Creationists Wrong? Unpossible!

Remember when I had a creationist claiming

stars are found where astronomers agree they could not evolve, near the center of our galaxy. These short-lived stars orbit a massive black hole, where gravity is so strong that gas and dust clouds could never evolve into a star.

Well, surprise surprise, recent studies have shown this is likely incorrect.

The new research shows that as large chunks of galactic molecular clouds fall into the galactic center, the gravitational forces conspire to compress infalling gas creating fresh young stars.

More Thoughts on the Contraception Kerfuffle

After posting my initial thoughts to Google+ and attracting at least one myopic idiot, there were a few other points that were put forth that I wanted to comment on as well.

The main one was a point that Gingrich tried to make in the interview I linked to as an addendum to my last post. His claim is that this isn't an issue about women's health, but rather, is about religious liberties. Namely, should religious institutions be forced to pay for services that run counter to their beliefs.

If that were the full story, I'd absolutely say no. As long time readers know, I firmly support the 1st amendment guarantee of separation of church and state which protects religious institutions from government influence.

But what tipped me off that this wasn't the big picture was the shrill cry on the slippery slope that I kept seeing as an example of what would happen if health care insurers were required to pay for contraception: Catholic universities and hospitals everywhere would be forced to shut their doors since the Church couldn't continue to run them if they had to partake in something that *gasp* might possibly pay for birth control.

That's when I realized how full of hot air this argument was.

The reason is that I've heard this exact argument before. A few years ago there was a dust up over whether hospitals (including Catholic ones) should be required to provide medically necessary abortions. As with this instance, Catholics immediately tried to play the "religious liberty" card claiming that they would have to shut their doors if these requirements were made.

And yet, here we are with the hospitals still intact and providing medically necessary abortions is still an expectation of these hospitals. The reason that these institutions don't get an exemption is that they're not truly religious institutions. They're religiously affiliated. However, these hospitals are providing a secular service and receiving money (and apparently a lot of it) from a secular government to function. Indeed, one study* showed that religious hospitals get more of their funding (36%) from medicare than typical public hospitals (27%).

The fact of the matter is, that if you want money from our government, you have to play by secular rules which means claiming religious liberty doesn't cut it. If it's an expectation for secular hospitals, secular schools, and the insurance companies that contract with them, then it's a requirement for religiously affiliated institutions (which mostly arise when a Catholic organization throws down enough money to slap their name on a previously established independent hospital).

So where does this leave us? I suspect that the same thing will happen here as it did in the previous case: The dust will settle, the expectation will be upheld, and Catholic affiliated institutions, despite their protestations will remain running.

The alternative is that they could pull their funding. Which... wouldn't much matter as I see it. Aside from medicare being a primary source of funding, a large portion obviously comes from the bills that patients (or their insurance companies) pay.... which wouldn't change if the religious organizations pulled out.

The religious organizations could refuse to sell the facilities to groups without such holy sticks up their butt which would effectively close them, but this would be seen as a childish move and petty move on their part. Definitely bad PR. Seeing that this would be a bad move, they would likely just pull their names off it, and these hospitals would become like any other secular hospital out there (78% of all the hospitals currently). In other words, it's business as usual.

In either case, the religious organizations only reveal themselves for what they are: Irrelevant to secular law.

Which reinforces my initial point: This isn't a discussion about religious liberty. Gingrich and others want to claim it is, but they're not trying to protect the rights of these organizations. They're trying to carve out new ones and create further intrusions on our secular government by religious organizations. Which is just as scary as all the other things I listed in my last post that the GOP is trying to pull.

* - Uttley, L. J, "No strings attached: Public funding of religiously-sponsored hospitals in the United States," Mergerwatch, 2002, p.10.

Contraception Kerfuffle

It's very rare that I write an "angry" post anymore in a blog with "angry" in the title. Even my recent dissection of the Missouri Creationism bill wasn't in anger, but in annoyance.

But the recent discussion in the political arena has gotten me downright irate.

For those that haven't been following the story, here's the recap:

The GOP decides to have a hearing on the bill that would require health insurance companies to help pay for birth control. Of course, their panel of "experts" was filled with anything but; it was a bunch of men, at least two of which only had the "expertise" of being religious.

