The Magic of Reality will be out next month in the US. At present Amazon UK doesn’t know when it will be available here.
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Harun Yahya, something of a name amongst Creationists, is touring the UK, with a stop off at the Manchester Metropolitan University on Wednesday. The question is, could I bear to put up with them if I went along to find out how convoluted their arguments are? Link to this post! A creationist writes, without any indication that he recognises the irony-
The only “science” put out for political reasons in the debate between creationism and reality (sorry, evolution) is that made up by the creationists. The word science always has implicit quote marks around it when used by creationists to describe what they think is evidence for their beliefs. Creationists are the ones who want people to remain uninformed and unquestioning- just keep believing the lines they’re fed so their would be leaders can keep taking advantage of them. Also, there’s no need to “believe” in evolution. Believing is what the creationists have to fall back on because they don’t have any evidence or a coherent theory. You understand evolution rather than believe in it. It’s been coherently explained by a large number of people. Understanding evolution is harder for some than believing in Creationism, because they can’t accept the freedom of no longer being told what to do. Which is a shame, because they then go on to tie themselves in knots as they try to explain all the logical inconsistencies thrown up by saying “God made it!” I’ve participated in online debates with creationists, and read through others, and it’s always the creationists who don’t want to talk about whether the science backs their beliefs. Faced with evidence that just keeps piling up, they’re the ones who will steer the conversation to why people “believe” in evolution, as they desperately try to run away from the realisation that they’re wrong. There’s no science behind creationism, just a desire to manipulate people, anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. Link to this post! Wannabe Scottish holy warrior Stewart Cowan has started what may be an ongoing series on “The Myths and Hoaxes of the 20th Century”. That he’s started with a weak swing at evolution should come as no surprise, neither should the fact that he fails to put forward a coherent argument. Cowan bases his argument on a wilfull or genuine failure to understand an 18th century theory called uniformitarianism. (It’s doubly amusing that he links to the wikipedia page about it because whenever he or his cronies are presented with a wikipedia page which proves them wrong or shows up a weakness in their arguments they fall over themselves to claim the site is a liberal conspiracy.) He then ignores centuries of research, discoveries and advances and implies that this one theory is the only thing scientists have ever used to figure anything out. From this nonsensical conceit he wanders off into a bunch of Creationist talking points and fails to prove anything. He cites research with blind cavefish which he thinks proves his point, completely failing to see that it does the opposite. Stewart Cowan’s never presented a coherent or convincing argument against evolution, but this one’s even weaker than normal. As the only people who can be bothered to continually comment on his blog are equally uninformed and blinkered he has no need to improve his arguments, so they seem to be devolving. Link to this post! The New Scientist has a special report on the roots and methods of denialism. Should be useful reading for anyone who ever finds themselves talking to creationists/climate change deniers/9/11 Truthers/anti vaccination types/that bloke in teh pub who knows what really happened to Elvis.
Link to this post! I did promise the author of this blog post, which claims that conspiracy theories are suddenly more true than reality, that I would provide a detailed response. But it’s going to be too long to waste on someone else’s comment section, so I’m publishing it here. Conspiracy theories tend to say more about the theorists than the alleged conspirators. I’m going to approach the examples cited by asking two questions- If the theorists are correct, what do the conspiracists get out of it? and Why might the theorists want to believe in this particular conspiracy? So- “1) The theory: mass immigration is being used to re-engineer society.” What do the conspiracists get? Errrrm. What do they get? According to the theory the mostly white, mostly christian engineers of this massed social change get a country where they lose a lot of their privileges because their constituents are less like, and less likely to vote for, them. And we know how willing MPs are to give up their privileges. Why might the theorists believe in this conspiracy? Because they’re racists? Because they don’t like immigration? Possibly, as a great many of them claim to be christians, they’re scared by falling church attendance and don’t want to have to fight for believers with a younger, louder religion. “2) The theory: climate change is not primarily manmade, but is a ruse to impose a world government which will tax and control us.” What might the conspiracists get? They’d get to pay more tax. Which I’m sure they really want to do. The scientists will get to keep the funding which pays for their research. Even though they could be better off working in the private sector. I have a problem with the repeated line about paying more tax. The people who’ll pay more tax are the ones who are too dumb to find ways to make their lives more efficient. Those who cut their carbon emmissions will find they’re paying less money to corporations, and the government, so they will have more money for themselves and be financially more secure. Why might the theorists believe in this conspiracy? See the last bit above about people too dumb to make their lives better. “3) The theory: the BBC is a propaganda machine for liberals and socialists.” What might the conspiracists get? The licence fee cut by the next Conservative government. Though