The Questioning Librarian

While sometimes the struggle against the pseudoscientific tripe that is creationism seems never-ending, those of us on the side of science and reason occasionally get a win. This we have done in the past week; in yet another slap against creationism, the British government announced that "free schools", (local schools, often religious in nature but funded by the government and usually exempt from the educational curriculum of Britain), often called "faith schools" will lose funding if they attempt to teach creationism as science. Make no mistake, this is a victory for science. While Great Britain has traditionally ranked very high in public acceptance of evolution, the spread of these "faith schools" has led to a growing fear that this will be used to spread the religious doctrine of creationism. I am very grateful to Richard Dawkins and David Attenborough for spearheading this effort , making sure that Britain doesn't slide back from knowing and under...

An acquaintance and I engaged in polite conversation some time ago, discussing the nature of historical evidence and sources, and the discussion happened to go on to the evidence for the historical existence of Jesus. Both of us being students of history, we know how important sources are; sources are what we base the study of history upon. The acquaintance offered to loan me Josh McDowell's Evidence for the Historical Jesus: A Compelling Case for His Life and His Claims . I was reluctant to do so, but being polite I agreed to borrow and read it. The name of McDowell was familiar to me before the fact, but I admit that I didn't know much about him or his work. Now having read the book from beginning to end, paying close attention to the nature of the argument and the sources McDowell uses, I can say without a doubt that this is the finest piece of pseudoscholarship I have encountered since it was my misfortune to read Lee Stobel's The Case for a Creator . The numerous pro...

If there is anything that I should have learned by now, Ken Ham will use any occasion to spew the nonsense of Answers in Genesis. And I mean ANY occasion. The death of Christopher Hitchens, noted public intellectual, journalist and atheist, is no exception at all. Of course, we should expect Ham and his kind to crow at the death of an atheist, one who thought young-earth creationism nonsense and didn't hesitate to say so either. Still, the very visible exhortations of glee from certain quarters is downright sickening to anyone with even a rudimentary sense of morality. I won't shed a tear when Ken Ham dies, but neither will I dance in the streets, as much as I find him an odious human being whose entire life has been dedicated to spreading lies. Though Ham himself says nothing, he introduces " Two Perspectives on the Passing of an Atheist " which contain much happiness at the death of Hitchens, including a statement that "Hitchens is no longer shaking a fist a...

Often I find that I'm overwhelmed by the sheer amount of output that the young-earth creationist organizations are capable of producing. I'm only one man, and even when I blogged more frequently I couldn't keep up with it. At most, I can deal with and dispense with a few articles from some of the major creationist organizations. This week I thought that I would take a different tack. Rather than focusing on a single article, I'm going to give a brief overview of some of the most recent articles coming out of Answers in Genesis, Creation Ministries and Creation Moments. Here we go... Creation Ministries International: (home of the supposed "Unanswerable Questions" for Evolutionists and of the Hovind clan) --Creation Ministries condemns the "framework hypothesis" as untenable in an article about history and pseudo-history. The framework hypothesis is one way of stating that Genesis 1-11 is literary rather than literal, and CMI won't stand for ...

A student wrote to Answers in Genesis for advice. What he got was the sophistry, bad-arguments and muddle-headed thinking that so characterizes that organization. The exchange is fine amusement, if one is in the mood to simply laugh at nonsense rather than feel the anger that often accompanies the attempts of the anti-science crowd to lie, distort and malign evolution. The student in question is afraid of majoring in science because of the "stigma" a young-earth creationist would get from the "Darwinist camp." Already, I'm saddened to see a student so interested in science have his enthusiasm tempered in the name of fundamentalist dogma. The authors of the article, two of the lesser lights of Answers in Genesis apparently, whom I've never heard of before, responded with a lengthy article, part advice and part delusion. They first recommend that this student consider attending one of the AiG-approved colleges where young-earth creationism is taught as scie...

One of the arguments that those defending evolution and good science continually have to fend off is the absurdity that is "irreducible complexity," the old argument of Paley that was dusted off and reinvigorated by Michael Behe. This argument has many manifestations, but at heart they are similar forms of the same basic idea. The young earth creationist points to something in nature, such as the bacterial flagellum, the blood-clotting system in humans or the human brain to give a few examples, and argue that it is too complex to be the product of evolution by natural selection. Therefore it must be, in the mind of the creationist, a fine example of design by a Creator of the young earth/ literal Genesis type. Within the last week or so two more of these so-called examples were brought to my attention by creationists eager to demonstrate that my acceptance of evolution is wrong, wrong, wrong. A few days ago, I was sent another one of those horrible Creation Moments daily pi...

After an inexcusably long absence, I've returned today to my occasional series highlighting those people and organizations whose stances are not only in contradiction to reality but are so counter-factual as to be absurd. However, becoming an "Enemy of Reason", joining the ranks of such notables as Ken Ham, Conservapedia and Creation Moments, requires more than just the average brand of crazy. Being listed as an "Enemy of Reason" requires holding and promoting positions that are hopelessly irrational. Congresswoman Bachmann meets both of these qualifications. Sometimes an Enemy of Reason is a one-issue person, someone who may otherwise be reasonable except on that one topic that, as soon as they open their mouth and talk about it, makes them seem crazy. Others are crazy on a number of different positions, and it is into this category that Bachmann falls. The first position Michele Bachmann holds is support for the unscientific notion of Intelligent Design, ...