Bill Nye, the Non-Science Guy

Alex Berezow, of the American Council on Science and Health, writes that Bill Nye is a terrible spokesman for science.  He writes:

It was clear that something was amiss a few years ago when, amid Nye's renewed celebrity status, it came to light that he aired an episode of Eyes of Nye that perpetuated anti-GMO propaganda. Nye was subsequently criticized by the scientific and (especially) science writing communities. Not long thereafter, Nye had a change of heart.

Good! Better late than never. But was this "conversion" based on a new understanding of biotechnology or simply a calculated marketing move? Evidence points toward the latter. As late as 2015, Nye was still pushing anti-GMO nonsense. That year, he published a book called Undeniable, which promoted evolution over creationism. The book entirely lacked references (quite bizarre for a science book)...

Yes, it was bizarre. I read the book. It was awful, filled with vague arguments, invective and special pleading. Probably the low point for Nye, however, has to be a complete 180° turn around on sex and gender.  In the original show, he had a segment on people that were XY and people that were XX and he described them accurately as men and women and argued that you couldn't change that.  Now, with Bill Nye 2.0 we get “My Sex Junk” (warning: do not watch if you do not have a strong stomach).  Berezow continues:

Ultimately, it seems that Bill Nye just panders to whatever he thinks the audience wants to hear. He thought (incorrectly) that they wanted to hear why GMOs were bad, so he altered his message when he got pushback. He won't get pushback for exaggerating climate change, so it's likely he'll keep this up for a while.

I don't think Nye actually believes the climate hysteria. Because if he did, Nye would support whatever means necessary to stop it, like nuclear power. After all, he's a mechanical engineer. But lo and behold, Nye is opposed to nuclear power. Big surprise. Audiences don't like nuclear power.

Nye is disdainful and contemptuous of young-earth creationism, yet employs exactly the same shtick that they do: pontificate in areas of which they have knowledge.  Unfortunately, now, people will remember Nye for the new show and not the informative old one, where he seemed to know his limitations. 

Is Louisiana's LSEA Bad Science?

It isn't, according to University of Shreveport political science professor Jeff Sadow. He argues:

[Senator Karen Carter] Peterson’s annual exercise persisted — until this year. With Democrat John Bel Edwards now governor, neither she nor anyone else filed a bill to repeal the act. That’s because the author of the law, former state Sen. Ben Nevers, a Bogalusa Democrat, serves as Edwards’ chief of staff. In the past, surely knowing her bill never would make it out of committee, Carter kept trying regardless as an apparent attempt to make Jindal look bad. She has no wish to do the same to Edwards.

But Peterson’s and others’ opposition to the act should disturb anybody who desires academic excellence in Louisiana education. The law creates a minor incentive for science classrooms to explore important issues and develop critical thinking skills. It also stands as a bulwark against the potential imposition of politically motivated orthodoxy masquerading as science. To oppose the act reveals an intolerance of freedom in academic inquiry — and a willingness to indulge a totalitarian impulse seeking to control information and knowledge.

Here is the problem that I see: the modern creationism movement has taken great pains to divorce the notion of creationism from the Bible, or any organized religion. They treat it as science, and promote it as such. They don't promote it as religion. To be sure, every court case that has been adjudicated has shown that it is, but because of this, the teaching of creationism now masquerades as “Teaching the Controversy” “Teaching the Full Range of views," or “Teach the Strengths and Weaknesses.”  Oddly, enough, these methodologies don't include all of scientific inquiry, but just happen to focus on evolution (and sometimes climate change).  Waiting in the wings is “scientific creationism,”  a view supported by a large number of legislators, it seems. 

Yes, it is true that we should keep science agenda free (and that is becoming increasingly hard in this over-politicized culture), but the LSEA does not do this.  If anything, it promotes the stealth agenda of ID and creationism.

New Book Out: How I Changed My Mind About Evolution

The Religion News Service has a story about a new book that has been published that will likely set many fundamentalist evangelicals' teeth on edge and rattle their cages.  The book is titled How I changed My Mind About Evolution: Evangelicals Reflect on Faith and Science (which I just picked up as a Kindle e-book, seconds ago) Cathy Grossman writes:

Creationist Christian tourists may soon flock to the Ark Encounter, a literal vision of Noah’s story in Genesis come to life in July as a theology-packed tourist attraction in Williamstown, Ky.

