Most of the time that I speak of intelligent design, Dembski, or his blog Uncommon Descent I’m highly critical. There’s lots not to like. But several days ago he posted a picture that was really quite nice — a “fire rainbow”.

fire rainbow over Idaho — click for larger picture

Once I stopped looking at the pretty picture and read the content, the feeling of appreciation quickly dissipated though. Dembski writes:

It’s the gratuitousness of such beaty that leads me to rebel against materialism.

Science, as a way of knowing, seeks materialistic explanations. That is, it seeks to explain the natural world solely by seeking natural explanations. This is what Dembski is referring to as materialism.

Now for what it’s worth, I (and probably all Christians) reject absolute materialism. That is to say that science is the only way of knowing something, that matter and nature are all there are, and that humans are simply an accidental byproduct.

But, is it a fair criticism to condemn science for seeking materialistic explanations? Should Christians (or for that matter others) be demanding that we seek more than just natural explanations for what we study? In one word — NO!

Let’s take the case of the fire rainbow. Snopes.com reports the precise conditions under which they form.

In general, a circumhorizontal arc (or “fire rainbow”) appears when the sun is high in the sky (i.e., higher than 58° above the horizon), and its light passes through diaphanous, high-altitude cirrus clouds made up of hexagonal plate crystals. Sunlight entering the crystals’ vertical side faces and leaving through their bottom faces is refracted (as through a prism) and separated into an array of visible colors. When the plate crystals in cirrus clouds are aligned optimally (i.e., with their faces parallel to the ground), the resulting display is a brilliant spectrum of colors reminiscent of a rainbow.

Far from being a mystery or a miracle, we know exactly how and under what conditions “fire rainbows” form. So, because this picture is beautiful, do I need to reject the naturalistic explanation that explains it? Better yet, for those of you with children, I’ll assume you find them beautiful too. Do you need to reject the theory of fertilization in order to be a good ChristianTM?

Clearly not. A Christian need not reject natural explanations for the natural world. Indeed it is the spectacular success of natural explanations that makes them so convincing. All a Christian must do is understand the place of natural explanations — that they explain the natural, observable world. Are there people who base their absolute materialism on naturalistic materialism? Yeah, sure. Are Christians free to disagree? Yeah, sure.

Dembski, like always, is creating a false conflict. It is the gravest of mistakes to lay the foundation of one’s faith on the belief that science can never explain something. I don’t care if it’s a fire rainbow, embryonic development, or even the origins of life. We can safely say that we live in a world governed by the laws of nature. Christians simply accept that God is the originator and sustainer of such laws.

A few days later though, it gets even more bizarre though in this post of predictions titled “If naturalistic materialism is true…“. I’m going to quote the first bit, and I’d like you to read it and carefully think about its implications.

If naturalistic materialism is true:

1. We are nothing but the sum of our parts. Our bodies are wholly explicable in terms of nature, and there is no aspect of our bodies that cannot be described in purely naturalistic terms, nor any means of describing ourselves other than naturalistic ones. Human beings are simply organic beings and nothing more, composed of organs which are composed of cells which are composed of molecules which are composed of atoms which are composed of sub-atomic particles (and, if string theory is valid, the particles are composed of various strings of energy), and that’s it. We are thus material beings and not spiritual ones. We have no souls. Consciousness is therefore nothing but a curious offshoot of biochemistry, a higher reasoning function of our brains that has arisen from the natural advantage afforded to us by both the size of the human brain and its level of complexity. It is NOT evidence that Man is a creature imago dei, but rather evidence of the power by which natural selection operating in tandem with random genetic mutation can operate.

THEREFORE, I PREDICT that scientists will one day construct a device capable of transporting a human body across vast regions of space–a device comparable to the “teleporter” as portrayed in the “Star Trek” TV series. It will disassemble a living human body at a molecular or sub-molecular level, transport those small bits of living organic material at high speed across great distance, and reassemble them to their original macroscopic configuration, with no ill effects to the body it has transported.

IF, HOWEVER, after several hundred years of scientific advance no such a device will have been formulated, this fact should be taken as an indication that naturalistic materialism is not true.

