Posted by PZ Myers on August 06, 2004 | Comments (10) | TrackBack (0)

Les Lane sent me a link to a weird, funny, and distressing story: Motorcyclists to show support for Creation Museum. It's from Answers in Genesis, which tells you a lot right there...

Anyway, it's several motorcyclists showing their support with a rally for the brand new creation 'science' museum that Answers in Genesis is building in Kentucky. I guess if you can't get scientific support, you can always find a few bikers. Maybe some of them are named Steve.

Here's a discouraging bit of news from the end of the article, though:

The $25-million museum project has passed the halfway mark for donations (an $800,000 museum donation was recently received from a long-time AiG supporter), and exhibit design continues in earnest.  The AiG staff of 85 plans to move into the administrative side of the complex in a few weeks; the museum has a faith promise opening timeframe of spring 2007.

That is truly depressing, that ignorance can accumulate that much money and throw it away on propaganda. I wonder what kind of good work the NCSE could do with 25 million dollars?

Posted by PZ Myers on August 06, 2004 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Euthycarcinoids are an obscure group of arthropods that I confess I'd never heard of until I saw this article by Vaccari et al.. They are interesting because 1) their phylogenetic relationships have been ambiguous, which can be a sign that they may represent something transitional (or, as an alternative, something degenerate), 2) there is trace fossil evidence that suggests that this group may have been one of the early leaders in the transition to terrestrial life, and 3) the authors have just found the oldest fossils of members of this group, pushing back the record of their existence to the late Cambrian. Since I can't really say that I know much about these guys, I'll let the abstract speak for itself and show you a picture of the new euthycarcinoid species, Apankura machu.

Continue reading "Another Cambrian critter: a euthycarcinoid (on Pharyngula)

Posted by Timothy Sandefur on August 06, 2004 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Reason magazine has a long and good article about NAGPRA and related controversies.

Posted by Timothy Sandefur on August 06, 2004 | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

...on the creationism/evolution conflict, via Physics Today.

Posted by PZ Myers on August 05, 2004 | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

You gotta love modern technology. Using computed tomography, investigators have done high resolution imaging of the fossilized cranium of Archaeopteryx lithographica, plucking out a virtual reconstruction of the creature's brain. This allows them to do some detailed comparative gross neuroanatomy, looking to see whether there are signs here of the transition from terrestrial crawler to aerial flyer.

Continue reading "Bird brains of the Jurassic" (on Pharyngula)

Posted by Timothy Sandefur on August 05, 2004 | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

I realized that in previous posts, I've used a lot of legal jargon and terminology with which our readers may not be familiar. Law is a very different thing than science, with its own language and ways of thinking; so I thought it might be helpful to post a "Guide for the Legally Perplexed."

Continue reading  “A Guide for The Legally Perplexed”

Posted by Jack Krebs on August 04, 2004 | Comments (11) | TrackBack (0)

In John Lynch’s post on Uncommon Dissent at his weblog here (referenced in his short post here at the Panda’s Thumb), he offers this remarkable quote from DI Fellow Nancy Pearcey,

By uncovering evidence that natural phenomena are best accounted for by Intelligence, Mind, and Purpose, the theory of Intelligent Design reconnects religion to the realm of public knowledge. It takes Christianity out of the sphere of noncognitive value and restores it to the realm of objective fact, so that it can once more take a place at the table of public discourse. Only when we are willing to restore Christianity to the status of genuine knowledge will we be able to effectively engage the “cognitive war” that is at the root of today’s culture war.

Right here we see the heart of the ID movement - one which jumps right over several critical non sequiturs.  Let me dissect this statement a bit.

Continue reading  “Nancy Pearcey on ID”

Posted by PvM on August 04, 2004 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

The following review of Privileged Planet was also submitted to Amazon

  Gonzalez et al appeal to Dembski’s _Design Inference_ to show how the correlation of habitability and measurability shows evidence of `purpose’ in the universe. Various people such as Wein, or various authors on Talkreasons.org, have already shown what is wrong with the _Design Inference_ argument. I will limit my comments to the claims by Gonzalez et al to show that their appeal to the _Design Inference_ is inappropriate. In addition I will show that their use of correlation to support ‘purpoe’ suffers from poorly defined and thus poorly quantifiable terms, that it is based on a single observation of what they call a ‘constrained optimum’ (the earth), that it is biased towards earth-like planets, and that it is based on cherry picking of examples that support the thesis. In other words, from a scientific perspective their claims are meaningless.
  Which of course does not mean that their book does not make for a useful apologetic tool (hence my two stars). For people who need their faith to be supported by some impressive sounding but scientifically poorly supported claims, this book serves its purpose. If one is hoping that this book will present a scientific argument for _Intelligent Design_ then one will be quite disappointed.

Continue reading  “Privileged Planet: Amazon Review”

Posted by John M. Lynch on August 04, 2004 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Over at stranger fruit, I provide a summary of Dembski’s Uncommon Dissent which expands on Jason’s post of July 13th (while linking to his subsequent writings) and offers some thoughts on Michael Denton as ID supporter. Enjoy!

Posted by PvM on August 04, 2004 | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

The authors of Privileged Planet have posted the following response at Discovery’s  Center for the renewal of science and culture Was Starlight Deflection Important for the Acceptance of General Relativity? A Response to Critics

I find it interesting as to what critics the authors are referring? Because in the first paragraph they mention a single criticism posted to various places. Surely the authors do understand the difference between a single datapoint counted many times and multiple independent data pojnts? Or perhaps not as I intend to show.

