Discovery Institute Face-Plants at Facebook

For the last week or two, a huge knock-down drag-out Internet free-for-all has erupted between scientists, science writers and Intelligent Design creationists that has spread across several blogs, ID creationist websites, and FaceBook, where the IDologues banned several critics (including myself) from commenting on their page. Commenters at Facebook effectively exposed the dishonesty of the scientific "facts" made up and published by the creationists, so they got banned. Since the purges at FB, the ID creationists have retreated behind the wall of their totalitarian blog-state "Evolution News & Views" where comments are verboten, whence they continue to hurl an endless series of ad hominem attacks, safe from fear of exposure by the sort of pesky scientific facts that would certainly appear in a free comment zone, if creationists ever again permitted free comments.

The initial topic this free-for-all were the claims made in a recently published ID creationist booklet called "Science and Human Origins" which claims to be able to prove that all human beings could have descended from just Adam and Eve, who were not descended from any simpler creatures but "designed separately"-- a euphemism meaning "created supernaturally." Thus, ID has taken an explicitly creationist position. Previously, ID proponents had often pretended that ID was not creationism because, supposedly, in their definition of ID, they asserted "Creationism typically starts with a religious text". But the new ID book drops the facade and promotes Adam and Eve directly, with chapter titles like "The Science of Adam and Eve." What's next-- the Geology of Noahs' Flood, or the Neurology of Balaam's Talking Donkey?

The book was written by Casey Luskin, a creationist lawyer, and Douglas Axe and Ann Gauger. Axe and Gauger work for the Biologic Institute, the allegedly "experimental" arm of the pro-ID Discovery Institute, though its published experimental output has been modest by the standards of molecular biology labs. Axe and Gauger have modest publishing records, but can actually do simple molecular biology experiments, comparable to what would have been adequate in the 1980's, although to their target audience it looks like gee-whiz cuttin' edge science. (The creationist audience, frankly, is impressed by making hydrogen burn, if a fellow creationist lights the match.)

At first the creationists of the DI were furious that no evolutionist paid attention to their new book. Waah! Then they were furious because they got what they asked for: an evolutionist reviewed their book. Waah! Paul McBride, a blogger and grad. student in genetics in New Zealand, published a detailed five-part review of the new book, effectively trashing it by comparing it to scientific facts.

The creationists went ape-shit when they got what they asked for-- attention. Denyse O'Leary, the "journalist" who blogs as "News" at Uncommon Descent, implied that McBride was lying about Gauger's genetical arguments:

If the girl [Ann Gauger] is making some sense, they [McBride] have to make up something she didn’t say, so they don’t have to address what she did say. [O'Leary at UD]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe "the girl" is pushing 60. Of course, O'Leary did not bother to read McBride's review before criticizing it.

At "Evolution News and Views", they unleased the Klinghoffer. David Klinghoffer is a mad non-scientist whose modus operandi is all ad hominems, all the time, and who (like most posters at ENV) never permits free comments that might cause him to be confronted with pesky facts.

Case in point here: Klinghoffer sneeringly calls McBride "Darwinist Hero of the Hour" without fear of contradiction. Then he insinuates the young reviewer never read the book:

"...scientists at reputable universities, shy from actually reading [ID] material... At best, they'll find someone else who claims to have read it and rely on his say-so..." [Klinghoffer, emphasis added]

Riight. Klinghoffer uses innuendo to suggest McBride only claimed to have read the book that McBride dissected in a five-part review that is 1/3 as long as the book itself. But the real Klinghoffer art, the genius, comes out here:

The reviewer, Paul McBride, writes about the book at his blog that no one before ever heard of...Together they [scientists] lift up the hitherto obscure McBride on their shoulders... [Klinghoffer, links in original]

I see what you did there! To get to McBride's blog, you have to click on the hyperlinked phrase "no one before ever heard of". Now that's classy-- that's the real Klinghoffer art.

Who needs a science degree when you have a doctorate in asshole?

Next he unleashes his inner Hans Landa:

"I find this suspicious."

I find zees zuspishus! Achtung! Stormtroopers, fire ze machine guns into ze floorboardz!

"They seem to be afraid of directly confronting ID arguments. Why would that be?"

Hm. Creationists like the DK seem to be afraid of confronting McBride's review. Why would that be?

Again: all of that DK's posts and most posts at ENV forbid comments. Consequently, Klinghoffer can, and does, write post after post that consist of nothing but infantile ad hominems, science-free, and need never be confronted with pesky contradicting facts.

(So what does McBride say that scares them so much? McBride highlighted critical scientific problems with every major claim made in the book, all of which were invalid. Briefly: there are huge numbers of studies of human genetic diversity that refute the creationist claims; there is just far too much genetic diversity among humans to permit us all to be descended from only Adam and Eve, even in the last 4 million years; and, as for the fossil record, creationist Luskin labored mightily to re-bury some transitional fossils, at least-- yet they keep poking annoyingly out of the ground. Some of the flaws McBride found in their work were disputed by Ann Gauger here and by Doug Axe here. McBride's response was that their responses do not address the facts that nullify their assertions.)

What Would Happen If Creationists Permitted Comments?

When the FaceBook page for the Biologic Institute made the mistake of opening comments, chaos broke loose. It is rare for any evolutionists to get a chance to directly confront creationists or IDologues anywhere on the Internet-- almost all creationist and ID websites have essentially closed comment policies. So many evolutionists are just itching to take a whack at them.

