Brilliant

There's no question that Mike Huckabee is a Fundamentalist. This brilliant cartoonist asks, what would happen if Huckabee was a Hindu Fundamentalist in Decision 2008 B.C.?

You can find more of Ted Rall's cartoons here. Enjoy.

More idiocy from the TEA

In a previous previous post, here, there was the story about the Texas Education Agency forcing the resignation of its Science Curriculum Director, Christine Comer, because she might have suggested a bias toward science. Yes, you read that right - a bias toward science.

Now read this, reported in The New York Times:

Green Light for Institute on Creation in Texas

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

Published: December 19, 2007

HOUSTON — A Texas higher education panel has recommended allowing a Bible-based group called the Institute for Creation Research to offer online master’s degrees in science education.

The action comes weeks after the Texas Education Agency’s director of science, Christine Castillo Comer, lost her job after superiors accused her of displaying bias against creationism and failing to be “neutral” over the teaching of evolution.

The state’s commissioner of higher education, Raymund A. Paredes, said late Monday that he was aware of the institute’s opposition to evolution but was withholding judgment until the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board meets Jan. 24 to rule on the recommendation, made last Friday, by the board’s certification advisory council.

Henry Morris III, the chief executive of the Institute for Creation Research, said Tuesday that the proposed curriculum, taught in California, used faculty and textbooks “from all the top schools” along with, he said, the “value added” of challenges to standard teachings of evolution.

“Where the difference is, we provide both sides of the story,” Mr. Morris said. On its Web site, the institute declares, “All things in the universe were created and made by God in the six literal days of the creation week” and says it “equips believers with evidences of the Bible’s accuracy and authority through scientific research, educational programs, and media presentations, all conducted within a thoroughly biblical framework.”

It also says “the harmful consequences of evolutionary thinking on families and society (abortion, promiscuity, drug abuse, homosexuality and many others) are evident all around us.”

Asked how the institute could educate students to teach science, Dr. Paredes, who holds a doctorate in American civilization from the University of Texas and served 10 years as vice chancellor for academic development at the University of California, said, “I don’t know. I’m not a scientist.”

He said he had no ready explanation for the panel’s recommendation. “I asked about the decision,” Dr. Paredes said Monday in a phone interview from Austin. “I got a three-inch-thick folder an hour ago. We’re going to give it a full review.” But, he said, “If it’s approved, we’ll make sure it’s of high quality.”

Approval would allow the institute, which moved to Dallas this year from near San Diego, to offer the online graduate program almost immediately while seeking accreditation from national academic authorities like the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges within two years.

In California, the only other state where Mr. Morris said the institute was offering degrees, it won recognition from the state superintendent of public instruction in 1981 but was denied license renewal in 1988. The institute sued and in 1992 won a $225,000 settlement that allowed it to continue offering degrees; it now operates under the California Department of Consumer Affairs. Dr. Morris said his program was accredited by the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools, which is not recognized by Texas.

Last month, in a sign that Texas was being drawn deeper into creationism controversy, Ms. Comer, 57, was put under pressure to resign as science director after forwarding an e-mail message about a talk by a creationism critic, Barbara Forrest, a professor at Southeastern Louisiana State University.

Lizzette Reynolds, a deputy commissioner who called for Ms. Comer’s dismissal, later told The Austin American-Statesman she was surprised she resigned. Ms. Reynolds did not respond to a message left at her office.

The Texas Education commissioner, Robert Scott, told The Dallas Morning News that Ms. Comer was not forced out over the message, adding, “You can be in favor of science without bashing people’s faith.” He did not return phone calls to his office.

Ms. Comer said the commissioner should show her where she was bashing anyone’s faith. “He just doesn’t get it,” she said.

No wonder I feel rushed

Researchers: Human evolution speeding up

No wonder I feel rushed - according to a recent study of the human genome, our evolution is speeding up.

Get this: a mere 10,000 years ago (thousand, not million!), no one had blue eyes, most people had dark skin, and few people were able to metabolize cow's milk.

The protection of melatonin in darker skin was needed in equatorial Africa where the Sun's UVs are more plentiful. People who could metabolize cow's milk would have survived where food was scarce, and thus gone on to reproduce.

But the researchers wonder how blue eyes affected survival or reproduction. Isn't it obvious? Blue eyes are more attractive, so blue-eyed people would have attracted mates more easily than brown-eyed people.

Silly Saturday #16

UPDATE
I just want to share a great post I ran across. Go over to Puppet Show, The Evolution of a Bad Idea, and read the post entitled Get me my oil! And turn off this world vision crap ... Football's on! Dan's a 20-something Canadian who has quite a lot to say about political blogging, our political situation, and that world vision thing . Here's an excerpt:

There is a startling lack of grassroots action taking place. Too many people, for example, seem to feel that because they want to end world hunger, and so does the person they're voting for, all they have to do is vote for that person, make a few statements on how ending poverty is important and voila, they've done their part.

"Atheists' Worst Nightmare"

Here's the famous Ray Comfort/Kirk Cameron video "disproving" evolution with um, a banana. This clip is augmented with commentary, including pics of how bananas have evolved. It's a scream. Enjoy. Oh, and enjoy this wonderful cartoon, too. :)

Why is science so threatening to (some) religionists?