But this month, another group of evangelicals is making a very different case – minus any animatronic critters — in a new book, “How I Changed My Mind About Evolution.”

It promotes the idea that one can be serious about Christian faith and still accept a scientific Darwinian account of human origins. BioLogos, the organization of pro-evolution Christians in the sciences founded by famed geneticist Francis Collins, teamed with InterVarsity Press to publish a collection of 25 personal essays from clergy, scholars and scientists.

It should be a good read. The Kindle version is only $8.84.

Rise of Anti-Evolution Bills: UPDATE

PhysOrg also has a post on this research that includes an animated GIF to show the progression.  From the post:

The study also found that antievolution bills show evidence of 'descent with modification,' suggesting that anti-evolutionist legislators copy bills recently proposed or passed, rather than writing new bills from scratch. In addition, although the antievolution bills usually avoid mentioning creationism, most could be tied directly to creationism through statements in the legislation or by the bills' sponsors.

"Creationism is getting stealthier in the wake of legal defeats, but techniques from the study of evolution reveal how creationist legislation evolves," Matzke said.

I will be curious to see how the Discovery Institute spins this.

A Closer Look at Accelerated Christian Education

England is currently grappling with a controversy surrounding its free schools: some of them are teaching young earth creationism.  Javier Espinoza, of the Telegraph, writes:

Creationism is still taught in dozens of faith schools despite Government threats to withdraw their funding, the Telegraph can disclose.

Last August Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said schools found teaching creationism as scientific fact would not be eligible for any money from the taxpayer.

Yet a series of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests show that 54 private schools are still being funded by local authorities, while continuing to teach that the Earth began with Adam and Eve.

Only 14 of the 91 schools teaching creationism have had their funding withdrawn, an investigation by the British Humanist Association revealed.

The campaign group also found that some faith schools' science departments were teaching pupils to identify what happened on each of the days of the creation.

Apparently, the focus of the inquiry is into a particular curriculum that is being used, that from Accelerated Christian Education. Well, its accelerated all right.  Johnny Scaramanga, of Patheos, examined the ACE science curriculum and found, among other things, that:

• The Loch Ness Monster disproves evolution.  I wrote about this a bit back here.  The direct quote that Scaramanga uses that I have also quoted:

  Have you heard of the ‘Loch Ness Monster’ in Scotland? ‘Nessie,’ for short, has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.

  No, it hasn't. There is no evidence that this creature exists, whatsoever.
• Solar Fusion is a Myth.  This is a retread of the old Russell Akridge argument that the sun is shrinking.  Howard Van Till wrote a detailed expose of this creationist “talking point,” and it is no longer an argument used because it was so thoroughly debunked.  Apparently ACE has not gotten the memo. 
• A Japanese Whaling Boat Found a Dinosaur.  As was pointed out very shortly after the discovery, it was not a dinosaur at all but a badly decomposed basking shark.  Even Answers in Genesis backed away from this one.  Creation.com also gave it a pass.  Once again, ACE treads where other creationists have urged caution. 
• Evolution Has Been Disproved.  Here, Scaramanga points out some statements found in the text that parrot the usual, discredited arguments:

  “This gradual change from fish to reptiles has no scientific basis.” (Science 1099, p. 30)
  
  “No branch of true science would make these kind of impossible claims without proof. Because evolutionists do not want to believe the only alternative – that the universe was created by God – they declare evolution is a fact and believe its impossible claims without any scientific proof!” (Science 1107, p. 24)
  
  “It is not possible that our planet accidentally evolved into a living blue and green planet! No, the creation of our earthly home required a miracle. That miracle was the design and work of a mighty Creator.” (Social Studies 1098, p. 3)
  
  “The evolutionist does not realise that he also accepts his theories by faith; he cannot prove them by scientific demonstration, and he is dishonest when he claims they are science.” (Social Studies 1097, p. 25)

  Not only are these incorrect, they are couched in haughty arrogance and derision toward the scientists who work in this field. Contemptible.
• Humans and Dinosaurs Coexisted.  This is an argument derived from what were considered dinosaur and human tracks at the Paluxy River, in Glen Rose, Texas.  Once again, this is an argument that creationists no longer use and have not used in years.   John Morris, of the ICR cautions his readers that this is not a credible argument. 
  

