We Believe in Dinosaurs

It’s unfortunate that I don’t think we’ll ever get a showing of this documentary, We Believe in Dinosaurs, in Morris — it’s too narrow a niche for our little community. The reviews make it sound pretty good, though.

Adding to that discussion is Monica Long Ross and Clayton Brown’s documentary “We Believe in Dinosaurs.” Attempting to portray both sides even-handedly (though a principal figure presumably refused to be interviewed), it offers not so much a critique as a slightly bemused observation of the Ark Encounter, a Biblical theme park-style attraction in Kentucky designed to promote a creationist rather than scientific view of Earth’s history — which spans about 6,000 years, in this reckoning.

The peculiar brand of pseudoscience utilized to provide supporting “evidence” is controversial, needless to say. So is the “separation of church and state” breach many view in such projects getting de facto governmental approval. Often amusing, but never condescending towards either Ark proponents or their equally vocal opponents, this feature should attract interest from various exhibition channels — perhaps particularly abroad, where admittedly it will not do Americans’ current popular image any favors.

An even-handed approach to both sides is a good idea, as long as you don’t lose sight of the truth. Show that the creationists are sincere, but also be unambiguous in pointing out that they’re peddling pseudoscience. It sounds like they take that approach.

…we get a good look not only at the world of “Young Earth creationists” and their logic (which extends to quasi-scientific academic conferences), but at individual players on both sides of the fight. Lead designer Patrick Marsh and artisan Doug Henderson are among the affable personnel who found their “dream job” creating a facsimile of Noah’s Ark, which requires some interesting imaginative leaps not found in the Bible.

Not least among those leaps is the depiction of dinosaurs and other extinct (as well as some murkily confabulated) creatures as passengers, since it’s the belief of creationists that fossil-record species simply died during, or shortly after, the Flood. It is also interesting to see the attraction’s PG-13 diorama of the decadence that triggered God’s watery wrath. There are even animatronic figures used to address such philosophical quandaries as, “Why does a loving God allow so much death and suffering?”

On the other side of the divide are people like paleontologist Dan Phelps (who points out that roadside Kentucky shale offers ample proof of Earth’s great age) and David MacMillan, a teenage evangelical and Creation Museum charter member who now runs an anti-Creationist website. He sees no conflict between his continued Christian beliefs and acquired trust in science, resenting that faulty creationist “evidence” gets shoved down many a gullible schoolchild’s throat. Farther out among the opposition are members of the Tri-State Free Thinkers, atheists who (not without humor) claim the Biblical story of Noah promotes “genocide and incest.”

I do have reservations, though. Does “fair and balanced” work? The documentary’s conclusion is deeply depressing, and while it’s good to show both sides, does it do a proper job of refuting the creationists? I don’t know.

Without laying on any overt message, “We Believe in Dinosaurs” does definitely suggest that this eccentric collision between faith and secularism, commerce and politics — one that might have seemed wholly outlandish not long ago—is kinda-sorta the direction in which our republic is now headed. Politicians increasingly bend to accommodate religious causes, with judiciary right behind them. Science denial is a trend, whether the motivation is Biblical literalism or simple capitalist greed.

We see Ken Ham (who presumably refused to be interviewed by the filmmakers) selling his wares every which way, using whatever terminology will gain acceptance with a particular audience, but always advancing the creationist cause. That the wind is blowing in his direction is underlined by a closing-credits compilation of recent American politicos publicly distancing themselves from (or outright decrying) evolutionary theory.

I guess I’ll have to wait for a streaming service to pick it up so I can see it for myself, but that last bit is something that might be encouraging to creationists, rather than as discouraging as I see it.

“Inside the Atheist Mind” is more revealing of what’s going on in the Fox News mind

This is an opinion published by Fox News, so you already know it’s garbage, but I’ll kick it around for a bit anyway. It’s by a guy named Anthony DeStefano, who claims to have insight into the atheist mind.

There’s no polite way to say it. Atheists today are the most arrogant, ignorant and dangerous people on earth.

Even more arrogant than a Christian who thinks the entire universe was created for their people? More ignorant than a Christian who thinks the Earth is 6000 years old? Even more dangerous than a cult that controls the American government? I’ll have to see the evidence.

We’ve all seen how these pompous prigs get offended by the slightest bit of religious imagery in public and mortified if even a whisper of “Merry Christmas” escapes the lips of some well-meaning but naïve department store clerk during the “holiday season.”

No, that’s not true. Splatter as much religious imagery on your house or your church as you want. But please, the government is here to serve all the people, so the government has no place endorsing a specific sect.

Also, you won’t find many stories of atheists raging at a store clerk saying “Merry Christmas”. That has never been a problem for us. You will, on the other hand, find plenty of stories of some self-righteous Christian raging about a clerk saying “Happy Holidays”.

But really, the War on Christmas? You know this is a totally made-up conflict peddled by the likes of Bill O’Reilly, don’t you?

