Category Creationism

Logic Fail

BarryA at Invisible Science Uncommon Descent:

I will demonstrate that under very clear United States Supreme Court precedent, the subjective motives of a policy maker are simply irrelevant in determining whether the policy violates the Establishment Clause.

Let us begin at the beginning – the Lemon test. In Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971) the Supreme Court established the following three-part test for determining whether a governmental policy violates the Establishment Clause: “First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose;

(emphasis added)

Creationist logic:

Fail
Another ID Argument Doesn’t Stand Up to Scrutiny

Over at casa de Dembski,
DaveScot tries to debunk a debunking of an ID argument. It goes
something like this:

Michael Behe: The bacterial flagellum is irreducibly
complex, that is, all of its components need to be in place before
it’ll work. It can’t have evolved by gradual addition and improvement,
because none of the subparts do anything until they’re all put
together.

Nick Matzke: Ah, but the Type Three Secretory System (TTSS), a
sort of bacterial syringe, is made up of proteins that look an awful
lot like ones used in the flagellum. That is, you can build
something useful using just some of the parts requied for a
flagellum, and that gives natural selection something to work with.
For instance, the flagellum could have evolved by adding parts to a TTSS.

DaveScot:
Ah, but I have here a paper about a species of bacterium that started
out with a flagellum, but lost most of its parts through natural
selection, leaving only the parts needed to construct a TTSS.

To which I reply below the fold.

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Plucky Documentary Plans Comeback

According to Fox News
and
Variety,
(… ← help yourself to a grain of salt) Yoko Ono has lost
her suit against the makers of
Expelled: No Intelligence Involved Allowed
for the unauthorized use of John Lennon’s Imagine. The
movie will be rereleased in theaters.

In related news, Expelled has gone from 9% on the
tomatometer
to 8%, which puts it in the same Outback as
Kangaroo Jack.

Dembski on Animal Rights

Reuters reports
that Spain is expected to pass a law granting rights to non-human apes:

MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s parliament voiced its support
on Wednesday for the rights of great apes to life and freedom in what
will apparently be the first time any national legislature has called
for such rights for non-humans.

Dembski’s
reaction:

Here is one consequence of evolution being used to justify
strict continuity between humans and other forms of life. Discovery
Institute’s persistent stress on humans being made in the image
of God and that not being a privilege extended to the rest of the
animal world makes more and more sense. [Slippery slope
snipped.]

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How Could Anyone Possibly Think ID Is Religion?

The “Editorial Review” of Bill Dembski’s new book says that it’s aimed at

readers whose understanding may have been confused by educational bias and one–sided arguments and attacks.

In case you were wondering who exactly these readers might be, Billy clarifies:

[The book] is geared specifically at mobilizing Christian young people, homeschoolers, and church youth groups with the ID alternative to Darwinian evolution.

So there you go. ID is scientific, and there’s nothing religious about it. It just happens to be marketed at religious folks, but that’s just a coincidence.

WTF, Bill?

The governor of Colorado just signed into law a bill that expands Colorado’s antidiscrimination laws to cover transgendered people.

Bill Dembski says that this

points up the lunacy that ensues in a world without design

To which I can only say, WTF?

Is he saying that this is the sort of thing that happens in an undesigned world? If so, isn’t that an admission that this is an undesigned world?

Or is he saying that the Unspecified Intelligent Designer—who may or may not be the god of the Bible, or might be space aliens—hates teh TGs? (Psst, Bill: your fig leaf for right-wing fundie creationism isn’t working.)

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Expelled: In Good Company

A certain movie was released in theaters today, and several critics have already weighed in on it. Rotten Tomatoes‘ tomatometer is a good tool for seeing at a glance how fresh (lots of good reviews) or rotten (lots of bad reviews) a movie is. But rather than jumping straight to the chase, allow me to place it in some sort of context:

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About the “Expelled” Animation

In case you missed the flap over the animation of cellular processes in the upcoming movie Expelled, here’s the nutshell version:

People at prerelease screenings said they saw footage from XVIVO/Harvard’s The Inner Life of the Cell. Bits of very similar animation appear in promotional clips for the movie such as this one. There’s a post at antievolution.org that shows stills from both films, side by side.

Now XVIVO, the makers of the original animation, are suing the makers of Expelled for copyright infringement.

My IANAL thoughts below the fold. Read More

Denyse O’Leary: Embarrassingly Ignorant?

Over at Dembski’s wankfest, Denyse O’Leary is having an outragegasm over her favorite PZ Myers quote. So nothing new to report in that respect.

But a few sentences caught my attention:

Myers, who teaches at a Minnesota liberal arts university that is proud of its status […]

But most Americans do not know even about it, let alone contemplate what it means that a teacher at a “liberal arts” university should express himself in this way.

Thus, a person who writes as Myers does is nonetheless viewed as a mild-mannered gentleman and scholar, worthy a place at a liberal arts university.

The only way I can imagine this making sense is if O’Leary thinks that a liberal arts college is a politically left-leaning school.

Denyse, if you happen to stumble upon this post, allow me to quote from a source you might trust: Conservapædia:

Liberal arts refers to the non-technical disciplines ordinarily taught as part of a baseline college education at American colleges. These include philosophy, history and English literature, and sometimes Latin, which lay the foundation for a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree. As such, many American colleges are referred to as “liberal arts institutions.” Technical fields of study are common, but not included under the aegis “liberal arts.” In Europe and Canada the Liberal arts are generally called the ‘Humanities’.

The term bears no connection with the modern political ideology of liberalism, save in the classic, historical sense.

Fundamentalist Education

Over at Pharyngula, PZ presents this appalling video:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUeoem1gR3s&hl=en]

and points out

The really awful pedagogy. Over and over again, the creationist says some stock phrase and then pauses, waiting for his kids to fill in the missing word. This is simply demanding rote learning. Similarly, he leads the kids in asking a good question — “how do you know?” — while training them to ignore any answers. Right there on the wall is a description of radiometric dating methods, for instance, and they turn their back on it.

This seems to be of a piece with other fundamentalist traits. The oft-repeated assertion that morality and human rights come from God. Appeals to the Bible. Attempts to disprove evolution by discrediting Charles Darwin (or Richard Dawkins, or PZ Myers, or whoever’s the antichrist this week).

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