The Democrats tried to get a woman, Sandra Fluke, on the panel to testify, but the GOP decided she wasn't expert enough and blocked her.

So instead of hearing from someone that the issue actually impacts directly, we get a bunch of men missing the issue completely.

Indeed, the discussion has revolved around the wrong points entirely. Whereas the requirement for health insurance companies is about treating health issues through birth control (where there are many), the "experts" whined about how their religion says people shouldn't have sex unless they're married, in which case, there's no reason for birth control and they didn't like paying health insurance companies that would have to pay, in part for birth control because, to them, it's all about fornication.

Then we get some chucklehead supporter of Santorum saying that women should avoid getting pregnant by putting an aspirin between their knees (ie, keep your damn legs shut). Again, missing the point by a mile.

So the Democrats allow Sandra Fluke to testify in their own hearing, where she talks about how her friend had to lose an ovary because her loving Catholic institution wouldn't help pay for her prescription birth control which would have helped treat the issue.

But yet again, missing the point by the distance of the moon, we get conservative clown Rush Limbaugh claiming she's a "slut" and a "prostitute" and that she's asking for handouts to have sex and if she's going to get paid, then she should post sex videos online.

What?

Of course, crackpot Bill O'Reilly has to pile it on claiming Sandra wants government to pay for her "social life".

The whole point of Sandra's testimony was that contraception isn't about sex. It's about women's health. Furthermore, Limbaugh repeatedly implied that the more sex someone had, the more expensive it would be to pay for birth control. Obviously he doesn't even know how hormonal birth control works.

Rachel Maddow nailed this one and revealed how it's not just a problem of the commentators, but of the GOP itself where GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney claims to support a "personhood" amendment which would make the destruction of a fertilized embryo a crime, but failed to understand that this is precisely what hormonal birth control does: It prevents fertilized eggs from implanting.

Meanwhile, I see Santorum giving a speech on how we shouldn't have the federal government taking over health insurance because people shouldn't have to pay for things they don't want to (like birth control). Does he really even think about what he's saying? We already have to pay for things we may not want to because it's part of the greater good; This is the entire point of taxes! All of them go towards things we may not even use, but collectively, we have acknowledged that there's massive benefits to paying for them. This is how we have schools, police, fire departments, and a military. If Santorum was intellectually consistent and honest, he would admit that there should be no place for any of those if we truly abolished requirements making people pay into things with which they may not agree.

And Santorum and Romney aren't the only ones making ignorant statements showing they don't understand what they're talking about. When Newt Gingrich was asked about his view on the issue, he also stated that he didn't want people to be forced to pay for "abortion pills". I suppose you could argue that he's a bit closer to the mark than Romney, but the closest thing I think anyone could call "abortion pills" is Plan B. And as I understand it, that's not covered in the bill, which again, reaffirms the fact that this isn't a debate about pregnancy so much as it is about healthcare. But the GOP doesn't want to hear that.

Additionally, to support this myopic crusade against women, religious institutions spread outright misinformation on birth control (kinda like Herp Derp Kirk Cameron claiming honosexuality is "unnatural" when it's been observed in numerous other species, but don't let the facts get in the way pal).

So to bring this together, here's what pisses me off:

This encapsulates the state of right-wing politics in our nation today - It's built on a foundation of ignorance and willfully misses the points, rejecting the people that actually have the points and expertise on a topic in favor of misplaced, self-righteous religious morals, attempting to slut shame women, instead of promoting their well being.

I don't buy into either political party, but while I think the Democrats are rather worthless, it's things like this that are simply a reminder of why the GOP is nothing short of vile.


(Side Note: Thanks to a concerted effort online many companies that advertised on Limbaugh's show have dropped their sponsorship.)

UPDATE: Shit like the above has real world consequences. Not only is it vile that the GOP is so scared of women having a sexuality that they'd rather punish them on medical issues, but they pass this crap onto their kids who outright harass others. The kids that echo this sort of thing are bad, but the parents are worse. The climate of condensation that the conservative right fosters is nothing short of loathsome. These people lack human compassion and should be shown none in return.

UPDATE 2: Added paragraph about Gingrich's ignorance as well.

Naka Kon 2012 Recap

My annual trip to Naka Kon was this past weekend. This year was definitely a change for me.

