Lee Strobel is a Christian apologist and author whose book, The Case for a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence that Points Toward God,  is on Dr. Eric Hedin’s reading list for his creationism-infested “science” course at Ball State University. Strobel claims that he was once an atheist, but that the evidence turned him religious.

Wikipedia characterizes the book thusly, which is perfectly in line with the other books on Hedin’s one-sided creationist reading list:

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Lee Strobel is the apologist that made it cool for Christians to call themselves ex-atheists.  None (!) of these so called ex-atheists demonstrate a sound knowledge of the atheist position; none of them realize that atheism and agnosticism aren’t mutually exclusive, and that non-religiosity (in practice, for lack of a better word) and atheism (in practice) aren’t the same.  While it is true that atheism incorporates non-religiosity, atheism is much more in practice.  Lee Strobel has no atheist publications.  That’s a glaring issue.  Moreover, he doesn’t demonstrate a knowledge of even the most common atheistic arguments (i.e. the Problem of Evil; the Omnipotence Paradox); he demonstrates no skepticism concerning Jesus historicity.  A former atheist (on par with Dawkins, Harris, Carrier, etc.) would know why atheists reject the historicity of the divine Christ or even the historical Jesus portraits put forth by a number of scholars.  Lee Strobel isn’t a former atheist; he’s simply someone who uses the label as means to seem more honest.  In any case, if Christians want to invoke ex-atheist as an argument for god, atheists have the right to invoke ex-Christian as an argument against god—and the statistics are undoubtedly in our favor.

Indeed, Michael Behe, a paradigmatic ID’er and the star witness for the defense, has repeatedly said that he accepts evolution. What he and his colleagues reject is not evolution as such. What they reject is unguided evolution. They reject the idea that life in all its various forms has come to be by way of the mechanisms favored by contemporary evolutionary theory - unguided, unorchestrated and undirected by God or any other intelligent being.

Alvin Plantinga (Read More)

Then they wonder why we call ID rebranded creationism.  Plantinga said it plainly and truthfully (which is quite surprising): it isn’t so much a rejection of evolution but a rejection of unguided, unorchestrated and undirected by God evolution.  He does add “other intelligent being,” but he showed his cards by mentioning his god first and foremost—and that is the attitude shared by ID proponents.  This is why science rejects it.  Science rests on naturalism and thus, seeks and finds natural explanations; ID, at its base, seeks a supernatural, religiously motivated explanation.  Science doesn’t work that way—and contrary to popular belief, it has never worked that way.  Scientists may have been motivated by religious sentiments, but when attempting to find the hand of god, what they found was the clumsier hand of unintelligent, impartial, natural processes.  Therefore, there is no fundamental misunderstanding of ID when stating that ID must explain so called bad design—in other words, the host behavior of ichneumon wasps, the laryngeal nerve of giraffes, the tusks of narwhals, the inadequate arm length of T-Rex, and so on and so forth for seemingly ad infinitum for anyone well-versed in biology.

jtotheizzoe:

Well, here’s a list of just scientists named Steve who support how beautiful and valid the theory of evolution is. And it’s bigger than any list the “other guys” have put together.

Check out Project Steve! Over 1,200 Steves as of today.

There’s even a t-shirt:

I live in Boulder, Colorado, which is a bastion of scientific research. There are four major space science centers here (CU-Boulder, SwRI, the Space Science Institute, and Ball Aerospace), two major atmospheric research centers (UCAR and NCAR), as well as NIST and many other well-known science research centers.

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This is the third post demonstrating an example of anti-science propaganda bolstered by attempts to push pro-Christian ideas into the state classroom.  Don’t ask us why we target Christianity; look at these examples for yourself.  The answer is clear.

The American public is slowly coming around to the idea that global warming is real, but there are a significant number of scientists at this point who believe we may be too late to do anything about it. As one of the biggest contributors of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, our failure to accept that global warming is happening threatens to become an epic tragedy that historians will sadly puzzle over centuries from now, assuming we don’t roast ourselves before that.

The US has always been an epicenter of science skepticism. There are several reasons for this. One is that Americans tend to be independent, self-reliant people. There is nothing wrong with a bit of independence, but when it causes one to make ignorant and harmful mistakes, it has gone too far. The world is complicated but we need to arm ourselves with knowledge in several different areas in order to achieve our goals: health and medicine, finance, education and politics to name a few. An effective thinker knows when to use the work of others and is able to gauge how much trust to put in it.

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The Orleans Parish School Board “OK’d policies that prohibit the teaching of creationism or so-called ‘intelligent design’ in its half-dozen direct-run schools, or the purchasing of textbooks that promulgate those perspectives,” according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune (December 18, 2012). As specified in the documents for the board’s December 18, 2012, meeting, the new policies provide (PDF, pp. 100 and 101), in part, that no “science textbook [shall] be approved which presents creationism or intelligent design as science or scientific theories” and that “[no] teacher of any discipline of science shall teach creationism or intelligent design in classes designated as science classes.”

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The logical handcuff^TM is applied when one exposes someone’s cognitive dissonance and puts someone in a logical bind; in other words, it is applied when one exposes the contradictory views held simultaneously by a given individual.  For example, it is true that most creationists deny evolution whilst accepting biblical archaeology.  However, this poses a glaring issue and their cognitive dissonance is rather obvious.  They accept carbon dating methods when concerning things like King Solomon’s mines but they reject carbon dating methods when concerning anything in support of evolution—especially findings in the field of paleontology.  It’s either accurate in both cases or inaccurate in both cases.  They can’t have it both ways.

 AronRa, The 12th falsehood of Creationism: “Creation science”

(via thisoneandonlylife)