Jerry Coyne has a blog. It’s worth checking out.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Jerry Coyne | Leave a comment »
Oh, Conservapedia
Posted on February 3, 2009 by Michael
It’s well known that Conservapedia is filled with a large contigent of dumb people. I mean, not just ignorant people. They’re outright stupid. Take this from their “news” section on the front page.
For those who cannot see the text, it reads:
An overweight and over-the-hill Bruce Springsteen is performing songs from the 1980s at the Super Bowl halftime. Wonder why? He supports the liberal agenda hook, line and sinker. But he hasn’t yet performed his “Born in the U.S.A.” … perhaps Obama types wouldn’t like that one???
Apparently, Conservapedians believe “Born in the U.S.A.” is a patriotic song, or at least in someway anti-liberal. On an aside, they also believe multiple question marks make good writing. They are wrong on both counts.
The Springsteen classic is about a young man who goes from his small town to killing people in a foreign country. Upon return, the man is given the crap we all know (except the morons at Conservapedia) was common for returning war vets.
Got in a little hometown jam
So they put a rifle in my hand
Sent me off to a foreign land
To go and kill the yellow manBorn in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man says “Son if it was up to me”
Went down to see my V.A. man
He said “Son, don’t you understand”
The song goes on to deride the war for being so meaningless and costly. The cost in the case being human life.
I had a brother at Khe Sahn fighting off the Viet Cong
They’re still there, he’s all goneHe had a woman he loved in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms now
Far from being a song about how crazy, awesome, cool the U.S.A. is, it’s about working-class people who lost their lives during a pointless war. Conservapedia is composed of idiots who are repeatedly shown as idiots. Nothing more.
Filed under: Misc, Politics and Social | Tagged: Born in the U.S.A., Bruce Springsteen, conservapedia, Khe Sahn, lenski, Viet Cong, Vietnam | 1 Comment »
Examining Deuteronomy 22
Posted on January 31, 2009 by Michael
I was glancing through Deueronomy 22 and noticed a few odd items. The first is that the dual use of an oxen and a donkey while plowing is prohibited by God (22:10). It displeases him. The second is God’s Sarah Palin-like attitude toward rape victims.
23 If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her;
24 Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour’s wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you.
I guess God’s rape kit is a handful of stones and a pocket full of hatred.
Here’s the clear interpretation of this: a man who rapes a woman in a city should be stoned to death. Okay, immoral enough reaction in itself, but there’s more. The woman, because she did not scream for help, should be stoned to death as well.
…
and people claim God is a source of morality? I wonder if the guy even has a clear idea of what constitutes a moral system. Life is not being black & white (as most conservatives think it is, incidentally). Aside from being a rape victim, the woman could have been afraid, mute, gagged, or threatened. God seems to assume by not screaming that the woman liked it. Illogical fella, no?
But, this deity isn’t all evil. He has some empathy for country rape.
25 But if a man find a betrothed damsel in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her: then the man only that lay with her shall die.
26 But unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing; there is in the damsel no sin worthy of death: for as when a man riseth against his neighbour, and slayeth him, even so is this matter:
27 For he found her in the field, and the betrothed damsel cried, and there was none to save her.
Since the woman couldn’t scream out for help, she’s in the clear. What if there was a farmer? Shouldn’t the woman have screamed to him? Simply being in a field does not necessarily change the situation. The principle in 22:23-24 seemed to be that the woman had help available to her yet did not seek it. Given that not all fields are empty and devoid of humans, she should have screamed out, even if it was to no avail. It’s almost as if people who lived in highly rural areas where it would be uncommon – in their personal experience – to see a farmer wrote this. Hey, crazy idea! Maybe people did write this fundamental evil? I’d expect God to cover a few more angles. Like, all of them.