The past three years I've run a small sub sector of the convention: the Gaming sector. However, this year, I took a big step up. I essentially oversaw everything that happened at the convention that attendees could do.

Of course, the majority of this means figuring out the schedule, which is done well in advance, but there's always fires to put out: Panelists not having the right kinds of computer cables, Guests not being at the right place on time, schedule changes, etc...

Most of Friday was taken up working on a single event: Our Formal Ball. In past years, the host has taken an approach of "make people dress up, play music and magic happens". Instead of dancing, we instead get something more awkward than a junior high dance. So this year, with assistance from one of my best friends, we decided to 100% rework the ball. We chose only waltzes, had a 2 hour waltz lesson prior to the ball, had a bunch of staff we taught to assist everyone and pull wallflowers off the wall, and had games to keep everyone engaged. We had "dance cards" that required people to interact and learn various waltz steps that could be turned in when completed for a chance at being ball king/queen, prince/princess.

For this event we'd anticipated ~300 people, but printed 350 dance cards just in case. A few weeks before the con, I started getting worried that that might not be enough. Questions about the ball were eclipsing anything else. Even the announcement for the ball was getting more "Likes" on facebook than the announcement for the two biggest Guest voice actors (usually the biggest draw at conventions).

And I was right to be worried. We ran out of dance cards before we even got through the initial line. The 1000 ft dance floor we laid down wasn't even close to enough. We needed 4 times that (which isn't even available)! Regardless, it was an amazing event and towards the end, every single socially awkward nerd in the room was waltzing.

However, towards the end, I had to step out for 20 minutes for an emergency meeting. It wasn't just the ball that was bigger than anticipated. It was the entire convention. We had over 3,000 attendees arrive on Friday alone. Usually Saturday is the big day for people arriving and if that held up again this year, there would be no way we could accommodate everyone. We simply didn't have enough badges printed and the staff couldn't handle another day of that. The call was made to close registration several hours early.

But as luck would have it, Saturday's registrations were slow. The final numbers were somewhere around 1,000. It seems that having major events like our formal ball and concert on Friday are becoming bigger events than the usual main draw: The costume competition (which is Saturday).

While I didn't have a single event taking up my time on Saturday, it was the day of my annual "Anime Mythbusters" panel. This year I had the largest room available for general panels. Our most desired Guest this year, Steve Blum, had the exact same room the hour before me and only managed to fill it 3/4 the way. For me, it was standing room only. Yes, science can be that cool.

This year I added 4 new segments including things from Avatar (the show, not the awful movie), Samurai 7 and Nyan Cat. I think this was easily the best year yet and can't wait to start touring it to my other annual conventions.

Saturday was busy in other respects too. Our voice actor Guests had a few things they decided to change around on us and we couldn't get the word out to attendees, which caused major headaches. It was also the day of security incidents, two of which involved the police. Our security team did an amazing job, but we're lucky to have a team that's composed of a large number of current and ex-military as well as former and off duty police officers so if any security team is ready to handle such things, it was ours.

Sunday went pretty quietly. It had to be up at 5:30 am to do my shift in our con HQ which wasn't fun. I had a panel on Sexism in Anime later that day and the amount of tired was kicking my butt. I wasn't intending on having any powerpoints and was just going to deliver it straight lecture style to not detract from the message, but I knew I was too tired to remember everything. Also, when that tired, I become more dyslexic so I couldn't use my notes I'd prepared as a crutch either. As such, I used my 4 hour shift to put together a powerpoint so I could remind myself what was going on in big words but not have to read too much.

In the end, the panel went spectacularly. I'd used my #1 favorite anime, Gurren Lagann, as a case study. My basis for the discussion was Allan Johnson's Gender Knot in which I went through several points that fit each of his criteria and examined whether they were present. Eventually, I'm wanting to expand this to many more animes and start building up a survey of the entire genre instead of a single data point.

The panel had about 300 attendees and several of them stayed after to discuss things further including apparently one that reads this blog (small universe). It was a really great experience and I've submitted it to Tokyo in Tulsa for July. I can't wait to update it and present it there.

Naka is usually my first convention of each year and has consistently been my favorite. This year's was easily the best, despite all the issues we encountered. But most of those issues are something that can easily be resolved and Naka 2013 will be even better.

