I did this thing:

Minneapolis News and Weather KMSP FOX 9

A few notes:

Ross Olsen is a retired physician who is a principle player in our local Young Earth creationist group, which produces the local creation science fair (this search will get you most of my posts on that).

When I said second amendment I meant first amendment. But maybe I was really thinking about … oh, never mind.

My intent was not to debate Evolution, although Ross clearly had a different idea in mind. Ross was asked to this discussion by the producers after they (the producers) contacted me to talk about Bill Nye’s comments. Then, they (the producers) needed to find a creationist so I suggested that they contact the Twin Cities Creation Science Association, they did, and this is how they came to invite Ross. I mention this because the more typical scenario is that the evolutionary biologist is set up for a debate they weren’t expecting. That is not what happened here.

Originally we were supposed to focus on Bill Nye’s statement that people who think that the world is less than 10,000 years old need to re-examine their religious beliefs. Here are my thoughts on that particular question, apropos the longer term and larger scale critique of the critique of the critique of the critique of Bill Nye’s video:

Bill is wrong for two reasons:

• First, people need to reconsider their understanding of their own religion, not rethink their beliefs. If you want to believe that the world is less than 10,000 years old, fine, but if you are Catholic, for example, you need to know that you are a member of a religion that does not think that. Most people in America are members of a religion that don’t subscribe to the Young Earth form of creationism, and in fact, many generally accept the scientific understanding of evolution with a little god sprinkled in here and there. So, you don’t need to reconsider your beliefs, but rather, you need to quit the religion you are currently a member of and join a different one.
• Second, as a scientist I don’t want to tell people about their religions (as an Anthropologist I’m happy to do that now and then, of course). People who think the earth is less than 10,000 years old need to reconsider not their religious beliefs, but rather, their scientific literacy and more broadly, their own credulity. We have tee ring sequences that extend back to before 10,000 years, forchristakes.

And when I say “wrong” I mean I agree with him. Of course.

Also,

• It is worth noting that there really are very few people in the US who are true Young Earthers. The poll indicated (see below) is misleading. If you take people to a nice natural history museum and show them interesting stuff about geology and fossils and so on, and ask them if they think the earth was created in six days in the year 4004BC, they will generally say no. If you had asked the same exact people if they take the Bible as literally true, without going into details, a large number of them will say yes. It all depends on how you ask the question, and on what people are specifically afraid of (looking stupid vs. enraging a vengeful god).
• The combined number of people who believe in Bigfoot, Aliens being among us and the Loch Ness Monster is probably greater than the number who, when pressed, actually believe in the 6 days at 4004 BC version of creationism. And, it is more likely that Bigfoot exists. Marginally.
• I was also hoping to say this: Evolutionists do not insist that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. We don’t care how old the Earth is. We’ll work with whatever facts are established. It’s the Physicists who are telling us how old the earth is, and they are using the same subset of Physics that are used to make nuclear power plants work pretty well most of the time, to operate the nuclear navy that keeps us safe from our foes, and that allows the use of nuclear medicine which is so important in diagnosis and cure of disease and disorder. If the physicists are wrong about the age of the earth then we need to have an urgent conversation with the engineers at the nuclear power plant, the Joint Chiefs, and the local hospital administrators.

Now, on to the Gallup Poll. Here are a few summary facts. The original is here.

First, a baseline. For the poll in June 2007,

Evolution, that is, the idea that human beings developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life: True – 53%, False – 44%

Creationism, that is, the idea that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years: True – 66% False – 31%

So, a majority of people think based on that poll that Evolution is true. And, a majority of people think that Creationism is true.

Gallop provides a graph that summarizes a slightly different way of asking the question:

Bottom line: Most people “believe in” evolution in the US, though many take a theistic view of some kind or another.

Marc Kuchner has an interesting post at Scientific American called Bill Nye’s “Don’t Teach Creationism…” Video Dissected by Business Communication Expert in which … well, you can guess what it is about from the title. To refresh your memory, here is Bill Nye’s video, which I had posted earlier on this blog. The video made my friend Marc cringe, who was “…pretty sure that the video would do nothing for those who don’t believe in evolution but turn them away.” This prompted Marc to ask Patric Donadio, an MBA and speaking coach to review it.

While I found several of Patric Donadio’s comments to be generally useful and appropriate, I think some things were being missed here by both Marc and Patrick.

