Ok, so, over on Pharyngula, PZ reported on Ray Comfort’s latest folly. Ray–who will go waaaay down in history for the creationist argument by banana–has a new site out. The comment thread called him “bananaman” (ok, no great stretch, as PZ’s title called him “the banana man”), which immediately activated whatever part of my brain it is that does this sort of stuff.

Anyway, my comment over there did not relieve the pressure sufficiently; I had to write the following. My apologies to Billy Joel, and to pretty much everybody else. Except Ray Comfort.

It’s an afternoon post on Pharyngula,
The regular crowd shuffles in
There’s a pretty good chance that some troll will come dance
And remind us we’re living in sin

He’ll say “Darwin is worshipped by Atheists”
He’s not really sure what that means
But he knows that you’ll find that the world was designed,
That designers made all of our genes

La la la, de de da
La la, de de da da da

Tell us a lie, you’re Bananaman,
Tell us a lie, or two
Cos we’re all in the mood for a belly-laugh
And you’ve got us laughing at you!

PZ is the host and proprietor,
So you know that there’s pretty good odds
You’ll see shocking opinions, both his and his minions’
And probably cephalopods

He says look at that beautiful octopus
And this shot of a sensuous squid
Though he won’t claim a fetish for things that are wettish
You wouldn’t be shocked if he did

La la la, de de da
La la, de de da da da

Tell us a lie, you’re Bananaman,
Tell us a lie, or two
Cos we’re all in the mood for a belly-laugh
And you’ve got us laughing at you!

Now Ray is a young-earth creationist
Who never had time for a life
And he wonders if maybe, he might have a baby,
If he could evolve him a wife.

And the Minions are arguing politics
As the Mollies are howling for beer
It’s a strange sort of virtual community
But it doesn’t get better than here

La la la, de de da
La la, de de da da da

Tell us a lie, you’re Bananaman,
Tell us a lie, or two
Cos we’re all in the mood for a belly-laugh
And you’ve got us laughing at you!

It’s a pretty good post for Pharyngula
It’s got science, and politics too
Cos there isn’t much quite like an internet fight
If you’ve got nothing better to do.

And the internet reeks of stupidity
And the blogosphere’s chock-full of dumb,
And I stare at my screen, and ask “what do they mean?”,
And then drink till my feelings are numb.

La la la, de de da
La la, de de da da da

Tell us a lie, you’re Bananaman,
Tell us a lie, or two
Cos we’re all in the mood for a belly-laugh
And you’ve got us laughing at you!

(Updated–additional verse and pics as of 9AM East Coast US time)

Blake Stacey sends me the latest news from PLoS, an article on “Complex Prey Handling by Dolphins”. Very cool… except… the prey they are handling are cuttlefish! That’s right, the full title is “Preparing the Perfect Cuttlefish Meal: Complex Prey Handling by Dolphins“. A bit of a shock to the hearts, I must say. Imagine if I had sent this page to him!

It is a fascinating article, though; I recommend it to any students of zoology, marine biology, behavioral learning, or just anyone who likes really cool stories about cuttlefish being killed, beaten, maimed, and eaten. (It’s ok, these cuttlefish had just finished mating, and were just scooting off to die quietly somewhere.)

For those who don’t like reading journal articles, I have translated it into Cuttlefish:

A dolphin may wish
For a cuttlefish dish
In the waters with old Davy Jones;
See, they find cuttlefishes
Are truly delicious
Except for the cuttlefish bones.
They also may think
That the cuttlefish ink
Is unpleasant, or nasty, or mean;
We infer this because
In a Gulf in South Oz
They’ve developed a dolphin cuisine!

Many dolphin techniques
Are employed, as it seeks
To find breakfast, or supper, or lunch
They are clearly no fools—
They can even use tools—
Hunting solo, or else in a bunch.
Some behaviors are thought
To be modeled or taught,
While some may be coded genetically;
The picture is muddy,
So researchers study,
And gather their data frenetically.

