Category Religion

Discovery Institute Shills Lie About Their Connection

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There’s a new site on the block:
Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity.
Not much new there. It’s just “30 Helens agree. Evolution doesn’t work” (sadly, their list of Helens doesn’t include a single Steve).

But finn2 over at LiveJournal did some investigative work and found some interesting stuff:

Here’s a meta header that appears on all of PSSI‘s web pages:

<meta name="keywords" content="intelligent design theory,Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity, PSSI, Physicians and surgeons that dissent from Darwinism, Charles Darwin, Stephen C. Meyer, Michael Behe, William Dembski, Bruce Chapman, Center for Science & culture, charles darwin theory of evolution, creationism, eugenie scott, natural selection, survival of the fittest, Cambrian Explosion, Richard Sternberg, Phillip Johnson, dinosaurs, national center for science education">

and here’s one that appears on all of the Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture:

<meta name="keywords" content="intelligent design theory, Discovery Institute, Charles Darwin, Stephen C. Meyer, Michael Behe, William Dembski, Bruce Chapman, Center for Science & culture, charles darwin theory of evolution, creationism, eugenie scott, natural selection, survival of the fittest, Cambrian Explosion, Richard Sternberg, Phillip Johnson, dinosaurs, national center for science education">

I’ve highlighted the similarities and differences between the two. Perhaps the Isaac Newton of information, Bill Dembski, will be good enough to tell us the amount of specified complexity in those strings, and calculate the odds that they’re related. The rest of us can probably agree that there was copying involved.

So I went for the direct approach, and sent this message to PSSI’s contact address:

Hi! I just ran across PSSI today. Could you please tell me
what connection exists, if any, between PSSI and the Discovery
Institute?

Here’s the answer I got:

There is no affiliation between Discovery Institute and PSSI. Discovery Institute is located in Seattle, Washington and we are located in Clearwater, Florida.

Does anyone buy that? Can we just add this to the list of creationist lies?

Update, May 18, 2006: Logan Gage of the Discovery Institute answered my email with:

There is no real connection to Discovery Institute. They are, however,
a friendly group. They just noticed that we do not really add MDs to
our list “A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism.” And since polls show
that at least 60% of MDs don’t buy orthodox neo-Darwinism, they thought
that this is an important voice which should be added to the debate.

Update, Jul. 28, 2006:
Evolgen lists “Stanley B. Gathinston III” an immunologist on the list.

Here
and
here,
“snex” confesses that he signed the petition under that name, and points out that “Stanley B. Gathinston III” is an anagram for “creationist Drs believe anything”. He even listed his address as “123 Kafe Ave.” (anagram of “fake”) for good measure.

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.)

And Speaking of Satan…

Why don’t Christians and Muslims pray for Satan to be saved?

If they think that Satan causes a lot of bad things to happen, and if they believe that prayer works, wouldn’t it be a Good Thing if Satan became good? Attacking evil at its root, as it were.

God and Free Will

This may be an old argument, but I just ran across it on a random podcast:

One argument for the lack of clear evidence of God is that it would undermine free will: anyone who knew for a fact that God exists would be overcome with goodness or something, and in the presence of such a cosmic carrot, would effectively lose the ability to sin.

To this the counterargument is, what about Satan? Satan supposedly had direct proof of God, talked to him, met him at the workplace, and so forth. But he still rebelled.

One might retort that Satan was angelic, not human. But then either Satan had more free will than humans do (in which case one must wonder why God didn’t build humans the same way), or Satan had less free will, in which case the whole thing was a setup.

Discuss in the comments. Next week, we’ll address an equally weighty question: whether the Millennium Falcon can beat the Enterprise in a fight.

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.

QOTD

There is this unmatched fanaticism that thinks they’re doing God’s will. You cannot negotiate with it. You cannot talk to it. You cannot make a deal with it. You’ve got to ultimately stand up to it, confront it, and defeat it if you want to live free.
— Sean Hannity, This Divided State

If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was talking about radical Muslims.