Dispatches from the Creation Wars
Archives for January, 2005
The DI Tap Dance
Posted by Ed Brayton on January 31, 2005 Newsweek has a story in its next edition about the various battles over evolution and ID going on around the country. The DI is sure to go ballistic over it soon, since it actually tells the truth about ID. But there’s one passage in it that just leaps off the page. It’s this one: But…
Keith Olbermann Hammers Dobson
Posted by Ed Brayton on January 31, 2005 In the aftermath of the intentional controversy over Spongebob pushing the obviously un-Christian idea of tolerance for others, Focus on the Family has been in full damage control mode. Naturally, their strategy was to attack the media for its horribly unfair portrayal of his words. Ironically, their claim is essentially this: “We weren’t attacking Spongebob,…
Another Study on Failure of Abstinence-Only Sex Ed
Posted by Ed Brayton on January 31, 2005 A new study from Texas A&M researchers on abstinence-only programs in Texas concludes that they have had no effect on teen sexual activity for those enrolled in the programs: The first evaluation of programs used throughout the state has found that students in almost all high school grades were more sexually active after abstinence education.…
A “Conversation” About the Founding Fathers
Posted by Ed Brayton on January 30, 2005 A couple days ago, I received an email from a correspondent named Nick, a man I’ve encountered in a political chat room before as well. He’s one of those really hardcore religious right types who, as you will see, absolutely glories in his ignorance, and he was bound and determined to “educate” me. His initial…
More Dishonest DI Spin
Posted by Ed Brayton on January 28, 2005 The Discovery Institute’s mid-winter festival of deceit continues with this absurd post about the recent Time magazine article on ID. This passage is particularly dishonest: Time lists three authors for the story: Michael Lemonick, Noah Isakson, and Jeffrey Ressner. But in the interest of full disclosure, the magazine should have listed a fourth: Eugenie Scott,…
A Poker Post
Posted by Ed Brayton on January 28, 2005 It’s been a while since I wrote anything about poker and things have been much too serious lately, so here’s a post few people will care the least bit about from last night’s game. We had two hands that were really pretty crazy. The first was very expensive for a couple of people. Flop is…
More on the Worldnutdaily and Wiccans in the Military
Posted by Ed Brayton on January 27, 2005 In following up on yesterday’s post, I thought it would be fun to go back in time to 1999 to see what the Worldnutdaily was saying about the issue of Wiccans in the military when the big stink over the issue was going on and Christian groups were telling their followers not to join the…
Update on Illinois Anti-Discrimination Law
Posted by Ed Brayton on January 27, 2005 A few days ago, I wrote about the new Illinois bill that added sexual orientation to their already existing anti-discrimination laws. That bill, signed by the governor last week, did not specifically include an exemption for churches. That lack of exemption has caused what can only be described as a full scale freakout in the…
Religious Freedom for Me, But Not for Thee?
Posted by Ed Brayton on January 26, 2005 The Worldnutdaily has an article up entitled Wiccans Meeting on Air Force Base. Now this would hardly seem to be newsworthy. There are over a million people in the US military, any logical person would assume that at least a small percentage of them are Wiccan or belong to any number of other smaller minority…
Much Ado About Nothing
Posted by Ed Brayton on January 26, 2005 I’ve not commented on the brouhaha that has surrounded Harvard President Lawrence Summers’ comment at a conference last week that innate differences might have some role to play in explaining the relative underrepresentation of women in math and science (and relative overrepresentation of women in English and the humanities). Let me do so now. Bottom…