Indiana Embarrasses Itself

So it's a presidential election year. That means that most people could be forgiven for losing track of the particulars of local politics. It's even more true in Indiana, where the state legislature has only recently concluded an acrimonious standoff over a controversial piece of "right to work" legislation which has dominated the local political consciousness for nearly two years. Maybe that's why a number of us were caught flat-footed by the passage on Tuesday by the Indiana state senate of Senate Bill 89, a pro-creationism bill that, if passed by the state house and signed into law, would provide a opening for Indiana public schools to be flooded with intelligent design flummery.¹

Some rather optimistic observers have noted that the bill was recently amended from this:

The governing body of a school corporation may require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science, within the school corporation.

to this (emphasis added):

The governing body of a school corporation may offer instruction on various theories of the origin of life. The curriculum for the course must include theories from multiple religions, which may include, but is not limited to, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Scientology.

This change was reportedly an attempt by Democratic state senator Vi Simpson to hamstring the bill by making it less attractive to the Republicans in control of the state legislature, but in my mind it's a dangerous gambit. Some hardcore Christians in Indiana may balk at at talk of Islam or Hinduism in the state, but make no mistake: Governor Mitch Daniels, while not as ostentatiously religious as some of his fellow Republicans, is likely gearing up for a 2016 presidential run, if not a play for VP in November. If SB 89 makes it to his desk, he'll sign it into law no matter what form it takes as a nod to his conservative base.

Frankly, if the bill does make through the house and onto the governor's desk, the language intended to sabotage it may actually make it more destructive. By throwing a bunch of religions into the mix, it just makes it easier for a teacher so-inclined to pass evolutionary theory off as an unimportant side note. It's not hard to envision what this new curriculum would sound like:

"Well, see, there's these folks called Scientologists who think an alien created life on earth, and then there's that Darwin fellow what with the monkeys and all, and the Hindus probably think there was an elephant guy or something. Now if you'll open your bibles we'll get to the true story of the origin of life as written, in English, by Jesus Christ Himself...."

Heck, even the language in the bill doesn't result in a half-assed glossing over of a bunch of creation stories with evolutionary theory tossed into the mix, the situation could still end up just as bad, if not worse. That is to say, even if every creation myth listed and evolutionary theory are all given equal time in the classroom, you still end up with a bunch of mythology and nonsense drowning out the actual science in science class!

There's still a chance that the Indiana House of Representatives may not take up the bill. House Speaker Brian Bosma, a Republican, has reportedly stated that what is taught in science classes should not decided on by the state legislature. Bosma also stated that the bill may represent "someplace we don't need to go" in light of the U.S. Supreme Court Ruling against intelligent design in famous Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District ruling in 2006.

Regardless of whether SB 89 passes into law or not, Indiana has embarrassed itself on the national stage by flirting with the introduction of creationism into its public schools.

__________
1.) On second thought, is anyone that surprised that a Republican-controlled legislature would trot out a creationism-in-schools bill transparently pandering to its conservative base during an election year?

A Friendly Challenge...

Phillip O'Donnell, who I've mentioned previously on here in this post about pterodactyls and as a snarky aside in my recent post about Ed Mitchell's alien silliness, has contacted me and proposed a debate between the two of us. Readers will remember O'Donnell as the YECer who wrote a book about living dinosaurs when he was just 14 years old. He now runs website called Living Dinos on which he attempts to show evidence for the modern existence of dinosaurs, as well as the reality of dragons and a 6,000 year-old earth, in the hope that advancing these positions will challenge the conclusions of evolutionary biology and provide support of a Biblical literalist view of reality.

Phillip has proposed that we do a recorded phone debate, which I admittedly don't have much interest in because I've no desire to, among other things, pay for several hours of long distance charges. I have instead suggested that, rather than debating privately over the phone, we should set up a formal, public debate over at the Internet Infidels Discussion Board. As with all the formal debates on that forum, this would be a moderated one-on-one debate with a mutually agreed upon topic and rules and would consist solely of Phillip, myself, and a moderator. There would be no dog-piling by supporters of either side. Naturally, more specific details about the debate would need to be worked out before IIDB moderators would approve it, but I've no reason to suspect that it would be difficult at all to put such a thing together.

I look forward to Phillip's response and eagerly await the opportunity to debate him on his evidence for the existence of modern dinosaurs.

