Category: Anti-Science

Deluded, Psychotic Creationist, Henry Morris III is Dead

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Anti-Science, Creationist, Genesis, Henry M. Morris III, Ken Ham

A Prominent Creationist Has Died. His Legacy? A Young Earth Planetarium.

Via Hemant Mehta

Yesterday, a prominent Creationist died.

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Dr. Henry M. Morris III was the CEO of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), a multi-million dollar enterprise with dozens of staffers that never produced any credible research. A few years ago, ICR made news by building a planetarium. I repeat: A planetarium… dedicated to showing how the universe was only a few thousand years old.

Morris and his organization are the lesser known counterparts to Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis, but even then, they always had plenty of money to try and dissuade students from accepting science.

But what’s especially odd about his obituary on ICR’s website is the first paragraph:

It is with heavy hearts that the Institute for Creation Research announces the homegoing of our CEO, Dr. Henry M. Morris III. He went to be with his Lord on December 12, 2020.

Nothing about that wording is unusual for a Christian website… except there’s no mention of the cause of death. Weird omission.

It’s especially weird because they included it earlier in the day, as evidenced by a screen capture, only to delete it later on.

It is with heavy hearts that the Institute for Creation Research announces the homegoing of our CEO, Dr. Henry M. Morris III. He went to be with his Lord on December 12, 2020, after a brief illness with COVID-19.

There’s nothing shameful about that… unless Morris was a COVID-denier, which he didn’t appear to be, at least not publicly. That said, ICR is hosting a number of in-person events early next year before a vaccine will be widely available. They also held a one-year anniversary celebration at the ICR Discovery Center back in September. The place is closed for the time being, but it’s not clear how Morris may have contracted the virus, if that was indeed the issue.

(Screenshot via ICR. Thanks to Curt for the link)

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Republican Ignoramuses | Grand Old Planet

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Anti-Reason, Anti-Science, Anti-Science Crazies, Republican Anti-Science, Science

Grand Old Planet

By

Earlier this week, GQ magazine published an interview with Senator Marco Rubio, whom many consider a contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, in which Mr. Rubio was asked how old the earth is. After declaring “I’m not a scientist, man,” the senator went into desperate evasive action, ending with the declaration that “it’s one of the great mysteries.”

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

It’s funny stuff, and conservatives would like us to forget about it as soon as possible. Hey, they say, he was just pandering to likely voters in the 2016 Republican primaries — a claim that for some reason is supposed to comfort us.

But we shouldn’t let go that easily. Reading Mr. Rubio’s interview is like driving through a deeply eroded canyon; all at once, you can clearly see what lies below the superficial landscape. Like striated rock beds that speak of deep time, his inability to acknowledge scientific evidence speaks of the anti-rational mind-set that has taken over his political party.

By the way, that question didn’t come out of the blue. As speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, Mr. Rubio provided powerful aid to creationists trying to water down science education. In one interview, he compared the teaching of evolution to Communist indoctrination tactics — although he graciously added that “I’m not equating the evolution people with Fidel Castro.” Gee, thanks.

What was Mr. Rubio’s complaint about science teaching? That it might undermine children’s faith in what their parents told them to believe. And right there you have the modern G.O.P.’s attitude, not just toward biology, but toward everything: If evidence seems to contradict faith, suppress the evidence.

The most obvious example other than evolution is man-made climate change. As the evidence for a warming planet becomes ever stronger — and ever scarier — the G.O.P. has buried deeper into denial, into assertions that the whole thing is a hoax concocted by a vast conspiracy of scientists. And this denial has been accompanied by frantic efforts to silence and punish anyone reporting the inconvenient facts.

But the same phenomenon is visible in many other fields. The most recent demonstration came in the matter of election polls. Coming into the recent election, state-level polling clearly pointed to an Obama victory — yet more or less the whole Republican Party refused to acknowledge this reality. Instead, pundits and politicians alike fiercely denied the numbers and personally attacked anyone pointing out the obvious; the demonizing of The Times’s Nate Silver, in particular, was remarkable to behold.

What accounts for this pattern of denial? Earlier this year, the science writer Chris Mooney published “The Republican Brain,” which was not, as you might think, a partisan screed. It was, instead, a survey of the now-extensive research linking political views to personality types. As Mr. Mooney showed, modern American conservatism is highly correlated with authoritarian inclinations — and authoritarians are strongly inclined to reject any evidence contradicting their prior beliefs. Today’s Republicans cocoon themselves in an alternate reality defined by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, and only on rare occasions — like on election night — encounter any hint that what they believe might not be true.

And, no, it’s not symmetric. Liberals, being human, often give in to wishful thinking — but not in the same systematic, all-encompassing way.

Coming back to the age of the earth: Does it matter? No, says Mr. Rubio, pronouncing it “a dispute amongst theologians” — what about the geologists? — that has “has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States.” But he couldn’t be more wrong.

We are, after all, living in an era when science plays a crucial economic role. How are we going to search effectively for natural resources if schools trying to teach modern geology must give equal time to claims that the world is only 6.000 years old? How are we going to stay competitive in biotechnology if biology classes avoid any material that might offend creationists?

And then there’s the matter of using evidence to shape economic policy. You may have read about the recent study from the Congressional Research Service finding no empirical support for the dogma that cutting taxes on the wealthy leads to higher economic growth. How did Republicans respond? By suppressing the report. On economics, as in hard science, modern conservatives don’t want to hear anything challenging their preconceptions — and they don’t want anyone else to hear about it, either.

So don’t shrug off Mr. Rubio’s awkward moment. His inability to deal with geological evidence was symptomatic of a much broader problem — one that may, in the end, set America on a path of inexorable decline

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Anti-Science Mormon Kook Glenn Beck Declares The Earth Is 7,000 Years Old

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Anti-Science, Buffoon Glenn Beck, Religious Crazies, Religious Frauds, Religious Nuts, Religious Wankers

Glenn Beck Decides: The Earth Is 7,000 Years Old
Wrestling with a controversial issue
Via:- Charles Johnson
 

Following Marco Rubio’s comments about the age of the Earth (“I’m not a scientist, man”), it’s been tragically hilarious — and sadly revealing — to watch the entire right wing wrestle with the issue.

Here’s Glenn Beck and his crew struggling to figure out whether the Bible actually gives an age for the Earth, because of course that would be the true age, never mind what those secular elitist eggheads think, they’re going to hell anyway.

Beck eventually decides that since each day for God equals 1,000 years, and God created the universe in 7 days, that must mean the Earth is 7,000 years old.

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GOP Contest of Clowns | Last Clown Standing

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in American Godnuts, American Right, Anti-Reason, Anti-Science, GOP Clown Car, Right Wing Kooks

Random Notes From the GOP Clown Show

This is getting embarrassing. First you have Mitt Romney claiming that Rick Santorum is too liberal and does not have “the fiscal conservative chops” that he, Mr. Flip-Floppin Conservative, has. Then Santorum fires back in typical schoolyard one-upmanship by claiming that Romney is a socialist.

Mitt first.

I find it interesting that he [Santorum] continues to describe himself as the real conservative. This is the guy who voted against right-to-work. This is the guy who voted to fund Planned Parenthood. This is the person who voted to raise the debt ceiling five times? […] Rick Santorum is not a person who is an economic conservative to my right.

Little Ricky’s response.

I didn’t back Romneycare, which is a government takeover of one-sixth of the economy,” Santorum told conservative radio host Mark Levin on Monday night, pointing to his own work with Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) on health savings accounts during the Clinton administration. “When Mitt Romney’s solution to a healthcare problem is to take over one-sixth of the economy, you can’t call yourself a conservative,” Santorum said. “You can call yourself a socialist, but you can’t call yourself a conservative.

These guys are duking it out to see who’s going to be the last clown standing in a battle of witless wonders.

Most depressing thought for Republicans has got to be the good possibility that this stuff is going to carry on all the way to the Tampa convention.

__

(The base source photograph for the above illustration is a Library of Congress digital image. The Mitt Romney source photograph is a Creative Commons licensed image from photographer Gage Skidmore. )

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Catholic Fanatic Rick Santorum Wants to Ban Science from Schools

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Anti-Science, Catholic Censorship, Catholic Crusaders, Catholic Demagogues, Catholic Fanatics, Catholic Fascisim, Catholic Fascist, Catholic Hitler, Catholic Lunatics, Catholic Right, Creepy Creationists, Republican Loons, Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum: ‘Science Should Get Out of Politics’
Rick Santorum is infamous as one of the most determined religious fanatics in US politics, an activist who believes Christian [he’s Catholic] creationism should be taught to all American children in science classes, and a persistent Republican advocate for injecting fundamentalist Christian religion into the political process at every level.

