Furious overconfidence does not counter the evidence

Here’s another wild creationist claim that just popped up from the YouTube algorithm. It’s a shouting match between a Muslim creationist (Subboor Ahmad) and an individual from the crowd, who is challenged to define evolution. He says “natural selection plus mutation,” which prompts this furious response from Ahmad.

If it’s natural selection plus random mutations, it becomes epigenetics.

What? No it’s not. That’s absurd. It just tells me that Subboor Ahmad knows nothing about evolution.

It also includes a clip of an encounter between Ahmad and Aron Ra, in which Aron correctly points out that drift is the major driver of evolutionary change, and Ahmad blows up in fury and accuses him of being drunk.

A creationist denies molecular evolution

Last night, Aron Ra got into a discussion about a claim that protein evolution is impossible, specifically, that different protein families could not have evolved. Here is the provocative and baseless claim.

There is no research that says protein evolution is possible, unless you appeal to evolution. That’s circular.
There is no research published that explains how a new protein family, with stable novel folds, can evolve in the rugged evolutionary landscape. Only conjecture and always with an appeal to the theory. That’s called theory laden evidence.

I have issues with the premise that evolution is fact (bad science). That demands a better definition of evolution so I’ll clarify, I have problem with the premise that random mutation, gene duplication, gene transfer, gene shift, and anything I may have missed, under the influence of natural selection is sufficient to produce biodiversity.

Perhaps a new mechanism will be discovered, but at present there is no evidence that evolution is possible beyond an appeal to evolution.

There is a barrier to protein evolution. Gradual change doesn’t provide a path from one protein family to another because the landscape is rugged. Point mutations will lead proteins off the functional cliff. Duplication doesn’t fit the bill either, not enough variety. Fact is, without some sort of bridge protein evolution is inconceivable. No bridge has been found.

I’m not claiming that there isn’t one or that it will never be found, I’m saying there is no evidence for one. It’s a leap of faith to say it happened.

I know you’re not a fan of that word, faith, but there is no alternative. The only justification for that faith is ontology. It’s your belief in naturalism which cannot be proven one way or the other. in fact, the very problem I’m discussing here is a thorn in the side of naturalism.

You’ve waged a lifelong war against theism and always appeal to intellectual honesty. Well, I’m being intellectually honest. There in no evidence that evolution is possible because protein evolution has no known solution.

Proteins exist on peaks separated by valleys where function drops off completely. The “rugged landscape”. The peaks play home to a variety of related proteins with limited variety of amino acid sequences called families. A peak is more like a plateau. Small changes can produce variety of function and fitness. Large changes cause function to collapse into a valley where the protein gets deselected.

The amount of change required to find a new stable fold with novel function, a.k.a. a new family on its own plateau, far exceeds what proteins can tolerate by incremental change without losing all function. This is not controversial.

Proteins need to leap or require a bridge. Leaps in sequence change are irrational because the search space is too large and the target too small.

The presumption is that there is an unknown “bridge” that allows proteins to make the transition from one peak to another. That bridge has yet to be found (or even adequately hypothesised), and without it proteins are trapped on local peaks. Meaning evolution is limited to variety of what is, with no access to cool new stuff. Micro but not macro.

The premise that evolution is a fact allows for the presumption that “we don’t know yet” is a valid placeholder for the bridge. A glaring “god of the gaps”. My “dilemma” is how can evolution be called a fact, when the facts exist to challenge it? It can only be reckoned that belief is the “Jesus nut” that keeps it from flying apart.

Anyone who is a materialist will naturally, and justifiably, search for that bridge. Dualists can as well, but it’s discovery isn’t an imperative. For the theist, that bridge may well be agency. In any case, agency is no worse than “we don’t know yet” as a filler.

My question is, on what basis do you declare the materialist ontology correct and the dualist ontology false? The inability to test is a feature, not a test in itself.

What does it matter if the problem was before Eukaryotes? Evolution covers the first cell to everything. From what I’ve read, the Cambrian Explosion is where the problem is most evident with many new protein families that have no observed precursors. All within a tiny fraction of evolutionary time.

