Category Creationism

Flock of Dodos Meme

I went to see Flock of Dodos for its Darwin Day showing on Thursday.

At one point, Randy Olson, the filmmaker, points out that the Intelligent Design movement has lots of points that fit on a bumper sticker, such as “no transitionals” (or “not enough transitional fossils”), “teach the controversy”, and so forth, while proponents of evolution, especially scientists, can’t seem to express any point in less than a paragraph. And while this may indicate that scientists are careful to make well-thought-out, nuanced statements and avoid oversimplification, it makes for bad PR.

Later on, perhaps unintentionally, Olson does present an anti-ID slogan of his own: ID never rises above the level of intuition. For instance, as IDists like to point out, it’s obvious that Mt. Rushmore wasn’t carved by erosion and tectonic forces. Okay, fair enough. But that’s just the first step. Now they need to quantify this intuitive feeling, and come up with an objective metric of “designedness” or something, so that two people in different parts of the world, with different backgrounds can look at the same phenomenon and independently arrive at the same “designedness” number.

Likewise, creationists of all stripes are fond of saying that certain structures are too complex to have arisen by chance. Setting aside the obvious fact that natural selection is the very opposite of chance, one can still easily imagine a person to whom it’s intuitively obvious that human eyes are too complex to have arisen through the action of natural laws, without an intelligent guiding hand.

But again, that’s just a first step. How do you turn this intuition into something objective and quantifiable? I would expect someone to write a paper showing that natural laws can produce X amount of complexity in such-and-such amount of time, but that human eyes have X+100 complexity. X+100 > X, ergo human eyes are too complex to have arisen naturally.

The first step toward this would be to come up with a definition of complexity in biological systems, and a way of measuring it (and people like Bill Dembski do refer to the work of Shannon, Kolmogorov, and Chaitin in this area). The next would be to estimate the upper limit of complexity that natural processes can generate (which creationists have never done competently and honestly) and measure the amount of complexity in a biological structure (which, again, they’ve never done. Dembski has been asked several times to produce such a calculation, but has never done so, to my knowledge).

So when the Discovery Institute, trying to avoid getting sucked into the Dover trial, said that ID wasn’t ready to be taught in classrooms, they were right. ID has yet to rise above the level of intuition and gut feeling. And until it does, it has no right to be taken seriously as science.

Addendum: Another bumper-sticker-sized slogan for evolution I’ve run across is that we are risen apes, not fallen angels.

PZ Steals My Thunder

Looking through my httpd logs, I ran across this post over at Teleological Blog:

Our friends at The Panda’s Thumb are planning a re-enactment podcast of the

Dover trial and are looking for voice talent. Imagine my surprise when I
received this e-mail today from someone named Lee Bowman:

Are you a voice talent? Andrew Arensburger is looking for volunteers!
http://www.ooblick.com/pandas/

Casting director is PZ Myers (self appointed).

PZ is the “self-appointed” director. You gotta give PZ points for Chuzpah!!

I suspect that’s this Lee Bowman, simply because a person by that name is listed as a contributor to Bill Dembski’s little circle jerk.

So let’s see. I asked PZ to advertise this little project, since he has a large audience and I don’t. Bowman sees it at either Pharyngula or the Panda’s Thumb. He follows the links and looks around and finds my name, but manages to miss the fact that PZ isn’t mentioned anywhere and has nothing to do with this project. But hey, he first read about it in a post by PZ, so PZ is clearly in charge!

And then DonaldM at Teleological Blog gets mail “from someone named Lee Bowman”, doesn’t check a goddamn thing in it for himself, and proceeds to chide PZ for his chutzpah. So maybe this should really be entitled “Creationists Steal My Thunder, Drop It On PZ’s Porch”. Or maybe “ID researchers announce absence of word `gullible’ in dictionary, according to sources.” Psst! Donald! Wanna buy a bridge in Manhattan? How ’bout some Iraqi WMDs?

Anyway, just to bring this back on topic for the Pandas podcast: if you’re playing a creationist, please don’t try to play them as idiots. The script does quite a good job of that on its own.

Secondly, just to make things clear for the copro- and lithocephalics: PZ Myers has nothing to do with this project. It’d be cool if he did, but he doesn’t.

