Discovery Institute: More Recycled Nonsense

Casey Luskin is revisiting one of his topics. See High Risk Quote Mining. Casey is everyone’s favorite creationist among the neo-theocrats at the Discovery Institute‘s creationist public relations and lobbying operation, the Center for Science and Culture (a/k/a the Discoveroids, a/k/a the cdesign proponentsists).

The Discoveroid blog offers us Casey’s latest effort: NSF Spends Almost $2 Million Of Taxpayer Money Crafting Darwin Only Lessons. Here are some excerpts, with bold added by us:

As discussed in my previous post, it’s best to just lay all the cards on the table: The goal of the Evolution Readiness Project is to get “young children” to “believe in” evolution. According to, NSF’s website, they’ve spent $1,990,459 of taxpayer-funded NSF dollars to bankroll this project.

That “believe in” business was clumsily quote-mined from the NSF website, as we demonstrated in our earlier post. We’re much more interested in Casey’s mention of the nearly $2 million that the NSF is spending. Our highly-developed Curmudgeonly instinct tells us that it must be funding time again for the Discoveroids, and they have to convince their patrons of the desperate need to fight the “Darwinist” beast. As we mentioned here, Discovery Institute: Their 2007 Tax Return, the Discoveroids spend about $2 million per year promoting creationism.

Let’s read on:

The agenda of the project is further clarified in the NSF Grant Award Abstract which states that it aims “to support a learning progression leading to an appreciation of the theory of evolution and evidence that supports it.” That’s fine, but why only the evidence that supports evolution?

Why? Well, Casey, we might shock you with what we’re about to say, so you’d better be near the fainting couch when you read this. Hey, Casey: There isn’t any evidence against evolution! If there were any, it would be taught.

See if you can grasp this, Casey: Back when Steady State was a viable theory, it was taught right along with the Big Bang. Today there are various theories attempting to explain dinosaur extinction, and they’re all taught. And let’s not even try to sort out all the versions of string theory that are being taught. Our point, Casey, is that when the scientific evidence isn’t conclusive, competing explanations are taught. It has always been thus. Casey’s article continues:

Before I say anything else, let me state that I am a firm advocate of teaching evolution. The scientific evidence that “supports” evolution should be taught. But that’s not all that should be taught.

Yes, Casey. Your scare quotes around “supports” gives us solid evidence of your firm advocacy. Here’s more:

The project justifies its dogmatic approach by promoting the myth that there is no scientific dissent from the consensus view on natural selection …

We won’t verify Casey’s next quote from the NSF, because we’re tired of always checking creationists’ quotations, but he probably got this one right. According to Casey, the NSF says:

Yet, essentially there is universal agreement among scientists that evolution by natural selection is the fundamental model that explains the extraordinary complexity and interdependence of the living world.

To counter the NSF’s claim about what is essentially universal agreement, Casey says:

Of course, it is not true that “essentially there is universal agreement among scientists” about evolution by natural selection. Over 850 Ph.D. scientists have now signed a statement expressing their skepticism …

Lordy, lordy. How often are the Discoveroids going to beat that dead horse? Casey refers to that woeful list of “over 850″ evolution skeptics who have signed on to the Discoveroids’ Scientific Dissent From Darwinism. But very few of them are biologists. They’ve got a lot of dentists, sociologists, proctologists, and maybe even chiropractors . Despite Casey’s telling us how “it’s best to just lay all the cards on the table,” he doesn’t mention Project Steve, which is now up over 1,100 “Steves.” Only 1% of the population have that name, which indicates that over 110,000 scientists support evolution. And unlike the Discoveroid list, the “Steve” list includes a large percentage of signers who are actually involved in the biological sciences.

You may want to read the rest of Casey’s article, because it starts like this:

Moreover, there is much scientific evidence that challenges neo-Darwinian evolution.

But we’ll leave that adventure up to you, dear reader. We’ve exhausted our daily quota of time we’re willing to spend on Casey’s writing.

