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Category Archives: Intelligent design
Is that what it takes?
Now I have no illusions about my blog being another Pharyngula or anything but with at least a couple hundred views a day, from around the world, you’d think I’d be getting few more comments.
Where are all the would-be “creation scientists” eager to show me the error of my ways? Here I am writing post after post spanking the heck out of their intellectual leaders and rather than reasoned defenses or even primal screams of rage I get:
Fine, let’s try Chuck & Beans advice:
inteligent design ain’t science!
Now I know this might seem like little more than a blatant cry for attention (which of course it is) but I am honestly curious about the seeming lack of comments around here. Is there a ‘visits per day’ threshold that one has to cross in order to overcome some sort of comment inertia? Has there been any research on this?
Oh, and hat tip to Scott Weitzenhoffer for the cartoon.
Something creationists wish existed
[Hat tip to Larry Moran at Sandwalk.]
Help the TalkOrigins Archive’s bid to buy “Expelled”

Premise Media, the production company that produced the creationist pseudo-documentary “Expelled“, has gone bankrupt and is putting the film up for auction. The opportunity having presented itself, the TalkOrigins Archive Foundation is making a run at acquiring it.
Getting the rights to the film and related production material (unedited interviews of scientists etc.) could be an invaluable source of ammunition in the defense of science education against the attacks of intelligent design creationists, so if you’re able please consider making a donation to the Foundation (if the bid is unsuccessful your money still goes to a worthy cause) .
Update: TalkOrigins lost the biding war. Oh well, it would have been interesting.
Wait, what?
Intelligent Design creationist Denyse O’Leary, in the midst of rationalizing (over at Uncommon Descent) why ID creationists spend all their time attacking science rather than doing science, has provided yet another example of how antievolutionists are pretty much pathologically unable to portray evolutionary theory (or its supporting evidence) accurately:
O’Leary: To me, Darwinism is like bad money. It becomes an intellectual vice. People are always looking for natural selection to generate random mutation, the way they are always trying to pass on the likely-bogus G-bill (when they are not out looking for the lucky strike). [Emphasis mine]
Yeah, right Denyse, it’s scientists engaging in an “intellectual vice” not creationists like yourself who spend all their time confidently bashing something they clearly don’t understand.
Newsflash: natural selection does not “generate” mutation; mutation is an independently occurring source of variation from which natural selection “selects” after the fact.
For heaven’s sake, Google it Denyse! Here, I’ll do it for you; the top two hits for “natural selection” are:
Wikipedia – Natural Selection
U.C. Berkley – Natural Selection
That took mere seconds and after mere minutes of reading you won’t find anything on either of those two pages about natural selection “generating” mutations, random or otherwise. Here’s a bonus one on genetic variation from Wikipedia.
Is it really so much to ask for them to have a basic understanding of the science they put so much energy into repudiating?

[Hat tip to Larry Moran over at Sandwalk. Larry took the time to address O’Leary’s aforementioned rationalizations, have a look-see.]
Stephen Colbert,”Papa Bear” Bill O’Reilly and the origins of the tides
Stephen Colbert reports on how “Papa Bear” Bill O’Reilly has been unfairly maligned over his comments regarding the origin of the tides:
Hi-frelling-lareous! And you can’t explain that.
So that there is no miscommunication, in the event that something happens to the YouTube version here is the official Colbert Nation video. The relevant bit starts at about 2:30.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Dinny the dinosaur (still) held hostage
A couple of years ago, after hearing that creationists had purchased Dinny the dinosaur and converted perverted him—and his sidekick Rex—into tools for peddling their rank ignorance, I went out to Cabazon to see for myself how badly they had been abused. What I found was not happy-making, nor would it be for anyone who cares about knowledge, science and truth, or who finds the thought of children being mislead distressing.
What I found was that Dinny had not only been taken hostage by creationists but judging by their posted material, creationists who seem to be enamored with the “teachings” of some of creationism’s lowest common denominators; professional hucksters such as (the felonious) “Dr.” Kent Hovind and “Dr.,” Carl Baugh, two people that even other young earth creationists (YEC) tend to distance themselves from.
Even worse they seemed to be doing fairly good business as they were in the process of expanding the attraction by adding a number of decently executed life size dinosaur models.
As I said that was two years ago. Last summer my wife Kathy and I happened to find ourselves not far from Cabazon and I figured we should swing by and see what new devilry might have befallen Dinny.
Irreducible complexity reduced
YouTuber QualiaSoup has produced a very nice, concise, refutation of the “irreducible complexity” argument used by intelligent design creationists against evolution; check it out:
Rush Limbaugh’s clueless rant about evolution
This last week I had the misfortune to hear Rush Limbaugh flapping his yap attempting to defend Christine O’Donnell’s ignorant comments about evolution. Unsurprisingly his comment were a grab bag of typical creationist nonsense. Here is the audio of the beginning of his diatribe:
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Paraphrasing from the audio: “If humans evolved from monkeys then why are there still monkeys?”
This is logically exactly the same thing as asking “if my cousin and I are actually related, then why does my cousin still exist?”
An example of “intelligent design”?
Ah yes, surely if there ever was a perfect example of the handy work of a benevolent intelligent designer it must be parasitic wasps.
Warning: You may not want to watch this prior to eating if you are squeamish at all.
All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lintelligent designerd made them all.
[Via Pharyngula]