These bottlenose feed
Where the cuttlefish breed—
Tens of thousands all gathered to mate;
After spawning, they’re weak,
So the bottlenose seek
Them (of course, out of hunger, not hate).
The process, as planned,
Takes place in the sand,
So from cover the cuttles are flushed—
A vertical pose
Puts the bottlenose nose
So one thrust, and the cuttle is crushed.

He is not just yet eaten—
No, first, he is beaten,
Till the ink-sac inside him is burst
Then he’s beaten some more,
And it’s clear what it’s for,
Until most of the ink is dispersed.
Then the succulent morsel
Is flipped on his dorsal
And scraped on the sand till he splits,
And the cuttlefish bone
Is released on its own,
And up to the surface it flits.

Without ink, bone, or soul,
They are gobbled up whole,
With no cuttlebone left to be chewed
And this far off the coast
There’s no Emily Post
So there’s no reason not to be rude!
And that’s how it looks
When these bottlenose cooks
Make “the Perfect Cuttlefish Meal”;
But they didn’t ask me—
From my vantage, you see,
Such a dinner lacks any appeal.

I’d invite me a mermaid
To a place just for her, made
Of corals and seashells and pearls
Just me and my cutie,
My undersea beauty,
And around us the ocean unfurls
All the sights of the ocean
Are no matching potion
For the magic that’s there in her eyes…
Yes, if it were my wish,
The best Cuttlefish dish?
A delectable Mermaid Surprise!

A commenter, named MrPete
Left a message he thought was quite neat
In a very old post;
I’ll reply, as your host:
Pete’s neat feat is, at best, incomplete.

Verse aside… MrPete replied to a post from early last year, so I thought I’d be fair and address his comment where people can see it, rather than in the murky depths of the past. You may, if you wish, click the link for context, but most of it is fairly self-explanatory.

Here’s something not from the choir :)

Welcome, MrPete; I hope you find the pews comfortable.

“Going to church” is meaningless. “Church” is a community, a set of people in relationship. How do you “go to” a relationship?

I’ll avoid the snarky 2-inch putt response to your first sentence, and simply note that if you replace “going to church” with “being part of a self-identified religious communal relationship”, the verse no longer rhymes. But oddly enough, the meaning remains the same. “Going to church” is, for children, the physical act of being dragged out of bed on a Sunday morning and taken to the place where the adults act like pod people (your experience may vary, but that was my first memory of church, from behind the soundproof window where we children were able to watch the services). For older children and adolescents, “going to church” may be the process of becoming part of or choosing to reject a community, or even a personal emotional experience. “Going to church” is also a quick and handy heuristic for determining “us” vs. “them”; just last night on the news, a Republican analyst was speaking about morality on the BBC, and used the phrase “good, churchgoing Americans” in this last, divisive manner.

Picking apart a verse because a very rich phrase, which has multiple and layered meanings, may have been inaccurate if you choose only the literal interpretation, is easy to do, and utterly meaningless.

“License” to be moral, or approved as moral, is also meaningless. “Moral” is simply a code of conduct.

The challenge isn’t in sometimes following the code.

The challenge is in always following the code — in word, deed, and thought. And not watering down the code just ‘cuz it’s hard to follow.

Which code? Seriously, of the thousands of interpretations of religious morality, which code do you always follow? Are they all moral? In which case, following a particular code vs. another is irrelevant. Are some immoral? In which case, how do you know which? Do you eat shellfish? Covet your neighbor’s ass? Seethe a kid in its mother’s milk? Cut your beard? Are any of these important?

If something is moral because your god says it is, and you believed that your god told you to drown your children, would that then be moral? If so, I would argue that religious morality is a license to be evil. If not, I would argue that you have a sense of morality that is independent from your religious moral code… just as atheists do.

God is far more about an achingly awesome love relationship than about harps and brimstone.

Mom loved me more than a friend, and in a whole different way.

My spouse loves me more than mom did, in a whole different way.

God loves me more than any of them, in a whole different way.

