Creationism

David Paszkiewicz, the Kearny, NJ high school teacher who was proselytizing for Christianity and creationism and then lied about it when his student Matthew LaClair complained, only to be caught because LaClair recorded the evidence, is taking students from the school on a field trip to the Creation Museum. Paszkiewicz, who is also the advisor for the school’s Christian Club, wants students to be exposed to the “science behind creationism." Apparently the original plan was to take this field trip during school hours using taxpayer funds. Matthew LaClair will be discussing this tonight on Equal Time for Freethought on WBAI radio 99.5 FM in NYC at 6:30 p.m. EDT, 3:30 p.m. MST (Arizona). WBAI broadcasts on the Internet in several streaming audio formats, so you don’t have to be in NYC to listen. ...

I’ll be giving a talk during the pre-conference workshop sessions at this week’s American Humanist Association conference, which is being held June 5-7 at the Tempe Mission Palms Hotel. My talk is on Thursday, June 4, from 4-5 p.m. in the Palm F room. While there is ordinarily a $20 charge for the pre-conference workshops, readers of this blog may attend for free (but donations to the AHA are appreciated). My talk is entitled “Lessons learned from 25 years of battling creationists, Scientologists, and fundamentalists online." I’ll also be representing the Arizona Coalition of Reason at a press conference on Friday morning about a new billboard campaign. More about that on Friday. UPDATE (June 4, 2009): My presentation (Keynote format) is here, published with a Creative Commons license (noncommercial, attribution, no derivative works). UPDATE (June 8, 2009): Friday’s press conference was held by the American Humanist Association, the United Coalition of Reason, and the Arizona Coalition of Reason. Roy Speckhardt of the AHA introduced the press conference, Fred Edwords of United COR announced his new group and that it plans to start up about 20 COR groups throughout the country by the end of the year, and I spoke on behalf of ArizonaCOR. We have a billboard up at 44th St. and Washington, on the southbound route into Sky Harbor airport. We got press coverage from ABC Ch. 15, Fox Ch. 10, and independent Ch. 3, from the Arizona Republic and New Times, and from KTAR radio. ASU’s State Press will also be running a story. Most spun the issue as a big controversy, but that seems outlandish to me. Fox’s “man on the street” interviews ended up with two atheists out of five interviewed, and most didn’t seem to think it was a big deal. The owner of the business near the billboard made some strange argument about how the billboard should have required special regulatory approval, since he needed to get approval for his own business’s signs–but apparently didn’t recognize that such approval would only be needed for the billboard itself (unless it was grandfathered), not for its content. UPDATE (June 21, 2009): Here’s my presentation, embedded via SlideShare: UPDATE (June 29, 2009): Leslie Zukor of the Reed Secular Alliance at Reed College gives a recap of the AHA conference. ...

As was mentioned last August by commenter Ktisophilos, Ian Plimer has a new book out on climate change, titled Heaven and Earth: Global Warming: The Missing Science, in which he challenges claims of anthropogenic global warming. Plimer is an Australian professor of geology who I criticized for his methods in debate with creationists, as well as for his reliability and accuracy. He responded by criticizing me with more misrepresentation in his book Telling Lies for God, which contained numerous errors, as well as multiple cases of failure to properly quote and cite sources that he used in writing the book. (The Creation Ministries International documentary for which I was interviewed, Facing the Fire, is about Plimer’s 1988 debate with Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research.) It now appears that Plimer’s latest work is also extremely sloppy and contains erroneous source attributions. Tim Lambert at the Deltoid ScienceBlog identifies a long list of problems in the book by page number, points out the facts about Plimer’s misleading figure 3, which doesn’t originate from the source Plimer has claimed, and about another misrepresented source and graph. Some Christians who found Plimer to be worthless as a source on creationism as a result of my critique have nonetheless found him to be a worthwhile source on anthropogenic climate change, such as Bill Muehlenberg and some of the commenters at his CultureWatch blog. This strikes me as an inconsistent position–Plimer has demonstrated unreliability in both debates, and shouldn’t be relied upon as a source for either. That doesn’t mean to ignore what he says, or that everything he says is wrong–it’s just that everything he says needs to be thoroughly checked for accuracy. If it checks out, then it’s better to cite the original source, not Plimer. UPDATE (May 26, 2009): Commenter Paul points out a review of Plimer’s book by Barry Brook, which also includes a link to a point-by-point critique of the book by Prof. Ian Enting of the University of Melbourne (PDF). (This link has been updated as of June 1, 2009 to point to a location that will continue to maintain the most recent version of the critique, as per a comment below from Prof. Enting.) UPDATE (May 28, 2009): Bill Muehlenberg still appears to be refusing to publish contrary opinions from me, continuing his past record. I posted the following two comments on his blog, which he has not allowed through moderation: 1. Comment submitted on the evening of May 22, 2009: I am a critic of creationism and skeptic who challenged Ian Plimer’s methods and reliability in his criticisms of creationism (cited by one of your commenters above). I am sorry to say that Plimer’s methods and reliability continue to be unsound in his contribution to the climate change debate. For example, see the following two blog posts that document errors and falsehoods in his new book: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/04/the_science_is_missing_from_ia.php http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/ian_plimer_lies_about_source_o.php I think that Plimer is mostly correct about creationism (it’s nonsense) and mostly incorrect about climate change (there are real trends that correlate with human activity), but given his record he shouldn’t be relied upon as a source in either debate without carefully checking up on everything he says.2. Submitted on the morning of May 23, 2009: Bill: I do hope you will let my comments through moderation. Here is another post from the Deltoid ScienceBlog about Ian Plimer misrepresenting one of his own sources: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/plimer_and_arctic_warming.phpUPDATE (September 2, 2009): Plimer has descended further into irrationality in his exchange with George Monbiot. UPDATE (December 17, 2009): Plimer engaged in a debate, of sorts, with George Monbiot, on Australia’s “Lateline” program. Monbiot offers his overview of how it went. ...