Thus at the BI's Facebook post, which pointed to Klinghoffer's promotion of Luskin et al.'s book, evolutionists began posting right in their faces comments full of pesky scientific facts that challenged Luskin's quote mining and fact-inventing.

Beware actually reading this Facebook thread now-- many commenters (including myself) were banned and all their comments deleted, so some of the back-and-forth now appears incoherent.

The remnants still there begin with a back-and-forth in which an anonymous moderator identified only as "Biologic Institute" loses very badly in an argument over the fossil record against evolutionist Nick Matzke. The creationist "Biologic Institute" tries to argue that there are gaps in the hominid fossil record, by quote-mining paleoanthropologist John Hawks from 2000.

Matzke smacks him down by citing the very scientist that "BI" himself cited as an authority-- John Hawks-- who says that genus Homo could be a direct descendent of Australopithecus, and Matzke conveniently gives us a link to Hawks' webpage on Homo habilis.

Losing badly infuriates the creationist "Biologic Institute", so he or she threatens to squash all discussion and run away.

BI: And you [Matzke] haven't given any evidence for your story either. "could well be due to" is not evidence. I am closing this discussion because we are talking past each other. Our responses will be posted separately at www.biologicinstitute.org.

Mathematician Jeff Shallit shows up to kvetch.

Shallit: You're closing the discussion because you're losing the argument badly, it seems to me.

BI: No, it's because I have other work to do, and these comments will be addressed in the other forum.

Shallit: ...where comments are not allowed.
[BI Facebook page]

Ooh snap!

It was at about this moment above-- when "Biologic Institute" was threatening to silence all discussion-- that Carl Zimmer, a science writer and author of Parasite Rex, wandered onto the BI's facebook page to ask this very easy, very simple question, in a seemingly harmless comment, that would send the ID train completely off the rails.

Biologic Institute vs. Zimmer: Can A Brother Get A Reference?

It was a very simple, very simple, easy, small, seemingly harmless, non-technical question that finally made all ID creationists everywhere go berserk.

Backstory: Carl Zimmer had been puzzled by a post at ENV by Klinghoffer, with the spooky, ooga booga title "A Veil is Drawn Over Our Origin as Human Beings." Wooooo! That's the kind of great old pseudo-science ooga booga, like "Ancient Aliens" or "In Search Of", real "Bermuda Triangle", old school 1970's ooga booga.

(Of course, scientifically, saying "A Veil is Drawn Over Our Origin as Human Beings" is like looking at a tree lying on its side in the forest and saying "A Veil is Drawn Over The Cause of the Tree's Horizontal Posture.")

Here DK is flogging Luskin et al.'s book, and he presents as a key argument of the book, their claims about human chromosome 2. Fact: humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes, several ape species have 24 pairs. Why? If humans evolved from apes, the simplest scenario is that two ape chromosomes got fused end to end.

Fact: human chromosome 2 looks coarsely like two ape chromosomes, fused end to end. Human chromosome 2 has two parts: one part has genes that are homologous with those on ape chromosomes 2a, arranged in the same order [synteny] as the ape chromosome 2a; and its second part has genes that are homologous with those on ape chromosomes 2b, syntenic [in the same order] with 2b. Normal chromosomes are capped with repeating DNA elements called telomeres, and human chromosome 2 has extra telomeric repeats in the middle, between the 2a-like-part and the 2b-like-part, where a fusion would have occurred if they were fused.

Evolutionists point to that as a testable prediction for evolutionary theory: if humans and apes are descended from common ancestors, and if the number of chromosome pairs differs by 1, there should be one human chromosome looking like a fusion of 2 ape chromosomes.

But Klinghoffer disputes this: instead of acknowledging that chromosomal structure supports the evolutionary interpretation, he instead insists the evidence contradicts it. We must be clear on what that DK wrote because the creationists try to take it back later, when it got challenged. DK wrote:

"But the idea of such an event [chromosome 2 fusion] having occurred at all is itself far from sure. The telomeric DNA parked in the middle of chromosome 2 is not a unique phenomenon... there's much less of it than you would expect from the amalgamation of two telomeres. Finally, it appears in a "degenerate," "highly diverged" form that should not be the case if the joining happened in the recent past, circa 6 million years ago, as the Darwinian interpretation holds." [Klinghoffer at ENV]

Let us be clear that DK's two points are:

1. The evidence is against the "Darwinian interpretation" that chromosome fusion happened, and
2. Thus it is "far from sure" that chromosome 2 fusion ever happened.

Both points would be silently revised later when the creationists were challenged.

Seeing that crap, Carl Zimmer wants to know where the words that DK put in quotes, "degenerate," "highly diverged", came from. But Klinghoffer's posts, like most at ENV, forbid comments.

So Zimmer posts his question at the BI's Facebook page, right at the moment when the moderator "BI" was threatening to ban all further comments.

Zimmer asked where the words "degenerate" and "highly diverged" came from. Who wrote them? Simple question, right? Who wrote those words. It's not something hard, like explain who created the Intelligent Designer. It's easy. Where did you get those words from?

Ironically, Zimmer's original comment asking this question, like many others, was deleted by the Biologic Institute, so you can't see it at their FB page now. Continuing with that thread:

Bob Bennett: "they plan to shut down the thread" is pretty much the main rhetorical strategy of ID I've noticed

BI: Nick, this is not the place for a substantive discussion. But we are open to have the discussion in another arena... many of your criticisms will be addressed in up-coming posts at Biologic's website and Evolution News and Views...

