Yet another reason for Israel to become the 51st of the United States of America

For they too have, among the top echelons of their government, "scientists" in charge of public education who do not accept the evidence for evolution or global warming! Wow:

The Education Ministry's chief scientist sparked a furor among environmental activists and scholars Saturday with remarks questioning the reliability of evolution and global warming theory. The comments from Dr. Gavriel Avital, the latest in a series of written and oral statements casting doubts on the fundamental tenets of modern science, led several environmentalists to call for his dismissal.

"If textbooks state explicitly that human beings' origins are to be found with monkeys, I would want students to pursue and grapple with other opinions. There are many people who don't believe the evolutionary account is correct," Avital said yesterday.

"There are those for whom evolution is a religion and are unwilling to hear about anything else. Part of my responsibility, in light of my position with the Education Ministry, is to examine textbooks and curricula," he said. "If they keep writing in textbooks that the Earth is growing warmer because of carbon dioxide emissions, I'll insist that isn't the case."

via haaretz.com

Now isn't that further evidence of the strong cultural ties between the US and Israel? Doesn't it lend support to the long-argued case for making Israel the 51st state of the US? Further evidence of a shared anathema to science comes courtesy of the NCSE, suggesting that this anti-scientific rot is not limited to the political upper echelons of Israeli government, but may be rather widespread among the general populace as well:

Unfortunately, Avital's views on evolution may be shared by a sizable segment of the Israeli public. A 2006 survey of public opinion in Israel by the Samuel Neaman Institute found that "a minority of only 28% accepts the scientific theory of the evolution [sic], while the majority (59%) believes that man was created by god," while according to the 2000 International Social Survey Programme, a total of 54% of Israeli respondents described "Human beings developed from earlier species of animals" as definitely or probably true, placing Israel ahead of the United States (46%, in last place) for its public acceptance of evolution, but behind twenty-three of the twenty-seven countries included in the report.

And I'm (sadly) gratified to find a shared brotherhood with my biologist colleagues in Israel who find themselves rather unexpectedly having to bat down this kind of inanity.

Posted via web from a leaf warbler's gleanings

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Teach the Controversy - sure... but which one?!

via atheistcartoons.com

Keep pushing teachers to "teach the controversy" - but you may not like what you get when they do! And this teacher didn't even hit upon my ancestral religion!!

Posted via web from a leaf warbler's gleanings

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Genie Scott on Evolution Versus Creationism

via academicearth.org

This is the second lecture of the course on Darwin's Legacy offered at Stanford in 2008. I posted the first lecture earlier today.

Posted via web from a leaf warbler's gleanings

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Got a creationist in your face about evolution? There's an app for that!

If you ever argue with creationists, you know that the Index to Creationist Claims is an incredibly useful site, as is the book version, The Counter Creationism Handbook. Life just got a little sweeter: it is now available as a smartphone app for the blackberry and iPhone (just get into the App Store and search for 'creationist'). Well, sweeter for us; creationists will find themselves a little more readily refuted now.

via Pharyngula

Here's an iTunes link to the Creationist Claims Index app, which at 99 cents might just be the thing I should recommend to my students as I begin teaching Intro Bio (Bio 1B) next week. I just hope I don't have to keep turning to it myself too often. I also wonder if this might have helped last year when I had a creationist grad student in my very lab?! I do have and recommend the paperback version, but having it handy one a phone might have helped others in the lab who got into head-scratchingly odd conversations with that student.

Thanks PZ, and the creators of this app!

Posted via web from a leaf warbler's gleanings

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A biology graduate student reacts to Eugenie Scott

Student post by Kelli Upton, in response to Eugenie Scott’s recent talk at Fresno State.

            Dr. Scott, although I was previously unaware, is a highly regarded advocate of evolution and for keeping intelligent design out of schools.  As the director of the National Center for Science Education, she has mastered handling interrogation from opposing sides of her argument. This was evident when members of the community confronted her on issues after the seminar. She only slipped a few times as far as I’m concerned, with being too condescending. Even though a self-described young-earth creationist applauded Dr. Scott for her continuum from creation to evolution, I thought that this continuum had the sole purpose of tying intelligent design proponents with ridiculous movements such as “flat earthers.” I believe that arguments made from creationists like Michael Behe etc., including arguments of irreducible complexity, are helpful in that they force us to investigate further into what the scientific community has already accepted as a reality. They also give us tools to provide better evidence against intelligent design. The dichotomy that Dr. Scott suggests we so desperately need to reject is only made more distinct when scientists are demeaning towards the other side. The way evolution is taught by some on this campus is exactly as such. In actuality, it would do a young scientist good to learn creationist/intelligent design points of view so that we are able to have constructive conversations with one another and not alienate people from science. Although this information should be pursued outside of the classroom, it would no doubt be helpful when inevitable debate pops up during class discussion.  Overall, I believe Dr. Scott did a nice job of conveying this and I think the take home message was that scientists cannot account for the supernatural and therefore only the natural world should be considered when studying science. I was enthralled with her presentation and it was a real treat to have her on campus. I look forward to reading some of her work.

