Charles Darwin On The Ouija Channel
by Robert David Singer
[Note: If you are not up-to-date with the debate over Evolution, Creationism and Intelligent Design, you will want to read the Preface Notes first, identified by a [p] at the beginning of the sentence. Preface Notes will separate fact from fiction and rumor from humor in my prima facie case for Intelligent Design.]
[p1] Professor Richard Dawkins, one of the greatest living “experts” on blind Watchmakers and selfish gene-centric Evolution got out his Ouija Board to channel the spirit of Charles Darwin, author of The Origin of Species and the father of Naturalism and Atheism.
Contacting Darwin was considered of a dangerous and controversial nature because if his current residence is Hell then a whole lot of evolutionary biologists will be out of work.
[p2] Dawkins and company agreed it…
Texas Rewrites The Nation’s Textbooks
Washington Monthly reveals how a small group of ultraconservative Texas residents has managed to rewrite the public school textbooks used across the entire nation:
“Evolution is hooey…the way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan.”
Views like these are relatively common in East Texas. But McLeroy is no ordinary citizen…[he] sits on the Texas State Board of Education, [and leads] an activist bloc that holds enormous sway over the body’s decisions.
As the state goes through the once-in-a-decade process of rewriting the standards for its textbooks, the faction is using its clout to infuse them with ultraconservative ideals. They aim to rehabilitate Joseph McCarthy, bring global-warming denial into science class, and downplay the contributions of the civil rights movement.
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The Cowardice and Calumny of Creationism
From HuffPost:
On Monday, November 30, 2009, Occidental College paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Donald Prothero and I teamed up against Intelligent Design (ID) proponents Stephen Meyer and Richard Sternberg. The topic was suppose to be on the origins of life and whether evolutionary theory or intelligent design best explained it. Then it evolved to just: “Has Evolutionary Theory Adequately Explained the Origins of Life?”, and finally, five minutes before the start, it changed again to “Has Neo-Darwinism Adequately Explained the Origins of Life?”
Why the word games? Because ID creationists have no science, no theory, and no research program. The only thing they can do is attack evolutionary theory and hope people don’t notice that they are employing the fallacy of false alternatives: If A is wrong then B must be right.…
Creationism, Minus a Young Earth, Emerges in the Islamic World
Kenneth Chang writes in the New York Times:
AMHERST, Mass. — Creationism is growing in the Muslim world, from Turkey to Pakistan to Indonesia, international academics said last month as they gathered here to discuss the topic.
But, they said, young-Earth creationists, who believe God created the universe, Earth and life just a few thousand years ago, are rare, if not nonexistent.
One reason is that although the Koran, the holy text of Islam, says the universe was created in six days, the next line adds that a day, in this instance, is metaphorical: “a thousand years of your reckoning.”
By contrast, some Christian creationists find in the Bible a strict chronology that requires a 6,000-year-old Earth and thus object not only to evolution but also to much of modern geology and cosmology, which…
