Wacky things on the radio

When I travel, like I was doing over the past weekend, I listen to the radio a lot. Sometimes, I listen to talk radio, which means listening to conservative and Christian talk radio. This past trip, I had the dubious pleasure of coming across a series of interviews done with people at the Creation Museum. The one that I managed to catch most of was with Jason Lisle, head astrophysicist at the Museum.

Wait a minute. An astrophysicist that thinks the universe is only a few thousand years old? Isn't that like going to the infectious disease department at a hospital to find a doctor that thinks viruses and bacteria can't make you sick?

The pentayokel

OK, this has gone from amusing to depressing to downright annoying. Yet another letter by a yokel from the Ghetto of Ignorance® was in the News-Gazette. This one by Mark Thompson of Dewey. As before, since these people aren't capable of having an original thought, the standard creationist claims are identified by a link.

Au contraire, evolution as a theory is entirely inconclusive. For all they preach the evolutionists have little evidence for the record.

Let's ignore for the moment the fact that "inconclusive" doesn't make sense in this sentence. I imagine he's trying to say it's not backed up by evidence. The only reason evolution is the dominant theory in biology is that it is consistent with the evidence. It's the only theory that's consistent with all the evidence.

• CA202. Evolution has not been proved.

Universal reproduction could not have evolved randomly; it is beyond scientific probability (insert DNA, any organ, voluntary and involuntary bodily systems, flora and fauna).

• CA100. Argument from incredulity.

I have a hard time fisking this because ... what the hell is "universal reproduction?" Is he talking about sexual reproduction? If so, I guess he has no problem with organisms that reproduce asexually having evolved? Ghetto of Incoherence is more like it.

Creationists, especially the casual, letter-to-the-editor writing kind like to talk about things being beyond some level of probability and therefore impossible. It's a crock, of course. You can't calculate the probability of events like that. (We'll ignore again whatever the hell he means by "scientific" probability.) The head yokels, the ones that write the books for the yokel audience, come up with metaphors like a tornado in a junkyard constructing a 747. But that's a false analogy. Evolution isn't random. It's stochastic. It has an element of randomness, but it's not a random process.

Could one person win the lottery every day of his life, unaided, probability or impossibility? Math science suggests "random evolution" as one chance in trillions.

• CF002.1. Tornadoes in junkyards do not build things.

What the hell is "math science?" Again, you can't calculate the odds for evolution. It's not a probabilistic event. It's like saying, "What's are the odds of gravity?"

On the other hand, evolution theorists can't rule God out of the equation statistically. After all, they believe in "any" chance.

• CA602. Evolution is atheistic.

And here, of course, we have it. Mr. Thompson equates evolution with atheism. Since he knows atheism is teh evil, so evolution must be, too.

"Random" evolution didn't create this marvelous, interwoven, natural world from a crucible of metals and gases; statistically and scientifically impossible, beyond reason.

Scientifically impossible, huh? So I guess all those, you know, scientists just missed that fact. That God we have Mr. Thompson of Dewey, Illinois, to tell us what is scientifically possible.

Math science favors this hypothesis, as does reason, as miraculous design is everywhere. Open your eyes, see?

• CI100.1. Look; is design not obvious?

There's that "math science" thing again. I guess this whole line of argument is the "stamp your foot and shout, 'It is too created!'" method of rhetoric. To paraphrase the Goblin King, if design is apparent and obvious literally everywhere, from every biological species to subatomic particles to even the very laws of physics that make the whole thing possible, what's your basis for comparison? If literally everything is designed, how do you know what a non-designed thing looks like?

Creationism does not refute science; it guides it, quite logically, on an enlightened level that stands the test of reason. No spin, just reasonable logic and math science, a theory that should be taught in school, alongside the random evolution theory, given the lack of conclusive facts. A totally reasonable stalemate.

• CA041. Teach the controversy.

Well, no, actually. Creationism does not guide science. There is nothing in science that requires religious belief. You don't need to be a Christian for an electron microscope to work, nor do you have to be a Hindu to study the human genome.

We're not at a stalemate. Creationism lost the game over a hundred years ago, and now they're just trying to change the rules.

Previous yokels:

• Local yokel disproves evolution?
• Another local yokel
• The third yokel's the charm
• Buy three yokels, get one free

Buy three yokels, get one free

The News-Gazette is trying to kill me. That's the only explanation I can think of for them publishing another creationist letter to the editor. This time it's by Dee Mulligan of Urbana. As usual, I'll give links to the Index to Creationist Claims for each bogus statement she makes.

It has been wonderful to see the debate over the theory of evolution and creationism once again emerging.