Zimmer: Where is a place for substantive discussion? You presented a link above to a site [Biologic Institute] that has no comment thread. The writer there [Klinghoffer] makes all sorts of puzzling claims with no evidence. For example, he claims that DNA that is evidence for chromosome fusion "appears in a 'degenerate,' 'highly diverged' form that should not be the case if the joining happened in the recent past, circa 6 million years ago, as the Darwinian interpretation holds." Where is the scientific evidence for this? Or is this merely the opinion of the author? If we can't ask these questions at the site you linked to, then why can't we find out here?
[BI Facebook page]

The "Biologic Institute" responds by saying the evidence is in the book, and that CZ should buy the book. This exasperates CZ, who points out that such an easy question, regarding references, can be easily and quickly answered, without the need to buy a whole book.

(The book was published by Biologic Institute Press, apparently their in-house publisher, so they're getting the profits from the sales.)

Zimmer also points out that when people ask him simple, easy questions about the many books he wrote, he just answers the question, without demanding people buy the book. So CZ pleads and begs, but no one at the Discovery Institute will describe the origin of the words they quoted about chromosome 2. CZ tries to shame them into telling him their source: he gets evasion and changing the subject.

Thus the evolutionist Paul McBride, who wrote the 5-part review of the book, looks up the citation and posts a comment with the citation in it, thus finally answering Zimmer's question.

Can you guess what happens next? "Biologic Institute" deleted McBride's comment that had the answer to the question in it. The presumed reason is that they set a 100-word limit on comments-- just short enough to prevent substantive science from getting in the way.

Our story so far: the Discovery Institute refuses to answer simple, easy questions about the origin of the "facts" claimed in their books. If an evolutionist answers the question, creationists delete that answer.

The creationist response grew increasingly surreal. Klinghoffer showed up, challenging Zimmer to debate the authors about the “facts” in the book whose origin or source no one at the DI could specify. Zimmer declined to debate about their "facts" of unspecified origin; CZ just wanted to know where the "facts" came from.

So I posted a comment at their Facebook page saying that I would debate them in Zimmer's stead, on two conditions:

1. All posts at "Evolution News & Views" will be open to comments forevermore. Freedom!
2. No word length limit.

I got this response: <crickets>

(The comment in which I offered to debate the creationists would later be deleted when they banned me.)

Predictably, that DK went off to the ENV website to crow victory: creationists had defeated evolutionists, because they challenged Zimmer to a debate and he turned them down. That proves evolutionists are cowards who run away from debates. Klinghoffer never mentioned me, and still didn't post the citation Zimmer originally asked for.

Of course, brave DK wrote this courageously at the ENV website which bravely forbids all comments, due to their sheer terror of scientific facts. So the Discovery Institute is metaphorically hurling random shit-balls over the top of a wall.

The creationists at "Biologic Institute" made several accusations that none of the critics had read the book. So I read the book-- right there on Facebook-- and right on their own Facebook page, I wrote a detailed review of Chapter 4 (the chapter about chromosomal fusion and genetics) complete with scientific references and citations-- all that in perhaps ~100 comments, each less than 100 words (because the DI enforced a 100-word limit on evolutionist comments.)

Klinghoffer then posted at ENV announcing that still no “Darwinists” had read Luskin’s book, except McBride, so all “Darwinists” were criticizing that which they had not read. He wrote that after I had demolished every page in chapter 4, dissecting Luskin’s “figures” and citations, logic, etc. That DK implicitly accused me of having not read the book, from which I had provided page numbers, Luskin quotes, etc. and posted them on their own FB page.

Instead the Biologic Institute banned me from their Facebook, and deleted all my comments with scientific references and citations. (I saved them to my own files.) They banned several other people, including Doc Bill and Rando.

When I first got banned, no reason was given. When other commenters complained, they gave the reason that I was "uncivil."

Biologic Institue: "Insults are removed. Not genuine, civil discussion on the scientific argument. BTW, all posts over 100 words are deleted, friendly or unfriendly."

 Really? Let's take a look at my last comment before they banned me, and you be the judge whether I was "uncivil." I was satirizing Klinghoffer's "A Veil Is Drawn" ooga booga post at ENV.

"A veil is drawn across the origin of the "facts" claimed by Luskin, Axe & Gauger in their book. From what source did the "facts" claimed by Intelligent Design proponents originate? Mankind may never know."

Guess they can't handle satire, so they banned me, and deleted all my comments. The trouble here is that for creationists, facts are "uncivil."

At this point I began to suspect that "Biologic Institute" was in fact David Klinghoffer.

ID proponents consider facts to be insults (which I guess they are in a way, because actual facts reveal how mendacious they are with the quote mines and dishonest paraphrases of sources), and they consider insults to be facts, which is why so many of their posts consist of nothing but ad hominems: as we see in the many posts of Klinghoffer, Denyse O'Leary and Cornelius Hunter.

And now, Cornelius Hunter. Creationist Dr. Cornelius got into the "Zimmer asked a question-- attack him!" bandwagon, accusing Zimmer of being a liar and criminal, in a blog post called "Carl Zimmer Doubles Down on Chromosome Two Lies and Misdemeanors." It is an execrable piece of writing, devoid of science, like much from Dr. Cornelius. 

Zimmer asked a simple question which no creationist dared answer. Dr. Cornelius dared not answer Zimmer's simple, simple question. Klinghoffer's and Luskin's sources must be concealed, no matter what. Dr. Cornelius durst not reveal their sources. They're like King Solomon's diamond mines.

