Creationism


Kansas starts evolving again

Following a primary election in Kansas two school board members who opposed evolution and wanted creationism taught as a science have been ousted.

“I am thrilled,” says Janet Waugh, a pro-evolution school board member and Democrat who lives in Kansas City and won her primary on Tuesday. “The people of Kansas are tired of being the laughing stock of not just the nation, but the world.”

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Messing with God's design

Would a Creationist be circumcised? With US circumcision rates running at up to 83% in the Midwest (an area you’d expect to be home to more than a few Intelligent Design fans) it certainly seems likely.

Don’t they feel just a little bit guilty for messing with the Lord’s design for their bodies? Or is their a tale of Satan sneaking in at the end of the sixth day’s shift and glueing this extra little bit on to Adam? From now on my foreskin’s going by the title of “The Devil’s Helmet”.

(This question was posed by Clare. I’m not the freak, okay.)

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Don't let Britain devolve

Anti-science is invading the British education system. A growing number of science students at universities and sixth forms believe in Creationism. The good news is that many are failing exams because they quote the Bible or Qu’ran as scientific fact. In response to calls for creationism/ intelligent design to be taught as science the Royal Society will hold a talk in April entitled Why Creationism is Wrong. The award-winning geneticist and author Steve Jones will deliver the lecture and challenge creationists, Christian and Islamic, to argue their case rationally at the event.

For some schools it’s too late.

Very few people seem to be coming back with the logical response to this trend- teach creationism where it belongs, in religious studies along with all the other creation myths.

via Gooseania, where Craig reported on his visit to a creationist’s talk at Manchester University.

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I thought we were better…..

In a poll of Britons carried out for a Horizon programme over 40% of respondents said they believed that creationism and/ or intelligent design should be taught in science classes. I want to scream.

If anyone starts touting this idiocy in Manchester I’ll be running a campaign of ridicule to stop them.

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Idiot Design

When the Vatican rubbishes your science you should know to give up.

“If the model proposed by Darwin is not considered sufficient, one should search for another,” he said in the paper. “But it is not correct from a methodological point of view to stray from the field of science while pretending to do science. It only creates confusion between the scientific plane and those that are philosophical or religious.”

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Flight of the Bumble Bee

Using high speed digital photography and a robotic wing scientists have been able to explain how bees fly, slapping down another of the shoddy arguments used by the Intelligent Design brigade.

Turns out bee flight mechanisms are more exotic than thought.

“The honeybees have a rapid wing beat,” Altshuler told LiveScience. “In contrast to the fruit fly that has one eightieth the body size and flaps its wings 200 times each second, the much larger honeybee flaps its wings 230 times every second.”

This was a surprise because as insects get smaller, their aerodynamic performance decreases and to compensate, they tend to flap their wings faster.

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The fight goes on against Intelligent Design

Despite the recent ruling against the Dover, Pennsylvania, school board there are still some who would like to turn the United States into the world’s most backward developed country. They are particularly, and worryingly, active on university campuses.

I’d willingly sign a petition that called for ID to be taught in the right place- alongside all the other creation myths in some religious studies type course.

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Dover, Pennsylvania returns to the modern world

A federal judge has ruled that Intelligent Design can’t be taught in biology classes in a case brought against the Dover Area School Board in Pennsylvania.

“We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom,” [U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III] wrote in his 139-page opinion.

The Dover policy required students to hear a statement about intelligent design before ninth-grade biology lessons on evolution. The statement said Charles Darwin’s theory is “not a fact” and has inexplicable “gaps.” It refers students to an intelligent-design textbook, “Of Pandas and People,” for more information.

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Ten things I hate about you……

Not really. A double dose of Creationist baiting via Bruce Sterling

Things Creationists hate. there are a lot, these could keep me entertained for days.

Societies worse off ‘when they have God on their side’. Because she hates it when they take her name in vain.

“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”

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The Top Ten Creation Myths

Which is exactly where Intelligent Design belongs.