Now to continue sleeping.

Happy New Year. Have an ID Bill Missouri!

It's been quite some time since I've seen any pro-Creationism bills introduced in my home state of Missouri. In general, it seems we learned from our neighbors in Kansas when they had their big kerfuffle and had their pro-ID standards struck down and were embarrassed nation wide (if you don't remember, Kansas' bill actually was put into law for some time and changed the definition of science to include the supernatural, whereas most bills die before ever becoming law).

But it seems Missouri has forgotten the lesson and a pro-Creationist bill introduced recently. And boy is it loaded with some stupid. Let's take a look.

One of the first things it does is define a bunch of terms:

"Biological evolution", a theory of the origin of life and its ascent by naturalistic means.

Uh, no. Evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life. That's how you can tell real scientists didn't have anything to do with this bill. Real scientists know what words mean.

A second quibble is that "ascent" is a poor word choice that makes the assumption that evolution has a goal towards "higher" species. This is nonsense.

Theory philosophically demands only naturalistic causes and denies the operation of any intelligence, supernatural event, God or theistic figure in the initial or subsequent development of life;

Again, it's pretty painfully obvious this was written by scientifically illiterate Creationists. Evolution doesn't deny the existence of God; it just makes Him superfluous.

"Biological intelligent design", a hypothesis that the complex form and function observed in biological structures are the result of intelligence and, by inference, that the origin of biological life and the diversity of all original species on earth are the result of intelligence.

Hey! That one is almost right! It didn't attempt to pass Intelligent Design off as a theory, whereas they admit that evolution is, although they don't make any indication that they know what the difference is.

Since the inception of each original species, genetic material has been lost, inherited, exchanged, mutated, and recombined to result in limited variation.

Wait, what? So this bill is passing straight lies into law? No, genetic material has not been "lost". Sometimes it is, but through gene duplication and other methods, the amount of information increases. Creationists often deny this. Furthermore, we've seen species diverge, thus giving lie to the idea that there is "limited variation" with "each original species".

Naturalistic mechanisms do not provide a means for making life from simple molecules or making sufficient new genetic material to cause ascent from microscopic organisms to large life forms.

A claim without any supporting evidence.

The hypothesis does not require the identity of intelligence responsible for earth’s biology but requires any proposed identity of that intelligence to be verifiable by present-day observation or experimentation.

It claims not to, but every major ID proponent, from Behe, to Dembski, to Johnson, have claimed otherwise at some point.

Concepts inherent within the hypothesis include:
(a) The origin of life on earth is inferred to be the result of intelligence directed design and construction. There are no plausible mechanisms or present-day experiments to prove the naturalistic origin of the first independent living organism;

Um, argument from ignorance.

(b) All original species on earth are inferred to be the result of intelligence directed design and construction. There are no significant mechanisms or present-day experiments to prove the naturalistic development of earth's species from microscopic organisms;

Another argument from ignorance, and one that's actually untrue. Genetics "proves" the common ancestry.

(c) Complex forms in proteins, enzymes, DNA, and other biological structures demonstrated by their constituent molecules in regard to size, shape, quantity, orientation, sequence, chirality, and integration imply intelligent design was necessary for the first life on earth. Intelligence is capable of designing complex form;

Intelligence is capable of designing complex form. However, it's not exclusive. Roll a rock down a mountainside and the chips and nicks it accumulates are exceptionally "complex". But that doesn't mean it was done in any intelligent manner. Thus, they're trying to confuse people with a possibility as the only possible answer.

(d) Complex functions demonstrated by growth, reproduction, repair, food metabolization, waste disposal, stimuli response, and autonomous mobility in microscopic organisms imply intelligent design was necessary for the first life on earth.

In other words, "we're going to assume the first life was as complex as life is today requiring all these things." Evolution has never made such a claim. Thus, this is a strawman.

(e) Within the history of human experience, all exhibits of recurring discrete symbols from a set of symbols arranged in a specific sequence which store information and can be read by human intelligence, is itself the result of intelligence.

Since when are nucleic acids "discrete symbols"? We assign symbols to represent them, but that doesn't mean that's what they are. We use symbols to make things comprehensible, but we can't project backwards and assume the reverse.

