Thoughts in a Haystack

The Yankees are playing tonight so just read this nice article about Richard B. Katskee's visit to Susquehanna University. Katskee was the lawyer for Americans United for Separation of Church and State at the Kitzmiller case. This, from Katskee, is nice:

Katskee said this minority believes that the planet is heating up because we are moving closer and closer to Armageddon as described in the book of Revelations in the New Testament of the Bible. Therefore, if we reverse global warming on that view, Katskee said we are delaying the end of days, frustrating God's plan.

Katskee said: "Of course they are entitled to their religious beliefs, no question about it. They are entitled to teach those beliefs to their children, they are allowed to talk about it in church, at home, in the mall, whenever they want. We are all entitled to those things -- that's what religious freedom means. The real issue is: are they allowed to use the law to impose those beliefs on everybody else?"

Or, for comic relief, you can read Ray Comfort's "response" to Eugenie Scott. Needless to say, it is a typical creationist screed: Darwin was a bad man, therefore don't believe him; evolution is "atheistic;" and my favorite:

The problem when arguing with those who believe in atheistic evolution is that they move goal posts by redefining atheism or evolution or the word species. From Darwin to Dawkins, they speak the language of speculation, continually using words like probably, maybe, perhaps, and could've. And Darwinism is as nebulous as a puffy cloud on a hot windy day, forever moving, changing, and expanding—because its bounds are limited only by the fertile human imagination.

Nasty science! It keeps learning and updating itself and, therefore, is never certain, while Comfort's religion aspires only to maintain the beliefs of Bronze Age shepherds.
.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 11:02 PM 4 comments

Anika Smith, the the tankwoman in pink of the Discovery Institute, is at the DI's Ministry of Misinformation, touting the results of the recent Ipsos MORI poll showing that, even in Britain, a majority think that "other possible perspectives," such as intelligent design and creationism, should be taught alongside evolution in science classes.

Smith attempts to blunt the obvious rejoinder that the respondents are unaware that there are no other scientific perspectives this way:

While Darwin's apologists* might try to explain the poll numbers as an example of ignorance influencing people's beliefs, the numbers themselves suggest a different picture.

Across the board, most respondents from the ten countries polled thought that "other perspectives on the origins of species" "such as intelligent design and creationism" should be taught in science class*. When the poll is weighted to include only those respondents who have heard of Charles Darwin and know something about his theory of evolution, the percentage supporting alternate theories increases, from 60% to 66% in Britain and 60% to 64% in the U.S.

The basic truth is that most people want evolution to have to compete for its place of dominance in their schools.

The idea that the best information can be obtained by taking the average opinion of a large number of people, regardless of their capabilities, is a logical fallacy. Richard Feynman, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, proved this by imagining a country whose emperor was never seen by any of his people, and stayed walled off in a secret palace. Feynman posited that a traveling salesman who wishes to know the length of the emperor's nose could traverse the whole country asking every citizen for his or her opinion, and then take an average of the answers. In theory, the answer should be very accurate because it is the average of a large sample. Unfortunately, every person who participated was taking a guess, and not working from any real information, rendering the survey inaccurate. The salesman knows nothing more about the emperor's nose after the survey than he did before.

The analogy holds in this example. We can go and ask all 308 million people in the United States for their opinion on this matter, but most of them are not informed enough to make this decision effectively, and we won't be any closer to the goal of educating schoolchildren about science. We don't poll the general public for their input on the curriculum of medical school, and I think we would all prefer our surgeon to be trained by a surgeon instead of by plumbers, policemen, or politicians. Simply because we have a democratic system does not imply that the public at large should make the final decisions about every issue, especially when they are not equipped to use the correct decision-making calculus. Most people in America can not make informed decisions about biology, because they are not biologists.

It should be noted that Discovery Institute opposes efforts to mandate teaching alternative theories in the science classroom — we'd rather have the whole picture of evolution, the scientific arguments both for and against the theory, presented instead.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 9:14 AM 5 comments

Oooh!

David Klinghoffer has gone from merely being inane to being a sycophant of epic proportions.

One can only hope that Jonathan Wells and David Berlinski had full body condoms available to protect the various body parts that Klinghoffer was trying to insert his tongue in.

