new anti-evoultion plan?

[kevin]

I live in Kansas City Missouri, just on the state line with Kansas. Driving around today I noticed a new billboard on the Kansas side, it was white text on a black background with the words "Evolution is a Fairy Tale for Grownups" and a link to www.ScienceProvesIt.com (non-URL form to prevent google counting it as a plus link).

Same old anti-evolution crap (too unlikely to be random, laws of thermodynamics say evolution impossible, etc....)

I find it interesting that they've registered their domain through Domains By Proxy so they can conceal their identities.

Has anyone else seen these around, or are they just in Kansas. Anyone know who is funding them? The links on their web site go to Answers in Genesis.

[skeptigirl]

Don't know about your group but when I Googled "faith based", "Christian", "institute", and "think tank" in various combinations looking for where Georgie was sending our tax dollars it was an eye-opener. There are hundreds of what look to be well financed Evangelical groups with the specific purpose of getting their religion into government and schools all over the country. In addition, Georgie has made every department from the DoD to the CDC add a faith based section on their websites, so I assume there are staff assignments as well, to direct grants to faith based groups.

Some evangelicals are on a mission to insert their unscientific views into anything and everything they can. As if pretend and wishful thinking would actually change the evidence.

[HeyLeroy]

Christian Science is an oxymoron.

Here are some letters I've written to my local paper. Feel free to use them. Heck, sign your own name to them if you want, with my absolute permission.

From 9 January 2006:

Georgetown University theology professor John Haught testified of Intelligent Design (ID): "When we have a failure to distinguish science from religion, then confusion will follow. Science and religion cannot logically stand in a competitive relationship with each other," and Young-Earth Creationism (YEC) and ID only differ "in the same sense that an orange is different than a navel orange." (AP, MSNBC, Sept.30, 2005).
Rev. George Coyne, Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory says teaching ID is "wrong."

"ID isn't science even though it pretends to be. If you want to teach it in schools, ID should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science." (Rutland Herald, Nov 19, 2005)

Rev. Coyne added: "If they respect the results of modern science, and indeed the best of modern biblical research, religious believers must move away from the notion of a dictator God or a designer God, a Newtonian God who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly." (The Tablet, June 2005)

Cardinal Paul Poupard of the Pontifical Council for Culture stated that evolution is "perfectly compatible" with Genesis. "The Fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim." (The Australian, Nov. 7, 2005)

YEC is more drastic. Every argument starts "if the Bible is true," followed by blindingly inane pseudoscience, distorting facts to fit unbending belief. The Bible is a closed subject and science is mocked because it's open to discussion.

Because science is open, we have antibiotics, ambulances, defibrillator, vaccines and a vast cornucopia of very good things.

Neither ID or YEC are scientific theory. They provide no testable hypotheses. Proponents try to counter science with philosophy. In science, any idea can be proven wrong. As philosophy there is no falsifiability to ID or YEC.

Teach them as such.


And from way back, 30 November 2000, even before I'd heard of the JREF:

Many opponents of evolution deny it because it contradicts the Bible. But when Jesus said "He that believeth on me ... out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water" (John 7:38), he didn't mean it literally. It's a figure of speech. Practically every book of the Bible contains such passages, which are either figures of speech or errors in fact.

Will we be teaching biblical astronomy, too? The Old Testament depicts the firmament as a dome covering the earth (it was flat, remember). The stars, sun and moon are hung from it; there's water above, which falls through windows when it rains (Gen.1:6-8, 1:14-17, 7:11, 8:2; Job 37:18; Isa. 24:18; Mal. 3:10; Ps. 104:2). The literal truth of the Bible is not the issue.

St. Augustine wrote that we should worry about what Bible stories signify and not worry about whether they are true.

Science worries only if things are true or not, not their significance. Science can't tell us about the meaning of life or the realm of the supernatural. That doesn't mean that there's nothing to be said about these things. Scientists are just not experts in these fields. Science cannot infer an infinite cause from a finite effect.

That humans evolved from apes millions of years ago is a testable hypothesis. That the universe was created in six days, 6,000 years ago, that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time, is also a testable hypothesis. And it's wrong.

That nature expresses God's purposes is not a scientific issue. There's no way to test this.

Biologists must admit the limits of modern science, stop trying to draw dogmatic conclusions and teach the plain facts of evolution, or it will be completely removed from public education due to it's perceived religious content. Can anybody object to science being taught like this?

That last one was prompted by the Ontario government quietly removing the teaching of evolution in biology classes, for fear of offending!!! Huh?

(ETA) That first letter I had to edit pretty savagely to fit the space limitations of the newspaper. If you're interested in the full version, lemme know. The second letter was edited down from about 1,200 words. It was a real dinger; unfortunately I've lost the original.

[Angus McPresley]

The best counter to their list of scientists that support Creationism is Project Steve (http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/3541_project_steve_2_16_2003.asp), a list of over 700 scientists named "Steve" that believe in evolution.

[eri]

I beg to differ - check out http://shovelbums.org/component/option,com_mospetition/Itemid,506/startpage,1/ , which is a list of 11,622 scientists who disagree with ID. A lot of us here at the JREF are on there somewhere. 7733 signed in just 4 days, vs the 4 years it took the Discovery Institute to find 400 people to sign theirs.

[Angus McPresley]

That's a good one too. But Project Steve has cooler t-shirts. ;-)

[DRBUZZ0]

Wow that is hella cool! Now I need to either get a PhD or get published in a scientific journal or something that would qualify me as a legitimate scientist.

(my name is Steve).


I found that website kind of funny. It's funny. Because the way *most* science works is that a scientist will postulate a hypothysis based on data he/she can observe and then do additional research on the matter. When they believe that their research has yeilded noteworthy results, they will publish it so that others can examine their work. Normally, critisism is welcomed, if it can help in finding flaws in their ideas. Also, most scientists would rather have their theory disproved than to move forward on a false premis.

Science is not supposed to be personal or reflect the values of the researchers. When science is modivated by a vested interest such as "this product is safe," it is generally judged to be bad science and is often taken with a grain of salt.


There are some instances where scientists have to stand up and debate over their theories, but those are rare. Usually this is the result of an important discovery being repressed for non-scientific reasons. For example, if a therapy was discovered but was being repressed by the goverment, because of social reasons.

"Creation Science" works completely differently. Start with an idea which you know is true, (it has to be.. the bible says it is), and then try to find support for it in science. If you find something that does not support it, just make an exuse like "We don't completely understand that process" or "god might have altered that." Then present the "evidence" along with the moral and biblical message and push it like it's religion...which it is.

As I read these pages, I do not find the kind of method one would expect to find in good science.

Also, it seems that those who feel different about the "intelegent design" theory are more likely to be damned to hell and told that they are wrong because of "God's Word" than to be accepted to review the research and help with the progress of science.

-Steve