One man preventing us from spiraling into a second Dark Age

Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Who takes on the dangers of 'intelligent design':

The Founding Fathers did NOT make the Constitution

A Christian icon and a religious document.

Bill Maher:

I had somebody in the comments a while back trying to prove Jefferson was Christian and would have approved of 'intelligent design' because he gave Bibles to Washington D.C. schools. (On the other hand, there were those who decided Jefferson was a secret Muslim.)

And then there was Christine O'Donnell...

If only we could go somewhere safe while we watched the incoming holy wars in the US as the 'theocrats' fight it out to decide exactly WHICH Christian religion gets to rule the nation....

Truer words have never been bespeaked!

Remember the creationism/ intelligent design debacle: the Kitmiller v. Dover Area School Board court case? Just finished Charles Pierce's Idiot America and he mentioned the utterly quote of a local pastor, Ray Mummert:

We've been attacked,"Mummert said,"by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture."

Exactly. Duly noted.

If you want to know why education is important

Check out these percentages:

Charles Darwin, who invented the theory of evolution, was born on Feb. 12, 1809. Marking the 200th anniversary of his Darwin’s birth, Gallup has a new poll out showing that “only 39 percent of Americans say they ‘believe in the theory of evolution,’ while a quarter say they do not believe in the theory, and another 36 percent don’t have an opinion either way”

And then watch NOVA: Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial.

And start to worry about returning to the Dark Ages....

Roger Ebert takes on Ben Stein

A violent stomping ensues. Very satisfying.

Unable to get past the form

And check the content.

(CNN) -- As Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Sen. John McCain's pick for vice president, makes her case to the convention Wednesday night, Republicans hope she will sway Democratic women toward their ticket.

Jesus. Exposes the sexist thinking of the McCain campaign just a bit. They obviously presume women will vote only by the dictates of genitalia.

It doesn't matter that Sarah Palin is a governor of a state, a beautiful, working mother of five. I'm glad she lives in a society that accepts that she can do it all, that women have a voice and representation in government, and it's guaranteed she will receive equal pay for equal work.

The reason why women won't automatically 'flock' to her support is that: she's an extremist Republican. She's a fundamentalist Christian who as mayor tried to censor books in the library, threatened people to sign loyalty oaths, silenced their right to talk to the press, tried to bring religion into schools. As governor she tried to use her office to fire an ex-brother-in-law and is now trying to block the investigation. She's against abortion. She's massively inexperienced.

The article goes on to say:

A recent Rutgers University study said historically, women don't vote for a candidate because a woman is on the ticket. They tend to vote Democratic.

I wonder why that is... hmmm. Maybe it's because Democrats tend to be more supportive of families as opposed to Republicans who are forever declaring themselves the party of family values and continually proving that they don't give a fuck about families, women's rights, equality, freedom of choice, freedom from and of religion, freedom of the press, freedom from corporate greed....

But look! She's a sparkly, pretty woman! Ignore the content! Vote for her form!

I have a new hero

Evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski of Michigan State University.

Who knows how to smack down creationists.

Amen.

Texas, the lone idiot state....

Bablogger of Bad Astronomy:

Well, it’s truly official: Texas is doomed.

Why? I’ve talked before about the guy that’s the head of the State Board of Education. His name is Don McLeroy, and he’s perhaps the least qualified guy on the planet to head a BoE. He’s a creationist. He thinks science is evil. The list of his disqualifications to be in charge of a BoE would be so big… well, it would be Texas-sized big.

I predicted nothing but doom and shame for the BoE this year, and it brings me no joy at all to say I was right. McLeroy’s latest antic — though I would call it the first shot fired in a war, a war on reality — was over, of all things, the English standards. According to an article in the Dallas Morning News, teachers and experts had worked for two and a half to three years on new standards for English. So what did McLeroy do? He ignored all that work entirely, and let "social conservatives" on the board draft a new set overnight.

Overnight? Think that’s better than Standards teachers and experts spent nearly three years on?

He warns that where Texas goes in schooling, the nation follows. Let's hope this time he is wrong.

Hovering at the edge of the Dark Ages

One in eight U.S. high school teachers presents creationism as a valid alternative to evolution, says a poll published in the Public Library of Science Biology.

