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.

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!

Vegetables Proof of Inteligent Design (?)

As PZ Myers said, I really don't see how citrus fruits resemble human mammary glands. I still find it amazing that people can be this deluded!

The video is originally from GodTube (yes, really), which a mine of information coming from those challenged by coherent thought.

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

The Atheists Nightmare

I try to avoid calling people I have never met stupid, or even ignorant. But sometimes I really have to restrain myself.

The (so called) Atheists' Nightmare is in fact a banana, and the video can be found here. I know this has been lurking around for a while, and it has been debunked many times. But I wanted to include it, and it makes for an interesting post.

Well, I concede that the banana has been designed. It has been selectively bred by humans for thousands of years. In fact a wild banana bears very little resemblance to what you find in the supermarket or green grocers today. Intelligent design? I would say so. Cultivated bananas are much nicer than wild ones. A triumph for Intelligent Design supporters, I'm afraid not (surprise, surprise).

Some of the YouTube guys had a field day with this. I've seen that despite the fact that banana may be well designed, the pineapple and coconut are clearly not.

The IDers came up with another triumph of stupidity. Apparently if evolution is true then every now and then life would spontaneously appear in jars of peanut butter.

I never knew that people could be that stupid.

Of course when this turned out to be nonsense Roy Comfort (the creator of the banana myth) conceded the argument. But why put it out there in the first place?

Ken Miller

I thought I'd post this video of Ken Miller talking about evolution and intelligent design, as some people have asked me about how things like the bacteria flagellum motor could arise by evolution. Miller has been a witness at several trials regarding the teaching of intelligent design in US schools.

I also found this video (a response to the one above) which seeks to remind us that evolution is a Hindu idea. I'm not acquainted with the Hindu literature, but I am pretty certain that if it does agree with evolution it does so by chance. Statistically I guess one religion was going to come up with it eventually. It will not however have come to it by a genuine, reasonable, scientific way.

The Flat Earth Society

If you think that Creationism (or Intelligent(!?) Design) should be taught in science lessons then you should also be up for the Flat Earth Society.

Yes, before you go on I do understand that it is a joke. It's a parody of the fact that many people think religion has a right to be taught in science lessons. (It does in some situations, I will expand tomorrow.)