Consider what they’re really saying. The complexity involved in this “Star Trek” transportation device would be more than immense. It just might be impossible. For example, one source I came across suggested that a 150 pound person would contain ~7×1027 atoms. Simply put, that’s 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms. (Don’t ask me how to say that number). Furthermore, 99% of them are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Thus, taking the number of electrons that each of those elements have and doing a little math, 99% of the body’s atoms contain ~2.3×1028 electrons.

Why did I bore you with the numbers? Simply put, if you know anything about quantum mechanics, then you’d know that every single one of these atoms and electrons would have to be “transported”, with all of their quantum properties intact. From what I understand of quantum mechanics (not much) — we can only deal with these properties statistically and in fact, if we’re right, we’ll never be able to predict exactly how an electron (or any of the other subatomic particles) behave.

Yet Dembski’s post would have us believe that this is a reasonable test of science’s validity. Now Intelligent design makes no predictions and has generated no research — despite vociferous claims to the contrary from prominent ID supporters. Thus the incredible irony in using the word predictions has not escaped the attention of this writer. Instead of falsifiable predictions highlighting the utility and explanatory power of intelligent design, we get bold “predictions” about what science will or will not be able to do several hundred years from now. If science does not live up to the expectations outlined in Dembski’s post, then it is found to be wanting, and presumably intelligent design wins by default.

Follow the logic? I didn’t think so.

The rest of the post is just as amusing: Claims such as

• We should find other life within the universe — The universe is something like 150 billion light years wide. That means that the vast majority of the universe may lie well outside our ability to detect life. That said, life may well exist. Who knows if or when we’ll find it. What we don’t know about other planets doesn’t change what we do know about our own.
• We should observe speciation — here the writer is simply ignorant, as we have every reason to believe we have.
• If Darwin was right, then morality is purely subjective — Crap! I’d better go cheat on my wife and have sex with animals. If I want to, why wouldn’t I? Here’s the most vile claim in the book and one that I will fight my whole life against. One can be a “Darwinian” and a Christian. I’m hardly the only one.

These two posts represent the age old battle. Pitting science and religion against each other and creating false dichotomies which insult a person’s intelligence, designed to steer them away from science by playing to their fears and prejudices. To borrow Dembski’s word, it’s the gratuitousness of such criticism that angers me.

In my week long break, there were a bunch of things that I should have blogged about. Hardly having the time to cover any of them in depth, I’ll simply include a list with some links for your perusal.

• Perhaps the biggest story I missed in my week off was Kansas. The state board of education got an “anti-science” cleansing in the primary elections. Several republicans that were vehemently opposed to properly teaching science were replaced by moderate republicans, most notably Connie Morris. MSNBC covers the details and describes just how crazy life in Kansas is.
  

  Control of the school board has slipped into, out of and back into conservative Republicans’ hands since 1998, resulting in anti-evolution standards in 1999, evolution-friendly ones in 2001 and anti-evolution ones again last year.

  And for more on the political math in the election, see this post on Red State Rabble, a good source for Kansas politics as they relate to education.

• NASA has joined the search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker by using air planes and “lasers” to map vegetation and identify potential habitat. While I lean on the side that the bird is extinct, it may be very interesting to see what they can learn about the habitat through techniques like this. I think every grad student studying ecology should get their own laser equipped NASA aircraft.
• In a new study, Sooty Shearwaters have been found to migrate over 40,000 miles in a single year. There are a couple of great write-ups on this story from the BBC and The Australian, as well as this site, which also included a nice picture gallery. At these distances, the birds would easily claim the title of longest migration in the world from Artic Tern. However, I might slightly quibble with how we define migration. Shearwaters and other tube-nosed birds (like Albatross) are ideally suited to cruise the open oceans. It is their habitat. It doesn’t mean this isn’t impressive. Just that perhaps it’s still impressive when a bird like the Arctic Tern makes the trip between poles to find favorable habitat.
• I had no idea that high polar latitudes and temperatures lower than -176°F could cause psychedelic clouds. Here’s the story, some really nice pictures, oh and leave it to the British to ruin the moment and kill the beauty.
• The latest edition of Carnival of the Spineless (all about invertebrates) was held over at Words and Pictures. There were a number of very interesting posts, including (I would like to think) two (here and here) from yours truly.

Not long ago, George Gilder — one of the founders of the Discovery Institute — wrote a piece called Evolution and Me for the print edition of National Review. (It’s online at the Discovery Institute though).

