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Classic clip. Baron Cohen is a genius.

Hilarious. I think we should use apostrophes more often when talking about creationist "doctors"!

MARVELOUS! I love creationists! Give them their own show on TV.

Brilliant! Fantastic clip.

What is it about Creationists and fake degress? Why can't they just go to universities like the rest of us and get a degree? Oops. Silly me...

Very funny!

Some creationists actually do have genuine degrees, even though creationists make up a pathetically miniscule minority of the world scientific community.(thought that I would head the AIG list of dentists and what not before it appears!)

Maybe Creationism [erroneously called since the Bible states Creation] and Evolution can be taught together.

I remember when I was a freshman in the University of Akron [Ohio] [1980], there was a class that taught the comparison between Evolution [as theorized by Darwin] and De-Evolution [as theorized by the rock group Devo].

#5- Because real accredited universities deal with real science, and anyone exposed to real science has an enormously difficult task reconciling that with creationism. There's usually only one result: the creationist discovers a better theory of origins rooted in real science! The few that continue to believe in young-earth creation are normally schizophrenic at an academic level. :-)

John,

I have a 'real' PhD in science and believe in creation. I do not consider myself "schizophrenic at an academic level."

#9, me too, PhD and over 120 published peer-reviewed scientific papers to boot! Anyone who has done any real science will know that we are a long way off a rational explanation for "life on earth" as we know it. That said, they may, on principle, deny the existence of a creator God.

rubberduckie- Do you consider yourself a good scientist?

Hovind should be incarcerated if for no other reason than having been outwitted by Ali G in public. Now with such strong evidence as that, how can anyone deny that people didn't evolve from monkeys?

Hovind should be incarcerated if for no other reason than having been outwitted by Ali G in public. Now with such strong evidence as that, how can anyone deny that people didn't evolve from monkeys?

I can't fault Hovind for denying that humans were descended from monkeys. One look at Ali G and I don't blame him, I wouldn't want to take responsiblity for that either if I were a monkey.

Hello Belfast Believer, you wrote

"me too, PhD and over 120 published peer-reviewed scientific papers to boot! Anyone who has done any real science will know that we are a long way off a rational explanation for "life on earth" as we know it. That said, they may, on principle, deny the existence of a creator God."

This makes a refreshing difference from most creationists who don't know even the most basic concepts of science and wouldn't recognise a peer-reviewed paper if it was slowly read to them by their mothers at bed time. As you tout your list of peer-reviewed publications, may I ask your opinion about the complete lack of peer-reviewed creationsit papers in literature (except that one paper that was let through without review by a creationist-sympathetic deputy editor)? Pointing out that the creation of life from life-less matter has never been replicated yet is correct enough, but would you agree that the holes in evolution are small compared to the noting-but-hole case of creationism? If not, could you present some creationist peer-reviewd literature? Peer-reviewed by academic standards, not by Discovery Institute standards (one Discovery clown vouching for the work of the Discovery clown in the office next door).

Could I aslo ask you if you are a young or old earth creationist? In in what area of science you hold a PhD?

kind regards,
Peter

OK, if you want to know where this guy Ali G got his schtick from, IMO it's Saturday Night Live's Father Guido Sarducci. See if you don't agree.

Here's a couple of clips;

Peter,

Where does matter come from?

Kind regards,

rubberduckie

Dear Peter (#15),

thank you for your comments!

I believe in a creator God. It is a personal belief and one that I have not and will not force upon you. It requires faith (and not of ourselves, as the Bible puts it) to do so. This is not in conflict with my scientific training, background and current research work - my point was that as a scientist I know that we are a long way off from explaining or, more importantly, understanding 'life, the universe and everything'.
I consider myself to have a personal relationship with God that works itself out in the everyday life of me and my family.
Regarding my PhD and area of study, it is irrelevant to the debate - I am a scientist by profession, I understand the bias (sometimes favourable to me!) in the peer-review process and the scientific process itself. Are you seriously telling me that the Discovery Institute is the only place where you find "clowns" who let personal factors cloud their judgement?! The top journal in my field (at the top of the citation index) has been guilty of the very same 'sin'.

In terms of citing creationist texts, etc., again you have missed the point. I believe in a creator God through faith and a personal relationship. It is not a matter of proving or disproving 'this' or 'that'.

I'm happy for you to attack my faith and personal beliefs but don't pretend that it is "science".

Belfast Believer;
Religion occupies the shadowy nether world uncomfortably straddling what is unknown and what is unknowable. Before anything was known, it had free reign and could say whatever it wanted without fear of credible contradiction. That's why the church was so angry at Galileo, once real demonstrable knowledge was brought in, their monopoly was over and the jig was up. The handwriting has been on the wall ever since. Most religions are in a constant state of retreat occupying a smaller and smaller space as more knowledge is accumulated but he creationists/ID people fight back by trying to discredit knowledge gained from science. That is why McIntosh tries to twist the second law to his will, and it may even work for those who don't understand it.

What will creationists do when scientists inevitably fuse a pair of simian genes, implant them in a foetal stem cell, and create something resembling a human being out of it? Will they finally give up? I doubt it, but they might just start a war to surpress it. So far the flat earth society hasn't gone that far.

