Casey Luskin has one off the wrist

Creationists generally are an embarrassment but Casey Luskin is notably embarrassing because he's also a lawyer. Luskin works for the Discovery Institute, a "think tank" in Seattle devoted to propagating a species of creationism called "intelligent design." In fact the DI represents the best and brightest of "intelligent design theorists."

Several years ago, scientists discovered Tiktaalik roseae, a fossil fish whose physical characteristics are especially important to evolutionary biology because many of them are the same as tetrapods, or four-legged animals.

Tiktaalik is just the sort of so-called transitional creature that creationists are constantly demanding. Neil Shubin, one of the University of Chicago researchers who discovered the fossil in Canada, calls it a "fish with a wrist."

Behold Counselor Luskin, attempting to critique Prof. Shubin's description of some features of Tiktaalik's skeleton:

Shubin et al.: “The intermedium and ulnare of Tiktaalik have homologues to eponymous wrist bones of tetrapods with which they share similar positions and articular relations.” (Note: I have labeled the intermedium and ulnare of Tiktaalik in the diagram below.)

Translation: OK, then exactly which “wrist bones of tetrapods” are Tiktaalik’s bones homologous to? Shubin doesn’t say. This is a technical scientific paper, so a few corresponding “wrist bone”-names from tetrapods would seem appropriate. But Shubin never gives any.

Yes indeed, those wrist bone names would seem appropriate, wouldn't they, Counselor? To be technical and scientific.

Wild guess here but that's probably why Prof. Shubin used the word "eponymous," which means "having the same name as." So Shubin already told Casey Luskin the names of the tetrapod bones before Luskin even asked: the intermedium and the ulnare. And the eponymous Tiktaalik bones are ... the intermedium and the ulnare.

Welcome to the world of "intelligent design theory" scholarship.

No wonder they call them IDiots.

h/t Carl Zimmer.

Skepticism has been expressed

Andy Schlafly, spawn of Phyllis and founder of the hilarious homeschoolers' website Conservapedia, is demanding data from Richard Lenski, a professor of microbial ecology at Michigan State University who studies evolution in E. coli bacteria.

PZ Myers has Lenski's reply to Schlafly here. As is typical of creationist numbskulls, Schlafly is asking for information that is already contained in the research paper in question, and is demanding an explanation for a claim that Lenski never made.

Presumably Schlafly, in classic creationist fashion, is after something he can misinterpret and garble for his credulous audience of conservative Republicans and other assorted homeschooled dupes.

Here is an excerpt from the Conservapedia entry on kangaroos:

According to the origins theory model used by young earth creation scientists [sic], modern kangaroos are the descendants of the two founding members of the modern kangaroo baramin that were taken aboard Noah's Ark prior to the Great Flood. It has not yet been determined by baraminologists whether kangaroos form a holobaramin with the wallaby, tree-kangaroo, wallaroo, pademelon and quokka, or if all these species are in fact apobaraminic or polybaraminic.

After the Flood, these kangaroos bred from the Ark passengers migrated to Australia.

Nobody cares enough to demand from Schlafly the data underlying these claims, or else they already have it.

"Darwinism cannot explain gravity"

This is a placeholder for an interview between two of the most insipid morons on the planet, Glenn Beck and Ben Stein. It aired last night, but I think what's turning up at the link at the moment are older broadcasts, but the latest will be there soon enough, I'm sure.

Stein alleges that Richard Dawkins, whom Stein interviewed for his cinematic creationist propaganda piece, Expelled, claimed to have "dumbed down" his discussion with Stein because Stein is too stupid to comprehend the bigger picture. That seems about right.

At one point in the most recent interview, Stein mocks a non-god believer for his skepticism that life continues after death yet moments later, in claiming that German doctors prescribe massive doses of barbiturates for those wishing to take their own lives (exactly what this has to do with evolutionary biology is anybody's guess), Stein says, 'What if the pill taker is just having a bad day and regrets his decision? Because by then, he's dead and it's all over.'

Don't watch any of it unless you can stand forfeiting a few dozen IQ points (which is to say, viewers who would take this pair of complete and utter ignoramuses seriously, can't).

