Atheist cooties cause cancer

It must be true. You better not touch us — the cooties will jump off and give you horrible diseases. Also, everything we handle, including our money, is contaminated. You can trust the American Cancer Society on this one.

You see, Todd Stiefel and the Foundation Beyond Belief offered $250,000 in matching funds to the ACS — a great big pot of godless moolah — and the American Cancer Society dodged and waffled and squirmed and ran away from the money. A charitable foundation turned their nose up at half a million dollars. It’s inexplicable.

Except for the cooties. That’s the only conceivable answer that makes sense.

Muslim women: screwed wherever they go

Muslim women in Muslim countries are at the mercy of the theocrats. Marzieh Vafamehr is an Iranian actress who made a movie describing the plight of modern men and women in a country with a medieval theocratic government — and as if Iran really honestly wanted to demonstrate that it actually was as bad or worse than the movie showed, they have now sentenced her to 90 lashes and a year in jail.

Jeez. Muslim women ought to flee to the West, then. Not so fast: it seems we aren’t so welcoming. Irum Abbassi was trying to take a plane from San Diego to San Jose when she was kicked off for looking Muslim.

Irum Abbassi alleges that on March 13, Southwest Airlines employees unlawfully removed her from a flight from San Diego to San Jose, where she was headed to finish research for her Master’s thesis. According to the complaint, Abbassi “was readily identifiable as Muslim by what she wore: a long shirt, pants, sweater and hijab, or Islamic headscarf.” She was detained at security for a second screening, but was allowed to board.

When boarding, Abbassi says she was on the phone with a Verizon representative in order to activate her smartphone. When the plane was getting ready to depart, Abbassi alleges she told the representative “I’ve got to go.”

Soon after, there was an announcement that an “administrative delay” would hold up the flight, at which point a TSA agent came on board and asked Abbassi to get off. From the complaint:

Once at the jetway the TSA agent explained to [Abbassi] that the flight attendant believed that she had been acting suspiciously. Although the flight attendant admittedly could not adequately hear [Abbassi], she reported that [Abbassi] might have uttered ‘It’s a go’ into her cell phone.

Shortly after, the complaint alleges, the TSA agent determined that Abbassi was not a security risk, and said she could re-board the plane. But at the gate she was told that the captain would not let her board because the crew was “uncomfortable” with her on the plane.

It always seems to be Southwest Airlines, doesn’t it? What’s the matter with that company?

At least she wasn’t whipped for her temerity. I think we should aim a little higher than being able to say “Come to America, Muslima! We usually won’t lash you with a whip!”

Deepak Chopra reviews Richard Dawkins

Shorter Deepak: “Richard Dawkins didn’t endorse my quantum bullshit, therefore The Magic of Reality sucks!”

Deepak Chopra actually sounds quite upset — his review of the book reads more like the indignant squawk of a charlatan furious that the presence of a skeptic might cut into his take. It’s largely an exercise in name-dropping and the profession of bleary, vacuous misinterpretations of science on his part, which he then turns around and uses to accuse Dawkins of error because he doesn’t share his inoculation of the ideas with pseudoscience. Like this:

What is obnoxious about Dawkins’ version is his tone of absolute authority about matters that he shows complete ignorance of. Respected physicists like John Archibald Wheeler, Sir Arthur Eddington, Freeman Dyson, Hans-Peter Dürr, Henry Stapp, Sir Roger Penrose, Eugene Wigner, Erwin Schrodinger, and Werner Heisenberg suggest a fundamental role for consciousness in quantum theory and a mental component at the level of biological organisms and the universe itself.

I notice that 56% of the people he names are dead, that none of them are biologists or psychologists, and that several of them, while authoritative in their fields, aren’t actually known for their views on consciousness. This is a common pseudo-scientific con, roping a few famous corpses into agreeing with wacky interpretations.

But even the ones who’ve pontificated on consciousness and physics, like Dyson and Penrose, don’t help. Those guys don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Quantum effects matter in that they’re fundamental to how all matter behaves, but cells are big — any counter-intuitive weird quantum effects are going to be negligible in the large-scale bulk activity of a synapse. This is a world where the laws of thermodynamics and electromagnetism rule: the Goldman-Hodgkin-Katz equation doesn’t need any quantum handwaving to accurately describe the potential across a cell membrane.

Bringing these guys into the argument is as silly as if I were to charge into a discussion of how the tides go in, the tides go out by insisting that we have to take into account the effect of the presence of schools of squid. Sure, they’re real and they’re there, but they don’t affect the tides. This simply is not where neuroscience is going: if you want to understand how the nervous system works, learn math and the physics of electrochemistry, and in particular learn about biochemistry, pharmacology, and molecular biology…but studying quantum physics won’t help you at all.

I won’t even get into his absurd ideas that the universe itself is conscious. Dawkins’ book is about reality, not fantasy.

