Category Creationism

Breaking: Pope Does Not Have Magic Powers, Says Vatican

An article in the Scotsman says that

BELIEVING that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed yesterday.

The rest of the article goes on to say that the god of the creationists is a “nature god”, harking back to the days when there were different gods to explain thunder, tides, spring, etc.

From this I infer that the Catholic church (or at least the Vatican astronomer) has adopted more advanced theology that basically boils down to “dude, this can’t be right” and accepts that scientific explanations are a hell of a lot better than “goddiddit” in a lot of cases.

“Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism – it’s turning God into a nature god.

So kudos to Consolmagno for aligning himself with the reality-based community, at least on this issue. I can’t tell which gap he’s put God into, but I think it’s clear that he’s a lot closer to a deist than Joe Average Baptist Preacher.

And here’s the bit that I wasn’t expecting:

Brother Consolmagno, who was due to give a speech at the Glasgow Science Centre last night, entitled “Why the Pope has an Astronomer”, said the idea of papal infallibility had been a “PR disaster”. What it actually meant was that, on matters of faith, followers should accept “somebody has got to be the boss, the final authority”.

“It’s not like he has a magic power, that God whispers the truth in his ear,” he said.

Okay, this is blindingly obvious to just about everyone, but it’s nice to have Consolmagno acknowledge it. It’d be nice if the Vatican would stress this a bit more, to make it clear that when the Pope makes a pronouncement, that’s just a referee’s judgement call, not Ye Final Word from God Almighty. (And hey, maybe you won’t go to hell for using a condom.)

Personally, I’d like to see this trend continue: if they’ve conceded astronomy, evolution, etc. to science, perhaps they’ll concede large chunks of morality and ethics to evolutionary psychology, game theory, and philosophy. And thus God will be pared down bit by bit until all they have left is a lot of pageantry in a dead language. And then maybe they’ll become upscale Unitarians.

(Hat tip to PZ Mhmhmrrrrz.)

Dembski In Bed With Ann Coulter

Bill Dembski brags
about having been “in constant correspondence” with Ann Coulter, helping her with her latest stack of soiled paper, Godless: the Church of Liberalism. He even quotes a bit of what it’s all about:

Though liberalism rejects the idea of God and reviles people of faith, it bears all the attributes of a religion itself. In Godless: The Church of Liberalism, Ann Coulter throws open the doors of the Church of Liberalism, showing us:

  • Its sacraments (abortion)
  • Its holy writ (Roe v. Wade)
  • Its martyrs (from Soviet spy Alger Hiss to cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal)
  • Its clergy (public school teachers)
  • Its churches (government schools, where prayer is prohibited but condoms are free)
  • Its doctrine of infallibility (as manifest in the “absolute moral authority” of such spokesmen as Cindy Sheehan and Max Cleland)
  • And its cosmology (in which mankind is an inconsequential accident)

Then, of course, there’s the liberal creation myth: Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The only comment I’ll offer on this bucket of turkey offal is that if public school teachers are clergy, they should get stickers to that effect, so that they can get better parking spaces and whatnot.

Dembski quotes all of this with approbation, and never hints that he cares about Coulter’s subpontibian nature, even after “constant correspondence”. One must therefore conclude that he agrees with her.

If Dembski were actively trying to discredit Intelligent Design and bury its corpse at a crossroads with a stake through its heart, he could scarcely do better with a fusion-powered grave-digging backhoe and a dozen Buffy Summers clones.

It’s All So Clear to Me Now

Bill Maher explains Intelligent Design.

No wonder IDiots think atheism is a religion: they think ignorance is a form of knowledge.

Focus on the Family Lies to Children

Focus on the Family,
James Dobson’s right-wing nutsoid organization, obviously isn’t above
lying to kids:

Q. Hi, Average Boy!

I need some advice on evolution. Everyone is talking about it, and I just don’t understand why people think we came from monkey people. I hope you can answer my wonders.

Bye,
Parker D.

A. Hey, Parker.

Great question! I’ve actually had people tell me that it looks like I may have come from a monkey family. However, if evolution did work, wouldn’t my ears be smaller by now?

Animals do adapt to their surroundings. For instance, my cat has developed a nervous twitch that lets him know when Billy walks in the room. That’s a survival adaptation. But the main evolution chart that most scientists go by was actually made up. The guy who presented all the facts threw in an extra step — that hasn’t even been discovered — to link men to apes.

Not to mention, if monkeys evolved into men then why do we still have monkeys? Wouldn’t they be men, too? That’s a good question to ask your friends the next time you are talking about evolution. Now if you will excuse me, I want to finish my banana.

Your friend and mine,
Average Boy

Elsewhere on the same site,
there’s a retelling of
Big Daddy
for children:

“Uh, Mr. Jemison,” he stammered, “You mentioned the Earth is billions of years old and began with a big bang. How can scientists know this as fact when they weren’t there?”
…

Cole looked down. “Sir, evolution and the big bang are theories based upon the idea there is no God, so doesn’t that make them a type of religion? I can’t agree that these theories are facts when the Bible has never been proven wrong.”

If it isn’t obvious why this is a load of dingo’s bollocks, ask in the comments.

Dembski Proposes Research Program, Cordova Misapplies It

I’ve been saying for a while (and I’m not alone) that if the ID folks want to be taken seriously by the scientific community, they need to do some actual, you know, research. So I was taken aback when William Dembski actually
suggested a line of research Read More

Both Maryland Antievolution Bills Dead

So
reports
the NCSE.

ID at Cornell

Allen MacNeill, at
Cornell,
will be teaching a course this summer entitled
Evolution and Design: Is There Purpose in Nature?.

Telic Thoughts has picked up on it, and MacNeill has chimed in in the comments. Go read them.

Judging by the course description and reading list (which includes books by Behe and Dembski), and MacNeill’s comments, it appears that this may be the fair “teach both sides” course that creationists have been demanding for some time. I also suspect that the outcome may not be one that they like, but I guess we’ll see.

Kent Hovind’s Theme Park Shut Down

The Pensacola News Journal is
reporting
that a judge has issued a Writ of Smackdown on
Kent Hovind,
my favorite wacky creationist.

Read More

Assorted Snippets From Dembski and Pals

So I was poking around at
Chez Dembski,
mainly to see whether he had anything to say about
a recent BC strip, and found a few amusing and/or stupid items:

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It’s Getting Hard to Tell the Creationists and the Onion Apart

Remember this article from The Onion?:

DESPERATE VEGETARIANS DECLARE COWS PLANTS

LAS VEGAS — At its annual national conference Saturday, the American Association of Vegans and Vegetarians released results of a detailed in-house study determining that the common beef cow is actually a plant, 100 percent fit for vegetarian consumption.

“Contrary to what was previously thought, the cow is not a higher form of animal life, capable of thinking and feeling pain,” announced AAVV spokeswoman Denise Chalmers to the large crowd. “Rather, we have found it to be a harmless, non-sentient form of plant life, utterly incapable of experiencing the slightest pain or simplest thought.”

Chalmers then passed around a large tray of dripping red meat, which the vegetarians in attendance ravenously devoured, feverishly licking the bloody juice from their fingers.

Compare that to this bit of masturbiblation (also this one), which shows that squid aren’t alive. I can only assume that future episodes will prove that up is down, black is white, and that the Babel Fish is definitive proof of the nonexistence of God.

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