I have not looked at ACE's textbooks in awhile but, given the ruckus they have produced,their content has likely not changed much.  Other problems abound with this curriculum.  In another post, Scaramanga writes:

In 2012 I began a PhD studying ACE, and discovered that little had changed since I left in 1999. I have campaigned against ACE, with some success. The shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt has described its stance on homosexuality as “dangerous” and “backwards”; the Advertising Standards Authority ruled last month that some ACE schools were mis-selling their qualifications; and the press finally noticed they were teaching that wives must submit to their husbands.

In all of this, however, little attention has been paid to the pseudoscience that ACE passes off as education. PACEs sometimes get basic science wrong, but more importantly they demonstrate that ACE can’t tell the difference between science and nonsense obscured with long words. For example, ACE’s Science 1087
(aimed at students in year 9) suggests it might be possible to generate electricity from snow.

That was written in September of 2014.  The rest of the article is a chilling expose of just how badly ACE has gotten basic science. It is astounding to think that sixty schools all over England are using it, or were using it five years ago. How will these kids react when they discover that the science they were taught is bogus? How will it affect their faith?  We know, in Scaramanga's case, it drove him to atheism. 

Arroyo Grande Technical School: Tribune Editorial

The editors of the Tribune in San Luis Obispo have written an editorial on the scuffle involving Brandon Pettenger and his inclusion of creationism as a discussion issue in class.  From the Tribune:

We don’t mind if science teachers want to briefly stray from the state-sanctioned curriculum to, say, discuss a shark attack off our coast, or engage in lively debate over nuclear power, or even to briefly vent about not being able to watch Dodgers games on TV.

After all, the best teachers are those who make their classes relevant, timely and interesting. If that means occasionally deviating from the lesson plan, so be it. But to spend three days showing a filmed debate on creationism vs. evolution — as Arroyo Grande High School science teacher Brandon Pettenger reportedly did — and to assign students to read and summarize a pro-creationist blog is not OK. It violates state teaching standards and the Lucia Mar Unified School District’s board policy. It also takes advantage of a position of authority to foist religious instruction on a captive audience, even if it’s done under the guise of giving students the information they need in order to decide for themselves.

It would be helpful if there was more information about which blog they summarized. If the blog is BioLogos, then the science is sound, even if it is within the context of Christian theology. If the blog was Answers in Genesis, then there is no science and the teacher did a massive disservice to the students. Once again, though, much is unclear. Did he have them summarize the scientific failings of the blog? Was it in the context of a discussion of “bad science?” Would be nice to know.

New Film: A Matter of Faith

Wendy Byerly Wood, of the Elkin Tribune, writes:

The story is about a Christian teenager who goes off to college for her freshman year and begins to be influenced by her popular Biology professor who teaches that evolution is the answer to the origins of life. When the teen’s father senses something changing with his daughter, he begins to examine the situation and what he discovers catches him completely off guard. Now very concerned about his daughter drifting away from her Christian faith, he tries to do something about it!

The film features Jordan Trovillion (“Jack Reacher”), Jay Pickett (“General Hospital”), three-time Emmy nominee Harry Anderson (“Night Court,” “Dave’s World”) and Clarence Gilyard (“Matlock,” “Walker Texas Ranger”) in the lead roles.

“We wanted to make a film that brought the issue of creation vs. evolution to the forefront,” Director Rich Christiano said. “A film that would be fair to both sides and allow the viewer to make a choice.

One problem: later in the review, we find this:

Many Christian leaders who have previewed the film are praising its biblical message. Both Ray Comfort and Ken Ham describe “A Matter of Faith” as a must-see.

“A great movie,” Comfort said. “Heartwarming, educational, God-honoring, and timely.”

“We don’t endorse very many movies, not even many of those that are supposedly Christian based,” Ham explained, “but we are fully behind ‘A Matter of Faith.’”

If Ken Ham is fully behind this film, it will not treat the subject of evolution fairly. Not even close.   Both he and Alex Comfort are strident anti-evolutionists and would never give their support to a movie unless it promoted a very one-sided, cardboard treatment of the science.  of additional note, all of the sites that are giving the film thumbs-up also link to films like Evolution's Achilles Heel, by Creation Ministries International.  I watched the trailer for this film and, even in watching this, could spot elementary errors.  Furthermore,  it made absolutely ridiculous assumptions, such as that evolutionists have never examined their own positions. 