Posted via email from Darwin's Bulldogs

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A Christian student reflects on Eugenie Scott's talk about Evolution/Creationism

What an overwhelming response we had at Eugenie Scott's wonderful lecture last week on "Why the fuss about Darwin and Evolution?"! Thank you, Genie, for such a great talk, for inspiring and recharging those of us in the thick of the evolution/creationism culture war in the Central Valley, for showing us how to address these issues in a graceful, polite, and inclusive manner. And thank you, all of you who came to campus that evening and overflowed the Satellite Student Union. For those that couldn't come that evening, you can still enjoy the talk, in parts via videos posted on Scott Hatfield's blog, and also a full-length podcast of the slides with audio that I'm working on (as soon as classes are out of the way this week!). More on that soon.

For now I want to share an essay written by one of my students who attended the talk, identifies himself as a Christian, and has, starting from a religious background that made him suspicious of the E-word, come around to accept the evidence for evolution, while retaining his faith. I thank Eric York for allowing me to share his synopsis of and reflections on Genie's talk here. Having a standing-room audience is one thing - and a great thing for sure - but a personal testimony from a student who has made some real progress in their thinking because of what we teach, that is the best kind of response we teachers can hope for. Note that I am posting his essay as is, although I have (and you can guess where) some quibbles with a couple of the things he says in his synopsis. You should also read Scott's summary of the talk, which has a bit more on the core-fringe model of knowledge. If you attended the talk, feel free to share your reaction in the comments section below. Here's Eric (continued below the fold):

“Why all the fuss about Evolution?” –Eugenie C. Scott

Eugenie Scott provided a lecture outlining the basics of evolution, followed by a detailed synopsis of the evolution vs. creationism debate. She started off the debate by outlining the different facets of evolution, and the various sciences it is deeply entangled with. These included astronomy, biology, geology, and anthropology, which are each considered evolutionary sciences. The main distinction is that evolution doesn’t necessarily address the origins of life; rather it attempts to explain how organisms have gotten to their present state, via descent with modification.

One of the complaints about evolution is that humans don’t like the idea of us being “descended” from monkeys. However, Scott cleared this up by stating that we aren’t descended from monkeys or apes. She compared this to a family tree. I descended from my dad, and my dad descended from my grandpa. My grandpa also had another son, who in turn had a son, who is consequently my cousin. I am not descended from my cousin, but we do share a recent common ancestor. This parallels the concept of descent with modification.

Scott brought up a book called, “A Consumer’s Guide to Pseudoscience.” This claims that the core ideas of science that are well tested, such as gravity and orbit, are at the center. Around the core ideas are the frontier portions, which include the current experiments and hypotheses that sciences are actively testing. Finally, surrounding the frontier is the fringe. This discusses the why and philosophical aspects of science, and includes ideas such as natural selection and perpetual motion.

Scott spent a significant portion of the time discussing the debate between creationism and evolution. She suggested that instead of looking at both as a dichotomy in which you have to choose one over the other, look at them as a continuum. This continuum starts with conservative Christians that take the Bible literally. This includes those people who, as Scott stated, base their belief on the written Word that simultaneously makes the statement that the earth is flat. This argument is based on Scripture that pictures the earth as circular. Arguments against this claim are that the old Hebrew language didn’t have an adequate term for the word spherical, or that by saying the earth was circular was merely describing its general properties and not its absolute shape. This is only one of the many arguments between evolutionists and the conservative Christians who take the Bible literally.