Not really, since there isn't any such debate. The debate, such as it was, was settled nearly a century ago. The only "debate" that rages is that ignorant Christians just keep demanding that their theology be treated as science.

I have a graduate degree and aced all the biology classes by feeding back answers the professors wanted. But they never convinced me that evolution makes any sense.

I'm sorry to see that Ms. Mulligan wasted this part of her education. Rather than actually learn anything, she treated her university as a series of hoops that needed to be blindly jumped through.

A friend of mine in college took Physics 101 as a pass/fail course. For him, it was just a mandatory prerequisite, and he didn't really care. His grades were reasonably good, so for the final exam, he just sat down and memorized a bunch of relevant equations without any actual understanding of what they were for. Ms. Mulligan apparently not only did the same this for her biology classes, but has the absolute hubris to demand that her pretend-knowledge be treated on the same level as actual experts in the subject.

My objection is that it is a theory. It is not taught as such in most cases. It is taught as fact.

Evolution is both theory and fact. We also teach atomic theory, quantum theory, the theory of relativity, and the germ theory of disease. Ms. Mulligan doesn't really understand the technical definition of the work "theory." That's what comes of blowing off your biology classes and getting your science lessons from your preacher.

• CA201. Evolution is only a theory.

I remember sitting in high school biology and looking at pictures of Cro-Magnon man.

It was absolutely taught as fact. Of course, we all know now it was just a hoax.

Whaaaaat? Cro-Magnons aren't a hoax. They were the first Homo sapiens to inhabit Europe, alongside the Neanderthals. It's kind of an archaic term, sure, but it's hardly fraudulent.

The saddest part of this is that literally 10 seconds of searching the Internet would have shown here this. There's Wikipedia article and the Britannica article. Hell, even the laughable Conservapedia has a stub article on Cro-Magnon man. But no, Ms. Mulligan couldn't be bothered. She's comfortable wearing her ignorance on her sleeve.

So science can be wrong. As a matter of fact, Karl Popper argues that a hypothesis or theory must be falsifiable if it is does not admit the possibility of being false.

The "science can be wrong" gambit is a classic one. It's basically just a way of saying "since we don't know everything, we know nothing." Can we assume that if Ms. Mulligan is diagnosed with cancer she won't accept treatment for it since we don't know everything about cancer? I suspect we were wrong once or twice there.

If education is to be complete, then all theories on the beginning of the world and we mortals should at least be explored or mentioned. It cannot be proved that we evolved from a single cell.

Uh, no. We don't study rejected theories except to mention that they are incorrect. Unless Ms. Mulligan is suggesting medical schools should have to explore the theory that disease is caused by bad air? Should science classes have to teach alternatives to atomic theory? No, of course not.

And what's with this fascination with "proof," anyway? It's something that's come up in a couple of the previous yokel letters. Science doesn't deal in proof; it deals in evidence. You want proof, go study mathematics.

• CA040. Fairness demands evolution and creation be given equal time.
• CA041. Teach the controversy.

By the way, where did that cell come from? And it cannot be proved that God created the world. They both take faith to believe. The creation story has been around for at least 6,000 years. How long has the theory of evolution been around? As for me, I choose God.

People, please, repeat after me: evolution is not abiogenesis. Or for those of you that don't know words not found in your hymnals, evolution has to do with how life changed on this planet, not where it came from. I guess these people fixate on this point since, in their creation story, everything was created in its current form, and so they don't see any difference between the history of life and the beginning of life.

You know what else has been around for a long time? The four elements. And guess what? It's wrong. It's the product of a time where people were ignorant about the world and how it worked. With the limited information they had at the time, it might not have been a crazy idea, but that doesn't mean it was right.

• CB050. Abiogenesis is speculative without evidence.
• CB090. Evolution is baseless without a theory of abiogenesis.
• CA612. Evolution requires as much faith as creationism.

Yeesh, I'm not even sure why I bother. As the quote goes, you can't argue someone out of a position they didn't argue themselves into.

Previous yokels:

• Local yokel disproves evolution?
• Another local yokel
• The third yokel's the charm

The third yokel's the charm

I had enough fun poking fun at the first two creationist yokels that wrote in to the News-Gazette, I thought I'd wrap up by looking at the letter from the third. This one is by Dan Yagow of Champaign:

Can a Christian accept evolution as fact? Can we believe human existence evolved from lower forms of life? Many say it is possible, but I see conflict. If a Christian accepts evolution, then what purpose or credibility does the Bible serve us?

One thing that's interesting about this line of "argument" is that it focuses entirely on human evolution. But evolution isn't just about how H. sapiens arose, it's about every species on the planet, from the towering dinosaurs to the bacteria that live all around us. They're every bit as evolved as we are. In the creationist mind, humans are special, dammit. We're not one of those dirty monkeys!

