An introduction to Skeptical podcasts


If you haven't yet joined the world of podcasts, now is a good time to do so. No matter what you're into, there's probably a podcast devoted to it.


If you're asking what the heck a podcast is, think of it as an Internet radio show. Sort of like NPR, but with a much wider range of available topics and styles. They're almost all free. You can find them at places like iTunes or Podcast Alley. You don't need an iPod or any special software to play them. As long as you can play mp3s (and who can't nowadays?), you're good to go.


Some of my favorite skeptical podcasts are as follows:


The Skeptic's Guide To The Universe - A panel of hosts gathers weekly to discuss Science/skeptical topics in the news. They often have interviews with top names in the field and the show is always full of good info. If you only add one of these podcasts to your routine, make it this one.


Skeptoid - Brian Dunning's one-man podcast show. Each week, he does a take on a different form of pseudoscience (including but not limited to quackery, conspiracy theories, supernatural and urban legends). His delivery will be a bit dry for some, but he keeps the episodes short and gets right to the point.


Point Of Inquiry - This consists solely of interviews of people making Science/skeptical news. The interviews are very in-depth and mostly concern religion's effects on society.


The Non-Prophets - A bi-weekly show featuring a panel of Atheists taking on religion. This show gets amusing and sometimes exasperating, even when it's just two of the hosts arguing with each other for 20 minutes over a very minute detail of one thing or another. Still, it's usually got a fun atmosphere and there's a live chat to go along with it if you catch them while they're broadcasting.


The Atheist Experience - One of the co-hosts from The Non-Prophets also lends his talents to this public access show from Austin, TX. While they sometimes go on for way too long talking about Batman movies (don't ask), the real meat of this show is the live callers. You get a real insight for how both sides think when the ideas are pitted against each other in real time.

Labels: podcasts, skepticism

Cleaning our own houses


Matt Dillahunty from The Atheist Experience is a consistently good representative of what a modern atheist should be. He knows the Bible inside and out, he knows his logic inside and out and he has no problem whatsoever with taking other atheists to task when they're wrong.


Recently on the blog for The Atheist Experience, he's done just that. A fellow atheist emailed him about an exchange with Ray Comfort (of Banana Nightmare fame) over a bumper sticker available on Comfort's site. The emailer turns out to be Patrick Greene. Greene has a reputation for being the squeaky wheel looking for some grease. He is threatening Comfort with a lawsuit if he doesn't remove this "offensive" anti-atheist bumper sticker from his site.


So on the blog and the latest show, Matt took Patrick out to the wood shed. You can't go around trying to silence people who have a different opinion. Patrick is playing into the hands of people like Comfort when he gets upset and aggressive about a stupid bumper sticker. Patrick tries feebly to fight back, but doesn't seem to get it.


I've said it before and I'll say it again. I don't give a free pass to anyone who's an atheist just because they agree with me on one topic. People come to the same conclusion for wildly different reasons. It's not always a measure of intelligence or good judgment or much of anything. If we don't keep our own shit straight, we can't criticize others for failing to do so.

Labels: atheism

Eucharist fails again

PZ Meyers has fired the last round in Crackergate. He has now desecrated one of the holy crackers. Behold his latest blog entry on the subject.

Where's your Messiah now? Yeah!

Labels: eucharist, pz meyers

Behold the power of Wicca!

A woman accidentally stabbed herself in the foot with a 3-foot-long sword while performing a Wiccan good luck ritual at a cemetery in central Indiana.

So much for that.

Labels: fail, wicca

Where did you come from?


When approached by prosthelytizing people from the planet Pluto, I always say "No thanks, I'm an Atheist" and try to shut down the conversation there. (Although it makes good blogging fodder, I'd rather not deal with 'em.) The next thing they say is almost always, "Well, where did you come from?"


I know what they're getting at. I do, really. This is all about abiogenesis. But no, I play along because I'm hoping...well, I don't know what I'm hoping. Maybe I'm just too literal for my own good. I answer the question.


me: My parents had sex. Sperm meets egg, egg cooks in the womb for nine months, and here I am.
them: Yes, but where did THEY come from?
me: Their parents also had sex. Same deal.
them: Yes, but where did THEIR parents come from?


As I sigh outwardly, you see this stupid smile start to spread across their mouths, as if they're thinking "I'm making this fellow THINK about his beliefs, for the first time ever!" No, you regrettable penis issue! What you're doing is annoying me by not just asking the fucking question you're going to get at eventually if I name every single one of my ancestors back to protoplasm. You want to ask how life came into being in the first place. Don't give me this song and dance. It's below me and it does no favors for you either.


me: Let's break this down, OK? What you're really asking is where did life on Earth come from, right?
them: Exactly. Where did all this come from?
me: Well, there was the Big Bang and then the formation of galaxies, the formation of stars, planets, solar systems, abiogenesis, evolution...eventually you and I standing here talking about it all.


