Aaron Golas » skepticism

Tangled Bankruptcy: Response to Nathaniel Jeanson

Aaron — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:06:54 +0000

Nathaniel Jeanson, newly of the Institute for Creation Research, gave a lecture in Boston last night entitled “Evolution: Bankrupt Science, Creationism: Science You Can Bank On.” This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with how creationist arguments work, but there was absolutely nothing new about his talk. As a freshly-minted doctoral graduate from Harvard’s molecular biology program, Jeanson is the embodiment of the very bleeding edge of so-called creation science: a dull intellectual wasteland rehashing decades-old arguments long since refuted, unable to be fertilized even by graduate-level training at an Ivy league university.

I attended the lecture with the Boston Skeptics. It was was mostly one stale, nonsensical creationist talking point after another, spanning everything from geology to astronomy to biology (in case you hadn’t guessed, by “evolution” he meant “every field of secular science that challenges Young Earth Creationism”), with bits of pieces of pure absurdity sprinkled in for flavor. I had to chuckle a bit when he brought up Irreducible Complexity; and here I had though Behe had gone out of style. There was, however, one claim he made late in his talk that caught my interest as a biologist: he suggested that the variation between species in a protein called cytochrome c (“cytC”) actually refutes common descent.

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A Thorough and Spirited Debunking

Aaron — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 04:31:14 +0000

Oh man. I’m back from The Amaz!ng Meeting 7, and there’s a LOT that I want to write about. For starters, Captain Disillusion hisownself made an appearance (in disguise, naturally) and screened a kickass addendum to his pantry ghost debunk:

Now THAT was satisfying. His prior explanation was good and plausible as an alternative explanation to claims of the paranormal. But in this one, as CD says, “we can pretty much see exactly what’s happening.”

I’ll have a lot more to say about the trip and related topics once I’ve recovered a bit more from late nights, red-eye flights, and jet lag.

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Amazing Disillusion

Aaron — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:24:39 +0000

Captain Disillusion, hero skeptic of YouTube, has a fantastic new video out. The debunking in this installment isn’t quite as thorough as are some of his other episodes, but the special guest and the “Contact” references make up for it. It’s important to spread the word: We (Skeptics) Are Not Alone!

Sara and I will be at TAM7. By all accounts, it promises to be–dare I say–amazing!

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