When you tell me you are a believer, at that moment I do not consider you a scientist, you have reverted to a frightened primitive wondering what it's all about and scared to face the reality of eternal inevitable death after what is ultimately a meaningless life. Emotion cannot be reconciled with science no matter how many degrees you have.

Hello rubberduckie, you wrote

"Where does matter come from?"

The short answer would be 'I don't know, the origin of the universe is some way away from my area of physics'. But if you asked people more knowledgeable than me in that area and kept asking them follow-ups like 'Where did that come from, what caused that to occur' etc, then at some point they too would say they don't know. Or they would say that they don't know YET, but that they are trying to find out. Just as there were many things that were not understood at some stage (and frequently assumed to be the hand of some god(s)), but that are very clear right now thanks to advances in science.

Belfast Believer, I saw your post too, but I'm afraid it will have to wait for a bit longer.

greets,
Peter

Dear Mark (#19),
you are fully entitled to your opinion about me and my credentials as a scientist. Fair play.
Just please don't tell my employer, or the journal editors where I publish my papers, or the charities, public bodies and multinational organisations that fund my research team. Luckily for me they judge my standing as a scientist on my research output rather than on my own personal faith and beliefs! Thank God for that!
Perhaps you think (or 'believe'?) that research papers should be submitted with a full disclosure of one's beliefs? We could use a checklist so that the editor could let humanists and buddists publish but not bible believing Christians and so on. Where do you stop- perhaps one could say that believing in a creator God shows a weak intellectual constitution and ban us from taking up public appointments, becoming school teachers, etc.

Sadly, there maybe something prophetic in that...

Hello Belfast Believer,

Thanks for you reply. You wrote

"I believe in a creator God. It is a personal belief and one that I have not and will not force upon you. It requires faith (and not of ourselves, as the Bible puts it) to do so."

and at the end of your post

"In terms of citing creationist texts, etc., again you have missed the point. I believe in a creator God through faith and a personal relationship. It is not a matter of proving or disproving 'this' or 'that'."

Ok, that doesn't remove the gap between our views, but it makes it at least a bit smaller. Believers claiming they have 'overwhelming evidence' sometimes get me pretty riled up, as that state of mind is so anti-knowledge, anti-thinking, anti-inquisitiveness, anti-critical questions and anti-science. And is responsible for the occasional assault on education. I appreciate that you say that it is a belief, not something that has tangible proof.

"I am a scientist by profession, I understand the bias (sometimes favourable to me!) in the peer-review process and the scientific process itself. Are you seriously telling me that the Discovery Institute is the only place where you find "clowns" who let personal factors cloud their judgement?! The top journal in my field (at the top of the citation index) has been guilty of the very same 'sin'."

I willagree that the process of science is not perfect and occasionally allows errors to slip through and biased opinions to temporarily persist. But in science clowns who keep peddling disproven rubbish lose credibility and their branch of thinking dies after a while. For one, their funding dries up. The Discovery clowns happily keep pushing nonsense that has been disproven years ago and they keep receiving generous funding to do so. Can you name examples in publicly of commercially funded science where the whole community laughs at some professors who keep up disproven rubbish yet remain the leading lights of a field of science?

Hello Belfast Believer,

Just one little thing I forgot in my previous post. You mentioned you didn't want to state your field of science, which is fine. But may I ask you again if you are a young or old earth creationist? If the former then would you agree that that is in irreconcileable disagreement with science?

Dear Peter (#22),
I'm sure that you would concede that there isn't overwhelming evidence on either side. You have chosen, based on your own prejudice (a function of your religious / spiritual beliefs / unbeliefs) and programmed (by those who educated you) understanding of the science of the origins of life. I doubt that you have studied the subject in the same way that you did for the lit review aspects of your PhD, although you may have !!

Anyway, you are trying to tease me into an academic debate about creation v's evolution and I'm not going to bite. Firstly, I'm too busy with the day job and secondly, as I said before, for me it is about my personal relationship with the living God through the blood of Jesus. As it's been said before, that will be foolishness to the gentiles and a stumbling block to the Jews.

Lastly, I'm glad that I didn't reveal my area of science - NI is a small place and Mark (#19) is out to discredit me - that's ok but I don't want this form of discrimination to affect my PhD students and RAs. After all, I don't even know what they believe about the creator God!

Hello Belfast Believer,

You say that you have no appetite for a debate. Ok. Let me then say just one thing more without trying to open up further discussion. You wrote

"I'm sure that you would concede that there isn't overwhelming evidence on either side. You have chosen, based on your own prejudice (a function of your religious / spiritual beliefs / unbeliefs) and programmed (by those who educated you) understanding of the science of the origins of life. I doubt that you have studied the subject in the same way that you did for the lit review aspects of your PhD, although you may have !!"

Good thing that you keep a small reservation there, as you are very, very wrong on multiple occasions in those few sentences alone.