And yes, Ben Stein actually does criticize "Darwinism" for not being able to explain gravity. Nor can it — or a fish — ride a bicycle.

Monday Night Mailbag

An anonymous reader writes: "You should get caught up in your knowledge of human origin. May I suggest that you visit the New Creation Science Museum in Ohio? One of their directors was a top evolution scientist that finally openly admitted the flaws of the theory. Perhaps, you could also be open minded."

Dear Anonymous, Petersburg, KY isn't anywhere near the top of my list of places to visit before I die and I doubt I could be persuaded to patronize the said "museum." Not without the assistance of organic hallucinogens, at any rate. Besides, I've already seen everything they've got a hundred times or more. But thanks just the same.

The Creation Museum is the stillborn brainchild of a supercilious nincompoop from Australia called Ken Ham, who, amongst a miscellany of other slapsticks, insists the universe is 6,000 years old. Ken Ham makes you long for the days when they used to send the criminals to Australia.

But Ken Ham is at least consistent. He thinks every word in the Bible is literally true, and that if even one word of the Bible isn't literally true, then not one other word of the Bible is literally true either. It's a compelling logic for millions of Americans, it is said. It's also an extravagantly risible fallacy, but never mind.

Apparently it would also crush Ken Ham's otherwise indomitable Faith to learn that the sun didn't "stand still" in the sky, pi is greater than three, or the mustard plant does not bear the smallest of seeds.

Ken Ham claims that if you add up the generations of the Old Testament (which include a number of mythic heroes and longsuffering heroines alleged to have lived for several hundred years) then you arrive at the Biblically correct age of the universe.

W3 is a star formation region in the constellation Perseus (a mere) 7,500 light years from Earth. A light year is the distance it takes light to travel in one year at about 59 million feet per minute. If the universe is only 6,000 years old, then the light from W3 wouldn't have reached us yet, and we couldn't see it. Yet, there it is.

So much for Ken Ham. But still, hundreds of thousands of dupes flock to his Kentucky carnival. That would be two feet every minute, in P.T. Barnumese, albeit slower than the speed of light, or even the short bus in third gear on its way to the Creation Museum.

Here's the manner of rigorously scientific installation you'll encounter at "the creationist Disneyland":

A male teenager is shown sitting at a computer looking at internet pornography and a female teenager speaks with Planned Parenthood about having an abortion; both acts are blamed on their belief that the Earth is "millions of years" old. The climax of the tour is the life of Jesus Christ, with a three-dimensional depiction of the crucifixion.

Let's hope they got that much right. By the way, why is it that they never seem to tire of killing him? We get it; enough already.

While the godless may — and not a few do — point and laugh, professional theologians are genuinely concerned:

The Rev. Mendle Adams, pastor of St. Peter's United Church of Christ in Cincinnati, said, "My brothers and sisters in the faith who embrace [the creationist] understanding call into question the whole Christian concept" and "make us a laughingstock." Roman Catholic theologian John Haught [said] it will cause an "impoverishment" of religion." Michael Patrick Leahy, editor of the magazine Christian Faith and Reason, says that by replacing the scientific method with biblical literalism, the museum undermines the credibility of all Christians and makes it easy to represent Christians as irrational.

I wouldn't go that far, but a subset for certain includes at least Ken Ham and his nitwit apostles. Anyway, they present their own selves as irrational. There are a few comical tours of the Creation Museum online. These two are pretty funny, as well as lavishly illustrated:

Incest, child abuse feature at Creation Museum — BlueGrassRoots
Not just your average load of horseshit — John Scalzi / Whatever

Creationist sentenced to Turkish prison

Today Harun Yahya, tomorrow William A. Dembski.

Already got Kent Hovind.

Ken Miller rips some Expelled

Despite these [numerous other] falsehoods, by far the film's most outlandish misrepresentation is its linkage of Darwin with the Holocaust. A concentration camp tour guide tells [Ben] Stein that the Nazis were practicing "Darwinism," and that's that. Never mind those belt buckles proclaiming Gott mit uns (God is with us), the toxic anti-Semitism of Martin Luther, the ghettoes and murderous pogroms in Christian Europe centuries before Darwin's birth. No matter. It's all the fault of evolution.

