KUSFS

It seems Kansas is percieved to have such a problem with bad science, that Kansas Citizens For Science needed some backup. So recently, graduate student Laura Murphy created the KU Students For Science. I found myself signing up to be treasurer somhow, so as an officer, I suppose I should mention it. The current website is a blog which I'm apparently co-author for.

Surprisingly, this group has already stirred a fair amount of interest. The local paper already wrote an article for which I was interviewed (although nothing I said was used. In it, Intelligent Design Network leader John Calvert manages to make himself look like a complete idiot.

In just a few short quotes, he manages to make many errors. His first is the typical abuse of the distinction between facts, theories, and hypothesies. From there, he repeats the tired claim that evolution is somehow inherently materialistic. The funny thing is if we look at material posessions like, say, money, it's not scientists (who, if evolution is so damned materialistic, should be the most materialistic bastards on the face of the Earth) that swim in money; it's the televangelists and megachurch pastors who decry materialism while bathing themselves in it. I really wonder how much Calvert's salary is and if he'd be willing to distance himself from materialism by taking a pay cut to show some piety in front of his God "Intelligent Designer".

From there he plagarizes good 'ole Ann Coulter, claiming that evolution is a religion and that it has its own gospel. I'm curious as to what gospel that would be. The Gospel of Empirical Evidence perhaps? The Gospel of Peer Review? Or the one of Testable Hypothesies? Does Calvert really know? Probably not.

So perhaps KUSFS and KCFS don't have much of a challange ahead of them, considering how weak the opposition seems to be. Now we just have to get the rest of Kansas to see through the smokescreen...

Hm. Maybe our work is cut out for us.