The Intelligent Design creationists had a discombobulating conversation that they thought was brilliant, but just left me wondering what planet they live on. They were discussing when it was a better time to be an atheist, and apparently it was in 1890, when being an atheist would prohibit you from entering a major university.

Jay Richards: The fact that we now talk about the universe as having an age is a significant update from a century and a half ago. It leads to new questions. Is it unique? Was there one beginning? Can we talk about the beginning? But that’s a different sort of situation. And so, I think if you’re thinking in terms of worldviews, I would much rather be a materialist where everyone assumed the universe was eternal than be at a moment in which virtually everyone, whether skeptic or believer, says, “Well, the universe has an age, so it’s got a finite past.”

Peter Robinson: You’d rather be a materialist in the 1890s…

Jay Richards: Exactly.

Peter Robinson: Than today?

Jay Richards: Yes, and I think it’s much easier to be a theist when standard cosmology says “Well, the universe hasn’t always been here.” It’s no longer a good candidate for an ultimate explanation if it had a beginning.

Jay Richards is not an atheist, of course, which makes one wonder about his ability to see the world from the perspective of an atheist. But OK, he considers himself an authority on the godless. That does not surprise me at all.

As an atheist and a materialist, though, I can say pretty definitely that the better time to be a materialist is when we have more information about the material world, which ought to be obvious. The big difference between scientists and the clowns at the Discovery Institute is that we welcome new information and aren’t trying to force-fit the universe into a mold decided upon by ancient civilizations.

So our universe had a beginning? We happily filed that data away with all the other facts about the material nature of the world. There’s nothing in that observation that implies a supernatural or magical origin — in fact, to the contrary, what led to that conclusion is physical observation and measurement, and physicists, not theologians, are exploring the 13.8 billion years of its existence.

News for Jay Richards: the Big Bang is not evidence for Jesus. It’s a bad time to be a theist when your god is getting squeezed into smaller and smaller gaps, and godless science is doing a better job of explaining how the world works than your holy book.

Destin Sandlin is an enthusiastic and cheerful engineering YouTuber, who spoke at Skepticon seven years ago. I was there. And I remember it, because I really disliked his talk. He’s got this “Aw shucks, I’m just a redneck engineer from Alabama” style that started to grate minutes into his presentation, and also he’s a Christian. That wouldn’t have been bad, except that that was his whole schtick — he’s a Christian speaking at an atheist conference! He must spend much of his time defending his faith and telling the audience to be tolerant of different perspectives, because obviously the Skepticon organizers must be intolerant despite the fact that they invited him to speak. It’s not as if they were unaware of his religious views, after all he mentions it and includes a Bible verse in every video.

I was really annoyed with the last 20 minutes, in which he showed off a bicycle that he’d modified to reverse the steering — it goes right when you turn left, etc. — and spent a year practicing riding it. His point was that different people have different backgrounds and expectations, so yeah, once again, you atheists who invited me here need to learn to respect other points of view.

Hated it.

Anyway, my response was to simply ignore him ever after, and had no interest in seeing any of his videos, until now. He has been written up by the Discovery Institute! He recently put up a video that was “golly gee, the flagellum sure is complex and awe-inspiring.”

A popular YouTube science channel called SmarterEveryDay has 11.5 million subscribers. The channel recently posted a fantastic video about the bacterial flagellum titled, “Nature’s Incredible ROTATING MOTOR (It’s Electric!).” It has been up for less than a week and already has over 1.9 million views. In the video, engineer Destin Sandlin explains how he became captivated after watching an online animation of the bacterial flagellum. He notes that the flagellum “is a really big topic, not only in biomechanics” but also in “philosophy.” That’s because “the complexity of the flagellum implies many things about the origin of life” and “raises questions that people are debating and they’re talking about how can this be?” Sandlin says that he’s “not going to answer” those deeper questions in this video and he doesn’t explicitly endorse intelligent design — but he clearly appreciates the importance of this tiny molecular machine.

Sandlin is very careful about walking a thin line. He clearly believes that complex molecular machines were designed, but he doesn’t have even basic knowledge about protein chemistry or how organisms work (at one point, he says that sperm flagella have rotary machinery like the bacterial flagellum — they don’t), so he’s conscious that he’s not at all qualified to discuss this stuff and that all he brings to the table on this topic is his religious bias, so he doesn’t come right out and say it. He’ll let the viewer fill in the blanks for him.