Stein, Mathis are fatuous, lying idiots

Creationist Thread of the Week

"Hey, Sal, it isn't 1859 anymore."

Long (350+ comments), but hella worth it.

ACLU sides with creationists 60% of the time

Scientific American's editor-in-chief interviews Mark Mathis, the jackanapes in charge of judger of top models Ben Stein's latest rickety "intelligent design" (translation: creationism in a cheap tuxedo) vehicle, Expelled.

I'm not in the mood to wallow in creationist idiocy at the moment, especially with the Schubert string quintet occupying the sound system; maybe later. In the meantime, the footnote at the SCIAM webpage is good for a laugh.

Demonstrating yet again how creationists never weary of regurgitating the same old viscous and thoroughly debunked drivel, Mathis mumbles that Kitzmiller v. Dover Area Sch. Dist., the currently definitive Establishment of Religion Clause manhandling* of intelligent design "theory," is comprised of 92% ACLU memoranda, briefs, and "findings of facts," as we say.

Even if it were true — which it isn't — it's not much of a criticism but rather a tribute to the ACLU's stellar efforts. What in the hell does Mathis think plaintiffs file facts and arguments with the court for? So the judge can paper his archaeopteryxcage with them?

Mathis. Just admit it, you're peddling religion. Which is fine. Peddle and lie away. It's a free country. But we would like to keep at least one area of human enquiry and endeavor free from your hobgoblins and leprechauns, and that is science. You can have everything else.

Now go ye and get a real job.

* The fine product of a conservative Republican, Dubya-installed judge named John E. Jones, III, which memorably added "breathtaking inanity" to the lexicon of perfect descriptions both for creationists and their -ism, and contains the strong suggestion that several Bible-fearing creationist witnesses at trial, er, bore false witness under oath.

New penis in Journal-Sentinel controversy

Recently, we endured the unseemly spectacle of a cadre of self-righteous conservatives, trolling the internets looking for ways to be religiously offended and finding one in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's banner advertisements touting an antipodean variety show called "Puppetry of the Penis."

The penis, according to reliable sources, is a popular and versatile body part with a mind of its own, found on slightly less than half of all humans (and occasionally in the other half, or so I've been told).

Notorious Milwaukee Marxist-Leninist Jay Bullock provides more details in the course of his strenuous defense of the free market rights of the venerable Miramar Theatre in this here blog post. (Sixty-two comments and counting, some of which are [unintentionally] hilarious.)

Then, this morning, as I conducted my daily consultation with the J-S's weather page — because it's easier than unbolting the opaque, bulletproof shutters behind which I ply my grisly trade — I found not just an advert for a theater production but an actual penis: the walking, talking, top model-judging prepuce Ben Stein, who's reportedly lent his considerable gravitas and scientific expertise to the forthcoming documentary exposé, Expelled.

You might have to refresh the page a few times to view the penis but if it takes more than three hours to produce the penis, consult a population geneticist.

Coincidentally, my good friend Michael Mathias of Pundit Nation fame sent me this link, according to which even the reviewers at Faux News pronounce Expelled an unmitigated piece of crap.*

For much, much more on Expelled, please visit Prof. PZ Myers's wildly successful blog, Pharyngula. Myers, along with his friend and Oxford don Richard Dawkins, are in the "film" but Myers was physically barred from attending its premiere. Just as comically, Prof. Dawkins, the militant atheist's militant atheist, was granted entry unscathed.

* "[Ben Stein] is either completely nuts or so avaricious that he’s abandoned all good sense to make a buck." — Roger Friedman.

"Teach the (penis) controversy."

See also Expelled Exposed.

Creationism's "powerful new weapon"

And soon to be dramatically revealed as comedian and judge of top fashion models* Ben Stein. It's hard to tell whether the quoted description is serious or not, let alone obtain a confirmable measurement of monogenic resistance betwixt cheek and tongue.

* In one segment, the dumbest model proved smarter than Ben Stein.

PZ Myers expelled from Expelled

Unbelievable.

"A bad film in every possible way ... A spectacular own goal."
— Richard Dawkins

Beware the IDiots of March

The religiously tinged evolution-questioning theory of Intelligent Design could more easily be brought up in public-school science classrooms under a proposed "academic freedom" legislation being pushed by conservative lawmakers.