I have never ever heard any good response to that from these folks on the street (or doorstep). They shift gears and ask something different. That's it. They don't have an answer to that. They don't want to discuss that avenue further, so they come up with something else.


them: Well, what do you think about all the evil in the world?


Now, let's back up one fucking second. It's disingenuous of them to jump to a different topic, and from now on I'm not going to allow it. There's no point in shooting down their arguments if they're not going to either a) refute what I've said b) admit they can't refute what I've said or c) give me some explanation as to why we're switching topics. I can't stand there all day and bounce dumb ideas off of my chest without some sort of reward for doing so. When I put you in your place, you'd better fucking react and not just pretend I didn't answer you. This is a tactic of salespeople who don't really listen to what you say. They're just thinking about the next thing they're going to hit you with to persuade you. Religion pushers have this mastered.


The point is this - even if you asked me "Where did you come from?" and I fell to the ground holding my ears and screaming "Noooooooooo! I have been asked an unanswerable question! Dammmmmmnnnn youuuuuuu!" guess what? That still wouldn't make your ideas about the origin of life correct. That's like saying "You don't know what 2 + 2 is? Well, if you can't answer it, my answer of 27.5 must be correct!" That's not how shit works.


So...once again it's time for the most electrifying phrase in Talk City today - Shut Up and Die.

Labels: religion

A post just for the halibut


Where did you get your ability to talk? Why, from your great great great great great great great great (etc, etc) grandfather, that's where. Oh, and he was a fish.

Labels: evolution, fish

So much for Biblical inerrancy


I'm partway through Bart D. Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus - The Story Behind Who Changed The Bible And Why. It's an interesting look at how what is now known as The Bible (especially The New Testament, which he spends a great deal of time on) evolved over the centuries. We don't have any of the original writings. None. Zip. Zilch. Zero. The earliest fragments we have are hundreds of years after the time of Christ.


In all, we've located some 15,000+ manuscripts from ancient times. You know what? No two are exactly alike. The problem is they didn't have printing presses or photocopiers. They relied on humans to do the copying by hand.


And what humans they were! Illiteracy was the norm. Only a very few people at the time were literate. The most literate person in a small community was normally the one assigned to make copies. But the thing is, even the "literate" ones were illiterate by today's standards. If you could not tell syllables apart, if you could not write your own words, if you could not recognize words on paper, but you could write your own name? You were considered literate.


Thus, the "literate" few took to painstakingly copying the texts one letter at a time. We take for granted our ability to distinguish words from each other when we read. Many of the copyists did not have this ability. To make matters worse, there was no punctuation used. Not even spaces between words. It all ran together in one line.


Even if you were literate enough to read the words, the lack of punctuation can really change a meaning. Look at the line below:


godisnowhere


Does that say "god is now here" or does it say "god is nowhere?" Two very very different meanings, but written the same way.


So each copy has a few errors. Then that copy is copied, errors intact and new errors made. Then that one copied, then that one, then that one. For 200 years until we start to see some of what we have. By that time the various mutations of the manuscripts are very different from each other.


A book published in 1707 demonstrates 30,000 errors in translation. If that sounds troubling, keep in mind that we've discovered a whole lot more manuscripts since 1707 and now the errors are over 200,000. And counting.


Putting aside errors, there were many intentional changes made. Scribes would change phrases to things they thought were more appropriate. Some would change the meaning of the text in order to fit more with their own views.


Today, just look at email forwards. Think of all the crap that comes to your inbox that you can look up on Snopes and find it's already been discounted. But there was no Snopes in the old days. People could write anything, anything at all, and there was nothing to verify it against. Even if there was stuff to verify it against, you couldn't read anyway. You gotta take it...well...on faith. Think if you had to accept all the forwards from your grandmother on faith. You'd believe a lot of stuff that wasn't true, wouldn't you?


But it's just minor stuff, right? Nothing major, right? I wouldn't be so sure. For example, the famous "let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone" bit? Wasn't in the original. Nope. Was added later, hundreds of years of Jesus kicked the bucket. No reason to think it ever happened.


Even more amazing is the resurrection. That's a cornerstone of the faith. And - you guessed it - didn't quite play out the same way in the original. The last twelve verses of Mark were added on later in the Bible's life.


In Mark's account, Jesus is crucified and then buried by Joseph of Arimathea. A few days later, Mary Magdalene and two other women go to his tomb to properly annoint the body. When they arrive, they find that the stone has been rolled away. They enter the tomb and find a young man in a white robe who tells them Jesus has been raised and they should go tell the disciples this. But the women flee the tomb because they were afraid of this guy.


