So long as the mother, Ignorance, lives, it is not safe for Science, the offspring, to divulge the hidden causes of things.
Johannes Kepler, Somnium, 1634
Quote of the Moment: Johannes Kepler
April 6, 2007
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Have you spoken against intelligent design, or other dangerous superstition, today?
April 6, 2007Imagine you live in Dallas, Texas, where it is generally assumed that one is Christian and that one attends church on Sunday, and Wednesday (so much so that school activities are not scheduled Wednesdays, because everyone is expected to be at church). Imagine that you teach science at a major Christian-affiliated institution in Dallas.
Now imagine that your institution is the site of a major conference extolling the virtues of superstition, specifically against a scientific theory that is the foundation and main supports for much of your work. Do you hunker down and hope no one notices, or do you speak up for science? 
20 professors at Southern Methodist University (SMU) signed an article on the opposite-editorial page of the Dallas Morning News, yesterday, calling out intelligent design and its advocates. (I mentioned it in this post, here.) They will most likely take a stand that there is no reason to “debate” intelligent design advocates, since the debate venue is stacked, the debate audience is stacked, and that intelligent design has not paid its dues to be admitted to the college of the sciences.
But I wish they would take a further stand: I wish the Christians among them would call on the advocates of intelligent design to repent, to stop asking people to turn away from science, to stop spreading false stories about science, to stop making false claims. Read the rest of this entry »
9 Comments | Blog Against Theocracy, Education, First Amendment, Freedom - Political, Religious Freedom, Science, Science and faith, U.S. Constitution | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Duty to speak out against intelligent design
April 5, 2007[Note to SMU Physics students: Glad to have you here! While you’re here, stick around for a moment. Check the blog’s list of articles on “intelligent design” or “evolution,” and you’ll see that the issue has moved a good deal since the flap at SMU. Feel free to leave comments, too. E.D.]
When sanity strikes public figures and public institutions, sometimes all one can do is sit back in wonder at how the universe runs.
Intelligent design advocates might begin to think that God (or the gods, or the little green men, as the Discovery Institute allows) has stacked the universe against them, at least in Texas. First, in 2003, with the Texas State Board of Education pregnant with 8 creationists among the 15 members, scientists in Texas applied quiet, gentle pressure and got some of the creationists to vote against requiring creationism in biology texts. Last week Lee Cullum, doyon of conservative commentators in Dallas society, alumnus of the late Dallas Herald and occasional opinion writer for the Dallas Morning News wrote a piece questioning whether intelligent design advocates had not overstepped propriety in their use of Southern Methodist University’s good neighborly intentions — a reversal of position for Cullum, and perhaps a bellwether for others with influence in the state. Plus, several of the faculty at SMU protested the pending intelligent design conference scheduled for the campus, though without endorsement from the university.
Discovery Institute spokesmen gave their usual demurrers, claiming that intelligent design advocates have First Amendment rights and accusing critics of being unfair and unholy, but never defending intelligent design itself.
So, I can imagine there were a lot of coffee-burned laps in Seattle (and at least one in Fort Worth) this morning when the Dallas Morning News‘ opinion section unfurled a hard stand against intelligent design, signed by a score of well-respected scientists of various faiths, from the SMU faculty.
They minced no words:
The organization behind the event, the Discovery Institute, is clear in its agenda: It states that what the SMU science faculty believes to be so useful (science) is a danger to conservative Christianity and should be replaced by its mystical world view.
We do not argue against the basic right to believe, worship and express oneself as one desires. [More, including the full text, below the fold.] Read the rest of this entry »
4 Comments | Darwin, Ethics, First Amendment, Free speech, Intelligent Design, Natural history, Politics, Science, Science and faith, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Intelligent design: Cromulence achieved
March 29, 2007Editorial writer Rod Dreher of The Dallas Morning News reacted to the news that scientists at Southern Methodist University are protesting a conference on intelligent design in biology, scheduled to be held at the university April 13-14, with an opinion piece that calls for a defense of free speech, and compares the adherence of intelligent design to the adherence of Marxism at SMU
In other words, Dreher defends intelligent design as having finally achieved a high degree of cromulence:
One might be foolish to disagree. Intelligent design is cromulent. The conference will embiggen the intellectual life of the university, regardless the shadow it casts across the light of reason.
