Charles McVety is an Idiot

A while ago I called Charles McVety a "professional embarrassment to religion" and today I see that Red Tory has found the clip I had in mind when I uttered those words. Here's McVety making a complete and total idiot of himself:

Creationism, who needs it?

My friend, The Roan is waging a war against evolution on his blog. I've told him that literal readings of Genesis don't seem to be necessary from a religious viewpoint (let alone the problems with their scientific accuracy). Today, I thought I'd put up a couple of quotes on the matter. This one comes from blogger Daniel Larison:

"Fideistic understandings of religion and materialistic philosophies that seek to exploit evolutionary biology to their advantage enjoy a symbiotic relationship, since they both thrive on promoting mutual antagonism between reason and faith. Tell the Christian that he must either endorse evolutionary theory or accept the Bible, and he will typically take the Bible, especially if he is not grounded in an authoritative teaching tradition that tells him that this choice is a false one. Tell the average educated secular person that revealed religion is incompatible with scientific theory, and he may very well conclude that those who continue to adhere to revealed religion must be either ignorant, insane or up to no good."

And from a Jesuit astronomer:

"If you read the Church fathers, going back to St. Augustine, it's clear that they are not what modern people would call literalists, or Creationists.

In a lot of ways, that's a modern heresy that comes from our mechanical world, where more people are likely to be reading owner's manuals than poetry."

Feel free to post your dissent.

John Paul II on the Origins of The Universe

The more I look at it, the more I wonder why this issue looms so large for the Huckabees of the world when a conservative pope like John Paul II was able to see that evolution need not be some massive theological stumbling block:

"The Bible itself speaks to us of the origin of the universe and its make-up, not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise, but in order to state the correct relationships of man with God and with the universe. Sacred Scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer."

Perhaps after the bad press that the Vatican got from the whole heliocentric thing, they decided to take a more cautious approach about science. In the meantime, Jason is preparing his dissent here.

The Michael Moore of the Right?

It appears that Ben Stein of all people is angling for that title. I was vaguely aware that Stein was a right winger (he worked for Nixon, among other things), but I had no idea that he was a fan of intelligent design. Nonetheless Stein stars in a documentary claiming that ID proponents have been shunted out of academia.

Now, I know there has been a great variety of opinion on Michael Moore. I've seen, and laughed at, a bunch of his movies. A great many of his public detractors come off as humourless twits at times. That said, I have grown steadily disillusioned with the man's methods - even if I agree with a number of his fairly sensible premises (e.g.: the US public was mislead about Iraq), I suspect his methods now. If I am honest with myself the man remains at best a guilty pleasure - that someone like Ann Coulter is far more horrible does not excuse Moore's methods.

It would seem though that the producers of Stein's movie, Expelled is not beneath being deceptive in pursuing their aims. Let's let that irony sink in for a second, people pleading for openness in academia are secretive about their ends when they interview potentially hostile subjects like above-linked biologist and atheist, P.Z. Myers. Myers points out:

"I mean, seriously, not telling one of the sides in a debate about what the subject might be and then leading him around randomly to various topics, with the intent of later editing it down to the parts that just make the points you want, is the video version of quote-mining and is fundamentally dishonest."

I don't even know that this Moore level, this is more the Borat-school interviewing. I assume that Stein doesn't want to be compare to a caricature of an ill-educated central-Asian.

As for me, I was raised on both the Good News Bible and a steady subscription to National Geographic. At various times I've tried to do away with one or the other of these influences but - for better or worse - they both remain. That being the case, I've always found the need for religious groups to assault science to preserve their beliefs to be, well, a bit of a waste of time. Spend that film budget preventing malaria. Please.

John Tory's Education Minister?

Too bad that "Dr." Kent Hovind is in jail: