Today’s Non Sequitur gives me a line I’ll have to remember: “victimizing people with reason.” No wonder people get peevish with me…I’m just a thug for rationality.
Stop victimizing people with reason
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Reminds me of the old “miracle” about the bees that fly anyway, though the wind-tunnel tests show they aren’t aerodynamically designed for it. Turns out the bees use a different method to fly that birds and airplanes do.
It’s not just faith that allows us to float through the air — we have to actually know something about floating through the air and how it’s done, to do it. With faith, we get awe at birds. With science, we get airplanes and air travel. Both are useful, in their place. Of course, it’s not necessary to have only faith to find birds beautiful, interesting, and worthy of study.
One might also note that there are different kinds of faith: There’s the faith that we can’t know how birds fly, and there’s the faith that if we study flight seriously, we can figure out how to do it. The value of the religion might be proportional to the type of faith it urges on people, the faith that nothing can be done, or the faith that something might be possible.
These intellectual thugs, using the power of thought and rational process in their arguments. Reminds me of a Douglas Adams classic:
“I didn’t think of that.” said God, and dissapeared in a puff of logic.
I beat to it… ;)
Our local paper (http://www.2theadvocate.com) removed Non Sequitur years ago. I am still pissed about that. Mallard Fillmore stays, and Non Sequitur replacement was some mindless comic (Pearls before Swine, I think).
“Mallard Fillmore stays, and Non Sequitur replacement was some mindless comic”
Mallard Fillmore, being conservative means you never have to be funny.
Thank you, Wiley! In a recent blog debate with a local minister, the minister accused me of being an “intellectual bully”. I’m much happier knowing that I was “victimizing (the minister) with reason”.
It’s a bonus that the example given was levitation, because this same minister believes that levitation is not just a magic trick, but instead, is proof of intervention by non-material, nth dimensional beings. When I questioned this, he said that he read a lot of physics, and that physicists were much better at “thinking outside the box” than us narrow-minded biologists.
Our lcoal paper in Charleston SC removed BC (thankfully, although I rarely read the comics) and the uproar has been stunning. Every day for at least 3 weeks there were multiple letters to the editor that were published wanting BC’s “humor”, “wit” and “values” back. There are still letters that appear once or so a week. It’s been months.
/sigh
@Bob L.
Mallard Fillmore is funny on so many levels. It’s so stupid, it’s funny. It’s Onion funny. Onion funny is a node that branches into sad funny because it’s not satire and people believe it and also intellectually superior funny because it’s not satire and people believe it.
Have I obfuscated myself clearly?
Ed (#1): I remember coming across a short article in Physics Today, maybe 10 years ago, that claimed to have found the explanation for the “bees cannot fly” myth. Something about a dinner party in which somebody had asked a physicist about the aerodynamics of bee flight, and the physicist did a quick calculation on the back of a handy envelope, treating the bee as a glider with stiff wings, and found it wouldn’t work. No wonder – but still, the story grew from that incident. To this day I keep kicking myself for not writing down the reference to the particular issue of Physics Today. I have tried searching for the article online, to no avail. (I had come across the article while waiting for a meeting to begin, the meeting room being in the physics department.)
This discussion reminds me of the time, many years ago, when our local paper removed Doonesbury from the comics page, and placed it on the Op/Ed page, where the editors said it belonged, after the infamous (or famous) “In Search of Reagan’s Brains” series, which I thought was uproariously funny.
It remained there for about 10 years, until I wrote a letter to the Editor complaining about it not being on the comics page, since it was, in fact, comical, after some neo-Nazi wrote in complaining that it was not funny. Not saying that my letter changed anything, because the editors claimed the switch was in the works before my letter, but I like to fantasize…
This reminds me of what a right-wing conservative christian local TV news producer once said in an interview.
“Logic is a tool of Satan.”
When I read that interview I realized what we were up against. The only weapon we have to fight them is our reason and they’ve defined that to their flock as Devilish trickery.
The Providence Journal removed Non Sequitur from the comics page and stuck it in the business section. Bizarre if you ask me.
Thug for reason? Dang it feel good to be a gansta …
The cartoon gets science and reason wrong in a really severe way — she was floating, so whatever was going on cannot be contrary to “the laws of physics” — which are descriptive, not prescriptive. I’m afraid that what we have here is not reason, but the worst sort of scientism. The problem with the religious is most certainly not that their actual behavior is contrary to the laws of physics — a logical contradiction — it’s that what they believe to be true isn’t.
This reminds me of what a right-wing conservative christian local TV news producer once said in an interview.
“Logic is a tool of Satan.”
It’s hardly an original thought — it’s virtually a direct quote of Martin Luther.
With faith, we get awe at birds. With science, we get awe at birds, airplanes and air travel.
Let us not forget that those with faith do not have a corner on the market on wonder and awe at the beauty of the world. They have nothing that atheists don’t have except a belief in the unbelievable.
With science, we get airplanes and air travel.
With faith and religion, we get people who fly airplanes into buildings.
Stupid is a value.