From the literal interpretations of the Bible comes a transition into young earth creationists, who believe the Earth is only 10,000 years old. They believe that the Earth has only recently been created, and accept that if evolution does occur, it must act much more rapidly than currently accepted. Next are the old earth creationists that believe in creationism, but accept an older earth with the possibility of evolution. This is based on the interpretation of Genesis that the seven days of creation aren’t actually 24 hour days. This is based on the Scripture that says, “To the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day.” By this reasoning, the seven days of creation could in fact imply thousands, millions, or even billions of years. Under this claim, evolution could be a feasible method that a creator used to derive the extant organisms that are alive today. This is followed by materialists, who don’t believe in creationism, and are skeptical of evolution. They are basically an in between category and don’t go one way or the other. Finally are the fundamental evolutionists. They are the ones that explicitly believe in evolution and the direct descent with modification.

Altogether I felt this was a very interesting and enlightening discussion. I personally am a Christian and take the Bible as inspired by God, which leaves several aspects up to interpretation. However, I am also taking evolution with Dr. Crosbie, and through this have learned the mechanisms, consequences, and impacts of evolution. Consequently I have come to believe that evolution via natural selection and descent with modification is in fact responsible for how organisms have changed over time to get to their present state. Although my belief is in contradiction to most views held by Christians, I personally think that science and creationism can in fact go hand in hand, and don’t have to be mutually exclusive of one another. As mentioned, I have slowly reached this conclusion by taking my evolution class, along with analyzing past and present research. I felt that it was appropriate to include as part of my analysis for this seminar the influence that Scott had on confirming my ideals, and expounding upon the inclusiveness in my own thinking of creationism and evolution.

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Eugenie Scott @ Fresno State on Dec 2: "Why the fuss about Darwin and Evolution?"

I am really excited to invite you to an evening with Dr. Eugenie Scott on the Fresno State campus next Wednesday, Dec 2, 2009! An evolutionary biologist by trade, Dr. Scott is the Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, and as such, has been at the forefront of the culture war around the teaching of evolution in the US for over a quarter century. Along the way she has testified on behalf of evolution and science at numerous venues, most famously at the Dover trial a couple of years ago, and has authored several valuable books on the subject, including Evolution vs. Creationism and Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools (with Glenn Branch). I am therefore thrilled that she accepted my invitation to come down into the valley to talk to us because here, as you may know, we happen to be in something of a hotbed for that culture war as well, although not nearly as hot as some other parts of the country (no attempts to mess with public school science curricula at least).

Dr. Scott will give a public lecture on "Why the fuss about Darwin and Evolution" at the campus' Satellite Student Union (maps) at 7:30 PM on Dec 2, 2009, as part of a new Evolutionary Biology lecture series hosted by the campus Consortium for Evolutionary Studies (see poster below for the various sponsors of this particular talk). We are bracing for a good turnout since this will be one of the most prominent speakers to come here and speak on behalf of teaching evolution and science in the classrooms - and we plan to bring some more over the coming year.

I know we got off to a bit of a late start in the Darwin Bicentennial celebrations this year, but we hope to keep the momentum going into the future as we try to light a few more candles in the dark in this lovely valley.

Click below the fold for the poster announcing this lecture - feel free to download and share it as widely as you like! And if you are on Facebook, check out the event page to rsvp and invite others, and become a fan of the Biology Department page while you are at it. I hope you will join us for this talk next week.

Why the fuss about Darwin and Evolution? - a lecture by Eugenie Scott at Fresno State

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Colbert to do Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins this week!

What fun! The Colbert Report will have Richard Dawkins on tonight, followed tomorrow by Francis Collins, the new director of the NIH! I wonder if he might ask Dawkins some of these questions? Maybe not, although Colbert, despite his avowed Catholicism and gut-centric persona, seems much more rational, skeptical, and pro-science than Bill Maher. He certainly showcases more scientists on the Report than any other late-night talk show! For examples, look no further than Matt Tobey's post on the Comedy Central Blog last week featuring this collection of Colbert's Most Intelligently Designed Creationism Moments:

Did humans evolve from monkeys over the course of hundreds of millennia or were we created in the Garden of Eden 6000 years ago? It's hard for me to say, to be honest. On the one hand, like Eve, I find apples very tempting, especially when they're in fried pies. On the other hand, I really enjoy flinging my poop. Hopefully these creationism-themed Colbert Report clips can help me make up my mind.

Check out all the videos there - but let me share here, below the fold, both Collins' and Dawkins' previous appearance on the show:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Francis Collins
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Michael Moore

Let's see how he fares on his return visit on thursday, now that he has his own upgrade to head the NIH!

