Our good friend Richard Dawkins is on the march once again: The sides of some of London’s red buses will soon carry ads asserting there is “probably no God,” as nonbelievers fight what they say is the preferential treatment given to religion in British society. Organizers of a campaign to raise funds for the ads said Wednesday they received more than $113,000 in donations, almost seven times their target, in the hours since they launched the project on a charity Web site. Supporters include Oxford University biologist Richard Dawkins, who donated $9,000. The money will be used to place posters on 30 buses carrying the slogan “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” [Says Dawkins]: “This Read More ›

I was back at Baylor on Tuesday talking about ID. For the school newspaper article reporting on the event, go here.

Ben Stein’s EXPELLED is finally out today on DVD. If you want to get it as well as a bunch of other nifty ID videos and Jerry Bergman’s new book, click here. Here’s a description of the superbundle: EXPELLED DVD and Super Bundle Available at ARN The EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed DVD featuring Ben Stein can now be ordered at ARN. In addition, ARN is offering an EXPELLED Super Bundle which includes the EXPELLED DVD, Slaughter of the Dissidents book by Dr. Jerry Bergman. And for a limited time when you order this bundle we will include free copies of the three of the best selling Intelligent Design documentaries: Unlocking the Mystery of Life, Privileged Planet, and The Case for Read More ›

Easy enough to do when like true things that are real problems are happening.

Nevertheless, we have a definite climate trend emerging – more and more climate scientists are admitting anthropogenic global warming is a bunch of crap. Read about some of them:

Lorne Gunter: Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof

More goodies below the fold. Read More ›

Recently, I read a book by an American political analyst Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism, which helped me understand a political landscape that I have watched with growing concern: increasingly authoritarian government and increasingly supine citizens.

Culturally, it reached the point recently where the term denialist began to characterize anyone who departs from a consensus – as if departing from a consensus were not part of the engine of progress in the Western world.

Goldberg calls the new mood “liberal fascism.” To interpret the political landscape correctly, we need to understand fascism clearly.

At present, most people think fascism is simply “the way the Nazis behaved.” While there is no question that the Nazis were fascists, it is quite easy to be at the opposite end of the traditional political spectrum and also be a hard core fascist. And so far as I can see, there are currently more fascists in North America at the leftward end of the political spectrum than the rightward end. That’s what Liberal Fascism is about.

So what is fascism?

Fascism is not a program in politics, it is a mood. It can be a mood of the right or the left.

It is the mood of an angry identity group. The group could be vegans, transgendered people, the losers in a war, members of an impoverished ethnic group …

In their view, they have been wronged – by members of another group. The government must make things right by giving them money, status, and power and punishing members of the evil group that has wronged them.

Typically, fascists thrive on crises. When they don’t have actual crises, they proclaim or even manufacture them in order to get what they want. Read More ›

It appears that the Waco Tribune abridged Don McLeroy’s op-ed on Texas science standards (that piece was cited a few posts back). Here is the full op-ed (reprinted with Don McLeroy’s permission):

Don McLeroy, guest column:
Biology standards and reasonable doubts

Sunday, October 19, 2008

COLLEGE STATION — Science education has become a culture-war issue. The battle is over the controversial evolutionary hypothesis that all life is descended from a common ancestor by unguided natural processes.

Texas is adopting new science standards. Scientists representing evolutionists and calling themselves the 21st Century Science Coalition say that creationists on the State Board of Education will inject religion into the science classroom. Should they be concerned? No. This will not happen.

They also say that the board will require supernatural explanations to be placed in the curriculum. This will not happen.

The National Academy of Sciences in its recent booklet Science, Evolution and Creationism, 2008, defines science as “the use of evidence to construct testable explanations and predictions of natural phenomena, as well as the knowledge generated through this process.” This definition should be acceptable to both sides. Read More ›

(I submitted this op-ed to the Austin American-Statesman, but – in their wisdom – they decided not to print it. So I am simply posting it here.):

When I first heard that a group of professors who say they speak for 800 Texas scientists “is challenging the idea that discussion of the weaknesses of evolutionary theory belongs in science classrooms” (Austin Statesman-American, October 1, 2008), I sighed.

Darwin, Texas educators need you and your “bulldog” Thomas Huxley to come back and talk some sense into them.

Huxley once wrote that “irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.” A hallmark of an “irrationally held truth” is that mundane discussion of its strengths and weaknesses is forbidden. Read More ›

Jeffrey Bada inherits Stanley Miller’s “scientific posessions” and finds untold riches … click here for article in WIRED SCIENCE If you want the truth about Miller-Urey, which was a bridge to nowhere, see my forthcoming book with Jonathan Wells: HOW TO BE AN INTELLEC-TUALLY FULFILLED ATHEIST (OR NOT) — this book is about the origin of life. The release of this book, scheduled for this month, is being coordinated with the release of the DVD of Ben Stein’s EXPELLED, due out October 21st.

Remember the big stir about Lenski’s 20 year experiment with E. coli where the bugs “evolved” the ability to digest lactose citrate and this was touted as overwhelming evidence of evolution? And remember our response that until the mechanism behind it was discovered that it might not be much “evolution” at all?