That's it. That's how it ends. Christ is crucified, they go to his tomb and some scary guy is there instead. He tells them Jesus isn't here, and they flee. Quite an ending, eh? Reminds me of modern movies' unsatisfying endings where you're supposed to draw your own conclusions.


In comparitively modern versions, twelve more verses are added on. In these verses, Jesus himself appears to Magdalene. He then appears to others and tells them they can drink poison and not be hurt if they believe in him. They can be bitten by snakes and not hurt if they believe in him. Blah blah blah. Then he ascends bodily up into Heaven and the disciples go forth into the world proclaiming his badassness.


But all that shit was added on. In the original, or at least in our most "far back" copies? Nope. No resurrection. Just Gandalf The White freaking out some bitches.


There's thousands of other errors too, but you get the idea. Ain't no use in debating what the Bible actually says, because we just don't know. Sounds like the work of Man rather than the work of God, dunnit?

Labels: bible, ehrman, misquoting jesus

More cracker fallout


If you've been keeping up with CrackerGate at all, you've probably read PZ Meyers' comments on it. PZ, an outspoken Atheist, is no stranger to death threats from the Christlike. His rant against the cracker-protectors generated more death threats. But this time PZ decided to go public with them, posting the full headers and all. Check out this gem:

Paul,

what I would like to know is how did you even
get a job at a collage.

when you are obviously a moron.
How would you feel if nice folks starting ranting against
Fags, and atheist like yourself.

well sir, you don't get to blaspheme and walk away from this.
You have two choices my fucked up friend, first you can quit your job for the good of the
children. Or you can get your brains beat in.

I give you till the first of the month, get that resignation in cunt

Labels: eucharist, pz meyers

A little Church Bulletin humor today:

These sentences (with all the BLOOPERS ) actually (read: supposedly) appeared in church bulletins or were announced in church services:

--------------------------

The Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals.

--------------------------

The sermon this morning: 'Jesus Walks on the Water.' The sermon
tonight: 'Searching for Jesus.'

--------------------------

Ladies, don't forget the rummage sale. It's a chance to get rid of
those things not worth keeping around the house. Bring your husbands.

--------------------------

Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community. Smile at someone who is hard to love. Say 'Hell' to someone who doesn't care much about you .

--------------------------

Don't let worry kill you off - let the Church help.

--------------------------

Miss Charlene Mason sang 'I will not pass this way again,' giving
obvious pleasure to the congregation.

--------------------------

For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a
nursery downstairs.

--------------------------

Next Thursday there will be tryouts for the choir. They need all the
help they can get.

--------------------------

Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the
church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.

--------------------------

A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall.
Music will follow.

--------------------------

At the evening service tonight the sermon topic will be 'What Is
Hell?' Come early and listen to our choir practice.

--------------------------

Eight new choir robes are currently needed due to the addition of
several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones.

--------------------------

Scouts are saving aluminium cans, bottles and other items to be
recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children.

--------------------------

Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased
person you want remembered.

--------------------------

The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment
and gracious hostility.

--------------------------

Potluck supper Sunday at 5:00 PM - prayer and medication to follow.

--------------------------

The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind. They
may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon.

--------------------------

This evening at 7 PM there will be a hymn singing in the park across
from the Church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.

--------------------------

Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning at 10 AM. All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the B. S. is done.

--------------------------

The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the Congregation
would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next
Sunday.

--------------------------

Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM. Please use the back door.

--------------------------

The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare's Hamlet in the
Church basement Friday at 7 PM. The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy.

--------------------------

Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church.
Please use large double door at the side entrance.

Labels: church bulletins, humor

The Missing Link


There persists an idea that we haven't yet found the "missing link" between humans and our ape-like ancestors. There's two major problems with this idea.


(1) The Fossil Record
(a) It's really hard for bones to fossilize. They normally disappear completely. We're lucky to have what we have. Wishing for this perfect midway point between modern man and modern* ape is wishing for something you're not going to get.
(b) Despite the difficulty in fossilization, we actually do have a respectable amount of fossils of our ancestors. Many intermediate species have been found. Wikipedia has more on this for a basic primer. The more interesting advancements in evolutionary understanding are coming from molecular evidence nowadays.


(2) Outdated Biology
The classic drawing of the evolution of humans is misleading. It's seen below.




The problem with this is the straight line. This gives people the impression it's a straight path from A to B. Started out as what looks like chimps, end up as modern humans. A --> B. End of story. That's not quite the case. Evolution isn't one linear path. It's more like a tree with many branches. They go off in different directions and sometimes cross back again. You can start with one species on a planet, come back in a million years and have thousands (if not millions) of different species. While each "end product"** did have a linear path from its earliest ancestor, there are many different end products. The early ancestors went in many directions.