Of more than 900 teachers who responded to a poll conducted by Penn State University political scientist Michael Berkman and colleagues, 32 percent agreed that creationism and intelligent design should be taught as scientifically unsound. Forty percent said such explanations are religiously valid but inappropriate for science class.

However, 25 percent said they devoted classroom time to creationism or intelligent design. Of these, about one-half -- 12 percent of all teachers -- called creationism a "valid scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species," and the same number said that "many reputable scientists view these as valid alternatives to Darwinian theory." (The full study makes for interesting reading: Evolution and Creationism in America’s Classrooms: A National Portrait.

Expelled from the Garden of Eden for being a snake?

Or just for being a scientist and an atheist? (And no, P Z Myers was not a gatecrasher, he was actually in the silly film: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.)

Conversation between Dr. Dawkins and Dr. P Z Myers over the movie and the expelling:



An hilarious overview.

Coming to theaters near you!

Now you can get a real dose of intelligent design at the movies!

Shortly before he was to attend a screening in January of the documentary “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” which is about alternatives to the theory of evolution, Roger Moore, a film critic for The Orlando Sentinel, learned that his invitation had been revoked by the film’s marketers.

“Well, you already invited me,” he recalled thinking at the time. “I’m going to go.”

So Mr. Moore traveled to a local megachurch and planted himself among a large group of pastors to watch the movie. In it, Ben Stein, the actor and economist (and regular contributor to The New York Times) interviews scientists and teachers who say that Darwinism gets too much emphasis in the classroom and that proponents of the theory of intelligent design are treated unfairly.

There were nondisclosure agreements to sign that day, but Mr. Moore did not, and proceeded to write perhaps the harshest review “Expelled” has received thus far. The film will open April 18, but has been screened several times privately for religious audiences. Mr. Moore deplored what he perceived as “loaded images, loaded rhetoric, few if any facts” and accused Mr. Stein of using a “Holocaust denier’s” tactics.

Which, of course, was exactly the reaction the moviemakers were hoping to avoid by keeping mainstream critics out.

Here is part of Roger Moore's excellent review:

That's the mnemonic device Stein came back to, time and again, last night in an Orlando screening of his new documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It's a rabble-rouser of a doc that uses all manner of loaded images, loaded rhetoric, few if any facts and mockery of hand-picked "weirdo" scientists to attack those who, Stein claims, are stifling the Religious Right's efforts to inject intelligent design into science courses, science curricula and the national debate.

He was showing the movie to what he and the producers hoped would be a friendly, receptive audience of conservative Christian ministers at a conference at the Northland mega-church next to the dog track up in Longwood. They're marketing this movie, which they had said, earlier, they'd open in Feb. (now April) the same way other studios pitched The Passion of the Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia, said Paul Lauer of Motive Entertainment, who introduced Stein.

In other words, a stealth campaign, out of the public eye, preaching to the choir to get the word out about the movie without anyone who isn't a true believer passing a discouraging judgment on it. Friendly words in the press only.

They postered the Orlando Sentinel with email invitations, then tried to withdraw the one they sent to me. No dice. They also passed out non-disclosure "statement of confidentiality" agreements for people to sign. I didn't.

What are they hiding from you? Straight propaganda, to be sure. But again, if Michael Moore or Robert Greenwald can do it, why not Ben Stein?

It's a movie that uses animation, archival documentary footage, interviews with outraged "people of science" who want ID on the table, and "atheists" (scientists) who see all this as a step backward, all freighted to back up the argument that it stifled "freedom" when you refuse to consider the work of a supernatural being in America's science classes.

It just isn't particularly funny. Or the least bit convincing.

The religious fundamentalists may sound hilarious and silly with their bizarre attempts to hijack the word 'evolution' and deliberately distort the meaning of the word 'science'. They have no idea why scientists use the word 'theory' and the word 'proof'.

But theocracy is truly their focus and their intent. They have gotten close enough to power to think that they can take it. We need to be clear this is unacceptable and unAmerican. Mocking this dangerously silly movie is a necessary step.

crossposted at American Street

Update: Zeno of Halfway There has a wonderful ... review of Ben Stein's movie.