(f) Intelligence-directed design and construction of all original species at inception without an accompanying genetic burden is inferred rather than random mutational genetic change as a constructive mechanism. Random mutational genetic change results in an increasing genetic burden and species degradation rather than species ascent;

Again with the ridiculous humancentric notion that there are "higher" and "lower" species. Also, they're making the absolutely false claim that mutations are only harmful. This is an outright lie.

(g) Intelligence-directed action is necessary to exceed the limits of natural species change, which is a combination of autogenous species change and environmental effected species change. Multi-generation breeding experiments illustrate the limits of natural species change and its inadequacy for developing required genetic information found in dissimilar species;

No. We have directly seen species diverge.

(h) The irreducible complexity of certain biological systems implies a completed design and construction at inception rather than step-by-step development, as indicated by the structures observed for sight, hearing, smell, balance, blood coagulation, digestion, and hormone control;

Wait... did they really just invoke Irreducible Complexity? That notion that got destroyed in the Dover trial? Hell, they're even including some of the exact systems that were shown to be reducible in that trial! It's cute they found some new ones to list, but it's still an argument from ignorance. Logical fallacies don't fly in real science.

(i) The lack of significant transitional forms between diverse species existing today and in the fossil record implies all original species were completed at inception rather than by a step-by-step development from other species. A lack of transitional forms is illustrated by the appearance of large complex life forms in the Cambrian fossil record without any significant previous fossils;

Wow. Two lies in one point. 1) We have a ton of transitional fossils. And even if we didn't, genetics and homology establish evolution beyond a shadow of a doubt. The fossil record is just bonus. 2) The Cambrian explosion has many fossils prior to it. Creationists just pretend they don't exist.

(j) Common designs and features evident in different species imply the intelligent reuse of proven designs analogous to the reuse of proven designs by human designers;

This is the gibberish that "common design implies common designer". No. If things weren't similar, then Creationists could claim it "implies a creative designer." Indeed, only a few hundred years ago, this is exactly the argument Creationists made. God was invoked to explain diversity.

The take away less is that a designer is assumed either way and since, no matter what, that's the case for common or different structures, there's no way to falsify the hypothesis. And if it can't be falsified, it's not science.

(k) The lack of significant present-day observable changes in species due to random variation, mutation, natural selection, adaptation, segregation, or other naturalistic mechanisms implies intelligence as the cause for all original species;

Again, an outright lie. We've seen numerous species diverge. When they diverge, that's very significant. But Creationists pretend that doesn't happen or use the term "species" so vaguely that it's meaningless.

From there, the bill goes on to proscribe "Equal treatment" which is defined as "the approximate equal teaching of each specified viewpoint for a single course of instruction in course textbooks" which should "contain approximately an equal number of pages of relevant material teaching each viewpoint."

That's right. The bill acknowledges that ID is merely a hypothesis, but claims it deserves as much time as a full fledged theory (which it spent considerable time lying about).

As expected, they go on to attempt to define "theory" but botch it:

"Scientific theory", an inferred explanation of incompletely understood phenomena about the physical universe based on limited knowledge, whose components are data, logic, and faith-based philosophy. The inferred explanation may be proven, mostly proven, partially proven, unproven or false and may be based on data which is supportive, inconsistent, conflicting, incomplete, or inaccurate. The inferred explanation may be described as a scientific theoretical model;

Nothing is ever "completely understood" in science. To do so would require infinite knowledge, something science doesn't claim to have (yet Creationists do!). Theories in science are not "proven" in an absolute sense. They are, however, proven beyond a reasonable doubt. If they are "partially proven, unproven or false ... based on data which is supportive, inconsistent, conflicting, incomplete, or inaccurate" then it's not a theory. The end.

Similarly, the sponsors of the bill can't manage to define a scientific law either:

(10) "Scientific law", a statement describing specific phenomena about the physical universe which has been verified by observation or experimentation and has no exceptions of verified empirical data. The statement may be described by formula;

"No exceptions of verified empirical data" you say? What about Newton's laws? There are numerous exceptions. Which is why the law had to be replaced... with a theory.

There's quite a few other ironies in the bill. For example:

If empirical data is taught, only such data which has been verified or is currently capable of being verified by observation or experimentation shall be taught.

