Surprise egg sac!

I’ve been despairing — I never get good egg production over the winter months. Today, though, one of the black widows surprised me with a big ol’ egg sac. I’ve been trying to make them think they’re vacationing in Florida in July, and I guess I fooled one, despite it being November in Minnesota.

You know what this means? I’ll have a swarm of baby spiders in December! And you know what that means? All my friends and family are getting black widow spiderlings for Christmas!*

*Not really. I don’t know that they’d properly appreciate a pet spider.

You don’t need to learn about Wes Huff

If you never heard of Wes Huff, relax — he just flamed out and crashed. Huff was a rising star in Christian apologetics, mainly thanks to his appearance on the Joe Rogan show (you could have stopped there, being Rogan famous is synonymous with being brain dead), and I was seeing him pop up everywhere, because as a good atheist I do try to track the latest excuses from theists. I was never impressed with Huff, because he’s just another Bible thumper who pretends the Bible is evidence for the Bible.

But man, he was just brutally exposed as a shameless plagiarist by Dan McClellan. Here’s his thorough exposé, included for completeness, but you don’t actually need to watch the whole thing — it’s seriously thorough overkill.

Since that came out, Huff has admitted his failure.

Let me be totally upfront in this scenario. If you want to cancel Wes Huff from 2016 or maybe even 2017 and 2018, I do too. I was not a good writer. I was not a good academic. I was just trying to find my legs as to where I fit in in the whole world of scholarship.

Let me be totally upfront and take responsibility for that, for what I think is bad. This paper, in fact, all of the papers I put on Academia.edu almost a decade ago are bad. Their use of citation and attribution is problematic. They’re not well written. They’re all pretty bad.

More accusations followed. He has now deleted his entire website. It’s the most dramatic destruction of a person’s reputation I think I’ve ever seen.

He should have been ashamed at the very beginning of his career as an apologist, because all apologetics is bad academic writing and is not honest scholarship. It’s just now caught up with him. May all apologists suffer his fate.

How not to become a scientist

Georgia Purdom, the creationist “scientist” working for Answers in Genesis, has written an article titled “How Can I Become a Creation Scientist?” It’s bad. I’m tempted to reply to it with one simple recommendation, “Don’t.” But this article is full of bad advice I have to try to counter.

Purdom breaks the process down into the stages of education, so I’ll follow that too.

High School

Her advice is stuffed full of self-serving religious nonsense. She suggests, first of all, read your Bible and Christian apologetics, and then adds reading AiG’s list of creation scientists, and visiting the Creation “Museum” and the Ark Park. You will not get any foundation in science from any of that; it’s not necessarily bad for you to follow a religion, unless you get fooled by the anti-science sentiment in those sources, but it’s entirely irrelevant to pursuing a science career. You can be religious and be a good scientist, but being steeped in religion isn’t going to help.

She gives some good, but generic, advice: do well in school. OK, that’s fair. But then she also has some bad ideas, beyond just stuffing your brain with creationist apologetics. For example, she expresses an attitude that I really dislike: I struggle with math, so chemistry or physics would not have been a good field for me. Don’t dismiss math, and don’t imply that biology is for people who don’t like math. All sciences are quantitative, and you must cultivate some understanding of math. You don’t like it? Then you’ll have to work harder to grasp the necessary quantitative skills. More importantly, learn the joy of mathematics by understanding what it is good for. That would be far more useful than reading Christian apologetics.

What’s missing from Purdom’s advice is anything to foster a love of science, replacing it with soaking in the Bible. The Bible isn’t going to help you in science! I would tell a high school student to indulge in fun, relevant hobbies, in addition to doing well in classes. Take up model rocketry or chemistry experiments, hike in the woods, go fishing, collect butterflies, collect rocks, raise pet insects, birdwatching…that’s all stuff I did in high school, but there’s much more. Geocaching, computer programming (even computer games), space camps, math olympics, etc., you can think of lots of entertaining activities that simultaneously build skills that will be useful in science.

Another thought I’ve had is that learning to cook is a fabulous support skill for science. It’s quantitative, it requires careful measurement, you learn to appreciate a variety of chemicals, even if people don’t like to call them that.

