Paul Braterman is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Glasgow University, and former Regents Professor at the University of North Texas. His research has involved chemistry related to conditions on the early Earth and to the origins of life, and collaborations with Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Sandia National Laboratories, and NASA’s Astrobiology Institute. His earlier book, From Stars to Stalagmites, discusses aspects of chemistry in their historical and everyday contexts, and he is now working on a book exploring the links between creationism, climate change denial, conspiracy theories, and right-wing politics. Email: psbraterman@yahoo.com; contactable at @paulbraterman@sciencemastodon.com
by Paul Braterman This book is essential reading or anyone who is trying to make sense of what is happening in America (and, alas, in much of the rest of the world) today. It traces the intellectual roots of Trumpism back to its fascist (or perhaps more accurately Nazi) roots. It anatomizes the extraordinary coalition…
by Paul Braterman As Heather Cox Richardson and by now many others have pointed out, a coup d’état is taking place in the United States. Even the New York Times and the Washington Post now seem aware that things are not as they should be. The coup is conducted by the Administration itself, within which Vance occupies…
by Paul Braterman Tim LaHaye’s career shows a direct line of descent within creationist thinking, from Reagan-era anti-Communism, through a more diffuse blanket opposition to humanist thinking, to American exceptionalism and the impulses that would later express themselves in 21st-century Christian Nationalism. LaHaye gives us a bridge between traditional morality, anti-Communism and Reaganism, and present-day…
by Paul Braterman This book is a delight. Drawing on a deep love of her subject matter, the author interweaves descriptions of a sequence of rock types with the story of her own personal and professional life. An extremely difficult feat to bring off, but Marcia Bjornerud (M) manages to do this without artificiality or…
by Paul Braterman You need to take Ken Ham seriously. This entrepreneurial Brisbane high school teacher has put together the world’s largest Young Earth creationist organization, Answers in Genesis (AiG). This has a worldwide presence, publishes its own magazine, Answers, and emails a constant stream of highly repetitive messages to its followers. It has built…
by Paul Braterman According to the anthropologist James Bielo, such places as the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter provide sacred infotainment, in which visitors imagine that their own lived experience is Bible-based. This requires an illusion of authenticity, with no concern for biblical accuracy. Thus, when Bielo sat in on the planning stages of the…
by Paul Braterman By now you will know that the new Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson (Louisiana 4th District) was among those who voted against accepting the results of the 2020 Presidential election. You may also know that he is opposed to the concept of same sex marriage, which in some…
by Paul Braterman The Heartland Institute tells us that there is not, and cannot be, a climate crisis, because for most of the past 12,000 years the climate was warmer than it is today. A recent (October 5) posting by James Taylor, president of the Institute, states as follows (full text; fair use claimed): CLIMATE…
by Paul Braterman When people tell you what they are, believe them. In the 2021 Facebook posting attached below, still available [1], he tells us exactly what he is, and since, in May this year, Martyn Iles became Chief Ministry Officer at Answers in Genesis, the $28 million dollar a year concern that runs Kentucky’s…
by Paul Braterman Within a single week, the raging Canadian wildfires have provoked opposite reactions from different wings of US evangelism, both claiming that their position is based on Genesis, with The Atlantic reporting on the churches’ deep political divisions. Statistical analysis confirms (is anyone surprised?) that July’s unusual heatwave across the northern hemisphere is…
by Paul Braterman One month ago today, Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis appointed Martyn Iles, formerly director of the Australian Question Lobby, to the position of Chief Ministry Officer, ministry of course being Answers in Genesis’ core activity. Here’s why that matters. Martyn Iles, a lawyer by training, was the managing director of the…
by Paul Braterman The Vikings started out as raiders, but then, in the way of these things, ended up as rulers, and their influence stretched from Greenland to what is now Russia. They first enter English history in 793, with the sacking of the Monastery of Lindisfarne. By the late 9th century, they were colonising…
by Paul Braterman There are two possible attitudes towards Scripture. One is to regard it as the direct and infallible word of God. This leads to certain problems. The other one, equally compatible with devotion, is to regard it as the recorded writings of men (it almost always is men), however inspired, writing at a…
by Paul Braterman UPDATE (March 13, 2023, 8 AM): Gary Lineker has been reinstated, and has reaffirmed his position: A final thought: however difficult the last few days have been, it simply doesn’t compare to having to flee your home from persecution or war to seek refuge in a land far away. It’s heartwarming to…
by Paul Braterman A friend just sent me a copy of materials that the Cornwall Alliance is sending to its supporters. Here is an extract [fair use claimed]: BE ARMED AGAINST THE DANGERS OF SCIENCE SO CALLED Question any part of the climate-change “consensus” (how much climate change is going on, how much humans contribute…
by Paul Braterman In 1954, at the height of the McCarthyite Red Scare, the anti-evolution preacher John R. Rice asked his audience to whom Marx had dedicated The Communist Manifesto. The answer, he shouted out, was Charles Darwin. It is doubtful whether Marx had even heard of Darwin when he and Engels wrote the Manifesto…
by Paul Braterman New Zealand is taking measures to reduce the amount of methane and nitrous oxide generated by the flatulence and urinations of its vast flocks of sheep and cattle. No joke; molecule for molecule, methane is about 80 times as effective a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide, while nitrous oxide (laughing gas, an…
by Paul Braterman Young Earth creationist organisations are united in rejecting the secular science of climate change. This science, they say, incorporates the study of positive feedback loops as demonstrated by data from Ice Age cores (true). But all of this is part of the secular science that regards the Earth as ancient (also true)…
by Paul Braterman Do we really need 230 pages of at times closely argued text, followed by 70 pages of footnotes, just to tell us about Kentucky’s intellectually bankrupt Creation Museum and the authoritarian organisation, Answers in Genesis, that brings it to us? The answer, I fear, is yes. For instance, this book will tell…
by Paul Braterman An Immense World; How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, Ed Yong, Random House/Bodley Head, June 2022 This book is an enormous achievement. A thrilling read, taking us into the Umwelt, or perceptual world, of numerous mammal, fish, reptile and insect species. A major work of scholarship, with over a…