For a while, at least, some of the kids in Florida have a shot at a non-stupid science education.
Archive for the 'Intelligent Design' Category
I posted this in links yesterday, but I’m putting it here because I thought it was funny and worth more notice. I really hate these intelligent design (creationism) people and the way they continue to try and pervert science and education. Expelled and Ben Stein are even worse because they try to link Nazism and Fascism to science and evolution. Their tactics, of course, are right out of the Goebbels playbook.
The guys who did this video have a cool Stephen Colbert puppet you should check out. (via)
This is a great encapsulation of the intelligent design theory and the people who support it. Appearing on the view, evolution denier Sherri Shepherd explains how she doesn’t know whether the world is round or not.
Can we tell these people that the sun is habitable and send them all there? (via)
This time it’s with Ben Stein and Creationism (aka Intelligent Design). Oh boy.
Teach the controversy, damn it.
And when I say childlike, I don’t mean it in the way that so much of childhood is good. I mean the bad way.
In the last three decades, studies of children show that they quickly pick up an intuitive understanding of how the world works, say the researchers. For example, babies know that objects fall and are real and solid (even though physics experiments show they are mostly made of atoms containing empty space.) “These intuitions give children a head start when it comes to understanding and learning about objects and people. However, they also sometimes clash with scientific discoveries about the nature of the world, making certain scientific facts difficult to learn,” the review says.
“To be scientifically educated means you have to pick up a lot of counter-intuitive beliefs,” says Bloom, whose research centers on how children develop their ideas about the world. It’s perfectly rational for people to rely on intuitive beliefs about the world, i.e. that objects fall down, rather than learning Einstein’s theory of gravity, he adds. “Life is too short.” The conflict comes when intuition conflicts with scientific evidence.
A pro-intelligent design Republican is called on his crap in the Minnesota legislature.
Unsurprisingly, the intelligent design (creationism) advocate comes out on the short end of the stick. (via)
Clip from Randy Olson’s film, Flock Of Dodos, about the fight between evolutionists and intelligent design (creationism) advocates. At the end of the clip, Michael Behe, one of the leaders of the movement to indoctrinate children with intelligent design theology admits that he doesn’t really care about the impact of his crusade because his own children don’t go to public school. What a guy. (via)
Who’s going to tell the “intelligent designer”?
Genes Show T. Rex Related to Chickens
An adolescent female Tyrannosaurus rex died 68 million years ago, but its bones still contain intact soft tissue, including the oldest preserved proteins ever found, scientists say.
And a comparison of the protein’s chemical structure to a slew of other species showed an evolutionary link between T. rex and chickens, bolstering the idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs.
The collagen proteins were found hidden inside the leg bone of the T. rex fossil, according to two studies published in the April 13 issue of the journal Science.
The scene of the crime is Southern Methodist U.
Intelligent design has a fundamental problem: Its proponents refuse to understand who and what they are. Hence, they have created an awkward situation for Southern Methodist University, where a conference called “Darwin vs. Design” is scheduled for McFarlin Auditorium on April 13 and 14. Some scientists at the university have questioned, justifiably, whether this is an appropriate place for a gathering as intellectually confused as this one.
Those who favor intelligent design seek to prove that evolution is impossible because the complexity of human systems is beyond the capacity of the Darwinian process to accomplish. Hence, humankind must have been created by a supreme designer.
Yet they have not toppled Darwin or his theory – and show no signs of coming close to that.
Their mistake is presenting themselves as a science and Charles Darwin as their natural enemy when, in fact, they are arguing from a religious base.
Yet another chink in the tinfoil armor of that mystical nonsense.
Some actual journalism being practiced here on the “intelligent design” issue.
Few Biologists but Many Evangelicals Sign Anti-Evolution Petition
In the recent skirmishes over evolution, advocates who have pushed to dilute its teaching have regularly pointed to a petition signed by 514 scientists and engineers.
The petition, they say, is proof that scientific doubt over evolution persists. But random interviews with 20 people who signed the petition and a review of the public statements of more than a dozen others suggest that many are evangelical Christians, whose doubts about evolution grew out of their religious beliefs. And even the petition’s sponsor, the Discovery Institute in Seattle, says that only a quarter of the signers are biologists, whose field is most directly concerned with evolution. The other signers include 76 chemists, 75 engineers, 63 physicists and 24 professors of medicine.
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