In reponse to the latest crawling from a Student Union over the recent Jesus and Mo fracas, and indeed the recent example of intimidation at an event featuring a dicussion of sharia law and women’s rights:
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Tags: atheism
The blog’s been a bit quiet lately, because I have been busy. Partly with work, but also because I embarked on reading one of the major works in the Intelligent Design canon.
I am halfway through Stephen Meyer’s opus ‘Signature in the Cell’. (I bought this as a Kindle edition, which hasn’t been well put together by the publisher). So far he’s been alternating between schoolbook level molecular biology, and a history of theories of the origin of life (his treatment of origin of life is rather more detailed, and presumably reflects elements of his PhD thesis). Intermingled with this are strange bids for sympathy (for example over the Dover trial and the fiasco of the improperly refereed paper) and odd anecdotes, which resemble parables and which are claimed to be examples of how he teaches students, via bizarre straw man arguments. Oh, and a credulous treatment of Dembski’s version information theory (specified functional information is frequently mentioned but never defined adequately). It’s all very odd, and so far seems to be building up to the proposition that because science hasn’t explained the origin of life satisfactorily (to Meyer’s satisfaction, I mean), that a supernatural entity must have done it. Stylistically, the book’s a mixture of clarity and obfuscation, which may well reflect the subject areas that Meyer is most and least comfortable with.
I’m looking forward to a detailed description of how Meyer thinks an intelligent designer may have brought all this to pass. Hopefully I’ll have finished the book reasonably soon, when I’ll put together a review.
Update: I note that Jack Scanlon (So, Discovery Institute, do I win an award or what?) has been flagged at another post at the ridiculously named Evolution News and Views ‘blog’ (One of These Days, Alice, One of These Days. Pow! Right in the Kisser!). Well, I began trudging through the 550-odd pages of text as soon as the book was delivered to my Kindle. I am still manfully ploughing through it.
Tags: intelligent design
Today
A nice response to the ongoing fracas at the UCL student’s union over the use of a Jesus and Mo cartoon in an atheist group’s publicity. Read more about this at The New Humanist (Student atheist society in censorship row with student union over Muhammad cartoon)
The Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society (ASHS) at University College London has become embroiled in a censorship row with the university’s student union over the use of a Muhammad-related cartoon on a Facebook page advertising its weekly drinks social.
An interesting situation, particularly given UCL’s origin as the first University in England to be established on an entirely secular basis. My irony meter is flickering in the red zone.
Tags: persecution
According to the BHA website, Government changes Free School model funding agreement to ban creationist schools. From that article:
The British Humanist Association (BHA) has welcomed a new revision of the model funding agreement for Free Schools by the Government in order to preclude ‘the teaching, as an evidence-based view or theory, of any view or theory that is contrary to established scientific and/or historical evidence and explanations.’ This highly significant change has been made in order to ban creationism from being taught in Free Schools, and prevent creationist groups from opening schools. The change follows the BHA coordinating the ‘Teach evolution, not creationism!’ campaign, which called for this precise change.
Good news indeed. More information at the BHA website, with further onward links.
Tags: education
One of the recurring modes adopted by Intelligent Design creationists is to adopt the strategy whereby an example of a complex biological system is looked at and it is decided that evolution cannot explain its origin. We see this enshrined in bogus concepts such as ‘irreducible complexity’, ‘specified functional information’ and the like. By claiming a process of inference, ID creationists seek to declare that an intelligent designer must have been involved in the appearance of such complex systems.
Of course, the problem with this strategy is that one by one, these examples are likely to fall to genuine scientific advance (examples include Behe’s favourites such as the bacterial flagellum and the vertebrate immune system spring to mind). A neat example of an approach to better understanding the evolution of protein complexes has just appeared as an Advance Online Publication at Nature (Finnigan et al (2012) Nature “Evolution of increased complexity in a molecular machine” doi:10.1038/nature10724). There’s also an accompanying News and Views article (Doolittle (2012) Nature “Evolutionary biology: A ratchet for protein complexity” doi:10.1038/nature10816). Read the rest of this entry »
The British Humanist association reports that the Everyday Champions Church is returning to the Free Scool fray (Creationist Everyday Champions Church re-launch Free School bid as ‘Exemplar Academy’). Sort of, anyway. It turns out it’s the same people, without overt Church involvement. According to the BHA:
Everyday Champions Academy was proposed and sponsored by Everyday Champions Church, a creationist church based in Newark. Following having their bid rejected, the team met with the Department for Education in an attempt to get the decision overturned, and their local MP, Patrick Mercer, met with Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove to attempt the same thing.
What the heck their MP is doing trying to go against Government policy on not teaching creation? Anyway, the people behind the bid are trying again.
The new Exemplar Academy is proposed by the same group of individuals from Everyday Champions Church as proposed the previous Free School, however the Church is no longer sponsoring the school, and the school will no longer be formally designated with a religious character. Instead, it will have a Christian ‘faith ethos’.
Sounds ominous to me. It’s worth visiting the BHA site for the full low-down. Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to attempts by evangelicals and fundamentalists to drum their ridiculous creationist notions into children’s minds.