Purdom also recommends that you prepare to attend a college that stands with AiG on the truth of God’s Word beginning in Genesis. Don’t do that. Avoid those places.

College

Purdom’s recommendation for college students is to read even more apologetics, join the creation research society, attend creation science conferences, and find a good church. None of that will inspire a deeper appreciation of science.

As someone who advises college students, I would say that finding a church, if that’s your thing, is a fine thing to help a student who is looking for social support. What I’m usually telling students is that they need to take more math to meet the prerequisites of their more advanced classes. I’m serious: the number one problem for students entering a science major is insufficient preparation in math, which is why I hate those people who downplay the significance of math and lead young people to neglect a core piece of their education.

But beyond that, the other thing I tell students is to get involved with a campus organization: we have a physics club, a chemistry club, a math club, a biology club. One of the jarring things about Purdom’s advice is that nowhere does she suggest doing science recreationally, because it’s fun. I also tell students to get involved in research, that you actually can just walk up to a professor and ask if there’s anything you can do in their lab, and often they’ll say yes and welcome volunteers. My last (sadly, my very last) research student got involved in studying spiders, joined the American Arachnology Society, presented her work at an arachnology conference, and is currently off in grad school, studying entomology. She’s on her way to a career in science in a way that joining a church cannot directly promote.

Purdom has another strange recommendation: hide your ideas.

Be careful what you share on social media and with others about your biblical creation beliefs. Much of higher education is antagonistic toward Christian students in general but especially those who are biblical creationists in science fields. Today, it’s easy to find out a lot about a person using a Google search and even AI.

How sad. The persecution complex is pervasive, to the point the creationists are telling their young students that they can’t be forthright in public. Have they considered the possibility that creationism is stupid and wrong, and simply telling young people you’ll look like an idiot if you espouse it? She says, It’s best to keep your mouth shut and get the education and training you need, and when the time is right, you can open it! There it is: she openly advocates lying for Jesus until you’ve got your diploma.

Graduate School

You’ll never guess what advice she has for grad students. Read more apologetics and find a good church. Aww, did you guess it?

She also recommends picking an advisor who is a creation scientist. Good luck with that! There aren’t many around, except maybe in the AiG approved crap colleges she wants you to attend. Then, another revealing comment:

If you’re constantly being bombarded by ideas that are counter to God’s Word, it will be hard not to compromise. For example, I would not recommend getting a degree in evolutionary biology. There’s a very real chance that you would be an author on a paper that espouses evolutionary ideas as truth.

She wants to raise up more dedicated pseudoscientists to challenge evolutionary biology, but it’s important that they don’t get exposed to evolutionary ideas that refute the nonsense that creationists peddle, and above all, do not actually get a degree in evolutionary biology. That explains a lot, actually: creationists don’t understand the science they criticize.

Professional Career

I’m sorry, but if you follow Georgia Purdom’s advice, you won’t have a professional career. All she can suggest is that you get a job with a Christian church or Christian organization.

My secular path doesn’t guarantee you a job, it’s a hard path to follow. But there are far more options available to you: we have students working in industry, agriculture, and research, as well as in education. And you know what allows our students to succeed in a variety of occupations? Their quantitative skills. Knowing math and statistics is a powerful skill that can help you find a place in all kinds of jobs.

Knowing bizarre Christian apologetics and how to lie for Jesus gets you diddly-squat in the world outside the churchy hotbox.

Old fools antagonize a young skeptic

A young woman made a short video criticizing Ken Ham’s Ark Park bullshit, and did it so well that Answers in Genesis felt compelled to rebut it. They did it in the laziest way possible, though, simply stealing her entire video and plastering text on it and making the ironic accusation that she was indoctrinating children. Oh boy, that just opened the door to her tearing their arguments apart more.

My favorite part was their response to her rejection of their pseudoscience with the simple claim that Jesus believed it. Yeah, citation needed. Modern creationism is a hyper-specific derivative ideology that is mostly unbiblical and is built on contemporary culture war issues.

Myths and money have poisoned our educational system

The analysis of last week’s colossal political upheaval continues. One explanation: education was a major driver of the public’s discontent with Republicans.

