Tag Archives: Creationism

A Tale of Two Dinosaurs

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The Institute for Creation Research has graced us once again with a brilliant display of their scientific prowess. This time the focus of their efforts revolves around the recently published description of a newly unearthed dinosaur species Eodromaeus murphi.

Eodromaeus is a small (slightly over a meter in length) South American dinosaur from the mid-Triassic (230 MYA). This date makes it one of the earliest dinosaurs and its describers, Ricardo Martinez et al., argue that it should be classified as a basal theropod ―the carnivorous branch of the “lizard-hipped” or saurischian dinosaurs (Martinez et al., 2011).

What has ICR’s, or more specifically ICR “science writer” Brian Thomas‘ knickers in a twist is that in the same paper in which they describe Eodromaeus the authors also argue for the reclassification of another dinosaur, Eoraptor (described back in the early 1990’s), which is from the same location and roughly the same time period as Eodromaeus.

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Stephen Colbert,”Papa Bear” Bill O’Reilly and the origins of the tides

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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

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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.

Dinny the dinosaur (foreground) and Rex (background).

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.

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Irreducible complexity reduced

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YouTuber QualiaSoup has produced a very nice, concise, refutation of the “irreducible complexity” argument used by intelligent design creationists against evolution; check it out:

New acquisitions for the Britain Research Library

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Thanks in part to an anonymous donor the Britain Research Library has recently made a number of new acquisitions in its science, pseudoscience, and political collections.

Science

Arthur, Wallace (1997) The Origin of Animal Body Plans: A study in evolutionary developmental biology, Cambridge University Press, XII + 338

Ayala, Francisco J. (2010) Am I A Monkey?: Six big questions about evolution, John Hopkins University Press, XIII + 83

Keynes, Randal (2009) Creation: The true story of Charles Darwin, Riverhead Books, XVII + 430

Kurtén, Björn (1972) Not From The Apes, Pantheon Books, New York, NY, VIII + 183

Levinton, Jeffrey S. (2001) Genetics, Paleontology, and Macroevolution (2nd edition), Cambridge University Press, XV + 617

Newman, Horatio Hackett (1926) The Gist of Evolution, The MacMillan Company, IX + 154

Pseudoscience

Gibbons, William J. & Hovind, Kent (1999) Claws, Jaws, & Dinosaurs, CSE Publications, 72

Walsh, Robert E. (editor) (1994) Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Creationism, Creation Life Fellowship, Inc. VII + 645

Politics

Hayek, F. A. (Caldwell, Bruce – Editor) (2007) The Road To Serfdom: Text and documents, The University of Chicago Press XI + 283

Thanks to whomever it was!

 

 

A New Major Award!

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The National Center for Science Education has announced their ‘creation’ of a new annual  award, the “Upchucky”, to be “bestowed on the most noisome creationist of the year”.  I love it! And they certainly have a nominee rich environment which they can select from.

The contenders for the first annual Upchucky were:

  1. Recently deposed Texas board of education chairperson Don McLeroy; “for his longstanding efforts to undermine the teaching of evolution in the Lone Star state”.
  2. Creationist buffoon Ray Comfort (aka Banana Man) of Living Waters Ministries; “for his distribution of copies of the Origin disfigured with his own creationist introduction”.
  3. The possibly over-caffeinated intelligent design creationist Casey Luskin of the Disco toot’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture; “for his logorrheic zeal in reciting the “intelligent design” talking points du jour“ (“logorrheic”, that’s good, I’ll have to remember that one).
  4. And finally a group nomination for Arabic news channel Al Jazeera; “for its wildly misleading coverage of Ardipithecus ramidus“.

And the Upchucky goes to…

The virulently ignorant Don “Somebody’s got to stand up to experts” McLeroy! [pre-recorded applause].

I’m sure it was a tough decision for the judges but when one considers that he was someone with actual authority over what was taught in public schools I think he was the best choice of this line up.

Bravo NCSE!

[Hat-tip to Thoughts in a Haystack]

We need creationists lecturing us on evolution like we need another fenestra in the head

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The Institute for Creation Research has presented the world with another taxonomic turd from the cat box of creationist wisdom. This time it comes from ICR’s “Senior Science Lecturer” Frank Sherwin. However before I get to the main event, I want to take a closer look at the litter in which Mr. Sherwin’s little jewel is nestled.

In the February (2010) issue of ICR’s monthly Acts & Facts Mr. Sherwin (whose background is in parasitology) graced us with an article titled “Darwinism’s Rubber Ruler” in which he argues that descent with modification is untestable and that “any and all scientific evidence” can be “stretched to fit” the theory.

The first thing that comes to my mind when reading this is to ask: if this is so, then how is it that I could have in my personal collection literally hundreds of books and pamphlets, many of them originating from Mr. Sherwin’s organization, that purport to contain absolutely scads of evidence that contradict evolutionary theory?

How about Dr. Duane Gish’s (the emeritus vice president of ICR) books Evolution the Fossils Say NO! (1978) and the update Evolution: the fossils STILL say NO! (1995)? How can the fossils say “no” to evolution if any scientific evidence (in this case fossils) can be “stretched to fit” the theory?

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Epic Horse Exhaust

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OK, it took me a while to get to it but I am, as promised, responding to creationist Arthur Biele’s lengthy comments left in response to my criticisms of his writings on horse evolution. For those interested I suggest you go back and read Mr. Biele’s article and my original critique first. Those that do I think will find that his response didn’t really answer any of my original criticisms. Instead what he did was dump a new load of barely coherent nonsense on me.

A warning though, this goes on for quite a bit (it sure felt like it while I wrote it), which is of course due to the well known fact that accurately and substantially responding to horseshit takes considerably more time and effort than it does to spewing it.

Biele: With regard to Eohippus, If you knew anything about the actual fossil record, Eohippus finds are many and that category has been a dumping ground for certain archaic partial skulls that defy any specific classification, nor are they known to be ancestors of any known ‘evolved’ descendants, and they are mostly from Europe.

While apparently attempting to impugn my knowledge of the “the actual fossil record” Mr. Biele clearly demonstrates his own ignorance of the subject at hand. Let’s break this down in order:

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How CvE debates often seem to go

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Though I doubt there are many evolution defenders who would be that ignorant of basic Judeo/Christian theology.

[Via Pharyngula]

The Hovind dissertation

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Someone has finally gone and done it. Someone got hold of a copy of convicted felon “Dr.” Kent Hovind’s doctoral dissertation and posted it on the interwebs for all to laugh at. I’ve read it before (no, I wasn’t the one who leaked it) but now at last we can all share in the hilarity.

Myself and jail-bird "Dr." Dino.

Of course it represents exactly the sort of scholarship one would expect from a high class educational establishment like Patriot University (Hovind’s alma mater) seen here in their latest location:

Go. Read. Laugh. Or for an excellent overview see Karen Bartlet’s review. And here is John Lynch’s take on it.