We’ve gotten used to hearing that Creationism and Intelligent Design are peculiar to the United States. Other places, especially Europe, not so much.
Unfortunately, that is changing. There’s increasing pressure from religious factions in the United Kingdom, and Australians continue to play the occasional game of whack-a-mole with Creationists.
Now the Russians are feeling the heat. The Russian Orthodox Church has launched its own version of “teach the controversy,” insisting that “several theories” about the origin of life should be taught alongside the Darwinian theory of evolution. Archbishop Hilarion (love the name) decries the “monopoly of Darwinism” in Russian schools. Of course, the good Archbishop does not decry the monopoly of Russian Orthodoxy in his own pulpit, and I’m sure he would shrink at the suggestion that “several theories” of religious belief be taught regularly alongside his own. Good for the goose and all that jazz.
Oh, and if you read the article all the way through, you’ll also find the Russian version of “Russia is a Christian nation.” Enjoy!
I know I’ve posted about this a couple of times before, but this onion keeps growing new layers. Over the weekend, bloggingheads.tvRobert Wright (The Evolution of God) posted a conversation with science journalist George Johnson, in which Wright offers a very detailed explanation of how the Michael Behe/John McWhorter diavlog got posted, then removed, then re-posted. In the aftermath of the incident, a handful of scientists and/or science journalists who have participated on bhTV have vowed never to be on again. Oh, and Bob Wright also addresses (sort of) the insinuations and rumors that he’s angling for the high-dollar Templeton Prize. Enjoy:
How to deal with Creationists and Intelligent Design proponents? It’s a bit of a Catch-22: one the one hand, unless we consistently, frequently and forcefully confront their nonsense, we might give them free rein to convince the general public that there’s some validity to what they say; on the other hand, if we give them a forum, or engage them in open debate, others might infer that there’s a real controversy within the biological sciences (there isn’t). At what point do we write off certain people as hopeless wackaloons not worthy of notice? How do we know when it’s beneficial to engage in dialogue and (polite) confrontation?
Boy, what a soap opera this has turned out to be. Late last week, linguist and conservative pundit John McWhorter recorded a segment for bloggingheads.tv (bhTV) with Michael “Irreducible Complexity” Behe. A credulous–even gushing–McWhorter, who is a self-admitted nonbeliever, began by heaping praise on Behe’s most recent book The Edge of Evolution. The 44-minute conversation is unremarkable, given that a linguist isn’t exactly the best conversational partner to pair up with a guy like Behe, and doesn’t break new ground on the supposed controversy of Intelligent Design.
Ben “Bueller…Bueller…” Stein has been let go from his biweekly gig writing a financial column for the New York Times, ostensibly because of his commercial work for a website called FreeScore.com and the associated (perceived?) conflict of interest. Now, normally I wouldn’t cover something so non-freethoughtish here, but now Stein has written a lengthy self-defense for The American Spectator, in which he blames everyone but the Illuminati for his ouster.
“Ufologist” and Young Earth Creationist Gary Bates of Creation Ministries International presented “Aliens, UFOs and the Bible” on July 18th at the Sewell Mill Baptist Church in Marietta, GA. We (John and Allison) were there, but the building did not spontaneously burst into flame, nor were there any clear-skies lightning strikes to manifest the ire of YHWH at the presence of infidels. As for Bates…thanks a LOT, Australia! For general creationist debunkage visit TalkOrigins.org. [Late-breaking Bonus: If you can stomach it, you can listen to Bates's entire baloneython in podcast format at the church's website--including the very session we sat in on!]
American Atheists president Ed Buckner delivers the invocation before a meeting of the Cobb County (Georgia) Board of Commissioners in Marietta. Yes, we know that “atheist invocation” is an oxymoron, but Ed used the opportunity to go meta, delivering a four-minute invocation on the idiocy of invocations. Go get ‘em, Ed!
You may have heard the news that the president has named Francis “Three Waterfalls” Collins to head the National Institutes of Health. By all accounts Collins is a competent bureaucrat and respectable as a researcher (he was one of the leaders in the Human Genome Project, after all, and he was the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute).
The Texas Senate rejected Governor Rick “The Secessionist” Perry’s re-nomination of Don “The Dentist” McLeroy to chair the State Board of Education. McLeroy is a young-earth creationist whose views on the teaching of evolution have threatened to cripple the state’s biology curriculum. McLeroy will remain as a member of the BOE, but Perry will need to find a new nominee for the chair. (Rest assured Perry won’t find an actual science advocate; more likely he’ll put forward a McLeroy clone, or perhaps a closet creationist who’ll be harder to criticize.) But in the meantime, congratulations, Texas!
The Dallas Morning News reports “the State Board of Education on Thursday narrowly turned aside a last-ditch effort by social conservatives to require that ‘weaknesses’ in the theory of evolution be taught in science classes in Texas.” It was a 7-7 tie, so it wasn’t a clear-cut victory. Rest assured the terrier-like ankle-biting engaged in by disgruntled creationists has been deflected only temporarily. Read the whole report here.
It’s amusing to me that these “teach the weaknesses/teach the controversy” whiners would have heart attacks at the suggestion that books like Bishop Spong’s Jesus for the Nonreligious or anything by Bart Ehrman be taught in church.
Bob Wright on the Behe Brouhaha: Mea Culpa
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009I know I’ve posted about this a couple of times before, but this onion keeps growing new layers. Over the weekend, bloggingheads.tv Robert Wright (The Evolution of God) posted a conversation with science journalist George Johnson, in which Wright offers a very detailed explanation of how the Michael Behe/John McWhorter diavlog got posted, then removed, then re-posted. In the aftermath of the incident, a handful of scientists and/or science journalists who have participated on bhTV have vowed never to be on again. Oh, and Bob Wright also addresses (sort of) the insinuations and rumors that he’s angling for the high-dollar Templeton Prize. Enjoy:
Tags: bloggingheads.tv, creationism, evolution, george johnson, intelligent design, john mcwhorter, michael behe, robert wright
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