Language

Posted on March 15, 2009 by Michael

Language is a dicey thing. It’s especially dicey for scientists. Take Einstein for example. He used to use the word “God” quite often. He usually did not mean anything related to the Christian god (or any other god concept). Let’s look at the Einstein phrase “Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?” He wasn’t literally asking if any particular god had a choice. He was asking if the Universe could have come into being in more than one way. Incidentally, the fact that the answer to this question is unknown should throw some light on that awful argument, the “anthropic principle“. Allow me to digress.

The anthropic principle is the creationist delusion that their particular god made the Universe with humans soley in mind. It’s likely the most arrogant concept ever presented. Beside that, it basically says “Humanity (or life in general) is too well adapted to the Universe for everything not to have been made for humans/life”. Humans are evolved to the Universe (at least one, insignifcant part of it that holds no special relevance). The whole argument ignores this fact. Of course, that is the creationist motif: hear no facts, see no facts, speak no facts. What’s more, it’s just an argument from personal incredulity: “The Universe is just too perfect to not be for me! I can’t believe anything else! It’s too much!” Mooks.

But I return. Language in biology can be difficult. In order to popularize the subject, scientists will use personifying terms. “Genes want to replicate”, or “Cuts and bruises want to heal”. There shouldn’t be anything wrong with this. It’s human nature to do this. We call computers stupid or say “the flowers danced in the sun” (for the more poetic among us). Of course, there is a contingent of people who hear these terms and think they are literal. They also happen to often be people who don’t realize the Bible is metaphoric in its entirety and therefore take it literally.

Take the comment section from a recent thread. Not to harp on a particular commenter, but the term “code” is taken wildly out of context. Rather than read for what it is, it is read as being something with intention at its root. Let’s examine.

Biologists may say “DNA codes for the genome”. This is true, but it has no connection to intentionality. What it means is simply that DNA is in one form until it is translated and transcribed into another form. In other words, it goes from being a series of amino acids into a series of proteins and enzymes. This does not require some grand creator or intelligence. It requires a slow, gradual process that provides for plenty of random variation while being governed by a non-random mechanism. Evolution by natural selection fits the bill.

Filed under: Creationism, Evolution | Tagged: , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Coy Creationists

Posted on December 22, 2008 by Michael

Have you ever noticed that creationists are getting more and more coy and more and more dishonest? From repeating claims about evolution that are blatantly false even after the real answer has been explained to them to coming up with the hooey that is intelligent design (as if it isn’t a repackaging of creationism), so many have turned to flat out lying. They’re liars. They’re immoral charlatans and mountebanks, peddling lies to society, especially children. Why they are given even a modicum of respect is beyond me.

Filed under: Creationism, Misc, Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

Discussing science

Posted on December 9, 2008 by Michael

I find I often subject myself to a surprising amount of anti-science misery, otherwise known as the Crosswalk forums (with alternative names such as ibelieve.com). If you dare to read that rubbish, you’ll actually find a thread linking to one of my posts. I was banned long ago (it’s lifelong; I’m so flattered!), so it was actually a friend who made the thread. Anyway, it has generated a good deal of traffic for me, as well as quite a few responses, even if a large number of them are wholly devoid of any education. One reason it has generated traffic is because this blog (and science) tends to be a tad abrasive toward creationism and I guess there’s a whole slew of other people who like subjecting themselves to material which disagrees with what they believe, too.

Here’s a sample of the rubbish which is put on these forums.

NS [natural selection] is just a filter. It doesn’t create anything, it just weeds out stuff. Contrary to Darwinism, it doesn’t necessarily keep stuff either. There is nothing that stops deleterious mutations from undoing neutral and/or good ones.

Natural selection is a filter, but it does not exist, apparently.

Well, just speculating here, but if the tooth of a little dinosaur was made into a necklace, would anyone necessarily think of it being a dinosaur? A lot of what we see in the museums are people’s ideas of what they may have looked like, so I’m not entirely sure that what we see in the pictures are what they really even looked like.

