Discovery Institute: Idiot’s Guide to Evolution

FRESH from the blog of the neo-theocrats at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture (a/k/a the Discoveroids), we present some thrilling excerpts from Introducing The College Student’s Back to School Guide to Intelligent Design. The article is by Casey Luskin, our favorite creationist. Casey says, with bold font added by us:

There are a lot of false urban legends promoted in academia about intelligent design (ID). They often start with myths promoted by misinformed critiques in scientific journals, court rulings, or even talks by activists at scientific conferences. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for this misinformation to then be passed down to college students, who may know very little about ID and lack the resources to correct their professors’ misinformed and misplaced attacks on ID. Not anymore.

At last! The creationists in Seattle are going to help us to clear up all those myths and misinformed attacks on ID. Let’s read on:

If you’re a college student, recently gone back to school and expecting to hear a lot of anti-ID views from your professors, we’re pleased to present this “Back to School Guide” for students as follows: The College Student’s Back to School Guide to Intelligent Design.

That’s a link to a pdf file which has the entire Discoveroid 20-page “book” available online. It’s a treasury of creationist lore. We continue:

The guide contains suggestions for helpful pro-ID books, articles, and websites for students to read when investigating the issue. Additionally, it contains “Answers to Your Professor’s Most Common Misinformed Objections to Intelligent Design.” Nine answers are given to common but false arguments against ID like “Intelligent Design Proponents Don’t Conduct or Publish Scientific Research” or “Intelligent Design Is a Science Stopper” or “Intelligent Design Has Been Refuted by the Overwhelming Evidence for Neo-Darwinian Evolution.”

We looked at one of those “common but false arguments against ID” sections. Here’s an example:

Objection #3: Intelligent Design Has Been Banned From Public Schools by the Federal Courts

The Short Rebuttal: ID has not been banned from America’s public schools by the U.S. Supreme Court or by any federal appeals court. The only court that has squarely ruled on teaching of ID was one federal district court (the lowest level of the federal court system), whose ruling is not binding precedent outside the small school district in Dover, Pennsylvania. Spend a day in law school and you’ll learn that judges get things wrong all the time. In fact, the district court ruling in Kitzmiller v. Dover misrepresented the arguments given by pro‐ID expert witness biologists and wrongly denied the existence of peer‐reviewed scientific articles and research supporting ID. The judge who ruled in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case (Judge Jones) copied over 90% of his section on whether ID is science verbatim or nearly verbatim from an inaccurate brief written by plaintiffs’ lawyers working with the ACLU. Judge Jones’ ruling satisfied the textbook definition of judicial activism, and even eading anti‐ID legal scholars have argued his ruling is “dangerous” to religious, scientific, and academic reedom.

That’s followed by a long rebuttal, but we’ll skip that. It’s a re-hash of Casey’s lonely (and very extra-judicial) appeal of the Dover case, waged all by himself in his Seattle cubicle, endlessly wailing to the walls that the judge got everything wrong. We’ve described Casey’s efforts here: Creationism and the Real World.

We’ve done a whole series of articles on the Dover case, starting here: Kitzmiller v. Dover: Is ID Science? And there’s also the very informative Wikipedia article on the case.

Meanwhile, since the Dover decision, no school board in the nation has adopted a pro-ID policy. Well, there’s the peculiar case of Louisiana, where the schools are now allowed to use undefined “supplementary materials” in science class, but there hasn’t yet been a court test of that. There’s also the tragic situation in Texas, where a gang of creationists on the State Board of Education have mucked up that state’s science education standards. Again, no court test of their meddling has been initiated.

Here’s a bit more from Casey’s Discoveroid article:

The Darwinian educational establishment doesn’t make it easy to become objectively informed on the topic of evolution and ID. The way around the typical one-sided evolution curriculum is to investigate the issue for yourself. Yes, study and learn about the pro-evolution evolution viewpoint being taught. But also read material from credible Darwin skeptics to learn about other viewpoints. Only then can you truly make up your mind in an informed fashion.

Yes, “the Darwinian educational establishment doesn’t make it easy” kiddies. It’s true — educated, rational science teachers don’t make it easy for creationists to find blissful happiness in science class. Instead, what good schools do is have instructors who know their subject and who teach from well-written texts. So Casey’s right — it’s not easy to get your brain all messed up on creationism. It takes effort. But never fear. Casey and the Discoveroids are there to help.