Some Unkind Words About "Kinds"...

I was looking at Ken Ham's blog this afternoon because, well, I'd just cleaned up two piles of puke at work* and figured that reading a few of the Hamster's offerings wouldn't be that bad by comparison. As usual, the power of the Young Earth Creationists to be stupid is something that I shouldn't have underestimated. Apparently the Creation Museum here in Kentucky has a petting zoo (almost everything in Kentucky has a petting zoo) and the petting zoo recently succeeded in breeding a zonkey. Readers may remember our friend the zonkey, which is a sterile hybrid of a zebra and a donkey, from this post about artificial insemination pioneer Ilya Ivanov. While zonkeys sometimes occur in the wild, Ivanov could make the things on demand. (You know, in case we need thousands of them for...something.)

In any event, Ham holds up the zonkey as a triumph of the idea of "kinds". That is to say, the Young Earthers, forced to retreat from absolute anti-evolution rhetoric by the forces of obvious and observable reality, have now come up with an idea of limited evolution wherein basic body plans denote what can and cannot interbreed. Donkeys, horses, and zonkeys belong to the "horse kind"; tigers, lions, and Big Fluffy Puss-Puss belong to the "cat kind"; humans are their own "kind" apart from other primates (of course); and vampires, werewolves, and mummies are all part of the "monster kind". The creationists have even made up a field of "study", baraminology (which is so new that my spell check won't accept it), that is devoted to talking about "kinds" without, to my knowledge, actually publishing any peer reviewed research on the subject. Curiously, one of the things they've never really gotten around to is actually defining what a "kind" is. By ignoring secular taxonomy in favor of Biblical "baramins", Young Earthers have the luxury of adjusting the definition of "kind" to narrow it down to the species level (as with humans) or to broaden it out to include entire orders and beyond as it suits them.

Basically, this YEC concept is used to explain away observable evolution, visible changes within populations, and genetic similarities between certain animals. It creates certain difficulties, however, for those of us who are prone to thinking too hard about such things. For one thing, while it's touted as an anti-evolution concept, it requires (in the 6,000 year-old Earth context in which it is couched) super-fast hyperevolution to work. For example, AiG says that there were originally only 50 "kinds" of dinosaurs, and yet science has documented approximately 700 species of dinosaurs. Let's examine what those two numbers mean: AiG maintains that the story of Noah's Ark actually happened, and that it happened around 2300 BC. They further maintain that every "kind" of dinosaur was represented on the ark. These "kinds" of dinosaurs must therefore have undergone a ludicrously rapid speciation in order to get from 50 "kinds" to 700 species and then die off without a trace before, say, the birth of Christ. That's around 650 new species of megafauna appearing in less than 2500 years - hardly an anti-evolution position, but rather a pseudo-evolutionary one!

The point isn't really to try and make any sense or advance any understanding of the natural world. The point behind all this wrangling about "kinds" is to figure out some way to keep humans separate from all other animals. Using it as a sensible opposition to evolution (which it isn't) is a distantly secondary concern to the true goal: trying to set humans apart from all other lifeforms. As far as I can tell, humans are the only organisms with a "kind" all their own. Even the giraffe, which is often held up by creationists as being so bizarre as to be incapable of having evolved naturally, is acknowledged by AiG to share a common ancestor with the okapi. Talking about kinds lets the Young Earthers admit the reality of evolution without having to say it out loud - it's like a kid standing in his parents' living room with a baseball bat and admitting that he "might" have been responsible for the broken lamp.

Easily observable and repeatedly verified phenomenon like the appearance of drug resistant tuberculosis can only be explained in evolutionary terms, and deep down the Young Earthers know that. They have to own up to at least some evolution, so they try to invent new concepts like "microevolution" and "kinds" to downplay the significance of observed evolution. When they can't lie outright about the findings they're uncomfortable with (See this picture from AiG in which the shaded area is purported to represent the only bones found of ambulocetus, a transitional whale, then look at this picture of the actual skeleton.), they retreat to their weak "evolution-but-not-evolution" positions and try to stall out the discussion.

