God's work on the march

I try to avoid being typecast as someone who criticizes only one religion, the one I was indoctrinated (remarkably unsuccessfully) in during my formative years, so every so often I like to point out that stupidity isn't limited to the Catholics. Here's a sampling.

First off, let's not overlook the Catholics. Here's what passes for moral reasoning in the Catholic Church:

KELLY: Are you saying that the pope was perhaps using some sort of sliding scale here? That while not condoning contraception, not condoning homosexuality, he's signaling that they are not the worst evils, and that passing on HIV is worse?

Father FESSIO: He's not giving a scale of evil or good here. But let me give you a pretty simple example. Let's suppose we've got a bunch of muggers who like to use steel pipes when they mug people. But some muggers say, gosh, you know, we don't need to hurt them that badly to rob them. Let's put foam pads on our pipes. Then we'll just stun them for a while, rob them and go away. So if the pope then said, well, yes, I think that using padded pipes is actually a little step in a moral direction there, that doesn't mean he's justifying using padded pipes to mug people. He's just saying, well, they did something terrible, but while they were doing that, they had a little flicker of conscience there that led them in the right direction.

I know I just blogged about this, but it's so horrifying that I had to bring it up again.



Next we have the theme park for ignoramuses: the state of Kentucky is plunging millions of taxpayer dollars into religious proselytizing of the most absurd sort.

It's true. In Kentucky, the idiots who run the Creation Museum are starting a biblical theme park in Kentucky, with the help of $37,000,000 from the taxpayers of Kentucky.

The governor is defending it as the kind of business giveaway that governments engage in all the time on the rationale that government-sponsored economic development creates jobs. So what's next? Government funds to Mormon missionaries because they buy airline tickets?

Finally, this is something that's actually kind of a sad story, but it illustrates the partial obsolescence of religion in general.

You know that back in October there was a volcanic eruption in Indonesia and a few people were killed in the eruption. One of the people killed was the guy identified as the spiritual guardian of the volcano.

The man, known as Grandfather Marijan, was among 29 people pulled from the fine grey ash as rescue workers scoured the slopes for victims and survivors of the eruptions.

From his house beneath the smoking crater, the royally appointed guardian, aged in his 70s, had for years led traditional rituals to appease the Indonesian volcano's ancient spirits.

His body was found on Wednesday covered in ash and reportedly in a position of prayer, suggesting the old gatekeeper had struggled to the end to soothe the violent energies in the mountain's core.

I take no pleasure in this old guy's death, but it does point out a crucial shortcoming of religions. At one point, religions had the function of explaining natural phenomena that were beyond the knowledge and understanding of humanity.

It's 2010, though, and the mechanism that makes volcanoes erupt is well understood, at least everyplace except the hillsides of Indonesia. Because of his ignorance, Grandfather Marijan died instead of removing to a place of safety, and he's dead now.

In fact, there is no longer a single natural phenomenon that can only be explained by some supernatural concept. I recognize that this isn't the only reason people cling to religion, but we're pretty much past the "god bowling up in heaven" as the explanation for thunder, right?

Time to move on.

He's found her

That's right. Richard Dawkins, so accomplished in both science and the philosophy of religion, can add another accomplishment to his resume: he has found the stupidest person in America.

I watched and listened to this entire interview so you don't have to. Trust me. This woman is the most witless, dishonest person you will ever want to meet. Not only does she lie incessantly, she has the most annoying way of laughing at every fact-based assertion she wants to duck.

I notice another video called "Why Richard Dawkins Doesn't Debate Creationists", and I think the answer is clear: they are dishonest, they refuse to confront the evidence, and a person who is constrained by the truth has a very hard time making any headway with them.

The most dangerous unknown man in America

Who knows best about what to teach American students? Educators, experts in their fields, or a right-wing dentist who believes the earth is under 10,000 years old?

If you believe right-wing loon Don McLeroy, the dentist, he's just the man to do it.



The dentist is also a member of the Texas State Board of Education, and what makes him so powerful is that every textbook purchased by public schools in Texas, some 48,000,000 textbooks a year at a cost of $22,000,000,000, must conform to the textbook standards promulgated by the Board. This means that if Dr. Don doesn't like the fact that, for example, the best-known history textbook refers to the "living Constitution", and has for fifty or sixty years, he has the power to squeeze the publisher and get them to change it.

Or if Dr. Don wants to cram his Christianist ideology down the throats of your kids, he has seven allies on the Board to help him do it.

