VICTORY FOR ZIMSCIENCE!

( Kent Hovind, founder of Creation Science Evangelism and Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola, was found guilty of 58 counts, including failure to pay $845,000 in employee-related taxes. He faces a maximum of 288 years in prison. )

There, in a nutshell, is the sort of thinking that drove me from agnosticism to atheism. Apparently, Steve Irwin deserved his death.. for believing in evolution.

(Nod to wave_cannon for pointing this out)

Edit:

In addition, Germaine Greer's also spouted off with some inanity, claiming "The animal world has finally taken its revenge". Which is as ridiculous as Ham's position - the animal world doesn't have an ulterior motive, or the capacity to plan.

USA ALL THE WAY.... to the corner with the dunce cap.

Turns out that the only nation in the world *less* accepting of evolution than the US.. is Turkey in this poll.

And yet on the other end of the "SCIENCE!" scale, fossilised *Pre-Cambrian* embryoes.

And here's something bizarro - Studies of cancers in dogs show how cancers can evolve into parasitic viruses in a way. This has great implications for evolutionary science, and biomed.

( David Attenborough talks about creationism - full context is below the cut )
"My response," he says, "is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that's going to make him blind. And [I ask them], 'Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy'."
( Read more... )

Seriously.

Go here and watch one of the clips for "Dance Like A Monkey".

Or I will NEVER talk to you again!

OHIO VS MICHIGAN.

Yes, less than a year after getting their asses handed to them at Dover, PA, the creationists"intelligent design" "theorists" are pushing to "teach the controversy" about evolution..

.. along with that of global warming. Granted, there's far more to and fro over global warming in the climatology wings, but there's a general consensus we are still facing a problem, the real issue is whether it's natural, or we're accelerating it*.

But they're implying there's no such thing..

"Lousy Smarch weather materialistic science!"




* I think the latter.

This is awesome.

Ross is not the only creationist who seems to be obsessed with flying saucers. As we have already seen, Dr Norman Geisler testified at the Arkansas trial that flying sacuers come from the Devil, an opinion echoed by "Dr" Kent Hovind. In my years of online discussions with creationists, I have had three different creationists, at different times, tell me in all apparent seriousness that flying saucers are actually time machines that are used by atheistic scientists to travelback into the past and plant fake fossils as evidence for evolution.


And I, for one, cannot WAIT to be given both the keys to my time-travelling UFO, and the means to make fossils. First thing I'm gonna make is some sort of trilobite man.

Apparently, according to Answers In Genesis, the "leading" creationist organisation..

Evolution supporters cannot support Earth Day. Because it's contradictory for us to want to preserve the plant.

I'm actually sitting here laughing out loud.

Science Fair Failure. This sort of thing is what I fear encountering in my teaching career. As I raised in my essay for Science,

What is more, there is a tendency for outcomes-based education to overcomplicate a situation, where time and resources are already short. The Western Australian Curriculum for Science reads

“While students in a classroom will have much in common, they also have a range of different science-related experience and world views that should be respected and accommodated. This means that teachers need to identify students’ current ideas and understandings so that they can design activities that build on them.”

The problem with this is that if students have a worldview that is at odds with established mainstream science, should a teacher be designing activities that require class time simply to accommodate these views? Again, concepts like creationism, “intelligent design”, and even the idea of a geocentric universe still exist in global society, and now with increasing pressures from religious groups for acceptance into classes. Is a teacher required to spend a lesson explaining that some cultures believe that the Sun revolves around a fixed Earth (a view still held by some (The Earth Is Not Moving, n.d.), even when all of modern scientific endeavor is aware that this is entirely not the case?

Heh heh heh heh.

Via mightyodinn, language creationism!

Actually a parody, but clever.

The development of a vaccine for avian influenza is totally dependent upon an understanding of natural selection, molecular genetics and evolution. This is in conflict with the theory of intelligent design and thus provides a marvelous opportunity for proponents of that concept to stand up for their beliefs and refuse to be inoculated. They would also be doing their part to make sure that there is enough vaccine for the rest of us.

Richard G. Fried, M.D.
Kimberton, Pa.


(via Pharyngula.)

A critique of "intelligent design"'s inability to actually produce any science, via Pharyngula.

And, for those of you interested in the "debate" over evolution, witness what happens when science attempts to combat someone who not only fails to reearch the mainstream arguments he's trying to demolish, but goes about it from a position totally lacking in any scientific grounding.

I've given the link a title derived from a quote from the guy:

""So, if not from dinosaurs, where did mammals come from? ""


Also, more fun, but this time starting with radioisotope dating compared to apples decaying, and somehow ending up with avian evolution. Wheeee fun.

Awesome.

I was walking home for lunch, and the little church group centre across the road was open. Table out with fliers, etc.

I've now got a big wad of bullshit creationist literature to ream out :D

Wieland, Ham, Batten, Parker.. it's like the Who's Who of Creationist Kooks.

And it was all FREE! COMEDY GOLD!

Aheh.

http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/science_stamps.html

Rather than write a lengthy article on Bush's statements over "intelligent design" in education, I'll simply let this thread EXPRESS MY FEELINGS.

Via Panda's Thumb:

Report 1 from the 2005 Creation Mega Conference

and Report 2.

You know it's going to be hard for creationists to really support the claim "It's science too! We just examine the evidence and get a different conclusion" when a key speaker says

Do not let evidence fuel your appreciation of God. Let your appreciation of God influence your view of the evidence.

That's a direct quote. They've *admitting* they're letting their religious views directly bias any scientific conclusion. In between ID supporters admitting they've not even read the curriculums (curricula?) that they're against, and that they strongly believe there is religious evidence for teaching creationismintelligent design in schools, you've got the YECs screaming out this sort of stuff in the background, jamming even more spokes into the wheels of their own bicycle.

This would be hilarious, if it wasn't such a serious issue affecting education of future scientists.