The need to challenge

Posted on June 13, 2009 by Michael

More and more, I find myself presenting specific evidence for evolution to creationists. I have done it on For the Sake of Science, and I do it with personal acquaintances. I get the same results from both areas. Creationists have no responses. They are satisfied with believing without evidence, something otherwise known as “faith”. Honestly, these people actually are willing to believe in their inane anti-evolution versions of religion, yet when you tell them that Tiktaalik rosae was predicted to exist in rock layers dating to about 375 million years ago, what do they have to say? They question motivations (atheists just hate god and want to do anything that pleases themselves), quote scripture, and completely gloss over evidence. I’ve never heard a creationist rebuttal to any individual fossil (except maybe to the overhyped account of “Ida” – though not to the non-overhyped account). These people believe in massive coincidence because, well, doing otherwise is inconvenient.

But there are exceptions. It is with pleasure that I present one now.

Why are you not providing reliable sources of information on your website such as the Genome project? What you’re website is basically saying is that every field of science in every country on the planet is wrong. That’s quite an assessment on your part. Instead of attempting to prove evolution wrong, why not attempt to put your money where your mouth is. Here’s a recent challenge. Do this, and you’ll become quite wealthy: Challenging the Discovery Institute to Discover.

This is from a man who saw an anti-evolution billboard while driving. He visited the attached website. Naturally, he found egregious abuses of science. He exchanged a few emails with one of the people running the site, but couldn’t get any decent responses. He experienced one of the most common interactions with creationists. These people aren’t interested in the truth.

The rant made me feel better to get those things off my chest. It’s difficult to communicate with people that haven’t taken the time to simply read at least a portion of the information that’s available, when they sit there arguing against material that they haven’t taken the time to learn anything about, simply rejecting it prior to ever having spent any time even looking at it.

Importantly, it wasn’t simply the terrible responses from creationists that turned this man from a Christian to a non-believer. While he says his “eyes have been opened by the exposure of deception and misrepresentation the creationist movement exposes itself to time and time again”, he also shows that he actually gives a damn about truth.

I continued researching and reading and watching documentary films in an attempt to erode my lack of knowledge on the immensity of Evolution. I had known of the topic all of my life, but not to the depth that I was now pursuing. Up to that point, I hadn’t really paid attention to the debate that was going on around the country regarding this topic. I had no idea that people were so passionately against this. Not because I lived in a cave mind you, but just simply do to the fact that I focused my life on other areas of interest. I was also disappointed as to how we as Americans were perceived outside of the United States on the matter of Evolution. The shear immensity of the problem boggles the mind.

While researching, I was amazed to learn what we as a species have discovered through our research and efforts. I was also amazed to discover how the scientific field of Evolution affected other fields of science and even spawned new fields, and how all of these fields became interlaced and supported one another. It was incredible.

After a year and a half of self-imposed and self-paced learning, along with conversations with family and friends (a whole other story), the gnawing memory of my discussion with Julie finally got to me. At this point, I was too far gone with the knowledge of my discoveries to let it sit idly any further.

(“Julie” runs the aforementioned creationist website and is the person he originally emailed.)

I love this. The guy heard some information, looked into it, then made sure he actually had some background so he could decide accurately for himself. Naturally, evolution won out for him. Truth has a funny way of doing this.

But isn’t this always the story? I’ve read so many blog entries and forum posts where atheists/agnostics describe how they heard something absurd from a tick-in-the-skin creationist and decided to check things out for themselves. My story is similar. At a dinner with a friend, his mother (a creationist), and a few of his mother’s church friends (also creationists), I heard the church friends claim Earth was created 6,000 years ago. Well, to be fair, they actually questioned amongst each other if the number they heard was 6,000 or 7,000. I quickly looked into the issue. They were off by more than a smidge.

I suppose I have these inane folks to thank for spurring me toward the absolute beauty that is science. I just wish more people would actually look into the stupid claims of ignorant creationists who hate, disavow, avoid, dismember, and spurn science in favor of their ugly, ugly beliefs. Actual evidence is a far better tool for revealing truth, and that is beauty.

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism, Creationism | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Questions

Posted on June 12, 2009 by Michael

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Theologians

Posted on June 12, 2009 by Michael

I’ve written in the past about theologians. I want to start calling out the idea of what these people do as what it actually is: literary criticism with a narrow focus.

Whereas most literary critics will have focuses on relatively broad topics – periods in time, styles of writing, etc – theologians focus merely on single books. Granted, the books are often relatively large, but so is War and Peace.

Now, theologians do deserve slightly more credit than I’ve given them. They do have some background on the history of the cultures and societies in which their texts originated. But if that’s what one wants, then why not turn to textual critics? These are people who actually understand what authors (and scribes) were intending while also having a grasp on the history of the cultures and societies.