Thomas Jefferson was not a Christian

A commenter responded to my post involving the separation of church and state here, and cited Thomas Jefferson's buying of bibles for the Washington D.C. schools as proof that the Founding Fathers would have supported the teaching of 'intelligent design'.

Ok, ignore the amazing leap of logic, but look at what else Jefferson said about religion. I've lifted my response in full:

Where to begin?

I don't know if you should rely on Jefferson for your 'intelligent design' theory.

Doing a quick google of Jefferson brought up these quotes:

"Jefferson, at 33, drafted the Declaration of Independence. In years following he labored to make its words a reality in Virginia. Most notably, he wrote a bill establishing religious freedom, enacted in 1786."

Religious freedom. That means being able to practice your own religion and not have someone else's religion forced upon you, right?

And:

"But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
— Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

"Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man."
— Thomas Jefferson

"In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty."
— Thomas Jefferson

"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

"It is between fifty and sixty years since I read the Apocalypse, and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac."
— Thomas Jefferson

"The Christian God is a being of terrific character — cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust."
— Thomas Jefferson

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
— Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, 1823

Bibles have been included as reading material in many schools. I took a Bible class in college. But it was just that: a BIBLE class, not a science class. Classical scholars read the bible because literature is saturated with references and quotes from the book. Using a bible as a reference book or a book to teach reading or as a book to teach Christianity does not make the leap to 'intelligent design' in science classes.

Science is different than faith and has an entirely different process. 'Intelligent design' belongs in the church, not in a school.

Besides...which 'intelligent design' do you assume will be taught in the public schools? Hindu? Muslim? Catholic?

Why on earth do you presume the religion that would be shoehorned in with the 'intelligent design' concepts would be yours?

Do you know how many religions we have here in the United States? Once you've opened the door to a state sponsored teaching of religion, we will have struggles for power between the churches to claim their version is the correct one. Europe is a standing example of such battles.

Do you really want to activate that? Do you realize the separation between church and state has allowed all Americans to live side by side in harmony?

Is that what you really want, a holy war? Don't answer. It's obvious.

Remember how it was before the separation between church and state was broken?

Bluegal at Crooks and Liars updates her post about the forced resignation of the Texas Education Agency's director of science curriculum:

The state’s director of science curriculum has resigned after being accused of creating the appearance of bias against teaching intelligent design.

by saying this:

Some commenters are taking offense that this post is anti-Christian. I wrote it. I’m a Christian (believing Quaker). A great many members of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State believe as I do that intelligent design is a specific attempt by Fundamentalists to inject religion into the public schools, and some of us also believe that if the State teaches the Bible they will misinterpret it for our children. Religious freedom requires freedom from anyone’s individual religious beliefs being force taught in the public schools as scientific fact.

Thank you for saying that, bluegal. It wasn't that long ago that religion was not jammed into everyone else's face. We were able to interact and vote without taking someone's beliefs into account.

Breaking down the wall between church and state has brought all the power hungry Christianists out into the open. Who knew there were so many of them who hate the Constitution and wish to destroy the United States?

Update: Tengrain of Mock, Paper, Scissors has more.

Update 12/1: I've copied my reply in this post.

Michael Medved resents the question about evolution

That the Republican presidential candidates had to answer. Trifecta of New Pairodimes takes him apart. Trifecta's responses are italized:

In the midst of the fierce campaign for the Presidential nomination, why did the Republican candidates choose to make an issue of the theory of evolution? In truth, none of the candidates ever emphasized this dispute, until Chris Matthews of MSNBC asked the ten contenders in the first debate if any of them rejected Darwin.

Our batshit insane candidates wanted to paper over their views that Jesus rode on a brontosaurus when a donkey wasn't available. Leave it to the liberal media to make them talk about their views.

When three candidates – Huckabee, Brownback and Tancredo – duly raised their hands, the media began focusing on creationism vs. intelligent design vs. evolution, as if the President of the United States got to make curriculum decisions for every local school board in the country.

No, the President gets to appoint 24 year old snot nosed kids to NASA to edit scientists work that mention things such as global warming, and to suggest that they push intelligent design. God don't make junk, and since we are created in his image, it's unpossible for us to foul the air with toxic crap.