So Deepak then gets off his quantum bandwagon and tries to discuss biology. He fails.

Dawkins bypasses evidence from his own field of genetics that might upset his hobby-horse. He ignores, either willfully or through ignorance, the evidence for directed mutagenesis first put forward by John Cairns of Harvard in 1988. John Cairns showed that if you grow bacteria with the inability to metabolize lactose, they evolve that ability in petri dishes tens of thousands of times faster than would be predicted if mutations simply occurred randomly. Professor Rudolph Tanzi of Harvard Medical School further points out that mutations in the human genome do not occur randomly but cluster in “hot spots” that are hundreds of times more likely to undergo mutation.

Dawkins is not a geneticist: he’s an ethologist and evolutionary biologist. Of course, he knows far more about genetics than does Deepak, so his confusion is understandable. Deepak would have to stand awed before the depth of knowledge known by my undergraduate students in comparison to his.

The Cairns results were interesting, but I don’t know of anyone who still claims that they are the result of directed mutagenesis, other than woo-peddlers. The fact that bacteria produced viable mutations more rapidly than predicted is explained by the observation of hypermutability in bacteria under stress. Basically, if you measure the error rate of replication in normal, healthy bacteria under growth promoting conditions, and then use that same rate to predict the frequency of mutations in a population under stressed conditions, you’ll underestimate the frequency.

The observation of hotspots for mutation in the genome is also well-known. It’s not magic, it’s not because these regions are well-liked by the mutation fairy, it’s because of chemistry. Some areas of a chromosome are more prone to breakage or error because of their structure or sequence.

This does not defy the observation that mutations are random. It merely means that the probability of mutation is not uniform across the entire length of the genome. Deepak’s argument is like claiming that because, when shooting craps, you’re more likely to roll a 7 than snake-eyes, throwing two dice generates a non-random result. Deepak doesn’t understand physics or biology, and he also doesn’t understand elementary probability theory.

Dawkins does. I heard him talk about this book on Sunday, and Deepak’s baseless complaints to the contrary, he did take a moment to explain what he meant by “random”, and it wasn’t the cartoonish nonsense Deepak Chopra babbles about.

I could go on and on about the stupidity of Deepak’s review — every paragraph is like the evacuations of an elephant with diarrhea — massively feculent and slimy, of a quality that will not even appeal to the neighborhood dung beetles. But I do have to mention one more sentence that left me laughing.

One doesn’t ask for advanced genetics in a primer for young adults, but one does ask that the writer know his field before adopting a tone of authority.

That’s rich coming from a quantum quack who is demonstrably deluded about medicine, biology, evolution, physics, chemistry, and the entirety of science, yet manages to pretend to be an authority every day.

(Also on Sb)

Why I am an atheist – Frederick Sparks

I am an atheist because I have never seen any real evidence of any gods of any kind. I was raised Catholic and later converted to Baptist as an adult. Even as a child it bothered me that god did not act in obvious and public ways as depicted in the Bible. The liberal interpretation that the supernatural events in the Bible should be interpreted metaphorically only begged the question why the god entity shouldn’t be interpreted metaphorically as well. Also, as an African American I can’t reconcile accepting a religion that was used to enslave my ancestors.

But seeing George Carlin’s routine Religion is Bullshit sealed my atheism.

Frederick Sparks
United States

(I put out a simple call for your explanations for why you’re an atheist, and I’m still inundated with submissions. This will be a daily feature on Pharyngula.)

Deepak Chopra reviews Richard Dawkins

Shorter Deepak: “Richard Dawkins didn’t endorse my quantum bullshit, therefore The Magic of Reality sucks!”

Deepak Chopra actually sounds quite upset — his review of the book reads more like the indignant squawk of a charlatan furious that the presence of a skeptic might cut into his take. It’s largely an exercise in name-dropping and the profession of bleary, vacuous misinterpretations of science on his part, which he then turns around and uses to accuse Dawkins of error because he doesn’t share his inoculation of the ideas with pseudoscience. Like this:

What is obnoxious about Dawkins’ version is his tone of absolute authority about matters that he shows complete ignorance of. Respected physicists like John Archibald Wheeler, Sir Arthur Eddington, Freeman Dyson, Hans-Peter Dürr, Henry Stapp, Sir Roger Penrose, Eugene Wigner, Erwin Schrodinger, and Werner Heisenberg suggest a fundamental role for consciousness in quantum theory and a mental component at the level of biological organisms and the universe itself.

I notice that 56% of the people he names are dead, that none of them are biologists or psychologists, and that several of them, while authoritative in their fields, aren’t actually known for their views on consciousness. This is a common pseudo-scientific con, roping a few famous corpses into agreeing with wacky interpretations.