Klinghoffer effuses over the Discovery Institute's latest propaganda film, Darwin's Dilemma, too, as if the whole "Darwinism can't explain the Cambrian Explosion" bafflegab was wholly new to him ... which, if true, has to make you wonder just how Klinghoffer can be so confident in his belief in ID, if he is so ignorant of it's arguments that he doesn't already know about one of its oldest claims (and that of its creationist predecessors, for that matter).

But it is Berlinski who Klinghoffer is practically got his nose up the butt of. And if Klinghoffer is reporting it correctly, it is incredibly fatuous stuff he is so enamored of indeed. Take this:

I also loved his insight that the ugliness of the results of the Darwinian idea, its effects on our culture, are far from irrelevant in judging the idea's truth. This is another one of Darwin's dilemmas. Berlinski cited Keats, "'Truth is truth, beauty truth,' -- that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." No, he pointed out, you can't separate the consequences of Darwinian theory from its truth. Beauty may well be an aspect of truth.

... David's very funny riff on how a cow-like creature could take to the seas as a proto-whale, per the Darwinian just-so story, including the challenge of developing nipples that work underwater.

But when have the DI drones let a little thing like accuracy about what science actually says stand in the way of a "good" religious apology? And what's the creationist fascination with mammary glands anyway? Hippopotamuses have tits that work well on land and in water. Where's the big jump?

Still, Klinghoffer can't help but deliver a truly -- but inadvertently -- funny line:

The word that came to my mind watching [Darwin's Dilemma] was "spooky."

That's hardly surprising ... what with spirits poofing things into existence and all.
.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 12:11 AM 5 comments

Charles C. Haynes, a prominent First Amendment scholar has an article, "Say what you want, hate-crimes bill protects free speech," on why the lunatic right wing's tizzy about the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which adds sexual orientation and gender identity (along with disability) as categories covered by federal hate-crimes statutes, is insane. Haynes notes:

Of the various arguments advanced by some social conservatives against the bill, the one that has gotten the most traction with the public is the charge that the legislation would “criminalize preaching the Gospel and put preachers in the crosshairs,” in the words of a letter sent to senators by 60 conservative leaders in June.

Scary stuff, but is it true?

To illustrate their fears, religious conservatives cite cases in Europe and Canada where a few pastors have been prosecuted in recent years for “hate speech” after they spoke out against homosexuality. These prosecutions are indeed insidious attacks on free speech and free exercise of religion – but they all occurred in countries without a First Amendment.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 12:16 PM 5 comments

Jesus Creed is discussing a white paper commissioned by the Biologos Foundation that surveys evangelical Christian theologians as to what barriers they perceive to be the greatest to accepting "theistic evolution" (i.e. evolution at all). Besides being a fascinating insight into the thinking (or lack thereof) of evangelicals, the study's author, Bruce Waltke, described by one of his book publishers as a "leading Old Testament evangelical scholar" providing "conservative commentary" on Genesis, had this as one of the "barriers" he was asking about:

Apologists such as those of the Intelligent Design Movement, fathered by Phillip E. Johnson, have made a sufficient case to reject the theory of evolution and to replace it with a theory of intelligent design.

The essential point of creation has . . . to do with the element of design or purpose. In the broadest sense, a creationist' is simply a person who believes that the world (and especially mankind) was designed and exists for a purpose [italics his].

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 9:55 PM 2 comments

It seems the Seventh-day Adventists are aping the Clergy Letter Project's Evolution Weekend program. They just held their first Creation Sabbath, where such startling presentations were made as:

... evidence for the biblical account of a worldwide flood, including turtle fossils in the United States and whale fossils in Peru that are in the same state of decay, indicating they were likely buried at the same time.

"All through history, there isn't an idea - no matter how ludicrous, no matter how stupid, no matter how contrary to the basic views of Christianity - that we're not going to find some 'progressive' Christians wanting to incorporate," said Goldstein, who edits the church's Adult Bible Study Guide. "I don't buy into the idea that they're the Galileos of their time and that we're retarding progress."

Pat Hamoodi ... said she attended to see the issue of creation discussed by some of the church's experts. She was raised in an atheist home and said she wants to debate her family on the matter of origins "in a good way."

"I came here to get ammunition, you could say," Hamoodi said.

I'm sure her foot appreciates it.
.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 5:07 PM 6 comments

Wow ... just wow:

More than half of British adults think that intelligent design and creationism should be taught alongside evolution in schoolscience lessons – a proportion higher than in the US.