Instead, Dr. Cornlius accuses Zimmer of lying because

"...he [Zimmer] demanded that skeptics of the chromosome two argument show why the evolutionary fusion hypothesis is not possible...Of course no such claim was made." [Cornelius Hunter]

Bullshit, Dr. Cornelius. Here's what Klinghoffer wrote:

"...there's much less of [telomeric DNA in the middle of chromosome 2] than you would expect from the amalgamation of two telomeres. Finally, it appears in a "degenerate," "highly diverged" form that should not be the case if the joining happened in the recent past, circa 6 million years ago, as the Darwinian interpretation holds." [Klinghoffer at ENV]

Klinghoffer clearly states that the evidence means chromosomal fusion could not have happened --not that chromosomal fusions never happen, but that it could not have happened in chromosome 2 in the last 6 million years-- because 1. there is not enough telomeric DNA, and 2. because it is supposedly "degenerate" and "highly diverged." Klinghoffer says the evidence precludes chromosomal fusion.

Such a claim was made, and Dr. Cornelius is bullshitting his audience again. (To give Dr. Cornelius credit, he's the only ID proponent with an open commenting policy, unlike all the other Stalinists.) The rest of Dr. Cornelius' long, dreary post had no science in it-- just the usual psychoanalysis, where Dr. Cornelius changes the subject from genetics (inconvenient for them!) to armchair psychoanalysis of the motivations of those darn atheist Darwinists. Intelligent Design is not a competitor of Darwinism, it's a competitor of Freudianism-- call it Fraudian psychoanalysis. Impugning people's motives they can do. Copy a citation? Nah.

Five days of insults, accusations and personal attacks were directed at Zimmer, and people were banned and comments were deleted left and right, but no creationist would reveal Luskin's sources!

Finally Klinghoffer (indirectly) revealed Luskin's sources. He copied into a post at ENV about one page from Luskin et al.'s book, which indirectly referenced Luskin's sources (no bibiliography page, alas).This was enough for Zimmer to deduce them.

Thus Zimmer was finally able to compare what the sources said to what Luskin and Klinghoffer said they said. And now we see why their sources had to be concealed like King Solomon's diamond mines.

In a long and marvelous blog post, Zimmer showed Luskin's sources on the chromosome 2 telomeric repeats do not say what Luskin said they say. Luskin's dishonesty was frankly exposed... certainly not the first time.

Luskin's worst tricks involve his misrepresentation of this 2002 paper by Yuxin Fan et al. Luskin presents the paper as having evidence against the fusion of human chromosome 2 in the eyes of its authors, when the authors in fact present evidence pointing to the opposite conclusion. Luskin employs several tricks to misrepresent Yuxin Fan et al., but I will direct you to Carl Zimmer's blog post which exposes Luskin's dishonesty quite neatly.

I will add this to Zimmer's points: Luskin cites Fairbanks' book Relics of Eden, which in fact says

"Of the 158 [telomeric] repeats, 44 are perfect copies of TTAGG or CCTAA. In most cases, the remaining repeats differ from the standard sequence by no more than one or two base pairs."

But Luskin in his book writes this as:

As evolutionary biologist Daniel Fairbanks admits, the location only has 158 repeats, and only “44 are perfect copies” of the sequence. [Luskin et al., Science and Human Origins, pp. 95-96, emphasis added]

Note how cunningly Luskin inserts his word "only", not in the original, to imply that this number is too low, thus challenging evolution. His source did not say 44 is too low-- this is Luskin's invention.

There are many other tricks employed by the quote miner, neatly dispatched by Zimmer above.

Of course the creationists did not admit defeat. Au contraire, Luskin doubled down. He attempted to defend his quote-mining in this response to Zimmer, where he digs himself in a deeper hole-- adding more examples to the list of his dishonest paraphrases of sources, again claiming they said things they did not say.

At Carl Zimmer's blog I wrote a long comment dissecting Luskin's doubling down on dishonest quote mines in Luskin's latest response.

Conclusion

Complete victory for science and reason. Defeat, humiliation and ingnominy for the forces of superstition and endarkelment. Shame on you-- shame. Let us now assign credit to the heroes.

First, Paul McBride for writing a detailed review of Luskin's book.

Second, Carl Zimmer for looking up Luskin's and Klinghoffer's sources and comparing the sources to their words thus exposing their dishonesty.

Third, Nick Matzke for kicking the tail of "Biologic Institute" so badly that they threatened to silence all discussion.

Let us assign ignominy to the hissable villains.

First, Casey Luskin. It is exhausting to battle his life-long addiction to quote mines. It is time for his family to arrange an intervention, to sit him down and say, "Casey, this has gone on for years. You must stop quote mining. You must go cold turkey. Just stop."

Casey, do you think dishonest quote mining leads to new scientific discoveries? Can you cure diseases with your quote mines?

Second, David Klinghoffer, who defends quote mining, blames Darwin for Christian evils like Nazism and slavery, and has nothing to offer but ad hominems, while never permitting comments on his posts. It isn't just that he has nothing to offer but ad hominems-- it's that he accuses scientists of cowardice and of running from a fight-- while Klinghoffer himself never permits comments on his posts. Scientists would love to take a whack at that DK if he ever opened comments. He just throws random shit-balls over the wall while hiding at ENV. This is cowardly behavior. Klinghoffer is the ultimate juvenile feline.