And here's Dawkins hawking his previous book on the Colbert Report three years ago:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Richard Dawkins
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Michael Moore

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When Hollywood distributors are exposed to Darwin's thoughts, who knows what could happen?!

Its not clear yet if and how the Darwin biopic "Creation" may ever get distributed in the US, even as it readies for a UK release next week. There was some scuttlebutt yesterday when the NCSE tweeted a Bay Area NBC affiliate station's report that their parent company was in a "bidding war" over the US distribution rights! And the juicy tidbit in that story was that apparently Mel Gibson (he who managed to get his graphic movie about a guy being flogged and tortured for hours shown in churches all over the US, without the help of any major Hollywood distributors!) had actually helped finance this movie (him being Catholic, and Catholics saying they don't have a problem with Evolution - that's how some people tried to explain it)! Wow - would that have blown some fuses in the heads of the church-going fans of Gibson's Passion in the American heartlands!! But, alas, that won't happen, because that news story has been retracted/replaced, with this caveat:

The original article confused the film's distributor, Icon Distribution, with Mel Gibson owed [sic] Icon Productions. The companies use the exact same logo and indeed Icon Distribution was once owned by Gibson. It is no longer. We regret the error.

Huh?! Alrighty then... and so American journalism continues its reverse evolution - but that disease apparently afflicts the British press as well, for the very same Telegraph that lamented the lack of a US distributor for this movie had, two days earlier, published a truly egregious piece of "balanced" reporting about evolution vs. creationism! As for the movie itself, I still haven't seen any official word on how that NBC affiliate's parent company is doing in that "bidding war", nor if indeed there is any such war at all. In fact, their own latest story has no mention of any bidding!! Scores of fans on the movie's Facebook page, meanwhile, are rallying around demanding it be shown here, but who knows if they constitute enough of a market for the bean counters weighing faith-based backlash vs. the box office appeal of a 19th century nerd wrestling with serious scientfic/philosophical issues! Last night, on another media outlet likely genetically linked to the Bay Area station, Rachel Maddow and Kent Jones had probably the funniest take on the saga:

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What does Open-mindedness really mean?

Many of us scientists are often accused of not being "open-minded" about a variety of "explanations" that others have come up with for a range of phenomena, real and imagined: from creationism to intelligent design, homeopathy to anti-vaccinationism, astrology to psychic phenomena... the list goes on! Its a real stumper, this accusation, because how can we be conducting science at all if our minds are closed to alternative hypotheses? It is more often the case that the accusers, whether purveyors of woo or merely gullible to it, haven't really thought through this notion of open-mindedness. This video should help clarify what it actually means, and why some of us practicing scientists are likely to dismiss some of these "alternatives" rather readily!

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God, Darwin, and the Culture Wars - Ethics Center Lecture

Today, at noon, the Ethics Center Lecture series @ CSU-Fresno will plunge into the culture wars with the following lecture:

March 4: Leonard Olson, God, Darwin, and the Culture Wars

12-12:50 PM in the Alice Peters Auditorium (in the University Business Center)

Most observers would agree that there is something like a cultural war taking place in America today, especially over the question of the origins of life on Earth. Is the choice as simple as one between evolution or creation? Extremists on both sides frame the issue poorly. As a result, a reasonable middle position is ignored. This talk will examine the middle and criticize the extremes.

Leonard Olson is a Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at CSU-Fresno, where he has been teaching ethics courses since 1986. A native of the Central Valley, he was educated at San Francisco State and U. C. Davis.

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In which an evolutionary biologist pwns the Discovery Institute!

This is just brilliant! Nick Gotelli, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Vermont got an invitation to debate someone from the Discovery Institute, that well-funded mouthpiece of the ID/creationist movement (read the invite in its entirety here). Many of us get these kinds of invitations from time to time - if not from the DI, then from various local surrogates. Sometimes even students will wonder why we don't debate them more often. My usual response is to decline, politely, because there is nothing really to "debate" (not on their terms) between evolution (well-tested science) and ID (creationism in disguise), and because scientific questions are never resolved through verbal debates anyway. Sometimes some of us will get sucked into engaging in these things, and the results are never particularly useful. But they keep coming back, especially in places like the central valley, and when we decline, they start claiming victory because biologists won't debate them because we're "afraid of losing", and spinning conspiracy theories (and even convincing some otherwise smart students) like in that Ben Stein movie. Its a despairing job to have to keep batting these nutjobs away. Now Prof. Gotelli has shown us how its done! Here's his response to the DI invitation:

Dear Dr. Klinghoffer:

Thank you for this interesting and courteous invitation to set up a debate about evolution and creationism (which includes its more recent relabeling as "intelligent design") with a speaker from the Discovery Institute. Your invitation is quite surprising, given the sneering coverage of my recent newspaper editorial that you yourself posted on the Discovery Institute's website:

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/02/

However, this kind of two-faced dishonesty is what the scientific community has come to expect from the creationists.