And because the Texas market is so huge, what is verboten in Texas isn't likely to show up in the public schools in your town, or your state, either.

You should read about it in today's Times Magazine. Here's just an example of how dangerous he is:

“BROWN BEAR, BROWN BEAR, What Do You See?” It’s not an especially subversive-sounding title, but the author of this 1967 children’s picture book, Bill Martin Jr., lost his place in the Texas social-studies guidelines at last month’s board meeting due to what was thought to be un-American activity — to be precise, “very strong critiques of capitalism and the American system.” Martin, the creator of 300 children’s books, was removed from the list of cultural figures approved for study by third graders in the blizzard of amendments offered by board members.

In this case, one board member sent an e-mail message with a reference to “Ethical Marxism,” by Bill Martin, to another board member, who suggested that anyone who wrote a book with such a title did not belong in the TEKS. As it turned out, Bill Martin and Bill Martin Jr. are two different people. But by that time, the author of “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” was out.

Or another example: just last Friday, the Board, acting on McLeroy's motion, has voted to reword the standards to say that Joe McCarthy was right.

As I say, this is a dangerous guy.

A disturbance in the force

Well, not actually the force, but a new argument has come up in the world of Bloggingheads.tv, and since I'm a regular, if not daily, viewer of Bloggingheads, I thought I'd comment a bit.

Bloggingheads is the brainchild of Robert Wright, an author of many notable books, in which he produces dialogues between people on various political, cultural, or scientific topics. By attracting intelligent, interesting people, and by using technology that enables them to conduct these conversations from the comfort of their own homes or offices, Bob is able to produce some great dialogues. Bloggingheads is in my blogroll, and I've linked to it or discussed it here in the past.

The issue here is two recent diavlogs featuring prominent creationists without significant challenge. One was between John McWhorter, a linguist and BHTV regular, and Michael Behe, a charlatan and creationist mouthpiece best known as a propagandist who was aptly eviscerated in the federal court decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. In this diavlog, McWhorter gives Behe the warmest imaginable tongue bath, along the lines of the following:

Michael Behe, I am so glad to meet you, and thank you for agreeing to do this. This is one of the rare times that I have initiated a Bloggingheads pairing, and it’s because I just read your book The Edge of Evolution from 2007, and I found it absolutely shattering. I mean, this is a very important book, and yet I sense, from the reputation or the reception of your book from ten-plus years ago, Darwin’s Black Box, that it may be hard to get a lot of people to understand why the book is so important.

And it really doesn't get any better than that. The general tenor of the discussion is McWhorter's repeated observations that since he, a linguist, doesn't understand various aspects of biological evolution, the only possible explanation is that God did it. This is convenient for Behe, because that's basically Behe's view as well.

The other, which appeared on the Bloggingheads Science Saturday edition, was between Ronald Numbers and Paul Nelson, an honest-to-god young earth creationist. I haven't viewed the entire thing yet, but objective observers, including Bloggingheads staff, have observed that Nelson's creationism is not challenged in the diavlog.

In the aftermath of these two diavlogs a number of prominent scientists who have participated in Bloggingheads have announced that they will no longer do so, including Carl Zimmer, Sean Carroll, Phil Plait, and PZ Myers.

To their credit,, Bloggingheads has not tried to defend its decisions. Rather, Bob Wright has said that the appearance of these creationists, particularly on a Science Saturday episode, did not comply with BHTV policies.

1) Both of the diavlogs in question had been arranged without my knowledge.
2) I would certainly not have approved both of them, and probably not either of them, had I known about them.
3) The Behe diavlog, in particular, was blatantly at odds with guidelines I’d laid down to my staff more than a year ago in discussing the prospect of Behe appearing. Namely: Behe should only appear in conversation with someone who is truly expert in the relevant biological areas, and since most such matchups would yield a conversation unintelligible to a lay audience, it was hard to imagine a Behe pairing that would make sense.
4) Since these two diavlogs were arranged, I have told the staffers who arranged them that in the future they should make sure to clear diavlogs of this sort with me before arranging them.

In addition, the BHTV staffer who set up one of the diavlogs has also written about it:

I agree that creationists and ID’ers are crackpots. I agree that these crackpots do harm (e.g. by corrupting public perception of science). I agree that appearing on a site that has featured crackpots could damage the reputation and integrity of reputable scientists, so I fully understand Sean’s choice to stay away from BhTV (although I’d be very happy if he were to reconsider).