Tags: education
The latest newsletter from the British Centre for Science Education (BCSE) is now available on the BCSE Blog.
Tags: education
Happy Kitzmas. This is the sixth anniversary of the famous decision in Kitzmiller vs Dover School Board, which really exposed the duplicity of those in the Intelligent Design creationist movement. Judge Jones, who many did not see as a particular ally to those fighting this incursion of religion into American schools, actually provided a exceptional smack-down of the devious and dishonest strategy taken by those wishing to push Intelligent Design creationism as science. This has led to many US-based bloggers to conclude that Intelligent Design creationism is something of a ‘busted flush’. But in reality, this is only true in the USA, where publicly funded schools are prohibited by the Constitution from teaching or promoting religion. In contrast, here in the UK we have a government that actively encourages the development of faith schools, and via its ideologically driven Free Schools raises the spectre of increasing the presence of creationism in our nation’s schools. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: creationism, education, intelligent design
In a article today, the British Humanist Association reports More creationist Free Schools planned for 2013 opening. It’s clear that Michael Gove’s Free Schools programme is likely to continue to attract those of the devious and deceitful religious type. If I take as an example the awful sounding Destiny Christian School proposed for opening in 2013. The school’s website covers up mention of creationism, saying under the FAQs:
Destiny Christian School will provide a curriculum that is broad, rich, inclusive and based and in line with the National Curriculum.
The BHA article, however, clarifies their position:
In Bedford, Destiny Christian School is being proposed by the Miracle Church of God in Christ, and if approved to open, will be a member school of the Christian Schools’ Trust (CST). At an open meeting attended by a BHA supporter, the group were asked about their policy on creationism and responded that they believe creationism is science and intend to teach it as such.
The affiliation to the Christian Schools Trust is something of a giveaway. Incidentally, any school adhering to the CST Statement of Faith has to be considered suspect in the modern United Kingdom, in which religious belief is generally declining. It’s not actually terribly clear whether the horribly named Destiny Christian School actually does, but it has all the common evangelical hallmarks (including a request for prayers to deliver skilled people to the project team).
Clearly the Free School scheme is seen by those adhering to creationist wingnuttery as an open invitation to pollute impressionable young minds with an inadequate science education.
I see that Jonathan McLatchie has crossed Larry Moran’s radar (Fishing for Creationists). Jonathan published one of his verbose articles taking issue with Jeffrey Shallit’s takedown of a video featuring Phillip Johnson, the grand-daddy of Intelligent Design creationism (This Video Should be Shown to all Biology Students - see also A Discovery Institute Flack Responds) – it’s a video dating to the early days of the Intelligent Design variant of creationism, and reveals Johnson’s ignorance of biology and evolution. The whole thing’s blown up to include another example of ID creationism misquoting, selectively quoting, and just plain failing to comprehend the scientific literature, this time on homology (both morphological and molecular).
Paul Nelson, in particular has weighed in at Sandwalk. In case you’re wondering about Nelson’s background in biology, it is the usual extensive education seen in ID creationism. According to his Wikipedia page, ”In 1998, Nelson gained a PhD in philosophy from the University of Chicago”. Anyway, the discussion has spilled out into a new post, Homology, where I expect the discussion to continue, amid the accusations that he’s selectively mis-quoting and misrepresenting the literature. Worth following.
And on the ‘further incomprehension by McLatchie’ front, we have this blog article cross-posted to crossexamined*: An Eye-Opening Discovery: The Remarkable Vision of Anomalocaris. This is a ‘teaser’ paragraph from the full article at the very silly and mis-named Evolution News and Views, to which I don’t link, due to its ‘no comments’ policy). For the rational-minded, the new discovery is really very interesting: that the ‘top predator’ in Cambrian seas was equipped with an effective visual system comprising a high resolution compound eye. The proposal has elicited quite a bit of discussion, not least around whether or not the eyes are really part of Anomalocaris (which, interestingly, McLatchie doesn’t refer to), but also that it suggests that Anomalocaris had arthropod affinities. Anomalocaris itself has had an interesting history in palaeontology, having over the years had body parts identified as three different species. While I cannot fault McLatchie when he says “This beast poses mysteries both small and large”, he then ruins it by charging off into his usual nonsense. Apparently the new discoveries make it another “tough day to be a Darwinian”, though it’s not clear quite why he says this, other than senior ID creationists say so (Meyer, Nelson and Chien** – the latter being one of the few biologists in the ranks of ID creationists), and that it’s the hoary old story of ‘sudden appearance’ of complex structures (such as a very high resolution compound eye) in the fossil record that exceeds his capacity to grasp the science.
For my part, I am fascinated by Anomalocaris, and look forward to further discoveries about the Cambrian seas. Not so much the ID creationist mangling of those discoveries!
*Jonathan McLatchie seems to be the sole blogger at crossexamined. Many of his posts there are ‘interesting’.
** Chien apparently leads the Discovery Institute Paleontology Research Program, according to his Wikipedia page, though that page suggests he’s a biochemist rather than a palaeontologist.
Tags: creationism, intelligent design
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