“A protein family is a group of proteins that share a common evolutionary origin, typically reflected in their similar amino acid sequences, structural features, and often their biological functions. These proteins are usually derived from a single ancestral gene that has undergone duplication and divergence over time, leading to variations within the family. Members of a protein family may differ in their specific roles or expression patterns but retain enough similarity to be classified together.” -Grok (I trust AI is allowed for definitions?)

I understand the standard hypothesis. Gene duplication allows one to remain stable while the other continues on down the evolutionary trail. I also understand there is a vast leap required for a protein to diverge into a new family. Recombination is most commonly considered for large leaps, though no evidence exists it can be done.

I understand the standard hypothesis. Gene duplication allows one to remain stable while the other continues on down the evolutionary trail. I also understand there is a vast leap required for a protein to diverge into a new family. Recombination is most commonly considered for large leaps, though no evidence exists it can be done.

I also understand that proteins are intolerant of big change. That paper by Axe estimated that only 1 in 10^63 random sequences fold right. Leaps mean a big change which hits that small target.

On the other hand, incremental changes enjoy a similar problem of losing functionality (which can kill all progress), while also facing time constraints. There isn’t enough time for evolution to search out functional sequences. Even a nice new protein with a stable fold must break the barrier of epistasis.

Finally, I’m talking about entirely new families. Think Superfamily. Like a transporter to the first protease. The information hurdle is massive, and the serendipity required makes Powerball look like a sure bet.

Evolution is not really varying allele frequencies. That works for HS kids but it falls short. Evolutionary theory is the explanation for those varying frequencies. Theories explain HOW, not what.

So we talked for a while about this silly claim. As Aron points out this is just the old show me a cat giving birth to a dog creationist claim translated to show me a transport protein evolving into a protease. It’s the same thing and the same answer. We can trace the ancestry of cats and dogs and see that they converge on a common ancestor in the distant past; we can trace the ancestry of various proteins and follow them back to a distant duplication event to the modern diverse pattern. The creationist wants to argue that the process is simply impossible by throwing around various sciencey terms. He uses the old creationist claim that the probability of a particular functional sequence is only 1 in 1063, a calculation built on faulty premises. He invokes the barrier of epistasis…what barrier is that? I don’t think he knows what epistasis is, let alone the nature of his imagined barrier. He throws around the term rugged fitness landscapes without recognizing that landscapes are an explanatory metaphor, not an actual physical entity.

If you don’t want to listen to us babble, I sent Aron a link to a paper by Tomoko Ohta that summarizes it all.

In eukaryote genomes, there are many kinds of gene families. Gene duplication and conversion are sources of the evolution of gene families, including those with uniform members and those with diverse functions. Population genetics theory on identity coefficients among gene members of a gene family shows that the balance between diversification by mutation, and homogenization by unequal crossing over and gene conversion, is important. Also, evolution of new functions is due to gene duplication followed by differentiation. Positive selection is necessary for the evolution of novel functions. However, many examples of current gene families suggest that both drift and selection are at work on their evolution.

The creationist says that all of that is inconceivable, of course. Never mind that we have evidence of each incremental step and can see intermediates in the process preserved in the genome.

Then he falls back on free will and morality as obstacles to evolution, somehow.

A guilty pleasure

Sometimes, I’ll tune in to these atheist phone line shows on YouTube. It’s unfair, but it’s always the worst, dumbest, most ignorant Christians who call in to air their idiotic views publicly — maybe there are intelligent Christians out there, but they don’t call in to get skewered by atheists who know the Bible better than they do. Also, I enjoy hearing Matt shout, “SHUT THE FUCK UP” to some babbling ninny who can’t answer a simple question and chooses to instead try and overwhelm everyone with frenzied bullshit.

For example, this video titled “From Biblical Slavery to Alien DNA – Nebraska Steve Takes Us on Another Trip” is a good example of the genre. First the guy tries to say the Bible doesn’t endorse slavery, only to be trounced by the hosts reciting Bible verses at him. Then he segues to claiming there is evidence for God, although he can’t say what it was, in spite of repeated requests from the hosts to explain what that evidence was.

He did finally gasp out that “the WOW signal” is evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. In case you don’t know, here’s is the WOW signal.