This does not bode well. 

Nobel Prize Winners: Ban Creationism in Scottish Schools

The Scotland Herald is carrying a story in which three Nobel Prize winners are urging the Scottish Government to ban the teaching of Creationism in public schools.  Judith Duffy writes:

Sir Harold Kroto, Sir Richard Roberts and Sir John Sulston have signed a petition lodged at the Scottish Parliament calling for guidance to be introduced for teachers.

The Scottish Secular Society wants a ban in publicly funded Scottish schools of the "presentation of separate creation and Young Earth doctrines as viable alternatives to the established science of evolution, common descent and deep time".

The move comes after an incident last year when it emerged that members of a US pro-creationist religious sect, the West Mains Church of Christ, had been working as classroom assistants for eight years at Kirktonholme Primary in East Kilbride. Children were given books intended to debunk evolution.

Although there is no mention of this in the story, the timing is such that some of these scientists may have seen the recent dust-up in England about the radical Islamic creationist influence in schools and decided to act.

English Education and the Rise of Islamic Radicalism

The Telegraph is reporting that education secretary Nicky Morgan has stripped kindergarten schools in the United Kingdom that teach creationism of taxpayer funding.  They write:

Any nursery that teaches creationism as scientific fact will be stripped of taxpayer funding. This is unlikely to apply to Christian nurseries as they tend to be more balanced. However large numbers of Muslim nurseries refuse to accept evolution. The rules will bring nurseries into line with schools. A government source stressed: “We are absolutely not saying, 'You can’t teach Bible stories’.”

This is a follow-up to a story that ran on Breitbart London, about the infiltration of the UK school system by radical Islamism.  The story on Breitbart reproduces a statement by Morgan to the Home Secretary, which includes the following:

But what Peter Clarke found is disturbing. His report sets out compelling evidence of a determined effort by people with a shared ideology to gain control of the governing bodies of a small number of schools in Birmingham.

Teachers have said they fear children are learning to be intolerant of difference and diversity. Instead of enjoying a broadening and enriching experience in school, young people are having their horizons narrowed and are being denied the opportunity to flourish in a modern multicultural Britain.

There has been no evidence of direct radicalisation or violent extremism. But there is a clear account in the report of people in positions of influence in these schools, with a restricted and narrow interpretation of their faith, who have not promoted fundamental British values and who have failed to challenge the extremist views of others.

Individuals associated with the Park View Educational Trust in particular have destabilised headteachers, sometimes leading to their resignation or removal. Particularly shocking is the evidence of the social media discussion of the Park View Brotherhood group whose actions “betray a collective mind-set that can fairly be described as an intolerant Islamist approach which denies the validity of alternative beliefs.”

Evidence collected by Peter Clarke shows that Birmingham City Council was aware of the practices that were subsequently outlined in the “Trojan Horse” letter long before it surfaced.

This is becoming a bit of an identity crisis for England, which has long prided itself on its MultiCulti viewpoint. The problem, of course, is sometimes you welcome viewpoints that have open hostility to yours.

David MacMillan: Understanding Creationism VIII

David MacMillan continues his series of posts on being a former young-earth creationist.  This part is personal history about his change of heart and, reading it, it gives me hope about others.  He writes:

All the while, I still maintained that even if evolution could work, it wasn’t fact, because the planet wasn’t old enough. Granted, I could see how the planet could be billions of years old – flood geology was wearing a little thin – but I was still constrained by religious belief to a 6,000-year-old universe. I think I really did know the truth at this point, deep down, but I didn’t feel like I could admit it.

Then I started learning about the history of creationism, and that’s where things started to crack. I learned that the age of the earth had never been a dividing issue in Christianity, not until Morris and Whitcomb plagiarized flood geology from the Seventh Day Adventists in the 1960s. I realized that not even the church fathers saw Genesis 1 as speaking of six actual days. Martin Luther was one of the only six-day creationists in church history, and he also believed geocentrism for the same reasons, so that wasn’t very encouraging. I began to see how there might be problems with the “historical-grammatical” approach to interpreting Genesis. If the creationist leaders were so far wrong about science, why should I expect their treatment of the Bible to be reliable?