Here's yet another nail in the creationist coffin, this one from MSNBC-Newsweek Lab Talk:

'Irreducible Complexity' is Reducible Afterall
Wednesday, June 06, 2007 7:49 AM
By Sharon Begley

Now that evolution has become an issue in the presidential campaign (in the May 3 debate among Republican presidential hopefuls, when moderator Chris Matthews asked if any candidates did not “believe in” evolution, three hands—Tom Tancredo’s, Sam Brownback’s and Mike Huckabee’s—shot up), it is always amusing when biologists put another brick in the solid wall that is evolution. The latest comes from a study in which researchers discovered clues to the evolutionary origins of the nervous system.

For anyone who just arrived from Neptune, the “nuanced” stance against evolution—that is, the one that doesn’t make you look like a complete Neanderthal—is to note that of course you know that microevolution occurs, with bacteria evolving resistance to antibiotics and mosquitoes to pesticides, for instance. It’s macroevolution—in which one species evolves into another—that gives you pause since, after all, who has seen such a thing?

The intelligent design camp also argues that some biological structures are just too darn sophisticated to have evolved through random mutation and natural selection. They must therefore have been designed by an intelligent agent. In particular, since complex structures have lots of components, how could the components have been just hanging around for eons waiting for the final component to emerge? Think of it this way: if you don’t already have all the other components of a mousetrap, why would you keep a spring around? A spring is only useful if you also have the base, the bar and the rest. This is the argument called “irreducible complexity,” and it has proved very persuasive to the public.

It’s always dangerous to base your argument on some version of “scientists have never found X” (with X in this case being components of a complex structure existing and serving a function before the rest of the components showed up). That’s because those darn scientists keep making discoveries. If you want to say they “have never found . . . ,” you’d better understand that what you really mean is “they haven’t found it yet.”

Which brings us to the latest discovery in evolution: DNA needed to make synapses, the sophisticated junctions between neurons, in none other than the lowly sea sponge. Considered among the most primitive and ancient of all animals, sea sponges have no nervous system (or internal organs of any kind, for that matter), notes Todd Oakley, assistant professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. But, he adds, they “have most of the genetic components of synapses.”

The first neurons and synapses appeared something like 600 million years ago, in a group of animals called cnidarians which, today, include hydra, sea anemones and jellyfish. Sea sponges are even older. “We look at the evolutionary period between sponges and cnidarians as the period when the nervous system came into existence, about 600 million years ago,” says Ken Kosik, co-director of UCSB’s Neuroscience Research Institute.

He, Oakley and the rest of the team listed all the genes known to be operative in synapses in the human nervous system. They then examined the sponge genome. “That was when the surprise hit,” said Kosik. “We found a lot of genes to make a nervous system present in the sponge.”

What were genes for synapses doing in a sponge, which has no neurons and therefore no synapses? This is where the irreducible-complexity crowd makes a fatal error: they assume that whatever the function of a biological component (gene, protein, biochemical pathway . . . ) today must have been its function in the past. Maybe you noticed that my mouse trap example above wasn’t very persuasive; even without a base and a bar, a spring can be a useful little device. So it goes with biological systems. For instance, of the 42 proteins known to make up the bacterial flagellum, 40 have been found to serve as ion channels or something else in bacteria. It is therefore perfectly plausible that they really were hanging around—serving some function that would have allowed evolution and natural selection to keep them around generation after generation—until they all got together and formed a flagellum.

So it seems to be with the genes for synapses. The sea sponge did not use them for their current purpose, but that doesn’t mean the genes had no use. “We found this mysterious unknown structure in the sponge, and it is clear that evolution was able to take this entire structure and, with small modifications, direct its use toward a new function,” said Kosik. “Evolution can take these ‘off the shelf’ components and put them together in new and interesting ways.”

Read it for yourself at the open-access journal PLoS ONE

I Believe It Can Fly

I've given this a lot of thought, and I've decided to convert to Pastafarianism, or as some prefer to call it, FSMism. Yes, I have decided to become a member of The Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster. I have written to the Prophet, Bobby Henderson, to find out if I have to be dipped in some sort of Sacred Sauce first (mainly because if so, Tomcat said he would want to watch.) I want to do this right.

I was touched by His Noodly Appendage (the FSM's, that is,) some time ago when The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was revealed.

It is important to me to become a Pastafarian, and here is why: if a local school board confuses religion with science, insisting that Intelligent Design (formerly known as "Creationism,") should be taught to our children in science class as an alternative to evolution, I can be there to demand that our equally valid theory of creation, namely, that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster, will be taught as an alternative. As the Prophet said, we have no problem with religion, except when religion poses as science. This has actually happened in Kansas City. Oh look, here is a nice poster about their Science Museum. It is my solemn, nay, sacred duty as a Pastafarian to ensure that our nation's future scientists will get equal exposure to our theory of creation wherever intelligent design is taught.

May you, too, be touched by His Noodly Appendage.



RAmen.