Someone quipped that creationists will never be happy with the fossil record anyway, since each new find creates two more gaps in the record. Stop and think about that for a minute. We have #1 in hand. We have #50 in hand. Someone complains that we don't have anything representing the gap in between. So we happen to find #25. There, found your gap. They can just turn around and complain that now there's two gaps - we need # 15 and #42. Each discovery opens up two additional gaps. You can't find them all unless you find every fossil which has ever been in our lineage. And that's not gonna happen, due to the nature of fossilization.


Biology has also learned a lot in the past hundred years. It used to be thought that the line from species to species was very distinct. Species A stops here, Species B starts here, never the twain shall meet. It doesn't actually play out that way though. It's more shades of gray.


I wish I still had The Ancestor's Tale handy. My memory fails me on the name of the species, but one part of the book talks about a group of critters that lives in a large region with a river in the middle. They cover a wide area, but they stay in small areas in groups. I'll try to draw a crude map from memory. (Remember, this blog is by the retarded for the retarded!)


There, that looks hideous. It'll do. The blue in the middle is the river. The reds are critter clusters.


What I haven't told you yet is that the creatures on the far left and the creatures on the far right are actually different species. Very similar, but not quite the same. The groups keep mostly to themselves, and over many many generations they have started to evolve independently from one another. There are actually several different species, technically speaking, as you go from left to right. Very very similar, but not exactly the same species.


But they're so closely related that they can interbreed with their closest neighbors. They don't usually do it, but they can. The ones from the far left (group #1) can breed with the ones that are just to the right of them. We'll call that group #2. Group #2 can breed with group #3. Group #4 can breed with group #5. So on and so forth. But when you get to the far right (I'll call 'em group #10), they can't breed with group #1. The two species have become so different that they can no longer produce offspring. The black-and-white differences between Group #1 and Group #10 are filled in along the way with the shades of gray in Groups 2-9.


This is a pretty good example of how evolution works. Colonies separated by distance (or other factors) keeping to themselves, eventually creating offshoots just different enough that they become genetically incompatible. Thus, we cannot breed with modern apes today.


Just think of all of our cousin apes were still viable species today. Think if we couldn't mate with an ape, but we could mate with a (whatever #1), which could mate with a (whatever#2) and so on and so forth until you get to modern apes. Think of what this would do for sex laws! Bestiality might be OK if you could produce offspring. You think? I don't know. But I do know one thing. Apes Gone Wild would be a best-seller.




* which presents a whole other issue, because people expect "modern" apes to be our ancestors, which is not the case
** even the term "end product" is misleading. there is no goal or end. evolution is, after all, just a baby-making contest. it only stops when the baby-making stops, though it might seem to take breaks at times.

Labels: evolution, missing link

Cectic is a site with lots of science/skepticism-related images. It's updated often, with references to current hot topics in the skeptical community. It's worth a peek.

The link (or not) from vaccines to Autism is one of those current hot topics. Noted scientists Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carey (*cough*) are the figureheads of the anti-vaccine movement. The science doesn't support their hypothesis, but that's not stopping them. They "know" it intuitively, in their hearts, and I guess that's good enough for them. *sigh*

Enter Cectic.

Labels: autism, cectic, vaccines

Giving Christianity a rest - what about Islam?


Yes, it's true that we Atheists here in the U.S. spend an inordinate amount of time explaining our beefs with Christianity. We don't talk about Islam much. Why is that?


For one, Islam doesn't have much of a presence here. Christianity is what we've been indoctrinated into, struggled with, examined and thought about the most. Our wrestling with the god concept has been largely with the Christian god. Plus, you have to speak the language of your audience. Talking to Americans about the evils of Islam is...well, kinda unnecessary.


But let's not spare Islam. After all, it is another "invisible man in the sky" set of beliefs just as invalid as any other. It also has a holy book riddled with contradictions. It also has followers who swear it's peaceful and followers who swear it says to destroy any opposition. Literally.


Enter Kafir Girl. She used to live in Pakistan and she's now an infidel non-believer. Yay! She's started a blog in which she reads the Koran (Q'ran, Quran, Qur'an, whatever) and shows how goofy it is. Fun stuff.

Labels: islam, quran

This image says so much. I barely know where to begin.


The intention of the cartoon is obviously to ridicule Science for constantly making new discoveries that change its paradigms. Given the source of the cartoon, you'd be safe in guessing that the message is something like this: Those Scientists change their mind all the time. They don't know what to believe! Meanwhile, we have all the answers right here in our Bible.


Let's address this a little at a time. Firstly, Science does not discover paradigm-shifting new information very often. Certainly not about the origin of life, as this cartoon suggests.


But I can understand why someone would have that idea. When we watch the news, we often hear of new studies or experiments that seem to challenge conventional wisdom. This is both a good and bad thing. It's good because it shows that research is still being done. We're constantly in a search for the truth, and research that might shake up the core of What We Know does get published and publicized.