I get that a video that demonstrates disrespect for creationists (and therefore, for certain religions, religious beliefs, or religious individuals) will turn some people away, but there are two reasons that this does not matter. 1) Those most likely to be turned away are least likely to be convinced by any given argument and 2) This is part of a larger trope which is really bad, widespread, and needs to be addressed; religious voices are allowed nearly unfettered criticism of pretty much anyone, but religious individuals and organizations maintain a strong and real privilege of immunity from critique. They obtain this immunity by the simple act of being offended and making sure everyone knows that. This strategy may not seem like a very effective one (try it for a while, it won’t work for you over the short term) but if a social institution does it for, oh, 800 years or so at every opportunity it tends to stick.

Putting it another way, no one should ever be concerned that people who are totally wrong about something … dangerously, offensively and obnoxiously wrong … are going to be offended when they are told they are wrong. That should never come into consideration even though it always does. That is undeserved but strongly entrenched privilege. We’ve had enough of that.

I get the very strong impression that the marketing expert has never heard of Bill Nye before, which is probably a good thing because Donadio is at either by default or intentionally attempting to put aside Nye’s celebratie to look at the video and the presentation for what it is, to provide a more useful critique. But, doing so also ignores an important element. Bill is a personality who has a wide audience who like him because of who he is. Instead of a textbook critique of how Bill does in front of a camera, a critique that look at this as a video of a wildly popular figure and actually try to understand from, learn from, that video what it is that is working, because Bill Nye is working. (I quickly add that Bill Nye is a very in your face kind of guy, owing mainly to the bow tie, I’m sure, and I often think “oh, I wish he had done that a little differently” when watching him.)

It may well be true that Bill Nye is only getting at a subset of the audience out there, or could change his approach in order to reach other people that an adjustment in approach with advice from marketing would allow, but since Nye is being very successful with an existing large audience why would we try to do that? Also, it may not be possible. If Nye took an entirely different approach, anti-science people could sully such a new production by bringing out Nye’s older work and reminding people that he is an unabashed pro-evolutionary scientist. I hate the expression I am about to use right now but it actually fits (for once): Bill Nye is what he is. Or, more exactly, Bill Nye already was what he is.

Patrick Donadio spends a certain amount of time analyzing the potential audiences a message like this may reach.

Let’s say there’s a continuum of beliefs around this issue. There are those people in the middle that you might be able to attract and of course, you have “either/ors” on sides of the continuum ; the creationists on one side and evolutionists on the other. The people in the middle have the potential for an “and/and” shift on this issue. You might be able to influence them. If we can move people from “either/or” to and/and, that would be a smaller move. This is a challenge sometimes for scientists, because many times scientists think in terms of black and white, “either/or”.

This discussion is expanded on by Marc, and the idea of quoting a religious person rather than Carl Sagan is discussed, as is the idea of focusing on those with a belief in both science and religion overlap or don’t conflict as much as other’s might (“they might consider that the science and their religious beliefs might be consistent and co-exist.”)

This issue has been addressed extensively, and there are important points that have been largely established as part of the overall conversation. Let me bullet point this for you:

• There are multiple points of view and therefore multiple strategies must be considered.
• Some strategies step on each other; an “in your face” strategy might turn off people who would have been convinced to “believe in” (bad term) evolution had they only met with the right argument first.
• Antagonizing people who are unlikely to be convinced to change their minds about evolution might be bad (no sense in playing to the other guy’s base!) but it is not as bad as throwing science under the bus by playing to an appeasement strategy (allowing for a limited amount of supernatural cause to co-exist with the science).
• Some of us think the “overton window” might be real. Nye is nowhere near the far end of the spectrum but movement outside the ideal range can move that window. Certainly, spending much effort on the side of the spectrum we would like to move opinion against is not good, should this magic window actually exist. This does not mean that Glen Back is not a dangerous ideologue, I quickly add.

Finally, here’s the problem with addressing a specific effort like Bill Nye’s. When looking at a single piece of work in isolation, it is almost necessary, certainly very tempting, to abide by the premise that there is a single framing or marketing technique that is most appropriate for the entire science/anti-science discussion. But there are several, and as a community I’m pretty sure we’ve mostly agreed that multiple strategies are needed. If we examine every potential efffort in isolation and try to sus out what the best possible approach is for that effort, all the different efforts are going to be modal, targeted to the middle, average, and like each other.

This comes through especially in the comment about the concept that you can’t be an engineer and be a creationist.