Belfast Believer, it is not you I wish to discredit, it is the ideas and way of thinking you expressed here. Your thinking process was not rational, your conclusions unable to be substantiated by evidence or logical deduction. That you may be a competent well respected scientist in your own field is possible, I have no way of knowing one way or the other. But in this area, you are not talking or thinking like a scientist. Science and religion try to reach truth through two different routes which are mutally incompatable. Science takes obeservations as facts (unless and until someone proves they were obtained inaccurately) and tries to develop a theory which most consistantly and logically explains all of them. When new observations are inconsistent with the theory the explanation must go even if it cannot be replaced right away with a better one. Religion takes its dogmatic explanation as fact and when observations inconsistent with them or theories drawn from other observations are inconsistent with them, then the observations and other theories are discarded as heresy. That is what happened with Galileo and with McIntosh. The problem with Galileo is that anyone could make the same observation he did whenever they wanted to so it left them in a pickle. Eventually they had no choice but to accede to Galileo's truth just as they had to accede to Darwin's. The difference between science and religion is that science is an entirely rational process, religion isn't which is why it must be taken on pure faith. You cannot twist religion into becoming a science, it cannot be made rational by its very nature because it will not yield its conclusion to inconsistent facts. You can evade this issue if you like but it won't go away and unlike the inquisition, you cannot show me the rack in the torture chamber in order to force me to recant or shut up. That's freedom of speech for you.

Hello Mark,

You mentioned the clash of science and creationism a few times in this thread. You (and others who worry about religious assaults on education) may want to take a look at the petitions at

and

You may also be interested in others, listed at

greets,
Peter

Peter (#25) - I'm often wrong. That's a prequisite for being a real scientist (not like the cr*p about science being peddled on this blog, and you know that in your heart so admit it, even if you by choice deny the existence of a creator God).
In my lab I used to have a poster that said, "People learn by making mistakes, I will learn a lot today".
Anyway, Peter, I hope that you too will know the creator God someday.

Mark (#26) - Oh, thanks for that. For a minute I thought that you "do not consider [me] a scientist". Looks like a back peddle to me, but I'm probably wrong (see above). Anway, like for Peter, there is hope for you too.

As I disappear off into the blog sunset, I would like to say, "goodbye and thanks for all the cheese!" It's been a fun ride for me as a first time commenter on "Will and Testament." I'm really feeling the love!

Hello Belfast Believer,

"Anyway, Peter, I hope that you too will know the creator God someday."

The length of your list of publications and the posts you make on this blog suggest you're at an age and stage of 'thinking' about religion where you are unlikely to change your mind. Otherwise I would express my hope that you would wise up some day.

Belfast Believer doesn't wish to bring his critical faculties into the sphere of his religious belief. The faculties he uses to observe and theorise about the real world are off limits to his religious belief; I wonder why? BB's comments go a long way to proving Dawkins' "compartmentalisation of the mind" theory: that 'real scientists' who believe in creation are suspending their otherwise good judgement when it comes to any clashes between their religion and their science. In this case, his religion tells him that the earth was created 6000 years ago in 6 days by a supernatural event of the God Jehovah and that, at some point, a talking snake was involved. The science says otherwise, and Belfast Believer denies the existence of a contradiction!

John Wright,

You are absolutely right. If they applied only 10% of their critical, suspicious, skeptical scientific thinking that they use in their work, then they'd all wake up as atheists next morning.

hi peter

i dont think that is what john is trying to say, i might be wrong though?

i am constantly amazed that you think that atheism is "rational" while theism is absoulutly "irrational".

in post 29

"The length of your list of publications and the posts you make on this blog suggest you're at an age and stage of 'thinking' about religion where you are unlikely to change your mind."

why do you put the word THINKING in '---' marks?

Science and religeon are different that does not make them enimies. I am annoyed that some people seek to stir up hatered between the two diciplines.

Ps
I found some intersting lectures,

if you are successful in application i think you can get free funding to go.

Well Peter's simply taking it to what he thinks is the logical conclusion: atheism. Personally I'm a theist. But the minute I suspend my critical faculties to yield a 'belief' I am no longer a reasonable person but a mere mystic who could believe anything I'm told. I'm no longer internally consistent or reliable. If I ever find my theism illogical or undefendable, I'll reject it. That's the difference between me and Belfast Believer.

Hello am,

"i am constantly amazed that you think that atheism is "rational" while theism is absoulutly "irrational".

I think atheism can have different grounds, not all of them strongly overlapping with rationalism (and never being synonymous I think). For me it is the case, or I least I try to make it so. But I know others for whom it's not. For instance, I saw an interview with a former Dutch MP recently, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She was a Muslim but became an atheist because of what Islam can do to women. Think forced marriages, domestic violence, genital mutilation. I think her reasons are more out of practical consideration for the women who suffer than academic rational philosophical thinking.

"why do you put the word THINKING in '---' marks?"

Because it is very different from what a scientist does when he thinks about his work. Dylan Dog mentioned compartmentalisation and BBs religious views not being subject to any such critical thinking. RAmen to that.

"Science and religeon are different that does not make them enimies. I am annoyed that some people seek to stir up hatered between the two diciplines."

I get a bit of a John McEnroe feeling here: I do not believe you're being serious.