Speaking at the University of Northern Iowa today, Santorum uncorked a real howler, with no apparent recognition of its intense irony. Santorum said the problem with American politics is too much science.

Discussing controversial classroom subjects such as evolution and global warming, Santorum said he has suggested that “science should get out of politics” and he is opposed to teaching that provides a “politically correct perspective.”

Topped off with a helping of homophobic hatred masked as religious victimhood:

Regarding education and the legalization of same-sex marriage, Santorum said he is concerned that schools will be forced to teach that all forms of sexual activity are normal, healthy and good behavior. He said that would be “counter to the belief structure of many people who have students attending those schools” and they would have little grounds to object.

 

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Obama, Assassination, and the Antichrist Conspiracy

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in American Right, American Superstitions, Anti-Christ, Anti-Science, Anti-Science Crazies, Atheists Are Smarter, Bad Religion, Barack Obama, Barack Obama Anti-Christ, Conspiracism, Conspiracy Crackpots, Conspiracy Crazies, Conspiracy Loons, Conspiracy Theories, Crazy for God, Fundamentalism, Racket of religion, Religion, Religion and the Brain, Religion Destroys the Brain, Religious Brain Damage, Religious Crazies, Religious Credulity, Religious Delusion, Religious Fascists, Religious Fundamentalism, Religious Insanity, Religious Kooks, Religious Right, Religious Violence, Right Wing

Obama, Assassination, and the Antichrist Conspiracy
Chip Berlet on the connections
Randall Gross Nov 19, 2011

[Link: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/11/19/153758/35/Front_Page/Obama_Assassination_and_the_Antichrist_Conspiracy]

Even if the shooter is a thorough crackpot his delusions did not form in a vacuum. Hate sites like Prison Planet, Atlas Shrugs, and Farrah’s World Net Daily all do most of the heavy lifting for these conspiracy theories and delusions. Oprah is not a hate site, but she does her share of aiding and abetting delusion with promotion of pseudoscience and magical thinking disguised as pop pscyh self help, so it’s really not a contradiction that he addressed a video to her, even though many on the right will grasp at that and say aha!

The alleged shooter charged with attempting to assassinate President Obama, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, apparently thinks our Commander in Chief is an agent of Satan in an End Times war. Sarah Posner has explained the basics in an article “‘Obama the Antichrist’ and end-times doctrine.” I warned about the possibility of the demonization of Obama leading to more violence in a book chapter published in 2010 “The Roots of Anti-Obama Rhetoric.” Here is a slightly revised version of what I wrote:

Many Americans believe Obama is a Muslim. Others are convinced he was not born in Hawaii and is thus not eligible to be President. Some say Obama is the Antichrist of Biblical prophecy.

A September 2009 poll in New Jersey found that 14% of Republicans believed that President Obama was the Antichrist—Satan’s agent in the End Times according to one reading of the Bible’s Book of Revelation. Another 15% thought it might be possible.

The results across political allegiances, however, were also troubling; with 8% of respondents statewide saying they thought Obama was the Antichrist and 13% stating they “aren’t sure”. The poll also found that “21% of respondents, including 33% of Republicans, express the belief that Obama was not born in the United States”.

According to the pollster, these are “eye popping numbers” (“Extremism in New Jersey”, 2009). The mobilization of apocalyptic expectation among Christian Evangelicals in the United States has been shown to be an effective mobilization strategy by the Christian Right and allies in the Republican Party (Boyer, 1992; Fuller 1995). This is especially true among fundamentalists (Barron, 1992; Mason, 2002; Berlet, 2008). This millenarian mood is spread from religious into secular communities, often through conspiracy theories (Brasher, 2000).

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What to expect from a Rick Perry administration: active suppression of science

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Anti-Science, Anti-Science Crazies, Republican Anti-Science, Science, Science News

What to expect from a Rick Perry administration: active suppression of science

Regular readers know I am no fan of Republican Presidential candidate Rick Perry. The reasons for this are legion, including his stance on evolution and global warming.