Bill Nye is well aware of the well documented and researched fact that engineers and certain other hard sciences (chemistry, for example) is the part of the landscape of professionals that harbors the most creationists. The fact is you can’t be an engineer (really) and truly believe creationism. Creationist doctrine claims that certain things engineers should know can’t happen do. For example, the speed of light is not really known, radioactive isotopes do not decay as science says they do, and that hydrology and geology do not work as engineers and geologists think they do. Nye is absolutely correct; a real engineer can not be a real creationist and visa versa.

Nye is speaking here to those engineers using their own terms and putting the question to them, subtly: “Do you want to be a moron or not?” This is the kind of subtly in the discussion that a communication expert coming in and applying marketing expertise is not going to know about unless they have already researched the discussion extensively. I hope Patrick does that and comes back with some even more useful advice.

Added: See also Bill Nye is Not a Businessman

I am looking forward to the construction of the meatspace version of the currently on-line only “Creation Science Hall of Fame” on vacant land on Interstate 75 between the Creation Museum and the Ark Park.

Someday this section of Northern Kentucky will be a veritable Miracle Mile of Creationism Related Facilities. It is about this time this industry got some competition. We know that the Invisible Hand of the Free Market is like god and makes everything better. What could possibly go wrong?

Here’s the story from the Courier-Journal

Hat Tip: Joe

This just in:

Baton Rouge, LA — (March 27, 2012) — At Senator Santorum’s March 23rd rally in Pineville Louisiana, student activist, Zack Kopplin, had the chance to question the Senator about creationism laws. Kopplin, who has led the effort to repeal Louisiana’s creationism law, the misnamed and misguided Louisiana Science Education Act, asked Santorum about the Louisiana Science Education Act and Santorum’s proposed amendment to the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, which served as a model for Louisiana’s law.

Kopplin asked, “In Louisiana we have a creationism law that’s based off a 2002 creationism amendment you proposed to the No Child Left Behind Act… Can you spend about two seconds explaining why you think this is a good idea?”

Stantorum responded, “states have a right to do what they want with education curriculum.”

First, Santorum didn’t take issue with the nature of Louisiana’s law or his amendment as being “creationist” laws.

Second, Santorum’s attempt to justify teaching creationism as a state’s right is wrong. There is no justification for teaching unconstitutional non-science in public school science classes. Students will not get the education they need to succeed and get the science and technology jobs of the 21st century. Ironically, Santorum’s own legislation would have been a federal mandate. So while it’s clearly convenient for him to cite state’s rights in favor of Louisiana’s creationism law, the fact that his own amendment would have been a federal mandate undercuts that argument and shows his real priority is the teaching of creationism.

When interviewed about the rally, Kopplin said,

“This defense of teaching creationism seems to be the Republican base’s party line. When Michele Bachmann was asked about the Louisiana Science Education Act last spring, and her own 2006 effort to pass a creationism law in Minnesota, she gave an equally ill-informed answer about state’s rights. Governor Perry, last fall, said that creationism was taught in Texas schools.

Governor Romney appears likely to win the Republican Primary and it is important to know what his views on creationism are. Will he stick to what he said in 2008 and defend the teaching of evolution, or will he shake up the etch-a-sketch and toe the line to the Republican base?”

To contact Zack Kopplin, email repealcreationism@gmail.com.

Thank you to Jason Berry and NOSHA for their help making this video possible.

More here at Repeal Creaionism Dot Com.

Tennessee is where the famous Scopes Trial of 1925 played out, and more recently two state level state bills (one house and one senate) are in play in a move by legislatures to further enhance Tennessee’s reputation as a place where people don’t value education and would not know of valid scientific theory if it bit them on the ear.

You’all knew that if you’ve been following the news from there. Yesterday, an editorial was printed by four scientists who are rather fed up with Tennessee’s playing fast and loose with reality, and it is worth a look.

… Even the religious mainstream has accepted the theory of evolution as the scientific description of how living things change over large time scales. Over 12,000 Christian clergy in the U.S. have endorsed a statement acknowledging that “the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests.”

In opposing the legislation, the American Association for the Advancement of Science explained, “There is virtually no scientific controversy among the overwhelming majority of researchers on the core facts of global warming and evolution. Asserting that there are significant scientific controversies about the overall nature of these concepts when there are none will only confuse students, not enlighten them.”…

Read the whole editorial here, it is quite good.