Voters were upset about a number of issues, including a voucher program, signed into law by Greg Abbott, the governor, that sent $1bn of public money to private schools. They were concerned about new social studies standards that critics say promote Islamophobia and minimize the impact of slavery. They had seen students detained by immigration authorities, and Abbott threaten to strip district funding if students protested against ICE. And they were angry about a curriculum incorporating Bible verses that felt “forced down the throats” of schools, Palmer said.

Well, yes. I, and just about everyone on the left, has been howling about those kinds of issues for decades. It’s nice to see it’s finally sinking into voters’ minds that the conservatives have been dismantling public education, and that that is a bad thing.

Maybe soon they will recognize that there are certain organizations, often religious, that are loci of spreading corruption, and will work to cut them out.

People still think Julian Jayne’s “bicameral mind” hypothesis is useful?

It’s been about 40 years since I read Julian Jayne’s book about his bicameral mind hypothesis, so my memory is more than a little fuzzy. Don’t ask me about the details! So I appreciated this summary by someone who supports the theory.

Imagine a theoretical framework that solves a long list of mysteries: the origin of religion and its concomitant features—supernatural visitations, ancestor worship, monumental mortuary architecture, divination, oracles, spirit possession, and the vestiges of archaic spirituality still visible in churches, temples, and mosques. This approach also explains otherwise inexplicable phenomena, such as hallucinations, hypnosis, glossolalia, and children’s imaginary companions. Moreover, this theoretical approach has clinical value: its argument about the originally nonpathological, adaptive nature of hallucinations helped establish an intellectual climate conducive to the Hearing Voices Network, which regards voice-hearing as a meaningful experience. Moreover, this framework comes with hypotheses waiting to be tested.

Such a framework can be found in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976) by Julian Jaynes (1920–1997). He theorized that until about three thousand years ago (with some geographic variation) humans possessed a “bicameral” (“two-chambered”) mentality in which the right hemisphere communicated with the left hemisphere using command hallucinations. These were interpreted as the voices of gods, ancestors, or godlike rulers. But population expansion and social complexity put pressure on this dual psychological system of supernatural superior and mortal subordinate. During the late second millennium BCE, this two-tier neurocultural arrangement collapsed. In response, languages—by developing metaphoric “mind words”—upgraded psychological processes. Jaynes identified the new mentality as “consciousness” (or in a wordier rendering, subjective introspectable self-awareness). Jaynesian consciousness is neither an innate, biologically fixed trait, nor something identified with sensation, thinking, or being awake. It is a learned cultural innovation.

That first paragraph claims the theory has explanatory power, but I fail to see how a hypothesis about the ancient duality of the mind explains a diverse and complex phenomenon like religion. I also don’t see the clinical value of a vague claim about hallucinations. I agree that hallucinations are real, and shouldn’t necessarily be pathologized, but where is the virtue in clinical practice to treating them as something more than a consequence of the problem of consciousness? I don’t think that splitting consciousness in two helps, because now you’ve created two equally big problems from a single problem.

You know, Wilhelm Fliess came up with an explanation of neurosis that involved a mysterious connection between the nose and the genitals, and even came up with surgical interventions to treat depression and psychosis. Did it work? No. I’m as convinced that the bicameral framework is effective in doing anything as I am about a hack chopping up turbinate bones.

The second paragraph is a silly claim about history — that there was a revolution in how the brain works 4,000 years ago, based on a hypothetical separation of mind functions before that transition, which Jaynes cannot demonstrate existed, except by his interpretation of old myths. Sure, people weren’t writing introspective psychological novels in the bronze age, but they were creating great works of art and building systems of laws and expressing themselves in poetry and music. They don’t seem fundamentally different from modern humans in that sense.

I dismissed it all as baseless fluff when I read it all those years ago, and that was before I started a research career looking at the development of cross-connections in the brains of fish and insects. The brain is full of commissures and decussations! Even your eyes split their output, with each eye sending information to both hemispheres, and the earliest neuronal pathways tend to innervate the contralateral side of the nervous system. Jaynes has to postulate that we had this massive cross-connection, but that people didn’t notice and incorporate into their ways of thinking until there was a “learned cultural innovation.”

I can well believe that there have been major cultural revolutions in our history. I just don’t see any evidence that somehow our minds were split into two chambers once upon a time.

These bozos have some really strange beliefs.

