Author: Nic McPhee

Misty’s back from the Galapagos

I just had a great conversation with my sister Misty, who returned last night from her two months in the Galapagos. She’d been posting updates on our family news page, including some nifty pics, and I’d even IM’ed with her once from there (ain’t that crazy?).

The timing was really cool and we got to talk about Greg Nelson’s speech last night, which was cool. (I definitely recommend Pharyngula’s nice report of events.)

Another Misty connection is that the weather’s nice and all our bikes are out of the basement and on the road again! Mine’s been out for nigh on a month, which was arguably premature (it sat in the snow and rain a fair bit), but we brought the other two out a week or two ago. It’s been wonderful riding around town again, and riding in to school with Sub-Evil Boy in the morning. Misty gets big kudos for helping Sub-Evil learn to ride a bike and helping me buy a nice bike when we were in Duluth. This then created the environment where WeatherGirl bought a bike, and we’re all rolling – hurrah!

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Paul Nelson: My new un-poster child

As Pharyngula reported earlier, UMM’s InterVarsity Christian Fellowship played host to Paul Nelson of the pro-intelligent design/creationist Discovery Institute (I’m not dignifying Nelson and the DI with links – you can Google for them if you care).

I have lots I could say (I have several pages of notes), and I’ll try to get to at least some of that later, but I figured I needed to say at least a little bit now to tide Brent over until I can provide a fuller report.

For now I’ll simply say that Paul Nelson is my new poster child for why degrees really don’t mean half of what academics try to make of them. He may have a PhD from the University of Chicago (which, on the surface, is about as good as credentials get), but he’s not very wise. He’s extremely clever, but not very wise. WeatherGirl‘s grandfather had to leave school at 14 to help his family, but was one of the wisest people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, and was certainly heads and shoulders beyond tonight’s speaker.

Some observations:

  • It was pretty scary to see how clever a speaker he was, because it certainly makes clear how powerful the forces of ignorance can be. We had best not underestimate these people.
  • On the other hand, I was amazed at how much Nelson was willing to concede. (He totally believes, for example, in micro-evolution, but will not accept that lots of micro-evolution adds up to macro-evolution.) There’s an almost desparate feel to ceding so much ground, and it seems a clear sign of how much the many successes of scientific research have carved into the many “unexplainable mysteries” that people like this so desparately need.
  • Our UMM students did a great job of representing the forces of good sense and scientific reason. The bulk of the Q&A was driven by excellent student questions, and while the faculty did get their oars in now and again, the students did a great job and arguably didn’t need us much :-). Well done!
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