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From the 21st Century Science Coalition:

Dear Colleagues,

The Texas State Board of Education is considering several changes to 
the state science curriculum that will undermine effective coverage 
of evolution in high-school biology classes. Proposed anti-evolution 
language will also put pressure on textbook publishers to 
incorporate creationist criticisms of evolution or else risk being 
excluded from the monolithic Texas textbook market.

The board members are receiving thousands of emails from 
creationists supporting the current curriculum draft. To keep 
scientifically unfounded arguments out of our schools' biology 
classes, we need help from each and every one of you. Please email 
the 15 members of the State Board and urge them to

(1) adopt the scientifically sound curriculum standards drafted by a 
working group of teachers and scientists in December, and

(2) reject amendments to these standards that have been proposed by 
anti-evolution members of the State Board of Education.

Below, we provide instructions on how to contact State Board of 
Education members. Although we include a form letter below, we 
encourage you to personalize the email. Below, we also provide a 
succinct explanation of the current status of curriculum revision in 
Texas.

Sincerely,

The 21st Century Science Coalition (www.texasscientists.org)

Dr. D.I. Bolnick University of Texas at Austin
Dr. R.E. Duhrkopf Baylor University
Dr. D. Hillis University of Texas at Austin
Dr. B. Pierce Southwestern University
Dr. S. Sarkar University of Texas at Austin

PS If you know of colleagues who have not yet signed the 21st 
Century Science Coalition statement, please forward them this e-mail 
or direct them to www.texasscientists.org.

Click through for more information on how to contact the Texas State Board of Education.

See Salman Hameed on "Harunian omission". Can you say "intellectual dishonesty"? Harun Yahya, of course. Not Salman.

The problem with intelligent design is...

Well, it doesn't have just one problem. It has a multitude of problems, including proponents who get themselves into trouble. During the Dover trial, for example, Michael Behe suggested that the intelligent designer might be dead.

Another problem is that proponents of intelligent design pick as examples things that work well, like the blood clotting cascade in vertebrates.¹ They forget that there are a lot of things that don't work so well. If they're going to have their intelligent designer take credit for the good stuff, then they also have to have her/him take credit for the bad stuff. And as David Attenborough points out, there's some really perverted stuff out there. Here's how Attenborough replies when someone tells him there must be a designer.

I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in East Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator.

If you don't understand what this one-wheeled bicycle has to do with intelligent design, I can't do better than to point you to Carl Zimmer and the Loom. He explains it much better than I.

In December 2005 the Honorable Judge John E. Jones, III wrote:

A significant aspect of the IDM [intelligent design movement] is that despite Defendants' protestations to the contrary, it describes ID as a religious argument. In that vein, the writings of leading ID proponents reveal that the designer postulated by their argument is the God of Christianity. (Kitzmiller v. Dover)

NOVA produced a special on the trial, Judgement Day. Now you can read an interview with Judge Jones in PLoS Genetics. Here are just a few of the highlights (all quotes from Judge Jones):

• Another remarkable moment on the science side was Michael Behe, who was the lead witness for the defendants, and a very amiable fellow, as was Ken Miller, but unlike Miller, in my view, Professor Behe did not distinguish himself. He did not hold up well on cross-examination.
• In the realm of the lay witnesses, if you will, some of the school board witnesses were dreadful witnesses and hence the description "breathtaking inanity" and "mendacity." In my view, they clearly lied under oath. They made a very poor account of themselves. They could not explain why they did what they did. They really didn't even know what intelligent design was. It was quite clear to me that they viewed intelligent design as a method to get creationism into the public school classroom. They were unfortunate and troublesome witnesses. Simply remarkable, in that sense.
• They gave me the last word in "Judgment Day" [a NOVA program on the trial] and I said this is not something that will be settled in my time or even in my grandchildren's lifetimes. It's an enduring, quintessentially American, dispute.

You may know that three of the six members of a committee appointed to review state science standards in Texas are antievolutionists.¹ The National Center for Science Education is asking Texas residents to appear at the 19 November meeting of the Texas Board of Education meeting in Austin to support sound science education standards.

Click through for more information.

Well, that's not quite right. Dawkins himself isn't banned in Turkey, at least not yet, but his website is.

A Muslim creationist has succeeded in getting the website of leading atheist Richard Dawkins banned in Turkey after he complained that its contents were blasphemous.

Internet users living in Turkey are now subject to a court order which prohibits them from accessing the popular site richarddawkins.net . The court in Istanbul issued its judgement after author Adnan Oktar claimed Atlas of Creation, a book he has written which contests arguments on evolution, had been defamed on Dawkins' website. (TimesOnline, 19 September 2008)

Defamed? How can you defame a book that is absurd?¹

It shouldn't be surprising that Harun Yahya resorts to the courts to keep people from seeing what a fool he is. Just last year, he got Turkish courts to ban many Wordpress blogs that had been critical of him. What's disappointing is that Turkish courts could be so easily fooled.

I received a copy of the Atlas of Creation over a year ago, and I wrote about it then. That led to a spike in visits, to this blog, many of them from Turkey. After a few weeks, the interest died down. The page continued to have a high rank in Google searches for "Atlas of Creation", at least for awhile, and it's continued to receive visits off and on ever since.

Yesterday I noticed that visits were spiking again -- 42 visits to that page in one day. 3 came as a result of searches for "atlas of creation",¹ but all of the rest came via referrals from sozluk.sourtimes.org. According to Wikipedia, sourtimes is "one of the biggest internet communities in Turkey with over 150,000 users." The page responsible for all of the referrals is this one. The link to my page is in entry #8.

I don't read Turkish, so I can't tell what they're saying about me (or even if they're saying anything about me). If anyone from sourtimes finds this entry and wonders what I think about the Atlas. The reaction that Kevin Padian reports sums it up pretty well.

He said people who had received copies were "just astounded at its size and production values and equally astonished at what a load of crap it is." (my emphasis)