An Ipsos Mori survey questioned 11,768 adults from 10 countries on how the theory of evolution should be taught in school science lessons.

About 54% of the 973 polled Britons agreed with the view: "Evolutionary theories should be taught in science lessons in schools together with other possible perspectives, such as intelligent design and creationism."

In the US, of 991 adults responding to the survey, which was organised by the British Council, 51% agreed that evolution should be on the curriculum alongside other theories, like intelligent design.

Lewis Wolpert, emeritus professor of biology at University College London (UCL), who is vice-president of the British Humanist Association, said: "I am appalled. It shows how ignorant the public is. Intelligent design and creationism have no connection with science and are purely religious concepts. There is no evidence for them at all. They must be kept out of science lessons."

Steve Jones, professor of genetics at UCL, said: "This shows the danger of religions being allowed to buy schools, hijack lessons and pretend that they have anything useful to say about science – which, by definition, they do not. The figure seems much too high, although no doubt there is a substantial minority that does think this."

Christine Blower, acting general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: "It would be wholly wrong to include creationism in the science curriculum. An overwhelming body of evidence, not assertion, supports the concept of evolution and therefore evolution must form the basis of the science curriculum. Consideration of creationism might not be out of place in religious education."

Overall these results may reflect the need for a more sophisticated approach to teaching and communicating how science works as a process.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 2:45 PM 6 comments

I had started on a fairly long response to Russell Blackford's reply to Massimo Pigliucci's blog post "On the scope of skeptical inquiry." But much of it has been overtaken by Russell's comments here. Specifically:

As for the claim about the age of the Earth, the ultimate answer I want to give is that rational inquiry rejects 6000 years as the correct age and settles on 4 to 5 billion years. It really doesn't matter whether that is characterised as a philosophical claim or a scientific claim. The reasons for settling on that answer are available, in principle, to anyone who is engaged in rational inquiry. But even if we say that it is ultimately a philosophical claim, it is a claim that philosophers make with the assistance of scientists.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 11:07 PM 18 comments

.
Uh, oh!

Jerry Coyne is "doing" philosophy again.

Predictably, the results are not unlike what happens when other activities are described as "doing" something.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Coyne is claiming that atheism is a scientific position.

The specific occasion for Coyne's assault and battery on philosophy is the post by Massimo Pigliucci, "On the scope of skeptical inquiry," at his blog Rationally Speaking, that I recently quoted:

[L]et us turn to atheism. Once again: it is a philosophical, not a scientific position. Now, I have argued of course that any intelligent philosopher ought to allow her ideas to be informed by science, but philosophical inquiry is broader than science because it includes non-evidence based approaches, such as logic or more broadly reason-based arguments. This is both the strength and the weakness of philosophy when compared to science: it is both broader and yet of course less prone to incremental discovery and precise answers. When someone, therefore, wants to make a scientific argument in favor of atheism — like Dawkins and Jerry Coyne seem to do — he is stepping outside of the epistemological boundaries of science, thereby doing a disservice both to science and to intellectual inquiry.

[L]et's be clear about what atheism is. I'll call "weak sense atheism" the position that, I think, most atheists hold. It is this: "There is no convincing evidence for God, so I withhold belief." This can be further refined, as Dawkins does in The God Delusion, into the statement, "There could be lots of evidence for God, but none has appeared. Therefore I think it improbable that God exists." This is the stand that informs the atheist bus posters that read, in part, "There probably is no God."

The second form of disbelief, which I call "strong sense atheism," is the flat assertion, "I know there is no God." Note that this elides a bit into the "probably-no-God" position, depending on how strong you think the evidence is. The existence of suffering in the world, for example, convinces many, but not all, that there is not a beneficent God.

So let's take weak-sense atheism (WSA) as the default stance. In its very weakest, "no-evidence-for-God" sense, WSA is absolutely scientific. After all, what is science but the claim that one needs empirical evidence before accepting something as a reality? When one says, "I see no evidence for a god, and therefore refuse to accept his/her/its reality," one is saying nothing different from, "I see no evidence for the view that plants have feelings, and therefore I don't accept the idea that they do."