Third, Cornelius Hunter. His blog posts are science-free; now they're just about armchair psychoanalysis. He didn't even read Klinghoffer's post before defending it.

Without ad hominems and quote mines, creationist ID proponents have nothing. Nothing.

Fundamentalists, Creationists And Islamic Extremists Share the Same "Philosophy"

Religious fundamentalists and authoritarian creationists frequently need a scapegoat to scare the public with, though it changes over the years--hippies or Jewish communists or blacks marrying whites--anyway, this decade it's gays and scientists. Perhaps the most over-the-top of the fundamentalists' recent anti-science slanders involves comparing the theory of evolution, or just science in general, or the fake "materialism" bogeyman, to...Islamic terrorism.

Yeah, that's right. Hard to believe they'd go there, but yeah they went there.

Some background: fundamentalists and creationists claim that the only reason why scientists would believe in evolution or global warming or "Earth goes around the sun" theory, is because 99.99% of scientists adhere to a secret religion called "materialism." This word is not coherently defined, but as near as I can figure out, you're a materialist if you think scientists have solved some scientific problems in the past, and might solve more in the future. Shocking, eh? This causes fundamentalists to say hilarious things about basic science, but it's just part of a calculated economic and political agenda.

Now to see how over-the-top ridiculous and nonsensical this has gotten, let's consider a recent anti-science scare piece by Rebecca Bynum in NER. Bynum begins by making a number of coffee-spittingly ridiculous errors about basic, basic science, such as, that scientists cannot explain electricity. We have to suffer through her absurd set-up, until she gets to the chase, metaphorically speaking. Here comes the money shot, the one most important claim that Bynum really needs to pound home.

Islam is, in essence, an extremely materialistic religion with many similarities to secular materialism: both remove human dignity and envision man as a slave. [Source.]

How logically incoherent can you be? Now Muslims, who believe in Abraham's God, Jesus' virgin birth and eternal Paradise, are supposed to be "materialists"!?

Now Bynum knows she has no evidence to back that up, and she knows it makes no sense. And we know she knows, because of the way she sneaks her dick (metaphorically speaking) into the popcorn box when she thinks no one's looking. In other words, in the above quote, she's lying.

But she figures her audience will grab onto it. And she might be right: probably her audience will grab whatever she sneaks into the popcorn box.

Bynum has to lie here, because Islamic terrorists, in their own words, say that they share the anti-materialism and anti-secular government values of Christian fundamentalist authoritarians, as we'll see in a moment.

But now, let's go back to the days immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

You show your true character when you're in a crisis: how do fundamentalists act in a terrorist crisis? Man up? Sacrifice for the good of the country? Nah. Let's angle for advantage!

By Sept. 13, Jerry Falwell and his friend Pat 'blood diamond miner' Robertson explained on TV who was responsible for the Islamic terrorist attacks on the USA:

God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve... I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way... I point the finger in their face and say you helped this happen.

By Dec. 1, 2001, the creationists at the Institute for Creation Research (founded by Henry Morris, see below) would add science to the list of those equated with Islamic terrorists:

Only 13 days after the act of terrorism [Sept.11] on New York, Public Broadcasting Stations delivered a different, but another event of grave importance that was witnessed by millions of Americans—a [TV] special entitled "Evolution." PBS...televised one of the boldest assaults yet upon both our public schools with the millions of innocent school children and the foundational worldview on which our nation was built. [Source: Institute for Creation Research]

Whoa Whoa Whoa. Whoa. Let's stop a second. First, he says a TV documentary about evolution is similar to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Also, broadcasting a documentary on TV is "assaulting" schoolchildren. Um hmm. And next, a TV show about evolution is attacking "the foundational worldview on which our nation was built."

This idiot has not read any of the writings of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Jefferson described our separation of church and state as "a nation arises which vindicates to itself the freedom of religious opinion, and it's eternal divorce from the civil authority." [Jefferson to James Smith, 12/8/1822]

Our Founding Fathers did believe in reason and using your damn brain and not trusting infallible religious authorities. Also, the main authors of our founding documents didn't believe in the Christian Trinity or the incarnation of Christ. But if you do, fine, your business. Either way, fundamentalism and hystericalism existed in their time, and it scared them to death. We'll get back to the Founders later.

But now, back to creationist thumbsuckers equating evolution and the terrorist attacks of 9/11:

These two "assaults" have similar histories and goals. The public was unaware of the deliberate preparation that was schemed over the past few years leading up to these events.

Dramatic music: DA DA DA DUM!!

And while the public now understands from President Bush that, "We're at War" with militant Islamics around the world, they don't have a clue that America is being attacked from within through its public schools by a militant religious movement of philosophical naturalists (i.e., atheists) under the guise of secular Darwinism. Both desire to alter the life and thinking of our nation...

"Evolution" is PBS's assault that's coming to your children's classroom—not soon but now... These evangelists in turn proselytize millions of victims in taxpayer-supported schools who can't protect themselves and whose parents don't understand that a vicious religious war for the mind has been declared on America from within.

[Source: Institute for Creation Research. Emphasis mine.]

Uh, why is this guy writing crap on the Internet if he's not himself out to alter the life and thinking of our nation? If you want to keep our thinking the same, throw out your computer, please.

Meanwhile, back on Round Earth, what really motivates Islamic terrorists? Religion, maybe? Hey, how about instead of listening to super-chauvinist anti-scientists, how about if we ask a real terrorist?