In 1977, an astronomer named Jerry Ehrman was recording radio transmissions from space, and got a brief, strong signal that he didn’t understand, so he scribbled “Wow!” on the printout. I’ve seen this cited so often by so many people as a sign that aliens are out there.

It’s not. The observation has been repeated. It’s noise from a passing comet.

The explanation started to come into focus last year when a team at the CPS suggested that the signal might have come from a hydrogen cloud accompanying a comet—additionally, the movement of the comet would explain why the signal was not seen again. The team noted that two comets had been in the same part of the sky that the Big Ear was monitoring on the fateful day. Those comets, P/2008 Y2(Gibbs) and 266/P Christensen had not yet been discovered. The team then got a chance to test their idea as the two comets appeared once again in the night sky from November 2016 through February of 2017.

The team reports that radio signals from 266/P Christensen matched those from the Wow! signal 40 years ago. To verify their results, they tested readings from three other comets, as well, and found similar results. The researchers acknowledge that they cannot say with certainty that the Wow! signal was generated by 266/P Christensen, but they can say with relative assurance that it was generated by a comet.

Somehow, I don’t think Nebraska Steve would care.

I’m not banal enough to be a NYT columnist

I have no idea what he’s trying to say with this illustration on the column. God has a whip? He’s a bastard to make you behave?

But I could try, if the New York Times would give me a sinecure as their atheist columnist, and if I were willing to discard any self-respect I might have. After all, they do employ the most insipid theist they could find, Ross Douthat. He tried something slightly creative this week, trying to steel-man an atheist argument, badly. He presents his idea of The Best Argument Against Having Faith in God. It’s the problem of evil.

One interesting point about this argument is that while it’s often folded into the briefs for atheism that claim to rely primarily on hard evidence and science, it isn’t properly speaking an argument that some creating power does not exist. Rather it’s an argument about the nature of that power, a claim that the particular kind of God envisioned by many believers and philosophers — all powerful and all good — would not have made the world in which we find ourselves, and therefore that this kind of God does not exist.

That is correct. No one uses the problem of evil to disprove a god, but only the idea of a benevolent god, or more specifically, the perfectly good being most Christians promote. When I see it deployed in an argument, it’s usually to make the narrower point that I don’t believe in your god.

Douthat follows the usual out — refusing to deal with a direct criticism of his version of god to ask, “what about this other god?”, a weaker god than his magical being. And then falls back on general apologetics.

You can’t fully counter the argument from evil with evidence of God’s existence because the argument doesn’t fully try to establish God’s nonexistence. And you can’t fully counter it with an argument for why God might allow suffering — as a necessary corollary of free will, for instance — because the claim isn’t about the existence of suffering but its scale and scope and excess.

What you can offer, instead, is a set of challenges rather than straightforward rebuttals. The first challenge emphasizes the limits of what the argument from evil establishes even if you fully accept it: not that God doesn’t exist, not that the universe lacks a supernatural order, but just that the traditional Christian or classical-theist conception of God’s perfect goodness is somehow erroneous or overdrawn. This still leaves you with the converging lines of evidence for some kind of cosmic order, some kind of crucial human role within that drama. And it still leaves you with various theological alternatives to make sense of that evidence: You could be a pantheist or a polytheist, a gnostic or a dualist, a deist or a process theologian, and more. The argument from evil might be a reason to choose one of those schools over traditional Christianity, without being a good reason to choose atheism.

He really just doesn’t like atheism. Anything else but atheism. He doesn’t bother to say what those the converging lines of evidence for some kind of cosmic order are, though. But OK, sure, the problem of evil says you should be anything but a traditional Christian, I’ll take it.

Douthat is a traditional Catholic.

Does he even read what he writes?

The straw he grasps at is that any good exists, and you can’t explain that, therefore God.

But it makes the problem of good — real good, deep good, the Good, not just fleeting spasms and sensations — at least as notable a difficulty for the believer in a totally indifferent universe as the problem of evil is supposed to be for the religious believer.

Which suggests that even if that evil makes it hard for you to believe in a God of perfect power, you still shouldn’t give up hope that something very good indeed has a role in the order of the world.

Except that we don’t need an all-powerful supernatural being to explain how the world works.