Theologians enjoy an elevated status in our society. But do they deserve it any more than literary critics of Shakespeare? The answer must be ‘no’.

I’ve taken far too many English courses in my time. I have constantly found myself encountering papers that are wide-open to interpretation. Hell, I made an argument that Utopia was about setting up a true hellhole, not anything glorious. It got an “A”. The argument itself was probably wrong, but Sir Thomas More isn’t around to say otherwise, is he? Theologians take the same liberties. They are free to interpret meaning and intention as they see fit. Is it any surprise that theology moves in conjuction with cultures and societal movements (even if it usually lags)?

In short, theology is certainly nothing more than literary criticism. What’s more, literary criticism shouldn’t enjoy an elevated status, especially when it is so narrowly focused. We can all interpret passages. Theologians are just the literate among us with more (narrow) dedication.

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Now the Republicans are really reaching

Posted on June 11, 2009 by Michael

A Guantanamo inmate has been transferred to U.S. soil for trial.

The first terrorism suspect to be brought from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States for trial appeared Tuesday in federal court in New York, where he pleaded not guilty to 286 murder and conspiracy charges in the bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

Okay, this all seems to be on the right track. The man is being given a trial because, despite probably being a terrorist, he is still a human being. He has rights that are not unique to Americans. But wait! That has nothing to do with why he’s here.

But conservative lawmakers opposed to closing Guantanamo lashed out at moving Ghailani into the U.S. justice system. “This is the first step in the Democrats’ plan to import terrorists into America,” House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement.

Wow. Boehner apparently thinks the Obama administration is setting up terrorist training camps. I know there’s spin in politics, but this is just absurd. Beside that, aren’t U.S. prisons already terrorist training camps? We send non-violent and minorly violent offenders to prison where they learn how to be better – and more violent – criminals. And isn’t it the Republican stupidity of “HE IZ SOFTORZ ON CRIME!!1!” that got us in this mess?

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New Creationists

Posted on June 10, 2009 by Michael

The New Creationists Mission Statement

It is the objective of us, the New Creationists, to undermine not simply evolutionary theory, but science as a whole. It is this form of inquiry which has caused the greatest damage to our version of events. It must be destroyed at all costs.

The primary method for attaining our goal is Reaching a Middle Ground. This means that we are to seek, purely in the eye of the layman public, a position which appears on the surface to be a reasonable compromise. To be sure, we want to tell the world we embrace evolution. We also want to tell the world we embrace a Creator.

We want to hide Our Creator in the nearly impossible to understand gaps of reality. Quantum mechanics will often be our realm, but much more can work. As stated, our goal is Reaching a Middle Ground with the layman public. We need not answer to scientists. Indeed, they are the enemy. What we are to do is wrench the very fruits of these enemies from their empirical hands. We are to show gaps in the understanding of the cell. We are to discuss unknowns in molecular biology. We are to contort the flaws of physics, cosmology, and astronomy to assist our goals. It is in these places that Our Creator resides. If it’s science, it is imperfect. We shall exploit, even invent, imperfections. All is justified in our goal. Science deserves nothing but lip service; It is the enemy.

Our first step is to put forth an army of Christian scientists. They will not be the supporters of fringe creationism. They shall not espouse views which deny any modern science. However, they shall put atop all modern science a sense of confusion and remote possibility. That remote possibility shall be where Our Creator resides.

Our goals at this point will rely upon American idiosyncrasies. Tired of divisive politics, Americans seek a Middle Ground. They crave a sense of wishy-washy – it sounds fair. We shall marginalize the New Atheists with paint brushes of extremism. While they fully embrace science and all its evils, we shall embrace it only superficially – we shall not fall into the evil of the enemy. We shall appeal to the American sense of fair play. We are the New Creationists.

Filed under: Creationism | Tagged: , | 8 Comments »

Macro- and microevolution

Posted on June 5, 2009 by Michael

In a Facebook discussion, one friend described macroevolution as such.

Macroevolution is microevolution given enough time.

In response from a creationist friend (yes, I maintain them), he got this.

HA.

Here is a fuller explanation of the terms from yours truly. Enjoy.

[That person’s] explanation is apt. First, it addresses the terms to the extent that they probably deserve. No scientist uses them in any meaningful way, except when addressing the invalid issues of creationists. And that’s the truth: the terms are largely of creationist origin. They arose as a means to appear more reasonable to the public. Similarly, there is a strategy going around creationist organizations known as “strengths and weaknesses”. It seeks to make creationists seem more reasonable. In truth, we’re just seeing an extension of normal creationist coyness from the organized among the crowd (i.e., the Discovery Institute & friends).

But insofar as the terms mean anything, one is just a description of the other on another scale. Here’s why.