Here's an Islamic terrorist who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993:

...in a prison interview, Mahmud Abouhalima, convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, stated that his war isn't against Christians but U.S. "secularists" who are exporting their way of life to the Muslim world....living in America allowed him "to understand what the hell is going on in the United States and in Europe about secularism of people, you know, who have no religion." He said the United States would be better off with a Christian government because "at least it would have morals."

...In his interviews...Abouhalima made it clear that his Islamic brothers have no fight with Christianity. He said the holy war is caused by the U.S. government supporting "enemies of Islam," such as the state of Israel...

...Abouhalima was asked what he thought of all those secular people walking around the streets of Cairo and New York, while he sat in federal prison for trying to blow up the World Trade Center. He called them lost people, nonbelievers who lacked the "soul of religion." Then he said: "They're just like moving dead bodies."

[Source: San Francisco Chronicle, 9/23/2001. Emphasis mine.]

In their own words, Islamic terrorists make it clear that they want to kill us, not because they share "secularism" or "materialism", but because they hate "materialism" and "secularism." They hate science, reason, freedom, equality and pluralism just as much as American religious fundamentalists do.

Note the similarity in language: the Islamic terrorist compares people with different beliefs to people without spirit, people already dead-- a common theme in US fundamentalist political statements.

But Islamic extremism has not evolved independently of US fundamentalist creationism: on the contrary, prominent US creationists have traveled abroad to meet Islamic extremists and do everything they can to fan the flames of Islamic hatred for science and secular government.

In Turkey, a NATO ally of the United States, the traditionally secular government is far more vulnerable than here, and religious extremism much more dangerous.

The father of modern creationism, Henry Morris, founder of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) (which compared evolution to terrorism in the 2001 quote above), and his lieutenant Duane Gish, former vice-president of ICR, visited Turkey in the 90's and participated in a creationist conference in Istanbul.

In Turkey an Islamic extremist group dedicated to fighting evolutionary theory, the Science Research Foundation (called BAV in Turkish), was formed by Harun Yahya (aka Adnan Oktar), and many US creationist attended BAV conferences in Turkey in 1998. [Source.]

The ICR bragged about their connections with the Turks in their newsletter [Impact, Dec. 1999].

US creationists hate secular government and science so much that, to them, anything, anything is better than the separation of church and state--they have done everything they can to inflame Islamic extremism and helped destabilize a ally of the US-- and have helped to put Turkish scientists in danger.

Morris originally went to Turkey to find Noah's Ark. At that he failed, but he and his US colleagues succeeded in crushing the free speech of Turkish scientists.

[Update: One former member of the BAV describes how the cult got their dogma by copying it directly from US creationists like the ICR:

For every [Harun Yahya] book, they will take a few key sources written by Christian creationist authors, mostly from the US. They plagiarize the chapters and paragraphs that agree with their creationist approach. Then they add the photos, a few ayat from the Koran, and sometimes a bit of a commentary. None of the ideas belong to [Adnan] Oktar. [ Source.]

The BAV went on to push a campaign of massive legal intimidation against evolutionary scientists, and Harun Yahya's cult used female sex slaves to gain influence over wealthy and powerful people.]

In 2005, when the state of Kansas was rewriting its science education standards to make them anti-evolution, a member of the BAV, Mustafa Akyol, testified to the school board. The Kansas City paper, The Pitch, dug up some background on the BAV's attacks on Turkish scientists:

...beginning in 1998, BAV spearheaded an effort to attack Turkish academics who taught Darwinian theory. Professors there say they were harassed and threatened, and some of them were slandered in fliers that labeled them "Maoists" for teaching evolution. In 1999, six of the professors won a civil court case against BAV for defamation and were awarded $4,000 each.

But seven years after BAV's offensive began, says Istanbul University forensics professor Umit Sayin (one of the slandered faculty members), the battle is over.
"There is no fight against the creationists now. They have won the war," Sayin tells the Pitch from his home in Istanbul. "...Today, it's impossible to motivate [any scientists]. They're afraid they'll be attacked by the radical Islamists and the BAV."

...The Turkish government, he adds, refuses to take an interest, tacitly encouraging the ongoing effort against scientists. ...As a result of the BAV campaign and other efforts to denounce evolution, he adds, most members of Turkey's parliament today not only discount evolution but consider it a hoax. "Now creationism is in [high school] biology books," Sayin says. "Evolution is presented [by BAV] as a conspiracy of the Jewish and American imperialists to promote new world order and fascist motives ... and the majority of the people believe it."

...Sayin says that creationism in Turkey got key support in the 1980s and 1990s from American creationist organizations, and [Turkish-born physicist Taner] Edis points out that BAV's [Harun] Yahya books resemble the same sorts of works put out by California's Institute for Creation Research. Except in Yahya's books, it's Allah that's doing the creating.

[Source: The Pitch, Kansas City. May 05, 2005.]

So you just substitute Yahweh <--> Allah, or vice versa, and you get US creationism <--> Islamic extremism. The logic, the arguments, the anti-science, the slanders are all the same: evolution is a conspiracy; evolutionary scientists are fascists; scientists are called atheists, Maoists, etc. There is no difference between BAV's language and the quote from American creationists above.