Even so, I don't think the point of "kinds" is to legitimately oppose evolution, not in the end. It just doesn't do a good job of it, and it admits far too much when you read between the lines. No, the main point of all so-called "bariminology" is undeniably the human "kind" sitting high atop its lonely throne. Separating us from our primate cousins is the ultimate purpose. Reality forces the Young Earthers to admit common ancestry in the animal kingdom, but as long as they can sequester humans in their own kind, they remain special, the God-created focal point of the universe. After all, once you've established yourself as the ultimate purpose of the existence of the entire cosmos, everything else is small potatoes.

*Good ol' direct care social services, man.

Pterodactyl Attack!

Pterodactyls* are pretty cool, that much is certain. They're also extinct, and have been since the great extinction at the end of the Cretaceous. I'm pretty sure that much is also certain. But, of course, there are a few weirdos floating around out there who are foaming at the mouth to prove that pterodactyls are alive and well and coming to your hometown. Bizarre even by cryptozoologist standards, the two biggest mushrooms growing out of the steaming pseudoscientific turd that is living dinosaur theory are David Hatcher Childress and Philip O'Donnell. Better put some gloves on - this one's going to get messy.

Rodan, a modern super-pterosaur

Childress is an archaeologist in much the same way that I'm a professional wrestler - We've both seen real ones on TV and thought "Gee whiz, that'd be cool". The only difference is that I don't go around telling people I'm a pro wrestler, but Childress, who has (at most) a single complete year of college under his belt, tries to pass himself off as an archaeologist. This goon has found a home among paranormal TV shows like Sightings, where they rarely present the fact that he's basically just a guy off the street. He's big into Erich von Däniken-flavored alternative history, wherein aliens have been interfering with life on Earth since the beginning of time, Atlantis was the place to be before it sank into the ocean, and the ancient Egyptians hung out in the Grand Canyon.

He enjoys a lot of support among "esoterics", which is to say ding dongs who, to paraphrase Aristotle, cannot entertain a thought without accepting it. Any version of history that seems cooler than actual history appeals to them. They're also prone to making loud arguments from incredulity** that are dripping with implicit racism. "How else but through intervention by the spacemen," they collectively ask, "could all those primitive brown people have built pyramids and temples and worked out functional calendars?" Childress also owns his own publishing house, the Adventures Unlimited Press, which he uses to peddle his enormous horde of books. His literary output largely consists of tales about his various adventures uncovering, singlehandedly, ancient secrets of anthropology that have eluded, well, the entirety of the world's actual trained anthropologists and archaeologists.

Linked here is one of Childress' pterodactyl articles, in which he argues, among other things, that El Chupacabras is actually a live pterosaur. His other arguments consist of reminding us that folks in medieval times had legends about dragons and wyverns and whatnot, and thus (obviously) such things (or a kind-of-but-not-quite equivalent) must've existed at the time. Following that sort of logic would lead me to lock my doors at night to keep Jason Vorhees at bay while downing cup after cup of coffee stay awake so Freddy Krueger doesn't get me in my dreams.

Childress also appeals to a mysterious old photo of cowboys with a dead pterodactyl. This photo is extra amazing because no one has ever seen it. People just hear about it and then...remember it. Spooky. There is not, so far as anyone can tell, even a single actual copy of the thing in existence, and yet Childress paints it as powerful evidence. Childress cites John Keel (Yeah, the Mothman Prophecies guy.) as his source that vouches for the authenticity of the photo. The quest for the magic photo is complicated by a handful of fakes (showing Civil War guys instead of cowboys) that got floated around the internet a few years ago as part of a viral marketing campaign for a now-defunct TV show called "Freaky Links".***

Pterosaur photo from the Freaky Links viral website.

Philip O'Donnell is the author of Dinosaurs: Dead or Alive? He's also known online as "Living Dinosaur Man for Christ", which should give you a bit of a sense of foreboding. Oh, did I mention that when he wrote his book he was 14 year-old home-schooled kid? He makes a weird argument (Which, judging by the favorable reviews on Amazon, people are buying into.) that the existence of living dinosaurs today would disprove evolutionary theory (He never really says how.) and show that the earth is really only...wait for it...6,000 years old.

