Theme switcher

Wierd.

I put in the code for switching stylesheets, and the first time the page loaded, it didn't load any of them. It was just a lot of unformatted text. Once I clicked on one, it worked fine after that. Wonder if it's because cookies are used to keep track of which one was selected...

Have to check on that.

Busy day in the battle against scientific illiteracy

So, let's see what we have here.

The History Channel has a new show, Ape to Man: The Evolution of Evolution. Ostensibly, it's about the history of research into human origins. I tivo'ed it last night, guess I'll watch it some time this week. PZ Myers has a long critique of it up on his site.

Anthropologist John Hawks has posted a review, as well.

And, of course, The History Channel's forum has been overrun with creationists as a result. I just can't bring myself to go there.

The cover of this week's Time Magazine is about "The Evolution Wars." Good grief. Sensationalize much? Guess I'll be reading that one some time this week. Time has gone downhill in recent years, so I'm not holding my breath expecting a good article...

The Seattle Times weighs in with an editorial on the "philosophy" of Intelligent Design.

Father Andrew Greely, described on his website as

One of the most influential Catholic thinkers and writers of our time, priest, sociologist, author and journalist Father Andrew M. Greeley has built an international assemblage of devout fans over a career that spans five decades. He is the author of over 50 best-selling novels and more than 100 works of non-fiction and his writing has been translated into 12 languages. A Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona and a Research Associate with the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, Father Greeley is a respected scholar whose current research focuses on the Sociology of Religion.

has a nicely written op-ed piece pleading for religion to stop meddling with science.

Last but not least, The London Times (free registration required) has the story of what's becoming a very public disagreement between Father George Coyne, an American Jesuit priest and a distinguished astronomy professor and Cardinal Christoph Shonborn over Intelligent Design. Some excerpts of Father Coyne's remarks (courtesy of Red State Rabble):

"God is working with the universe. The universe has a certain vitality of its own like a child does..."

(God) "... is not constantly intervening, but rather allows, participates, loves,"

"... [R]eligious believers must move away from the notion of a dictator or designer God, a Newtonian God who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly."

"Perhaps God should be seen more as a parent or as one who speaks encouraging and sustaining words."

"This view is compatible with the Bible, which gives God human characteristics and presents divinity as "a God who gets angry, who disciplines, a God who nurtures the universe, who empties himself in Christ the incarnate word."

According to the Catholic News Service, Father Coyne criticized Cardinal Schonborn for saying that the scientific processes of "chance" and "necessity" cannot explain the presence of purpose and design in nature. He gave the example of two hydrogen atoms meeting in the universe.

"By necessity (the laws of chemical combination) they are destined to become a hydrogen molecule. But by chance the temperature and pressure conditions at that moment are not correct for them to combine. And so they wander through the universe until they finally combine."

"By the interaction of chance and necessity, many hydrogen molecules are formed and eventually many of them combine with oxygen to make water, and so on, until we have very complex molecules and eventually the most complicated organism that science knows: the human brain."

"Chance" and "necessity" are continuously interacting and must be understood as being tied to the scientific process of "fertility" by which the universe is constantly generating matter, he said.

"The classical question as to whether the human being came about by chance, and so has no need of God, or by necessity, and so through the action of a designer God, is no longer valid," he said."The meaning of chance and necessity must be seen in the light of that fertility," he said.

The universe contains trillions of stars and they "release to the universe the chemical abundance of the elements necessary for life," he said.

"There is no other way, for instance, to have the abundance of carbon necessary to make a toenail than through the thermonuclear processes in stars. We are all literally born of stardust," he said.

Evolution is a continuous process and "has a certain intrinsic natural directionality in that the more complex an organism becomes the more determined is its future," he said.

"It is precisely the fertility of the universe and the interaction of chance and necessity in the universe which are responsible for the directionality," said Father Coyne.

Switchable color schemes

Like most every change I've made to this site, the next change arises from boredom. I've gotten bored with the way this site looks, so I decided to tinker with it. Some.

Many weblogs and photologs have user-switchable color schemes. Clicking one of the style links executes a javascript that forces the page to use a particular stylesheet. The script also sets a cookie, so once the stylesheet is changed, that change will persist when the visitor moves among other pages on the site.

It's actually quite simple; the instructions and the script can be found at A List Apart. What's not so simple is finding good color schemes that work well across platforms. Once I find some schemes I like, I'll implement the facility on this site, and probably on my photolog as well.

It does look like there are better ways to achieve this functionality. Guess I'll get around to trying it that way, eventually.

Teach Both Sides

I found this on Anne's Anti-Quackery & Science Blog:

Pretty funny.