The ball is in your court, New York Times: I’m available. I don’t know if I could write anything as stupid as Douthat’s scribblings, though. If I read enough Douthat will that make me ignorant enough to take his place?

Discovery Institute ♥ Joe Rogan & Bret Weinstein

The Discovery Institute is thrilled by Rogan and Weinstein, entirely because these conspiracy theorists criticize “Darwinism”. It’s laughable. Rogan is an ignorant meathead, and Weinstein is a weird outsider who profits from babbling nonsense about science. It’s no surprise that the garbage out crowd is in alignment with religious propagandists.

Here’s the bit the DI adores:

Weinstein says he is “sympathetic” to ID but rejects it, which we knew. He says the current version of Darwinism, however, is “broken” and the evolutionary mainstream “lies” to itself, and to us. He alludes to another Darwinian mechanism operating on top of the standard one of random mutation and natural selection:

I believe there’s a kind of information stored in genomes that is not in triplet codon form, that is much more of a type that would be familiar to a designer, either of machines or a programmer. [I believe] that what we did was, we took the random mutation model and we recognized that it was Darwinian, which it is, and we therefore assumed that it would explain anything that we could see that was clearly the product of Darwinian forces, on the basis of those random mutations. And we skipped the layer in between, in which selection has a different kind of information stored in the genome that is not triplet-codon in nature. [Emphasis added.]

In another words, I think he’s saying, the other information is in a “meta” relationship to the familiar material genome, the genetic information instantiated in DNA and other known physical epigenetic features in the cell.

Dr. Weinstein is a deep thinker, and I hope I’m not misrepresenting him. But this other information, in his view, is also material in nature, not spiritual — which might be the difference between Weinstein’s thinking and, say, that of Platonist ID scientists like Richard Sternberg and Günter Bechly who posit an “immaterial genome,” occupying that meta role.

Weinstein is not a deep thinker. He’s a disgraced ex-biologist and intellectual charlatan who now pals around with Douglas Murray and Andy Ngo and various other far right wing creeps, promoting ridiculous ideas about vaccines, race, and is an AIDS denialist, while promoting ivermectin during the COVID epidemic. He’s a fringe kook, but the DI is so stupid they can’t tell.

I have no idea what this “kind of information stored in genomes that is not in triplet codon form” that he is referring to is, and I don’t think he knows either. He’s making up strings of words. The DI is right about one thing: it is on a par with “immaterial genome”. It’s all nonspecific nonsense that dumb ol’ Joe Rogan will nod along to.

Weinstein has another tell that exposes his irrelevance.

[In my opinion,] the mainstream Darwinists are telling a kind of lie about how much we know and what remains to be understood. So by reporting that yes, Darwinism is true, and we know how it works, and people who aren’t compelled by the story are illiterate or ignorant or whatever, they are pretending to know more than they do. So all that being said, let me say, I think modern Darwinism is broken. Yes, I do think I know more or less how to fix it.
…
There are several different things that are wrong with [Darwinism]. The key one that I think is causing folks in intelligent design circles to begin to catch up is that the story we tell, about how it is that mutation results in morphological change, is incorrect.
…
I am sympathetic to the intelligent design folks, though I do not believe they’re on the right track. I’m open to a universe with intelligence behind it, but I’ve seen no evidence of that universe myself. I’m open to it. If it happens, I will look at it.

Darwinism. Darwinism, Darwinism, Darwinism. Yes, there are things wrong with Darwinism: it’s a 19th century hypothesis composed by a guy who knew nothing about DNA, genes, molecules, or mutation. Show me anyone who proudly announces that he has discovered problems with Darwinism, and I’ll show you a popinjay whose understanding of science ended in 1900.

What is the story we tell about how mutation results in morphological change? I would love to hear it.

And then…

You’ve had Stephen Meyer on. He’s a scientist who’s quite good, and he’s spotted that the mechanism in question [the standard Darwinian one] isn’t powerful enough to explain the phenomena that we swear it explains. And so he’s catching up, but that’s really on the Darwinists for not admitting what they can’t yet explain and pursuing it, which is what they should be doing.

