Stephen Law

"But it Fits!' Douglas Adams' puddle and Ken Ham's creationism. How it all 'fits'! My latest blog post at CFI here .

  Centre for Inquiry UK and Conway Hall present: Science and Pseudo-Science: Chris French, Andy Lewis (Quackometer), James Ladyman and Stephen Law Sat 30th November 2013 What distinguishes real science from pseudo-science, flim-flam and bullshit? Is parapsychology a science? Is Young Earth Creationism science? Is pseudo-science on the rise in British schools? Tickets here or on door.  

Here's the Al Jazeera discussion programme I appeared on last night. It was a very good discussion I thought. Al Jazeera produce exceptionally high quality TV. The other contributors were Salman Hameed and Imam Joe Bradford from the US. The discussion was prompted by an article by Geneticist Steve Jones in the Telegraph . In fact I had not seen this earlier interview in the Australian where Jones does say the problem of students boycotting evolution classes is predominantly with Muslim students.

“BUT IT FITS!” AND THE BLUNDERBUSS “But It Fits!” is one of the most popular strategies for immunizing beliefs against refutation. In fact, “But it fits!” does double duty. Not only is it a great immunizing strategy, it can also be used to create the illusion that a ridiculous belief system is not, after all, ridiculous, but at least as well confirmed as its rivals. I’ll explain how “But It Fits!” works by means of a particularly impressive example: Young Earth Creationism. Young Earth Creationism Young Earth Creationism is a theory based on a literal reading of the Old Testament. Young Earth Creationists maintain that the entire universe is less than ten thousand years old (a typical estimate is about six thousand years old). They claim that the universe, the Earth, and every living species were created literally as described in Genesis, over a period of six days. So, according to Young Earth Creationists, the theory of evolution, which says that new species can evolve, and hav...

Ken Ham, perhaps the world's leading creationist nutcase, educates some school children about dinosaurs, fossils, and so on. Not sure I'd call it "brain washing", but it is, er, a little worrying! Ken's pop quizz starts: Ken: "Next time someone says 'millions of years ago', what do you say?" Chorus: "Were you there?" It's worth playing a few times just to hear properly what they've been so well-trained by Ken to say. An evangelical church, which intends to teach creationism as part of its science curriculum, has submitted a proposal to open a free school in Nottinghamshire. The Everyday Champions Church in Newark handed its plans to open a 625-pupil secondary school in the area to the Department for Education last week. The application came just a day before the DfE held its first free school conference, where education secretary Michael Gove said applications from creationist groups would be considered, with each judged on its ...

Dave believes dogs are spies from the planet Venus. He views any canine with great suspicion, for he believes they are here from Venus to do reconnaissance work. Dogs, Dave supposes, secretly send their reports back to Venus, where the rest of their fiendishly cunning alien species are meticulously planning their invasion of the earth. Their spaceships will shortly arrive from Venus to enslave the human race and take over the world. Unsurprisingly, Dave’s friends think he has a screw loose and try to convince him that dogs are comparatively benign pets, not cunning alien spies. Here’s a typical example of how their conversations with Dave go: DAVE: It’s only a matter of weeks now! The spaceships willarrive and then you’ll wish you’d listened to me. We mustact now—let the government know! MARY: Look, Dave, dogs are pretty obviously not space invaders, they’re just dumb pets. Dogs can’t even speak, for goodness sake, let alone communicate with Venus! DAVE: They can speak—they just choose...

Everyday Champions Church set to be latest in line of faith-based founders [Source TES here .] An evangelical church, which intends to teach creationism as part of its science curriculum, has submitted a proposal to open a free school in Nottinghamshire. The Everyday Champions Church in Newark handed its plans to open a 625-pupil secondary school in the area to the Department for Education last week. The application came just a day before the DfE held its first free school conference, where education secretary Michael Gove said applications from creationist groups would be considered, with each judged on its individual merits. According to the church, the Everyday Champions Academy will possess a "Christian ethos that permeates everything that happens throughout the school". The church states that it believes the Bible is an "accurate" depiction of God's word, and that God is the "creator of all things". Continues at TES . Here's my view about the ...

From IBTimes: " A Mori poll has found that over half of Britons believe Creationism and Intelligent Design should be taught alongside Evolution in science lessons. The poll, which was part of a worldwide study into attitudes to the teaching on the origin of life on earth, saw 1,000 Britons questioned on the subject. Around 54 per cent of those who responded said they thought teachers should talk about “alternative perspectives” to the Theory of Evolution, however only six per cent said they felt Creationism or Intelligent Design should be taught instead of Evolution. Just over one fifth of respondents said that only the Theory of Evolution should be taught, as is currently the case under the national curriculum ." Read more ... Guardian article here . What explains these statistics, and what if anything should be done?

Here's an interesting anecdote. A friend of my wife's from Exeter says that she discovered her primary school was teaching her child Young Earth Creationism (YEC). When she went to the head teacher to complain, the head said that the school needed to combat the work of atheists and the anti-Christ. When this parent then went to the Local Education Authority to complain, it did nothing, citing the school's excellent performance as evidence that all was well. It is one of the top performing primaries in Exeter. Understandably, this parent feels helpless and frustrated. It's just an anecdote. But it is yet another example of Young Earth Creationism being taught in schools without parents' knowledge (or even, in some cases, the schools' knowledge). As I remarked earlier, it seems there is a lot more YEC being taught in schools than most of us realize. Quoting from an earlier post : Students from British Universities were surveyed on a range of questions, including w...