The April 2009 issue of Smithsonian magazine prints two letters about February’s “Darwin and Lincoln” article under the heading “Twin piques.” The first reads: The only place Darwin and Lincoln are equals is in the mind of author Adam Gopnik ["Twin Peaks"]. What a stretch to weave their lives together because they share a birthday. “High peaks [that] look out toward each other”? Total hyperbole. Rick Munsell The Villages, FloridaUnfortunately, Dr. Munsell, a veterinarian from Florida who got his college degrees in Mississippi, doesn’t tell us which reputation he thinks is exaggerated. Given his status as a southerner, he could either be a fan of the Confederacy and southern secession, or he could be an anti-evolutionist. Then again, perhaps he just thinks nobody is ever equal to anybody else…

The Institute for Creation Research Graduate School has filed a lawsuit in the state of Texas over its inability to advertise master’s degrees in science that it is not accredited or permitted to offer in the state of Texas. An attorney evaluates their lawsuit and finds that it’s as crazy as their science, and doomed to dismissal. (Via Pharyngula).

CMI has taken down its AiG-critical material and posted a notice that reads: CMI and AiG are pleased to inform you that the dispute between the ministries has been settled to their mutual satisfaction. Each ministry is now focused on its respective mission, having put this dispute behind them in April of 2009.Nathan Zamprogno noted in a comment on my last blog post on this dispute that AiG still had some of its CMI-critical material about the case online, but it now appears to have been taken down as well.

Commenter Tim H pointed me to a post at Tim Martin’s Beyond Creation Science blog about another Answers in Genesis controversy. Old-earth creationist Charles Spurgeon delivered a June 17, 1855 sermon (four years before Darwin published Origin of Species) in which he stated that the earth had to be “many millions of years” old. When Answers in Genesis published that sermon on their website, they omitted that sentence, “We know not how remote the period of the creation of this globe may be-certainly many millions of years before the time of Adam." After Martin pointed out the omission, Answers in Genesis inserted a footnote containing the omitted sentence, stating that this footnote was inadvertently omitted from their publication of the sermon. But they made no apologies for removing the sentence in question from its proper context and relegating it to a footnote. UPDATE: AiG did more than just remove that sentence–they revised language throughout the sermon, which in some other areas also changed the intended meaning to bring it in line with young-earth creationist dogma. ...

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered Creation Ministries International and Answers in Genesis to settle their dispute with private arbitration, the outcome sought by Answers in Genesis and affirming the trial court’s ruling. CMI had hoped to force the U.S. dispute into the Australian courts, where a second lawsuit is ongoing and has its next hearing in April. This decision opens a route for AiG to stop the Australian proceedings in favor of the private arbitration that has been ordered in the United States. The court’s decision is here (PDF). It appears to me that CMI is going to be held to the agreements that its previous board of directors signed, however foolish, irresponsible, or unethical it was of them to do so. As those previous board members resigned in return for indemnification, it doesn’t appear to me that CMI is likely to obtain any remedy for the wrongs it alleges have occurred. It looks like AiG operated within the bounds of the law in its actions. ...

A conference on “The Religious-Secular Divide: The U.S. Case” will be held on March 5-6, 2009 at The New School in New York City. The conference will: explore the tension between religion and secularity in the United States, which is long-standing, widespread, and increasingly intense. This is evident in contemporary debates over such issues as evolution and intelligent design, the importance of religion in political decision-making, and in spiritual or faith-based philanthropy. These issues will be addressed from the perspectives of religious studies, legal studies, political science, sociology, and philosophy. Charles Taylor will deliver the keynote address on March 5th at 6:00pm.The conference website may be found here. The current speaker list is: Richard J. Bernstein Jose Casanova David L. Chappell William E. Connolly James Davison Hunter Daniel Dennett Noah Feldman Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad Susan F. Harding George Kateb Mark Lilla David Martin Michael W. McConnell James A. Morone John T. Noonan, Jr. Ann Pellegrini Winnifred Sullivan Charles Taylor Peter van der Veer ...

The creationist video I was filmed for, Creation Ministries International’s “Facing the Fire,” a documentary about the 1988 creation/evolution debate between Ian Plimer and Duane Gish, is available on YouTube in four parts (and embedded below). I first appear around 4:34 in the first segment, at 1:06 in the second, at 1:04 in the third, and at the very beginning of the fourth segment. I described my experience being filmed and reasons for appearing in this documentary here, my reaction to the result here (which includes links to critiques of Gish), and you can find the articles I refer to in the documentary here: “Some Failures of Organized Skepticism," The Arizona Skeptic vol. 3, no. 1, January 1990, pp. 2-5. “How Not to Argue with Creationists," Creation/Evolution vol. 11, issue XXIX, Winter 1991-92, pp. 9-21. “How Not to Respond to Criticism: Barry Price Compounds His Errors," talkorigins.org FAQ, 1993. “Criticisms from an Obscure Corner of the World," review of Plimer’s Telling Lies for God. Part 1: Part 2: Part 3: Part 4: ...