Holy crap. Stephen Meyer is not a scientist. He got an undergrad degree in physics and earth science, decided he knew everything there is to know about biology, and went on to get a master’s and Ph.D. in philosophy. He held jobs in a couple of private Christian colleges before becoming a professional propagandist at the Discovery Institute. And now Weinstein thinks he’s a “quite good” scientist? That tells you all you need to know about Weinstein.

Well, that and vague, handwavey glop about mysterious sources of genetic information, vaccine quackery, racist apologetics, and ill-informed complaints about “Darwinism”. This is a guy whose whole career now is bent on getting on the Joe Rogan show to foment non-controversies.

If logic were a horserace, this guy would have lapped himself multiple times

A horse living as God intended it to

I suspect most of you don’t read the Answers Research Journal, the hack pseudoscientific journal published by Answers in Genesis to create the illusion that they do actual research. They don’t. And I don’t normally read it myself, but Daniel Phelps sent me a link to a recent article there titled Were Horses Designed to Be Ridden? If you know Betteridge’s law of headlines, then you know the answer is supposed to be “NO!”, but AiG can’t even get that right.

Horses have served as one of man’s closest companions for thousands of years. Humans have ridden them into battles, attached them to the plow, galloped them across great plains, and shown them in countless competitions. Found anywhere from ranches, to back yards, to racing tracks, to beaches, these magnificent animals have been used as instruments which brought great change into the world. One might even wonder how easily man would have managed to advance without them. With such close ties to man’s history, it seems natural that one should ask if horses were designed for riding. Such is the topic of this article and the research thereof. In considering different subjects such as History, Anatomy, and Scripture, it is this author’s belief that horses were designed to be ridden.

A bold claim. Does Caleb Harrier back it up? I shall follow Betteridge’s law, and the answer is…NO!

He’s supposed to provide evidence that horses were designed to be ridden, so he looks up the answer in a few sources, which is good. The sources are all consistent in their answer, which is also good.

Unfortunately, authors who have spoken to the topic of whether horses were designed to be ridden are usually dismissive to the idea. For example, the authors of Equine Science, simply state: “The horse is not designed to carry a rider’s weight on top of its back” (Pilliner and Davies 2004, 23). However, no explanation is provided in the text as to why the authors dismiss the idea.

Another example can be found in the popular book, How to Think Like a Horse by equine author Cherry Hill. In this work, she states that “A horse’s body isn’t really designed to carry extra weight, but it can by virtue of its suspension-bridge features” (Hill 2006, 50). Soon after, she adds: “Even though a horse is not designed to carry weight, because of the cooperative interaction between major topline ligaments and the circle of muscles, with careful consideration, we can ride” (Hill 2006, 52). The implication, then, from the author is that horses were not designed to be ridden. According to the text, horses at least have the capacity to be ridden but were not designed for such a role.

Numerous blog articles have been written on this topic of discussion as well. Sadly, these authors’ views also tend to be quite dismissive. In her article, “The Horse’s Body is not Designed to Carry a Person,” Didier (2019) states: “when we objectively assess what really holds a riding horse back we have to admit something quite awkward, and that is—from a design, strength, and balance point of view—the horse’s body is simply not designed to carry a person.” In this article, she at least provides reasoning for why she believes horses were not designed to be ridden, and it is due to their back structure in relation to where a rider sits.

In the article, “Were Horses Meant to be Ridden by Humans?”, Stone (2022) flatly opens with “Horses were never meant to be human slaves and carry them on their backs.” His explanation is the recurring theme about a horse’s anatomy, in addition to back pain caused by riding.

So all his sources say no, horses were not designed to be ridden, but he’s going to ignore that and decide that yes, they were designed to be ridden. So much for scholarship! His argument is that well, horses are ridden, and have been ridden throughout history, therefore they must be designed to be ridden. He also points out that they have strong back muscles, so therefore the only reason they don’t suffer catastrophic back failure is because they were designed to carry a human.

Then he unlimbers the big gun. The reason that we know horses were designed to be ridden is because the Bible, specifically the book of Revelation, says so.

It is this author’s position that, because Christ and His heavenly armies will one day be riding horses— as part of biblical prophecy—then horses were indeed designed to be ridden. It is not a horse’s historical record nor its anatomy that ultimately decides what it was designed for. As always, Scripture is our final authority. The King and His armies will return to the earth, riding on white horses. The horse kind—like other kinds—has always been a part of God’s plan. Horses have made a historical impact in our past; they will certainly have an impact in our future.