What about the "probabilistic" form of WSA? That's equally scientific. If there could be evidence for a phenomenon, but repeated investigations fail to give that evidence, one becomes less willing to accept that phenomenon. In this sense, being a WSA is no different from making a perfectly scientific claim like this: "I think it pretty improbable that the Loch Ness monster exists." After all, if there were a giant reptile trapped in the Loch, presumably you could find it. And people have tried. They've looked underwater with cameras, hung around the lake trying to photograph it, and conducted sonar and satellite investigations. Nothing has turned up. In all probability, the Monster is a myth.

Based on these searches, is it then a "philosophical position" to say that it's highly unlikely that Nessie exists? I don't think so. It's an evidence-based position — in other words, a scientific one. Similarly, the god that many people believe in, who is said to be beneficent, answer prayers, heal the sick, come back from the dead, and the like, is contradicted by evidence: the failure of prayer and spiritual healing, the existence of inexplicable evil, and so on. There are a million ways that a theistic god could have shown itself to us Earthlings, but it hasn't happened.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 2:49 PM 5 comments

A thought:

[L]et us turn to atheism. Once again: it is a philosophical, not a scientific position. Now, I have argued of course that any intelligent philosopher ought to allow her ideas to be informed by science, but philosophical inquiry is broader than science because it includes non-evidence based approaches, such as logic or more broadly reason-based arguments. This is both the strength and the weakness of philosophy when compared to science: it is both broader and yet of course less prone to incremental discovery and precise answers. When someone, therefore, wants to make a scientific argument in favor of atheism — like Dawkins and Jerry Coyne seem to do — he is stepping outside of the epistemological boundaries of science, thereby doing a disservice both to science and to intellectual inquiry.

- Massimo Pigliucci, "On the scope of skeptical inquiry," Rationally Speaking

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 9:37 PM 5 comments

Remember John Lynch's article a while back, "The Roots of ID," about the Discovery Institute's claim at its faith + evolution website (set up to counter the Biologos Foundation's efforts to convince more Christians that evolution and faith are compatible) that the Intelligent Design Movement wasn't born in the immediate aftermath of Edwards v. Aguillard by the cdesign proponentsists working on Of Pandas and People?

John demonstrated quite thoroughly that no one was saying that the design argument was new ... far from it ... the issue was when the modern ID Movement, aimed at getting ID into public school science curricula or, at least, watering down education in evolutionary science, was born. John also notes the irony of the DI quoting extensively from Christian and other theistic sources to show that ID predated the decision in Edwards v. Aguillard, at the same time as they are claiming it is non-religious modern science.

They (sort of) attempt to avoid that problem by pointing to Fred Hoyle (sometimes described as an agnostic and sometimes as an atheist), who once in 1982 used the words in that order, as the person who "coined [the term] in its contemporary scientific usage," even though no one knew about Hoyle's use until sometime in 2007, way too late for him to have been IDs intellectual progenitor.

But there was one modern usage that the DI missed ... one that bears a lot in common with ID.

Let's take a brief detour to this press release:

Repeated sexual scandals in the Roman Catholic Church! - The Canadian Council of Raelian Bishops suggests sexual robots as a solution to protect the victims of Roman Catholic priests

"The Raelian philosophy not only advocates sexual freedom, which naturally protects our members from these mental deviances, but is also in favour of the use of sexual robots ; as Rael describes them in his book 'Intelligent Design', written in 1975, and as today's scientists are now suggesting."

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 7:50 PM 4 comments

This is for Yankees fans.

Jorge Posada stole second.

... then got caught in a rundown that the umpires blew the call on ... the third bad call but, so far, its been a wash.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 9:59 PM 0 comments

... and favorably at that!

Sheila Musaji, in The American Muslim, reviews The Atlas of Creation by Harun Yahya (otherwise known as Adnan Oktar). She notes:

Yahya has offered a huge sum of money ($10 trillion Turkish lira or $8,010,890,000,000. Eight trillion, ten billion, eight hundred and ninety million dollars) to any scientist who can bring forward an intermediate fossil, however, it is doubtful that there is any scientific evidence that he would accept. One scientist, P.Z. Meyers, at the University of Minnesota said: "The US government should immediately send a plane to pick up Mr Oktar, bring him to our country, and take him on a guided tour of the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History, accompanied by Niles Eldredge, Kevin Padian, Jerry Coyne, Sean Carroll, and the entire scientific staff of those museums. Afterwards, they can accept the check from Mr Oktar, run down to the local bank and cash it, and use one trillion dollars to resolve the current financial crisis, seven trillion can be sunk immediately into the American educational system, and they can send the change left over to me as a reward for coming up with this brilliant plan. Unless… You don't think… Adnan Oktar couldn't possibly be lying about how much money he has, could he? And he couldn't possibly by planning to weasel out of accepting any honest evidence, could he?" This offer by Yahya has also been made by Christian creationists, but with much smaller amounts offered.