In the end, Sandlin expounds upon his emotional reaction to seeing the complexity of the flagellum. He says its complexity gives him “joy” and makes him feel “awe and reverence,” and even brings him to give thanks to God. What a beautiful reaction to such a little thing!

Gee whillikers, he’s just a good ol’ country boy letting you know how he feels…and providing fodder for creationists.

I’ll continue to ignore him, but now with additional vehemence.

I have learned that the most haunted road in Minnesota is located about an hour away from me, near Sibley State Park. It’s called Timber Lake Road.

The street is called Timber Lake Road, which is located in central Minnesota near New London. The area is far from any major cities – about an hour west of St. Cloud – so you’re in for a bit of a drive. In the daylight, that might not seem like such a big deal. It looks like any other country road in Minnesota.

But at night, things can get a little scary. The road is located near the thick forests and wetlands of Sibley State Park. The landscape certainly looks like it would set the scene for a horror movie. As the story goes, a woman who lived in a house near the road one day came home to find her children murdered. Devastated, she hung herself, and her ghost has wandered the road searching for the murderer ever since.

Locals have reported strange sightings on the road for years. Shadows in the woods along Timber Lake Road may point to a supernatural force at work. There have also been reports of red eyes blinking at travelers from the darkness.

A gated cemetery stands along Timber Lake Road. This is where the woman and her children are said to be buried. Here, visitors have sighted ghostly children wandering the graves. You may also hear strange sounds. Dogs howling, a woman wailing, and otherworldly screaming have all been reported.

Never mind the imaginary ghosts — I’m looking at the photos and thinking, “Spider country!” The wailing and screaming are just the sounds the locals make when they stumble into cobwebs. I should check it out. Maybe we could spend a night at the Palmer House Hotel while we were out there.

Man, the ghost-hunting business must be tremendously profitable — you can just milk the absence of the subject of inquiry for money.

After seeing a few recent atheist videos and reading a few godless articles, I had a question: where are my natural-born, god-free from birth atheists at?

It’s just strange that all the popular atheists nowadays are people who deconverted — you know, like Matt Dillahunty and Paulogia — which is fine, they are good representatives, but I can’t relate. Other ex-Christians and ex-Muslims probably find them relevant and interesting, but they aren’t me. I never believed; I got shuffled through Sunday school more because it was free daycare for my parents, who had six kids wearing them out, and I would memorize Bible verses for the teachers, but that was just an exercise that would get me praise on Sunday. I never prayed, not even as a very young child, because it seemed stupid to me. Who’s listening? I didn’t expect a response from someone else inside my head.

My parents were not religious either, and neither did they ever pray or even go to church. My grandparents made me read from the Bible every Christmas, but do you think they ever went to church? Heck no. I didn’t know anyone, except the Sunday school teacher, who was particularly devout, and even the pastor, when I asked him about why I was going to church at all, just shrugged and said it was fine if I didn’t. (I wonder if he was deconverting himself — he later left that church).

This is not a complaint — atheists who deconverted are great, and an important part of the face of atheism. I am just feeling unrepresented. For instance, I don’t give a flying fuck about interpreting Bible verses or finding contradictions, but there’s a lot of atheist content on that sort of thing, which I find largely irrelevant. I enjoy stuff about humanism and science, which matters far more to me.

What about you? Are there more people here who never ever believed in Jesus or prophets or whatever, or more people who fought the good fight to escape from youthful misconceptions?

I’m sad, but the good news is that I watched Debbie Goddard on YouTube last night, and I assume the rest of the talks will be on the Skepticon YouTube channel today. Check out the schedule:

10am: Panel – Planned Parenthood Great Rivers
2:30pm: Main Stage Speaker: Greg Gbur. I don’t know what he’ll be talking about: throwing invisible cats off the roof?
3:30pm: Main Stage Speaker: Kavin Senapathy. She has a new book: The Progressive Parent: Harnessing the Power of Science and Social Justice to Raise Awesome Kids.
4:45pm: Panel – The Fourth City Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

Tune in and check it out, and don’t forget to leave a like on the videos!