Here’s where to find out what’s happening in Kansas
There is an anti-evolution kangaroo court going on in Kansas right now, with a string of creationist pseudoscientists being trotted out in hearings held by the state board of education, all with the intent of injecting nonsense into schoolkids’ educations. Qualified scientists are boycotting the event, a worrisome strategy since it gives the creationists an open microphone, but so far it seems to be working—their foolishness is what is being exposed. However, I haven’t been writing much about the hearings because I just assumed that everyone who read Pharyngula was also reading the other weblogs with all the news (although that story that the good right-wing Christians of Kansas are calling on an the testimony of an Islamic extremist was too juicy to resist). I got a couple of e-mail requests last night to explain what’s going on, though, so maybe everyone doesn’t follow this as avidly as I do…so let me direct your attention to a couple of good sources.
Pat Hayes of Red State Rabble is right there—he’s attending the news conferences and the hearings. He’s been posting reports regularly; you can read the summary so far (which will be obsolete soon as he adds more), and he has accounts of the woeful bias of the board of education members and the willful blindness of ID creationist witnesses. Some of his accounts have also been posted to the Panda’s Thumb.
Josh Rosenau of Thoughts from Kansas has also been following the case closely and posting analyses. He has observed that the witnesses are ignorant and unqualified, and is also optimistic that it’s going to backfire on the creationists.
I’m hoping for a good outcome, too, but I’m more cynical. All too often, foolishness loudly declaimed is accepted by those who want the lies to be true, no matter how ridiculous what they say might be. On the other hand, now that the Son of a conservative God rejects ID creationism, maybe a few of them will stop to think.
May 7th, 2005 at 7:36 am
Scopes Monkey Trial, Part II
May 7th, 2005 at 7:45 am
And though I haven’t written about it here, I posted a couple pieces this week over at corrente, here, here and here.
May 8th, 2005 at 1:11 am
Well, being blues and all, I have my own individual take on the advent of the anti-evolution/intelligent design scam.
First-off, you might want to know that the alleged discoverer of the “theory of evolution,” (the idea had cropped up here and there long before he came along) Charley Darwin, was really a rather neoconish fellow who had more money than God, and who basically parlayed an extended episode of tourism into a vast “scientific revolution.” Furthermore, there is damn little meat on the bones of this “theory” — which I would say is more aptly termed a “theorem.”
And this whole “intelligent design” thing is something that could conceivably become a real scientific issue someday, but not yet, since the science of our time simply lacks the tools that would be needed to handle it. Note that you can entertain scores of odd theorems. Just this evening there was this guy on the radio who seems to think he is finding messages from some God-like entity in the DNA of all living things. I myself am partial to the wildly hairy notion proposed in the science fiction novel “Simulacron III” by F.F. Galouye. See:
CHAOS CUBE
–Wherein you’ll find that the whole universe could be nothing more than a vast computer simulation:
“These worlds, which for the inhabitants seem to be real, are however pure mathematical simulations.”
But I did say “the advent of the anti-evolution/intelligent design SCAM.” Why “scam?” Because, in this instance we are dealing with people who are really interested in coercive thinking. These are people who have the ultimate goal of teaching kids to accept coercive indoctrination — to accept that there are just some things that they must profess to believe “or else.” Once you get them to accept that bull-excrement, it’s easy to force them to accept that they must join the army, etc., etc.
Still, Ron Reagan has a rock-solid point regarding the absolute idiocy of the anti-evolution movement. This should become crystal clear if you consider that, if kids are required to learn about “intelligent design,” then there can be no reason in the world to not also require them to learn about “computer simulated existence.”