So let’s break down what’s important here. It’s perfectly fine for my point to grant that the coming of Jesus somehow changes the immorality we see here. It’s a common tactic of Christians: the Old Testament should be interpreted through the lenses of the New Testament. Okay, sure, whatever. But there still remains the problem that at some point in time, God was telling people to stone rape victims. Even if it is granted that the New Testament changes how we should interpret these words insofar as how we should act now (i.e., we do not stone rape victims because we recognize that as evil), there still remains the problem that God told people to murder women who were raped. He still did these things. God is still guilty of these crimes, even if he corrected his misbehavior down the line.
Filed under: Creationism, Misc | Tagged: City rape, Country rape, Deuteronomy 22, evil, God, immoral, Moral, Rape victims | 8 Comments »
More Christian Science
Posted on January 18, 2009 by Michael
I’ve been kicking around some thoughts. There’s a lot of pseudoscience out there. It’s bull. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence can tell it’s bull. So I’d like to put forth a challenge. This specifically goes out to Christian Science. Offer me some good evidence that believing really, really hard can heal a person. I’m not talking about spiritual healing. It’d be silly and worthless to seek evidence of something which is actively hidden from evidence. I’m talking about physical healing – something real.
To be fair, asking for evidence of magic is, of course, silly. However, as long as there are people out there making claims – ones which are dangerous – I feel it necessary to ask for some evidence. Given the nature of the people who so readily accept pseudoscience, it may be helpful to define what evidence is not:
- It is not correlation – correlation is helpful, but just because Jimmy got better when you started praying does not mean your prayers did anything
- It is not declaration – claim does not make a ‘miracle’ so
- It is not anecdote – saying Jimmy was healed due to prayer does not offer much evidence; this crosses into my first point
- It is not mystery – because something is yet unexplained by science does not mean God Did It.
These few points I’ve listed are pretty standard. I’d assume something as ‘true’ as Christian Science could surely offer up evidence which held to such standards? Nay, it should be lightyears ahead it’s so real!
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Christian Science, Evidence | 5 Comments »
Poetic wax
Posted on December 31, 2008 by Michael
The clearest of nights is the most beautiful of nights. Hidden from my region of space, the moon fails – quite wonderfully – to hinder my view of this galaxy that is just one of billions. The stars, twinkled by Earth’s atmosphere, are nothing short of perfect. The gods of the cosmos, at least until daybreak, their power is felt so easily by anyone who joys to skyward.
Filed under: Astronomy/Cosmology/Physics, Misc | 1 Comment »
Emotional Appeals
Posted on December 29, 2008 by Michael
Ben Stein tells us that evolution leads to genocide. It leads to atheism (which is implicitly bad, apparently). Chaos, murder, cancer, and sad puppies will infest the world if evolution is embraced. It only makes sense then that we should necessarily reject evolution if we want to live in a world of peace and goodness.
Of course, that all sounds utterly silly. But it’s the argument being put forth by Christians all the time (if not in form, then principle): because X leads to something bad, it should be rejected. It is an appeal to emotion. No one wants something bad to be true, so claiming a falsehood on that thing can bring some sort of sense of mind. These people are not ones with which to be reasoned easily.
Emotional appeals are useless in determining what is true. It is the simple truth of something which is important to me. I do not accept or reject evolution based upon an philosophical underpinings or relations. To do so is to make my acceptance or rejection irrelevant and meaningless. If evolution somehow automatically leads to the philosophy of Hitler, that’s unfortunate. That, however, has zero bearing on the truth of evolutionary theory. Either life evolved through small, gradual steps over billions of years of common descent or it didn’t. Nothing Hitler ever thought can change that.
It should not be acceptable for a person to make an emotional appeal on an issue of truth. Save that for the subjectivity of a relationship. We should believe not based upon what we want to believe, but based instead upon evidence. It is evidence which holds so much importance to our lives and to our ability to discern what is true and what is not. Our emotions have no influence over truth.