In Homer’s Iliad, we rarely encounter the Greek word for ‘I’ or much that refers to internal thought or decision-making. bit.ly/4C1lZgk

Cultural theorist Brian J. McVeigh agrees with Princeton psychologist Julian Jaynes’ claim that the Homeric Greeks had no internal life or self-awareness.

I guess the ancient Greeks were all NPCs, then.

I can relate

Only 3% of transgender adults regret transitioning.

I don’t have any personal experience with that. The part I relate to is all the people who regret knee surgery — I had knee surgery, I don’t think I was harmed by it, but it didn’t help at all. I could have spared myself weeks of time in bed and all that therapy if I’d just stayed home.

With those odds, though, I’d transition, if only I weren’t mostly satisfied with the body I’ve got.

The very least surprising thing about the last election

Mike Lindell says it was stolen.

MyPillow founder Mike Lindell called for a recount of the 2026 midterms, claiming that he has discovered “new evidence” of election interference — and directing supporters to give money to a nonprofit legal fund that paid one of his own companies more than $4 million between 2023 and 2024.

Nice twist at the end — he’s telling his fans to donate money to a corporation he owns, which means he’s just funneling it all back into his own pocket.

Who the hell is Chad Robichaux?

I heard some ridiculous things about this guy, so I started digging into his background, and hit a brick wall because Google has become completely useless. He has an unusual name, so you’d think it would be easy to find diverse sources about him. You can’t. Google search results are saturated with autobiographical claims by Robichaux himself, about and by the foundation he established, his podcast, his youtube channel, and puff pieces by organizations that support him, like Focus on the Family (you ought to be suspicious of anything Focus on the Family supports.) All I learned was that he’s really good at optimizing his presence on the internet.

AI doesn’t help, either. Here’s the AI summary of the man.

Chad Robichaux is a former Force Recon Marine, bestselling author, and founder of the Mighty Oaks Foundation, which helps veterans and first responders recover from PTSD and trauma. He has dedicated his life to helping others find healing and purpose after serving in combat.

I finally found one source that demonstrated any critical thinking, and it was Reddit. Sorry. That’s never a reliable source, but at least some people are asking questions.

I’m sorry, but can I get some clarification on Chad Robichaux? It seems like he tells stories like he was deployed as a Marine Recon member to Afghanistan eight times doing all this insane high speed stuff with JSOC.

However, I’ve heard other claims that he never deployed as a member of the military and was instead overseas as a contractor. That seems like a MASSIVE difference and very dishonest if it’s being presented that he was a member of the military getting into all these insane black ops missions.

Right. He spends a lot of time on his podcast and interviews, bragging about all his black ops missions, while simultaneously claiming to be this great righteous humanitarian. I’m already suspicious, and what is more plausible is that he’s a profiteering contractor who exploited the war, and afterwards turned into a grifter exploiting veterans. I was primed to doubt and mistrust this bozo by an interview he did with Tucker Carlson, where it was clear that he’s an obsessive liar and conspiracy theorist.

Let’s start with a standard stupid claim about archaeology. Did you know that ancient Egyptians and Native Americans couldn’t possibly have built megalithic stone structures?

CHAD ROBICHAUX (GUEST): I’ve stood in front of the megalith structures of Machu Picchu. When you stand there and you’re looking at a 300-ton rock that’s carved at such precision, it’s like, the Inca didn’t build this. Maybe they built stuff on top of it, but the Inca didn’t build this. Like, some primitive little mountain tribal person didn’t build this. There has to be a preexisting — they had help from someone, and they probably did it with preexisting technology. I don’t believe, by the way, we’ve — and you said this — I don’t believe we’ve evolved. I think we’ve devolved.

TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): Well, so a lot of those structures, Machu Picchu is a great example, but the megaliths in Jordan, the mounds in Illinois, like —but some of the stonework, we don’t, there are no masons today who could build it.

ROBICHAUX: No.

CARLSON: So like, what does that tell you? In 2026. No, with modern tools you couldn’t build that. So, no one’s explained any of this stuff. I’m just amazed by how incurious official institutions are in this. Like, how can National Geographic or the Smithsonian — like, if I’m the editor of National Geographic, I’m, I don’t know. I’m assigning piece after piece, like, how were the pyramids built? How did they get the stones 300 feet in the air? Like, how did that happen? No one even asks. And it’s considered wrong to ask.