Thirdly, Lee Bowman and DonaldM are clearly asshats (drink!) who need to learn some critical thinking (not to mention reading for comprehension) skills. Seriously, guys. If you want to be taken seriously, why don’t you act like it? I hate to think ill of anyone, but you leave me no choice.

Pandas Podcast: Casting Call!

I’m putting together an audio dramatization of the Dover Panda trial, to be podcasted, and I need actors. If you’re interested in helping, go to the
project page and sign up!

Here’s how it works: pick some parts you’d like to play (preferably more than one in case your first choice isn’t available) and send me the list, along with a demo (because I’d like to know that you know how to record stuff on your computer). Once roles are handed out, you’ll record yourself reading your part in the
Dover
transcript
and send it to me. I’ll collect all of the recordings and splice them together into something like a radio drama or dramatic reading, and put them on the net.

More on Hovind

Jennifer Epstein has a sympathetic account of Kent Hovind’s sentencing. Interesting if you want to know more about what happened aside from the actual sentencing.

And the Pensacola News Journal has a delightfully snarky editorial entitled “Earth to ‘Dr. Dino’: Please pay your taxes and start facing reality”:

In court, Hovind offers the judge a deal: Release him and he will stop suing the government.

Hovind blames his problems on lawyers, another pastor, the Internal Revenue Service. His own sins are minor.

“I forgot to dot some i’s and cross some t’s,” he said.

And apparently he really is as stupid as all that:

He talked tough in telephone conversations from Escambia County Jail, where he was held while waiting to be sentenced Friday on 58 charges.

Although phones include warnings that conversations are recorded, he didn’t mince words as he ran up eight hours of calls per week.

He vowed to “make life miserable” for the IRS, keep suing the government and promote his cockamamie theory that he’s tax-exempt.

This call will be monitored, and not just for quality assurance purposes. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be used against you.

Why Are Fundies Illiterate?

I seem to have attracted a number of fundies and creationists, most likely due to the fact that I’ve been talking about Kent Hovind. [info]curvemudgeon has pointed out that for some reason, they can’t seem to go four sentences without committing crimes against the English language (so it’s not just me). Why is that?

Aside from the obvious, I mean. That they’re uneducated rednecks who’ve tragically never been taught to think or how to learn, otherwise they wouldn’t be creationists?

I know that there are smart and educated people who can’t spell or compose a sentence, but still, I think we have a large enough sample to draw some conclusions.

Hovind Sentencing: Whiny Git Update

The Pensacola News Journal has
another article
about Kent Hovind’s sentencing. This one points out the contrast between Hovind’s behavior before the trial:

In a recording of one of the telephone conversations played in court Friday, Hovind said the Internal Revenue Service, presiding judge and prosecutor broke the law by going after him, and there were things he could do “to make their lives miserable.”

Comparing himself to a buffalo in a lion fight, Hovind’s voice was heard saying “As long as I have some horns, I’m going to swing. As long as I have some hoofs, I’m going to kick. As long as I have some teeth, I’m going to fight. The lion’s going to know he’s been in a fight.”

and after spending two months in jail:

Before his sentencing, a tearful Kent Hovind compared his situation to that of the lion and the mouse in Aesop’s Fables.

“I feel like the mouse,” Hovind told U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers. “I stand here in great fear of the power of this court. Your decision can destroy my life, my ministry and my grandchildren.”

Note, also, the subtle difference between Hovindland and the real world:

“I am not a tax protester and never have been,” Kent Hovind told Rodgers. “The laws are just fine. It is just that some are enforcing laws that are not there.”

The recordings, compiled by the IRS from phone conversations from jail, showed Kent Hovind was trying to hide assets from the government, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Heldmyer said.

See? Just because he hid money from the government and didn’t pay payroll taxes, doesn’t mean he’s a tax protester. And besides, he’s a fine upright moral citizen:

“My father is not a man who is in love with money. He’s in love with God,” son Eric Hovind said. “He is a man who loves this country and loves others.”

Hovind’s supporters don’t get it either. Apparently a man is either 100% good or 100% evil. They can’t imagine that Hovind might be a liar and a crook, and also be kind to puppy dogs.

Oh, and the judge didn’t let the bit about loving his country slip by:

When handing down the sentence, Rodgers admonished those present the trial “is not and has never been about religion.”
…

Furthermore, Rodgers contended Kent Hovind had failed his fellow citizens and the men and women of the military — who fight to defend his freedoms — by refusing to pay taxes.