Yesterday in a shockingly violent manner, John Derbyshire (also at the National Review) was caught mercilessly pummeling Gilder’s piece beyond recognition. It’s nice to see that the National Review is keeping it in house.

Derbyshire’s piece, though long, is a poignant response to Gilder’s article, and includes some good insights.

I’ll also say that I write the following with some reluctance. It’s a wearying business, arguing with Creationists. Basically, it is a game of Whack-a-Mole. They make an argument, you whack it down. They make a second, you whack it down. They make a third, you whack it down. So they make the first argument again. This is why most biologists just can’t be bothered with Creationism at all, even for the fun of it. It isn’t actually any fun. Creationists just chase you round in circles. It’s boring.

While Gilder argues that throwing off the search for natural (that is material) means of explaining the world around us is the only way science will break new ground, Derbyshire points out that on the contrary, biology is just hitting it’s golden age and evolution is squarely at the center of it all.

Speciation via evolution underpins all of modern biology, both pure and applied. Note that in the latter category fall such things as new cures for diseases and genetic defects, new crops, new understandings of the brain, with consequences for pedagogy and psychology, and so on. To say to biologists: “Look, I want you to drop all this nonsense about evolution and listen to me,” is like walking into a room full of pilots and aeronautical engineers and telling them that classical aerodynamics is all hogwash.

Biologists are of all scientists least in need of a new metaphysic. Neurophysiology aside, it is in the “hard” sciences that our epistemological underwear is showing. When physicists have to resort to explanations involving teeny strings vibrating in scrunched-up eleven-dimensional spaces a trillion trillion trillion trillionth of an inch across, or cosmologists try to tell us that entire universes are proliferating every nanosecond like bacteria in a petri dish, there is a case to be made for a metaphysical overhaul. Not that work in these fields has come to a baffled dead stop, as George seems to imply. Far from it; the problem in fundamental physics and cosmology is not so much that we have run out of theories, as that we have too many theories. I’ll grant that there are epistemological issues, though.

Biology, by contrast, really has no outstanding epistemological problems. With the tools of modern genomics at its disposal, it is in fact going through a phase of great energy and excitement, so that biologists are much too busy to be bothered with epistemological issues. To modify the simile I offered above: Creationists are walking into that room full of pilots and aeronautical engineers right at the peak of the Golden Age of flight, around 1930. “Hey, those machines of yours don’t really fly, you know…”

He then hits the nail squarely on the head by pointing out the utter and total emptiness of intelligent design.

That brings us to the second problem that scientists have with George’s system: After being around for many years, it has not produced any science. George’s own Discovery Institute was established in 1990; the offshoot Center for Science and Culture (at first called the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture) in 1992. That is an aggregate 30 years. Where is the science? In all those years, not a single paper of scientific standing has come out of (nor even, to the best of my knowledge, been submitted by) the DI or the CSC. I am certainly willing to be corrected here. If the DI or CSC have any papers of scientific standing — published or not — I shall post links to them to NRO for qualified readers to scrutinize.

Scientists discover things. That’s what they do. In fast-growing fields like genomics, they discover new things almost daily — look into any issue of Science or Nature. What has the Discovery Institute discovered this past 16 years? To stretch my simile further: Creationists are walking into that room full of pilots and aeronautical engineers right at the peak of the Golden Age of flight, never having flown or designed any planes themselves. Are they really surprised that they get a brusque reception? [emphasis in original]

With so much of the objections to evolutionary theory coming from the political right, I’m always happy to see conservatives like Derbyshire (or George Will or Charles Krauthammer for that matter) trying to correct the record. I’d be just fine with de-politicizing science in our culture.

I had planned on finishing up my review of Finding Darwin’s God by Ken Miller this evening (it’s been sitting in my drafts half finished for a week now), but as it turns out, Miller surfaced over the weekend for another reason.

Last month the folks at Uncommon Descent quoted Ken Miller, giving the impression that he was secretly a supporter of intelligent design. (Miller is a prominent proponent of theistic evolution.) The way it normally works at U.D. when Dembski puts something up is that he pastes emails which are from anonymous friends, colleagues, secret undercover agents, etc. And such was the case here, which he labeled as an “edited report” of Ken Miller’s talk at Texas Tech. Whoever this friend was, he quoted Miller thusly:

The most interesting part of the talk for me came at the end when the following question was posed: “Since biologists don’t really have a good grasp on the origin of life itself, and since life has clearly resulted some kind of self-organization to go from a bunch of chemicals to the point where we are today, couldn’t the origin of life be the point at which God’s involvement in creation was direct?” As this question was posed, at least a third of the students in the crowd nodded their heads yes. The professors in the crowd just looked confused; and scared. To my surprise however, Dr. Miller said, “absolutely!” That made the professors look even more confused.

