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.

Consumer Christ

From Banksy, of course. Photo by Jonny Baker

BlueGirl has a callout for submissions to Blog Against Theocracy this weekend if you have something you'd like to contribute. And before you go getting all samharris on their ass, note their list of issues :

~No religious discrimination.

~PRO End-of-Life Care (no more Terri Schiavo travesties)

~Reproductive health decisions made by individuals, not religious "majorities"

~Democracy not Theocracy Academic Integrity (like, a rock is as old as it is, not as old as the Bible says)

~Sound Science (good bye so-called "intelligent" design)

~Respect for ALL families (based on love, not sexual orientation. Hellooooo.)

~And finally, The right to worship, OR NOT.

So for all of us atheists asking where the real Christians speaking out against the Christian right got to, here ya go : Christians willing to go to the mat for the right of atheists to be atheists because they believe this to be what their religion demands of them.

Damn if I'm not getting all weepy.

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Typo : Meant to say Blue Gal

UPDATE : From BlueGal in comments : Memo to non-believers

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Sunday FSM news

PR Web News reports the alarming possibility of a schism developing within the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster as two New Intelligent Design books with slightly differing visions are published simultaneously.

Founding Pastafarian Bobby Henderson, best known for his seminal work tracking the inverse relationship between global warming and the continuing decline in the numbers of pirates, has just released "The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster" through Villard Books. Expected to provide "an influential voice within the Intelligent Design debate plaguing school systems", Henderson is pledging all proceeds from the book towards the pirate ship fund, hoping to strengthen the movement that believes "the universe was created by a creature comprised largely of noodles".

"I feel that my constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religious belief is being unfairly discriminated against.
Obviously, if we have to pay taxes, we won't be able to afford as large or bad-ass of a pirate ship. I suspect they will find it harder to ignore us when we have the pirate ship, with cannons, etc"

A more spiritual approach is taken by Dr. Jonathan C. Smith in his handsomely bound volume "God Speaks! The Flying Spaghetti Monster in His Own Words". Using advanced computer techology and groundbreaking artificial intelligence software to produce a new form of anagrams called "spaghettigrams", Smith's goal is to “to inspire those of all beliefs to put aside the superficial prejudices, distorted thinking, and superstition that can cloud one’s vision and interfere with authentic spirituality.”

As PR Web News reports, "Whether or not the FSM movement, which has lobbied to be considered by school boards alongside other theories of intelligent design, will embrace Smith’s ideas remains to be seen."

Surely a movement which has so successfully straddled the scientific and religious and pirate disciplines will prevail over these minor semolina differences.

To read more about the FSM movement or to order Henderson's book, go here. Dr. Jonathan C. Smith's book can be ordered here.

Umbrage Update : From today's USA Today article on FSM :

" "It's too bad that they'll get attention for this sort of drivel when we have a robust scientific research program that the media doesn't seem to want to write much about," Discovery Institute spokesman Robert Crowther said in an e-mail interview. The Seattle-based institute is the leading think tank for intelligent-design advocates. "

Robust scientific research program? Sadly, the Discovery Institute does not seem to offer any courses on "Petard Safety and Handling".

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

Intelligently Designed pillows

Yes, this lovely ID Mount Rushmore Throw Pillow can now be yours for only $22.99. "Stylish fun" and "easily laundered" pretty well covers the whole ID experiment, wouldn't you say?

A link from Canadian Cynic leads to The Intelligent Design weblog of Bill Dembski who provides this blurb to go with your new pillow :

“Intelligent design begins with a seemingly innocuous question: Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause? ...What if humans went extinct and aliens, visiting the earth, discovered Mount Rushmore in substantially the same condition as it is now? "

What would the aliens think of us carving our human likenesses onto Mt Rushmore? I'm guessing it would be something along the lines of : " Now here's a species who projects and imposes its own image onto nature and then worships it."

But that's just my inner alien. Dembski's inner alien is probably quite different.

Further down the Intelligently Designed Apparel and Merchandise Page we come to this unexplained figure:

Is he:

1. an atheist mole signalling us from inside the ID site?
2. on step#1 of the 12 Step ID Anonymous Program?
3. enacting some sort of intelligently designed religious auto-eroticism?

You be the judge.