It's bad because the news is bad about follow-up reporting. We hear about an exciting new study, but we don't hear about it when nine months down the road the study has been picked apart and shown to be flawed. We don't hear about the failures in replicating the results, or how brutal peer review has been. We just hear the initial "Hey, look at this crazy thing that might be true!" and that's the last we hear of it. Until another study comes out saying something completely different but also new.


There's also what is known as The File Drawer Effect. Whenever research is completed that confirms other research, scientific journals tend to publish them less often. They want to publish solid research, but they also want to appeal to their readers. They want exciting, groundbreaking work. If you do a perfectly good study that shows water is wet, you're less likely to get published. The mainstream media will only latch onto the best of the best (in terms of entertainment value), so studies showing what we already know don't really make the airwaves.


And in 2008, let's face it - Science has come a long way. We now have a much better understanding of our world than we did 100 years ago. New discoveries that shake the foundation of Science are few and far between. Most of the crazy new studies you hear about in the mainstream media turn out to be false alarms once they're sufficiently investigated.


Even Einstein's theories which shook Science to its core didn't really overturn much. Newton's model of the universe still holds true as far as it goes. Einstein just filled in the gaps and dropped out the bottom, teaching us much more. Quantum mechanics hasn't really overturned anything either, just filling in more gaps and leaving us all a little confused. One day we'll bridge the Einstein/Quantum theories and open up our understanding even more, but it's unlikely we'll overturn what we know now.


So I can get how scientists seem wishy-washy or unsure of much of anything. I get that. But don't people realize that's a good thing? Science is about the search for the truth. It's about being open to new ideas (as long as they're good ones). As someone once said, Science is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that must never be questioned.


The changes in our body of knowledge show that the system is working. The peer review process is constantly incorporating new ideas and new experiments, mixing them in the sea of What We Know and in a constant state of re-evaluation. Changes to what we accept as Truth is part of our learning. Sometimes we stumble. Sometimes we're wrong. Sometimes we get shown a new way we never thought of. But we keep learning and recalculating our world so that we end up with better understanding. New ideas are put to the test. If they're bad, they're discarded. If they're good, they get absorbed. You should expect big discoveries from time to time. If not, what are we learning?


Of course if all that's too much for you, you could just turn to religion. Put your money in the collection plate and take your answers home with you. They may not be the right answers, but hey. Correct answers are hard work. And sometimes you have to take "I don't know" for an answer. The horror!

Labels: science

The Infidel Guy hosts an Internet radio show in which he talks about Science, Atheism, skepticism, that sort of thing. Maybe one day I'll do a post about why he's not one of my favorite hosts, but not today. Today I'm here to pat him on the back for a job well done.


He gets a fairly typical caller in the link below, but what happens is definitely not typical. The caller actually listens to what TIG is saying and he gets a miinnnnnd explosion~! Kudos to TIG for being patient with the guy and kudos to the caller for taking it all in.

Labels: the infidel guy

Evolution = baby-making contest


If you read my previous entry on what evolution is not, you might be wondering just what it is. After all, it's not like high school Science classes are always worth a damn. Let me distill it for you as simply as I can: Evolution is a baby-making contest. That's it. Whoever makes the most wins.


That's really evolution in a nutshell. Let's say you're male. If you impregnate one woman per day in your hometown for as long as you're fertile, eventually you'll start to see that everyone in town looks a little like you. They're carrying part of your DNA with them. Now, let's say you also happen to have an inheritable genetic quirk - six fingers on your right hand. All those kids you produce will have six fingers on their right hand. They'll go on to produce other children, and their children will produce other children, etc, etc. In a few generations, your hometown will have "six fingers on the right hand" as the norm.


That's all there is to it, really. It's not about survival of the "strongest." In practice, it tends to be about survival of the "fittest." But "fittest" doesn't mean most athletic or anything like that. It means who can carry on their genes the most. Being fit for your environment really helps, since you can produce more offspring the longer you live. Maybe having 11 fingers really turns women on and that's why you've been so successful in finding mates. Or maybe it has nothing to do with your mating habits. Maybe you're a rapist. Maybe you're incredibly wealthy. Maybe maybe maybe blah blah blah - the point is, something about you enabled you to boink lots of women. Lots more than your competitors. Thus, your genes get carried forward more often than theirs do. Good genes, bad ones, neutral ones - they all go into your offspring and get spread around. Several generations down the line, whatever made you special now makes everyone normal. This is especially true if 11 fingers really is an advantage somehow. Then your offspring will have the same advantages you had in finding a mate and the quirk will be spread all over the place until it becomes the norm everywhere.