The recent revelation that about 30% of secondary school teachers want "creationism" taught in schools reminded me of the results of a survey reported back in 2006, which is still one of the most disturbing educational surveys I've ever seen. If you are not aware of it, it's worth checking out. Go here . The original tables of results of the Opinionpanel survey are here (scroll down to 2006) Students from British Universities were surveyed on a range of questions, including whether they were Young Earth Creationists, and whether Young Earth Creationism had been taught to them by their parents, school, sunday school, etc. Amazingly, 12% of these undergrads were Young Earth Creationists. But the real stand-out statistic for me was that 19% of students said that they had been taught Young Earth Creationism "as fact" in school. 19%! One in five students. We are not talking mostly Muslim schools either. The figure for those who were of other non-Christian reli...

This is interesting....

Author@ptbooks has been defending a form of creationism, and also arguing for the existence of God. I pointed out that the arguments for authors specific God are weak, and that the problem of evil provides seemingly overwhelming evidence against the existence of any such being. Author's response has been to say that that are "too busy" to discuss the issue of whether God is good or not, and that they are merely defending belief in God, not his goodness. But this seems highly evasive to me. Surely it is now misleading for author to continue to use the term "God" here, as, for most people, "God" means something far more specific - a personal God who is supremely benevolent and powerful, among other things. Indeed, author's arguments from design really only support, at best, the hypothesis that there is some intelligence behind the universe. This intelligence may not even be divine (for example, perhaps this universe is the virtual, Matrix-like cre...

author@ptgbooks has been contributing to this blog on creationism. I have divided my posts into two: those dealing with the issue of whether it's reasonable to suppose the authors' Judeo-Christian God exists, and those dealing with whether creationism should be explicitly acknowledged in school science classes as something science has not disproved (which is what author wants). On the first issue: two posts ago I pointed out that evidence from design etc. is very weak evidence for the very specific god believed in by Christians (who is all-powerful and good), and that there is, in addition, very powerful evidence against the existence of that God supplied by the problem of evil/suffering. So, in terms of reasonableness, author's belief system looks very unreasonable indeed. In response, author comments that: (i) he doesn't want to focus on this issue (ii) that he has faith - i.e. "chooses to believe what God says" about his own goodness (iii) that the evidenc...

Incidentally, has anyone got any information regarding Young Earth Creationists who have ceased being Young Earth Creationists (or even become atheists)? And have any once confirmed atheists ever ended up YECs? While lots of religious have become atheists, and vice verse, I am guessing there are very few examples of either of these categories. I suspect (though it's speculation, I admit), that Young Earth Creationism is an intellectual black hole - that the psychological and other forces that make religion so seductive become so concentrated in the U.S. version of YEC that they reach a critical mass: so that, once you're in, there's no way out again (certainly, not by means of reason ). But I would like to be proved wrong....

Here’s a quick-ish response to some of author@ptgbook’s (a creationist, if a slightly unorthodox one) comments on my preceding post. 1. EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FOR/AGAINST THE EXISTENCE OF GOD First, author suggests that the supernatural/God is not something that science can address. Yet he or she suggests that, actually, there could be empirical evidence for God’s existence. Indeed, he/she cites the truth of prophecies, the fine-tuned character of the laws of nature, etc., and suggest there might also be evidence for ID . Well, good, so we agree that there can be empirical evidence for, and thus also against, God’s existence. Let’s look at some of author's alleged evidence supporting belief in God (which is threefold, thus far: fine-tuning, ID and truth of Biblical prophecies). Actually, fine-tuning and ID-type evidence are evidence, at best , for some sort of intelligence working behind the universe. It’s a huge further, unwarranted leap to conclude this intelligence is all-powerfu...

Here's a comment from author@ptgbook.org on my post on Darwin, creationism and evidence . Reminds me of Spencer Tracey towards the end of Inherit The Wind (the Tracey character puts to the blustering old creationist prosecutor that perhaps the "days" of the Bible lasted millions or billions of years). I am posting it here as it deserves special treatment, I feel. I'll respond further in next post... Your article is interesting and makes some good points, but it is missing the larger picture. Not all Bible literalists believe in a six thousand year old earth. A literal understanding of Genesis allows a time period of unspecified length between verse 1 and verse 3. This could have been billions of years. In other words, in verse 1 God created the earth. The earth could have become filled with life. At some point, the surface of the earth became covered with water as described in verse 2. Then starting in verse 3, God restored the earth to a condition of having life o...

Here's something I have been working on. Comments please. It needs a final para. Warning - about 3.5k words! DARWIN, CREATIONISM AND EVIDENCE Introduction Both the general theory of evolution and Darwin’s particular theory of evolution by natural selection are regularly challenged by people who describe themselves as “creationists”. There are several varieties of creationism. The focus here is on what is often called “young earth creationism”: the view that the entire universe is approximately six thousand (certainly less than ten) thousand years old, and that all living species were created within the first few days of creation. Henceforth, when I speak of “creationism”, it is young earth creationism I have in mind. Why would anyone believe creationism? Typically, because they are Bible literalists. Creationists believe that Genesis provides an historically accurate account of origin of the universe and life. Their chronology is based primarily on the number and ages of the genera...

If you have ever had a conversation with a creationist of the "young earth" variety (who believe the entire universe is less than 10K years old, with all species created by God as described in Genesis), you'll know it is a frustrating experience. Point to the fossil record, say, or light from distant stars, or carbon dating, or tectonic plate movement, etc. as evidence of a much older universe, and you will find they have prepared answers, supplied, for example, by the multi-million dollar funded Institute for Creation Research . There are also innumerable creationist resources on the web, such as at www.christiananswers.net . I'd like to discuss how best to respond to young earth creationists when you come across them (I've come across quite a few in British Schools, recently - including one teaching science in a leading public school).