether is this is morally justified by religion or not is another matter.

Arguments Against Creationism

Here are a few arguments made against creationism a while ago now on the Infidel Guy podcast, when he was talking to Frank Zindler.

Zindler made a huge attack on creationism as it is told in Genesis. Two points that I found particularly interesting (although I'd heard them before) were the fact that a literal interpretation of Genesis requires a flat Earth, and an argument made on that favourite science topic of creationists - the fossil record.

The 'flat Earth' requirement comes from the six days it supposedly takes to make the Earth. Well, if we take this literally it is nonsense, at any time half of the Earth is in day, the other half in night. At the poles day and night are 6 months each! If on the other hand we take 'day' to be a significant length of time, then the order of creation is ridiculous.

My favourite argument is however based on the fossil record. Creationists often use this as a trump card in disproving evolution, even though there are so many intermediary forms in the record that to claim it doesn't support evolution is wrong. But anyway, surely if, as many creationists believe, we lived at the same time as the dinosaurs (who in some cases could breathe fire in order to explain dragons), then there should be fossil records of people ad dinosaurs in the same strata. None has been found. There are also other glaring inconsistencies that support evolution, there is a cut off point for pollen from angiosperms, even though there are other plant fossils before this date.

I just love the fact that one of the creationists trump cards has been turned on them!

British Centre for Science Education

I saw on another blog (sorry I forgot which one) about this guy David Anderson who has created a blog solely as an attempt to counteract the British Centre for Science Education, whose aim is to prevent creationism being taught in UK schools.

I must admit prior ignorance of this group, but I have read around their website and I agree with their aims, and have since registered for membership, which is currently free. I would encourage you all to do the same here. Perhaps we can make something positive has come out of David's blog after all.

Alternative Dinosaur Museum

I saw this today.

This is a step way across the line. Giving a religious explanation to accepted science on a scale like this, and presenting it as fact is repulsive on so many levels. The truth of the matter is we KNOW that dinosaurs became extinct millions of years ago, and never walked the Earth with humans. To say otherwise is a lie.

Here in the UK there would be an outcry at such a preposterous idea. But then we have a much greater freedom of belief, or lack of. I also doubt such funds could be raised for a similar venture here.

To me this has really bought home the fact that America is in a Dark Age. We have seen it in Europe after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Within a few generations the architectural feats of the Romans were thought by many to be the work of some higher power. European culture was in a trough. This was a time that religion was a major force in the world, and the influence of the pope over kings led to numerous atrocities. I guess thanks to the Da Vinci Code and the ilk the most famous of these will be the horrendous genocide of the Cathars, and the murder of the Knights Templar.

The Dark Age came to an end with the enlightenment where people were once again able to think freely in the sciences, philosophy and the arts. The Church was however reluctant to give up its power, and we see a period of intellectual conflicts with the established power.

Ever since the enlightenment the power of religion has been waning, and with it the people have become less religious. The French revolution succeeded in separating church and state, and in other countries the influence of Rome over the leaderships reduced.

What America needs is an enlightenment, and it needs it soon before the few lights of the Dark Age have gone forever.

How Can You Be Sure Christianity/Islam/(insert others here) Is Not The One True Religion?

I have been asked this on numerous occasions. It is clear to me that there is not one universal god, or one universal set of gods, for all of humanity.

The crux of this argument is the sheer number of different god-centric belief systems, that have been developed in parallel by cultures which for many centuries had no contact with each other. The Aboriginal Australians developed the concept of "dream time", the Native Americans came up with a complicated system of spirits and associated beliefs, the ancient societies of Greece, Italy and Egypt had a plethora of gods, and so on.

Are any of these concepts of "god(s)" mutually compatible. Well, some might be but many are totally beyond combination. The multi-god religion of the Romans is totally incompatible with the one-god teaching of Abrahamic religion. The spiritual unity of the natural world in many religions also clashes harshly with the Old Testament's insistence of the superiority of man over the animals.

Surely if there was only one god, or group of gods, then all religions would have a common focus, even if they were not all identical. Surely the natives of Australia should be as capable as any as following Jesus?

Or, just perhaps, the fact is that the inhabitants of the middle-East around 2000 years ago (and their favourite imaginary friends) didn't know about Australia at the time. It posed no threat to them and did not need to be controlled by the same rules - enforced through the promise of eternity in paradise, or hell.

The sheer number of mutually exclusive belief systems that claim to be the only way to salvation should make the followers of any of them question their beliefs. The strength of their belief is equalled by other believers who believe in a different system that also offers the only way to eternity in paradise.

It wouldn't be half as bad if they just got on with life, but how many times in history has one of these belief systems launched an attack on another? How many millions have died? What a waste of human life and potential!

But the worst is yet to come, these people who stand by an organisation that has committed genocide, murder, robbery and countless other crimes on people who have the audacity to believe in a different fairytale then tell me, as an atheist, that I have no morals.

Well thankfully I live in a society where it is generally acceptable for people of intellect, rather than men in robes, to come up a set of rules to live our lives by. Although that doesn't stop the 'robies' trying to interfere with anything they can get their hands on.

Religion Has A Place In School Science

If we go back in time to the first concept of creation we would find that it would today be put into the category of spiritual or religious.

However the title for most accurate description is not dished out on a first come first served basis. Since that time our knowledge of science has grown from a simple curiosity about the world around us to broad, wide-reaching theories governing not only our everyday lives, but also the behaviour of the very large, the very small, the very slow and the very fast (on scales that are often almost, if not totally, impossible to grasp).

As we have learned more by observing what actually happens, we lessen our need to 'fill the gaps' of our knowledge with tales that if told often enough and believed strongly enough provide some sort of spiritual comfort.

Are these first attempts at explanation truly scientific? Well they could be. A scientific theory has to describe the relevant criteria already discovered, and from it we can make predictions that we can test to see if this theory really does describe the phenomena concerned. In a world with very little knowledge of science a story, however much like a fairytale, could be a scientific theory. Admittedly one incapable of running the gauntlet of experimental evidence to the present day, but a theory nevertheless.

Should this be taught in schools. I would say so, and in science lessons too. Anything that elucidates the application of the scientific method to a given problem has merit. Would the students have the inclination (or perhaps, in many religious countries, the bravery) to extend the application of the idea to modern day religious doctrines? I can only hope so.