Filed under: Evolution, Misc | Tagged: Ben Stein, Emotional Appeal, Evolution, Hitler, Truth | 7 Comments »
John Lott is a big fat liar
Posted on December 26, 2008 by Michael
Well, of course John Lott is a big, fat liar. He writes for FOX News. That’s the ultimate cesspool of journalism. It is where people actually go when they want to lie. It’s allowed there.
Lott recently gave a response to all the bloggers who called him out for being a big, fat liar.
My piece at Fox News yesterday on the inconsistent rules for counting ballots in Minnesota’s Senate race has produced a lot of reaction. Nate Silver over at fivethirtyeight claims in the title of his post that my piece “blames liberal conspiracy.” My piece didn’t mention the words “liberal” or “conspiracy” (nor did it say that Democrats or Franken were involved in some secret conspiracy or use any similar synonyms). Nor did I say that people had made mistakes intentionally (unlike Nate, I don’t claim to know what is going on in people’s minds).
My point was simple: “The primary problem isn’t the rules. The real problem is the lack of consistency.”
There are actually two issues here. The first, of course, is that John Lott is a big, fat liar. The second is that he must be dumb. He’s a big fat liar because his point was not that the rules are inconsistent. His point was “[w]hen the recount is in Franken’s favor [a particular method] is used. When the original machine tally works best [for Franken] that is used.” This is the true point of Lott’s conspiracy piece. It isn’t that he actually cares about the inconsistency of the recount method. It’s that he cares that the inconsistency is favoring Franken rather than Coleman. That’s the very reason FOX News published his piece. And he must be dumb because it isn’t really necessary that he spell out the words “liberal” or “conspiracy”. It’s difficult to outfox your critics if you’re blatant about your bias. It would be like someone writing a book about the government killing JFK without using the word “conspiracy” and then subsequently whining “B-b-but it isn’t a conspiracy! I didn’t use that word! See? See!?”
Beside that, Silver was specifically referring to FOX News, not Lott’s big, fat liar piece, because this was displayed on the front page of its website:
Instead, he focuses on the fact that the Star Tribune data base made a mistake in classifying one of the ballots and that I relied on that for one of my examples. The fact that my website had already noted this and corrected that one ballot example before his post was put up is never mentioned by Silver. He also incorrectly implied that I hadn’t double checked that ballot, but he didn’t make any telephone calls or check this point either. It is not surprising that he wouldn’t try to check these points out before making his assertions.
This is why FOX News published Lott’s piece. He’s a liar that is incredibly ironic, but has absolutely no idea of this fact. Okay, Natey, you’re upset because Silver “incorrectly implied” something? Let’s take a look at your piece.
Nor can Coleman even win when there is an oval filled in for Coleman and the Constitution Party candidate receives an “X.”
And how is this not implying a bias toward Franken? Coleman can’t even win the bias is so bad! Oh, but you actually mean Coleman can’t win because the rules are so inconsistent. If the rules were simply inconsistent one would expect to see an averaging out with the inconsistency because both Coleman and Franken would experience the inconsistency. Because the results are so close, the errors would be relatively close for both sides in all likelihood or they would favor one candidate sheerly by chance. You damn well know that. You’re actually whining about a big, liberal conspiracy because you’ve discarded the notion that the rules are actually inconsistent – that’s the point of your piece. You’re saying the rules are inconsistent in favor of Franken. That means you were never actually writing about how the rules were inconsistent. You were writing about a big, liberal conspiracy. Oh, but you never used those words so nevermind, right?
But why are you complaining that Silver implied you didn’t double-check the ballot? You didn’t until after publication. Deal with it, you big, fat liar.
People like John Lott and FOX News are excellent examples of our failed media.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Big fat liar, FOX News, John Lott, Nate Silver | 9 Comments »
Merry Christmas
Posted on December 25, 2008 by Michael
A merry Christmas to all on this secular, federal holiday.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Christmas, Secular | Leave a comment »
For the Sake of Science 