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The American creationist movement has entirely bypassed the scientific forum and has concentrated instead on political lobbying and on taking its case to a fair-minded electorate… The reason for this strategy is overwhelmingly apparent: no scientific case can be made for the theories they advance.
~Ken Miller
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Ken Miller, Thought of the day | Leave a comment »
A blogger once noticed that people who don’t like PZ Myers refer to him as “Paul Zachary Myers”. Now there’s a new level of contempt. Mark Looy of Ken Ham’s staff will only call him “the prof”
…He was standing with the prof and 10-12 SSA members, and I stopped to hear what was being said—especially since the prof was being filmed at the time and that was creating some congestion.
I actually counted twelve instances of Looy using “the prof” to reference PZ. He slips up and writes “the professor” once. Perhaps his heart soften for just a moment. But at no point in Looy’s post (or Ken Ham’s surrounding post) does “PZ Myers” appear. They even refuse the often creationist-preferred “Paul Zachary Myers”. Looy, Ham, and ilk seem to have decided that the best way to express their deep, vitriolic hatred of PZ is to be as humanely impersonal as absolutely possible. Whatever. They still know shit about science.
If some blogger can morph this with an image of PZ, that would probably garner a few hits.
Filed under: Creationism | Tagged: Ken Ham, Mark Looy, Paul Zachary Myers, Pleiotropy, pz myers, The prof | Leave a comment »
I’m sure I’ve had this thought elsewhere on For the Sake of Science, but it deserves repeating.
I love when the religious call evolution or atheism or whathaveyou “religion”. They’re trying to expunge any merit from the expressed belief(s) by associating it with the emptiness of what they hold dear. Sure, they’re horribly wrong and have no clue how to define “religion”. But if they want to debase my beliefs by inherently debasing the very idea of religion, then I’m going to have a hard time objecting.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Thought of the day | 3 Comments »
It’s long been known that creationists love to quote-mine. They’ve long done it Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Gould, Albert Einstein, and plenty of other scientists in order to support their positions. No one is really all that surprised when they keep doing it again and again.
So it is nonchalantly* that I present yet another example. This time it’s Creation “Museum” supporter Tom Estes.
So I have been wondering; why do atheists have such animosity for Ken Ham? He is attacked so viciously, so often by atheists that I wonder if they have pure, unadulterated hatred for the man. And again I wonder, why? Before I go on, I want to share this cartoon that was drawn by Jennifer over at http://blaghag.blogspot.com.
Okay, got it? Estes is looking to support the idea that atheists simply hate Ken Ham. The hatred is so intense it’s even unadulterated. So what’s he do? He reposts a cartoon. Here’s what he featured.
To see the rest of this cartoon, visit the Blaghag.
This seems to support Estes point quite well. Clearly, the cartoon is indicating the pure desire of atheists to express their unadulterated hatred for Ken Ham. But wait!
As it turns out, the cartoon is actually showing that, yes, atheists don’t like Ham very much. He misrepresents science as much as humanly possible. That’s a bad thing. But the point is a far cry from unadulterated hatred. It’s a play off the whole Expelled debacle combined with PZ Myers’ love of squid and squid-like creatures and a mockery of Ken Ham’s silly beliefs about dinosaurs. It’s a bit of fun, and in the end it shows something decidedly less cool but clearly more welcomed – everyone being civil to each other. Estes chopped off this portion of the comic (adding a link back to the front page – not the original post – of the cited blog). He’s just another creationist. He’s willing to ignore what’s inconvenient to him in order to support his position. It’s sort of like the entire concept behind Ken Ham’s bad “museum”.
*Doesn’t it seem like “chalant” should be a word? Instead of “So it is nonchalantly that I present…” it would be way better to say “So it is without chalant that I present…”. Just sayin’.
Filed under: Creationism | Tagged: Blag Hag, creation museum, Creationism, Evolution, kentucky, pharyngula, pz myers, The Hard Truth, Tom Estes | 7 Comments »
Dale Neumann has been found guilty of second-degree reckless homicide.
Dale Neumann, 47, was convicted in the March 23, 2008, death of his daughter, Madeline, from undiagnosed diabetes. Prosecutors contended he should have rushed the girl to a hospital because she couldn’t walk, talk, eat or drink. Instead, Madeline died on the floor of the family’s rural Weston home as people surrounded her and prayed. Someone called 911 when she stopped breathing.
Prayer is an unacceptable method for real healing. I’m glad this jury has recognized that.
Filed under: News | Tagged: Dale Neumann, Madeline Neumann | Leave a comment »
Speaking of the tendency of believers to avoid responsibility for their actions, Dale Neumann is nearing the end of his trial with the jury currently deliberating.
“If I in a moment of crisis and in a moment of time, I went to anyone else but the Lord, it would not have been favorable to God,” Neumann said.
I wish I could find the better quotes I came across earlier today. Neumann wants to be acquitted of the charges because he really believed in his religion. No, he couldn’t have called a doctor for a relatively simple remedy to the problem. The audacity! That would be an affront to his particular, cultural god. It is merely his deeply held belief which deserves condemnation for being horribly wrong, not him. Christ.
I just hope Wisconsin juries know when they’re getting the wool pulled over their eyes. This guy is a danger to society directly as a result of the (especially) wacky religious views he and many others hold. Prayer does not heal. That is a lie, perhaps a delusion at best.
Filed under: News | Tagged: Dale Neumann, Faith healing, Kara Neumann, Pray, Prayer, Weston, Wisconsin | 1 Comment »
“If this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him?”
~Albert Einstein
And there’s one critical difference in the morality of believers and the morality of non-believers. Believers defer responsibility, at least to some abstract degree, elsewhere. That is not possible in an atheistic system of belief. Responsibility must always fall on the shoulders of man.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Thought of the day | Leave a comment »
These are some of the wholly ignorant individuals who are seeking to overturn Maine’s same-sex marriage bill before it officially becomes law. They’re actually proud of themselves. It’s gross.
Bob Emrich is a hateful, stupid man. He has absolutely no idea that he’s actually advocating for discrimination against himself. He thinks homosexuality is icky or perverse or just like having sex with a dog or he’s uncomfortable in his own sexuality or he’s just another mook propping up the bible for his own ends (which is easy because that is one of the most morally malleable books ever written) or maybe it’s all of those things. Ultimately, he has no universal justification for denying people the right to marry on the (purely legal) basis of sex/gender. I doubt he’s smart enough to come up with many principled arguments for his beliefs in the first place, but even if he was capable of that, such an argument does not exist for his absurd position.
It’s an utter disgust that people like this are given legitimacy. Why don’t more people just lash into crap like this? Bob Emrich has a lot of bad ideas predicated on a lot of bad bigotry. I hate to be redundant with “bad bigotry” but aside from the grammatical flow, it supports the notion that Emrich doesn’t even understand the true basis for his hatred. He has no idea that through his outright bigoted, hateful views of homosexuals (what did they ever do to anyone?), he is taking legal aim at absolutely everyone. And that’s what this all is: a legal issue. Emrich has no logical basis to be demanding that the state of Maine discriminates against everyone on the basis of what chromosomes they have (again, go here).
Filed under: Politics and Social | Tagged: Ambrose Rolfe, bigotry, Bob Emrich, Christians, gay marriage, Maine, religion, Same-sex marriage | 1 Comment »
For the Sake of Science 