Academic debate on controversial topics is fine, but those topics need to have a basis in reality. I would not invite a creationist to a debate on campus for the same reason that I would not invite an alchemist, a flat-earther, an astrologer, a psychic, or a Holocaust revisionist. These ideas have no scientific support, and that is why they have all been discarded by credible scholars. Creationism is in the same category.

Instead of spending time on public debates, why aren't members of your institute publishing their ideas in prominent peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Nature, or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences? If you want to be taken seriously by scientists and scholars, this is where you need to publish. Academic publishing is an intellectual free market, where ideas that have credible empirical support are carefully and thoroughly explored. Nothing could possibly be more exciting and electrifying to biology than scientific disproof of evolutionary theory or scientific proof of the existence of a god. That would be Nobel Prize winning work, and it would be eagerly published by any of the prominent mainstream journals.

"Conspiracy" is the predictable response by Ben Stein and the frustrated creationists. But conspiracy theories are a joke, because science places a high premium on intellectual honesty and on new empirical studies that overturn previously established principles. Creationism doesn't live up to these standards, so its proponents are relegated to the sidelines, publishing in books, blogs, websites, and obscure journals that don't maintain scientific standards.

Finally, isn't it sort of pathetic that your large, well-funded institute must scrape around, panhandling for a seminar invitation at a little university in northern New England? Practicing scientists receive frequent invitations to speak in science departments around the world, often on controversial and novel topics. If creationists actually published some legitimate science, they would receive such invitations as well.

So, I hope you understand why I am declining your offer. I will wait patiently to read about the work of creationists in the pages of Nature and Science. But until it appears there, it isn't science and doesn't merit an invitation.

In closing, I do want to thank you sincerely for this invitation and for your posting on the Discovery Institute Website. As an evolutionary biologist, I can't tell you what a badge of honor this is. My colleagues will be envious.

Sincerely yours,

Nick Gotelli

P.S. I hope you will forgive me if I do not respond to any further e-mails from you or from the Discovery Institute. This has been entertaining, but it interferes with my research and teaching.

[via Pharyngula: How to respond to requests to debate creationists]

PWNED!! I believe that's how the kids would describe this. And I'll have to ask Prof. Gotelli if we can use this letter as a template for any future invitations from creationists!

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Learning from the vapidity of creationists and Conservapedia

Here is an excellent example of how a creationist argument can still help us understand the scientific method! And it starts on a topic we've been discussing in class this week: Homology! Larry Hufford of Washington State University was preparing a lecture on homology, went googling for any new supporting material, stumbled upon the Conservapedia entry on homology, and ended up discussing their creationist claim in the classroom! And the result is something that should make creationists think twice about continuing to demand that biologists (real scientists) give equal time to creationism in the classroom. Its a risky proposition (for creationists) if a competent biologist takes creationism on in such a thoughtful discussion because it is so easy to show why creationism is not a science! Do you want us to keep doing that over and over again? I suppose there is some educational benefit to that - but I'd rather use our class time to explore the real wealth of insights from evolutionary biology, than keep flogging the intellectually dead horse of creationism (or Conservapedia). It is nice therefore to have Hufford's article which lays out the argument with regards to one creationist "claim" about the invalidity of homology. It is worth your while to read the whole story, which starts by outlining what the homology argument is and how a scientific explanation of it can be constructed:

Homology is basically a proposal of equivalence. If we say that the arm of a human, the arm of a chimpanzee, and the wing of a bird are homologous, then we are hypothesizing that these corresponding structures are somehow equivalent. The somehow of that equivalence is what a biologist wants to explore and to explain. In a facile manner, I could say that homology of the arm of a human, the arm of a chimpanzee, and the wing of a bird is explained because they are all modifications of a corresponding structure in their most recent common ancestor, which is to say that we have homology because of evolution.