More:
- The weblog of Jeffrey Weiss, the reporter for the Dallas Morning News, and further notes on the story
- Panda’s Thumb entry on the SMU flap
- Discovery Institute’s press release on exactly the same presentation made at the Knoxville, Tennessee, Convention Center
Leave a Comment » | Evolution, Free speech, Intelligent Design, Science and faith, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Textbook wars: APA resolution against intelligent design as science
March 12, 2007Psychology rests out on the end of the science spectrum, closer to “social sciences” than other branches of hard, research science, and sometimes affiliated with the pseudo-scientific, even while debunking false claims, such as the studies of parapsychology. Were there scientific merit in claims of evidence for supernatural design, psychology would be a natural home for most of the claims and much of the research. If any branch of science were to endorse intelligent design as science, psychology would be a likely first branch.
But not even psychology accepts intelligent design as science.
The American Psychology Association’s (APA) Council of Representatives adopted a resolution earlier this month which says intelligent design is not science, and that teaching it as science undermines the quality of science education and science literacy. The entire press release, and the resolution are below the fold.
This should be a serious blow to advocates of intelligent design who had hoped to make some recovery after the devastating loss in federal court in Pennsylvania in 2005, in the next round of textbook approvals in large states like California, Florida and Texas. There is no comment yet from the Discovery Institute, the leading organization in the assault on teaching evolution in public schools.
Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Charles Darwin, Creationism, Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science, Science and faith, TAKS, TEKS, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Ghost of Austin Peay: Tennessee legislator tries to reanimate creationism
February 27, 2007You just can’t write parody of creationists and creationism. A retired physician, Tennessee state senator is demanding the Tennessee State Department of Education provide the answers to questions left hanging by the trial of John T. Scopes in 1925. Read about it in the Nashville Post, in an article by Ken Whitehouse.
It appears as though the state senator, Raymond Finney, either failed Tennessee history, or just doesn’t pay attention to excellent advice and warnings from George Santayana.
Update, February 28, 2007: Perhaps Sen. Finney should check out this comment at the blog Sola Fide.
3 Comments | Creationism, Education, History, Humor, Intelligent Design, Natural history, No Child Left Behind Act, Public education, Science and faith, State school boards, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Text of the “Fixed Earth” memorandum
February 16, 2007Fixed Earth? I didn’t know it was broken.
Steve Schafersman, the dogged scientist at the root of Texas Citizens for Science (TCS), snagged a copy of the “evolution is religion” memorandum from Texas Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, and posted it to the TCS website. Also available from the Houston Chronicle’s SciGuy blog (transmission memorandum, the offending memorandum).
Holy mother of pearl! Voodoo science — you couldn’t make this stuff up.
4 Comments | Charles Darwin, Creationism, Darwin, Education, Ethics, Evolution, Politics, Religious Freedom, Science, Science and faith, Texas Freedom Network, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Georgia legislator tries end run around evolution — in Texas legislature
February 14, 2007Be sure to see update here, next post. Worse, even more, here.
Don’t you just love the Texas lege?
And could you make this stuff up if you were writing a novel? Nobody would believe it.
Warren Chisum is a good ol’ boy from Pampa, Texas, and the second most powerful man in the Texas House of Representatives. So when his friend, Georgia State Rep. Ben Bridges, asked him to — well, what was it he asked? — Chisum agreed to circulate a petition that calls evolution a plot of the Pharisees, Albert Einstein and Carl Sagan members of a Kabbalistic plot, and Big Bang ancient religion.
The Associated Press report in this morning’s Dallas Morning News (free subscription required eventually):
The memo assails what it calls “the evolution monopoly in the schools.”
Mr. Bridges’ memo claims that teaching evolution amounts to indoctrinating students in an ancient Jewish sect’s beliefs.
“Indisputable evidence – long hidden but now available to everyone – demonstrates conclusively that so-called ‘secular evolution science’ is the Big Bang, 15-billion-year, alternate ‘creation scenario’ of the Pharisee Religion,” writes Mr. Bridges, a Republican from Cleveland, Ga. He has argued against teaching of evolution in Georgia schools for several years. Read the rest of this entry »
5 Comments | Accuracy, Charles Darwin, Creationism, Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science, Science and faith, State school boards, TEKS, Texas Lege, Textbook Selection, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Evolution Sunday, and history, and reason
February 11, 2007Today is Evolution Sunday. It’s a day when thinking Christians make a modest stand for reason, it’s a day when caring Christians make a stand for facts and truth, versus calumny and voodoo science and voodoo history.