Now there’s evidence it’s even worse than I thought: The Guardian is reporting that Governor Rick Perry’s administration in Texas is actively suppressing science. A report about the environmental impact of global warming on Texas was apparently edited by officials, “… deleting references to climate change, sea-level rise and wetlands destruction.”

This action smacks of scientific suppression and censorship. And before you accuse me of overreacting, the scientists involved in writing the report felt this editing was so bad that the original authors of the report asked for their names to be removed from the final version. Yegads.

This story was originally reported in the Houston Chronical, and Mother Jones has an example of the changes made. It’s starting to pop up in other venues as well like Climate Progress and Climate Science Watch.

Looking it all over, the charges that science is being suppressed hold up pretty well. John Anderson is a researcher at Rice University, and author of a chapter of the report heavily redacted by the agency in question, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). His opinion is clear:

That state of denial percolated down to the leadership of the [TCEQ]. The agency chief, who was appointed by Perry, is known to doubt the science of climate change. “The current chair of the commission, Bryan Shaw, commonly talks about how human-induced climate change is a hoax,” said Anderson.

Terrific. I’m not terribly surprised by this; after all, Perry nominated creationists to head up the Texas State Board of Education not just once, but three times. Putting a climate change denier in charge of an environmental commission is par for his course.

When Bush was President, science suppression was rampant when it disagreed with political ideology (which was very, very common). If Perry is elected, we can expect more of the same. I’m very glad to see Perry sinking in the polls right now, but as far as science goes, the other options aren’t much better.

As I’ve said before, if you’re a Republican and you support science, you need to make your voice heard. It’s now long-since become de rigeur for GOP candidates to deny all manners of science if they want to get elected. It may not be too late. Speak up… or forever be denied your peace.

via:- http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/10/18/what-to-expect-from-a-rick-perry-administration-active-suppression-of-science/

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The Republicans’ war on science and reason – The Washington Post

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Anti-Science, Anti-Science Crazies, Religious Credulity, Religious Delusion, Religious Fundamentalism, Religious Insanity, Religious Kooks, Republican Insanity, Right Wing

The Republicans’ war on science and reason 

By  , Published: October 25

Last month, Washington Post columnist Steve Pearlstein wrote that if you wanted to come up with a bumper sticker that defined the Republican Party’s platform it would be this: “Repeal the 20th century. Vote GOP.” With their unrelenting attempts to slash Social Security, end Medicare and Medicaid and destroy the social safety net, Republicans are, indeed, on a quest of reversal. But they have set their sights on an even bolder course than Pearlstein acknowledges in his column: It’s not just the 20th century they have targeted for repeal; it’s the 18th and 19th too.

The 18th century was defined, in many ways, by the Enlightenment, a philosophical movement based on the idea that reason, rational discourse and the advancement of knowledge, were the critical pillars of modern life. The leaders of the movement inspired the thinking of Charles Darwin, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin; its tenets can be found in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. But more than 200 years later, those basic tenets — the very notion that facts and evidence matter — are being rejected, wholesale, by the 21st-century Republican Party.

The contempt with which the party views reason is staggering. Republicans have become proudly and unquestionably anti-science. (It is their litmus test, though they would probably reject the science behind litmus paper.) With the exception of Jon Huntsman, who polls about as well as Darwin would in a Republican primary, the Republican presidential candidates have either denied the existence of climate change, denied that it has been caused — and can be reversed — by man, or apologized for once holding a different view. They have come to this conclusion not because the science is inconclusive, but because they believe, as a matter of principle, that scientific evidence is no evidence at all.

It’s on that basis that Ron Paul can say of evolution, “I think it’s a theory and I don’t accept it as a theory.” It’s on that basis that Rick Perry can call evolution “it’s a theory that’s out there, but one that’s got some gaps in it.” And it’s on that same basis, that same rejection of science, that Perry can say, “I’m not sure anybody actually knows completely and absolutely how old the earth is.”

Then there’s Michele Bachmann, who has embraced the idea that the HPV vaccine can cause mental retardation, although not a single piece of medical evidence backs up her claim. How, then, did she come to that conclusion? That’s simple: A woman came up to her at a debate and told her so. Scientific evidence is anathema; superstitious and anecdotal asides, on the other hand, deserve to be repeated and amplified on a national stage, the consequences, in this case to countless women and girls, be damned.