His basic premise is that (his non-existent understanding of) evolution predicts that dinosaurs cannot exist today, and thus the existence of a living dinosaur would disprove evolution. Keeping in mind that some well-adapted creatures, such as alligators, have experienced only minimal changes in body plans over the eons, there's no specific aspect of actual evolutionary theory that precludes the modern existence of dinosaurs. They were simply ill-equipped to deal with the situation created during the K-T extinction event (thought by many to have been precipitated by a large scale impact event) and were out-competed by proto-mammals and other creatures who were better adapted to the new environment. While evolutionary theory could be used to make basic predictions about what species might or might survive X change vs. Y change, it would not predict, ceteris paribus, that dinosaurs would go extinct and that mammals would thrive in a stable environment.

Pterosaur photo that appeared on the Freaky Links TV show.

O'Donnell, who also believes in the existence of dragons, lists as evidence on his website a pile of "Champ" lake monster photos, some pieces of art depicting dragons, an Ica Stone, and some photographs of skulls which he claims show anatomically modern humans in the Jurassic geological layer. Since he and his friends write the captions for their pictures themselves and offer no citation, it's not easy to track down where they even come from. He also has an "Answering the Skeptics" page that consists of, and I'm not kidding, a machine gun list of two sentence descriptions of dinosaur encounters with, as usual, no citation.

One of O'Donnell's most annoying habits is that of assuming his own conclusion. For example, the lack of dinosaur fossils after the late cretaceous means squat because the geological column is an evil evolutionist lie. How do we know? Because the earth is 6,000 years old and thus the geological column isn't real! How do we know? Because the old earth is an evil evolutionist lie! How do we know? We just do! Wait...what? He also likes to try and quote mine Alan Feduccia, the paleornithologist at UNC, as saying that there is no evidence that birds evolved from a prior form of creature.**** Feduccia is unusual among paleornithologists because he doesn't think that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs, but that isn't because he doesn't think they evolved. He instead thinks that birds and theropods share a common ancestor further back in the timeline, but his arguments are unambiguously pro-evolution.

A common argument shared by both our friends is "Hey, coelacanths exist, and science thought they were extinct! Thus it is just as likely that pterodactyls still exist." Yep, there are two species of coelacanth prowling the oceans today, with the total number of individuals thought to be less than 500. They dwell at depths of up to 2,300 feet, and their eyes are so sensitive to light that they won't even rise to a catchable depth on nights when the moon is full. Yet they've still been captured, dozens of them. On the other hand, O'Donnell and Childress would have us believe that pterosaurs with wingspans of up to 45 feet are living in Texas and Mexico, attacking humans and animals alike, and have yet to be physically documented. They're shooting themselves in the foot by bringing up the coelacanth, because if a creature so elusive as that has been conclusively documented then there's no excuse for brazen, farm-raiding dinosaurs to remain unconfirmed.

As I've stated on here many times in the past, cryptozoologists are a strange lot, but even they tend to give loons like Childress and O'Donnell a wide berth. The idea of living dinosaurs in America pushes the conspiracy-mongering and wishful thinking that are endemic to cryptozoology to the point of self-satire.

*"Pterodactyl" is a generic term, and the creatures it is used to describe are more properly termed "pterosaurs". On the other hand, pterodactyl is a cooler sounding word. Pterosaurs, by the way, and not technically dinosaurs.
**Which, when you thinking about it, is pretty remarkable coming from folks who tout extraterrestrial visitors as the source of much of earth's technology.
*** FreakyLinks.com used to be the site for the show, so sometimes you'll see old forum posts that refer to it. Just keep in mind that the TV show ended in 2001, and FreakyLinks.com is now a porno site.
**** The section on his site in which this occurs is actually quoted wholesale (with credit given) from Creation Ministries International shill John Sarfati's book Refuting Evolution, so O'Donnell can be forgiven- it's unlikely that he's ever actually read a word of Feduccia's work that hasn't been through Sarfati's grinder. Sarfati, by the way, is a chemist, not a biologist.

It Was Childish Enough Before...

According to Answers in Genesis, Ken Ham's laughable but well-funded Young Earth Creationist organization, the Creation Museum that blights my home state of Kentucky will soon receive a small makeover in the form of numerous kiosks and additions to make it more kid-friendly. Considering the fact that the Museum peddles a bizarre history in which the universe was created 2,000 years after the invention of the battle axe* and Noah took dinosaurs on the ark,** I don't know exactly how the Creation Museum could get any more childish. Honestly, this is an organization that exists for the purpose of arguing for the historical accuracy of The Flintstones. Other than, I dunno, hiring on Barney the Dinosaur as a greeter, what could they possibly do to kiddify it even more? I guess it's important to drum this crazy message into children before they've had the chance to develop any critical thinking skills whatsoever.

