The Questioning Librarian

Great news from Answers in Genesis; they're spreading the lies and stupidity of creationism to the Arab world, where, presumably, they should have their work cut out for them. While perhaps the message of Biblical creationism won't be particularly welcome to the devout, creationism is already well at home in many Arab or majority Muslim nations (after all, the only surveyed country that ranks lower than the U.S. in acceptance of evolution is Turkey). But, Ken laments, AiG can only do so much. While they can send Terry Mortenson, one of their speakers, to Egypt to talk about biblical creationism, they don't have the resources to send their emissaries everywhere, a fact for which I imagine that we should be grateful. However, he sees his organization, and their massive output of articles, books, DVD's, etc (some of which, including a website, are now available in Arabic), as a " reservoir" of resources for others to use in promoting creationism. Answers in Gene...

I was intrigued coming across a book called $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better in one of the bargain price book catalogs I peruse, and I thought since it was especially cheap I would give it a read. The idea of oil, beyond the woes at the pump, and how it underpins our lives is something that has interested me for about a year now since I read James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency . What I've been reading, even beyond Kunstler, showcases a planet that is reaching its natural resource limits, not just oil but also food, freshwater and energy in general. How we deal with this problem, that of increasing demand meeting natural resources that are most assuredly not increasing, will define how humanity persists into the future. Will we go forward with, as Kunstler calls it "the project of civilization" or will we fall back into some sort of dark age of unknown duration? At first, it was almost re...

If there is one thing the folks at Answers in Genesis do not like, aside from evidence, naturally, it is being mocked or having their positions laughed at. But they just make it so darn easy to stand back and laugh, long and uproariously, whenever they talk. This week, their opinion voiced by the estimable Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell, whom we've encountered before on this blog, AiG takes issue with the Doonesbury comic mocking the Louisiana Science Education Act , allowing the teaching of "evidence contrary to evolution" or "problems with evolution" or other such rot that has more basis in fundamentalist ideology than it does in evidence and science. Dr. Mitchell (a medical doctor, not a PhD scientist, I hasten to add), is furious that not only were they mocked but they claim that their positions are "distorted." The teacher in the comic "delivers a series of erroneous and misleading statements." For instance, the character claims creationists ...

Last week, I finished reading Curt Stager's amazing book Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth . It was a book that is certainly worth reading, but at first glance one might ask what good is a book like this, one that purports to look far into the future beyond not only our own lifetimes but those even of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren (and many generations beyond that too). Of course, none of us will be here to witness whether Stager's predictions are true, but we can be assured that they are not blind prognostications. Stager is a paleoclimatologist by trade, meaning he looks to the record of rocks, ice and lake-bottom deposits to determine what past climates were like, using this information to help us understand what might be coming based on our actions in the present. This book is one of evidence-based reasoning presenting a range of possibilities for our future on this planet, based on whether we take a moderate-emissions path or a high-emissions...

One of the favorite tactics of creationism is to engage in the "God of the Gaps" argument; if science can't explain something, then it must have been God/ the Intelligent Designer. Or, conversely, if one can poke enough holes in evolution then not only will it be destroyed but everyone will have no choice but to accept the creationist alternative. This tactic has evolved (pun intended) into the "irreducible complexity" argument of the Intelligent Design hucksters, most notably espoused by Michael Behe of Darwin's Black Box  and the 2005 Dover Intelligent Design trial. The argument goes that a number of observable features in nature are irreducibly complex, that is to say that if one part is removed then the whole system collapses. Thus the "irreducibly complex" feature could not possibly have evolved and is proof of the work of an Intelligent Designer (which may or may not be the God of the Bible; ID proponents are cagey on this, saying in public...

Over at Answers in Genesis, an anonymous article (I think it reasonable to assume that Ken Ham is the author, or even if it isn't it cites one of his articles and encapsulates views he has expressed elsewhere) decides that the people peddling creationism don't want to be called "young-earth creationists" anymore. The author states that to many, announcing yourself a young-earth creationist (or YEC) is like saying "I'm an anti-science mystic." Well, I couldn't have stated it better myself. Young earth creationists are the pinnacle of anti-science mystics, especially the ones taking an active, promotional role. Old earth creationists are slightly less so, and theistic evolutionists have it mostly right (though in speaking to several, some of the positions they hold are bizarre and anti-science as well). The strange world of Answers in Genesis, where it is more plausible to believe that a six hundred year old man brought two of every "kind...