We fully expect some deranged science teacher in Louisiana to hand out copies of the Discoveroid pamphlet as “supplementary material” to assist the kiddies in becoming good idiots. That’s when the creationism hits the fan.

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

• • • • • • • • • • •

. . Permalink for this article

World’s Worst Creationist Writing

WE know why you visit your Curmudgeon’s blog. It’s because we search out and present to you the worst that the world of creationism offers. Today, dear reader, is truly your lucky day because what we found … well, you’ll have to see for yourself.

Here are some excerpts from Teen Talk: Teenhood Today: What’s love got to do with it? Everything, which appears in the The Daily Star of Oneonta, NY (population 13,292).

This isn’t a letter-to-the-editor. We’re not really sure what it is. The author’s name is Jessie Matus, “a 2009 graduate of Oneonta High School,” and the bold font was added by us. Here it comes:

Love is the final frontier.

What else is so improbable, so inexplicable, so stubbornly intangible as love? What else flies in the face of those who would keep tabs on it behind cold iron bars, if only they knew how? What else flits between the fingers of those who would cage it with classification, ferret out the secrets of its grandeur with a scalpel and bone saw, lay open its innards with a dichotomous key to study its diet? What else, if the atoms of love could be split, would send the human race scurrying into bunkers as a great, terrible fleet of joy and beauty bombs rained down?

Seriously now, we understand that the author is a kid, but still — have you ever read anything that was more filled with awkward metaphors, or more empty of meaning? If you have, then we must be shopping in different bookstores. Let’s read on:

The defining characteristic of the human being is to be unable to accept things as they are. With this and time, humans have risen to dominate a world that once chained them to their fire pits with luminescent eyes in the darkness that spun the harvest moonlight into beacons of salivating death.

The “defining characteristic” of this article is deep nothingness. But fear not, your Curmudgeon is merciful. We’re skipping over several paragraphs of dripping drivel about love, until we arrive at this:

Love is terribly un-Darwinian. The persistent desire to develop an unreasonable attachment to another unrelated being and to devote all of your resources to its continued well-being hardly meshes well with survival of the fittest. An evolutionary biologist would go into psychological trauma shock if all of the Earth’s creatures suddenly began falling in love at first sight without so much as an elaborate mating dance or clash of horns to prove their genetic fortitude.

See there? Darwin is proved wrong again! It’s so easy, even a child can do it.

We have to skip some more before we get to the next paragraph of interest, but not without excerpting a brief example of what you’re missing because of our selectivity:

What is love? Where does it come from, and why it is necessary? What is the source of tenderness and devotion? What is the purpose of wanting to be whatever someone has need of, and never asking if they love you in return?

I believe that love is what lends credibility to the idea of a higher power. …

Now that you’re all cozy and cuddly, here it comes:

The theory of intelligent design looks to the wonderful genius within the universe to advocate the presence of a higher being. Perhaps in the search for the elusive greater presence, we should look not to the masterpieces found in the natural world, but to the flops. Maybe such marvelous biological fallacies as love are the cracks left in the otherwise seamless cover that separates us from whatever lies beyond us. Maybe to fall in love is to throw back the Wizard’s curtain.

There’s not much more until the article ends, but we’re going to stop here.

Now, class — let us speculate about what kind of career the author of today’s article might pursue. Blogging for the Discovery Institute? No, that requires some degree of malice, and we don’t detect that here.

Well, if Seattle is out — and we know that’s the very bottom — is there no hope for today’s author?

At first we thought that the only solution would be a brain bypass operation, but we’ve come up with another option. We think there’s a future for today’s author in a new literary genre that’s just waiting to be born — creationist romance fiction.

Harlequin, are you paying attention?

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

• • • • • • • • • • •

. . Permalink for this article

Flat Earth, Uranus, & WorldNetDaily

YES, we live in blessed times. The stars themselves are aligned in a rare triple conjunction to declare The Truth™ you’ve been hiding from all your life.

We present to you, dear reader, some excerpts from an article in WorldNetDaily (WND) which brilliantly defends their intellectual champion: Kirk Cameron bashed for Darwin campaign. It’s subtitled: “Media gets snarky over effort to debunk evolution on college campuses.”