This is an area that most young earth creationists don't know much about: the history of their own views.    Whitcomb and Morris' book is a near retread of the work of George MacReady Price and the views derive in large part from the works of Ellen White, the Seventh Day Adventist that lived in the late 1800s.  As Joshua Moritz wrote:

White and her Seventh Day Adventist followers harbored no doubts about the correct reading of the early chapters of Genesis because in a trancelike vision White was ‘‘carried back to the creation’’ by God himself, ‘‘and was shown that the first week, in which God performed the work of creation in six [24 hour] days and rested on the seventh day, was just like every other week.’’ White likewise saw that during Noah’s flood, God created all the various geological layers of sediment and fossils by burying the organic debris and causing ‘‘a powerful wind to pass over the Earth...in some instances carrying away the tops of mountains like mighty avalanches...burying the dead bodies with trees, stones, and earth.’’ Thus, from the divine dreams of Ellen White young earth creationism was born and, ironically, it was conceived in stark opposition to the reigning biblical literalism of the day.

MacMillan closes with some very important tactics to remember, the first one at which I fail miserably.  He writes that we should be patient, but I find that hard to do as I encounter stubborn refusal on the part of creationists to address the evidence with any degree of honesty or integrity (for example, the recent posts on David Menton's human origins AiG article).

He writes that we are to know our enemy and that is not the person we are speaking with but the creationist viewpoint, itself.  This is also true...to a point.  The problem here (and it relates to the previous paragraph) is that even if you can show beyond a shadow of a doubt that the YEC viewpoint is full of holes, the same viewpoint continues to be pressed by its purveyors (e.g. Ken Ham, John Morris). 

If I teach that all cats are red and you show me, categorically, that, no, some cats are red, some cats are blue and some cats are green, and yet I continue to teach that all cats are red, at some point, it becomes a lie.  It doesn't matter how sincere I am or that I tie it to a personal religious belief.  It is still a lie.  David Menton, when faced with mountains of evidence that did not fit his worldview, had two options: to adjust his worldview, or to try to twist the evidence to say things that it did not. He chose the latter. That is part-and-parcel of young earth creationism.

David MacMillan: Understanding creationism, VI: An insider’s guide by a former young-Earth creationist

Panda's Thumb has the sixth installment by David MacMillan on Understanding Creationism.  This one deals with the correspondence between fossil taxonomic studies and genetic evidence as well as the daunting task of constructing phylogenies.  He writes:

The more items you have in a given collection, the more ways they can be arranged. Just five items can be arranged in 120 different ways, and ten items can be arranged in a staggering 3.6 million ways. But the task of placing items into a branching tree is even more complex; for only five items, there are an unbelievable 6.6 × 10198 different possible branching trees. The number of possible trees for just five species is hundreds of orders of magnitude greater than the number of gene sequences that could be used to compare those five different species. So a researcher can’t simply “pick” the sequence that matches; there’s no chance of getting a match in any sequence unless there’s a real phylogeny to work with.

Most importantly, researchers don’t pick only a single sequence. Phylogenetic analysis is performed on many different sequences, and then all of the resulting trees are compared to each other to see which one appears most consistently. Trees produced by random noise will appear only once; accurate trees will appear in multiple sequences. All these clear facts are completely missing from the creationist understanding.

Read the whole thing, especially the response to the “common design” argument.

David MacMillan: Understanding Creationism, Part IV: The Predictive Power of Evolution

David MacMillan's fourth post on being an ex-creationist is over at The Panda's thumb and in this one, he writes about why it is so hard for those with the YEC perspective to understand the evolutionary biological concept of “transitional” fossil. He writes:

Young-earth creationists believe that all life, living and fossil, can be grouped into a series of families – they call them baramins, a made-up Hebrew word for “created kinds” – which all existed together at the same time from the very beginning. They use this completely artificial understanding of our planet’s biosphere in generating their concept of a “missing link”: in order for something to be a “true” transitional form under their model, it would have to be something halfway between two separate created “kinds”. Because they automatically assign every species to a particular created kind and only to that created kind, their “transitional form” is something that could never exist.