A less facile explanation would require us to explain how common position within bodies and possible similarities in development, including perhaps similar genes being expressed to control development, of humans, chimpanzees, and birds lead to a hypothesis of homology. We might also be expected to explain how intermediate structures in the lineages ‘between’ humans and chimpanzees as well as between them and birds help to demonstrate the transformations that could have occurred since their divergence from a common ancestor. Formulating this set of explanations to propose an hypothesis of homology is sometimes called a ‘homology argument.’

After laying out that excellent explanation, Hufford went looking for examples:

As I wrote my lecture on Monday, I wanted to look for new examples of homology arguments—so I googled ‘homology argument.’ One of the top links that Google returned in the search was for an entry in the Conservapedia, which subtitles itself as “The Trustworthy Encyclopedia.” The link took me to the Conservapedia entry for homology, which it defined as “. . . the theory that macroevolutionary relationships can be demonstrated by the similarity in the anatomy and physiology of different animals.” While I don’t regard that definition as accurate, it’s neither egregious nor exactly untruthful.

It was the section below the Conservapedia’s definition of homology that caught my attention—it was labelled “Invalidity of the Homology Argument.” How could the homology argument be invalid, I wondered? After all, a homology argument is a method of comparing and reasoning rather than an assertion of truth.

The explanation offered by the Conservapedia for the invalidity of the homology argument is straightforward: “Creation scientists claim that similarity can just as readily be explained by a common Designer as common ancestry, and that homology is therefore not evidence that can be used to support the evolutionary view.”

So a "claim" from creationists is sufficient to dismiss out of hand a logically constructed and repeatedly well tested scientific argument? And they claim that scientists are the ones acting in an authoritarian manner when keeping creationism out of the classroom? Interesting. Anyway, the above "claim" then led to a useful class discussion on what separates scientists and creationists:

We discussed in class a critical difference between a scientist and a creationist. Creationists think they have THE answer from the beginning, whereas a scientist has only a question in the beginning. While a creationist may accept absurd dogma and simplistic dismissals of rational ideas, a scientist looks for a way to test ideas. That willingness to test and to infer from the results of those tests the best explanations distinguishes the scientific method from the creationist method. [A great untruth of the Conservapedia’s entry on homology was its claim that there are creation ‘scientists’—creationists offer religious explanations and dismiss the results of repeatable scientific studies rather than using a scientific method.]

Once this very basic difference between the two approaches is recognized, is there really any reason to keep discussing all the other creationist arguments in the classroom?

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Darwin gets a belated apology from one church?

That would be the Church of England, which yesterday posted this apology to Charles Darwin on the new Darwin 2009 section of their website:

Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practice the old virtues of 'faith seeking understanding' and hope that makes some amends. But the struggle for your reputation is not over yet, and the problem is not just your religious opponents but those who falsely claim you in support of their own interests. Good religion needs to work constructively with good science – and I dare to suggest that the opposite may be true as well.

Maybe you're wondering: who cares what the stuffy old Church of England says? Or, what's the point of apologizing to a man dead for over a century and a quarter? Does the Archbishop of Canterbury even have much resonance with the religious public in the US, which is the real battleground in the anti-Darwin wars these days? Whatever you think of this apology - at least good old Charlie got off lightly compared to some earlier men of science caught in other church crosshairs - like, say, Galileo (who suffered during the latter parts of his life, and got his apology only recently). I guess if you believe in eternal life, you might think it is never too late to atone, so there is perhaps some logical consistency.

But wait, the essay containing the above statement, by Revd. Dr. Malcolm Brown, is not actually an official apology from the CofE, according to a spokesman, but just his personal view! So much for that, then...

Nevertheless, its worth noting that the CofE Darwin 2009 website is apparently sincere in trying to set the record straight, as seen especially in the Darwin and faith section, which uses Darwin's own words to show how he gradually lost faith despite his earlier religious training. I especially like this quote:

“Formerly I was led by feelings such as those just referred to (although I do not think that the religious sentiment was ever strongly developed in me) to the firm conviction of the existence of God, and of the immortality of the soul. In my Journal I wrote that whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest: ‘It is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind.’ I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind.”

The man sure knew how to turn a phrase, didn't he?

And its good to see the church avoid sugar-coating, or quote mining to suppress that last sentence, let alone claiming some ridiculous death-bed conversion! That's something, I'd say; and its nice to have a website from such a major church to point to the next time some devout christian comes around in distress over Darwin or some religion-vs.-science conflict!