How do you know your spouse, and your mom, love you? I would hope that they would occasionally show you, and not just tell you. If, for instance, your mom beat you, but always told you it was for your own good, does that count as a “whole different way”? If your spouse demands obedience, gifts, and praise, in return for letting you keep part of your own paycheck, does that count as a “whole different way”?

You know they love you because of their actions, actions that you can plainly see, which you do not have to simply take on their word. They do not have to steal the credit from other people’s actions (my sister shared her dessert with me—thanks be to Mom! I found a twenty dollar bill in a snowbank today, praise my spouse!).

One-sided loves are often aching and awesome. Abusive relationships are accompanied by a panoply of hormonal and neurological cascades, not to mention the highly effective variable ratio schedule of reinforcement. This does not make them better; it just makes them “a whole different way”.

I think your rant is more against an organization than against becoming one who accepts God’s love and as a result tries to be more like him.

Again, which god are you trying to be more like? Have you been practicing your smiting?

I have been called immoral simply for being an atheist. Presumably, the people who made this accusation accept their god’s love and as a result try to be more like him. Will you accept them as your peers? As your community? Will you reject them as not true Scotsmen—er, believers? I have no need of their standards; frankly, neither do they. Nothing of how they act has been made better by their beliefs. Nothing.

[Yes, we can argue over pain and suffering etc etc etc. But it’s really just a bigger picture version of why mom made you do your homework and eat your peas… and why the whole bus suffered when Billy poured glue on Sally’s seat…and why your big brother whupped the bully who broke your glasses :) ] :)

Oh, please. Is this a special pleading, a “god works in mysterious ways” answer to the problem of punishment? I refer you to above—if something is moral only because your god says it is, then infanticide could be moral. If you require something other than your god’s decree, your god is superfluous.

Your examples all focus on punishment or the threat of punishment. Is that your bottom-line reason for morality? Be good, or god will punish you to teach you that you are supposed to be good? I would hope that your mom explained why you had to do your homework, or eat your peas; if she simply said “because I said so” she is doing her child an injustice. If the whole bus suffered, I hope the school system has a good lawyer, and that the argument can be made as to why this was in the best interest of all the children, or somebody is going to pay. And I was the big brother, and never had to whup a bully.

[Edit–I just removed several smiley emoticons that I had inadvertently pasted into MrPete’s comment. I do not wish to misrepresent him. 10:47 eastern US time.]

A Parable:

Your mom loves you… as such, she wants you safe. But she’s not terribly good at explaining her motives, and indeed her actions focus on trivial matters at times and ignore larger dangers. She wants you to stay inside, because it is a dangerous world out there (it’s a place where who knows what things you might learn!), so she tells you about the neighbor’s dog, which is always hanging around your yard looking for someone to bite. It’s a mean, vicious dog—Tommy across the street got bit, and had to get stitches and everything, and now he can’t come out of his house, which is why you don’t know him.

Funny thing… you’ve never actually seen this dog, and you do occasionally see kids playing on the sidewalk… But your mom loves you—she tells you so—so of course the dog has to exist. So you stay safe inside your house. Fresh air is over-rated. Meeting kids, learning stuff, over-rated. You might fall and skin your knee. Mom knows best.

You get to be school-aged, and Mom decides to home-school you, because it is so much safer in the house. Besides, there is the dog to think about. Horrible to consider, with those nast
y sharp teeth. Poor Tommy. And Billy, too, and Sally down the street. She got bit so bad she is going to be in pain for the rest of her life! You’ve never met these kids, or seen or heard the dog, but you have to believe your mom—not just some of the time, when it’s easy. Don’t water it down cos it’s hard to follow.

Years go by; whenever you express doubt, your mother tells of another kid who had his ear bitten off, and reminds you how much she loves you and how much she has sacrificed to keep you safe. Hers is an unconditional love—just ask her. Don’t ask her to explain, mind you, just to once again assert that she is doing what she does because she loves you, and you don’t have to question that.

Of course, if I could, I’d like to get a message to you. You are shut up in that house, so it might be difficult to actually talk to you. Maybe I should put a message on the side of a bus that drives past your window:

“There probably is no dog. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

Ok, so… I just posted this as a comment on Pharyngula, but I like it enough to repost it here.