Copyright © 2010. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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Ken Ham Gets a Quick $1K

This is about a blog article by Ken Ham (ol’ Hambo) — the genius who brought you the website Answers in Genesis (AIG) and the mind-boggling Creation Museum.

The title of this delightful piece is Another Caleb. We’ll be brief here, as there’s not much to say after we’ve told you what happened The bold font was added by us:

The Caleb described in the Bible (in the books of Joshua and Deuteronomy) was one of the great warriors of the faith who “wholly followed the Lord God.” Oh that there would be more Calebs in the world today!

Where is this thing going? Let’s read on:

I did meet another Caleb recently: a young Caleb who is zealous for following the Lord.

We can’t wait to hear more. Let’s continue:

Caleb Elliott is a remarkable young man. Only at 13 years of age, he spent 2–3 years mowing lawns, pulling weeds, mulching, etc. to earn enough money ($1,000) –

We interrupt to say that Caleb sounds like a good kid. Now let’s get back to that sentence to find out what happened to Caleb’s earnings:

— to get a lifetime pass to our Creation Museum.

What? Here’s more:

Now, Caleb could have used a guest museum pass that belongs to his parents (they are museum charter members and thus have a lifetime pass with guest passes) to visit the museum as many times as he wanted, but he wanted to have his own lifetime pass (and its associated guest passes, for his friends to use).

There’s more, if you want to learn about Caleb’s family. But you’ve already read the important part. Ol’ Hambo scored a fast $1K, and he got it from a kid’s lawn-mowing money. Truly, this is a story with a happy ending.

Isn’t creationism grand?

Copyright © 2010. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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Evolution and the Fermi Paradox

YOU have surely heard of the Fermi Paradox: If the universe is full of life, some of it intelligent, then — as Enrico Fermi is said to have asked — “Where are they?”

Everyone eventually takes a shot at answering Fermi’s question, but we haven’t tackled it yet at our humble blog. It’s time to remedy that defect. Our answer: It’s evolution!

Look at it this way — we’re a new species in an old universe. Some of the intelligent creatures out there have been around for millions, perhaps billions of years. It’s likely that they’ve made some improvements.

For example, being fresh from the steaming cauldron of evolution, we’re mostly comprised of primitive parts. Consider our torsos. They’re mostly filled with guts! From the mouth down to the other end, we’re almost all guts. Think about it — your colon is probably the largest internal organ you’ve got. Are you proud? Well, maybe it’s not the colon; perhaps it’s your liver — yuk!

Internally, we live in symbiosis with billions of bacteria that help us digest our food. It works, usually, but it’s really quite crude. An advanced species would almost certainly dump the whole messy business and opt for replaceable power packs. Then they could use the freed-up internal space for other purposes.

Consider how we speak. We use our mouths — organs evolved for sucking and chewing. Yes, we make a lot of neat sounds by flapping and clicking our membranes, all of it powered by exhalations, but a simple radio speaker can do far better. Allegorically speaking, we’re still yodeling in the mountains while the aliens are using iPhones.

A few obvious improvements would make an incredible change in us — power packs, computer chips, that sort of thing. No food, no intestinal disorders, no forgetfulness, no dementia. We’d still want to be human — especially the way we reproduce — but we could be much improved. It’s virtually a certainty that the aliens have already taken that route, and we think that’s the key to the Fermi paradox.

Compared to Humanity 2.0, which our posterity will probably be in the not-to-distant future, we’re — let’s be candid here — we’re rather disgusting right now. And if our descendants will see us that way, imagine how we’d appear from an alien’s point of view.

For example, if they had sense organs that could see and smell what’s really going on, they’d be aware that each of us is surrounded by a pungent cloud of decaying dandruff as we constantly shed dead skin cells. And that’s just the start of it.

This whole planet is probably revolting to aliens. What we might see as a pleasant stroll through the meadow, with dandelions and butterflies and such, to them would be a hideous experience of being surrounded by air swirling with bacteria, fungi, and pollen, walking on top-soil composed of centuries of decayed organic waste, and everywhere would be the stench of dead ants — you get the picture.