Those silly misleading fossils. Scientists just guess how they go together.

So the pattern, rather than gradual changes through incremental and incidental modification of ongoing mutation, appears to be a rapid appearance of various groups [of horseshoe crabs] followed by extreme stasis, presumably comprising in some cases hundreds of millions.

This would seem to directly contradict the fundamental notion of Neo-Darwinian evolution.

Please see Gould.

Ok so here are some of the major reasons why I believe Darwinism will collapse.
Darwinism will ultimately collapse as a valid theory of life origins because :

It fails to explain the origin of complex coded information contained in all living organisms
It fails to explain the origin of nano bio-machinery contained in all living organisms
It fails to account for irreducibly complex systems contained in all living organisms
It fails to account for the human moral sense and altruism
It fails to explain the general lack of transitional forms in the fossil record which should number in the multiple millions but don’t
Natural selection (originally a creationist concept) has failed as a sufficient explanatory mechanism for the level of complexity and diversity in nature
Random mutations can never account for the sophisticated, factory-like organization within the cell
It fails to account for how, in the midst of greater numbers nefarious mutations, any of the rare beneficial mutations could dominate bio history = see 1st quote below
… IDists and creationists are invited to add to this list if you have more reasons

My head hurts.

Okay, I’m sorry for posting this, but I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t have a redeeming link, I promise. For actual discussion on evolution where people have [i]actual[/i] educations, the Richard Dawkins forums are excellent. I don’t personally post very much, but simply reading good discussions about science is refreshing and wonderful. And it isn’t necessary that you be an atheist to post or enjoy the read.

Filed under: Creationism, Evolution, Misc | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Uncommon Descent

Posted on November 24, 2008 by Michael

There’s been this big hub-bub among creationist conspiracists that “academic freedom” is being quashed by all those EVILutionists. That was the main theme of the movie Expelled and it even resulted in an anti-science bill being signed into law by Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal (most states rejected such nonsense, fortunately). For those who are unfamiliar, “academic freedom”, in its creationist sense, is just code/whine word for “no one will listen to our bad ideas”.

So it comes as an entertaining irony that the people whining and moaning about not having a voice in acadamia, have been called out for quieting dissent against their poorly thought out positions when the academics come onto their turf. This is actually something commonly practiced by the likes of Michael Heath, local Christian zealot and bigot. He actually just doesn’t approve dissenting comments, no matter how cleanly written, but it’s roughly the same principle: creationists want us to hear their voices, but cover their ears when truth is spoken to them.

Is anyone surprised?

Filed under: Creationism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

The Dishonest Firing of an Honest Woman

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Michael

I try to make it a habit to not use much of anything I find on PZ Myers blog. It’s not because I don’t like his blog – I do, it’s great – but I’d rather not be stealing the man’s ideas or topics (there’s enough science to go around). But he recently made a post about the travesty that’s been happening to Christine Comer. As a few of you may know, she was forced to resign from her position as the Director of Science for the Texas Education Agency (TEA) because she circulated some information about a talk denouncing the bullshit that is intelligent design. It didn’t denounce the religion of intelligent design, but rather the faux science that it is. Because the TEA has a neutrality policy on the issue, Comer was told she’d either be fired or she could resign (and keep her pension). She resigned.

Comer currently has a lawsuit pending which contends what happened to her was illegal because teaching or endorsing creationism is unconstitutional.

So what we have now is a report released from Texans for Better Science Education (TBSE), an organization, despite its name, actually devoted to destroying science in favor of magic. Fortunately, Steven Shafersman has a full account of what’s actually going on.