The usual parodies of evolutionary transitional fossils, like Ray Comfort’s infamous crocoduck, are openly tongue-in-cheek. But because creationists see all animals as belonging to individual, immutable kinds, they represent evolution as “change from one ‘kind’ to another” claiming that evolution predicts we should see transitions between their “created kinds”: for example, a fossil that is midway between a dog and a cat. Just as with living species, all fossil species are placed within strict “created kinds”, allowing creationists to maintain the illusion that nothing is ever “in-between”.

This is only one aspect of the problem. The other problem, mentioned in Young's third post in the series, is the mistaken belief that evolution is entirely vertical and that there is only direct ancestry and not collateral ancestry. With this understanding, one species directly leads to another species and so on. That Archaeopteryx may not have been ancestral to modern birds must mean that we have a gap in the fossil record. These “gaps” must mean that there are problems with evolutionary biology.  With created “kinds,” the species related to Archaeopteryx simply create gaps of their own.  It is difficult to penetrate this logic. 

New Gallup Poll on Belief in Human Evolution

On June 2, the Gallup organization released another poll on acceptance of human evolution.  In a random sample of 1028 adults (18 years +), they found the following:

• The percentage of people that accept some form of theistic evolution has dropped since 2012 from 46% to 42%.
• The percentage of people who accept a young earth creation model of human origins is exactly three times that of people who seldom or never attend church: 69% to 23%.
• While the percentage of people who have less than a high school education and who accept the young earth model of human origins is 57%, of those who have a college degree, only 27% accept this model. 

The authors of the poll results hasten to mention that education may not play as large a role as one might think: 

These relationships do not necessarily prove that if Americans were to learn more about evolution they would be more likely to believe in it. Those with less education are most likely to espouse the creationist view and to be least familiar with evolution, but it's not clear that gaining more education per se would shift their perspectives. Many religious Americans accept creationism mostly on the basis of their religious convictions. Whether their beliefs would change if they became more familiar with evolution is an open question.

This tracks with modern-day young earth creationism, for which I do not know a single adherent who is not an evangelical Christian.  I do not know whether or not the relationship is real or not.  I do know that I have several friends who are Ph.D.s who are highly skeptical if not doubtful of evolution.  This is not because they have familiarity with the subject (one is a materials scientist, the other a chemical engineer) but because they think it is inherently anti-Christian.  My pastor, who is quite intelligent, and I engaged in a long conversation about it and yet I am quite certain that he remains unconvinced of its authenticity because, as he has stated since then, it conflicts with his understanding of scripture.

The writers also note:

However, significantly fewer Americans claim familiarity with "creationism" than did so seven years ago. In 2007, 86% were familiar, including 50% who were very familiar. Now, 76% are familiar, with just 38% very familiar. In short, even though the adherence to the creationist view has not changed over time, familiarity with the term "creationism" has diminished.

Given the current news climate and what I perceive to be the increased importance of this subject in Christian circles, I find this unusual. Given that these results are not broken down by age, however, it is possible that the drop is related to the rise of people that are more a-religious and thus do not come into contact with this controversy.  If this is the case, this is disheartening. 

Teach Both. Let The Kids Decide

Rick Perry once told kids that they teach both evolution and creationism in Texas “…. because I figure you’re smart enough to figure out which one is right.” Why stop there?

Bill Nye to Debate Ken Ham

Bill Nye the Science Guy is slated to debate Ken Ham, head of the Creation Museum and Answers in Genesis.  This debate is set to happen at the main hall of the Creation Museum at 7:00 p.m. on February 4.  Tickets are $25 and will be available from Answers in Genesis beginning tomorrow (The event link is at the bottom of the page).  I may try to get up there for this.  On the other hand, I bet the local churches will bus people in by the hundreds just to make sure that Bill Nye is given a hard time so tickets may sell out fast.  Here is the story on ABC News:

The event is likely to attract plenty of attention in scientific and faith circles, as Nye is a high-profile advocate of science education and Ham is a respected leader among Christians who believe the Bible's origin story is a factual account of the Earth's beginnings.

Ham had been hoping to attract the star of TV's "Bill Nye The Science Guy" to the northern Kentucky museum after Nye said in an online video last year that teaching creationism was bad for children. The video was viewed nearly 6 million times on YouTube.