If that’s not enough evidence for you, there’s also the argument that Jesus would not use a horse for a purpose for which it was not designed.

Revelation 19 demonstrates that horses were designed by God to be ridden just as powerfully within a symbolic or metaphorical interpretation. For example, if horses were not designed to be ridden, then the Holy Spirit would not inspire John to write a passage that shows the Creator Jesus misusing His own creation. Also, if it were animal abuse to ride horses, Scripture—even metaphorically!—would not depict Jesus abusing His own creation.

I don’t know why he bothered to research horses, since he already knew his conclusion, and since the only source he needed was the Bible.

Oh no, not Thunderf00t!

It’s been over a decade since I even thought about Thunderf00t AKA Phil Mason. He had a blog here on FtB for about 3 days before he flamed out spectacularly — he decided to use his opportunity here to screech about feminism, and rant about all us cucks and how contemptible the site was. He was an embarrassing disaster, and we kicked him out (although, unfortunately, he kept his password to the backchannel and copied all the private discussions we’d had about this mess, and dumped them to the denizens of the slymepit.) He was a truly awful, obsessive, immoral person, we discovered.

Now Rebecca Watson picks at the scab and tells us what Thunderf00t is obsessed with now. It’s Elon Musk. I can’t fault him for that, but I can fault him for being so bad in his arguments. He is objectively bad at making arguments about anything.

Would you believe Thunderf00t still has one million subscribers on YouTube? Getting booted off freethoughtblogs didn’t do him any harm at all.

Another conference I won’t be attending

The Center for Inquiry has been ideologically captured by the wingnuts. We’ve known this for a long time, since it was basically bought out by the Richard Dawkins Foundation. CFI has announced a conference coming up in July, in which Richard Dawkins will hand out his annual Richard Dawkins Award to someone he considers worthy. Can you guess who it’s going to this year?

Keep in mind that in the past it has gone to Bill Maher, despite all the groans from the CFI membership.

Do you have a guess?

I’ll spill the beans. He’s giving it to…JOHN MCWHORTER. Jesus christ. He’s one of that small group of anti-DEI freaks who have melted down over the idea that non-white non-men might actually have something to contribute to society (face it, that’s what all the anti-woke/anti-DEI goons are about, that idea that white men are not the pinnacle of civilization.) Here’s a bit from Elie Mystal’s review of McWhorter’s last book.

McWhorter’s central thesis is that being woke — by which he seems to mean acknowledging the ongoing fact of bigotry, systemic racism and the resulting forms of oppression — is a religion. Not “like” a religion — McWhorter refuses to hedge this contention with simile. No, McWhorter argues that people who advocate for anti-racism policies, racial sensitivity training and (of course) “critical race theory” are all part of a religious movement with its own clergy. (Ibram X. Kendi, Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ta-Nehisi Coates have all been ordained, apparently.) He argues that this religion’s “Elect” has taken over the country and “rule[s] by inflicting terror” on those who dare to speak against it. Along the way, he warns that it is “coming after your kids” with a breathlessness that makes him sound less like a thoughtful academic and more like a conspiracy theorist looking for hidden critical race messages in the menus at Chuck E. Cheese.

He’s also an author on that terrible “politicization of science” paper that complained about how science not kow-towing to the far right’s racism is an example of “politicizing”, while ignoring people like Chris Rufo.

The madness of King Dawkins continues its descent. I suspect that McWhorter was hand-picked by Dawkins specifically because they both endorse that “woke mind-virus” nonsense.

Believe in belief, says famous physicist

Marcelo Gleiser is a humble guy. The Templeton Foundation just awarded him $1.5 million for being humble, as we know because when asked, “which aspect of your work do you think is most relevant to the Templeton Foundation’s spiritual aims?” by Scientific American, he claims he was given all that money for his humility.

Probably my belief in humility. I believe we should take a much humbler approach to knowledge, in the sense that if you look carefully at the way science works, you’ll see that yes, it is wonderful — magnificent! — but it has limits. And we have to understand and respect those limits. And by doing that, by understanding how science advances, science really becomes a deeply spiritual conversation with the mysterious, about all the things we don’t know. So that’s one answer to your question. And that has nothing to do with organized religion, obviously, but it does inform my position against atheism. I consider myself an agnostic.