As usual, we are vindicated. In a similar case where it’s lactose instead of citrate the bug was all set up, in fact one might say front loaded, with the capacity to switch over from glucose to lactose digestion. Essentially the bug constantly samples the level of lactose in its environment and when the level reaches a tipping point a single “throw of the dice” switches it over from glucose to lactose digestion. This is contrary to Lenski’s hypothesis that a series of dice throws, each making a small change towards ability to digest lactose citrate, accumulate until lactose citrate digestion is fully switched on. Darwinian gradualism is denied once again and we see a front loaded genome switch to a new mode of operation through a saltational event.

Throw of a dice dictates a bug’s life
17:53 17 October 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Ewen Callaway

Read More ›

Don McLeroy, who heads the Texas State Board of Eduction, has an editorial in my local paper: …Texas is adopting new science standards. Scientists representing evolutionists and calling themselves the 21st Century Science Coalition say that creationists on the State Board of Education will inject religion into the science classroom. Should they be concerned? No. This will not happen. They also say that the board will require supernatural explanations to be placed in the curriculum. This will not happen. The National Academy of Sciences in its recent booklet Science, Evolution and Creationism, 2008, defines science as “the use of evidence to construct testable explanations and predictions of natural phenomena, as well as the knowledge generated through this process.” This definition Read More ›

I share concerns expressed here that this blog is becoming too political. I’m of a mixed mind about this. I see the upcoming presidential election as pivotal for our nation and for the place of ID in the wider culture (I foresee an Edwards v. Aguillard type case going against ID if Obama gets to choose the next Supreme Court justices). At the same time, I don’t want to see ID’s intellectual program getting short shrift here. Let me therefore encourage UD contributors to balance political postings with straight-up ID postings (we need a lot more of the latter). With regard to the latter, Bob Marks and I continue hammer away at our work on evolutionary informatics. We’ve recently had Read More ›

What think you of the “bizarre” strategies for walking used by artificially evolved organisms? (Posted by Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing, October 2, 2008)? This is a project of Darwin@home, which tries to simulate evolution in unused computing space. Oddly enough, the narrator says at one point, “It seems complex beyond the reach of human ingenuity.” It looks interesting, though not quite as interesting as that.

From what I can determine, this is a true story:

A Mindful Hack reader writes,

The state of Maine gave a test to about 15,000 eighth-graders to assess their writing skills, including their ability to form a logical position. When the state refused to release the results, a newspaper filed a Freedom of Information Act request and learned that 78 percent of the kids failed, which was 50 percent more than failed the test the previous year. Maine’s Department of Education explained the results were “inconclusive”, and they discarded them because students reacted emotionally to the test. “Kids got ticked off at the [question],” explained Education Commissioner Susan Gendron, “so it was not an accurate reflection of their writing skills.” The essay-based test asked the students to support or refute the statement, “Television may have a negative impact on learning.” (Portland Press-Herald) …And their inability to form a logical position and refute that is proof that the test is flawed.”

At Bangor Daily News.com, Kent Ward asks:

Just what there is to get so upset about in the debatable proposition that television may have a negative impact on learning, I haven’t a clue. The more so when test instructions clearly gave students the choice of making a case either for or against the premise and provided the pros and cons for making their argument. Which is to say they weren’t exactly starting from scratch, with only a blank sheet of paper and a debilitating writer’s block for inspiration.

In any event, from Kelley Bouchard of the Portland Press Herald (September 7, 2008) we also learn:

Edwards noted that eighth-graders who took the writing test in 2007 were able to draw from their own experience to sustain arguments for or against the following statement: “Rather than maintaining separate teams for boys’ and girls’ sports, a high school is considering combining teams and having a completely coed sports program.”

Now that strikes me as a very emotional question for many students, yet the students could handle it.

Gendron could be right, that the results this year are a fluke. But here’s another possibility: Thinking about television induced in many students a state of mind not suited to critical thinking because that is in fact how they react to television. So they were not “ticked off” by the question, they were disabled by it. That’s hardly good news, even if it is a fluke.

Let’s see what next year brings.

Note: Poe’s law states that some people or situations just cannot be parodied because you couldn’t make up stuff that is further along the continuum.

Also just up at The Mindful Hack: Read More ›

Surprisingly, whether you are left or right may not matter as much as you might think, according to an interesting new political litmus test.

Whether you are authoritarian vs. libertarian may predict your politics just as effectively.

Hat tip to Franklin Carter , Editor and Researcher, at the Freedom of Expression Committee of the Book and Periodical Council of Canada, for this entertaining and instructive litmus test.

I took the test and here is my score: Read More ›

Yeah, me too. Amazing how fast a red herring gets pushed off the front page when there’s a real problem to talk about. But just to keep you updated a little I offer these: Boise gets earliest snow on record Valley shivers as winter weather makes a premature appearance and related to the global cooling we are now experiencing is this: Spotless Sun: Blankest Year Of The Space Age ScienceDaily (Oct. 7, 2008) — Astronomers who count sunspots have announced that 2008 is now the “blankest year” of the Space Age. As of Sept. 27, 2008, the sun had been blank, i.e., had no visible sunspots, on 200 days of the year. To find a year with more blank suns, Read More ›