Weep for the poor creatures.
But note the steely glint of vengeance in the eye of their living compatriots.
(Also on FtB)
Friday Cephalopod: Atrocity!
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Weep for the poor creatures.
But note the steely glint of vengeance in the eye of their living compatriots.
(Also on FtB)
You know, I really despise Alvin Plantinga’s ‘philosophy’ — it’s more of an obsessively masturbatory exercise in theological babbling. Jerry Coyne has been slapping him around a bit, in part because there is a new book out called Science and Religion: Are They Compatible?, in which Dan Dennett and Alvin Plantinga go at it.
I really want to read that book. It’s got to be at least as entertaining as Bambi Meets Godzilla. But they don’t have a Kindle version! So go read Coyne’s post, and go order the book for yourself if you’d like, but could you also click on the “Tell the Publisher! I’d like to read this book on Kindle” button? For me? Pretty please?
Weep for the poor creatures.
But note the steely glint of vengeance in the eye of their living compatriots.
(Also on Sb)
It’s a question from Israel, so it was right-aligned. Too bad it wasn’t written from right to left or it would have been more interesting.
sorry for my bad english.
someone gave me a strong evidence for a design
a)we know that all robots need a designer
b)from a material prespective, the human is an organic self replicator robot
a+b=the human need a designer
what you think?
yours…
Ooooh, logic is fun!
a) We know that all robots use batteries or plug into an electrical outlet.
b)from a material prespective, the human is an organic self replicator robot
a+b=the human need a battery or electrical outlet.
So all creationists should go stick a fork in one.
Alternatively, I suppose I could just tell him to read his own question and think about what he is saying.
Designed robots are designed.
Organic self replicator robots organically self replicate.
(Also on FtB)
It would be a convenient lie to say that I am an atheist because of rationalism, reason and the application of logic. I was an atheist well before I had any idea what those things were. I know that many people like to argue that everybody is born an atheist, and of course, in a sense that is true, but I like to differentiate between being ignorant of religion, and the realisation that it’s false.
I grew up almost completely unexposed to religion. My mother is a Quaker, and sometimes took me along to meetings, but I had no idea what they were, other than a bunch of “old people” sitting around occasionally speaking; not appealing to a 6 year old.
My first school had no religion classes, and I knew nobody religious. I didn’t even know what the word “god” meant for most of this time. But then I changed schools to a (public) school that did have almost compulsory religious (Christian) education classes. If you’ve never been told the stories of Adam and Eve, or Moses, or Jesus’s birth, miracles and resurrection, until an age when you’re starting to think for yourself (10), I think it’s inevitable you’ll be suspicious of such stories. It only took a month of such classes (once a week) for me to realise it was just rubbish. The volunteers taking the classes were unintelligent and uneducated, and the stories were as believable as any of the mythology books we had at home.
At this point, I asked my parents if I could stop attending the classes, which they agreed to, and my life as an atheist activist began, as the (public) school fought hard to prevent me from not attending those classes. Eventually they relented, and I was allowed to spend an hour once a week in the library. I know in Australia now, with the push for ethics classes as a replacement for religious classes, there are many complaints about sending the non-religious students to the library with nothing to do, but for me, that was probably when I started to become such a prolific reader, so in hindsight it was an incredibly valuable experience.
I’m very glad that I came to atheism, and to atheist movements, at such a young age, and basically by myself. I see many atheists now who I think dogmatically accept philosophical concepts for which no proof or evidence exists; “burden of proof,” and various logical “fallacies,” that are actually just names of types of arguments (ad hominem springs to mind). My experience taught me not to believe people, just because they say something is true, but to examine it closely, and make my own mind up. Religion is just a tiny facet of the subjects I apply that critical thinking to.
Jeremy O’Wheel
Australia
Some random troll on the internet named Simon Painter has tried to invent an ejection seat for arguments.
I am staking a claim to this as Painter’s Law of The Internet whereby someone occupying an indefensible position will call troll to avoid admitting they made an illogical statement.
See? All he has to do is be repetitive and stupid and pointless, and when someone accurately calls him a troll, he gets to declare victory! It’s going to be amusing when someone named Painter starts trying to win arguments by citing Painter’s Law.
But here’s where it gets really funny: in that very same article, Simon Painter does a far better job of defining a troll than most people.
Personally I have no real interest in who is right and who is wrong. It makes about as much difference to my life as the existence or not of the Higgs-Boson particle. I will almost certainly never know for sure and I am truly skeptical that it would make much of a difference to my life either way. If you follow the Roman Catholic Church or some other variation on the theme or you follow the Church of ‘Atheism’ and worship the prophet Dawkins I couldn’t really care a monkeys but when you start making stupid statements like ‘there is no god’ or you judge an organisation that comforts many by the evils of a few within that organisation then you should probably prepare to be called out on it.
If you don’t care which position is right or wrong but you still charge in to stir the shit, you are a troll. And if you’re so oblivious that you publicly announce that you don’t give a damn about the truth, you’re a moron and a troll.