Which brings me to another series of questions I'd like to ask these candidates:

If you don't believe in evolution, does that mean you believe the world is only 6 thousand years old?

Or do you believe that we've always been what we are today, but the world does evolve?

If you don't believe in evolution, do you believe in continental drift and plate tectonics?

Do you believe the stars are billions of years old?

If you don't believe in these things, do you believe in science? Facts?

Would you support space exploration?

The Hubble?

The International Space Station?

If you don't believe in evolution, can science teach us anything?

If you don't believe in evolution, and don't believe in the facts that science teaches us, do you believe in the Rapture?

Would you assist the Second Coming if you could?

Just a few questions to hone in on what would really drive a Republican president who doesn't believe in evolution.

For those of us who are evolving

And intend to keep doing so, an excellent dismantling of the creationist's 'arguments':

Evolution: What You Need To Know:

• "Hey, it's only a theory..."
• Human beings are not the ultimate result of evolution
• Human beings are not descended from gorillas or chimpanzees
• Doesn't "Survival of the fittest" mean it's good for the strong to destroy the weak?
• Creatures do not decide how to evolve
• Species do not spontaneously change into new species
• Complex organs such as eyes can evolve gradually
• Creatures are not colourful just to please God
• Don't I have to give up belief in God if I accept evolution?
• Further reading

If you can't force science to match your religion

Then incorporate scientific words into your religion! Then you can sell really crappy science books with religious overtones!

PZ Myers at Pharyngula:

If you've been wondering what the new name for repackaged Intelligent Design was going to be after the drubbing it took in Dover, look no further: it's going to be called "evolution". The new textbook from the gang at the DI, intended to replace Of Pandas and People is going to be titled "Explore Evolution".

It's a cunning plan to sow confusion, which is ultimately all the Intelligent Design creationists are good at. If state education standards mandate instruction in evolution and if the laws of the land make teaching Intelligent Design creationism illegal, well, they'll adapt and teach "evolution" … it's just that this version of "evolution" flouts the ideas of experts, ignores the evidence, misrepresents the theory, and promotes a role for design in "evolutionary" history.

It's an interesting tactic. Simply write a very bad book about evolution, market it appropriately, and find enough ideologically motivated science teachers to use it, and they will have effectively continued their efforts to subvert science education in this country. After all, the successful court challenges to block creationism in the classroom have done so on the basis of their violation of the separation of church and state, not so much on their quality and competence; propagating awful science is probably constitutional.

The misuse of the word 'proof'

When arguing with a scientist will not help and will immediately expose you as a moron.

Finney, a Maryville Republican, said he wants the department to say there's no scientific proof for the theory of evolution and to let schools teach creationism or intelligent design.

That is a fundamental misconception, and one I wish we could somehow hammer into these gomers' heads. There is no scientific proof of anything…proof isn't something scientists deal with at all. It's an inappropriate demand in several ways.

• It singles out evolution, but as I said, there is no scientific proof of anything. Why not question cell theory or electromagnetism?
• If Finney is going to demand "proof", where's the proof for creationism or intelligent design? He's awfully inconsistent.
• The word Finney is actually looking for is not "proof", but "evidence". Evidence is what we look for in science classes. There is evidence for evolution; there is none for creationism or intelligent design. Case closed.

Do not argue with a scientist about evolution

Casually tossing big science-y-type words about when you don't know anything about the subject just makes you look like an idiot.

It depends on what the word Theory means....

as to whether or not Intelligent Design have parity with the scientific concept of evolution, or even why the religious theory has bound itself so tightly to the conservative movement.

In the post, Zeno notes:
"There are no surprises here for the informed citizen who knows a little bit about the enterprise of scientific research and the standards of proof that accompany it. Wilson continues his essay by discussing such things as the religious motives of intelligent design advocates and design flaws in nature (the eye's “blind spot”) that suggest the absence of an intelligent designer. He was promptly taken to task, of course, by those ID sympathizers whose will to believe in a creator God makes them eager to embrace ID as scientific (and not a thinly veiled attempt to make fundamentalist religious dogma more respectable)."