Anyway, this is just my opinion, but I think we (BhTV) screwed up — and the origins of that screw-up lie in my ill-fated decision to put together the Numbers/Nelson diavlog. One Sean Carroll diavlog is worth any number of creationism conversations. If I could rewind and start over I’d aim to do it all differently.


I'm not going to stop watching BHTV. There are plenty of people on BHTV that I can't stand to watch, and I just don't.

On Saturday Bob and George Johnson recorded a new Science Saturday diavlog to discuss the creationist controversy, and the comment section has over two hundred comments on that, which I commend your attention to. To Bob's credit, he takes responsibility for the system failures that led to these two grossly inappropriate diavlogs to go up, and he does set forth the standards that he will apply for someone like this in the future, so I'm hoping that this will help to improve things.

I think Bloggingheads is a great resource, and I hope that this can do what it takes to recover.

Evolution? In a school?

Here's another great story I learned of from PZ.

There's a school in Missouri that had t-shirts printed for the band. Kind of a clever variant on the old "ascent of man" motif, only the evolving figures have band instruments. Inoffensive, if a little busy, and it provides a distinctive look for the members of the band, right?



That's what you think. How dare the school associate itself with the idea of evolution? In fact, the shirt is so offensive that they've decided the kids can't wear the shirts, and even if they like them they have to give them back.

I particularly like this quote from a parent who is also a teacher at the school:

“I was disappointed with the image on the shirt.” Melby said. “I don’t think evolution should be associated with our school.”

Creationist goes to court to silence critic

I guess that's what's left when prayer doesn't work.

SANTA ANA – A Mission Viejo high school history teacher violated the First Amendment by disparaging Christians during a classroom lecture, a federal judge ruled today.

James Corbett, a 20-year teacher at Capistrano Valley High School, referred to Creationism as “religious, superstitious nonsense” during a 2007 classroom lecture, denigrating his former Advanced Placement European history student, Chad Farnan.

That's the takeaway message from the Orange County Register, but a closer examination shows that the court was clearly wrong, and is likely to be overturned if the teacher has the resources to appeal this decision.

The suit, brought by a creationist former student of the defendant, attacked James Corbett for a large number of statements that the plaintiff construed as being opposed to religion, yet the court found only one that, in its view, actually violated the student's First Amendment rights.

The test by which government actions may be said to violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment is referred to as the "Lemon test", because it was first articulated in the Supreme Court's decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 406 U.S. 602 (1971). Under the Lemon test,

First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion; finally, the statute must not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion.

Usually cases raising the Lemon test involve legislation, such as "moment of silence" legislation, but they apply to other circumstances in which a government official, like a public school teacher, is claimed to have taken a position that has the effect of establishing a particular religious view. In this case the court rejected the plaintiff's general claim that the defendant's statements had the effect of establishing a "religion of secularism", but it did find that one statement in particular failed the Lemon test.

The Court turns first to Corbett’s statement regarding John Peloza (“Peloza”). (Farnan’s Ex. I, pp. 222-25.) This statement presents the closest question for the Court in assessing secular purpose. Peloza apparently brought suit against Corbett because Corbett was the advisor to a student newspaper which ran an article suggesting that Peloza was teaching religion rather than science in his classroom. (Id.) Corbett explained to his class that Peloza, a teacher, “was not telling the kids [Peloza’s students] the scientific truth about evolution.” (Id.) Corbett also told his students that, in response to a request to give Peloza space in the newspaper to present his point of view, Corbett stated, “I will not leave John Peloza alone to propagandize kids with this religious, superstitious nonsense.” (Id.) One could argue that Corbett meant that Peloza should not be presenting his religious ideas to students or that Peloza was presenting faulty science to the students. But there is more to the statement: Corbett states an unequivocal belief that creationism is “superstitious nonsense.” The Court cannot discern a legitimate secular purpose in this statement, even when considered in context. The statement therefore constitutes improper disapproval of religion in violation of the Establishment Clause.

The court is clearly wrong here in finding no secular purpose because it fails to adequately consider the nature of Peloza's religious statements that Corbett describes as "superstitious nonsense". In fact, Corbett's statement was not a wholesale attack on Peloza's religious beliefs, but on the factual claims made by creationists. These claims are not only religious in nature, but are demonstrably false, and have been shown to be so by a century and a half of scientific study. Thus, the description of creationism as "superstitious nonsense" is precisely identical to the description of astrology, or the belief that the earth sits on the back of a gigantic turtle, as "superstitious nonsense". As such, any public school teacher is justified in criticizing another teacher for teaching false and superstitious nonsense in the science classes of a public school. The district court is clearly wrong here.