This kind of guttural rejection of reason, evidence and science trickles into just about every aspect of Republican ideology. There’s Herman Cain’s much-discussed 9-9-9 plan, for example, which has been eviscerated by independents, conservative and progressive economists alike, but which Cain continues to champion. Why? Because, he argues, the skeptics haven’t read his analysis yet — as if he is entitled not just to his own facts but to his own math. It’s that same worldview that makes Cain comfortable, when asked about the Occupy Wall Street protests, to say, “I don’t [have] facts to back this up, but I happen to believe . . . ” Without facts, does it really matter how he finished the sentence?

Perry now fancies himself a flat-taxer, a position that might as well make him a flat-earther. A flat tax is, in his mind, a job creation proposal. In a reality based on reason and logic, it is a ticket straight back to recession. He might be giving — or getting — lessons from his fellow Republican, Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, who after boldly lying about Planned Parenthood on the floor of the Senate had his press flack explain that his remarks were not intended to be a factual statement. What then, one wonders, were they intended to be?

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, this kind of behavior is constantly rewarded by the media. As Al Gore noted in “An Inconvenient Truth,” while fewer than 1 percent of peer-reviewed scientific journals questioned the reality of man-made global warming, about half of all journalistic accounts did. In an age where media is obsessed with balance, facts are sidelined in favor of dueling opinions and false equivalence. That one is based on reason and science, the other on neither, is treated as entirely irrelevant. It’s a system ripe for exploitation, and conservatives are happy to oblige.

It seems worth reminding the candidates that these debates have been settled, many for decades, some for centuries and that the year is 2011, not 1611. In the coming decades, science — and a respect for science — will prove crucial to confronting our greatest global challenges, whether that means reducing our carbon footprint to combat climate change, finding new treatments and new cures to the diseases that ail us, or developing new innovations that can lift hundreds of millions out of poverty. We cannot afford to ignore the power of science or the problems we will need it to solve. Nor can we afford to make decisions about our economy, and our future, without reason or sound evidence. It’s time to take back the Enlightenment.

Katrina vanden Heuvel’s new book is “The Change I Believe In: Fighting for Progress in the Age of Obama.”

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Michele Bachmann’s Claim That Natural Disasters Were a Warning From God

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in American Right, Anti-Science, Anti-Science Crazies, Bad Religion, God, GOP, Michele Bachmann, Natural Disasters

A quick and entertaining reminder of the type of uncivilized, unsophisticated, irrational, superstitious and anti-science lunatics – typified by Michele Bachmann – that are presently fronting the GOP.

Stephen Colbert Explains Michele Bachmann’s Claim That Natural Disasters Were a Warning From God [VIDEO]
By: Don Deane  |
Stephen Colbert
Comedy Central

On ‘The Colbert Report’ last night, Stephen Colbert gave a tongue-in-cheek explanation of Michele Bachmann’s recent comment that Hurricane Irene and the East coast earthquake were warnings from God to politicians.

Last week, Bachmann said both natural disasters were God’s way of telling politicians to cut spending and fix the budget deficit. Later, she downplayed the comment by first saying it was a joke, then by calling it a “metaphor.”

Colbert felt compelled to explain further. “In this metaphor, God represents the American people, politicians  represent themselves and the hurricane represents the earthquake,” he said. “And Bachmann herself is a simile, because she is like or as  someone who makes sense.”

[via AOL TV]

The Destruction of Israel

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Anti-Science, Anti-Science Crazies, Bad Religion, Ethnic Cleansing, Fascism, Fascists & Zionists, Fundamentalism, God, God Crazies, God nuts, Human Liberty, Human Rights, Israel, Israeli Fascism, Israeli Theocracy, Jewish Fascism, Jewish Fascist, Jewish Fundamentalism, Jewish Religious Right, Jewish Right, Jewish Right Wing, Jewish Superstitions, Jewish Taliban, Jewish Theocracy, Religious Crazies, Religious Credulity, Religious Fascists, Religious Fundamentalism, Religious Right, Right Wing, Right Wing Assassinations, Right Wing Culture Wars, Right Wing Extremism, Secular Humanism, Secularism, Theocons, Theocracy

Make no mistake, Israel‘s existence is under threat
TheDrum By ABC’s Ben Knight

Updated September 24, 2011 12:17:39

Let’s imagine for a moment that at this time next year, by some
miracle, Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas meet on the White House lawn to
sign the accord that will create the nation of Palestine. All disagreements are
forever resolved – from where the borders of the two countries will lie, to how
they will share Jerusalem as their capital.