A leading voice for the Intelligent Design movement acknowledged as much Wednesday by saying that the theory constitutes "scientific information," which the bill expressly and repeatedly says teachers should present in questioning and criticizing evolution without fear of persecution.

The remarks by Casey Luskin, an attorney with the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, were made during a press conference with actor-columnist-speechwriter-gameshow host [-IDiot] Ben Stein, who's exhibiting a documentary in support of the legislation.

Read the complete article in the Miami Herald.

As the mighty Wesley Elsberry correctly observes,

The only reason the Discovery Institute makes a big deal about not "mandating" instruction in “intelligent design” creationism (IDC) is that a law doing so could be challenged immediately without waiting for it to actually affect a classroom. * * *

The falsely so-called "academic freedom" bills aim to maximize the proportion of teachers that will participate in the Discovery Institute miseducation scheme and to extend the strategy to also recruit children into being as disruptive as possible whenever evolutionary science is a topic in a classroom.

Sneaky bastards they are.

Creationist post of the week

Jonathan Wells is seriously one of the leading proponents of "intelligent design theory" (ID), which is just a fancy term for creationism. In other words, he's about as good as they've got (with all due respect to noted population geneticist Ann Coulter).

Wells, who is a veritable fountain of disingenuous inanity and nonsense, wrote something especially ridiculous about his great Moonie bugaboo, evolution, the other day. And Larry Moran, a professor at the University of Toronto, has all the details, complete with all the relevant links, right here.

I'm not particularly fond of the epithet "IDiots," but if there was ever an instance that truly merited its justified and suitable application, this is unquestionably that instance.

While the ID lexicon contains a number of other fancy-sounding expressions such as "specified complexity," "explanatory filter," and so forth, evidently it doesn't allow for "irreducible embarrassment."

Knock knock.

Who's there?
Florida Orange.
Florida Orange who?
Florida, Orange you glad for creationist buffoons?

Let's not even get into his closing remarks, trying to compare evolution to trucks full of poultry and garbage colliding, and spontaneously fusing maggots and turkeys to produce the school board. * * *

I'm perfectly comfortable with the idea that I'm a distant relative of every creeping, crawling, blooming, squirming organism on the planet, but I do have to admit to some discomfort at being related to Mr Dallas Ellis. ~ PZM

The Sunshine State? Literally. Figuratively, not so much.

Calling Dr. Moe, Dr. Larry, Dr. Gibbs

I found this rather comical document (.pdf; 6 pgs.) via Greg Laden's blog. Laden is a biologist/anthropologist at the University of Minnesota who frequently discusses the evolution/creation "controversy." The document contains a letter and memorandum addressed to the "Florida Board of Science Education" (there is no such thing as the "Florida Board of Science Education"; it's the Florida State Board of Education).

The FSBoE is currently in the process of reviewing its science standards which is, predictably, engendering all sorts of nonsense on the part of determined creationists.

The letter and memo were composed by David C. Gibbs, III, a Florida attorney with the Christian Law Association, an outfit dedicated to providing counsel to "Christians facing legal difficulties for practicing the Biblical faith." Emphasis added — I'm not sure what that means, exactly. Likely something to do with cries of persecution.

Claiming to be concerned about "scientific accuracy," Atty. Gibbs describes evolution as a "worldview" and a "belief system," and asks that the FSBoE accord his memo "considerable weight." The letter is on Atty. Gibbs's law firm's stationery, and it suggests that a number of the State science benchmarks (curriculum requirements) may violate the First Amendment's Establishment Clause which, as Atty. Gibbs puts it, "does not permit the government to either promote or inhibit religion ... [or] to express hostility to religion."

Atty. Gibbs clearly has at least two religions in mind: evolution and Christianity. At least the latter really is a religion.

After a number of amusing demonstrations of the fact that he thinks the singular form of "species" is "specie" (it's also "species"), Atty. Gibbs reserves his greatest (and weirdest) consternation for the following statement from the proposed science standards: "Evolution is the fundamental concept underlying all biology and is supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence." That essentially prosaic observation really sets Atty. Gibbs off:

This unscientific conclusory statement, devoid of underlying evidence, moves Florida's science standards outside the realm of traditional science and enters, instead, into the discipline of philosophy as the construct for defining a worldview. A worldview addresses, not only the field of science, but the philosophical purview of how to identify the four components of reality.

