Burp!

This is Beep! Beep! It's Me!'s Darwin Fish entry in the "Your chance to be an intelligent designer!" competition. Great, isn't it?

Meanwhile....

Pope says evolution can't be proven

"He stopped short of endorsing intelligent design, but said scientific and philosophical reason must work together in a way that does not exclude faith.

"But it is also true that the theory of evolution is not a complete, scientifically proven theory."
Benedict added that the immense time span that evolution covers made it impossible to conduct experiments in a controlled environment to finally verify or disprove the theory.
"We cannot haul 10,000 generations into the laboratory," he said."

Dr Dan Johnson, Professor of Environmental Science at the University of Lethbridge, wrote the first resolution by a Canadian scientific society against the teaching of intelligent design in schools,

Recently he made the following comment on DeSmogBlog in response to a climate change denier, but his lesson on what constitutes a theory applies equally well to the pope's statement.

Take it away, Dr Dan! :

"Theory means a body of knowledge surrounding the science. It doesn't mean a guess or something to be proven.
The idea that 'first you have an observation, then a hypothesis, then a theory, then it graduates to proven" is nonsense, and not what you would call any kind of good science. That is the definition of "theory" that might be in a newspaper or grade school years ago, but it is not what theory means.
"Number theory" doesn't mean we are not sure there are numbers, like maybe 42 has not been proven. "Evolutionary theory" doesn't mean we are not sure that species gave rise to other species over long earth history (why do I just know that you don't agree there?).
"Gravitational theory" doesn't mean that I might float."

Here endeth the lesson.

Creeping things...

1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

Well, so much for the biblical position on the environment.

But speaking of creeping things, Public Eye Online reports that Darrel Reid, former President of "Focus on the Family" and former Chief of Staff for the Reform Party, has just been named Rona Ambrose' Chief of Staff. Although his anti-SSM, anti-abortion, anti-evolution, anti-stem cell research opinions were deemed too fuckwitted to get him elected to office in Richmond in the last election, there is evidently a home for them in the Ministry of the Environment.

Says Dr Reid : "I think every Christian's under an obligation to change laws to reflect biblical values."

Sure. Whatever.
I think we can all guess what God's position on the sacredness of the Alberta oil sands is going to be. And it seems unlikely that God's love for the little sparrow will be extended to the 17 remaining spotted owls in BC any time soon.
But this is just a patronage position for Dr Reid, right?
It's not exactly the inauguration of the Ministry of the Environment - End Times Division.

In an offline email, Corinne from YaYaCanada is not so sure and she provides this link to Marci McDonald's article in The Walrus Magazine - Stephen Harper and The Theo-Cons.

Picture courtesy of The Brick Testament.

Mom!

Fossil Called Missing Link From Sea to Land Animals

Discovered in Nunavut, the 375 million year old fossil is five to nine feet long and has the fins and scales of a fish but the ribs, neck, head and wrist bones of an animal capable of hauling itself onto land.
Dr. Shubin, the evolutionary biologist who made the find, said, "It's a really amazing, remarkable intermediate fossil. It's like, holy cow."

But not everyone was thrilled.
"Duane T. Gish, a retired official of the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, said, "This alleged transitional fish will have to be evaluated carefully." But he added that he still found evolution "questionable because paleontologists have yet to discover any transitional fossils between complex invertebrates and fish, and this destroys the whole evolutionary story."

Also missing is any transitional evidence between plankton and pineapples, or between creationists and science.

Obviously the only fossil discovery which would satisfy creationists would need to be 5000 years old and look something like this :

Uh oh, Toto, NaPo's gone to Kansas

"Canadian scientists want out of Darwin's rut" says the National Post headline.

What, all of them?
Well no, but one scientist did say that and, along with another eight, they signed a petition at the Discovery Institute, a right wing American think tank promoting Intelligent Design.
(For those of you who go outside from time to time instead of sitting here fretting about such things, here's an easy one to remember :
DI = ID, or Discovery Institute equals Intelligent Design.)

"A handful of Canadian scientists are speaking out against evolution as an explanation for all of life as we know it, saying the complexity of living things simply cannot be attributed to biological chance.
Nine university professors and others with science or engineering PhDs have added their names to an American petition that voices skepticism about the theory of evolution."

So who are these Canadian scientists?
The "Darwin rut" one who says "science must look beyond evolutionary theory" is a biochemistry and molecular biology prof at U of Calgary.
As he's in a relevant field here, we do have to take him seriously.
Oh look - he is also the one who states he "does not believe Intelligent Design is the answer".

Um, ok, so what about the others?
Two of them teach at Christian universities. Check, check.
One "runs an organization dedicated to the links between Islam and science". Mmm.
One is an ex-creationist and "a geophysics PhD and software developer who compares genetic systems to languages created by humans" and states (laughably) "There is no way I could create a code like this [DNA]". Meaning what...???
One is an electrical engineering PhD at IBM.
And the other three are a chair in chemistry at Lethbridge, a UBC anthropology emeritus, and a Waterloo U biology emeritus.

So, not exactly a revolution in the Canadian scientific community then.
Care to revise your bullshit headline, NaPo?

Link

Nope, this one isn't about Stockwell Day

Good guess though.

Last Sunday we had a look at SpongeDob and his spawn 'Focus on the Family Canada'.
FotFC had just announced the launch of what they refer to on their website as their new initiative - a think tank in Ottawa called the 'Institute of Marriage and Family Canada' to "research and suggest new legislation". (shudder)

I dropped by their website again today to see how the Feb 16 launch had gone, fully expecting glowing reports of how tens of people had shown up, and right there on the front page is an article promoting none other than Kent "Dr Dino" Hovind. On a Canadian website.

It's easy to make fun of Dr Dino and what he calls his "Creation Science Evangelism" : the dinosaur theme park to promote the idea that humans and dinos coexisted on an earth that's only 6000 years old, his belief that they still do, his assertion that the Grand Canyon is the result of the Great Flood and that UFOs are apparitions of Satan. When he isn't pushing 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion', Dr Hovind's folksy speaking style could even be described as charming, but alas the 'doctor' part is also a joke, having been obtained from a diploma mill.

Even other young-earth creationists generally consider him an embarrassment so what is he doing on the front page of the Focus on the Family Canada website?
Well just listen to what he says (bold - mine):

"Hovind, who believes the Bible is literally true and scientifically accurate, says the Dover Area School Board in Pennsylvania was “barking up the wrong tree” when it attempted to require that intelligent design (ID) be taught in its classrooms.
“To me,” Hovind suggests, “the much better approach is don’t mention creation, don’t mention evolution, don’t mention intelligent design” – but instead push for textbooks that simply tell the truth. There are 50-some lies in the average textbook that are used as evidence for evolution. Get them out. End of story.” "

Not mentioning any of the controversial buzzwords - neither ID nor evolution - and going quietly about their business would be the much better approach for them at this point.
We should be watching for it.

A more thorough take on this at The Galloping Beaver