Let’s also assume that all Muslim and Arab nations will keep their promise to
recognise Israel – and that the militants of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad
are consigned to the dustbin of history.

Israel is finally free to realise its full potential as a nation. Or, to put
it another way – Israel is finally free to let its own internal divisions and
hatreds tear it apart.

If you think Israelis and Palestinians don’t see eye to eye, the gulf between
secular Israelis and the ultra-orthodox religious is probably just as wide.

Go to Tel Aviv on a Saturday morning, and you’ll see one version of Israel –
secular, middle-class sun-worshippers, sitting in trendy beachside cafes,
munching on bacon and eggs, or hummus and salad.

Then, on the same Saturday morning, drive 40 minutes up the highway to
Jerusalem, where you’ll visit an entirely different country. Here, there are no
cars, and streets are closed off with police barriers – as ultra-orthodox Jews
in black overcoats and fur hats walk to the Western Wall to pray.

And no, the two groups don’t get along.

Secular Israelis work, pay taxes, and serve in the army. Ultra-orthodox, or
Haredi Jews, don’t.

Secular Israelis are prepared to die for their country in battle, but have to
travel outside it to get married in a civil ceremony.

Not surprisingly, it’s a pretty sore point. Especially as the demographic
balance is shifting fast.

Secular couples have, on average, around two children per couple. Haredi
couples have closer to eight or nine.

And it’s changing the very identity of Israel – away from the secular,
socialist civil society it was created as in 1948 – to something quite
different.

To see it in action, you only need to take a peek inside an Israeli
school.

Israeli’s government funds three streams of education; regular state schools,
ultra-orthodox religious schools, and Israeli Arab schools.

Back in 1960, only around 15 per cent of Israeli children were enrolled in
religious or Arab schools.

That figure is now around 50 per cent. In 30 years, it will be almost 80 per
cent. That is a frightening statistic for the nation of Israel.

Arab Israelis have long had lower education, and higher unemployment
levels.

But the real problem is in the religious stream.

In religious schools, children don’t learn mathematics, science, or English;
only the Bible. All day, every day. And Haredi men are expected to – and do –
continue that Bible study for the rest of their lives.

It’s all funded by the taxpayers. And the taxpayers are… secular
Israelis.

What does it mean? Well, if the figures are to be believed, in less than 30
years, Israel will have a population where the majority either can’t, or won’t
join the workforce – putting an increasing, and impossible burden on the secular
minority to pay the taxes and serve in the army.

This, in the ‘Startup Nation’ – the country that prides itself on its hi-tech
sector. Israel has the ideas, the inventors, and the entrepreneurs – but
already, it has to import workers from overseas, because there aren’t enough
educated Israelis in the job market.

It’s not sustainable. Israelis know about it, and sometimes talk about it,
but Israel’s government does nothing. It’s just too hard – especially as the
political power of the ultra-religious is growing. It’s almost impossible to
form a government in Israel today without them.

Opposition – and resentment – is growing. Middle-class, taxpaying, secular
Israelis are already so angry about the mere cost of living – and that their
children cannot afford to buy or rent a home – that they have taken to the
streets in huge numbers.

But it’s hard to see how any government – however brave – is going to be able
to turn the ship around without committing political suicide.

Now let’s imagine that in a year from now, Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud
Abbas have not reached a peace deal.

All of the current problems are still there; but Israel is even more
isolated, the Palestinians are even more frustrated, and sitting in the midst of
an ever more unstable and chaotic region.

This week’s UN assembly might have put Israel and Palestine back in the
headlines – but it won’t solve the conflict. And soon enough, it will all fade
from view again.

And all the while, behind the scenes, Israel’s
demographic time bomb is still ticking away.

Ben Knight
is the ABC’s Middle East correspondent.

