Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Five-Year-Old Wanted to Explain Evolution Simple Math to the Discovery Institute

Over at one of my favorite science blogs, PZ Myers' Pharyngula, he asks the rhetorical question Any 5 year olds want to explain the problem to the Discovery Institute?

The so-called Discovery Institute, for those not in the know, is an organization of professional morons whose goal is to try to denigrate the Theory of Evolution in general and Charles Darwin in particular. And, to my everlasting chagrin, they are headquartered in, of all places, my own Seattle!

But anyway, back to the question. Today's news that Thomas Jefferson would have supported so-called Intelligent Design has drawn, of course, much laughter on the side of science, scientists and the reality-based community in general.

Go read PZ's take on the whole thing, including the timeline which includes the following notation for 1859: Thomas Jefferson, still dead (and has been since 1826); Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species.

To get to the heart of the matter, how could the father of the wall of separation been an evolutionist fifty-three years before Darwin published his work? Granted, Thomas Jefferson was undoubtedly an ultra-genius, but really...

2 Comments:

Anonymous said...

You know, this Discovery Institute thing and pushing magical stories that are just PLAINLY and DEMONSTRABLY wrong has nothing to do with education on the part of the people pushing this agenda forward. Wrapping this nonsense in the trappings of science in an attempt to formulate this alternative explanation is an attempt to make it more palatable to a greater audience.

That greater audience is expected to contribute dollars. These people don't have the education they think they have and find it appealing to have a pretty magical story.

Make no mistake, this is an attempt to consolidate power away from our government in an attempt to replace those warrants and securities that define our government and our way of life. These people are the "enemies from within", leveraging the ignornace of our own population to destroy their own government.

Farnsworth68 said...

Thanks, Anon, for that insightful comment. It's like I've said about the so-called abortion foes for years. The last thing they really want is for abortion to be outlawed. Then their funds would dry up and they'd have to go out and get a real job. Odd, isn't it, that the Rethug party had control of both houses of congress and the presidency and even then NO ONE even broached the possibility of passing a law outlawing abortion?