[Update: Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya, formed a religious cult centered on the BAV and its creationist anti-Darwinian crusade. The BAV launched hundreds of legal actions against scientists, critics and former defectors from their organization. News websites in were blocked in Turkey. Wordpress.com in its entirety--all its blogs--were blocked in Turkey in 2007 because some bloggers reported Yahya and the BAV's actions. In 2008, they got all of Google Groups, and then Richard Dawkins' website blocked entirely in Turkey. The creationist cult employed women as sex slaves to recruit new members, and as "wives" for the leader. Adnan Oktar/Yahya was eventually sentenced to three years for founding a criminal organization.

One former BAV member said: "We had something to please everybody: Ataturk [nationalism], namaz (prayer), creationism and, if need be, cocaine.”

So perhaps one difference between Islamic and American anti-evolutionists is the sex-and-drug cults. But then... insert Ted Haggard joke here. ]

Akyol from the BAV has emphasized the similarities between Islam and the US anti-evolution Intelligent Design movement, specifically the Discovery Institute:

Muslims should also note the great similarity between the arguments of the Intelligent Design Movement and Islamic sources. Hundreds of verses in the Qur’an call people to examine the natural world and see in it the evidence of God...

What Intelligent Design theorists like [Michael] Behe or [William] Dembski do today is to refine the same argument with the findings of modern science. In short, Intelligent Design is not alien to Islam. It is very much our cause, and we should do everything we can to support it. [Source.]

And what did Mustafa Akyol tell the anti-evolution school board in Kansas when he testified in 2005?

Muslims think that the West is a completely materialistic civilization that has turned its back on God... Since America is the leading country within the whole of Western civilization, it attracts much of this distaste. Unfortunately, that is one of the factors that create a breeding ground for radical Islam. [Source.]

Note his language, his attack on "materialism." By materialism here, he does not mean greed, consumerism or capitalism, which are all mandatory according to Christian fundamentalists. He means science, evolution and the separation of church and state.

Translation: We Americans must get rid of reason and the separation of church and state, or his co-religionists will kill us. Abandon American values, or you die.

And now, a pop quiz. Here are two quotes on the same topic: "secularism" and liberal professors in universities.

Two quotes: which is American fundamentalist, which is Islamic extremist?

A. There are "thirty to forty thousand" left wing professors who are "termites that have worked into the woodwork of our academic society and it’s appalling... These guys are out and out communists, they are radicals, they are, you know, some of them killers, and they are propagandists of the first order... you don’t want your child to be brainwashed by these radicals, you just don’t want it to happen. Not only brainwashed but beat up, they beat these people up, cower them into submission. AGGGH."

B. "Today, students should shout at the president and ask why liberal and secular university lecturers are present in the universities."

The answer is at the bottom of this post.

Recall that the ICR creationists, friends of Turkish creationists who assisted in founding the BAV, above said evolution was an assault on "the foundational worldview on which our nation was built."

Howabout, instead of listening to them, we actually ask our Founding Fathers about the worldview on which our nation was built?

Here's John Adams, second US President:

The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history...

It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service [making the US government] had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven... it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

[John Adams, "A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America" (1787-88)]

Well guess what Johnny, it is "pretended" now! 24 hours a day every day at Fox News and the Christian Broadcasting Network!

So if evolution agrees with "reason and the senses", and does not pretend it "had interviews with the gods", how does it undermine the values our country was built on?

(And if the time ever comes that evolution no longer agrees with "reason and the senses", then OK, off it goes.)

If the US fundamentalists on the school board in Kansas in 2005 had had any spine, any backbone, they would've listened to Mustafa Akyol's testimony above; and told him that if his co-religionists can't control their violent impulses, they have to change. Not us.

We have problems, true. But this country was built on reason and science, pluralism and tolerance, and the separation of church and state, the "eternal divorce from the civil authority" Jefferson wrote about. And they would've told Akyol and the BAV to go back to their country and, rather than fighting and slandering secular government and science and the use of reason, they should defend these things and tell their more violent co-religionists to change or f*** off.

But no...it's Western scientists who are assaulting our schoolkids, huh? American creationists... anti-science, encouraging extremism, and cowardly when confronted with it.

---

And now... the answer to our "quote quiz" above. The less hysterical quote (B) is from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, who like Pat Robertson was calling for a purge of liberal and secular teachers from the Iran's universities, encouraging students to employ Iranian Islamic revolution-style radicalism. [Source.]

Of course, the more hysterical quote (A) is from American fundamentalist Pat Robertson [video.] He also describes the "thirty or forty thousand" left-wing professors as "racists, murderers, sexual deviants and supporters of Al-Qaeda-- and they could be teaching your kids!" This is in reference to a book, America’s 101 Worst Professors, which lists no murderers at all, and no professor who beats anyone up. Among the dangerous profs listed in book was a professor of Peace Studies at a pacifist Quaker school. One real radical and asshole, Ward Churchill, has since been fired.

Cornelius Hunter's Logic: Intelligent Design Can Disprove "Obama Is President" Theory

The Intelligent Design proponent and Discovery Institute (DI) Fellow Cornelius Hunter has a post at his blog where he argues that evolution disproven because is not parsimonious--that is, because the evolutionary pathways leading to complex organisms are complex. Hunter has a slogan, endlessly repeated: "Religion drives science and it matters", which is quite a "tu quoque" argument coming from a guy who works for a faith tank like the DI. This is like the Klan cutting off all accusations that they're racist by starting out by saying: 'If you don't like us, you're racist against white people.' Not that Hunter is a racist, of course, but the point is, right-wingers definitely understand how to launch a preemptive strike by first accusing others (without evidence) of what they themselves (with evidence) are manifestly guilty of.

