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Pirate modeIt's always good to have one of these around. Celebrate All Saint's Day! Reject all dogmatic iconography!
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Pharyngula has moved to http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
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Did they take it down? The link doesn't go through for me.
It was there 5 minutes ago for me (ie ~15:15 EST).
Interesting peek at the Other Side.
There was a '}' where no '}' should be. <a href="http://www.thomasmore.org/news.html?NewsID=374>Corrected link</a>.
The correct link is http://www.thomasmore.org/news.html?NewsID=374
Yes, it really does surprise me that they included the following statements from the exchange between Thompson and Haught:
"Let's say I have some bolts, and from them I make both a plane and a car. Yes, they have the same parts, but that doesn't mean the car came from the plane does it?"
"Uh, no," says Haught, pausing to consider what Thompson could be driving at.
Thompson pauses too, turns again to the jury box and smiles triumphantly. He concludes that it is therefore easy to see that it is only mere conjecture that humans and other primates share genes just because they share an evolutionary lineage.
The jury box of reporters and many courtroom spectators seem dumbfounded. How could Thompson so confidently reveal such a basic misunderstanding of the role of genomics in analyzing and confirming evolutionary relationships?
Bizarre :S
From that article on Thompson:
If you are nothing but an accident of nature, then nothing you do is dependent on objective truth
I invite him to take the "gravity test" of objective truth from a 15th floor window. It applies equally to theists and atheists.
"Let's say I have some bolts, and from them I make both a plane and a car. Yes, they have the same parts, but that doesn't mean the car came from the plane does it?"
No, Mr. Thompson, but couldn't one say that they both had a common ancestor--metal?
ID
"Last week a coalition representing 70,000 Australian scientists and teachers likened it to the flat-earth theory."
My estimation of the Aussies has just gone up - I had thought a majority had become born-agains.
If you are nothing but an accident of nature, then nothing you do is dependent on objective truth
My favorite response to this kind of garbage comes from Larry Lord (by way of Bob Mitchum):
"Baby, I don't care."
The point, of course, being that whether anything I do is "dependent on objective truth" is irrelevant for practical purposes.
Science doesn't care about the kind of "object truth" that Thompson is referring to, nor do I.
Let's get back to making the world a better place, starting with putting all these deadbeat "philosophers" to work.
From the article on Thompson:
He is arguing that no theory should be judged by its historical roots...
This I'm OK with. Ideas come from weird places. But they get to stay in the pool of live scientific ideas by proving their worth in certain kinds of ways -- say, pointing towards useful measurements, or explaining the phenomena better than the available alternatives.
However, this part:
"All scientific theories, including Darwinism, have religious implications," Thompson says. And the religious implication of Darwinism is atheism.
The second claims is simply untrue unless one has a very narrow definition of religion (which I suppose Thompson does). But, more importantly, from the point of view of science as science, it simply isn't relevant what the religious implications might be. That's a question theologists might take up, but it's not the business of science.
And honestly, if these folks are worked up about the religious implications of what kids are taught in school, they might have more to chew on with the glorious history of capitalism and American imperialism.
I'm just sayin' ...
My estimation of the Aussies has just gone up - I had thought a majority had become born-agains.
Where did you get that idea? For the most part we Aussies are pretty non-religious, at least in public. We view any politician trying to get into office while talking about what a good Christian they are with quite a bit of skepticism. Unfortunately some Churches like Hillsong have been growing in the past few years but they are still a smallish force.
So, what's the deal with Howard?
Too many foreign countries are allowing their bird flu to evolve and they are now an immanent danger to our American way of live. Terrists are encouraging this practise of evolution which is not found anywhere in the good book. Evolution is spreading like a scourge across the nations of the world, undermining our familes, causing death and destruction and bad for our business environment and American ingenuity. Birds are migrating into birds and a dangerous flu and we have to hold the line. Americans are mad. Foreign borders are invading us with evolution and no respect for unborn children and women. I support the medical community. It's hard work and I know. So today I will nominate Congress for seven billion dollars to defeat the spread of evolution into our land and stop the bird flu back where it started. I support a strict constructionalist reading of the good book and not taking education into your own hand and evolving new and evil means of bird flu every day.