"Having the opportunity to hold a cordial but spirited debate with such a well-known personality who is admired by so many young people will help bring the creation-evolution issue to the attention of many more people, including youngsters," Ham said in a release Thursday.

Ham, it seems, has gotten his wish. The problem is, because of format issues and the fact that the audiences for these debates tend to not be up-to-speed on the science, they rarely go well for your average scientist. Bill Nye is not your average scientist, however and has a folksy, down home way of explaining things.  Hopefully, that spirit will prevail.  Look for Ham to be patronizing and evasive.   Here is the Youtube video that got it started.

John Freshwater Loses Final Appeal

The Raw Story is reporting that the Ohio Supreme Court let stand an appeals court decision to allow the termination of Mt. Vernon science teacher John Freshwater.  From the story:

“We recognize that this case is driven by a far more powerful debate over the teaching of creationism and intelligent design alongside evolution,” the court noted in its decision. “(But) here, we need not decide whether Freshwater acted with a permissible or impermissible intent because we hold that he was insubordinate, and his termination can be justified on that basis alone.”

This seems sort of anticlimactic, but boils down the termination to concrete, non-religious terms and, thus is as narrow a reading as the court can put forth.  Thus, the case that began five years ago, ends with a poof and not a bang. 

Charter Schools and Religious Entanglement

Although certainly not a new topic (witness last year's Loch Ness Monster reports), the problem of the funding of religious charter schools by state money is becoming a more visible problem.  John Turley tackles this controversy.  The article is as much as anything just a run-down of different cases that have spawned across the country but it is interesting for showing that the charter school/fundamentalist ties are strong in many different areas across the country.  Among them, he writes:

In November 2010, Jessica Meyers wrote a newspaper article about Advantage Academy in Duncanville, Texas. She said the students at this school “follow biblical principles, talk openly about faith and receive guidance from a gregarious former pastor who still preaches when he speaks.” She said Advantage Academy is typical of the “latest breed of charter schools”—those “born from faith-based principles and taxpayer funds.” She added, “Advantage markets its teaching of creationism and intelligent design. It offers a Bible class as an elective and encourages personal growth through hard work and ‘faith in God and country.’”

The academy’s founder Allen Beck is a former pastor for Assemblies of God who “hopes to instill morals and ethics in students as they learn to count and read.” Beck was quoted as saying, “America is in a battle between secularity and biblical thinking. I want to fuse the two together in a legal way.”

The more open these charter schools get in proclaiming their ID/creationism, the more scrutiny they will get to the point where the whole program will be examined and investigated. Given that the organized Texas educational system does not have a good track record for the teaching of "hard science," this will be a battleground state.

Donald Prothero Writes A Withering Review of Darwin's Doubt

On the Amazon page for the new Stephen Meyer book Darwin's Doubt, there is a review of the book by Donald Prothero, who is responsible for one of the best books on the fossil record in recent memory, Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters.  Of creationists (sensu lato), he writes:

They either cannot understand the scientific meaning of many fields from genetics to paleontology to geochronology, or their bias filters out all but tiny bits of a research subject that seems to comfort them, and they ignore all the rest.
Another common tactic of creationists is credential mongering. They love to flaunt their Ph.D.'s on their book covers, giving the uninitiated the impression that they are all-purpose experts in every topic. As anyone who has earned a Ph.D. knows, the opposite is true: the doctoral degree forces you to focus on one narrow research problem for a long time, so you tend to lose your breadth of training in other sciences. Nevertheless, they flaunt their doctorates in hydrology or biochemistry, then talk about paleontology or geochronology, subjects they have zero qualification to discuss. Their Ph.D. is only relevant in the field where they have specialized training. It's comparable to asking a Ph.D. to fix your car or write a symphony--they may be smart, but they don't have the appropriate specialized training to do a competent job based on their Ph.D. alone.

This credential mongering was, of course, true with the modern progenitors of all subsequent creationist works, The Genesis Flood and Scientific Creationism, both written by Henry Morris, a hydraulic engineer with no training in any of the major earth or biological sciences.That they were accepted uncritically by masses of Christians is, to this day, astounding.  Onward.

