What Brits Know About Charles Darwin

According to what we read in London’s Daily Mail, our UK readers have some explaining to do. It’s an article about a poll conducted by the UK’s leading book review and recommendation website, Lovereading.

Here are some excerpts from Dumb Britain: One in five men believe Oliver Twist was written by Charles Darwin. We shall discretely restrain our usual commentary so that you can make up your own minds. The bold font was added by us:

Respondents were contacted about their reading habits after visiting the Love reading website.

Almost 20 per cent (18.6) thought Animal Farm – Orwell’s 1945 seminal novella about the pre-Stalin era – was the name of a pornographic film.

Oh dear! Let’s read on:

The same number thought Oliver Twist was penned by naturalist Charles Darwin, rather than by Charles Dickens.

Dickens, Darwin. Quite understandable, really. We continue:

One-in-four respondents admitted they had ‘no idea’ if the sleuth Sherlock Holmes was real or otherwise.

One in four? Hey, the rest had some kind of idea, so that’s not too bad. Here’s a final excerpt:

Of the men questioned, almost one-in-two (48 per cent) said they took up to 12 months to read a novel but almost all (98 per cent), said reading was an ‘important part of their day’.

We looked for a more detailed article on the poll, but we had no success. Anyway, that’s probably enough for our purposes. Let’s see what our readers across the pond have to say about it. They never hesitate to express opinions about the US.

Being always a gentleman, your Curmudgeon isn’t even tempted to write a clever close to this very informative post.

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

• • • • • • • • • • •

. . Permalink for this article

Answers in Genesis: Rascals or Retards?

We know that you can’t get enough of Ken Ham (ol’ Hambo) — the genius who brought you the website Answers in Genesis (AIG) and the mind-boggling Creation Museum.

Hambo’s latest is titled: Rebuttal to Editorial. Here are some excerpts:

It’s not unusual that after AiG conducts a conference in a major city, letters to the editor (and even editorials) are written in local papers that are against our message of the Bible being true from its very first verse.

One can only imagine. Perhaps “Good bye, idiots!” might be the gentlest of the headlines. Let’s read on:

That was the case in West Virginia earlier this month when an editorial in the state’s leading newspaper, The Gazette, took a shot at the message we had presented at a creation seminar in the capital city’s (Charleston) municipal auditorium.

Here’s a link to that editorial in the Charleston Gazette: Science: Honest evidence. One excerpt should be sufficient:

Evolution is the bedrock of modern biology. Nearly all scientists accept it as fact. Most mainline churches embrace it, calling it God’s billion-year method of creation.

But an event in Charleston Saturday contended that science is false. The Answers in Genesis conference at Municipal Auditorium — with the theme “I Am Not Ashamed: Standing on Biblical Authority” — asserted that the universe is merely thousands of years old, not 13 billion. Answers in Genesis declares that all existence was created in six literal days, and that Earth was formed before the sun, moon, solar system and galaxies, as Genesis records.

You get the idea. Well, ol’ Hambo was furious! One of his creationist staffers wrote up a reply, which the Charleston Gazette published. Here’s a link to that: Evolution editorial full of false claims. It’s good stuff, but we’ll give you just a little bit of what AIG’s response says, with bold added by us:

First, a distinction needs to be made between observational science and historical science, which the editorial writer attempts to equate. Observational science gives us airplanes, MRIs, computers, cars, etc. It is observable, testable, repeatable and falsifiable and has absolutely nothing to do with molecules-to-man evolution. Evolution falls under the category of historical science, and is not observable, testable, repeatable or falsifiable.

That is purest rubbish. We posted about it over a year ago, when AIG raised the same bogus dichotomy. See: Creationism and Science.

But we’re not interested in that old stuff. What’s special about AIG’s rebuttal is the following statement:

We also wish to point out that most of the founding fathers of science were creationists; in fact, many of them were contemporaries of Charles Darwin.

That is glorious! We hesitate to declare that it’s the all-time dumbest creationist claim ever, because there are so many contenders for such a title. But still, it’s absolutely stunning.

As for the “founding fathers of science” being creationists, who is AIG talking about? We aren’t told, so we’re left to guess. Do they mean Aristotle, Galileo, and Newton? What’s the point of listing people who lived and died before Darwin? Perhaps they’re only thinking of biology. But the problem is the same. What was biology before Darwin? There were numerous naturalists, but they had no coherent explanation for what they were collecting and describing.

It’s rather obvious that until Origin of Species was published in 1859, creationism was the only game in town. With similar brilliance, one could say that before the Wright Brothers, air travel was very unpopular. It’s a true statement, but it’s not much of an argument against heavier-than-air flight.

But that’s only part of it. There’s also the claim that many of the founding fathers of science — unnamed — were not only creationists but “were contemporaries of Charles Darwin.” What is that supposed to mean? Such a statement is explainable only by a mental health practitioner.

Yes, Darwin’s contemporaries were probably creationists — until Origin of Species and his later work was published. Similarly, George Washington’s Virginia contemporaries were probably loyal English subjects — until the Revolution. But when that ended as it did, they were Americans. Likewise, Darwin’s theory was generally accepted by his professional contemporaries within his lifetime.