“When a tree falls in the forest,
There is sound”, the people chorused,
But a pressure wave is simply not identical with sound.
I’m not making the suggestion
That it’s not a stupid question
But this answer is as dumb as any other that’s around.
It’s less “answer” than “illusion”;
It’s assuming its conclusion,
So it’s true by definition, but the definition’s wrong!
Is the stimulus sensation?
An erroneous conflation
Of the pressure and perception–leave them both where they belong!
This ignores the useful labor
Both of Fechner and of Weber
Who invented psychophysics to explore the problem right
Now their sig-detection theory
Might make researchers grow weary
But it works to study taste and touch, and sound and smell and sight!

Besides, Danae rocks…

You didn’t see it. You didn’t hear it. Neither did I. But Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire gave a brief convocation today at the inaugural events in Washington, D.C.. I suppose CNN can’t show everything that goes on… my only hope is that if the directive came down, “don’t show the controversial preacher”, that they apply the same rule on Tuesday.

With sincere and heartfelt apologies to Simon and Garfunkel…

We’d like to have you speak at our inaugural event…
We’d like to put your face up on the screen
Look around you; all you see are Democratic eyes.
Stroll around the Mall until it’s time to speak

And here’s to you, Bishop Robinson,
CNN—your speech they wouldn’t show
Wo wo wo
Bless us with tears, Bishop Robinson,
Heaven knows it can’t be cos you’re gay
Hey hey hey, hey hey hey….

Use another camera while the Bishop says his prayer.
Put it on a crowd scene for the broadcast
Keep him in the closet, Bishop Robinson’s not there
Most of all, we’ve got to hide him from the kids

Shoo, shoo, to you, Bishop Robinson,
CNN—your speech they wouldn’t show
Wo wo wo
Bless us with tears, Bishop Robinson,
Heaven knows it can’t be cos you’re gay
Hey hey hey, hey hey hey….

Standing on the marble steps, with Lincoln looking down
Going through the motions for TV
Laugh about it, Shout about it, Try to spread the word
Anyway, the Bishop wasn’t heard

Where have you gone, Marian Anderson?
The GMC is singing just like you
Ooo ooo ooo
What’s that you say, Bishop Robinson?
CNN sure kept you locked away
Hey hey hey… hey hey hey…

The text of Bishop Robinson’s speech can be found at Pam’s House Blend, and is well worth the read. Fortunately, the Bishop was not just talking to his god, but to thousands of people as well. Maybe his words will make a difference as a result.

Update–Pam’s House Blend (and a few other places) has the video of the speech. My own reaction to the video… maybe it’s me, but I think his prayer is a lot more moving when it is in the voice in my head, rather than Robinson’s voice. Beautifully written, but…

And yes, I know “Marian” has one too many syllables. Sue me.

Good morning, class; Today, we’ll call
The “Academic Free-For-All”—
We’ll take a break from evidence,
From peer-review, from making sense,
From climbing up atop our giants
And other silly ways of science.
Today, I’d like to talk about
The theories often done without;
The ones held by tenacious few
(And yes, they laughed at Einstein, too!)

Today, I’d like to speak with you
On “Origin of Species 2”
The sequel Darwin meant to write
But didn’t, due to oversight.
Of course, he did not know of genes,
But knew that, there, behind the scenes
Of each mutation, pulling strings
And mucking with all sorts of things,
The “unmoved mover”, if you wish,
There lurked a giant cuttlefish.

Today, dear students, (quiet please!)
Take out your old recycled trees
And open them—page ninety-three,
Now listen very carefully—
Who really wrote the Shakespeare plays
While Will was in his drunken haze?
Not Bacon—no, and not deVere,
Today I’m going to make it clear
Though “they” will claim my claim’s absurd
A cuttlefish wrote every word.