It’s a question from Israel, so it was right-aligned. Too bad it wasn’t written from right to left or it would have been more interesting.
sorry for my bad english.
someone gave me a strong evidence for a design
a)we know that all robots need a designer
b)from a material prespective, the human is an organic self replicator robot
a+b=the human need a designer
what you think?
yours…
Ooooh, logic is fun!
a) We know that all robots use batteries or plug into an electrical outlet.
b)from a material prespective, the human is an organic self replicator robot
a+b=the human need a battery or electrical outlet.
So all creationists should go stick a fork in one.
Alternatively, I suppose I could just tell him to read his own question and think about what he is saying.
Designed robots are designed.
Organic self replicator robots organically self replicate.
(Also on Sb)
Geoffrey Pearce sent me this argument he uses with creationists, and I thought others might find it useful, too.
I am regularly approached by young Earth creationists (yes, even in the bedlam of sin that is Montreal…) both on the street and at home. If I have the time I try to engage them on the age of Earth, since Earth is something whose existence them and I agree upon. They will tell me that Earth is somewhere between 6,000 – 10,000 years old, and, when prompted, that the rest of the universe is the same age as well. I have taken the approach of responding to this assertion by pulling out a print of the far side of the Moon (attached, from apod.nasa.gov).
I cannot tell you how handy this is! Once they’ve had a good look I usually point out that almost all of the craters were formed by asteroids smashing into the planet, and that the Moon has over 250 craters with a diameter of 100 km or more. After explaining that Earth is just as likely to be struck by large asteroids as the Moon (is more likely to be struck, in-fact, due to its greater gravitational well), I then ask them to consider what their time-scale entails: that Earth should be struck every couple of decades by an asteroid capable of completely ejecting an area about the size of New Hampshire (not to pick on New Hampshire). Since such an event has never been observed and there are no well-preserved impact structures anywhere close to this size range, I then suggest to them that the only sensible conclusion is that Earth is much older than they had thought.
This may seem a convoluted way of making a point about Earth’s age, in particular since more precise and direct dating methods than crater counting are used for Earth, but I think that it may have an important advantage. In the past I have tried explaining to creationists how our understanding of Earth’s age is obtained, but they seem to take the “what I can’t see isn’t real” attitude when they hear words such as “radioactivity”, and “isotope”. Conversely, many of them seemed to be somewhat shaken after seeing this image and hearing my explanation, with one even admitting that the Moon looks “very old”. Furthermore, such images are a good starting point for discussing the degree to which chaos and uncertainty are inherent to the universe. Yay!
(Also on FtB)
I hope some of the New Hampshire readers are paying attention: you have two creationist bills working through the legislature, and some real dingbats backing them.
Bergevin told the Monitor, “I want the full portrait of evolution and the people who came up with the ideas to be presented. It’s a worldview and it’s godless.” He reportedly blamed the acceptance of evolution for the atrocities of Nazi Germany and the 1999 Columbine shooting.
I know NH has extremely diverse representation…tell me these clowns are going to get laughed down as soon as their bills come up for a vote.
(Also on FtB)
Geoffrey Pearce sent me this argument he uses with creationists, and I thought others might find it useful, too.
I am regularly approached by young Earth creationists (yes, even in the bedlam of sin that is Montreal…) both on the street and at home. If I have the time I try to engage them on the age of Earth, since Earth is something whose existence them and I agree upon. They will tell me that Earth is somewhere between 6,000 – 10,000 years old, and, when prompted, that the rest of the universe is the same age as well. I have taken the approach of responding to this assertion by pulling out a print of the far side of the Moon (attached, from apod.nasa.gov).
I cannot tell you how handy this is! Once they’ve had a good look I usually point out that almost all of the craters were formed by asteroids smashing into the planet, and that the Moon has over 250 craters with a diameter of 100 km or more. After explaining that Earth is just as likely to be struck by large asteroids as the Moon (is more likely to be struck, in-fact, due to its greater gravitational well), I then ask them to consider what their time-scale entails: that Earth should be struck every couple of decades by an asteroid capable of completely ejecting an area about the size of New Hampshire (not to pick on New Hampshire). Since such an event has never been observed and there are no well-preserved impact structures anywhere close to this size range, I then suggest to them that the only sensible conclusion is that Earth is much older than they had thought.
This may seem a convoluted way of making a point about Earth’s age, in particular since more precise and direct dating methods than crater counting are used for Earth, but I think that it may have an important advantage. In the past I have tried explaining to creationists how our understanding of Earth’s age is obtained, but they seem to take the “what I can’t see isn’t real” attitude when they hear words such as “radioactivity”, and “isotope”. Conversely, many of them seemed to be somewhat shaken after seeing this image and hearing my explanation, with one even admitting that the Moon looks “very old”. Furthermore, such images are a good starting point for discussing the degree to which chaos and uncertainty are inherent to the universe. Yay!
(Also on Sb)