Through Faith and Religion, someone may believe that he can stop a commercial airliner’s communication, turn off its transponder, fly it off course, and continue to fly for many minutes without being challenged. But what do we have when it turns out that the person’s faith is validated and vindicated?
“Victimizing with reason”, eh? I’m still pleased at the time I was accused of “blatant toleration“.
Since I go straight to “Non Sequitur” as part of my pre-dawn wake-up ritual — well, it’s 6:15am in Oz — this was one of the first things I saw today. Loved it so much, I was the first to recommend it for StumbleUpon (Firefox fans will know what I mean)…
Now I’m off to bully and victimise religionists everywhere.
physicists were much better at “thinking outside the box” than us narrow-minded biologists
Of course they are. They have to do everything outside the box because no one’s willing to take the blame for killing the cat.
seems to me that the messages are mixed here. clearly, danae was flying, and it seems to have been contingent on her faith in her ability to do so.
Stop victimizing the cartoon with reason.
While all very clever, bravo; Frumious Bandersnark is the most succinct and apropos.My 2 cents is I’m amazed Danae even listened to reason!
“The “science has proved that bees can’t fly” urban myth originated in a 1934 book by entomologist Antoine Magnan, who discussed a mathematical equation by Andre Sainte-Lague, an engineer. The equation proved that the maximum lift for an aircraft’s wings could not be achieved at equivalent speeds of a bee. I.e., an airplane the size of a bee, moving as slowly as a bee, could not fly. Although this did not mean a bee can’t fly (which after all does not have stationary wings like the posited teency aircraft), nevertheless the idea that Magnan’s book said bees oughtn’t be able to fly began to spread.”
http://www.paghat.com/beeflight.html
Yes! How dare people question the Law of Evolution!!!
…But was she *really* flying, or was it simply a cartoon device about imagination, as this example shows?
Actually, on second look, the cartoon could also be interpreted on the side of the “faith believers” since her sister saw her flying but decided that it couldn’t really be happening because it conflicted with known physics laws. So, either Wiley is ambiguous about the notion of religion vs. science, or he just didn’t set the joke up right.
(OTOH he does point out the absurdities of religion by showing how easy it is for Danae to create her own “church” and mythology).
DSM continues to troll.
Danae’s floating was clearly a metaphor for her faith. Or something.
Throwing my 2c on this, since I don’t see much use in faith I prefer to say that I trust in the ability of empirical methods to describe and model observations. I also trust our ability to some day imitate interesting properties of biological systems since most are on a reasonable scale.
Of course, this means that my trust has a modicum of uncertainty, as in all empiricism. But I trade that to confine faith to the fully uncertain and unmotivated faith of the religious type. They can have all of it. :-P
Thank you, I vaguely remember know.
Because without the velocity factor, even if a bumblebee has a heavy body with length comparable to the wing lengths, since lift scale as area while mass scale as volume a rescaling to plane size would be reasonable otherwise unless I am mistaken. (Say a factor 1000 on wing lengths for an oversize airliner, and then a factor 100 on the body length scale.)
Um, that would make flight speed go from say 1 cm/s to 10 m/s or 40 km/h. Yep, could be bad even with the above oversize wings and undersize body. My car can walk faster than that, and it sounds like take off from plane surfaces would be a problem. (Not stall speed it seems; maximum allowed stall speeds for roughly similar build ultra light aircraft planes is 24 knots or 40 km/h.)
I wouldn’t be surprised if a detailed model would give a definitive negative result as opposed to the very rough minimum sketch here.
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truth machine:
Yes, the general sentiment feels like it could be an old tool of christianity. Perhaps older than this even. But since I am anxious to pin it down (it is such an excellent example of religion up front consenting to reject the blabbering of NOMA), I would like to find the quote in question. Perhaps you can help?
Throwing my 2c on this, since I don’t see much use in faith I prefer to say that I trust in the ability of empirical methods to describe and model observations. I also trust our ability to some day imitate interesting properties of biological systems since most are on a reasonable scale.
Of course, this means that my trust has a modicum of uncertainty, as in all empiricism. But I trade that to confine faith to the fully uncertain and unmotivated faith of the religious type. They can have all of it. :-P
Thank you, I vaguely remember know.
Because without the velocity factor, even if a bumblebee has a heavy body with length comparable to the wing lengths, since lift scale as area while mass scale as volume a rescaling to plane size would be reasonable otherwise unless I am mistaken. (Say a factor 1000 on wing lengths for an oversize airliner, and then a factor 100 on the body length scale.)
Um, that would make flight speed go from say 1 cm/s to 10 m/s or 40 km/h. Yep, could be bad even with the above oversize wings and undersize body. My car can walk faster than that, and it sounds like take off from plane surfaces would be a problem. (Not stall speed it seems; maximum allowed stall speeds for roughly similar build ultra light aircraft planes is 24 knots or 40 km/h.)
I wouldn’t be surprised if a detailed model would give a definitive negative result as opposed to the very rough minimum sketch here.