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Ann Coulter – Basking In Her Own (Self-Confessed) Ignorance of Science

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in American Right, Ann Coulter, Anti-Science, Anti-Science Crazies, Buffoon, Cretins, Science, Science Hatere, Science News

More Coulter Stupidity on Evolution

by Ed Brayton

Not content to show her complete ignorance of evolutionary biology once, Ann Coulter doubles down with yet another screed that would get her flunked by a competent high school science teacher. She begins with this unintentionally amusing statement:

More people know the precepts of kabala than know the basic elements of Darwinism.

And then she proves it by displaying her own ignorance of the subject.

Darwin’s theory was that a process of random mutation, sex and death, allowing the “fittest” to survive and reproduce, and the less fit to die without reproducing, would, over the course of billions of years, produce millions of species out of inert, primordial goo.The vast majority of mutations are deleterious to the organism, so if the mutations were really random, then for every mutation that was desirable, there ought to be a staggering number that are undesirable.

Actually, most mutations are neutral. Coulter, and all of us, have hundreds of mutations in our DNA at the very least, and the overwhelming majority of the time they affect us hardly at all. In some cases, they cause serious disease. And in other cases they can aid in survival. This is not even remotely controversial. We see it happen in both the lab and the wild literally every day.

If we sequence a genome and compare it to earlier versions of the same genome, we can identify the specific mutations. Richard Lenski has done exactly that with a population of bacteria, which are particularly useful for such experiments because they reproduce so quickly. Not only can we see the specific mutations and their effects, we can watch a particular trait evolve over time as new mutations pile up on top of the old ones and create new pathways and new molecular structures.

We also ought to find a colossal number of transitional organisms in the fossil record – for example, a squirrel on its way to becoming a bat, or a bear becoming a whale. (Those are actual Darwinian claims.)But that’s not what the fossil record shows. We don’t have fossils for any intermediate creatures in the process of evolving into something better. This is why the late Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard referred to the absence of transitional fossils as the “trade secret” of paleontology. (Lots of real scientific theories have “secrets.”)

Ah, another dishonest quote mine. This one irritated Gould himself, who addressed the question head on when he wrote:

Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists — whether though design or stupidity, I do not know — as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups. The punctuations occur at the level of species; directional trends (on the staircase model) are rife at the higher level of transitions within major groups.

And indeed they are. In fact, Gould himself wrote a good deal about one of the transitions that Coulter questions, the evolution of whales from land mammals (not from bears but from Artiodactyls). Paleontologists have now found numerous transitional forms from land mammals to modern whales and they form a fairly complete series. Gould wrote in 1994:

“If you had given me a blank piece of paper and a blank check, I could not have drawn you a theoretical intermediate any better or more convincing than Ambulocetus. Those dogmatists who by verbal trickery can make white black, and black white, will never be convinced of anything, but Ambulocetus is the very animal that they proclaimed impossible in theory.”

Coulter continues:

If you get your news from the American news media, it will come as a surprise to learn that when Darwin first published “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, his most virulent opponents were not fundamentalist Christians, but paleontologists.

Another lie. It’s certainly true that there were scientific critics of Darwin’s theory, but the primary opposition came from the church. Thus, the famous debate between Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce. What Coulter conveniently leaves out is that Darwin’s theory gained very rapid acceptance among scientists quite quickly because it explained such a wide range of data extremely well. And that continues to this day. Coulter doesn’t know any of this because she is as ignorant of the scientific literature on evolution as I am of auto mechanics. Unlike her, however, I don’t go around declaring that all auto mechanics don’t know a thing about how to fix a car or that the internal combustion engine couldn’t possibly work.

But things have only gotten worse for Darwin.Thirty years ago (before it was illegal to question Darwinism), Dr. David Raup, a geologist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, said that despite the vast expansion of the fossil record: “The situation hasn’t changed much.”

To the contrary, fossil discoveries since Darwin’s time have forced paleontologists to take back evidence of evolution. “Some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record,” Raup said, “such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information.”

Another dishonest quote mine. What a shock that new evidence would alter explanations. This is, of course, one of the great strengths of science — and one of the great weaknesses of religion. More detailed information should modify our explanations, and in science they do.

The rest is more of the same, rote regurgitation of long-discredited creationist arguments. Ironically, the very man she quoted in her last ignorant diatribe on the subject, Michael Behe, accepts common descent and agrees that the fossil record clearly supports it. He just gives God a divine assist at the molecular level.

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