There is another interesting point here. The particular statement that Corbett is sued for, and which the court found was a violation of the Establishment Clause, is the statement that creationism is "superstitious nonsense". In other words, it was a statement criticizing the religious beliefs of both the other teacher, but also the plaintiff. As you probably know, for years creationists have claimed that creationism, which they now prefer to call "intelligent design", and previously called "scientific creationism", is not religion at all, but science. This claim was authoritatively disposed of in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, 400 F. Supp. 2d 707 (M.D. Pa. 2005), in which the supporters of creationism brought in the leading experts in their field and mounted a valiant effort to establish the scientific validity of creationism, only to be thoroughly discredited in court. Yet in this case, the only way for the plaintiff to prevail is to demonstrate the essentially religious nature of the tenets of creationism. Thus, even in winning, the creationists lose.

Stranger things have happened, but it's hard to see this decision standing up on appeal.

A Walking Seal

One of the key arguments we regularly hear from creationists is that evolution can't be true because there are no transitional fossils. At least, they argue that what they call macroevolution can't happen because there are no transitional fossils between species, which would be predicted if one species had evolved into another.

Of course it's a lie, but most people who have the misfortune of encountering creationists don't know enough about the evidence to disprove it, so you might be interested in this new story of a newly discovered transitional fossil, a walking seal, so different from any existing animal that it has its own genus and species, Puijila darwini.

You should go over and take a look. It's pretty interesting, including a 3-D reconstruction of the fossil.

By the way, interesting name, huh? In a move that must be particularly galling to creationists, it was selected specifically to honor Charles Darwin, who predicted the existence of this very animal in The Origin of Species.

"A strictly terrestrial animal, by occasionally hunting for food in shallow water, then in streams or lakes, might at last be converted into an animal so thoroughly aquatic as to brave the open ocean".

So if you find yourself talking to one of those godbots, and they start blathering about the lack of transitional species, tell them about this one.

Creationism, UVM, and (we hope) the last chapter on Ben Stein

I don't have to go over the whole Ben Stein/creationist/graduation disinvitation thing do I? I didn't think so.

The latest chapter is that the creationist Discovery Institute, always with an eye open for publicity, is still trying to elbow its way onto campus at UVM. Following on the disinvitation of their buddy Ben Stein, they've written to Nicholas Gotelli, a biology proessor at Groovy UV who published an op-ed piece in the Burlington Free Press about the Stein affair, to try to get themselves invited to debate creationism and evolution.

Among skeptic and freethinking circles there is a debate about whether to debate these clowns. On the one hand, they can't go into a legitimate debate and stand up to any criticism; thus, any educated person who watches the debate will see that they have, once again, been thoroughly discredited. On the other hand, even appearing on the same stage with them enables them to claim a degree of undeserved credibility, and to maintain the fraudulent claim that there is a scientific debate in which creationism and evolution are equal competitors.

In this case, Professor Gotelli has it exactly right:

Academic debate on controversial topics is fine, but those topics need to have a basis in reality. I would not invite a creationist to a debate on campus for the same reason that I would not invite an alchemist, a flat-earther, an astrologer, a psychic, or a Holocaust revisionist. These ideas have no scientific support, and that is why they have all been discarded by credible scholars. Creationism is in the same category.

Instead of spending time on public debates, why aren't members of your institute publishing their ideas in prominent peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Nature, or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences? If you want to be taken seriously by scientists and scholars, this is where you need to publish. Academic publishing is an intellectual free market, where ideas that have credible empirical support are carefully and thoroughly explored. Nothing could possibly be more exciting and electrifying to biology than scientific disproof of evolutionary theory or scientific proof of the existence of a god. That would be Nobel Prize winning work, and it would be eagerly published by any of the prominent mainstream journals.

Follow the link for the rest of the story at Pharyngula.

The University of Vermont is a National Embarrassment

Well, Groovy UV (in honor of Peter Freyne) has made national headlines this week, only not in a good way.

PZ has a post about their boneheaded choice of commencement speaker. Have you heard already? It's Nixon chum and creationism apologist Ben Stein.

As PZ says, picture being a biology professor and sitting there while ths quizmaster and right-wing Republican gives the big sendoff to the graduates of Vermont's flagship institution of higher learning.

What are they failing to see? Wasn't anyone from the Flat Earth Society available?