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Yet another controversy to teach in our classrooms

And this one is a good analogy to the creationist arguments

The theory of childhood, also known as child origin, is a damnable, loathsome and indefensible lie. How can any thinking person suppose all humans used to be babies once? There is no development path from babies to adults, no transitional forms between these two species. Show me even one baby with the head of a grown man on his body. Can you? No? Not even a bearded toddler? No adults with unfused skullbones, outside unfortunate disorders? Not even a tiny little newborn girl suddenly sprouting a respectable bosom? You can't find them, because they don't exist. There isn't a single transitional form between children and adults, and you will never find one because the theory simply is an unscientific lie.

The development of children has been well-researched in our six-month study following a sample of one thousand children and adults of various ages. We have conclusively proven that while there are minor changes in features like height and body fat, and replacement of deciduous teeth with permanent teeth, incontravertibly still every creature in the study that started out as a child had only slightly more adult features at the end of the observation period than at its beginning. Children and adults are separate kinds and there will never be sufficient changes to change one into the other. We reject any evidence from longer-term studies as we believe the laws of physics have changed within the last year.

To claim people come from children is demeaning and morally degrading. We have observed how children behave. If we acted like small children we'd all be demanding and impatient, and we'd be cheating, lying, and stealing from each other all the time. If the theory of childhood were true there would be no morality, and with no morality to build one on, no society. Childhood is a wicked lie used by charlatans to justify evils such as public schools.

There is no consensus on the theory of childhood in the scientific community. We should teach the controversy. Our children will be served well to learn that the prospect of them becoming adults is merely a theoretical idea. Many children come from families that do not subscribe to the theory of childhood, and they could be disturbed if the theory were taught as fact.

[From metaquotes: ari_rahikkala makes a compelling arguement...]

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Why I'm glad I don't teach high school biology in this country!

Because I don't have to worry about adhering to some "science standard" set by the whims of uneducated but elected school-board members, rather than the well-established and thoroughly peer-reviewed knowledge accumulated by my scientist colleagues over the past century and a half since Darwin published his Origin! This story in the NYT over the weekend, about a Florida school teacher's struggle to teach Evolution properly in his classroom, is another reason why I respect educators like Mr. David Campbell, and my local friend Scott Hatfield. I'm not sure I'd have the patience or perseverance to keep at it if I was constantly being discouraged from mentioning the e-word by my bosses, challenged by ignorant parents who would rather have me re-affirm their kids' beliefs than teach them the best knowledge in science, and showed up by my own fellow biology teachers teaching creationism down the hall from my classroom!! I don't know how they do it, but these schoolteachers are real heroes of the embattled enlightenment in this country, and my hat is off to them. again. If it were me, I'd have given up long ago and headed back home to India, where this issue never came up throughout my education!

And those of you students taking my classes this semester, please do read the entire NYT article. And watch the accompanying video. I am aware that there are at least some high school biology teachers right here in the Fresno-Clovis school districts, and elsewhere in the central valley, who dance around California's science standards and avoid teaching evolution as much as they can. While I'm happy to provide remedial education if you suffered under such a teacher, I also hope such teachers didn't kill your scientific curiosity and critical thinking abilities entirely! You will certainly need to switch those on to make the most of my classes.

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Ken Miller and the missing links between radio and TV

So Miller's book tour brought him to the Colbert Report last night, following the more substantial Science Friday appearance last week:

I was underwhelmed by the Colbert interview, and that is mostly to do with the format of that particular show, and its the very short duration. Miller was good but seemed to rush through a number of things, so I don't know how regular viewers kept up. I recommend listening to the radio interview for a much better discussion. I'm not sure what to make of his comparing the ID/creationists to welfare moms - although it did allow Colbert the opportunity to claim victory! But why bring in the whole economic-conservative image of moms (driving cadillacs) living the high life on govt. handouts? Is this a way to "frame" the issue so that it resonates with conservatives? He made a similar comparison on the radio as well, but the argument seemed more fleshed out there (or at least less abrasive to a liberal like me). Likewise, comparing science to a free-market of ideas where ID has failed to compete, and directly appealing to Colbert's anti-government persona. I wonder if that actually works in convincing anyone on the right... but who better than Ken Miller to "frame" evolution to make it palatable to religious people?