On another note, I'm looking at the museum's rates I see that it costs a whopping $19.95 plus tax for an adult to get in. Meanwhile, the Louisville Zoo, where you might actually learn something that's true, costs a mere $11.95 for an adult admission, and the Louisville Science Center only charges $15 for admission to the center itself and an IMAX show. Hell, even a yearly family membership to the Zoo only costs $75 compared to the Creation Museum's whopping $125, and the Louisville Zoo boasts a world-beating gorilla enclosure whereas the Creation Museum has nothing but fiberglass dinosaurs and lies. Apparently the Young Earthers are as money-hungry as they are asinine.

* Archaeological evidence shows that the first axes with a handle (haft) were manufactured around 6,000 BC. The Creation Museum's brand of YEC is premised on a universe that began around 4,000 BC.

** Recall the Testing Poe's Law post in which a similar argument was found to be indistinguishable from parody.

Confronting the Creationists With Science...

Alright, with the release of Expelled looming like on the horizon like some big ridiculous monster, I thought it'd be fun to post a video about the relationship of humans to our great ape cousins. For added emphasis, I'm referring readers not to an atheist biologist like Richard Dawkins, but instead to devout Catholic biologist Kenneth Miller, holder of a Ph.D. in biology and a professor at Brown University. This is a fascinating video taken from a much longer 2 hour talk available here. In this clip, Miller talks about the evidence of chromosome fusion in humans, explaining why humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes while great apes have 24. Were there no evidence of a fusing of chromosomes in human beings, the theory of common descent between humans and great apes would be disconfirmed. On the other hand, mapping of the human genome shows an anomalous placement of centromeres and telomeres in the human genetic code that provides powerful evidence of chromosome fusion and, therefore, of common descent. Enjoy.

Expelled by Design...

Well, Ben Stein's Intelligent Design screed Expelled is going to start showing up in theaters this Friday, though it's only running in two theaters in my city. I actually saw a commercial for it on TV for the first time this morning. I must admit that I have some morbid interest in seeing the film, though I've no interest whatsoever in supporting its creators by paying to do so. Expelled is little more than a collection of the same tired old creationist arguments mixed in with whining about about "scientific elitism" and weird accusations that Darwin caused the Holocaust.

There are two things that strike me as missing from all the pre-release material on Expelled, the first being the obvious question that, if somehow ID turned out to be true in the face of all on-going scientific research, why would that naturally lead us to the conclusion that the Judeo-Christian God was behind it? Why not Odin, Amaterasu, Ganesh, Marduk, or Cthulhu? What would it prove about any god? Mightn't it just prove that there are aliens and that they created humanity? Because ID is just a repainted version of fundamentalist Christian creationism, it makes an unspoken assumption that if nature were shown to be designed by an outside intellect, it must've been Yahweh that did it. But what leads them to that assumption? Why didn't Ben Stein interview this guy?

The reason is that Stein and his Expelled cronies aren't interested in non-Christian versions of ID is that they're specifically out to tout biblical creationism in the guise of science. Not that I'm claiming that the alien guy is doing any more science than the IDers (actually they're probably working on about the same level), but it's telling that the traditional IDers want nothing to do with these guys. They're all making about the same claims, but the ID crowd wants to make sure that its audience understands, without having to say so, that the operator behind all this meant to be Yahweh.

What's double fun here is that any time you bring up the whole "intelligent design by aliens" to a traditional IDer, you'll get a response along the lines of "Aliens complex enough to create human beings are also too complex to have arisen by chance*, so what designed them?" The reply, of course, is that an omnipotent deity must by definition be far, far more complex than either humans or aliens, so where did it come from? Was it designed by something else? Where did that come from? Did it, and only it, evolve? If a deity has existed for all eternity with no beginning or end, can't one ask, rhetorically, why a static universe in which the building blocks of life have always existed is not at least equally as plausible?** Most IDers have no answers to these questions because their are operating under the assumption that the ID "designer" is meant to be Yahweh.