We’ve evolved to live in this mess, but the aliens haven’t. Whatever evolution they went through was long ago, and they’ve undoubtedly made lots of changes since then. If they learned about our recent appearance on our pretty little planet, although we think we’re wonderful, it’s doubtful that they’ll appreciate us nearly as much as we do.

So we think that’s why they’re staying away — they think we’re grotesque, like any newly-evolved species. They’re waiting for us to grow up and make a few improvements. If the world is ever ruled by creationists (who think we’re wonderfully created as we are), then there won’t be any changes; and there won’t be any alien visits either. We’ll be the bumpkins of the universe, isolated forever.

Until we take charge of our future evolution, don’t expect any alien landings. If there’s any alien contact at all, it’s going to be limited to long-distance conference calls. Very long distance.

What about abductions and probes? No way! That’s the last thing they’d want to do. Sorry to disappoint you.

See also: Charles Krauthammer and the Fermi Paradox.

Copyright © 2010. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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WorldNetDaily: Still Promoting Theocracy

STRICTLY speaking, the article we’re discussing today isn’t about The Controversy between evolution and creationism. It’s about something far worse because it advocates theocracy — of which creationism is usually but a symptom.

Today’s horror comes from the bizarre pages of WorldNetDaily (WND), an early winner of our Buffoon Award — thus that jolly logo displayed above this post. WND — that execrable publication, that organ of idiocy, that rag of all rags, that sinkhole of stupid — offers us this article: Pastors as leftist shills?

The author is Dave Welch, a preacher in Houston. We wrote about one of his WND articles before — A Plea For Theocracy — which is one of our favorites.

Rev. Welch is once again advocating theocracy — that old-time hell of inquisitions, heresy trials, book bannings, and witch burnings. He doesn’t specifically call for those measures — not yet — but we’ll give you a few excerpts from his article and then you can judge for yourself. The bold font was added by us:

Once again the Texas State Board of Education has erupted into the national news scene, this time by considering a resolution shedding light on anti-Christian bias in some history textbooks. Such bias is old news to anyone following the direction of the government education complex over the past 40 years. However, once again Texas can serve as a counterbalance simply due to the volume of its textbook purchases.

The rev is talking about the recent Resolution Alleging Muslim Bias in Textbooks. We haven’t written about that, but others have noted the extreme irony of the Texas SBOE’s sudden desire to purge religious bias from their textbooks. Let’s read on:

The conservative members of the SBOE are essentially serving as the Alamo for the nation’s children in government schools.

Yeah, right — the Alamo. Jonestown seems like a much better analogy. Then the rev criticizes all the clergy who don’t share his views:

Once again, my guns are aimed at the pathetic preachers, pitiful pastors and compromised clergy that TFN [Texas Freedom Network], AU [Americans United for Separation of Church and State], ACLU and their ilk trot out as props for their leftist agendas. They disgust me. Their list of “nearly 100 religious leaders from Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths” who signed a letter opposing the resolution represents a tiny cadre of liberals who have all rejected the fundamentals of their own faiths.

Preach it, rev! Then he praises:

… Terri Leo, David Bradley, Don McLeroy, Ken Mercer, Gail Lowe, Barbara Cargill and Cynthia Dunbar – the “Magnificent Seven” who voted to adopt this resolution (on a seven-to-six margin) and who will certainly again be vilified by the media, education elites and the sorry excuse for clergy mentioned above.

Did you catch that? The “Magnificent Seven.” We won’t bother to comment. Instead, we’ll skip over a considerable amount of additional raving until we get to the rev’s climax:

This victory in Texas was again a victory for the nation. However, the government still controls the education of most of the nation’s children, and the religious and anti-religious secularists are not going away.

So there you are. According to the rev, when government and the “secularists” no longer control education, then the schools will be run to his liking. If that should ever happen, creationism in science class will be the least of our problems.

Copyright © 2010. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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