Buh? The what?

The problem here is that Florida's science standards now force upon students only one of several possible interpretive worldview systems without providing any philosophical instruction as to how students may evaluate and distinguish between the various worldviews that inform and identify the four components of reality---god, life, matter and time.

You gotta love that, criticizing a completely bland statement of fact for being "devoid of underlying evidence" by suddenly introducing "god" as a "component of reality," an assertion utterly "devoid of underlying evidence," to coin a phrase. He then goes on to claim the standards portray evolution as a "faith-based belief system."

All of this, of course, is typically addlepated creationist blather. But what piqued my curiosity was Atty. Gibbs's description of himself as "Dr. Gibbs" at the outset of the memo.

According to Gibbs's bio here, he has a bachelor's degree from Jerry Falwell U. and a J.D. from Duke. Also, he was on Fox & Friends.

While lawyers have "Juris Doctor" degrees, they don't normally go around calling themselves "Doctor," at least when they don't also possess medical degrees or other academic doctorates. It's misleading, and a number of State bar associations discourage it, or even disallow it.

The Florida Bar, for example, permits the use of "Juris Doctor" on business cards and stationery, but retreats to a more circumspect position even where the term is used on other forms of advertising, which the Bar says must be evaluated for context on a case by case basis.

Atty. Gibbs's memo is beyond mere commercial advertising, however, and especially given the subject matter, evolutionary biology, whose notable practitioners do in fact hold the relevant Ph.D.s, Gibbs's employment of the honorific is highly suspect, not to mention potentially ironic: at one point, Atty. Gibbs criticizes the science benchmarks for being dishonest.

Unfortunately, this instance wouldn't be surprising in the least, since creationists generally have a habit of attempting to inflate their credentials. Consider Kent Hovind, one of the most ridiculous creationists of all time, who went about demanding to be addressed as "Dr. Hovind" for years based on a purported Ph.D. obtained from a "university" housed in a Colorado bungalow. Hovind himself is currently housed at a federal prison in South Carolina after being convicted of creatively interpreting the tax code.

Forgive me for being suspicious of just about everything creationists get themselves up to, but I'm really curious as to how Atty. Gibbs comes to pass himself off as "Dr. Gibbs" in this context.

Equal time for Quatzequatl

A number of skirmishes are erupting in Florida over that State's science standards, as elected local school board officials again parade their profound ignorance of biology. The State department of education is in the process of revising its approach to evolution, and the neanderthals are up in arms.

Incensed that the State standards might correctly present evolution as "the fundamental concept underlying all of biology [which] is supported in multiple forms of scientific evidence,” a unanimous gaggle of Taylor County yokels has resolved to revise the foregoing "so that evolution is presented as one of several theories as to how the universe was formed."

The State standards, according to these yokels, must be presented "through a fair and balanced approach, an approach that does not unfairly exclude other theories as to the creation of the universe."

Evolution has nothing to do with either "how the universe was formed" or "the creation of the universe." It deals with phenomena occurring after the inception of life on Earth, however that came about. Biology is the study of life; that's what the word means.

Evolution, the yokels contend, must "not [be] presented as fact, but as one of several theories." Except it is a fact. What sort of people demand that facts be presented as something other than facts? Morans, that's who. Go USA, indeed.

Unfortunately, the local press isn't faring much better. Writing in the Miami Herald this morning, a scribe reports and opines upon the shenanigans at a Taylor County school board meeting as follows:

Boca Raton physician Tom Hall warned of the legal costs incurred by a quixotic, unconstitutional attempt by the Dover, Penn., School Board to teach faith-based Intelligent Design. But a Miami paramedic warned that taking God out of the classroom has led to immorality and violence. He related the beating death last week of a toddler by a 12-year-old in Lauderhill to the teaching of evolution. An unfathomable leap in logic on one side of the divide. An understandable leap of faith on the other.

Buh? Which is which? It's hardly unfathomable that Florida will become the latest venue for litigation should these yokels prevail. It's guaranteed. And it's not understandable that teaching biology caused a baby murder. It's absolutely ridiculous.