I urge all Americans who support me in this task to halt the spread of this viorlent diesase which is undermining this good administration with lies. Contact your school board and churches, your pastries, priests and and elected officials and tell them you won't stand for this attack on your way of life and foreign invasion. Keep our borders safe. No more flues.
George W. Bush
The third worst job in science according to Popular Science?
Biology Teacher in Kansas!
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/806ffb24a5f27010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd/8.html
As I said some Churches like Hillsong have been growing and politicians like Howard are now appealing to them. Unlike America Howard doesn't campaign on his religious beliefs. I think he is a Baptist but I have never heard him mention it or make a bid deal of it. I don't have many kind things to say about him but at least he doesn't go around saying what a good christian he is and that is why we should vote for him.
Our Federal Education minister seems to be rather foolish at best. He said that parents should be able to choose whether they wanted to have their children taught ID in school. Those comments were the driving force behind the petition. He later backpedaled stating that ID was for religious or philosophy classes (which I don't think we have in Oz) after much criticism that ID wasn't science. The latest ID news here is that a principal of a prestigious private school said that ID would be taught in his science classes (or should be I can't recall and I can't find much by way of google news).
I don't have many kind things to say about him but at least he doesn't go around saying what a good christian he is and that is why we should vote for him.
Mr Beazley does (the federal opposition leader), not to mention Mr Costello. And remember all the fuss about Mr Latham being an agnostic?
My estimation of the Aussies has just gone up - I had thought a majority had become born-agains.
Where did you get that idea?
I read on he news that the right wing Christians are how Howard got into power.
I thought the US was the only place so primitive that politicians had to appeal to their gods to get elected.
And remember all the fuss about Mr Latham being an agnostic?
Uhh, no...
I read on he news that the right wing Christians are how Howard got into power.
Interesting that someone with the handle "Skeptic" would actually believe what he hears in the news at face value. Australia's trend towards social conservatism is a microcosm of the steady ageing of the entire Western population. No wonder governments are looking to piss away billions of dollars on imaginary avian flu vaccines for the old and frail; they're hoping to preserve their constituency for as long as possible. Besides, I didn't hear the Labor Party kicking up much of a fuss on that Gay Marriage legislation. Or the looming anti-sedition -oops, I mean anti-terrorism bill. Lucky they have the power to undermine our comparatively liberal system of civil liberties we inherited from the centuries-old American and English systems, what with terrorism being such a new and unprecedented phenomenon and all.
"The great trouble is that the preachers get the children from six to seven years of age and then it is almost impossible to do anything with them." --Thomas Edison.
And remember all the fuss about Mr Latham being an agnostic?
Recall that Bob Hawke (recent prime minister) was openly an atheist. Couldn't happen in the US. It's nevertheless clear that the turn to the right, from which Australia has not been immune, has seen a resurgence of respectability for religious belief. Still, the religious right has had basically nothing to do with Howard's success, which has been built on scaring people with the spectre of terrorism and promising them lower interest rates.
Sorry, that bit of American exceptionalism won't wash. There are other places where at least pretending to be devout is a sine qua non for office. Some of those are also places where open atheism (especially of PZ's evangelical variety) carries a non-trivial risk of death.
Rooie, we do have philosophy classes in Oz, at least in victorian high schools. The suggestion that ID should be left to philosophers horrifies this philosopher. I'm happy to teach classes in science and non-science, to show why ID is nonsense, or to teach epistemoloy (ditto), but taking ID seriously is not something that can be done anywhere where intellectual standards are maintained.
Next entry: Evolution of the mammalian vagina
Previous entry: A, B, or C?
Hmmm. Just came across this Salon.com article on Richard Thompson, founder of the Thomas More Law Center's and one of the lawyers for the Dover Area School District: http://www.thomasmore.org/news.html?NewsID=374. One part of me says to give them credit for carrying it, but another part says they are just too dumb to see that it makes them look bad.