Evolution is a continuous process. At no single point in history can anyone point and say, yes, here is where species X began. Natural selection works gradually and cumulatively. It is simply a matter of convenience that we can separate species. All their ancestors are gone to say otherwise. In other words, a mother dinosaur only gives birth to daughter dinosaurs. But gradually, those dinosaurs change into something slightly different. Over wide expanses of time, those slight changes add up to big changes. This should be a hugely simple concept. Feathers, webbed feet, webbed arms, lighter frames. This all eventually add up to the evolution of birds. (Some scientists consider birds modern day dinosaurs, a somewhat trivial issue.) But at no point did a dinosaur lay an egg which hatched into an eagle. It took a huge number of small changes to lead that bird. That is what microevolution does over thousands and millions of years to produce macroevolutionary changes which can only be identified in hindsight, eons later.

Filed under: Creationism, Evolution | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

New Hampshire plays catch up

Posted on June 3, 2009 by Michael

New Hampshire has caught up with most of New England by passing a bill to allow same-sex marriage.

New Hampshire became the sixth state to legalize gay marriage after the Senate and House passed key language on religious rights and Gov. John Lynch — who personally opposes gay marriage — signed the legislation Wednesday afternoon.

I’ve had discussions with people who claim Lynch is acting out of political pressure. I don’t see evidence for that. It’s certainly a possibility, but the man is hugely popular and won by landslides in his last two elections. At the very least, it seems just as likely that he was caving to political pressure when he initially said he was against same-sex marriage. In fact, why not more? He had more to gain then than he stands to lose now.

Lynch, a Democrat, had promised a veto if the law didn’t clearly spell out that churches and religious groups would not be forced to officiate at gay marriages or provide other services. Legislators made the changes.

…

The revised bill added a sentence specifying that all religious organizations, associations or societies have exclusive control over their religious doctrines, policies, teachings and beliefs on marriage.

I believe this is correct. Morally, it isn’t, of course. It’s bankrupt in that sense. However, in a legal sense – and this is a legal issue – religions are protected by the First Amendment in this regard. Time may very well conclude that they are not, but it would appear that they are afforded these protections right now. Of course, the KKK is afforded First Amendment protections.

It also clarified that church-related organizations that serve charitable or educational purposes are exempt from having to provide insurance and other benefits to same-sex spouses of employees.

This, however, is not constitutional. This moves from the realm of protecting religious beliefs to harming people. If a religious organization hires a married homosexual, it is not germane to their beliefs to deny insurance. We’re talking about secular legal and tax issues, not religion at this point. New Hampshire went to far here. They are allowing religion to trump individual rights.

On the up side, discrimination has been significantly lessened in New England over the past few months.

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All it takes to refute something…

Posted on June 3, 2009 by Michael

…is for some journalist to say you did. According to the headline on that article, James Perloff refuted evolution at some half-baked meeting.

Perloff tried to draw parallels throughout history, attempting to connect individuals such as Andrew Carnegie, Karl Marx, Josef Stalin and Adolph Hitler with the teachings and rationales of Charles Darwin. He also told of his own life’s inner conflict, saying he was briefly turned into an atheist at a young age due to Darwin’s theory.

Perloff went on to say, “Survival of the fittest does not explain arrival of the fittest,” and that, “[the theory of] evolution is just speculation on the past and should not been seen as scientific fact.”

There you go. EVILution has been defeated. Good job, Perloff. Honestly. It should be clear to everyone. If someone can make bogus, tinsel thin connections between ideas and people Real America loathes, then the idea must be false. Just pretend that logical fallacies don’t exist and the argument is air-tight.

The event was held in front of a small gathering and was kicked off with a prayer along with the Pledge of Allegiance led by Harold Shurtleff of West Roxbury, regional field director for the John Birch Society.

I remember as a very young kid playing Street Fighter. When the levels got too hard or my older brother beat me a bunch of times in a row, I’d start up a game just by myself. I would have a Player 2 set up, but no one was controlling it. I’d just wail all my 32 bits on that character. It made me feel good. Does anyone get the feeling that conservatives have the same frustration? I mean, the exact same frustration – one born out of immaturity and a lack of rationale. These people are kicking and screaming their prayers and flag-based prayers all over the place because it makes them feel good. Of course, I was a child when I did it. What excuse do these people have? There are more examples.

Take Sean Hannity. He’s a huge idiot. (I heard him say in the middle of a broadcast, and I paraphrase, “…that isn’t an arrogant statement. America saved the world from Totalitarianism. It did this multiple times. The world has us to thank. That isn’t an arrogant statement.”) He refuses to refer to Obama as “President Obama” in virtually every instance. He insists on calling him “The Annointed One”, or “The One” for short. You can feel his anger and immature frustration. People very rarely identify whining correctly (they tend to conflate it with active disagreement). This is not one of those cases. Sean Hannity and the new breed of ultra-radical conservatives are big, fat whiners.