The next time someone tells you they don't believe in evolution, see if they look like their dad. If they look more like the mailman, there's a clue.

Labels: evolution

The tale of the oil suicides (or, No Blood For Oil)

I recently had to get the condenser replaced for my central air conditioning system. For those of you not in the know, this is an expensive task. $3,600 to be precise. Ouch. My installer was friendly enough. He'd been an oil technician before moving to air conditioning. I sat right back while he told me a tale. I'll relate it to you as accurately as I can.

I used to work on oil furnaces, but it's dangerous. I don't like oil heat. The next house you buy, make sure it's gas. I've seen people die from oil heat.

There was this guy who left for work. He came back home that night and found that his wife and children were dead from an oil leak. He was devastated. After they buried them, he came back home with a bottle of Jack Daniels and a photo album of all their memories. Then he took a 9 mm to his mouth and BLAM! Blew his head off.

My dad and I went there to clean up. They had sealed the house up for four years. It was like a time capsule. The clothes were still out, the food still out on the tables, everything left exactly like it was. It was eerie. And we walked into the living room and all the splatter of blood on the wall was still there, where he killed himself. You could walk over to that section and just feel a cold chill. There was a ten degree difference between the rest of the house and that spot right there!

We can't explain everything. Humans haven't been around for all that long, but still. That was a definite drop in temperature! After that, we said no more! Stopped working on oil right then and there.

OK, the dude's position is obviously riddled with logical fallacies. It makes for a nice story, but come on. Families die from gas heat too. And wood heat. And kerosene. And shark attacks (but not usually in the living room, granted).

His bigger mistake is not really understanding how your brain fucks with you. Let's break it down:

(1) Expectation can color your experience. If you hear about this awful home you're walking into and what happened there, and you get to the area with a chair and blood all over it, that's bound to shake you up a little. Cold chills are a sign of psychological effects as often as physical effects. Hell, some songs give me cold chills and I don't think my mp3 player is haunted. Feeling a cold chill while looking at such a sight would be normal, not proof of paranormal activity.

(2) Let's say that the air really was colder there. So? Homes have areas which are naturally warmer or cooler than others. Having lived with no a/c in June the past few days, I'm acutely aware of this. Even my cats know this, which is why they pick certain spots when they're not happy with the temperature in the house. It goes even father - if the guy was like me, he would've picked a cool spot to put his chair in because he's a warm-blooded male and likes the home to be cooler than his wife would prefer. Guys tend to run a little warmer than girls, so it's only natural that he'd want to sit in a cool spot and get used to that being "his" spot. I'm just speculating here, but all of the assumptions I'm making fit in perfectly well with a non-paranormal view of the events described.

(3) Memory is a malleable thing. The more emotionally intense an experience, the less likely we are to remember the details correctly. We also tend to embellish stories after the fact, even if only on a subconscious level. You can't take these stories at face value. Not even from yourself, as counterintuitive as that seems. Memory isn't like a VCR or DVR. It's more like your grandmother trying to recall which of her cousins died from a stroke 15 years ago.

So we have the expectation of creepiness, actual creepiness, and years of retelling after the fact. This is what makes anecdotes unreliable. I don't doubt that the experience creeped him out. The circumstances were chilling quite on their own. I just don't see any need to bring paranormal activity into the equation. Never posit a supernatural explanation when a natural one will do. This case? The natural ones work just fine.

Labels: blood for oil, memory, suicide

The Banana - the atheist's other nightmare.


Behold with your own eyes!



Do I even have to debunk this one? Really? Well, I guess as long as there are people like Ray Comfort and his followers, someone has to. (NOTE: After I'd already planned this post, a much more detailed rebuttal appeared on Fark. I might as well link that one here)


The banana did not fucking come from nature that way, you asshat! The banana as we know it today is a result of many generations of selective breeding --- an intentionally guided evolution, if you will --- by people looking to sell and eat the things. We had to improve upon it to make it a better food for humans to consume. The amazing characteristics that make bananas so great for humans were selected by humans themselves. Is "DUH" a strong enough word? And look at all the fucking kinds of food in the world. From watermelon to eggplants to cacti to the meat on a porcupine, most food is either dangerous to obtain or awkward to consume. Surely with all the food in the world you could find a couple examples of convenient food. Is the coconut proof of Satan?


Then there's the more amusing angle. With fundies being so opposed to sodomy, you have to laugh at their descriptions of how the banana fits into the human mouth perfectly. You know what else is shaped like a banana? It ain't the potato, I can tell you that.

Labels: bananas, sodomy

Peanut Butter - the evolutionist's nightmare!

So here we have some fish and a barrel. Witness the video below. Go ahead, watch it. I'll wait.



Lock and load!

I'm sure someone somewhere else has run this down better than I can, but what the hell. I'll give it a shot too.