That’s all too familiar racism and ignorance, and Carlson is pandering to it. We know how these structures were built. Scientists and engineers have been asking the questions for centuries, and working to understand the clever engineering and social structures that could use brute force and material understanding to get stones 300 feet in the air. Everyone asks. The answers are easy to find, at least if you can escape the vortex of suck that is Google.

It’s clear, though, that Tucker Carlson is an unreliable kook who is trying to imitate the Joe Rogan strategy of bringing in even kookier kooks to make him appear reasonable. Don’t be fooled!

At least he’s useful for exposing the even wackier beliefs of gomers like Chad Robichaux. Robichaux babbles about Nephilim.

TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): So, if your theory that Genesis 3 and the Book of Enoch are not just folklore, but are describing physical reality, If that’s true, if you’re right, then there would be actual physical giants. I mean, that’s what those accounts describe, giants.

CHAD ROBICHAUX (GUEST): Right.

…

ROBICHAUX: From my research, and this is something I’ve been very interested in, and those who I’ve spoken to who have spent their life researching this, every time there is evidence of giants, it goes to the Smithsonian and never to be seen again, which is quite strange.

CARLSON: No, they’ve denied it. Not that that means much, but do you think that’s true? That the Smithsonian has suppressed archaeological evidence for whatever reason?

ROBICHAUX: I’ve spoke to several people. Even beyond the physical evidence that we have today, if we believe the Bible and believe every part of the Bible, the Bible talks about giants and talks about Goliath. And talks about other giants in the Bible. So you can’t believe part of the Bible and not believe all of it. So I believe it cover-to-cover. So I believe giants did exist. I believe the, you know, modern day stories are true as well. I believe the giant of Kandahar is a true story. In fact, Tim Alberino interviewed the pilot in private that flew him out, so it’s a firsthand testimony there. So I believe —

What if we don’t believe the Bible and believe every part of the Bible? Where’s your credibility then?

He’d rather believe that the Smithsonian is suppressing evidence than that maybe the Bible is an untrustworthy collection of old myths.

TUCKER CARLSON: For those of us who are not familiar with the giant of Kandahar. Kandahar, Afghanistan.

ROBICHAUX: So I have some time in Afghanistan. However, I didn’t see any giants there. But the story of the — is some Marines getting this gunfight with this giant, and —

CARLSON: This is in the 2000s during GWAT?

ROBICHAUX: During GWAT, and a team goes back, and they actually — a team goes back because these Marines didn’t come back out. Team goes back and actually kill this giant, and it’s brought into a facility, and the US aircraft flies the body back.

He wasn’t there, but he obligingly parrots a story about a giant being killed by American forces. There are very tall people that some would call “giants,” but that’s not what these clowns are talking about.

ROBICHAUX: But I do believe this exists, and if you look at the Nephilim, which is the offspring of human women and the fallen angels, a lot of people would bring that to the modern day Sasquatch and Bigfoot. Once you start talking about this, it sounds crazy. However, no one’s found Bigfoot yet, including us, and we did two episodes of Shadow Figures on it. And I believe the reason no one’s found Bigfoot is because it’s not some primitive ape, it’s actually intelligent. Ancient and intelligent being, and not one, but a species of them that whether they’re elusive for whatever motivation they’re elusive for, but that’s why we’ve not been able to spot them or see them. You know, we get fuzzy videos, and with game cameras all over, right, you’re a hunter, there’s game cameras all over the world, why don’t we have a picture of Bigfoot? And I believe because it’s not some just primitive ape, some wild animal.

CARLSON: I was just thinking that exact same thing.

Two gullible idiots chatting about total nonsense. This is what the internet has brought us.

Such an astonishing amount of bullshit.

The murder was planned

Planned by his own dad.

When God made the trees, He knew that a tree would one day be used for the evilest event of history: Jesus’ crucifixion.

These people have such a weird worldview — everything is planned and predestined, right down to the seed that grew into the tree that would be used as a torture device. God is scheming in advance to do evil.

Speaking of evil…the death of Jesus was the evilest event in history? When you are not fanatically obsessed with your cult founder, one can think of many much more evil events.