Though this happened years ago (by Internet Time, aka last Wednesday), Bostonist would be remiss if we didn't mention yet another example of the Boston Globe quickly diminishing standards.
Not content to merely wilt and die, the Globe continues its mission to commit suicide in the grandest way possible: by publishing ridiculous tripe that no one with a lump of grey matter between their ears would believe. Case in point: this op-ed by a creationist, claiming that Thomas Jefferson would be a creationist and so it must be true, or something or other.
There are many reasons why this is completely idiotic, but the most obvious one is this: Thomas Jefferson died 30 years before Darwin published Origin of Species. Pretty much everyone back then was a creationist because they didn't know any better. Jefferson was a deist, meaning he believed in a fuzzy kind of god-like thing out there in the heavens, and so of course he figured that that's how we all came to be. Saying Jefferson would still believe that today—with the mountains of evidence we have to support the fact that evolution is true—is like saying he wouldn't use a computer today because he didn't in 1823.
By the way, we are talking about creationism, here. The Discovery Institute, the "think tank" that employs op-ed writer Stephen C. Meyer*, enjoys rebranding old-school religious creationism as "intelligent design," a pseudo-scientific term that means the same thing as creationism: "but maybe God did it?"
The rest of Meyer's essay is made entirely of long-debunked creationist rhetoric, which is taken apart quite handily in the comments over on Pharyngula. That's right: it's not enough that blogs do a better job of reporting science and informing the public, but in this case blog commenters have bested the Boston Globe. What's next? Lolcats correcting the Globe's basic factual errors?
*Stephen C. Meyer is not to be confused with Stephenie Meyer, author of the equally idiotic Twilight theory on the origin of sparkly vampire species.
Baffling photo from here.
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