"Evolution teaches that energy...plus matter can occasionally create new life." - No, no, no. Once again, creationists miss the mark. Evolution says nothing about the creation of new life. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Evolution describes what happens after life already exists. Evolution is about the effects of breeding, not about spontaneous generation of life. Evolution doesn't describe "creation of new life" any more than the theory of gravity or "Everybody Loves Raymond" does.

What they're getting at is abiogenesis, which is a completely separate theory from evolution. But even that, they get wrong. There's nothing in mainstream theories of abiogenesis that says you should find life in a fucking jar of peanut butter. The conditions inside of jar of peanut fucking butter do not fucking resemble the conditions of early Earth in which life first fucking formed, you fucking worthless, ignorant cunts. That's like saying "We never find babies in jars of peanut butter, so babies must never be born." Real experiments concerning abiogenesis look very different indeed. Completely different set of circumstances, completely different set of chemicals, completely...ah, fuck it.

And I won't even go into the whole "Did you try looking with a microscope instead of the naked eye?" thing. Or how strains of e coli evolve to thrive in those conditions and sometimes infect our food supply, causing recalls of spinach and lettuce. Nope. Not worth it.

Abiogenesis recognizes the fact that the right combination of the right chemicals at the right time under the right conditions is a longshot. The odds are way against it. But it only had to happen once. In all of the history of the Earth, it only had to happen one time. To beat those odds just once seems like less of a herculean task, dunnit? After that, we're off to the races.

Labels: abiogenesis, evolution, peanut butter

In honor of Independence Day, I'd like to take a contrarian view. July 4th is the day we here in America celebrate our independence. Our independence from England, historically. But maybe things would be better if we were still under British rule.

TV - They have Doctor Who, Top Gear and Monty Python. We have Medium, The Dukes Of Hazzard and Full House. Advantage: England

Accents - They sound refined and intelligent. We sound brash and stupid. Advantage: England

Education - They have Oxford and Cambridge. Our teens have to take remedial courses after graduating high school just to catch up to high school level. Advantage: England

Religion - Britain ranks 6th in the world in belief in evolution. The U.S. ranks next-to-last, only beating Turkey. Advantage: England

Fitness - What Americans consider "average," the English consider portly. Advantage: England

Cars - Proximity to other European countries gives them easy access to all manner of stunning vehicles. We drive minivans or Japanese boxes. Advantage: England

Ruling Party - The Royal Family is an outdated product of inbreeding. Our president is George W. Bush. Advantage: Tie

Music - They gave the world The Beatles, The Sex Pistols and Black Sabbath. We came up with Britney Spears, Winger and Vanilla Ice. Advantage: England

Food - We have soul food, southern cuisine, extremely varied local fare and all imaginable mixes of ethnic food. They have kippers, mince pie and spotted dick. Advantage: US

There you go! We may not be the smartest or the healthiest. We may drive crappy cars and produce pointless entertainment that embarrasses us ten years later. But at least here in America we don't have to eat a Curly Wurly or suck on a Fisherman's Friend. Thank your lucky stars for our independence.

USA! USA! USA!

Labels: 4th of july, england, independence day

"Creation vs. Evolution" or "Biblical Literalism vs. Naturalism?"

Part of having a productive debate is agreeing on definitions. Framing the debate is key to getting anywhere. In this, the notion of a "Creation vs. Evolution" debate has done its debaters a disservice.

Evolution is only one piece of the naturalistic puzzle, but its opponents seem to misunderstand that more often than not. I can't tell you how many times I've heard creationists say "Something can't come from nothing" in a debate about evolution. The thing is, evolution doesn't suggest any such thing.

Evolution requires life to already be there before it can start working. Evolution says nothing at all about how the universe came to be, or about how life first appeared on Earth. It doesn't address the issue one way or the other. It can't. It's not designed to. It deals with what happens once life capable of reproduction is already in place. Anything outside of that is not evolution. The formation of the universe is not evolution. The appearance of life on Earth is not evolution. The planets being in rotation around the sun is not evolution. Got it?

Creationists have a hard time with this. They have an entire system which gives them all the answers they need. It's counterintuitive to say that one theory explains X, another explains Y, and the two have nothing at all to do with each other. X might turn out to be 100% wrong, but Y is still true. That gives people trouble.

What creationists are really arguing against is a naturalistic/materialistic explanation of the universe and our place in it. They can't keep straight what part is The Big Bang and what part is Abiogenesis. Personally, I find it a bit amusing that they don't tackle abiogenesis. For one, evolution is about as proven a science as you can get. You fight evolution, you're fighting a losing battle. Secondly, abiogenesis is not that well documented or even theorized. It's a much, much weaker theory than evolution. By contrast, it's easy pickings for creationists. Yet most of 'em haven't even heard the term before.