Or was attributing the baby murder to science class an unfathomable leap in logic? If so, then I agree, insofar as it relates to any form of logic whatsoever. But that leaves the prediction of the inevitable lawsuits a "leap of faith." Hardly. Furthermore, it's neither unfathomable nor a leap of faith to predict that the creationists will lose. They always do. And rightly so, albeit generally at great expense to taxpayers. However, I'm not complaining about attorneys' fees.

The writer continues:

Some who doubted Darwin suggested a populist solution. Teach all theories of creation. Let the kids decide. As if biology were as speculative as philosophy.

Interestingly, "speculative" was amended to "subjective," after I left this comment: "'As speculative as religion,' you mean. Logic, for example, is not speculative." But philosophy isn't necessarily subjective either. Logic, which undergirds both philosophy and science, has rules that are practically laws of physics.

But I don't disagree with the writer's insinuation that a "populist" approach to teaching science is an absurdity. Whether it's "let the kids decide" or "let the elected creationist yokels decide," the outcome is identical: institutionalized ignorance. In fact, children have more sense than creationist school board members.

On the other hand, maybe it's time that the ACLU, the NCSE, and others held off being concerned about science standards in one of these outback communities, and allow the latter to go ahead and teach all "theories" of creation in their biology classes. Now that would be entertaining as all hell.

Ann Coulter's Gormless

Yesterday I had the distinctly unpleasant misfortune of catching a few moments of one Ms. Ann Coulter yelping at a Fox News Network hair helmet (John Gibson [link NSFW!!!1] I think it was), babbling something about Mike Huckabee, and how he is the liberals' favorite Evangelical Christian or some such similarly supercilious assclownery.

It was alleged that Ann Coulter wrote a book, a full third of which dealt with questions of biological evolution. I recall hearing something about this. And I recall hearing that Ann Coulter had enlisted the likes of William Dembski and Michael Behe, the numeri uno e due crackpots of the so-called “intelligent design movement” to tutor her in the discipline.

So I was a bit surprised yesterday to hear Ann Coulter aver that nobody had even addressed the “arguments” she'd made with respect to biological evolution in said tome. “Godless,” I think it was called. Or maybe “Slander” (which always struck me as more of an FDA warning label than the actual title of the book). Anyway ...

Now I know that the Milwaukee Public Library maintains electronic records of my borrowings, and I'd sooner have the federales find the Unabomber Manifesto, the Qur'an, and The Anarchist's Cookbook therein or, for that matter, my mother discover a CD-R loaded with bukkake .mpegs after my death than anyone unearth evidence that I'd actually cracked the spine of an Ann Coulter product.

Sure enough, a stout yeoman by the name of James Downard had already done the heavy lifting, and the results of his considerable labors are published in three lengthy parts at TalkReason.org:

Secondary Addiction: Part 1
Secondary Addiction: Part 2
Secondary Addiction: Part 3

Nope, nobody had ever even addressed her “arguments.” If anyone has a set of cojones so risibly colossal as to get all up on national teevee and make that statement, it's Ann Coulter.

Downard's verdict:

Her sashay into matters scientific delightfully illustrates a common theme in sloppy thinking. Coulter is a secondary citation addict [and she is a lawyer, may gog help us all].

Like a scholarly lemming, she compulsively reads inaccurate antievolutionary sources and accepts them on account of their reinforcement of what she wants to be true. It never once occurs to her that she might find it prudent to check on the reliability of those sources before accompanying them off the cliff, either by investigating critical takes on those sources, or by actually inspecting the original technical literature directly.

Downard does both, and the results are enlightening and frequently hilarious, as all the finest creationist smackdowns are.

LOLcreationists

Found via Pharyngula, a series of succinct "Successories" spoofs poking fun at the so-called intelligent design* movement, e.g.:



Collect the whole set at Banninated.

In addition to the obvious japes about creationists' failure to perform peer-reviewed science and their fatuous attempted connections between the coleopteraphile Charles Darwin and mass murder and genocide, a more subtle message inheres concerning a gentleman called Trofim Lysenko, chieftain of Soviet biology under Stalin.