Well, the truth is a pesky detail, and it’s surfaced. Ken Miller has written a response, and has the actual audio recording of the Q & A. The question, as it’s paraphrased above by Bill and friends was quoted fairly enough. The answer however is a complete fabrication.

Question: On the idea of the origin of life from the very beginning… That’s one of the problems ..[unintelligible].. It’s difficult to understand at this point how life got established. But my question would be is that if it was organized , you know, self-organized by proteins or whatever, then the idea that it’s even self-organizing and that life from them on seemed to be self-organizing, you know, through random mutation, however you want to look at it, does not that sound very similar to design, or some form of hand involved in the original that allowed it to unfold?

Answer: Now, since he spoke from the back, I think everyone heard him, so I won’t repeat that.

The answer is Yes, it does. And in a way, the very use of the word “design” to label the current anti-evolution movement is a brilliant piece of public relations. And the reason for that is that any person who sees meaning and purpose and order to the universe — and I certainly do — in a sense believes in a kind of “design,” that things sort of make sense. Einstein told us that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it seems to be comprehensible, and that’s an extraordinary statement to make. So that’s a kind of “design.”

But the interesting thing is that in the context of the public debate in the United States today, what you described is actually not what is called “intelligent design,” and here’s the way in which I would put it. I, and I think all other evolutionists, would point to the fact that the capacity for life is inherent in matter. Matter is…. Life is a chemical and physical phenomenon. I think that the universe does have a “design,” and that the design is so grand that it makes the evolution of life not only possible but almost inevitable.

The ironic thing is that the proponents of intelligent design actually don’t think that. Because they don’t think that the universe is well enough designed to make the evolution of life inevitable. They think constant intervention on the part of the creator is required to bring about the first life, the first living cell, the first chordate, the first insect, the first bird. In other words, the designer or the creator had to keep tinkering with it. So, in away, In think most biologists look at the universe and have a grander appreciation for the orderliness of the universe based on what many of us regard as the almost inevitability of the evolution of living things.

Now having been caught red handed, their response is to attack Miller and insist that their paraphrase was accurate enough. Somehow they can’t see why the difference between a four paragraphed nuanced answer where a Christian biologist explains his position on the “design” of the universe is any different from the unequivocal answer “Absolutely!”.

Naturally others have commented on this distasteful behavior. I point you to two good Christian responses.

What I’m interested in is why creationists (and I certainly include intelligent design proponents in this group, despite their shrieks to the contrary) show such outright venom to Christians who don’t have a problem enjoying science and worshipping God as part of an integrated worldview. You’ll notice in the first post at Uncommon Descent, Miller and Francis Collins (another scientist quoted) are approvingly spoken of for expressing their belief in God. Yet, when the ID folks are caught telling lies, the tone changes drastically.

I think I’ve figured out the reason. You see, the only credibility creationists have (and I know, the word credibility has got some people spitting up their drink right now) is that they point to those in science who’s worldviews don’t include God, and ask the question to their followers, “Do you want to believe in that?” To a very real degree, their only currency is convincing people that you can’t trust God and accept evolution.

Take this currency away and the fury begins. For the creationist, the scientist who believes in God is a far greater threat than the one who doesn’t. For in a very real, tangible way, his very existence makes the creationist a liar.

In a way it’s kind of scary. Is this really what awaits a Christian who chooses to pursue science? Have things really gotten this bad? That even lying about what someone said is acceptable, as long as they belong to the side of the evolutionary boogeyman? Sadly, I fear it is. And about the only thing I can do is keeping pointing it out and keep appreciating that not all Christians have it this wrong.

I keep Uncommon Descent, the weblog of all things intelligently designed (and unintelligently argued), handily available amoung my RSS feeds. Reading in small doses is quite illuminating and humerous. A recent title grabbed my attention: Research possibility motivated by ID. Could this be it? The breakthrough that propels intelligent design forward into actual science, tearing down the walls of Darwinism?