Also conspicuous by their absence are any prominent Christian scientists who accept evolution. As usual, I'm going to trot out Human Genome Project head Francis Collins, who is an eminent geneticist and also a devout believer in evangelical Christianity. Collins is willing to go to the mat with Richard Dawkins about the existence of God (Collins is big into the anthropic argument.), but he is convinced of the reality of evolution by natural selection after having spent his entire professional life working exclusively in the field of genetics! Where is Collins in Expelled? What about Catholic biologist Ken Miller, author of Finding Darwin's God and outspoken foe of creationists of all stripes? Why isn't he in Expelled?

The answer here is easy - Expelled's producers felt that Christian evolutionary scientists would "confuse the audience". Something that the creators of Expelled want to sweep under the carpet is that the vast majority of Christians working in the biological sciences understand evolution by natural selection to be, for all intents and purposes, an established fact. By refusing to acknowledge that anyone can both be a Christian and accept evolution by natural selection, the Expelled crew is working hard to manipulate their Christian viewers into siding with them by fiat, essentially saying that "Christians aren't allowed to accept evolution".

So yeah, Expelled is coming to theaters on April 18th, but it might behoove moviegoers to think for a moment about some of the perspectives that have been expelled from Expelled.

* Note the use of the word "chance" in ID/creationist-speak, rather than anything more illustrative of the proper evolutionary view of "random mutations being acted upon by non-random selection pressures."

** Sure such a cosmological scheme doesn't jive with modern physics, but doesn't that make it all the more appealing? Stick it to Big Physics by asserting your right to believe in a static universe!

Creationists want it both ways...

I've been spending an exorbitant amount of time lately poking the creationists over on Ray's blog. I don't really expect to "convert" anyone, but it's interesting to see the ways that they frame their arguments and whatnot. Now, I largely believe that the issue of evolution is problematic for some breeds of Christian because it calls in to question their privileged place in the universe. Note that I say "their" rather than "ours". There is a tremendous arrogance among the "saved" that I've spoken of on here before, and I can only say that, among the followers of Ray's blog at least, my original griping on the subject was a gross understatement of the truth.

One of the most interesting things I've encountered thus far is the strange relationship some of these folks have with science, as both an institution and a methodology. Whenever science fails to support their preconceived notions it is uselessly and dogmatically naturalistic you see, but when it coincides with their beliefs it is not only correct but nearly infinite in its persuasive power. I suspect some of this comes from the ongoing debate between the skeptics and the believers on Ray's blog. Ray's brand of Christians seem incapable of grasping the idea of existing without out and out worshiping something, so when skeptics talk about science as a useful methodology for understanding the world we are naturally saying that we worship it. It's a peculiar thing to wrap your mind around, but some of their statements make more sense (more narrative sense, anyway) when you finally see that some of them have that perspective.

One thing that is of interest to me is the degree to which creationists think scientists are in (dis)agreement about evolutionary theory. Many of them seem to think that there's an enormous amount of debate within the scientific community as to whether or not evolution in the broad sense is true. Indeed, a recently Pew survey indicated that something like 54% of lay people think that scientists in general support evolution. Read that again. 54% of lay people think that scientists in general support evolution. What a weird survey. Actual surveys of scientists reveal acceptance of evolution by anywhere from 95% to 98.5% of scientists. In fact, the good ol' "Scientific Dissent From Darwinism" that the Discovery Institute is so proud of represents a minuscule number of scientists (approx. 700 out of nearly 500,000) and its numbers are likely padded by its pallid wording that "Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged." Hell, I think almost everyone would agree with that. Add to that the fact that numerous signatories on the list are either not in biological science fields or openly admit that their concerns about evolution are ideological and you have a list of names that just doesn't mean much.

Another question that never quite gets answered is what creationists make of scientists with both strong Christian and strong bio-sciences backgrounds who believe in God but also accept evolution as settled fact. The figurehead of this group is the eminent Francis Collins, whose belief in God has been manifested in public debates with atheist scientists like Richard Dawkins but whose entire professional career has been spent doing legitimate experimental work and, among other things, heading up the Human Genome Project. Here's a man whose faith is not in doubt but whose lifetime of work in the fields of biology and genetics has left him thoroughly convinced of evolution's reality. It is scientists like Collins who make it impossible for the creationists to have it both ways when it comes to science.

I've been asking the creationists over on Ray's blog what they think of Collins for weeks now and I've gotten no replies. I guess, as with the evidence of evolution, they choose to pretend that he doesn't exist.