Lysenko notoriously rejected Mendelian genetics in favor of hocus pocus and Stalin's favor, and ultimately failure and disgrace. Current biology, on the other hand, embraces a combination of Darwin's and Gregor Mendel's ideas, hence the designation, “Modern Synthesis,” which, ironically, was initially championed by a Russian-born emigré to the U.S., Theodosius Dobzhansky.

While contemporaries, Darwin and Mendel were unaware of one another's work. Dobzhansky made the justly famous observation that, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."

* "The Designer of intelligent design is, ultimately, the Christian God." — William A. Dembski, betraying his secular purpose.

Bad week for creationists

Looks like the “intelligent design movement” picked the wrong week to continue sniffing glue.

First, PBS brought its oft-celebrated dissembling modus operandi to the national airwaves. Then, “intelligent design theorist” Michael Behe was forced to admit that one of the central claims in his book, The Edge of Evolution, is demonstrably false.

Now, one of the other “intelligent design” top dogs, mathematician and theologian William Dembski, has been caught misappropriating a computer generated video, evidently the copyrighted product of Harvard University and a corporation, XVIVO.

The Behe episode is especially entertaining, as he was originally exposed by a 24-year-old female graduate student named Abbie Smith. In fact, Behe's initial response was to blow her off, for being just that, the classic ad hominem fallacy or, in this case, the argument against the woman.

But a fellow named Ian Musgrave took up cudgels on Ms. Smith's behalf and initiated a series of open letters, to which Behe responded at his Amazon.com blog. The entire exchange is archived here. It's a lot of reading, is quite technical, and refers to a lot of side links (all worthwhile), but it's instructive, to say the least.

Ultimately, Behe doesn't have the balls to concede the point to Ms. Smith, who made it in the first place, but rather to Musgrave.

Smith, who is rapidly becoming a cause célèbre among the biological sciences crowd, maintains a blog called ERV (short for endogenous retrovirus, since she's a researcher of HIV/AIDS). She also provides laymen's translations of her original Behe critique here and here.

In fact it was Ms. Smith who busted Dembski on the Harvard/XVIVO video as well.

That bit of unintelligent redesigning is both shameless and shameful, given the ID movement's agenda to retool scientific methodology by insisting that it allow for the Hand of Jesus in the construction of cellular organelles.

Dembski is traveling about, like a circus clown or monkey, charging several grand a pop to deliver lectures backed by a video swiped from Harvard researchers, from which he's removed the biology and added subtitles describing cells as “lilliputian machinery factories” or some such nonsense.

He's also appended to it an absurdist narration, which Abbie Smith describes as sounding like South Park's Big Gay Al.

PZ Myers of Pharyngula has a bit more on Dembski's opéra bouffe here. It might be nice to think any of this was surprising, but it isn't. It's typical. And, you can count on the glue sniffing to continue.

A creationist "Senior Fellow"

As noted below, Seattle's Discovery Institute is a “think tank” from whence much of the “intelligent design theory” issues, generally in the form of political rhetoric and pronouncements grounded in an allegedly objective morality. Science? Not so much.

Now comes news (nice picture) the DI has named as a “Senior Fellow” the noted population geneticist Michael Medved. Mr. Medved's contributions to evolutionary biology are legion, not least of which are his review of Jurassic Park and his recent apologetic for American slavery, published by ClownHall.com.

As a Senior Fellow, Mr. Medved outranks such luminaries of biology as the mere Fellow Nancy Pearcey, whose scientific credentials include “graduate work at the Institute for Christian Studies” in Toronto, which corresponds roughly to authoring a scholarly paper on the behavioral psychology of leprechauns.

Apparently the DI has now discharged all pretense to credibility, and Mr. Medved's appointment to Senior Fellow serves only to confirm that the intelligent design movement truly is nothing more than “creationism in a cheap tuxedo,” a set of fallacious assertions against evolution and a dyspeptic, polemical rejection of the fact that our species is as much a part of nature as any other creature.

It is, as another of the DI's Senior Fellows acknowledged during the Dover trial, every bit as scientific as a horoscope and nothing more than a ploy to smuggle religion into the one remaining area of human endeavor where it clearly has no place.

Its advocates shouldn't be granted an inch of concession.