Oh. I suspect his position against atheism was a more relevant criterion in the award — I don’t think that people who brag about their humility are particularly humble, especially not when they think their humility is so vast and impressive that it deserves millions of dollars.

I’m also surprised by his claim that being an agnostic means he is opposed to people who make claims against the existence of a god. Does he express a similar opposition to people who make positive claims in favor of the existence of a god? I think not. He wouldn’t have won a Templeton prize if he did. Also, he’s very confused about what atheism is.

I honestly think atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method. What I mean by that is, what is atheism? It’s a statement, a categorical statement that expresses belief in nonbelief. “I don’t believe even though I have no evidence for or against, simply I don’t believe.”

How dare those atheists simply not believe in a phenomenon for which they have no evidence! That is inconsistent with the scientific method, which according to Gleiser, expects you to accept any hypothesis in the absence of evidence! Better yet, you should accept it even if the only evidence you’ve got is against it!

I’d reply to his question “what is atheism?” by turning it around and asking “what are gods?” What are these things you expect us to respect and even believe? Be specific. I suspect that all I’d get is hand-wavey babble about spirituality.

More seriously, he opposes rejecting a hypothesis for the trivial flaw of being unsupported by any evidence.

But in science we don’t really do declarations. We say, “Okay, you can have a hypothesis, you have to have some evidence against or for that.” And so an agnostic would say, look, I have no evidence for God or any kind of god (What god, first of all? The Maori gods, or the Jewish or Christian or Muslim God? Which god is that?) But on the other hand, an agnostic would acknowledge no right to make a final statement about something he or she doesn’t know about. “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” and all that. This positions me very much against all of the “New Atheist” guys—even though I want my message to be respectful of people’s beliefs and reasoning, which might be community-based, or dignity-based, and so on. And I think obviously the Templeton Foundation likes all of this, because this is part of an emerging conversation

OK, I agree with part of that. You do have to have evidence for a hypothesis — you can’t make a proposal to NIH and expect to get funded if you have no preliminary evidence from your lab or the scientific literature to justify it (although you can submit such an empty proposal to the Templeton Foundation and get a big bucket of cash in return). However, we do have the right to strongly and provisionally reject a claim that is advanced in the absence of any support — in fact, it is necessary that we reject unfounded hypotheses out of hand, unless we want to waste immense amounts of time and effort and money in the futile pursuit of nonsense.

I encourage Dr Gleiser to invest that $1.5 million to research the existence of elves, which have roughly the same amount of evidentiary support as gods. It’s the scientific thing to do. Or, since he’s a theoretical physicist, maybe it would be more appropriate to use the money to make a perpetual motion machine. There is an immense number of absurd hypotheses that are dismissed by sensible scientists, and among them is the god hypothesis. That’s the atheist position that Gleiser opposes. Before you can expect rational people to believe your claims, you have to have a body of acts of god that aren’t better explained by natural mechanisms. No, the resurrection of Jesus doesn’t count, because we don’t believe it and you’ve got nothing but cultish claims and confused exaggerations in a holy book to back it up.

To return to his claim of humility, he doesn’t believe that at all. He thinks humans are all special!

You know, I’m a “Rare Earth” kind of guy. I think our situation may be rather special, on a planetary or even galactic scale. So when people talk about Copernicus and Copernicanism—the ‘principle of mediocrity’ that states we should expect to be average and typical, I say, “You know what? It’s time to get beyond that.” When you look out there at the other planets (and the exoplanets that we can make some sense of), when you look at the history of life on Earth, you will realize this place called Earth is absolutely amazing.

Great. What’s the new hypothesis to replace the idea that we’re the product of universal general properties of physics and chemistry? What’s special about Earth? Is there a specific insight that contributes to science that can be used here? The “rare earth” hypothesis is usually used as a tool to smuggle a god into the works, rather than chance and necessity.

He goes on and on, and some of the things he says are sensible — like yeah, we should take better care of our planet — but to be honest, I don’t care. I stopped caring when I read “Templeton Prize”.