Matt Burton-Kelly's home on the Web
Seriously. It fell off, and my intestines are spilling out on the floor.
John Scalzi has put up a Flickr album of his trip the Creationsit Museum. People down the hall must have thought I was crazy because I was laughing out loud for so long. Be sure to read the comments; even the most mundane photos have a chuckle from the other people who have looked at them.
“In closing, however, I think this does reveal a common thread that runs through all creationist thinking. If anything comes up that makes you feel uncomfortable, no matter how well supported by evidence and accepted by an overwhelming number of scientists, just pretend it doesn’t exist.”
The Panda’s Thumb: Privates by Satan
Actually, my favorite part of this article was the following:
“How are kids supposed to react to this supposed textbook when they see these pictures and then look at themselves in the mirror? What if little Bobby gets all freaked out because he’s got this thing between his legs that the book says he shouldn’t, so while his parents sleep he grabs a butcher knife and sets himself up for a career as a castrato?”
[Gould gets most of the credit for teaching me words like ‘castrato.’ 2014-03-05]
Mind the Gaps: Intelligent design as an answer to all life’s great conundrums.
*smiles*
Stupid American culture.
[EDIT: This post is interesting to me, not least because my opinion on religion has subtly changed over the years. There’s no need to rag on people for being religious, but I do still see the need to rag on people who claim that religion equals science. 2014-02-05]
Yay! The retort to Darwinism (or is it evolution in general?) is best summarized as “I can’t think of a real theory, but someone must have done it.” This is from the same people who claim we can never know God because he/she/it is beyond our capacity to understand. Now, if you admit one thing is beyond your capacity to understand, doesn’t that open up the door to a lot of other things that just may be over your head?
Trial begins today
Of course, they obviously do not say ‘God’: they say ‘Deity.’ Which is okay as long as you don’t try to teach anything in particular, wink wink nudge nudge, say no more. If an Islamic group were pushing for this sort of thing it would have no chance of happening, or even a Jewish group.
Silly Christians. I get to talk about them because I suppose I qualify as one. Even if you aren’t you get to talk about them because (some of them) are just silly at times.
Anyway, I make my point that this is stupid and unconstitutional–claiming that an unknown Deity may have created everything is just as religious as claiming that God or Yahweh or Allah or Odin may have created it. Once you make a statement about a Deity, you remove the impetus to question the world around you and find out how it works, and instead cause people to start asking, ‘now what are the characteristics of this Deity, and what shall we call it?’
Evolution minor without Religion
Doesn’t seem like a problem to me. You CANNOT tell a private institution what to teach or not to teach, and you especially cannot tell tenured professors of the sciences that they should be teaching intelligent design.
I’m curious why the fact that ID will not be mentioned qualifies as news.
“Mr. Bush was pressed as to whether he accepted the view that intelligent design was an alternative to evolution, but he did not directly answer. ‘I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought,’ he said, adding that ‘you’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes.'”
Bush Remarks Roil Debate on Teaching of Evolution – New York Times
ummm, no.
[EDIT: To clarify, I agree that people should be exposed to different ideas, and open to changing their opinions. The problem, however, is that intelligent design theories are arguments by authority, and not based on “the scientific method.” 2014-02-05]