Abiogenesis describes the origins of life on Earth. How life arose from non-life. You have a regular old planet, then life suddenly forms. This is abiogenesis and not evolution.

Progress on abiogenesis is slow. There are several competing hypotheses and no clear winner yet. It's a rough field to get a straight answer in. The chemistry and conditions of very very very very early Earth aren't around anymore for us to study, and it's not the sort of thing that fossilizes well. You'd think creationists would hop all over that as the weak point in naturalism, but they're stuck in the anti-evolution rut. That's like boxing Mike Tyson in his prime when you could just fight Dakota Fanning in a cage match and call it a night.

This is not to say that if abiogenesis is flawed, creation is the only alternative. That's what's known as post hocto procto (pulling lobsters out of your ass like Jayne Mansfield).

Labels: abiogenesis, creation vs. evolution

Pascal's Wager is a suggestion posed by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal that a person should wager as though God exists. If you're wrong, you've lost nothing. If you're right, you go to Heaven.

I still hear people use this a lot, so I'm going to run down the main reasons it can be disregarded. First, you have the problem of God - which god do you wager on? The Christian God is not the only one around today, and certainly not the only one who has ever been around. There have been many, many gods throughout the ages. You're likely to choose the wrong god to bet on, and you've gained nothing. You may have even pissed off the real god by choosing one of his/her/its rivals.

Secondly this makes the assumption that even if you pick the right god, that god will reward you for allegiance. Perhaps the one true god doesn't like blind sheep following him/her/it. Or perhaps the one true god would rather you worshipped him/her/it because you thought it proper, not because you were hedging your bets.

So we see that being wrong might put you at odds with the one true god. Being right might even come off as pandering by the one true god and be a mark against your favor. But these are silly imaginary beings we're talking about here. One could make up anything and it would be just as valid.

The real thing you've lost here and now is your entitlement to the truth. Wouldn't you rather learn as much as you can about the way the world really is? Why settle for something scrawled by primitives when you can take in thousands of years of scientific advancement? Science isn't perfect, but it's either that or just make shit up. I'd rather believe as many correct things as possible, but if you just want an answer - any answer - I guess religion will do. But you're still losing something if you're wrong. You're losing an understanding of the world around you.

Also, there's this pesky little detail. People who believe in religion tend to vote, attend parent-teacher conferences, join homeowner's associations, etc. Their beliefs inform their input on society. Whether it's freaking out over Janet Jackson's exposed tit or stilting scientific progress in the name of pretend naturalism, personal beliefs have consequences for other people. Believing in psychics and automatic writing have lead to false accusations of child molesting. Kenyans hunt each other as witches. Some people even fly planes into buildings. Unwavering certainty in your beliefs can lead to fundamentalism, which can lead to all sorts of nasty things. Who knows how much progress we would've made if fundamentalists weren't there opposing every new development along the way? Even today things like stem cell research and the Large Hadron Collider are controversial. At the very least, we need to encourage critical thinking and introduce the element of doubt to fervent believers. Conversion is nearly impossible, but introducing a little doubt can go a long way in making the world better for the rest of us.

It's a good thing Pascal never went to Vegas. He would've had to hitchhike home.

Labels: pascal's wager

David Mills: Atheist Universe - The Thinking Person's Answer To Christian Fundamentalism

While I find myself in agreement with most of Mills' points, it's basically "Refuting Fundies 101." There's nothing wrong with that, and given how many times Pascal's fucking Wager comes up in debates it's probably necessary for some folks. It didn't have much new to offer me personally, and I doubt most fundies would be convinced. At least it would let them know we've heard their arguments so they're gonna have to come up with something more persuasive.

On the plus side, the language is simple and accessible. This isn't The Ancestor's Tale, so you won't get a constant biology lesson or have to re-read chapters in order to grasp the details. This is more for fence-sitters or for creationists wondering what the materialist response is to their main arguments. I did find his explanation of the fossil record (and of the creationist denial regarding it) simple and effective.

In listening to a radio interview with Mills recently, he took some flack from callers for singling out Christianity. Why didn't he attack Islam? They believe wacky things too, and they kill people over it. Fair enough, but you tend to write what you know. This book is about Christian fundamentalism. Islamic fundamentalism is a whole different can of worms.

A better refutation of Islamic fundamentalism is found in Dawkins' works, which have the advantage of providing the materialist explanation for our world. This trumps the spiritual paradigm as a whole, and doesn't rest on the specific claims of any particular religion. When you understand more about how humans and their universe came to be, you tend to stop needing a tidy alternate story to fill in those gaps. The backbones of religions being gone, their other edicts become merely cultural representations of the times in which they were written. Interesting, but nothing to base your life on.

Labels: atheism, atheist universe, david mills