Conservapedia is another great example of a bunch of crybabies. Their page on evolution (which is just a page on creationism) has a section titled “Creation Scientists Tend to Win the Creation-Evolution Debates“. I kid you not. This is their version of 32-bit wailing. They absolutely cannot win. Rather than to accept reality, they set up these conversations in their own heads where they win every time. Sean Hannity does it. John McCain did it. Dubya definitely did it. This is the path of conservatives in America. Yell and whine and if that doesn’t work, beat the crap out of Blanka.

Filed under: Creationism, News | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

The moral elite

Posted on June 3, 2009 by Michael

“Elite” is a term that generally gets bandied about when someone is stupid. Obama was elite and McCain and Palin were Real America. In other words, they were amazingly stupid and Obama was intelligent. This applies to many conservative-liberal dynamics. So in essence, this dynamic changes the definition of elite. Put bluntly, it makes faux connotations to a word which is a positive attribute or characteristic. Unfortuntely, I’m going to delve into this bastardization of the English language, too.

We have a moral elite in the world. They are the righteous religious, the men and women (but mostly men) who believe they are right because they have always been told by their dogma they are right. In truth, they are moral scum. In 2008 campaign rhetoric, they are the most elite of the elite.

We recently had the killing of the abortion doctor in Kansas. The irony should not be lost on anyone. A pro-life man killed someone. In reality, he was actually pro-some-life. He went about picking and choosing. Religion is the engine which allows this. It is the wrong model for morality. It allows – nay, often encourages – itself to be subverted for evil. If it isn’t actively advocating for evil acts (i.e., telling people to murder rape victims), then it’s propping itself up for people to be immoral. The abortion doctor was killed because a religious man believed he was defending life. Religion leads to this conclusion, unavoidably.

Locally, religion has been a motivator in my hometown. A few years back we had a lingerie shop with live models. Women stood in the window downtown and showed off some underwear. Small acts of vandalism against the owner eventually built up to the slashing of her tires. She soon moved to another part of the state out of fear bred by religion. Years later another business opened up with the same idea, though with a focus on latex. Given that reality has a huge liberal bias, people apparently recognized that window models harm no one. It turns out the religious motivations were wrong. Again.

Now we have this incident. A man opened up a topless coffee shop in the next town over. He had plans of opening a stripclub, but recently announced he planned on just having dancing waittresses (pending board approval), sans the alcohol and lap dances. Sure enough, we have an act of vandalism. I use that word very, very lightly. In truth, this was an act of arson. A person, ‘morally’ motivated, burned down a building because it housed harmless activity of which he or she did not approve. The culprit is still unknown, but is there any doubt religion has its filthy hand in this?

Oh, and just to make matters worse:

An ambulance crew from Belfast was driving by at around 1:00 a.m. and spotted the fire. They woke the building’s occupants, which included owner Donald Crabtree, four other adults and two four-month old babies. They all got out safely.

Religion makes people do inane, dangerous things for which there is no secular basis.

Filed under: News, Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

The Republicans are falling for it

Posted on June 1, 2009 by Michael

I keep hearing this crap about how Rush me some pills Limbaugh is now the voice of the Republican party. He apparently represents this group of old, racist, bigoted, zealous white men who hate all that is not evil. It makes sense. But really, what has changed between a year ago and now? The Republicans took a whacking in the election because they represent bad ideas that conflict with reality, but what about Limbaugh? How has he changed? He was tops in the radio business before this. Why is now different? The answer is actually quite simple. The Republicans are idiots.

Republicans hate the media (bar Fox Noise). Everything that happens is media bias and they’re all “in the tank” for Obama. Okay, swell. But who is it that has elevated Limbaugh so much? He’s in the same position he was in 365 days ago. He hasn’t done anything different from being a hateful, stupid, immorally obese, moron of a man. What has happened is that the media has donned him an unofficial leader in the Republican party. But at the same time, it is impossible to read anything about the Republican party that doesn’t talk about how they’re purging their ranks. Anyone who is moderate is not part of Real America. Anyone who takes the middle road is really a Democrat.

So what has happened is that the media has crowned Limbaugh the king of the Republicans. At the same time, it is impossible to not point out that the Republicans are going from being absurdly wrong to being utterly and radically wrong – with no odd bright spots to lessen the darkness of the party. Limbaugh represents this perfectly. Mention his name and you set off a chain reaction. This man could never be elected to the national stage. Moderates and liberals alike would join ranks against his ultra-conservative, bigoted, dumb ideas. And the Republicans are letting the media tell them that this is their leader. Hell, Michael Steele made some minor comment dismissing something Limbaugh said not long ago. Within a day or two he was apologizing. It’s hilarious. The Republicans are going “pure” under the flabby wings of Limbaugh. Good. Give that a shot for the next few election cycles. See how it works out.

Filed under: Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , , | 5 Comments »

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