So let’s not have too much bogus sympathy for Hovind. He brought this on himself. He had every chance in the world to comply with the law, to make restitution before the matter came to trial, to plea-bargain. Heck, he didn’t even mount a defense, and tried to play tough throughout. Well, it looks like he picked a fight with the wrong federal agency. Maybe he’ll learn something in Federal PMITA Prison, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Hovind Sentenced to 10 Years

The Pensacola News Journal finally has the story:

U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers ordered Hovind also:
— Pay $640,000 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.
— Pay the prosecution’s court costs of $7,078.
— Serve three years parole once he is released from prison.

Read More

“Do you even know what intelligent design is?”

On the Pensacola News Journal’s letters page, one John Pasquale writes:

Do you even know what intelligent design is? Does your child?
…

Look into the work of biochemist Dr. Michael J. Behe or go to www.ICR.org (Institute for Creation Research).

At the ICR site, we learn that

The first human beings did not evolve from an animal ancestry, but were specially created in fully human form from the start.

and also that evolution has never occurred and is not happening now, and could never happen at all. Furthermore, “the millions of years postulated by old-Earth advocates never happened.”

Michael Behe, on the other hand, writes in Darwin’s Black Box, pp. 5-6:

For the record, I have no reason to doubt that the universe is the billions of years old that physicists say it is. Further, I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it. I greatly respect the work of my colleagues who study the development and behavior of organisms within an evolutionary framework, and I think that evolutionary biologists
have contributed enormously to our understanding of the world.

When I asked him, Behe confirmed that he accepts evolution, natural selection, and common descent.

(And let’s not forget that ID proponents are quick to point out that they are not creationists.)

So why would Pasquale recommend learning about ID from both the ICR and Behe? Either 1) ID is so broad a concept that it encompasses both a young and an old earth, both evolution and no evolution, both common descent and separate creation, and is therefore probably far too broad to be of much use; or else 2) Pasquale doesn’t know and doesn’t care about the differences between ID and young-earth creationism.

This seems to be a common affliction. It looks as though the Discovery Institute has a PR problem on its hands: on one hand, it wants to pretend that ID is scientific, which means accepting common descent and denying a literal interpretation of Genesis. On the other hand, it needs the political support of the uneducated rubes who want to believe that “I ain’t related to no monkey”. So no wonder the suckers are confused.

Hovind Prison Update

On Monday, a
new post
appeared on Kent Hovind’s weblog, describing life in jail. As you might expect, he plays the Christian persecution card. He also has a list of reasons God allowed him to be sent to jail. Oddly enough, neither “I’m guilty” nor “there are no gods” is on the list.

He also writes,

If the case is not reversed, I face anywhere from parole to 7 to 12 years.

This is a man who believes that the Earth is 6000 years old when in fact it’s 4.5 billion years old. So presumably that means that he’s looking at between 5.25 and 9 million years in prison.

Kent Hovind Behind Bars

The Pensacola News Journal reports that Kent Hovind was led away to jail after he and his wife were found guilty of tax fraud.

U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers released Jo Hovind until sentencing but denied Kent Hovind’s request to be released. He most likely will be detained at either Escambia County Jail or Santa Rosa County Jail until sentencing.

[Prosecuting attorney Michelle] Heldmyer said Kent Hovind was a flight risk and a “danger to the community.”

Kent Hovind? Flight risk? Say it ain’t so!… No, wait, they already did say it was so when he was arrested and the court took away his passport so he couldn’t flee the country (as it looked that he might).

Sentencing is scheduled to take place Jan. 9, so it doesn’t seem that Hovind will be having a happy Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year.

Oh, and by the way:

The jury also granted the prosecution’s request for the Hovinds to forfeit $430,400. That amount equals the value of the checks signed and cashed by Jo Hovind in the 44 counts.

I wonder how much of that $430,000 will come from Hovind’s bank accounts, and how much will have to come from auctioning off God’s guns and bits of pieces of CSE and Dinosaur Adventure Land.

Let’s hope Kent learns something during his time in prison.

Yeah, I know schadenfreude isn’t one of the nobler emotions, and I probably shouldn’t be enjoying Hovind’s conviction as much as I am, but hey, I’m descended from apes who survived by living in groups and had to punish individuals who obtained personal gain at the group’s expense, so I can’t help it.