that will probably happen anyway. Why might the theorists believe in this conspiracy? Because Fox News is Fair and Balanced. “4) The theory: the 9/11 attacks were an inside job.” What might the conspiracists get? The satisfaction of having turned real life into the opening sequence of the first X Files Movie Why might the theorists believe in this conspiracy? Racism? Brown people couldn’t possibly have organised something this big, it has to be the work of the Illuminati and/or the Jews. (An early 9/11 conspiracy theory had all Jewish workers in the World Trade Centre being called up and told not to go in to work that day.) An inability to grasp reality. Given all the genuinely horrible, stupid, illegal and dangerous stuff the Bush regime did, why on Earth do some people need to make stuff like this up? “5) The theory: the Theory of Evolution is a 19th Century misunderstanding, which is now clear from modern scientific discoveries.” What might the conspiracists get? Confused, given that modern discoveries strengthen and refine the Theory of Evolution. Why might the theorists believe in this conspiracy? Fear that science, and increased understanding of it, will undermine their religion. Inability to visualise a simple and elegant theory. The writer of the post is a Creationist, so this is a favourite subject of his. He claims masses of evidence for his belief, but can never present any that stands up to scrutiny. This is a bit of a rambling post, because I started it as a comment then brought it over here. Feel free to add your own comments and help me refine and better explain my reasoning that way. Link to this post! Jamie Reed is the MP for Copeland, which is where my parents live. His blog is relatively new, so I’ll give it a bit of time to grow. Wikipedia tells me he declared himself a Jedi in his maiden speech, so he can’t be all bad. I may have fallen out of love with Labour, but I’d support him for the Copeland seat in the coming election. Tory polling puts them a close second and the BNP a distant third but with enough support to be disturbing. Copeland may be 99.3% white, according to this list (nearby Allerdale and Eden are even whiter) but that’s no excuse for supporting the racist moron party. The Tory candidate for Copeland is Chris Whiteside. He’s a Conservative, so I took an immediate dislike to him. But we’ll see how he fares over time. John Redwood used to be referred to as the Vulcan. It wasn’t just because of his elongated and Spock like face, but because he was supposedly a man of great intelligence. Sadly that vast intellect isn’t in evidence when he posts nonsense like this about climate change. Rather than finding out about the subject he’s latched onto the talking points which conform to his ideologogy and prejudices. His specialist area is economics, I believe. Let’s hope he actually investigates and thinks about that before opining. Hope, but, on the evidence, don’t expect. Stewart Cowan is a Creationist and homophobe (and possibly a few other things, I’ve only been reading since yesterday). I’m sure we’ll have lots to talk about. It may be borderline classing this one as a political blog, but I found it through a comment on Jamie Reed’s blog and decided it should be included here. Link to this post! Sensible people have visited the loony Creation Museum before and posted reports of just how wierd it is. But last Friday P Z Myers, one of the US’s highest profile atheists, and around 300 others attended. Here’s his report. Because of my long held fascination with dioramas that depict surreal and often gruesome events I found myself hunting down pictures of the Ark diorama. In what must be the final section Noah and his chosen passengers (including, no doubt, dinosaurs) sail away from the unsaved, who fight for space on the wave washed rocks and have to fend off tigers and bears. It’s like something Jake and Dinos Chapman would come up with, only with less Nazi regalia. Link to this post! We should be better than this, and we should expect more from organisations like the National Recognition Information Centre, which has announced that a creationist course taught in religious schools should be considered equivalent to an A Level. This is an insult to everyone teaching real A Levels and all the youngsters taking them. This isn’t the USA or some other backward country. We need to demand that children are taught science, not fantasy, and anyone dressing up indoctrination as education should be punished, not accredited. Link to this post! David Attenborough gets hate mail for not crediting God in any of his programmes.
Link to this post! Fundamentalists say the darndest things. You have to be in the right frame of mind to read this. If you’re in the mood to be made angry by moronic bigotry this will probably raise your blood pressure dangerously high. On the other hand, if you want to laugh at a bunch of hypocritical idiots, dive in. via Pagan Prattle Link to this post! Sci-fi author John Scalzi went to the Creation Museum after readers of his blog raised enough money for charity to persuade him. His report, and accompanying Flickr photo set, are as charitable as the place deserves.
Link to this post! The Creation Museum in Kentucky has exhibits showing dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark and claims the Grand Canyon was created by the Flood.
via BoingBoing Link to this post! David Cameron has been typically ambiguous on the teaching of Creationism, effectively saying that faith schools could pretend it’s a real science if they wanted to. However, he’s not alone amongst politicians in abusing science. Link to this post! The American home schooling trend is driven by parents who want to protect their children from the horrors of a secular education, such as sex education and evolution, and teach them a heavily biased and God based curriculum. Even though they’re doing it because they love their children, it strikes me as a form of child abuse and part of a slide toward the sort of fundamentalism they claim to be fighting in the Middle East. Link to this post! |
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