The iTunes store has a new Creationist Claims Index app, which at 99 cents might just be the thing I should recommend to my students as I begin teaching Intro Bio (Bio 1B) next week. I just hope I don't have to keep turning to it myself too often. I also wonder if this might have helped last year when I had a creationist grad student in my very lab?! I do have and recommend the paperback version, but having it handy one a phone might have helped others in the lab who got into head-scratchingly odd conversations with that student.
Thanks PZ:
If you ever argue with creationists, you know that the Index to Creationist Claims is an incredibly useful site, as is the book version, The Counter Creationism Handbook. Life just got a little sweeter: it is now available as a smartphone app for the blackberry and iPhone (just get into the App Store and search for 'creationist'). Well, sweeter for us; creationists will find themselves a little more readily refuted now.
And thank you to the creators of this app!
Great news! I'm certain that this app will strike a cord with my rational thinking friends - but given confirmation bias, Spinoza's Conjecture, and a complete lack of regard of evidence I am skeptical that such a tool will make inroads in facilitating a major paradigm shift. My greatest hope is that it will affect those who are on the fence with subtly burning embers of rationalism.
I don't know about paradigm shifts. This is but a reference tool made even handier for those of us on the rational side having to deal with inane questions from the creationists. I know scientists aren't used to the level of stoopid some of these questions can get, and can stumble when faced with them. So a handy reference, backed up by peer-reviewed literature, can help - and if it nudges anyone on the fence in the right direction, so much the better!
Has this app been removed from the store? No mention of it if you search?
Hmm... it does appear to have disappeared from the store, although I have it on my iPhone! I wonder what happened.
Ahh... may be some copyright issues waiting to be resolved, it seems, based on this comment (#80) on Pharyngula.