I love it when Bob Garfield kicks someone’s ass. He’s really one of the smarter people in the media today, and when he’s right, and talking with someone who’s clearly in the wrong, it’s an amazing thing. I mean, we’re used to Brooke doing that kind of thing – flipping an opponent over her back and slamming them to the floor – but she does it all the time. Bob, for whatever reason, holds back. Which makes it more fun to watch.
He’s not holding back this week. Texas is changing some of its scientific education standards in such a way as to further confuse the debate between whether or not creationism should be taught in schools alongside evolution.
I’ll leave it to Bob’s piece to explain exactly what happened, but it seems to me to be a step neither forward nor back for either side – though both are celebrating it as both a victory and a crushing blow.
I love that someone quoted in a news blurb excerpted in the story is railing about his ‘scientific’ ‘proof’ that calls evolution into question – and it doesn’t require ‘mathematics’ or ‘experts.’
Dude’s “scientific proof” is probably something completely irrelevant. He probably believes that accepting Jesus into your heart is evidence that the earth is only 10,000 years old.*
Maybe he’s showing bias, maybe it’s just that the creationists are wrong (and a bit douchey about it), but when Bob’s talking to the anti-evolutionist Casey Luskin, at the Discovery Institute, he meets the guy’s “I’m right because I know I’m right, and I’m not going to listen to the other side because I found five people with degrees who are on my side” swagger with the following:
Are you aware of the fallacy of favorable enumeration? It says that you find a handful of examples that support your premise, and you focus on them to the exclusion of the vast preponderance of circumstances that don’t support your premise. . . . That’s called cherry picking.
Poor Luskin’s comeback is nothing but a bunch of yelling, paranoiac, Alex Jones bluster. He knows that Bob is right. That the whole argument is nothing but cherry picking. You can’t say that it’s not because it’s plain fact.
PWNED.
It’s gratifying to hear, it really is.
This week’s very short recap was written by a very tired Matthew, and edited by Kerry.
If by “edited” you mean “wondered about, while she was out drinking beer and playing foosball with friends.” Not that I’m jealous.
*For the record, I don’t have a problem if you like Jesus – I’m only saying that belief in God is not proof of a young Earth.
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