Somewhere (I can’t find the reference) I read recently in something by an anti-ID, pro-stochastic-macroevolution writer a crowing remark that a spider hatched in isolation immediately starts to build a perfect web and gets it perfectly right on the first attempt.

Alas, I’m afraid not. It can all be summed up as saying that spiders build pretty cool webs, and scientists don’t really know exactly how they do that.

The opening paragraph reminds me of this exchange in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I can just picture the ID theorist in a biology class objecting to evolution as so:

Um, that’s a bad theory. My best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with the girl who once looked at a spider web and discovered that it couldn’t have evolved. I guess it’s intelligently designed.

With most of the criticism of evolution and support for intelligent design coming from conservatives circle, the Wall Street Journal has an op-ed on the subject worth reading titled Misplaced Sympathies. The article’s a nice read, but here’s an excerpt.

It was a preoccupation with defeating materialism that inspired many of Darwin’s contemporary detractors. Richard Owen, a 19th-century English anatomist, privately conceded that “The Origin of Species” was the best explanation “ever published of the manner of formation of species”–but because he thought that natural selection denied the possibility of human uniqueness, he savaged the book in public. Ms. Himmelfarb made a related argument in a recent review of two new editions of Darwin’s works, decrying the “mechanistic and reductivist interpretation of all human life, including its emotional and intellectual dimensions, in the name of Darwinism.”

But there is a problem here. At a time when the life sciences are advancing at an astonishing pace, it is simply too late to be taking up Owen’s mantle. There is no longer any serious dispute about the evidence for natural selection; it seems that every gap in our current explanatory model has a Tiktaalik waiting to fill it, whether it comes from the Canadian tundra or a DNA microarray. The logic of Darwin’s theory has also undeniably shed light on some of the puzzles of human psychology. Of course this doesn’t mean that natural selection explains everything about the human condition, or that we shouldn’t be wary of attempts to use it as a cudgel against religion.

(via Dispatches)

While driving through Port Arthur, TX on my recent trip, we came across an oil refinery that was producing quite a show.

While some may consider this an accident, the whole event is actually intelligently designed. If you look closely, you can clearly see a fire breathing rabbit, responsible for sending the place up in smoke.

Here’s a closeup of the prior picture, to offer you a better view of the fire breathing rabbit responsible for this “accident.”

To the left of the telephone poll you can see his ear, to the right his eye. His nose is further right still and just behind the power lines. Below his nose you can see his open mouth, shooting out flames. But I’m sure I didn’t need to tell you all that. It’s clearly visible in the picture.

Seems that the flying spaghetti monster came under attack in Kansas on a recent tour of a middle school by state board members.

A science teacher dared to the hang a picture of His Noodliness and a Doonsebury cartoon (I can only assume it’s this one) and this offended a couple of state board members who voted science out of Kansas.

When Connie Morris, a vigorous supporter of rewriting science in Kansas, asked the principle to remove the sign, another board member, Sue Gamble, took the approach of smaller government.

“I advised the principal that Morris has no authority,” she said. “I told him to deal with his staff as he saw fit, not by what a state board member says.”

It seems that in Kansas some don’t just want to rewrite science, they want their science teachers to like it too.

And yes, today I just happen to be wearing my FSM shirt.

I imagine by now you heard of the new transitionary fossil reported from the artic circle, dubbed Tiktaalik roseae. (It’s pronounced tic-TAH-lick, and it’s just so fun to say!) MSNBC has the layman’s report, while Pharyngula and The Loom both have more in depth coverage on the find.

It’s a cool fossil. Essentially the bones in its shoulders, arms, and wrists correspond to the bone configurations seen in the Tetrapod lineage. I mention it because its the wonderful type of transitionary fossil we’re told doesn’t exist in the fossil record by those who know little biology but have big hearts for psuedoscience.

It’s the reaction from intelligent design supporters which is particularly fun to watch. I’ve tried to stop poking fun at Uncommon Descent. It feels kind of unfair, like picking on the retarded kid in the lunch line in elementary. But they seem determined to spread as much misinformation as possible, and to distort and slander as many scientists along the way as they possibly can.

Their recent post aims squarely at Tiktaalik.

After including the text of an entire news story (I’ve never understood why they don’t simply include a link — they work remarkably well guys), we get an admission which is quite funny.