Now, let’s examine the incidents of “insubordination” and “misconduct” that TBSE’s Mark Ramsey and DI’s John West claim disqualifies Chris Comer’s claim that her employment was terminated illegally. In the TBSE timeline, Ramsey emphatically makes the accusation that, “During her employment at the TEA, Comer received…three disciplinary letters spanning at least eight separate incidents, and seven of these eight incidents had nothing to do with evolution.” But there’s more to this charge than meets the eye. Chris began work at TEA in 1997, and until 2007 there is only one serious charge in all the documents against Chris. This is the June 12, 2003, Letter of Reprimand and Notice of Disciplinary Probation from Ann Smisko, Associate Commissioner. Chris was accused of getting a small amount of money from a TEA Comprehensive Assessment Training in Science (CATS) grant to Alamo Community College District (ACCD) for travel expenses. Chris was told the money was from the San Antonio Education Foundation, not from the ACCD. Also, she could not provide receipts for the reimbursed travel expenses. In fact, she received no funds from either the CATS grant or ACCD as the continued investigation showed.

A second charge was that she took money as a consultant for work on the Texas Atlas Project, another CATS project, which was conducted on her own time. Employees are forbidden to take any money for consulting without submitting a Disclosure Reporting Form, and Chris failed to do this. This is a very minor infraction. For these two charges, the letter was the only disciplinary action Chris received, because, in fact, the charges were so minor. The letter states that “the disciplinary action is based on information available at this time and the preliminary findings of the Internal Auditor.” There were no further findings or charges. She was told later that she was completely cleared of suspicion, but Ramsey and West don’t want to inform you of that. The mistaken Letter of Reprimand and Notice of Disciplinary Probation should have been removed from Chris’s file, and Ramsey and West should apologize to her now.

Now this is important: the charges in this letter were the only misconduct charges Chris received during the first nine years of her employment at TEA. The remaining seven incidents all came during one year after the Perry-McLeroy-Scott-Reynolds anti-science cabal started to take over the TEA. Thus, contrary to several statements by Comer antagonists, Chris did not have (1) “a history of disciplinary issues” as Ramsey wrote, (2) “a long history of disciplinary problems” as West wrote, and was not (3) “an employee who has no legal case against the agency because she abused her position for years” as Lizzette Reynolds wrote (p. 16 of pdf file). Each of these claims increases in malice and untruthfulness. What is their motivation to direct so much animosity at Chris Comer?

So what we have is a set of creationists who have been given authority on subjects over which they have no grasp going around and firing people for teaching the unifying principle of an entire field of science. What’s more, they’re dragging this woman through the mud by claiming that she has all sorts of infractions and insubordinations. In reality (a place these creationists seem to deny as much as possible), Comer had a minor infraction plus 7 made-up infractions which were attributed to her for the sake of destroying science (something which doesn’t jive well with this blogger’s url) only after a set of creationists gained authority.

Let’s hope these patently dishonest creationists are successfully sued. Maybe then Texas will realize it needs to throw these yahoos out.

Filed under: Creationism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments »

No, science only has a bias toward reality.

Posted on October 28, 2008 by Michael

Apparently, some people think science can be either conservative or liberal. Well, it can’t. So why do the nuts over at Conservapedia think otherwise? What’s more, why do they think creationists tend to win debates with ‘evolutionists’?

Morris also said regarding the creation scientist Duane Gish (who had over 300 formal debates): “At least in our judgment and that of most in the audiences, he always wins.”

You may be wondering, who the fuck is that guy? Well, that’s Henry Morris, one of the founders of the Institute for Creation Research – an organization which does nothing but undermine science. Apparently, Conservapedians believes if they cite the opinion of a creationist on the issue of debating evolution that they have an air-tight case that creationists tend to defeat those EVILutionists in debates. This is about as valuable as those text polls FOX News took after the presidential debates where McCain apparently destroyed Obama, winning roughly 90% of the votes. What’s more, the fact that even if there were some empirical way to measure debate winningness*, it wouldn’t matter since, just as Hitler has no bearing on the truth value of evolution, the random opinions of anti-science mooks is rather irrelevant.

*Creationist would likely reject such a measure were it possible since they believe science to only be science when it gives them results they already like.

Filed under: Creationism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

« Previous Page