With its bounty of brawny, barrel-chested gods and buxom goddesses, the ancient Norse religion of the Scandinavian and Germanic countries is truly the creation myth for fans of both pro wrestling and heavy metal music. According to Norse lore, before there was Earth (Midgard), there was Muspell, a fiery land guarded by the fire sword-wielding Surt; Ginnungagap, a great void, and Niflheim, a frozen ice-covered land. When the cold of Niflheim touched the fires of Muspell, the giant Ymir and a behemothic cow, Auohumla, emerged from the thaw. Then, the cow licked the god Bor and his wife into being. The couple gave birth to Buri, who fathered three sons, Odin, Vili, and Ve. The sons rose up and killed Ymir and from his corpse created from his flesh, the Earth; the mountains from his bones, trees with his hair and rivers, and the seas and lakes with his blood. Within Ymir’s hollowed-out skull, the gods created the starry heavens. What can we say: Pure metal magic!!

via Intelligent Design: An Ambiguous Assault on Evolution, itself via GeekPress

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March of the Creationist Monkeys

Some people are too sad. The Creationists/ Intelligent Design monkeys have decided that nature documentary March of the Penguins is evidence of God’s hand.

Andrew Coffin, writing in the Christian publication World Magazine, said such miracles of nature were evidence that life is too complex to have arisen through Darwinian random selection: ‘That any one of these eggs survives is a remarkable feat – and, some might suppose, a strong case for intelligent design. It’s sad that acknowledgment of a creator is absent in the examination of such strange and wonderful animals. But it’s also a gap easily filled by family discussion after the film.’
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Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London and an atheist, said: ‘I find it sad that people with intrinsically foolish viewpoints don’t recognise this as a naturally beautiful film, but have to attach their absurd social agendas to it.

‘The problem with intelligent design is that there is no conceivable observation in nature that can disprove the idea. It’s not part of science, which is why scientists are not interested in it. A group of penguins standing upright looks like co-operation, but in fact the ones on the outside are struggling to get in and those on the inside are trying to stand their ground: it’s a classic Darwinian struggle. The idea that the life of a penguin is any more beautiful than that of a malaria virus is absurd.

‘Supporters of intelligent design think that if they see something they don’t understand, it must be God; they fail to recognise that they themselves are part of evolution. It appeals to ignorance, which is why there is a lot of it in American politics at the moment.’

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are you prepared to meet your maker and ask for your money back?

Whilst i’m pondering god-
the intelligent design monkeys like to cite the eye as evidence against evolution. I think someone should convince them that they’ve lost that argument and should try another body part, such as the clitoris. It’s an organ built specifically for fun, how much more designed can you get?
If we could just get them to run with this argument we’d have the double pleasure of knowing they were still wrong and watching them squirm every time they had to say clitoris.


The Mis-edumication of George W Bush

It may not be all Wubble U’s fault. He may just have been poorly educated and is now too ignorant of his lack of scientific knowledge to change.

One of the defects of democracy is that we usually have quite ordinary persons as our leaders. Sometimes this doesn’t matter; their particular defects don’t bear upon public affairs, or the times are sufficiently placid that it just doesn’t matter that they drink, or play too much poker, or cultivate friends of doubtful character, or whatever.

These are not such times. The President’s ignorance of science might have remained a private matter, but he chose to speak on the subject of evolution and “intelligent design.” This is a great pity.

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President Bush is a monkey!

After Wubble U announced that American schoolchildren should be taught intelligent design so they can “understand what the debate is about.” the American Geophysical Union has issued a press release stating that Dubya is putting schoolchildren at risk and undermining the US’ abilities to function in the future.

“Scientific theories, like evolution, relativity and plate tectonics, are based on hypotheses that have survived extensive testing and repeated verification,” Spilhaus says. “The President has unfortunately confused the difference between science and belief. It is essential that students understand that a scientific theory is not a belief, hunch, or untested hypothesis.”

“Ideas that are based on faith, including ‘intelligent design,’ operate in a different sphere and should not be confused with science. Outside the sphere of their laboratories and science classrooms, scientists and students alike may believe what they choose about the origins of life, but inside that sphere, they are bound by the scientific method,” Spilhaus said.

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