Since every point listed in defining the thrust of ID is a logical fallacy, it is not "capable of being verified by observation or experimentation" in a broad sense. In narrow senses, some specific points may be, but every time those points have been raised, they have been found to be false.

Data with the appearance of empirical data which has never been verified and is currently incapable of being verified shall be identified as nonverifiable when taught orally or in writing;

You mean like Behe's claims of IC, or Dembski's entire concept of Specified Complexity which make up the core of many of the points previously raised?

If scientific law is taught, written textbooks statements identified as scientific law shall have no known exceptions of verified empirical data;

As previously pointed out, this actually has more of an effect on Physics than it does Biology.

But perhaps one of the most vile things the bill does, is after working so hard to (mis)define theory, they nearly admit that it's irrelevant anyway because they're going to mush everything up with false equivalence:

As used in this subsection, the term "theory" shall mean theory or hypothesis;

In other words, they don't care that ID hasn't been established. They're just going to promote it for no reason.

Here's another doozy:

If biological intelligent design is taught, any proposed identity of the intelligence responsible for earth’s biology shall be verifiable by present-day observation or experimentation

Either the sponsors of this bill are fiendishly smart, or incredibly stupid with this point.

As written, it would seem the intent of this passage is to prevent discussion that would link the designer to the Biblical God, thereby keeping it from running afoul of 1st amendment challenges under the guise that it doesn't promote any specific religion and is therefore secular. But Behe, Dembski, Johnson, et al claim to be able to infer the identity of the designer. Thus, if that was the intent of the sponsors, since those arguments are presumably scientific, there is a gaping loophole.

But then again, that may well be the intent, that those very arguments could sneak God into the discussion while excluding all other options. Again, either very clever or very stupid (as if the rest of the bill doesn't indicate the latter).

(6) If a scientific theory or hypothesis proven to be false is taught for historical, illustrative, or other reasons, the theory or hypothesis shall be identified as false when taught orally or in writing.

Wait... doesn't that mean the entire bill defeats itself?

As noted previously, the bill requires that all textbooks conform to this "equal time" nonsense. Obviously, this doesn't mean all textbooks are thrown out immediately, but all new ones purchased must be. In the meantime, the bill requires that a "supplemental textbook" be created. But the identity of the people to create it is asinine:

shall consist of nine individuals who are knowledgeable of science and intelligent design and reside in Missouri.

Wait... so they don't need to be Biologists? They can just be knowledgeable about any form of science to qualify?

It's no surprise why this is included: You probably wouldn't find 9 people that are Biologists in Missouri that would support such anti-science. Rather, as the Dissent From Darwin list shows, the vast majority of "scientists" that support ID aren't in any relevant fields. According to one survey, only about 0.01% of "dissenting" scientists are from a field which is applicable.

In other words, they want to include people that are illiterate in Biology to write material for a Biology class.

So here's a quick recap:

• The bill admits that evolution is a theory and ID is a hypothesis.
  
• It promptly tosses that distinction out the window to engage in some false equivocation.
  
• It incorrectly defines most of its terms.
  
• It throws out all of the typical Creationist/ID false claims against evolution and pretends that they're 1) honest criticisms and 2) a positive argument for ID.
  
• Leaves a wide open door to promote the Christian God as the identity of the Designer.
  
• Appoints non-experts to develop classroom material.

I sincerely doubt this bill will make it too far. However, I've looked at the wording of quite a few Creationist bills and I think this one rates pretty highly on the stupid density scale.

Poisoning the Well of Science in New Hampshire & The Back Handed "Help" From the NCSE

Word's been getting around that there are currently two anti-evolution bills in the legislature in New Hampshire. While such bills pop up all the time and are nearly as quickly struck down, these ones are interesting to me because they may be signaling a new(ish) approach from the anti-science crowd: Poisoning the well.

For those that don't remember how Creationists have tried worming their gibberish into the classroom previously, here's a quick recap:

• Straight out teaching Creationism - Ruled illegal in Edwards v. Aguillard
  
• Straight out teaching promoting Creationism "Intelligent Design" - Ruled illegal in Kitzmiller v. Dover
  
• "Critical Analysis" of Evolution using fake "facts" - Ongoing

So where does this new bill fall?

The new bills require that teachers tell students about "the theorists' political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism".