Today (sit down and shut your yaps!)
We side-step academic traps,
To tell the truth as we see fit
And put away that standard shit.
What holds a plane up in the air?
We’ve tested currents, lift, and prayer—
All crap! But in a dream last night
It came to me… and must be right.
We’re held up high and safe from harms
In a giant cuttlefish’s arms.

This Academic Free-For-All-ing
May seem fun, or just appalling!
If you’re dismayed, please have no fear,
There’s method to our madness here;
It’s meant to draw attention to
The structure to the work we do
The methods that we use, we must,
To get results that you may trust.
A Free-For-All Day sure is fun,
But aren’t you happy when it’s done?

cuttlecap tip to PZ, of course.

Oh, yeah, time for one of these again:

I wish to register a complaint. About nothing. And I’m serious.

It’s this “strong vs. weak atheism” business. I’m sure you have heard the terms; they purport to categorize those who “believe there is no god” and those who “hold no belief in a god”, respectively. A weak atheist allegedly does not believe, but a strong atheist allegedly believes that there is no god.

Stop using these terms. Stop it. Just stop it, right now. They are worse than useless.

Atheism is the “none of the above” category; it’s the “nothing for me, thanks” equivalent. A co-worker of mine, when he found out I am an atheist, asked me “which god is it you don’t believe in?” He was a christian minister, and must have thought himself very clever. Of course, he would have strongly believed in the god of the Bible–and it makes sense to speak of that as a strong belief. He had no doubts (despite plenty of reason to doubt, having lost family in a flood at a bible camp!), whereas others may have a few doubts, or grave doubts.

He also, as a devout believer, would have been a strong disbeliever in, say, Zeus. Which is why the terms are silly. Belief is object-specific. My sister is a believer–does that tell you much about her? Is she Christian? Muslim? Jewish? If she is Christian, what does that tell you? Is she Catholic? Lutheran? Baptist? Not all believers are the same (duh), and each of these different belief systems is positively defined, with regard to a specific object of belief. My co-worker, as an article of faith in his god, strongly believed that there were no other gods. His disbelief in Zeus was part of a positive description of his world-view, not merely an absence of belief in Zeus. (By the way, you may also have heard the argument “ask yourself why you do not believe in all the gods you don’t believe in–I just apply the same reasons to one more god than you do.” While this may be correct for some, it obviously would not work for my co-worker. His reason for not believing in god X was that god Y had told him not to–this does not generalize to god Y, and is also very probably not the reason an atheist does not believe.)

An absence of belief is just that–an absence. Zero on the scale. You don’t get more zero by adding exclamation points, or more zeroes after a decimal. You may have positive beliefs that are relevant–I, for instance, believe that an understanding of the psychology and neurology of belief more than adequately accounts for the reasons people believe in a god, without an actual god being required at all–but this is a separate positive belief, not a “stronger absence of belief”.

Stronger and weaker are terms that are appropriate when speaking positively of a belief, but irrelevant when speaking of an absence; to use the terms is to strengthen the anti-atheist position that speaks of “atheist agenda”. Catholics may have an agenda, but non-catholics? Muslims may have an agenda, but non-muslims? (note–I am not using “agenda” to mean anything other than their defining beliefs.) “None of the above” does not have an agenda.

I looked in my wallet, to take out a note—
There was someone I needed to pay.
Now, I’m used to my wallet containing just nothing,
But there’s even more nothing today

I didn’t just not have a dollar today,
I didn’t have twenty or more!
I didn’t have hundreds, I didn’t have thousands,
More nothing than ever before!

It’s not that I’m working with negative numbers,
Just zeroes, and zeroes galore!
I thought that, with zeroes, just one was enough
But I’ve zeroes today by the score!

There’s nothing—just nothing—a whole lot of nothing,
There’s nothing all over the place
Just zeroes, and zeroes, and zeroes and zeroes…
I’m lucky they take up no space.

You’d think inundation with infinite nothing
Would be a particular hell
But the thing about nothing—no matter how much—
Is that nobody really can tell.

You can doubly my nothing, it’s still only nothing,
At double-or-nothing the odds
And nothing is nothing, when speaking of money
Or even believing in gods.