Notice the argument implicit in his last statement: if evolution is true, then the Bible is of no use. But that's not really an argument, is it? It's like saying that if the Earth isn't the center of the universe, then we're not special in the eyes of God, therefore the Earth is fixed in space and everything revolves around it.

• CH182. The Bible is influential.

A Christian follows Christ, claiming him to be holy and one with God the Creator... [snip irrelevant Bible quotes] If we embrace evolution, it's impossible to give God the credit he deserves. We would diminish his awesome power and exchange it for a faith in man's accomplishments.

Again, note the same implicit assumption as before. If evolution is true, my faith will be challenged, therefore evolution isn't true.

Why would evolution being true require awesome faith in man's accomplishments? It seems to me that if evolution were true, the credit belongs to all the billions of critters worldwide that crawled around in the muck and slime and dirt, from Tiktaalik to Archaeopteryx.

We would say that man's interpretation of how life originated makes more sense than the infallible intelligence of God. To claim that man evolved from lower forms of life does not fit with God's inerrant words.

In other words, "If it contradicts my interpretation of the Bible, it must not be true." A better excuse for intentional ignorance has never been spoken.

• CH100. The Bible says it; I believe it; that settles it.
• CH101. The Bible is inerrant.
• CH101.1. If part of the Bible is wrong, none of it can be trusted.

Consider this. There has been no scientific experiment that has successfully produced living cells from an arrangement of molecules evolution suggests.

Consider this. You haven't a freaking clue what you're talking about. Evolution doesn't say that a random arrangement of molecules got together to make a cell. Evolution isn't about the dawn of life. Even if God said "poof" and suddenly there was life on a barren Earth, evolution still could have caused that life to grow and develop into what we are now.

• CB010. The odds of life forming are incredibly small.
• CB010.2. First cells could not come together by chance.

The odds of it happening are remote. To believe that it can be done and that it occurred by accident over millions of years without any intelligence behind it would require immense faith.

Now wait a minute. We just went from "it couldn't happen" to "it couldn't happen without any intelligence behind it." So God-driven evolution is possible? Somehow I don't think that's what Mr. Yagow is saying.

• CA612. Evolution requires as much faith as creationism.

Again, we see that there's nothing new under the sun when it comes to creationist claims. Maybe evolution isn't true; otherwise, we'd expect to see their arguments (ahem) evolve to more persuasive forms.

A perfect storm of ignorance

Sigh. The creationists are at it again. It never ceases to astonish me that there are so many credulous and gullible people in this country. It seems to be getting worse, not better.

First, Chris Comer was fired from the Texas Education Agency for forwarding an email about an anti-intelligent design speech. She was the director of science curriculum and in charge of the science standards for Texas schools. "Coincidentally," those standards are up for review this year. The deputy commissioner that demanded her firing used to serve as an advisor to then-governor George W. Bush. Somehow, I'm not surprised. Again, I'm ashamed to be Texan.

A man writes in to the News-Gazette with a "disproof" of evolution that has nothing to do with evolution. Hint: if a disproof of one of the most accepted and evidence-supported theories in all of modern science fits on a 3x5 card and requires only an 8th grade education, there's probably something wrong with your argument.

There's actually a creationist wiki: CreationWiki. Unlike even Conservapedia, participation isn't open; you must first ask the site admins for permission. Believing in Godly creationism is a prerequisite; Hellbound atheists need not apply.

A Florida educator sends out an email asking creationists to fight the inclusion of evolution in Florida's educational standards. Unlike the Texas case, she receives only a reprimand.

Ugh, it's just so frustrating. The good news is that if you go look at the comment on Comey's firing at the Statesman article or at the Chronicle editorial, they are predominantly pro-evolution. The frustrating part is that the anti-science comments are full of the same stuff we've seen a thousand times before: evolution is just a theory, there are no transitional fossils, evolution isn't true because we don't know what came before the Big Bang. Geez, creationism hasn't had a new argument since about 1925.

I'm famous!

The Austin American-Statesman had an article a week or so ago about the evolution-related firing of Chris Comer, the science curriculum director of the Texas Education Agency. You haven't read my blog post on the subject because I haven't finished it yet.

My letter to the editor of the Statesman, however, was published. W00t! I am proud to join the ranks of cantankerous old bastards with too much time on their hands.

The Statesman publishes their Opinions page online as a blog, complete with a comments section, so you can read that I'm not welcome back in Texas. Sniff.

It's just another example of politics as tribalism that being pro-science and pro-evolution is the "liberal" position and the anti-science and pro-creationism position is "conservative."