Prothero, who is a palaeontologist, has found Meyer's book unimpressive:

Almost every page of this book is riddled by errors of fact or interpretation that could only result from someone writing in a subject way over his head, abetted by the creationist tendency to pluck facts out of context and get their meaning completely backwards. But as one of the few people in the entire creationist movement who has actually taken a few geology classes (but apparently no paleontology classes), he is their "expert" in this area, and is happy to mislead the creationist audience that knows no science at all with his slick but completely false understanding of the subject.

This is the same sort of experience I had with the abysmal Bones of Contention, written by Marvin Lubenow some years back, where every page had some sort of error on it.  I felt beaten down by the time I was finished and, despite having the best intentions of reviewing it, I never did because I couldn't stomach picking it up again.

Meyer's central focus of the book is the Cambrian "explosion," in which life seems to have proliferated and diversified during what Meyer argues is too short a time for evolution to have occurred.  After correcting Meyer's understanding of how long the Cambrian was, he addresses a persistent problem:

The mistakes and deliberate misunderstandings and misinterpretations go on and on, page after page. Meyer takes the normal scientific debates about the early conflicts about the molecular vs. morphological trees of life as evidence scientists know nothing, completely ignoring the recent consensus between these data sets. Like all creationists, he completely misinterprets the Eldredge and Gould punctuated equilibrium model and claims that they are arguing that evolution doesn't occur--when both Gould and Eldredge have clearly explained many times (which he never cites) why their ideas are compatible with Neo-Darwinism and not any kind of support for any form of creationism.

It is immensely disappointing to see this kind of problem over and over in ID writings. This example is similar to the lack of understanding of natural selection and adaptive valleys and peaks that William Dembski exhibits in his writings.  He seems to make the same errors consistently to the point where people don't even comment on what he has written because he won't address any of the criticisms. This is common of most ID writers.  I am currently piecing through Science and Human Origins by Luskin, Axe and Gauger and am encountering the same errors that I took Casey Luskin to task for three years ago.

You should read the whole review in all of its caustic glory.  I will probably get around to reading it but have too many other things to read right now. 

Petition to Ban Creationism and ID

A petition has been submitted to Whitehouse.gov that calls for the banning of young earth creationism and intelligent design in the public schools.  Here is the text of the petition:

Since Darwin's groundbreaking theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, scientists all around the world have found monumental amounts of evidence in favor of the theory, now treated as scientific fact by 99.9% of all scientists.

However, even after 150 years after the establishment of evolution, some schools across the US are "teaching the controversy," including Creationism and Intelligent Design. Both of these so-called "theories" have no basis in scientific fact, and have absolutely zero evidence pointing towards these conjectures. These types of loopholes in our education are partially to blame for our dangerously low student performances in math and science.

Therefore, we petition the Obama Administration to ban the teachings of these conjectures that contradict Evolution.

The petition has 24,345 signatures so far and needs 100,000 for the Obama administration to even look at it. The problem is that a Whitehouse.gov account is required and, anymore these days, people are skittish about giving the government any more information than they have to. Even if it got the signatures and was contemplated, it is doubtful that such a ban would be approved.

Meanwhile, Over in "Oiho"

The Dayton Daily News is covering the goings on of the Springboro School Board, which is in the news yet again, and is locked in a tussle with some parents and the ACLU over the inclusion of creationism in the county school curriculum.  Lawrence Budd writes:

Local parents and the American Civil Liberties Union urged the Springboro school board on Thursday to abandon plans to pass policies inserting creationism and other religious issues into local classrooms.

Parents, teachers and students crowded a board meeting at Springboro High School where the board sought comments on policy changes including creation and evolution in a list of controversial issues.

Lynn Greenberg said the renewed consideration of bringing creationism into classrooms was just the latest controversy diverting attention from educating Springboro students.

“We’re being defined by our issues and not our accomplishments,” said Greenberg, a parent.

This kind of thing seems to be playing out in quite a few venues across the country and, with the advent of the Internet and the instant news cycle, it is likely that these events, which have probably been going on all the time, are now brought to our attention.  It does not help that the recent spate of "academic freedom" bills at the state level has given these school boards cover to attempt imposing not just ID but creationism at a local level.  The ability to shine a national spotlight on these sorts of debates, however, does make it hard for another Dover to occur.  In that case, the local school board was counting on people not paying attention.