As if that has anything to do with anything when it comes to statistically sound science. Religion, or lack thereof doesn't change the observations or the math (unless someone's lying, which Creationists do all the time).

So what's this all about? One of the bill's sponsors, Jerry Bergevin (R-District 17), says that he wants things taught this way because of "the people who came up with the ideas.... It's a worldview and it's godless." He blames evolution for the Holocaust and the school shootings at Columbine.

Well guess what! So is gravity! After all, it's not Intelligent Falling! But as always, the anti-science crowd is singling out evolution for being "different". It's not. It's still well tested, robust science.

But despite Darwin being initially religious, Bergevin is trying to smear evolution by poisoning the well. This is really a subclass of the red herring fallacy, which attempts to distract from the real issues by invoking guilt by association.

It's one of the most pathetic, childish ways of arguing and Bergevin should be ashamed, but apparently doesn't have the good sense to be. To be fair, it's a tactic Creationists like Kent Hovind and Answers in Genesis have been taking for a long time, but when it comes to schools, they've largely been out of the picture for some time now.

So what does this mean?

It's hard to say. It could be just a coincidence, or it could be the start of a new strategy by the Creationist camp since their "critical analysis" has been stopped by and large since it's devoid of any honest information.

If it's the latter, then what's driving it? Is this a throwback to the harder line, totally bugnuts Creationists like Hovind and AiG? If so, I welcome it. It's only further evidence that the loons at the Discovery Institute have failed, and the old camp is one that's been so thoroughly defeated that the future battles will be a cakewalk.

But perhaps I'm reading too much into this.

Meanwhile, there's one more thing I think that's worth pointing out, and this is the response to this claim from the NCSE.

For some time, many science bloggers (especially PZ and Jerry Coyne) have accused the NCSE of going too far in defending evolution, to the point of actually promoting religion. I think the NCSE's response in this case is a pretty good example of this.

Instead of simply pointing out that Bergevin is committing a fallacy by trying to smear evolution without addressing any of its facts, they ignore this central issue, and instead, bend over backwards to point out

Evolutionary scientists are Democrats and Republicans, Libertarians and Greens and everything. Similarly, their religious views are all over the map, too. ... If you replace atheism in the bill with Protestantism, or Catholicism, or Judaism or any other view, it's clear to see it's not going to pass legal muster.

While this is vaguely true (there are religious scientists, many of whom I've written about on this blog), what's more notable is that the scientific community is about as non-religious as it gets. But the NCSE hides that, thereby giving the appearance that the religious component is far larger than it really is.

In other words, the NCSE is actually helping Bergevin because they're acting like his accusation is something of which they should be ashamed. Yes, evolution doesn't mention God. Yes, there are more non-religious scientists than there are religious. NO, this is not something we need to shy away from.

The reason is that the first point, not including God in the equations, is exactly what makes science work! Science began making its huge strides forward in explaining how the world works, in repeatable, testable, and meaningful ways, precisely when it cast off the shackles of the supernatural.

The second point, as I've pointed out, is nothing more than a logical fallacy.

But the NCSE doesn't seem to want to own up to these facts. Instead, they want to cozy up to religion and protect it, coddling the fear of atheism and in addition, the naturalistic method that makes science work.

I Thought This Argument Worked....

Here's an example of what an open and shut court case should look like:

1) White landlord accuses daughter of black tenant of using hair treatment products that cloud up the pool.
2) Tenant files discrimination complaint
3) Landloard hangs sign that reads: PUBLIC SWIMMING POOL - WHITE ONLY
4) Tenant takes landlord to court and wins.
5) Landloard claims sign is "historic" and as such, it's ok.
6) Court disagrees and rules in favor of tenant.

I like this ending. Justice is done. Historicity isn't a good excuse and the courts didn't allow it to be used as one.

Yet this argument is one that I see used all the time and quite often it does work! It's the defense that's always trotted out for the violation of the first amendment. Whenever someone wants to post the 10 commandments in a courthourse, it's always for its "historical" value. "In God We Trust" on our money? It's historical (even though not so much). "Under God" in the pledge? Historic (with even less history than "In God We Trust").

So why is it that sometimes this excuse works but other times it doesn't? The obvious answer is that, despite our constitutional guarantees, there are special privileges being given to religions of choice.