Archive for February, 2008

While the Creationist Noise Machine continues annoying the public with its endless mantra of “there’s no evidence for evolution!” and “teach the controversy (that we’ve made up)!”, over in the real world, scientists continue to ignore such nonsense and concentrate on the actual research those people don’t do. There’s an interesting report today about new discoveries in convergent evolution, where it’s been found that similar mutations in species of Asian monkeys and South American monkeys have led to genes that appear to confer resistance to HIV. The implication is that HIV possibly isn’t a new outbreak, and that similar diseases have afflicted primates in the past. Neat. The article doesn’t say if this research can lead to new, genetic treaments for HIV in humans, but it quite possibly could. You’d have to ask Abbie Smith about that — that’s her line. Observe. This is exactly the kind of beneficial research that no creo has ever done. The kind of research that would be kicked in the balls if they got their wish of confusing students’ educations by introducing non-scientific ideas like ID into classrooms, shoring it all up with bold proclamations of conspiracy theories declaring scientists are evil thought police trying to control outside-the-box thinkers. Has the Discovery Institute produced any research that points to findings like the ones above, and do they have a way to explain these developments using ID? (And don’t tell me, “No, because teh eebul Darwinistas at the universities won’t let them!” because we all know how independently well funded the IDiots are.) Of course not, all the ID crowd ever does is glom onto the latest research real scientists have done, then bitch about how it’s all wrong and shows biases against the supernatural and whatnot. As always, the IDiots have nothing to bring to the table, except their...
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Please note: It was brought to my attention that this was a repeat of an argument that I already posted on this blog earlier. I have decided to leave it up because the argument is more fleshed out than it used to be. See the comments section for a link to the first time I posted it. One of the more interesting, but frustrating discussions I had online recently was on the first cause argument. The fellow with whom I had this discussion has a good scientific mind and frequently denounces creationism very eloquently. I don’t know eactly what his beliefs are, but I think I would characterize him as an agnostic theist. He appears to believe in a God, doesn’t claim that he can know for sure, but frequently insists that carefully qualified belief is a superior alternative to qualified non-belief. The reasoning, as I understand it, goes like this: We don’t know where the universe comes from. But we do know from experience that intelligent agents can create many wonderful and complex things. We can’t be certain that the universe was created by an intelligence. But we do know that it’s POSSIBLE in principle. Therefore, doesn’t it make sense, purely from a scientific, deductive point of view, to take seriously the hypothesis that intelligence was probably involved? So I have a counter-proposal, and it’s this. Emperor Yu the Great, who founded the Chinese Xia dynasty around 2070 BCE, was killed by a machine gun. Now you may say that this is implausible. You may even complain: “But that’s ridiculous. There weren’t any machine guns in 2070 BCE.” To which I say, no, that’s just your opinion. You weren’t there in ancient China, and the historical records from that far back are kind of spotty anyway. But I say it is worth seriously considering the hypothesis that there was a machine gun that killed Emperor Wu, even though we’re not aware of any that exist. Why? Well, it is...
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Check the latest post by PZ, concerning a desperate press release by the Expelled team, who are huffing and puffing and doing their best “well I never!” posturing over Robert Moore’s blistering review of the movie in the Orlando Sentinel. They claim — you’ll love this — that Moore created a “security breech Read more

Our pal Joe Zamecki has posted the very first episode of The Atheist Experience to YouTube, from almost eleven years ago. I’ve never seen it till now. Hosting the program, which was not shot live in studio but taped at the cafeteria where the ACA used to have its Sunday brunches, are (from left) Joe, Mary Sue Osborne, and Don Rhoades, one of ACA’s true gentlemen. A little while before my time, ’97. Yes, the technical quality is — ahem — crude. But it was a first effort from a fledgling atheist group trying something new and challenging. And the show it launched, that still runs to this day, has been an influence upon the media efforts of dozens of other little local godless organizations around the country. So here are its most humble origins, the first of several parts (the rest of which you can watch at YouTube itself). Thanks for unearthing and posting this, Joe! Read more

Their money is worth far more than ours, and now it seems their intellects are as well. Well, that last bit isn’t fair at all, of course. Great Britain has always had one of the richest intellectual and cultural legacies on earth. But to read that fully two-thirds of the population of the UK claim no religious affiliation is jaw-droppingly joyous to behold. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all embracing Dawkinsian atheism en masse. But it does mean that a greater percentage of them are thinking freely about these matters and refusing to commit to received belief systems and religions simply as an act of following the herd. It’s such a contrast to the headlong rush into the morass of anti-intellectual, anti-science religious irrationalism that the poor old US of A is suffering, that all one can do is wonder at how two free Western societies could take such disparate paths. I think, in my layman’s way, that part of the cause of religion’s demise over there can be placed on their having a state-sponsored church. Nothing can turn a modern enlightened population off to the intellectual and moral dead end of religious belief than living in a country that still has blasphemy laws and is only just now considering repealing them, several centuries too late. And the way in which Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams enjoys shooting off his mouth without first loading his brain on such subjects as Muslim sharia law can only serve to make the clergy and the beliefs they represent look not only unappealing but wholly reprehensible. All I can say is I’m proud and envious of the British public as they continue to disprove the canard that we’ll never really be rid of religion, because people are weak sheep who need its comforting lies. Pro-religion views can only support themselves by selling humanity short. Secularism celebrates humanity and freedom to the greatest possible heights. I often dream I’ll live to see...
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