So Hunter's post claims that evolution is disproven because, in
this research paper, the authors used genetic comparisons to construct our best model of the tree of descent for the first placental mammals, and found it involved hybridization events very early in the history of mammals.

Hybridization? Says Cornelius Hunter. That disproves "Darwinism"!

Uh huh...

I have recently heard an absurd "origin theory" about the president of the United States-- that the US President is neither black nor white, but both at the same time!

A HYBRIDIZATION theory!? Hybridization never happens in the real world!

The US population is 1.7% multiracial, so the odds of this "Half-Black President" origin theory are 58.8 to 1!

But it gets worse! The "Obama origin theory" furthermore claims that he was born in Hawaii in 1959!

Now Hawaii is 43rd among US states in population, and the odds against the President being born in a state the size of Hawaii are 239 to 1!

And, given that the president must be at least 35 and less than say 90 or so, the odds against him being born in 1959 are 65 to 1!

So the combined odds against this dogmatic atheist "origin story" are now 916,375 to 1!

Clearly, the only reason why anyone would believe this "Obama is President" story is a metaphysical precommitment to atheism.

But it gets worse! They say he's "American", but they also say his father was from KENYA! How many people have Kenyan fathers?

Epicycles upon Epicycles!

And their "origin theory" furthermore claims he grew up in Indonesia!

Most Americans don't even have a passport! The odds against this unparsimonious origin theory are now millions to one.

Another falsified prediction of the dogmatic "Obama is President" thought police!

Religion drives the "Obama is President" theory, and it matters.

Don't pay any attention to the vast number of successful predictions of the atheist "Obama is President" theory, like that birth announcement printed in Honolulu newspapers in 1959, or the photos of him with his white grandma.

Why should a vast number of successful predictions matter!?

Luckily, Mr. Hunter has a more parsimonious theory about the origin of our president, right? A more parsimonious theory that makes testable predictions that are both more specific and different from the accepted theory...You do, right, Mr. Hunter?

The current theory hurts my brain. So please keep yours simple, Mr. Hunter.

Such as for example, that all the relevant authorities are lying to us.

...And have faked their incomparably vaster number of successful predictions.

...And have tricked us into thinking that their many "falsified predictions" are really successful predictions, or relevant to other topics altogether.

Hunter has on his website a long list of what he calls "failed predictions" of Darwinism. I scanned it: mostly successful predictions of Darwinism, or observations that make Darwinism more probable (for example, the genetic code is more tolerant to mutations than you would expect at random, thus minimizing deleterious mutations and making constructive mutations more likely), or stuff that's irrelevant as far as Darwin is concerned.

Hey Hunter: It's Wednesday and it's raining. Please add that to your list of "failed predictions of Darwinism"; it is as good as anything else on there.

In his current post Hunter basically says that the historical pathways by which complex organisms (in this case, the first placental mammals) evolved are too complex. This is in reference to a research paper that tries to reconstruct the origin of the first placental mammals by genetic analysis.

The authors are trying to figure out which large groups of placental mammals were the first to split off from the other placental mammals. Was the first outlier Afrotheria (elephants, elephant shrews, sea cows and such)? Or was the first group to branch off Xenarthra (South American anteaters, armadillos, tree sloths, extinct ground sloths and such)?

The authors (Churakov et al.) write: "These findings provide significant support for a “soft” polytomy of the major mammalian clades." A "clade" is a bunch of species with a single common ancestor, that is, all branches that grow upward from a single node, i.e. up from one progenitor branch. A "soft polytomy" means that it appears that more than one branch split off at one time from the common ancestor, as far as we can tell, but there's not enough phylogenetic data (yet) to say. So we can't tell if the ancestors of elephants or of sloths were the first to bid good-bye to the other placental mammals, or if they both split off at the same time. (Of course the ancestors of marsupials, like kangaroos, branched off before that.)

The authors write:

Ancestral successive hybridization events and/or incomplete lineage sorting associated with short speciation intervals are viable explanations for the mosaic retroposon insertion patterns of recent placental mammals and for the futile search for a clear root dichotomy.

Hunter concludes this is not parsimonious enough-- compared to what, I don't know.

Evolutionists think nothing of these sorts of explanations and repeatedly use them when needed. But elaborate explanations can always be contrived in order to explain observations. Why should we believe they are true? As with heliocentrism, evolution erects so many "epicycles" in order to fit the data. Religion drives science and it matters.

Now, if evidence of hybridization disproves evolution, then Barack Obama's mere existence disproves evolution.

Hey, all scientists agree, the most parsimonious theory that fits the data, is the best. We'd like the universal tree of descent to be as simple as possible, while fitting the data. But hybridization happens. It's not the norm, but you've got to expect it sometimes. Organisms mate with outliers. It happens.

Also, my kid's existence disproves evolution too, by Cornelius Hunter's logic. Because my kid's a hybrid, indeed, so his birth disproves evolution. Right?

Hunter and his Intelligent Design colleagues don't have a parsimonious theory, nor a parsimonious theory that fits the data, nor a theory that is not parsimonious and fits the data. Nor do his colleagues have one, single, successful, distinct prediction that has not already been falsified (like Behe's irreducible complexities which have always been reducible.) Now that matters.

Religion drives Hunter's assertion that all evidences that make Darwinian evolution more probable, are "unsuccessful predictions" of "Darwinism." And it matters...nah it doesn't. I don't care if he believes in the blue peacock of Yazidism.

Does religion drive scientific failure? I don't care.