But even the ones who’ve pontificated on consciousness and physics, like Dyson and Penrose, don’t help. Those guys don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Quantum effects matter in that they’re fundamental to how all matter behaves, but cells are big — any counter-intuitive weird quantum effects are going to be negligible in the large-scale bulk activity of a synapse. This is a world where the laws of thermodynamics and electromagnetism rule: the Goldman-Hodgkin-Katz equation doesn’t need any quantum handwaving to accurately describe the potential across a cell membrane.

Bringing these guys into the argument is as silly as if I were to charge into a discussion of how the tides go in, the tides go out by insisting that we have to take into account the effect of the presence of schools of squid. Sure, they’re real and they’re there, but they don’t affect the tides. This simply is not where neuroscience is going: if you want to understand how the nervous system works, learn math and the physics of electrochemistry, and in particular learn about biochemistry, pharmacology, and molecular biology…but studying quantum physics won’t help you at all.

I won’t even get into his absurd ideas that the universe itself is conscious. Dawkins’ book is about reality, not fantasy.

So Deepak then gets off his quantum bandwagon and tries to discuss biology. He fails.

Dawkins bypasses evidence from his own field of genetics that might upset his hobby-horse. He ignores, either willfully or through ignorance, the evidence for directed mutagenesis first put forward by John Cairns of Harvard in 1988. John Cairns showed that if you grow bacteria with the inability to metabolize lactose, they evolve that ability in petri dishes tens of thousands of times faster than would be predicted if mutations simply occurred randomly. Professor Rudolph Tanzi of Harvard Medical School further points out that mutations in the human genome do not occur randomly but cluster in “hot spots” that are hundreds of times more likely to undergo mutation.

Dawkins is not a geneticist: he’s an ethologist and evolutionary biologist. Of course, he knows far more about genetics than does Deepak, so his confusion is understandable. Deepak would have to stand awed before the depth of knowledge known by my undergraduate students in comparison to his.

The Cairns results were interesting, but I don’t know of anyone who still claims that they are the result of directed mutagenesis, other than woo-peddlers. The fact that bacteria produced viable mutations more rapidly than predicted is explained by the observation of hypermutability in bacteria under stress. Basically, if you measure the error rate of replication in normal, healthy bacteria under growth promoting conditions, and then use that same rate to predict the frequency of mutations in a population under stressed conditions, you’ll underestimate the frequency.

The observation of hotspots for mutation in the genome is also well-known. It’s not magic, it’s not because these regions are well-liked by the mutation fairy, it’s because of chemistry. Some areas of a chromosome are more prone to breakage or error because of their structure or sequence.

This does not defy the observation that mutations are random. It merely means that the probability of mutation is not uniform across the entire length of the genome. Deepak’s argument is like claiming that because, when shooting craps, you’re more likely to roll a 7 than snake-eyes, throwing two dice generates a non-random result. Deepak doesn’t understand physics or biology, and he also doesn’t understand elementary probability theory.

Dawkins does. I heard him talk about this book on Sunday, and Deepak’s baseless complaints to the contrary, he did take a moment to explain what he meant by “random”, and it wasn’t the cartoonish nonsense Deepak Chopra babbles about.

I could go on and on about the stupidity of Deepak’s review — every paragraph is like the evacuations of an elephant with diarrhea — massively feculent and slimy, of a quality that will not even appeal to the neighborhood dung beetles. But I do have to mention one more sentence that left me laughing.

One doesn’t ask for advanced genetics in a primer for young adults, but one does ask that the writer know his field before adopting a tone of authority.

That’s rich coming from a quantum quack who is demonstrably deluded about medicine, biology, evolution, physics, chemistry, and the entirety of science, yet manages to pretend to be an authority every day.

(Also on FtB)

Guess whose house is getting TP’ed this Halloween?

Oh, man, everyone I knew when I was a kid hated these people: you’d go trick-or-treating at their house, and they’d hand out cheesy stupid bible tracts or worse, pieces of paper with bible verses on them. Now some horrible, joyless people are promoting Jesusween, where they encourage more people to do just that.

Ick. Smug and sanctimonious. The only good thing about their website is the graphic prediction on the page.

In addition to the toilet paper, though, expect the cross to be eggsplattered, too.

It was his turn to get expelled

Richard Dawkins was supposed to speak at a hotel near Detroit, but had to change his plans at the last minute because the hotel owner watches TV and is bigoted and unethical.

Prejudice against atheists manifested itself again when The Wyndgate Country Club in Rochester Hills, Michigan (outside of Detroit), cancelled an event with scientist and author Richard Dawkins after learning of Dawkins’s views on religion. The event had been arranged by the Center for Inquiry–Michigan (CFI), an advocacy group for secularism and science, and the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

The Wyndgate terminated the agreement after the owner saw an October 5th interview with Dawkins on The O’Reilly Factor in which Dawkins discussed his new book, The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True.

Hmm. The most prominent atheist in the world gets openly discriminated against, and where’s the outrage? I hope CFI is pursuing legal action.