Wait — we saw a hand go up. Okay, you in the back — what’s your question? You want to know who’s Kirk Cameron? We wrote about him here: Kirk Cameron: World’s Dumbest Human?

Okay, let’s get on with it. This is actually a follow-up to our earlier report on WorldNetDaily, Ray Comfort, and Brain Death. The bold font was added by us:

A campaign by Ray Comfort and actor Kirk Cameron to give away 100,000 copies of a special edition of Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species” on 100 university campuses in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of the seminal book’s publication in November already is drawing a caustic reaction from media.

Jeepers, we can’t imagine why that should be. Let’s read on:

The special release of the book challenges the theory of evolution with a 50-page introduction that includes an overview of Darwin’s life and presents a case for a universe created by God through arguments such as the structure of DNA and the absence of species-to-species transitional forms.

Ah, now we understand. This “special release” has an introduction that amounts to a pile of poop. Okay. We continue:

The introduction to the special “Origin of the Species” release, which can be read on Living Waters website [not really, the link is broken], also shows how great scientists of the past such as Nikolas Capernicus, Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon and Albert Einstein, believed in God’s existence

Let’s pause for a moment to grasp what’s being said … Isaac Newton believed in God, therefore — what? Evolution is wrong? Okay. Here’s more:

In his video presentation of the Darwin campaign, Cameron says, “An entire generation is being brainwashed by atheistic evolution without even hearing the alternative; and it’s radically changing the culture of our nation.”

No one ever heard of Noah’s Ark? That can’t be right. Even your Curmudgeon knows the tale. Moving along:

Comfort [that’s Ray Comfort] previously told WND “atheists are going crazy” on Internet forums in response to the “Origin of Species” plan, saying, “How can we stop this? We’re going to have a book burning.”

Comfort’s Living Waters [that’s Comfort’s ministry] is working on the project with Answers in Genesis, Campus Crusade for Christ, Teen Mania and the Alliance Defense Fund.

Wow! What a stellar lineup! This is more than a triple conjunction. The whole creationist firmament is involved. Another excerpt:

“Atheism has doubled in the last 20 years among 19 to 25 year olds. So young people are being brainwashed by this stuff,” he [Comfort] said. “All we want to do is give an alternative.”

If Comfort is the alternative, the devil has already won. Here’s our last excerpt:

“So many young people are being convinced that atheism is right, that evolution is right, there’s no god, there are no moral absolutes,” he said. “Who cares if you marry a dog? What’s the big deal? And that’s what atheism believes, too. It’s very sad, and we’re going to do our best to fight back in November.”

This is a good point to break away from WND. We can only handle a limited amount of this stuff If you want to read it all, click on over there.

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

• • • • • • • • • • •

. . Permalink for this article

Creationist Wisdom — Example 72

YOUR Curmudgeon once again brings you the view from Answers in Genesis (AIG), one of the major sources of creationist wisdom. They have a truly bizarre article at their website: Logical Fallacies: Faulty Appeal to Authority. Ponder the title, dear reader, and bear in mind that this comes from a creationist website.

The article is by Jason Lisle, described at that website as a Creationist Astrophysicist — whatever that is. As we’ve noted before, AIG has an entire page devoted to information about this amazing man: Dr. Jason Lisle, Ph.D. Note that a reference to his doctorate appears both before and after his name. That’s how we shall refer to him. We’ve written about the work of Dr. Lisle, Ph.D. before. See, e.g.: Creationist Wisdom — Example 56.

Since then he’s written a few more articles for AIG. We’ve looked at them but they’re not even funny — that’s an insult unique to creationism, commensurate with “not even wrong.”

When we saw the title of today’s article, we avoided reading it for a while, out of fear that our brains would explode. Finally, our fascination with the macabre overcame our discretion and we started reading. Sure enough — Ka-Boom! So we had to bring it to your attention.

But first, considering that this article by Dr. Lisle, Ph.D. is about a logical fallacy, it might be useful to refresh yourself as to just what is meant by an argument from authority. That’s a link to a Wikipedia article, which isn’t bad. Basically, they say that an “appeal to authority is a logical fallacy, where it is argued that a statement is correct because the statement is made by a person or source that is commonly regarded as authoritative.”