Debunking hoaxes — finding the truth about who put the first plumbed bathtub in the White House, repeating the debunking of the “Lady Hope hoax” that claimed Darwin recanted his life’s work on his deathbed, holding a spotlight on the facts of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the events in the Gulf of Tonkin, highlighting the bravery of Cmdr. Lloyd Bucher and the crew of the Pueblo, noting that there never was a family of chainsaw murderers in Travis County, Texas — is difficult work. One wag I used to see posting on an internet bulletin board had a tagline, “Fighting ignorance since 1974 1973– it’s taking longer than I thought.”*
So, if you’re in church today, light a candle against the darkness, as Carl Sagan would say. Candles show us where demons are not, and where it is safe for humans to go. The more candles against ignorance, the greater the realm for human reason.
As Einstein almost certainly did not say, the difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. And as Frank Zappa probably did say, hydrogen is not the most abundant thing in the universe — ignorance is. Light some candles against ignorance today, in church or out of it. Reason gives us hope, and there is precious little of both today.
Be grateful for those things that keep us free, for those things that keep us seeking and acquiring knowledge, and for those people (like P. Z. Myers) who prod us — righteously — to stand up for the truth.
- * Tagline of Cecil Adams at the Straight Dope (thanks D.S.)
1 Comment | Accuracy, Charles Darwin, Education, Evolution, First Amendment, Free speech, Freedom - Political, Public libraries, Science, Science and faith | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Something sweet in Sweden (not intelligent design)
January 20, 2007Swedes entertain skepticism much better than U.S. residents do, or they attain much better understanding of science.
That conclusion can be deduced from the results of a poll showing that 23% of Swedes think astrology is scientific. Most poll results show more Americans put stock in their daily horoscopes than the 23% of Swedes, but not a lot more.
Swedes really doubt intelligent design: Only 14% think there is any science there.
The poll was conducted by the Swedish group Vetenskap & Allmänhet (Public and Science) (VA).
So, contrary to the recent efforts of Seattle’s Discovery Institute to make inroads in Europe, their push for intelligent design is just more than half as credible as Sidney Omar and other fortune tellers.
The poll found support for science and hope for good results from research very high among Swedes:
Nine out of ten people have high confidence in the potential of research to develop more effective and environmentally friendly sources of energy. A smaller but increasing proportion believes that research can contribute to reducing segregation in cities.
Seven out of ten people believe that there is a strong possibility that research will help increase economic growth, which represents a marked increase since 2005. Six out of ten believe that there is a strong chance that research can help reduce climate change.
The poll also hints at a way scientists can more successfully argue against crackpottery and crank science, such as intelligent design: Emphasize the benefits people get from applied research.
Research areas that are currently in the news tend to be viewed by many as important. Most people would like to see support for research that people can benefit directly from, says Karin Hermannson, Research Manager at VA.
Scientists in the U.S. should spend more time explaining how their research is used in the real world.
3 Comments | Accuracy, Creationism, Intelligent Design, Science, Science and faith | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Kentucky watch on intelligent design
January 8, 2007Kentucky is shopping for a new state commissioner of education. The outgoing commissioner, cognizant of the legal failures of education agencies to insert ID into curricula during the past year, advised that the new person should not be an ID advocate.
Members of the Kentucky State School Board say it is not an issue. The story is here, in the Kentucky version of the Cincinatti Post.
Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Bogus history, Creationism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science, Science and faith, State school boards | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Russian creationists miss Stalin’s views in biology
January 3, 2007The good news is that Russian high school biology textbooks talk about Darwin, at long last, after the 74-year rule of the Communists decimated the corps of teachers who taught Darwinian evolution, partly because Darwin was ‘too bourgeois.’
The bad news is that Russian creationists, with what appears to be the support of the Russian Orthodox Church, are suing to bring back the old Stalinist views that Darwin was wrong. The case is loaded with irony, not the least that Theodosius Dobzhansky, the famous biologist who noted that biology is only clear under the light of evolution theory, was devoutly Russian Orthodox.
This case appears to have gone on for some time, but details are only now coming to these shores. The Baltimore Sun had a story on the case today. And, as if one would not guess, it appears the case is brought by a public relations company — perhaps the Moscow branch of the Swift Boat Veterans?