So, Steve Pinker’s genome is going to be made public. He comes across as quite willing to recognize genetic determinism, but in my view he is all too dismissive of our ability to systematically analyze our environmental variability. “Nonshared environment” is “just a fudge factor” in twin studies; to my ear, it sounds like a bit of an argument from ignorance. It should not be a fudge factor, it should be a fertile area for study. But for now…

They analyzed my genome, and they put it in a book,
Which they offered me, politely, so I thought I’d take a look.
I wondered what my genome could inform me of myself,
So I summoned up my courage… and I pulled it from the shelf.

It spoke in broad percentages and probabilities
And it warned we are unable to extrapolate from these;
The educated reader knows the folly of that task—
But the info’s on the pages, so it couldn’t hurt to ask.

My eyes, it said, were hazel, if I represent the mean;
But the distribution spreads a bit, and so my eyes are green.
I’m average height, and average weight; I’m healthy in my heart,
And I’ve got some good potential, or I did back at the start.

I ought to be a genius (that should make me a believer)
If I hadn’t scrambled half my brains with adolescent fever;
(The doctors say my fever was a nasty one-oh-eight;
Sure, my nature points to brilliance, but my nurture says “too late!”)

It says I’ve got a decent chance of having OCD
But I have to tell you, honestly, I think I disagree—
I’m not the sort to check my stove or light-switch all the time,
Not obsessive or compulsive… save for meter and for rhyme.

It tells me I prefer a blonde—I much prefer brunette,
Ah, but maybe there’s the perfect woman I have never met
It tells me I should love the taste of steak and kidney pie,
But I’ve never really eaten one—I guess I’d better try.

The listed probabilities all seem to interact
Like a winning hand in poker, less the one or two I lacked,
When I add them all together, It was plain for me to see
Just a chance in several billion that I’d come out just like me.

News Item: Being Alive Today Is Hazardous To The Environment.

erm… not quite… Actual News Item: The Environmental Impact of Googling

It’s getting to the point, these days, where looking at the news
Is utterly depressing—it’s the information blues;
Not merely the economy, although that’s bad enough;
But politics, environment, and scientific stuff—
For instance, just this morning as I had my morning cup
And read the recent news reports I just had Googled up,
I read a Harvard physicist (named Alex Wissner-Gross)
Accusing me of murder (well, not really, but it’s close)!
You see, my carbon footprint (which we know is really bad)
Was growing with each Google search and coffee that I had!
About the same for each of them, at roughly seven grams—
I looked around and saw… I’m part of several other scams!
My clothing uses pesticides, and fertilizers too,
Synthetics from petroleum and other sorts of goo;
My jacket and my shoes were made from something that had died
And someone earns a buck a day to make stuff from its hide
The other night I had a roast, a fine New Zealand lamb,
About as far as possible to ship to where I am—
I’d love to have some swordfish, but there’s hardly any left,
Though still so cheap to buy it that it might as well be theft.
My cellphone, so they tell me, is a cause of global war
For coltan and cassiterite, and other metal ore—
The cost of its convenience isn’t one I have to bear;
The tragedy, of course, all happens way, way over there.
My TV set, my microwave, my fridge, my stove, my car,
Each everyday convenience (all the work’s done from afar)
Is making me my own environmental wrecking crew —
Including, as it happens, this here verse I write for you.
…
I’ll try to shrink my footprint, and report on how it goes:
First, clothing—I’ll run naked through the January snows;
I’ll walk to work—no driving, and my bike is from Brazil,
Not local manufacture, so it hardly fits the bill;
I’ll turn off light, and shut off heat—or hold my class outside,
Reduce our carbon footprint, but increase our civic pride!

I can’t go to the store, because I’m giving up my car
But walking there’s a nightmare—I can’t carry stuff that far.
I’d have it all delivered, but I cannot make the call;
I’m giving up my cellphone, cos of genocide and all.
Besides, when they deliver, it’s this big enormous truck…

No wonder most Americans choose not to give a fuck.