[ID} is not really a new approach, using basically the same evidence and arguments used for years by scientific creationists but made to appear more sophisticated with complex nomenclature and argumentation. ...

[ID advocates are guilty of] use of the same arguments and evidences we Biblical creationists have used for years, while simultaneously trying to distance themselves from us. Our adherence to Biblical literalism is ridiculed by evolutionists, and the ID advocates would be embarrassed to be tarred with the same brush.

Dembski himself may not believe such nonsense, but he is trying to build a very large tent, allowing anyone except pure materialists to take refuge there.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 11:20 PM 5 comments

Kelly Boggs, a columnist for Baptist Press and editor of the Baptist Message, newsjournal of the Louisiana Baptist Convention, is trying to play the guilt card:

According to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary and Thesaurus the word "liberal" is defined as: respectful and accepting of behavior or opinions different from one's own.

The dictionary and thesaurus also provides several synonyms for the word. Among those listed are the following: tolerant, unprejudiced, unbigoted, broad-minded, open-minded.

You would think that a person who embraces the concept of liberalism would be, of all people, open to debate, dialogue and inquiry on most any subject. But the new liberals, or as I refer to them, "neo-liberals," are among the most narrow-minded and closed individuals you will ever meet.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 7:27 PM 2 comments

A thought:

From the late nineteenth century on, religious people who have thought hard about the Darwinian view of the history of life have found it deeply troubling. George John Romanes, author of books on religion and works of science, found Darwin's vision agonizing. It seemed to him that the universe had 'lost its soul of loveliness." In his groundbreaking The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James articulated more extensively this sense of loss, offering an arresting image. "For naturalism, fed on recent cosmological speculations, mankind is in a position similar to that of a set of people living on a frozen lake, surrounded by cliffs over which there is no escape, yet knowing that little by little the ice is melting, and the inevitable day drawing near when the last film of it will disappear, and to be drowned ignominiously will be the human creature's portion. The merrier the skating, the warmer and more sparkling the sun by day, and the ruddier the bonfires at night, the more poignant the sadness with which one must take in the meaning of the total situation." Given this picture of life as early twentieth-century science seems to depict it, James can only view cheerfulness, or even the absence of despair, as based on false optimism, on failure to face reality It is hardly surprising that he sees religious impulses as cries, triggered by the need for something different or for something more -- "Here is the real core of the religious problem: Help! Help!"

Perhaps this is overwrought, even neurotic? I don't think so. Romanes and James, like the evangelical Christians who rally behind intelligent design today, appreciate that Darwinism is subversive. They recognize that the Darwinian picture of life is at odds with a particular kind of religion, providentialist religion, as I shall call it. A large number of Christians, not merely those who maintain that virtually all of the Bible must be read literally, are providentialists. For they believe that the universe has been created by a Being who has a great design, a Being who cares for his creatures, who observes the fall of ever sparrow and who is especially concerned with humanity. Yet the story of a wise and loving Creator who has planned life on earth, letting it unfold over four billion years by the processes envisaged in evolutionary theory, is hard to sustain when you think about the details.

- Philip Kitcher, Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 9:34 PM 3 comments

Of course Intelligent Design is not religious. Neither is it creationism.

The fact that Michael Behe is participating in a lecture series organized by The International Institute for Culture, which describes the series as:

Leading Catholic scientists, ethicists and cultural analysts will present information that supports the event's theme: "Latest Scientific Discoveries Challenge Darwinian Evolution's Fitness to Survive." The IIC is a non-profit educational and research center dedicated to Catholic cultural renewal.

Hugh Miller, research chemist, and co-author of the paper "Recent C[arbon]-14 dating of fossils including dinosaur bone collagen," will also challenge generally accepted thinking in his speech titled, "Removing the Darwinian fig leaf: what modern carbon dating reveals about the true age of the dinosaur."

