A reader sent in a request that I post a reply to an old article. How old? From June 2005. I’d almost forgotten this old quack, but Cindy Lee had to remind me.
Fresh off his earthshaking debunking of the whole of evolutionary biology with his classic “banana” and “coke can” arguments, Ray Comfort has a compelling new argument against atheism: the electricity argument. It’s a little story about “three wise fools” who are exposed to electricity for the first time, and who refuse to believe in this amazing invisible force, and refuse even to test it. Obviously, the “wise fools” are supposed to be modern scientists, and the invisible force they refuse to acknowledge is a god. Comfort tells the tale to make the scientists look like obstinate idiots who refuse to look at the evidence in the natural world and instead make rabbinical arguments about authorities and texts and…hey, wait a minute! Who’s being parodied here?
Anyway, his parable is a patent lie, and he completely misrepresented the events in the encounter. I know. I was there. The full and accurate transcript of the actual test follows.
It’s a friend with a face full of necrotizing venom, which just makes him a little more special, I think. Anyway, it’s a good story about a responsible, rational reaction to finding a brown recluse spider in the house, and the little guy is so darned cute, too.
We’ve often heard this claim from creationists: “there is no way for genetics to cause an increase in complexity without a designer!”. A recent example has been Michael Egnor’s obtuse caterwauling about it. We, including myself, usually respond in the same way: of course it can. And then we list examples of observations that support the obviously true conclusion that you can get increases in genetic information over time: we talk about gene duplication, gene families, pseudogenes, etc., all well-documented manifestations of natural processes that increase the genetic content of the organism. It happens, it’s clear and simple, get over it, creationists.
Maybe we’ve been missing the point all along, though. The premise of that question from the creationists is what they consider a self-evident fact: that evolution posits a steady increase in complexity from bacteria to Homo sapiens, the deep-rooted idea of the scala natura, a ladder of complexity from simple to complex. Their argument is that the ladder cannot be climbed, and our response is usually, “sure it can, watch!” when perhaps a better answer, one that is even more damaging to their ideology, is that there is no ladder to climb.
That’s a tougher answer to explain, though, and what makes it even more difficult is that there is a long scientific tradition of pretending the ladder is there. Larry Moran has an excellent article on this problem (Alex has a different perspective), and I want to expand on it a little more.
I have just been informed that those sneaky Europeans at AFOE are having a poll, and I’m on it in the category of “Best Non-European Weblog”, and I’m losing badly. This wouldn’t be so bad if losing meant I got the title of “Best European Weblog”, but apparently trivial geographic and cultural differences will be used as an excuse to disqualify me there. Somehow, though, Sadly, No is winning in a landslide. I don’t understand how that can happen, and can only attribute it to the fact that a bunch of foreigners are voting, and they can’t read the title as an injunction to not vote for them. Sadly, of course. It means “NON” or “NEIN” or “NYET”, people!
I’m also getting whomped by LGM and the Agonist. Maybe the voters think the crews over there are French. Or that the winner of the vote is required to stay as far away from Europe as possible.
And then, perhaps, another problem is that they’ve misspelled this blog as “Pharyngyla”. Pharyngyla? Everyone knows that Pharyngyla is a blog that sucks. Pharyngula, though, is a whole ‘nother kettle of writhing tentacles.
I urge all of you who think I am the most non-European of them all to get out there and vote for someone. Anyone but sucky Pharyngyla. Or send me a kettle of tentacles, instead.
Even the webcomics are making fun of him. Click on the panel to read the rest—it’s pretty good. It also points out why we shouldn’t be displeased that he’s been imprisoned: one of his ‘accomplishments’ has always been to make the scientific and rational thinkers of all ages feel ostracized by an ignorant majority. He’s a sad little man, but he’s also done a lot of evil.
I got about 5 times my usual traffic yesterday, which explains why there were some occasional slow-downs all across scienceblogs. I think the server held up fairly well, though, and I know the big guys here are planning some server upgrades to handle future growth.
Don’t worry, it’ll ease up. You can tell from the relatively small increase in page views vs. visits that most of these people zipped in to read one post and didn’t hang around. The new creationists trying to argue weakly in that thread have been mildly amusing, though.
What are you doing this evening? Two big events:
Pirates of the Caribbean 3 is opening at the Morris Theater tonight at 8! I was thinking of going, but Skatje works there, and she’s got the inside scoop: people are already lining up. In Morris. I might wait a few days for the mob to fade away.
If PotC3 is too crowded, there’s always Drinking Liberally—7:00pm at Old #1.
Who says Morris isn’t a happening place?