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truth machine:
Yes, the general sentiment feels like it could be an old tool of christianity. Perhaps older than this even. But since I am anxious to pin it down (it is such an excellent example of religion up front consenting to reject the blabbering of NOMA), I would like to find the quote in question. Perhaps you can help?
Ironic, since we were discussing religion and physics – an excellent example of a Non Sequitur.
Btw, not that there is such a law, but since “common descent” (or, equivalently, nested hierarchies) is expected and observed in all life as we know it, it would probably fit the bill of becoming instated as one analogous to physical laws. It would embody the (theory supported) fact, as opposed to the theory at large, just as the laws of thermodynamics et cetera.
Unfortunately, biologists are much more humble than physicists. Time to think outside the box? :-P
Ironic, since we were discussing religion and physics – an excellent example of a Non Sequitur.
Btw, not that there is such a law, but since “common descent” (or, equivalently, nested hierarchies) is expected and observed in all life as we know it, it would probably fit the bill of becoming instated as one analogous to physical laws. It would embody the (theory supported) fact, as opposed to the theory at large, just as the laws of thermodynamics et cetera.
Unfortunately, biologists are much more humble than physicists. Time to think outside the box? :-P
I’m gonna go with “it’s a fricken cartoon” as an explanation for her floating.
As clearly stated in Roadrunner v. Wile E. Coyote, comic laws of physics do not apply until the user is aware that they are defying any said laws.
Re Martin Luther and logic being the “tool of Satan”: ML apparently thought just about anything and anyone who disagreed with him was a “tool of Satan”! It was more a standard demonising put-down of any opposition than ever being a reasoned and evidenced thing. However, he also thought that Satan was the tool of God. So, by extension …
The “according to scientists bees can’t fly” story, long before its popular debunking, was one of the key components of my apostasy (along with the bashing-babies-heads psalm — which I discovered on my own while actually reading the bible — and the midianite rape & genocide). It was so patently stupid that it made it impossible to continue to take preachers who propagated it as infallible or even to continue to respect their thinking at all. Once I started questioning what they were saying it was all downhill from there.
It was like when in grade 4 one of my teachers taught us that milk was harder to digest because the first step in digestion is liquefacation but milk is already a liquid (the implication — apparently quite palatable to the other 9 year-olds — being that the digestive process was some sort of entity stymied by the fact that milk had craftily co-opted the first step in digestion. It was clear to me that while milk may or may not be harder to digest, this reasoning for why was the thought process of an idiot. I was no longer able to muster any respect for him at all.
Something about a dinner party in which somebody had asked a physicist about the aerodynamics of bee flight, and the physicist did a quick calculation on the back of a handy envelope, treating the bee as a glider with stiff wings, and found it wouldn’t work.
IIRC, you have to replace “physicist” with “engineer lab assistant”
Not even a scientists, and he said (roughly translating the French) “”According to what we know about aerodynamics, the bumblebee shouldn’t fly”. So even then it was a statement about the limits of then current aerodynamics theory, not bumblebees.
Of course, a lot of stories get twisted around, like that of King Knut and the waves…
Regarding bees can’t fly: I received an email pointing to a nice summary of the story. It agrees with comment #26, so I assume the case is closed. This time I’ll hang on to the reference!
Steve (comment #6) – do you have a link for your blog debate with the preacher? I’d be interested in reading that – he sounds rather Mummert-like.
I’d like to read Steve’s blog debate with the Minister as well. Based on my own experiences, I suspect Steve (assuming he is an atheist) was accused of being amoral by definition at least once during the debate. If that is the case, I also suspect the Minister was never accused of moral bullying.
How anyone can dedicate their professional life to denouncing others’ actions on the basis of some claim of objective morality and then accuse someone else of ‘bullying’ is beyond me.
Mind-boggling.
DSM, either evolution is a world-wide conspiracy by scientists who do not tolerate dissenting views or it’s a ‘theory in crisis’ that top scientists are skeptical of. You can’t have both.
Can’t you people get your spin straight?
Yes Steve, a link please.
DSM:
Please read this carefully. Evolution is just a theory. If you want to attack it, go with that angle and at least you will not display your total ignorance of that which you speak.
Steve, if you get another chance, maybe you can ask the skypilot, “Does that make you an ignorant bully?”
I think I’m with some of the others commenting above. That is, it is
nice that someone is defending science and reason, it would be nicer still if the
defense was a good one. The problem is that, if the cartoon is trying
to defend science, then it undermines itself, because if “the laws of physics”
really could be negated by “faith”, then it would be the laws of physics
that required revision. The problem is that there is no evidence that such has
ever occurred.
Comment #36: I’m reminded of a mathematicians’ joke:
You have a firehose, a fire hydrant, and a house on fire. What do you do? You connect the firehose to the fire hydrant, and put out the fire.
Now, suppose you have a firehose, a fire hydrant, and a house not on fire. What do you do? You set the house on fire, reducing the problem to the previous one.
SEF:
Thank you! That was rather weaker context than I hoped, but perhaps I can use ML’s sentiment anyway.
SEF:
Thank you! That was rather weaker context than I hoped, but perhaps I can use ML’s sentiment anyway.