It is important for young Catholics to hear both sides of the story to assist them in their own accountability in faith decisions. I believe Darwinian evolution will be discredited this generation. We want to reach as many decision makers and educators as possible.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 8:25 PM 7 comments

This is why I like PZ Myers much more than Jerry Coyne.

When PZ decides to talk about philosophy, he at least manages to be very much in the ballpark, while Coyne has difficulty differentiating his gluteus maximus from his ginglymus.

Not only does PZ cite my favorite, much underlined, article of Stephen Jay Gould's, he creates this lovely metaphor of the relationship between science and philosophy:

Philosophers, sweet as they may be, are most definitely not the "arbiters" of the cognitive structure of science. They are more like interested spectators, running alongside the locomotive of science, playing catch-up in order to figure out what it is doing, and occasionally shouting words of advice to the engineer, who might sometimes nod in interested agreement but is more likely to shrug and ignore the wacky academics with all the longwinded discourses. Personally, I think the philosophy of science is interesting stuff, and can surprise me with insights, but science is a much more pragmatic operation that doesn't do a lot of self-reflection.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 10:24 PM 3 comments

Due to "real life" (including such things as baseball playoffs), I've been remiss in getting to Nick Smyth's last two responses to criticisms of his article, that he characterizes as:

7. You keep using this word "Science". But you say science is indefinable! How can you keep using it? (John)

8. You're overestimating creationists. They will not accept your epistemology, and they are totally insensitive to arguments which show their views to be false. This new strategy will not work (John, Matzke, Penner).

It is reasonable to demand that the latter kind of political use of a word [to exclude certain people and ideas from public life] be backed up by a complete definition of the word, so that we don't end up making massive practical mistakes, excluding good ideas and including bad ones. In fact, this is just what has happened: popular definitions of "science" actually include all kinds of wacky theories and exclude important research programmes which don't fit with the standard definitions.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 1:44 PM 2 comments

And it gets funnier!

Robert Crowther is at the Discovery Institute's Ministry of Misinformation further kvetching about the cancellation by the California Science Center of a screening of the Darwin's Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Explosion. It's the usual PR spin not worth much attention.

However, Crowther ends his rant with this:

Rather than debate the science, Darwinists try to suppress it. They simply can't stand to let people know the truth about the shoddy case for Darwinian evolution.

Now back when they did get to show Darwin's Dilemma at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, the museum's response was to issue a statement that read, in part:

Although the museum does not support unscientific views masquerading as science, such as those espoused by the Discovery Institute, the museum does respect the religious beliefs of all people. ... The museum does not discriminate against recognized campus organizations based on their religious beliefs, political philosophy, scientific literacy, or any other factors.

It also scheduled a lecture addressing the actual science about the Cambrian Explosion and kept the museum open for free before and after the showing of the Discovery Institute's film.

When discussing the museum's reaction to the screening at Sam Noble, Jonathan Wells of the DI quoted with approval Oklahoma Daily columnist Jelani Sims to the effect:

Rather than hijacking the night of the documentary presentation with an opposing seminar and free extra hours of operation, it should have let the event stand on its own. And, rather than releasing a statement of vehement opposition, thinly veiled in tolerance, it should have said nothing.

In short, the DI wants the right to rent scientific institutions, and assume the seeming legitimacy that comes with the location, but, if those institutions want to counter the pseudoscience being peddled by the DI in the best way possible (instead of holding phony "debates"), by presenting detailed explanations and showing the public the very evidence that the DI is claiming isn't there, that's somehow unfair. They are demanding access to these institutions in order to call the very scientific work done by them "shoddy" and the institutions should say nothing in response!

And then people like Rhology wonder why we call them dishonest!
.

Labels: California Science Center

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 3:53 PM 0 comments

Heh! I reported before that the IMAX theater at the California Science Center in Los Angeles had been rented to show the Discovery Institute's pet piece of propaganda Darwin's Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Explosion.

Not so fast!

It seems that the Center has cancelled the screening and accompanying prayer tent meeting, entitled "The Darwin Debates: A Forum for Dialogue." The Center cites unspecified "issues related to the contract."

Naturally, the DI is claiming pressure from "Darwinist censors" and from "the Smithsonian Institution, which clearly was upset by publicity promoting the screening that mentioned the true fact that the Science Center is an official 'Smithsonian Affiliate.'”

Labels: California Science Center

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 4:59 PM 6 comments