Is there anything else in AIG’s rebuttal to the editorial? Not really — at least nothing as noteworthy as what we’ve already mentioned. But click over there and read it. We know you want to.

After smugly presenting that clever rebuttal, Hambo ends his article with this:

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

You’re welcome, Hambo. Keep the fun stuff coming.

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

• • • • • • • • • • •

. . Permalink for this article

Seaweed Is Proof of Creationism

The evidence just keeps piling up. The last time we posted one of these things was here: Dinosaurs Are Proof of Creationism. That was about an article from the Institute for Creation Research (ICR).

Today we have another article of the same kind, but this one is from Answers in Genesis (AIG), one of the major sources of young-earth creationist wisdom. It follows the same general pattern as the ICR article: Scientists discover X, therefore Oogity Boogity! There are rarely any surprises in these things, but each is amusing in its own way.

This one is the first item in AIG’s: News to Note, November 27, 2010 (“A weekly feature examining news from the biblical viewpoint”). It’s AIG’s commentary on a BBC news item: Ancient seaweed is living fossil. AIG has done this with BBC articles before; we recently wrote about one here: Australian Toads: Evidence of Creationism?

To understand what AIG is talking about today, we suggest that you first read the BBC item that inspired them, and only then consider AIG’s spin on things. BBC says:

Ancient seaweed that have been found growing in the deep sea are “living fossils”, researchers have reported. The two types of seaweed, which grow more than 200m underwater, represent previously unrecognised ancient forms of algae, say the scientists. As such, the algae could belong to the earliest of all known green plants, diverging up to one billion years ago from the ancestor of all such plants.

The research paper on this appears in the Journal of Phycology, which is devoted to algae research: AN UNRECOGNIZED ANCIENT LINEAGE OF GREEN PLANTS PERSISTS IN DEEP MARINE WATERS. The lead author is Professor Frederick W. Zechman, of California State University in Fresno. The BBC article also says:

The algae had previously been identified. … But Professor Zechman’s team is the first to study their genetic make-up, and it is this research that has revealed their startling ancestry.

Green plants in general belong to one of two groups, or clades. One clade includes all land plants and the green algae with the most complex structures, known as charophytes or more commonly stoneworts. The other clade, known as the Cholorophyta, comprises all other green algae.

But the algae examined by Zechman’s team were different:

What is more, “by comparing those gene sequences to the same genes in other green plants, we have discovered that these green algae are among the earliest diverging green plants… if not the earliest diverging lineage of green plants,” Professor Zechman told the BBC. “That would put them in the ball park of over a billion years old.”

The next excerpt is about a side point, but it may be interesting for other reasons — it should help Michael Behe pinpoint the time when the magic designer conjured up the irreducibly complex flagellum:

[The] progenitor of green plants is currently thought to be a single-celled plant that had a tail-like structure called a flagellum, which allows the cell to move itself in water. But no single-celled or flagellated algae of the types studied by Professor Zechman’s team have been observed, suggesting the earliest green plants may not have had flagella after all.

The BBC article has more information and you’ll want to read it all, but let’s get to AIG’s very predictable response to all of this. They reject Zechman’s hypothesis that the newly examined algae are ancient and ancestral. They say, with bold added by us:

The alternative, creationist explanation is that the tree of evolution is a flawed model of biological origins, because not all organisms are genetically related — life is more like an “orchard” than a tree.

Uh huh. Let’s read on:

Distinct forms of life most likely represent unique creations of God during Creation Week, not “primitive” or “ancient” life-forms.

Ah yes. Creation Week. Zechman is a fool! Here’s the last of it:

Furthermore, if the evolutionists were right that the algae are living fossils, it would merely be another case of an organism having changed little in hundreds of millions of years.

We assume that “having changed little in hundreds of millions of years” is some kind of evidence that evolution never happens. So AIG seems to win no matter how they look at it. We’re not at all surprised.

And so, dear reader, we see that even the humblest algae in the sea — without flagella! — are evidence of creationism. But then, so is everything else. There are no exceptions. Isn’t it wonderful?

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

• • • • • • • • • • •

. . Permalink for this article

Barbara Forrest Replies to Darrell White

A few days ago we posted Louisiana Creationism: Darrell White Speaks Out. That was about a letter in Houma Today, the online edition of the Courier, the oldest surviving newspaper in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, urging Louisiana’s state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) officials to reject science texts that don’t teach creationism along with evolution.

To their credit, that same newspaper now presents a response by philosophy professor Barbara Forrest, a star witness for the winning side in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. She is a founder of the Louisiana Coalition for Science.

If you need some background information on the creationism struggle in Louisiana, you can find it here in one of our earlier posts. We won’t delay you with any of that now because we know you’re eager to read what Barbara has to say. Her letter is titled ‘Science’ with no evidence? We’ll copy most of it, with bold font added by us. Here it comes:

[We’d like to give you some excerpts from the letter, but that paper is being acquired by Stephens Media, and they’re suing bloggers who excerpt their content without permission. So you’ll have to click over there to read it for yourself.]

She goes right for the creationist’s false premise, and then — like a vampire whose heart is skewered with a wooden stake — Darrell White’s argument turns to ashes and disintegrates. Nicely done, Barbara!

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

• • • • • • • • • • •

. . Permalink for this article