Comparing the two interviews is a good illustration also of how much can go missing when one is forced to condense things for the typical sound-bite demands of TV, especially when faced with a loud talking-head host! And this wasn't even one of those right-wing blowhards on Fox News! If the medium is challenging even for someone as articulate and media-savvy as Ken Miller (winner of the Peabody), what hope do the rest of us scientists have of getting the word out in the mainstream media?

And one more annoyance last night was that the interview seemed unnecessarily short, for Colbert evidently had another 3 minutes available (following Miller), which he padded with REM performing "Hollow Man" - not live, but from their appearance on the show some months ago!! I'm mystified as to why they would do that, when other guests have been on (I think) for longer chats!

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Only a Theory: Ken Miller on Science Friday today

Here's something to look forward to on the radio today: evolutionary biologist (and devout Christian) Ken Miller will be interviewed on Science Friday, where we may also hear about his new book: Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul. If you manage to catch the live broadcast on your local NPR affiliate station or on the intertubes, you might even be able to ask him question! In any case, this should be an interesting conversation, which I hope to catch on my drive back from a field trip tomorrow morning:

Only a Theory (broadcast Friday, June 13th, 2008)

Once, there was the battle over whether the concept of evolution should be taught in public schools at all -- a fight remembered for the trial of high school teacher John Scopes in 1925. More recently, the terms of the debate shifted to whether the idea of 'intelligent design' needed to be taught alongside the scientific theory of evolution in the classroom. Now, the terms are shifting again. This summer, the Texas Board of Education is expected to consider whether biology classes should be required to include a discussion of the "strengths and weaknesses" evolutionary theory -- wording that proponents of teaching evolution say is code for creationist ideas. It's a significant question, as the curriculum and textbook-buying decisions of the state of Texas often end up affecting the books offered by publishers. In this segment, guest host Joe Palca talks with biology professor and textbook author Kenneth Miller about the fight to keep creationism out of public school science class. Teachers, find more information about using Science Friday as a classroom resource in the Kids' Connection.

And of course, if you miss the live broadcast, you can always catch the podcast (which is how I normally listen to Science Friday) or listen online.

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Permission to act like a monkey!

Nasir Sadeghi shares this video with the class.

here is a video for some laughs. this person uses obscene and irrational arguments to rationalize intelligent design, and thus blaming everything on SATAN. He decides to mock evolution by comparing it to "the evolution of a knife into a fork". this is a prime example of taking things out of context, and later using them in a matter to one's own advantage (in this case, it didn't really work, but it does give people all over the world something to point and laugh at). either way, hope you all enjoy this as much as i did!

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More from the other side: the origin of life

[Student post submitted by Sukh Kang]

Taken aback from the discussion we had in class about how to this day, after so much biological evidence, both on the micro and the macro level, there are people who still believe that evolution is a myth, and it simply does not exist! While searching for an interesting evolutionary article to write about, I came across this brief video clip, which argues that the organisms in this world did not descend from one common ancestor, but were rather created by an intelligent being for a purpose, and that there is a design to the universe! (Continues below...)

This video clip starts off by quoting Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, “The universe is precisely the properties we should expect. If there is at the bottom no design, no purpose, nothing but blind pitiless indifferences.” This is followed by a commentary from the general public on how they feel about evolution. After that begins the argument that Evolution simply did not occur and that there is far too much diversity and variation in organisms to tie them all back to one common ancestor.

What is interesting about this video is that most of the people or the speakers arguing against evolution are scientists, including a molecular biologist, a biochemist, and a microbiologist. To think that these people who have deeply studied biology and still don’t believe in evolution makes a great case for the con side. Other speakers include scientific Philosophers, a science author as well as an astronomer.

Some of the interesting points from the video include the Microbiologist mentioning that the more we get to learn about biology and life, the more problems Darwinism has. Another main point was that there is not the slightest chance of chemical evolutionary origin for even the simplest of cells in out bodies. The third main biological argument made is that the discovery of information bearing properties of DNA and RNA fundamentally challenges all of the existing materialistic theories to the origin of life. There is a mention that the theories of evolution and others alike will not be able to survive the biology of the 21st century, because they’re inconsistent.

The video was really catchy and made some bold claims to void the theory of evolution which was first presented by Charles Darwin. While it is very persuasive and has strong references, none of them really explain what the problem is with the Darwinian Theory and why it is becoming outdated in the 21st century. It is their personal educational experiences mixed with their beliefs and their assumptions. While it is in no way challenging to the accepted theory of evolution, I thought it was still very interesting to hear the other side, and contribute to the topic brought up in class today!

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