Okay, enough introduction. Now you understand our curiosity in wondering why AIG would even mention this fallacy, as their entire enterprise is based upon it. Yet they’ve published an article devoted to this subject. We’ll give you a few excerpts, with bold added by us. Here we go:

In the origins debate, the faulty appeal is often to someone who is considered an expert on a particular topic — a scientist or perhaps a theologian. For example, “Dr. Bill has a PhD in biology, and he believes in evolution.” The unstated conclusion is that evolution must therefore be true or is at least likely to be true. But such an argument is fallacious. After all, we could equally point out that “Dr. Dave also has a PhD in biology, and he believes in biblical creation.” The fact that other experts on the topic draw the opposite conclusion should reveal the vacuous nature of the evolutionist’s argument.

That’s cleverly put, but Dr. Lisle, Ph.D is correct — a mere appeal to authority isn’t a conclusive argument. The fact that experts may sometimes disagree among themselves isn’t what makes it fallacious. Let’s read on:

Not all appeals to authority are faulty appeals to authority. It is legitimate to consider the opinion of an expert on a particular topic. None of us has the time or the ability to verify each and every truth claim that has ever been made. We can and should rely upon the expertise of others at times.

That might seem to contradict what was just discussed, but let’s continue:

So, when does the appeal to authority become a fallacy? It seems there are three common ways in which this occurs:

The three examples provided by Dr. Lisle, Ph.D are a bit slippery. Here they are, and the bold titles are in the original:

1. Appealing to an expert in an area that is not his area of expertise. Our hypothetical Dr. Bill may indeed have a PhD in biology — and that qualifies him to say something about how organisms function today. But does knowledge of how things work today necessarily imply knowledge of how things came to be? This is a separate question. The experiments Dr. Bill has done and the observations he has made have all taken place in the present world. He has no more direct observations of the ancient past than anyone else today. The question of origins is a history question that deals with worldviews.

That’s beyond slippery. It’s slimy. Dr. Lisle, Ph.D is slipping a separate — and totally bogus — argument into a discussion about appeals to authority. We’ve written about AIG’s “nobody can know the past” issue before. See: Creationism and Science. Moving along:

2. Failure to consider the worldview of the expert and how this might affect his interpretation of the data. We all have a world-and-life view — a philosophy that guides our understanding of the universe. … The fact that Dr. Bill believes in evolution means that he is predisposed to interpret the evidence in a particular way. … So, while I may put confidence in what Dr. Bill says about the structure of a particular protein that he has studied under the microscope, his bias against biblical creation means it would be unwise for me to trust his opinions on questions of origins.

More slime. The “worldview issue” isn’t related to the fallacy of an appeal to authority. An expert may be wrong for any of a thousand reasons — or he may be right. It’s still fallacious to accept his opinion as true merely because he’s an an authority. Doesn’t Dr. Lisle, Ph.D. understand this?

Here’s the third example:

3. Treating a fallible expert as infallible. … It would be fallacious to argue that something definitely must be true simply because a (fallible) expert believes it.

Dr. Lisle, Ph.D. had promised us a third illustration of when appeal to authority become a fallacy, but what we just read seems to be nothing but a restatement of the definition of an appeal to authority. Ah, we see what he’s done — he slipped in the word “fallible” to illustrate why an expert’s opinion may be wrong. It appears that Dr. Lisle, Ph.D. truly doesn’t understand this stuff at all.

What makes a naked appeal to authority fallacious is because there’s nothing to it but authority — and authority alone isn’t sufficient. We need verifiable reasons to accept something.

It’s now clear to us that Dr. Lisle, Ph.D. doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and that explains why — as you shall soon see — his article climaxes with a mind-boggling contradiction.

We’re skipping over several examples of appeals to authority. Trust us, they’re not worth reading. Or you may reject our “authority” and decide for yourselves. Anyway, we’re going right to the end of the article, because that’s what exploded our brain:

It is commendable to esteem the opinion of experts, provided that we are discerning and never regard fallible human opinions above (or equal to) the authoritative Word of God.

No appeal to authority there! Well … except for the all-time, galaxy-class, incomparable example of the ultimate use of that fallacy. But that’s okay — we’re dealing with creationists.

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

• • • • • • • • • • •

. . Permalink for this article