For earlier reviews of Privileged Planet see:

• The Privileged Planet Part 1: Where Purpose and Natural Law freely Mix Part 1

• The Privileged Planet Part 2: The failure of the ‘Design Inference’

• Amazon review of Privileged Planet

Continue reading  “Icons of ID: Privileged Planet Authors respond to 'unnamed' critic”

Posted by Wesley R. Elsberry on August 04, 2004 | Comments (34) | TrackBack (2)

The balance of power has shifted again in Kansas, as Jack Krebs reported earlier here that it might. Kathy Martin, a conservative advocate of teaching creationism in science classes, defeated Bruce Wyatt, a moderate proponent of teaching science in science classes, shifting the board from a 5-5 split to a simple 6-4 conservative majority. Expect revisions to the state science standards in 2005 to “de-emphasize” evolution again. Whether the board will go so far as to insert “creationism” brazenly by name remains to be seen.

See these news reports:

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/special_packages/e…

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/local/9315092.htm…

Posted by Ed Brayton on August 03, 2004 | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Please raise your glasses in a toast to welcome the Panda's Thumb's newest patron, Jim Foley. For those who have observed or participated in the evolution/creationism debate online for any period of time, Jim needs no introduction. He is the author of the Fossil Hominids website in the TalkOrigins Archive, an incredibly thorough examination of the evidence for human evolution and equally thorough debunking of the creationist claims on the subject. Jim is a software engineer by training and, like any good Aussie, we expect him to more than hold his own at the PT drinking games. Welcome to the group, Jim.

Posted by Steve Reuland on August 02, 2004 | Comments (82) | TrackBack (3)

Well, it looks like Ed Brayton beat me to this one, but since I penned most of this post by the time I saw his, I figure I’ll go ahead and share it anyway. 

After Jason’s excoriation of Sisson, I thought we’d hit rock-bottom in terms of ignorant dilettantes.  If only it were so.  Rodney Stark, professor of sociology at Baylor (home to another favorite of ours), proves that there really is no rock-bottom when it comes to anti-evolutionist diatribes.  His just published bit in The American Enterprise is titled Fact, Fable, and Darwin.  And man is it a doozy.

Continue reading  “Stark raving mad...”

Posted by Wesley R. Elsberry on August 02, 2004 | Comments (18) | TrackBack (0)

The National Center for Science Education’s Project Steve now has a published paper appearing in the estimable journal, “The Annals of Improbable Research” (AIR).

http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume10/v10i4/…

(Photo: Dr. Steve Carr, Memorial University of Newfoundland)

Eugenie Scott, Nick Matzke, Glenn Branch, and some 430 odd Steves comprise the author list as Project Steve T-shirt order information is bent, folded, stapled, and otherwise mutilated to obtain such findings as “island dwarfism in Steves” and the infamous “mid-continental Steve deficit”.

I play an unacknowledged role in the paper as the model in the “experimental Steveometry apparatus”.

Check it out…

Posted by PZ Myers on August 02, 2004 | Comments (15) | TrackBack (0)

I got back from the Society for Developmental Biology meetings in Calgary last week, and I've put together some summaries of various sessions I attended on Pharyngula. There are digests of the talks on Development and Human Health, Education, Hox genes, Patterning, and Stem Cells, and for the Panda's Thumb crowd, there may be particular interest in the Evo-devo session and my meeting with Paul Nelson of the Discovery Institute.

Posted by Jason Rosenhouse on August 01, 2004 | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)

In my previous discussions of William Dembski's anthology Uncommon Dissent I addressed Dembski's intruduction and the contribution from Robert Koons. I argued both contained numerous errors and misrepresentations, and neither provided anything worth considering seriously.

Those were very bad essays, but they provided nothing to raise the heartbeat of an experienced ID consumer like myself. They contained the normal level of preening, arrogance, and stupidity that I have come to expect from the ID's. It seemed a pity. I mean, not only are the ID's not producing anything new in the way of scientific arguments, but now it seems they have run out of underhanded rhetorical tricks as well.

Then I read the contribution by Edward Sisson. After about three pages I was longing for the wit and erudition of Koons and Dembski.

Over at EvolutionBlog I have posted four (!!) replies to various aspects of Sisson's essay.

Part one is available here.
Part two is available here.
Part three is available here.
Part four is available here.

I feel like these four posts barely scratch the surface of all that is wrong with Sisson's essay. Enjoy!

Posted by PvM on August 01, 2004 | Comments (26) | TrackBack (0)

Remember Dembski’s hypothetical example of receiving a message consisting of prime numbers (adapted from the movie: Contact)?

In order to infer design, Dembski has to eliminate regularity and chance. While chance can be eliminated in a relatively straightforward manner, regularity may not be that simple to eliminate.

The emergence of prime numbers as the result of evolutionary strategy
by Campos et al

We investigate by means of a simple theoretical model the emergence of prime numbers as life cycles, as those seen for some species of cicadas. The cicadas, more precisely, the Magicicadas spend most of their lives below the ground and then emerge and die in a short period of time. The Magicicadas display an uncommon behavior: their emergence is synchronized and these periods are usually prime numbers. In the current work, we develop a spatially extended model at which preys and predators coexist and can change their evolutionary dynamics through the occurrence of mutations. We verified that prime numbers as life cycles emerge as a result of the evolution of the population. Our results seem to be a first step in order to prove that the development of such strategy is selectively advantageous, especially for those organisms that are highly vulnerable to attacks of predators.

Continue reading  “Icons of ID: The emergence of prime numbers as the result of evolutionary strategy”