Tip of the scrub brush to Panda’s Thumb, where there is guaranteed to be more discussion of the issue.
Leave a Comment » | Bogus history, Cold War, Creationism, Darwin, Evolution, History, Religious Freedom, Science and faith, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
D. James Kennedy suffers heart attack
January 2, 2007Browsing at Positive Liberty today I first saw the news that the Rev. D. James Kennedy suffered a heart attack, and is hospitalized. Kennedy is the head of Coral Ridge Ministries in Florida, and a leader of the history revisionist movement to rewrite especially textbooks to argue that the U.S. should have a religiously-based government.
It appears the news didn’t get out quickly. The Miami Herald had a story just today, though Kennedy’s heart attack was last Thursday. Jonathan Rowe urges a speedy recovery, so Kennedy can continue to provide material for that blog. I think there’s enough material for this blog without Kennedy, but I wish him a complete recovery anyway.
2 Comments | America's founding, Bad Quotes, Creationism, History, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, Intelligent Design, Science and faith, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
National Review’s John Derbyshire hammers intelligent design advocates
December 31, 2006National Review kept me alert to developments in the world of conservatives with brains in the latter part of my high school life and through college. I must confess, though, that I have not been a regular reader for nearly two decades. A lot of the intellectual air seemed to leak out after William F. Buckley left.
NR still offers a window into conservatism in America, though. John Derbyshire in his wrap-up of 2006 offers a review of intelligent design advocates that they would do well to pay attention to. Derbyshire keeps alive the flames of thought at NR.
Welcome, readers clicking over from Pharyngula. More posts on intelligent design issues can be found here, at the index of ID posts on this blog.
2 Comments | Creationism, Intelligent Design, Politics, Science, Science and faith | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Carl Sagan
December 22, 2006I’m a day behind — but, that just makes it more like real history, no?
Carl Sagan and the Mars “Viking” Lander, NASA/JPL photo
Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of Carl Sagan’s death. Several bloggers are blogging to commemorate his memory.
I’ll borrow wholesale; John Pieret at Thoughts in a Haystack pulled out a passage from Sagan’s book, Demon-Haunted World, that has rung true for me. Here it is:
Pieret wrote: For this passage (pp. 414-15), Sagan begins by discussing George Orwell’s 1984 and its roots in Stalinism:
Soon after Stalin took power, pictures of his rival Leon Trotsky — a monumental figure in the 1905 and 1917 revolutions–began to disappear. Heroic and wholly anhistoric paintings of Stalin and Lenin together directing the Bolshevik Revolution took their place, with Trotsky, the founder of the Red Army, nowhere in evidence. These images became icons of the state. You could see them in every office building, on outdoor advertising signs sometimes ten stories high, in museums, on postage stamps.
New generations grew up believing that was their history. Older generations began to feel that they remembered something of the sort, a kind of political false-memory syndrome. Those who made the accommodation between their real memories and what the leadership wished them to believe exercised what Orwell described as “doublethink.” Those who did,not, those old Bolsheviks who could recall the peripheral role of Stalin in the Revolution and the central role of Trotsky, were denounced as traitors or unreconstructed bourgeoisie or “Trotskyites” or “Trotsky-fascists,” and were imprisoned, tortured, made to confess their treason in public, and then executed. …
In our time, with total fabrication of realistic stills, motion pictures, and videotapes technologically within reach, with television in every home, and with critical thinking in decline, restructuring societal memories even without much attention from the secret police seems possible. What I’m imagining here is not that each of us has a budget of memories implanted in special therapeutic sessions by state-appointed psychiatrists, but rather that small numbers of people will have so much control over news stories, history books, and deeply affecting images as to work major changes in collective attitudes.
We saw a pale echo of what is now possible in 1990-1991, when Saddam Hussein, the autocrat of Iraq, made a sudden transition in the American consciousness from an obscure near-ally — granted commodities, high technology, weaponry, and even satellite intelligence data — to a slavering monster menacing the world. I am not myself an admirer of Mr. Hussein, but it was striking how quickly he could be brought from someone almost no American had heard of into the incarnation of evil. These days the apparatus for generating indignation is busy elsewhere. How confident are we that the power to drive and determine public opinion will always reside in responsible hands?
Good things for historians to ponder.
3 Comments | Bogus history, History, Science, Science and faith, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 