Wheee! Kelly Hollowell graces us with another excrescence from the chitinous cloaca of the mindless, reflexive reactionary hive mind labeled "WorldNetDaily".

A favorite liberal maxim is: "The mind is like a parachute. It only functions when open." So why are libs so zealously opposed to any idea that runs counter to evolution?

What a spectacularly mind-bending opening! Setting aside the fact that I had no idea this maxim was particularly favored by liberals (she's trying to understand, people. We'll cut her some slack and let the first four words of her essay pass), I will at least agree that open-mindedness is a good thing. But, umm, if she is saying that open-mindedness is a liberal value, what does that say about conservatives? That they refuse to pull the ripcord when skydiving?

The second sentence has the same deep conceptual problem. I don't normally associate valuing good science with the liberal/conservative label. I would imagine intelligent conservatives ought to be getting a bit irate with these weird theocratic extremists who have hijacked their political designation and are now using it to associate stupidity with conservativism.

But OK, if Dr Hollowell insists, let's run with it. Yes! Liberals are the party of good science, empiricism, and reason! Conservatives are sad little know-nothings who prefer obsolete, falsified superstitions over evidence.

A trial opened Monday over a warning sticker placed in suburban Atlanta biology textbooks that says evolution is "a theory, not a fact." The sticker reads, "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."

As you might expect, opponents insist that the warning label violates the separation of church and state by promoting religion. They insist this is a backdoor attempt to reintroduce Biblical creation into the classroom.

Why, yes. Because it is. There are no scientific reasons for a bunch of politicians to decide they know biology better than textbook authors and to start slapping warning stickers on books. Seriously, if a group of left-wing extremist tried to stick this warning on all American history textbooks, wouldn't Kelly Hollowell be a little bit suspicious of their motives?

This textbook contains material on the Constitution. That document was written by a cabal of wealthy, slaveholding white males who wanted to perpetuate an elitist class structure on our culture. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.

I think Hollowell would be a bit more than suspicious—she'd be shrieking and whirling like a top. (Want more stickers? Have fun.)

And the creationist warning label is just so stupid. The first sentence is a no-brainer; if evolution isn't in a biology textbook, well, it's not a biology textbook. And the last sentence ought to be true for every textbook—are there certain books which the Republicans believe ought to be approached with closed mind, skimmed carelessly, and accepted without question? Is that their ideal of education?

It's that middle sentence that is the real problem. It's wrong. It misuses the language of science in such a way to illustrate that the authors of the warning simply don't understand science.

Here, I have to redo my absurdist American history warning sticker to show why.

This textbook contains material on the Constitution. Since we do not have a time-machine or videotapes of the deliberations of the founding fathers, it is not possible to analyze the document historically. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.

Anyone with even a passing knowledge of history would know right away that there is no such restriction requiring direct visual observation of an event by a living student of the subject to study history. Historians everywhere would rise up en masse and ask, "What kind of goddamn morons do we have in the state house?"

It's the same story with scientists. We're all rising up and wondering what kind of goddamn morons think calling evolution "a theory, not a fact" necessitates calling it into question. It's like criticizing history for studying things that occurred in the past, or math for using premises, or philosophy for talking about how we think without knowing how we think.

In science, theories are good things. Saying that we have a theory of something means that we have a solid explanation for it with buckets of evidence to back it up. A theory is a whacking great tool we can use to chop into evidence and figure out how everything works, and it's also a great tool for taking scattered bits of evidence and assembling them into interesting and useful ideas. One of our chief criticisms of Intelligent Design creationism and old school creationism is that they have no theory of origins at all, and even studiously avoid saying anything about it.

The other bizarre implication of this sticker is that somehow, raw facts are better than theory. Try to picture a science textbook with nothing but "facts".

"Here is the sequence of hemoglobin. Here is the sequence of the sickle-cell form of hemoglobin. Moving right along, here are some measurements of beak sizes in Geospiza fortis, correlated with average rainfall by year."

Data is crucial, and biology has volumes of it supporting evolution, and it gets presented in these same biology textbooks that the creationists are criticizing…but theory is the framework for understanding. Biologists aren't out collecting postage stamps. They are building ideas that integrate and explain the "facts".

By the way, in addition to lacking any theory, the Intelligent Design creationists also lack any supporting data for whatever the hell it is they are proposing to substitute for evolutionary biology. So why are these politicians paying any attention to them?

But back to Hollowell…Dr Hollowell, who calls herself a "scientist". Strangely enough, Kelly Hollowell, Ph.D., also has a peculiar view of scientific theory. She defines it for us.

A truly scientific theory, by definition, must be testable by repeatable observations. That means a scientific theory can only attempt to explain processes and events that are presently occurring repeatedly and are within our observation. In other words, a scientific theory is empirical in nature.

Hmmm. There goes geology, cosmology, big chunks of astronomy, theoretical physics, paleontology, etc., etc., etc. I am totally baffled by a so-called scientist who claims that science cannot by definition tells us about anything that has happened in the past.

I also don't see why evolutionary biology fails to meet her requirement. Evolution is an ongoing process that is studied in extant organisms, and even our study of the past involves repeated measurements (geologists and physicists will also insist that they are studying ongoing principles, too, I suppose…). Is she seriously trying to suggest that biological theories lack an empirical foundation?

I'm shaking my head with disbelief at this point in her essay, and then she pulls an illustrative example out of her butt, and I'm dumbfounded. Here's the true secret weapon of creationists: say something so incredibly stupid that your critics are all stunned into silence.

Assume the fossils of a one-toed, two-toed and three-toed horse were to be shown to a panel of evolutionists and intelligent design advocates. An evolutionist might conclude that the fossils support descent-by-modification of a species consistent with their worldview. By contrast, intelligent design advocates might conclude with equal validity that the fossils do not provide evidence of a transitional animal but rather demonstrate a rule of extinction that persists in the world today at 20,000 species per year. In either case, the evidence remains unchanged—able to support but unable to prove either explanatory model as accurate.

Umm, I suppose if we had so little data that all we could do is show three examples of discrete morphological features, Hollowell would have a case. That's actually the situation we were in two centuries ago, and then, yes, smart people could oppose the idea of the transformation of species. Now, though, we don't have three: we have thousands of fossils in the horse lineage. We aren't just counting toes, but looking at other morphological features. We have biogeographical and chronological data to go with them. We understand some of the principles of the genetic basis of morphological change. The two worldviews are no longer equally valid: you have to be deeply ignorant or seriously nuts to accept the creationist view anymore. And somebody please tell Dr Hollowell that science doesn't deal in proof: what we have at this point is a body of evidence that is not compatible with her creationist hypothesis, but does favor evolutionary explanations.

I'm also trying to puzzle out her weird "rule of extinction…at 20,000 species per year." So, like, a million years ago there were an additional 20 billion species on the planet? And the Cambrian was populated with an additional 10 trillion? Sounds crowded.