ID does not preclude evolution per se; it challenges the notion that evolution happened by blind chance. […] Despite the false claim that this fossil is a blow to ID, it is an interesting find. It may, in fact, be a transitionary form bridging fish and land animals. Perhaps it could help elucidate our understanding of the the relationship between fish and land animals and possibly the evolution of the former to the latter.

What I find so humerous about this is that more and more, we’re seeing intelligent design accept the idea of evolution. Hard to make that fossil disappear, huh. But for some reason or another, they’re convinced that little pieces here and there couldn’t have evolved. So while God (oh I’m sorry) the designer was needed for a bacterial flagellum, Tiktaalik could clearly take care of itself.

Here’s a prediction that may help the guys at Uncommon Descent out. If the religious folks who line your coffers ever hear that you’re cool with land animals evolving from fish, they’ll demand your heads and abandon you in droves. Just a thought.

The post then quotes ID supporter Robert Crowther to add this dig.

There’s a problem with the Darwinist position that runs even deeper than this, however: If Darwinian evolution is an undisputed fact, as its chief defenders routinely claim, why is this fossil find being billed as such an crucial piece of evidence? [emphasis in original]

I’ll tell you why this is being billed as a big deal. Because if scientists have one universal trait, we’re a darned curious bunch. We get excited to find and learn new things. Saying that our excitement over a new fossil somehow shows that evolution doesn’t happen is like questioning our excitement over discovering new species of birds as if it implied that we doubted the existance of birds in the first place.

For good measure, DaveScot makes sure to slander everybody in the first two comments.

Looks like a big mudpuppy to me.

This is evolutionary biology at its finest though. Sort of like stamp collecting.

The practical benefit from this “great discovery” is exactly zero. Again like stamp collecting.

[…]

I take it back. A practical benefit occurred to me.

As long as these ebola boys are playing with fossil skeletons they aren’t communicating their dreams of exterminating the human race to innocent young minds.
[emphasis mine]

I guess every cloud DOES have a silver lining.

It takes real chutzpah to further the lies about Eric Pianka at his recent talk, and then turn around and claim that all scientists advocate for the genocide of the world’s population.

But I have to admit — they impress me. I don’t know how they do it.

Late to the party as usual, I came across a thread from a couple of weeks ago on The Loom where Randy “Flock of Dodos” Olson gave more of his thoughts on communicating evolution to the public. Olson also chimed in on the comments, which in the great tradition of the internet, turned heated and passionate as people argued for the best course of action.

I’ll throw in my two cents, even though that’s not really why I’m writing…

What Olson is getting at is the main reason people reject evolution — they think it conflicts with their faith, and they think the soul purpose of evolutionary biologists is to attack their faith. Olson comments on who he thinks is a great messenger of science to the general public.

Right now, I am putting all my chips on Dr. Steve Case, head of the Kansas Writing Committee. He’s got a great combination of elements — well humored, nice guy, very articulate, very humble, and best of all, very patient. There might be better spokespersons out there, but what I know so far is that all neutral folks (neither rabidly pro-evolution nor pro-intelligent design) cite him as their favorite character in my film. The bit that he delivers about “the God of the gaps” concept and how it leads to the predicament that the more we learn the smaller God gets, which we illustrated with a brick wall graphic, is I think the most profound summary to date of the flawed logic of intelligent design. At our test screening you could hear people in the audience say a hushed, “oh my goodness,” as they got his point.

That’s what a lot of this nasty debate is all about. How do you frame the issue. I continue to be a firm believer that it’s not better science education we necessarily need (though we certainly do), but rather it’s a better way to talk to people about the two. If you can’t address the religious aspects with the people who are most concerned about that, you can teach evolution effectively all day long and it won’t matter.

What Really Caught My Eye

Earlier in the same comment, Olson told some information (dare I say gossip?) that I’d not heard before.

I’ve been contacted now by a major Hollywood production company who is in casting for a movie titled, “Monkey Trial,” which is going to be a re-telling of “Inherit the Wind,” from the pro-I.D. perspective, to be directed by Mel Gibson’s producing partner who was involved with a little movie called, “Passion of the Christ,” so brace yourselves evolutionists.

Sounds lovely. If you thought the 30 minute flogging of Jesus was a little too violent, just imagine what they’ll do to Clarence Darrow.