To cite a few recent examples: Last December, the group American Atheists launched its annual billboard campaign with the slogan: “Just Skip Church — It’s All Fake News.” In February, the American Humanist Association became furious when President Trump had the gall to mention Christianity and Jesus Christ without also mentioning atheists—at the National Prayer Breakfast! (How dare he!) And just this month, the Freedom From Religion Foundation raised holy hell because the Reverend Billy Graham was laid out in state in the Capitol Rotunda before his burial.

Yes? A billboard campaign by an atheist organization is just a publicly expressed opinion. It’s allowed.

If you are so upset that a few citizens expressed a non-binding, secular, unenforceable opinion, why are you so blase about the President using his power and his influence to tell the country that they should pray, and also using the power of the government to honor a Christian mouthpiece?

Yes, these atheists are loud, nasty, unapologetic and in-your-face.

So far, he’s backed that up with an imaginary conflict, the fact that atheists openly say that they don’t believe in church, and that the American government expresses a religious bias. Mediocre!

But while their arrogance is annoying, it’s nothing compared to their ignorance. Atheists believe that the vast majority of human beings from all periods of time and all places on the Earth have been wrong about the thing most important to them. They basically dismiss this vast majority as being either moronic or profoundly naïve. What they don’t seem to know – or won’t admit – is that the greatest contributions to civilization have been made, not by atheists, but by believers.

The vast majority of human beings from all periods of time have always believed that everyone else is wrong about gods, not just atheists. Remember, Christians were once a small minority who believed that everyone else — Jews, Romans, pagans — got the most important fact in the universe wrong, and were going to be punished with eternal damnation for it.

Atheists do know that they are a minority, and that historically they’ve been an even more minuscule minority. When the majority of people believe in a deity, then we can expect that a majority of believers will have contributed to civilization. This is not a surprise.

Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Isaac Newton all believed in God. Nobel-prize winner Wilhelm Rontgen, the discoverer of X-rays; Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry; William Keen, the pioneer of brain surgery; rocket scientist Wernher von Braun; and Ernest Walton, the first person to artificially split the atom—all believed in God.

But…but…Aristotle didn’t believe in your religion and specifically not in Jesus. Bacon, Da Vinci, and Newton all lived at times when denying Christianity would get you persecuted and punished (which is not to say that they didn’t also have cultural biases favoring belief…and Newton in particular was fervent but weirdly unorthodox). Heck, I was brought up Lutheran, although I repudiated it in my teens — does that mean a demented 16th century anti-semite gets credit for my interest in science? I think not.

And speaking of pioneers of science, who do you think coined the term “scientist” in the first place? William Whewell, an Anglican priest and theologian! He also came up with words “physicist,” “cathode”, “anode” and many other commonly used scientific terms. Essentially, the very language used by scientists today comes from the brain of a believer.

Even the Big Bang Theory itself – which atheists mistakenly think bolsters their arguments against God – was proposed by Fr. George Lemaitre, a Belgian astronomer and Roman Catholic priest! And the father of genetics—which provides the basis for the whole theory of evolution—was Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian monk!

Just about every 19th century English scientist was an Anglican! They probably also ate porridge, too, but we don’t go around insisting that porridge made them great scientists. Or maybe you do. It would make as much sense.

I teach genetics. I imagine everyone who does so mentions a bit of the history, and discusses Mendel specifically as a monk working in a monastery garden. We’re comfortable saying it too, and are fine with the idea that people who believed in God can also do science. Most of our American students are religious, mostly Christian but I also teach Muslims, and we don’t use the classroom to lie about history, which makes this next bit particularly ridiculous.

Yes, the new atheists have an ignorance of history bordering on madness.

You haven’t shown that. You haven’t even made an argument touching on that.

But are they really dangerous, too?

I expect more garbage arguments in defense of that claim.

You bet they are. The truth is, the atheist position is incapable of supporting any coherent system of morality other than ruthless social Darwinism. That’s why it has caused more deaths, murders and bloodshed than any other belief system in the history of the world.

I’m an atheist humanist. I reject social Darwinism. Social Darwinism was avidly endorsed by a great many Christians, you know — it’s a position that can be held independent of one’s religious beliefs.

Atheists, of course, are always claiming hysterically that Christianity has been responsible for most of the world’s wars, but that’s just another example of atheistic ignorance. The main reasons for war have always been economic gain, territorial gain, civil and revolutionary conflicts. According to Philip Axelrod’s monumental “Encyclopedia of Wars,” only 6.98 percent or all wars from 8000 BC to present were religious in nature. If you subtract Islamic wars from the equation, only 3.2 percent of wars were due to specifically Christian causes. That means that over 96 percent of all the wars on this planet were due to worldly reasons.

I have never heard an atheist claim that Christianity has been responsible for most the world’s wars. Was the American Civil War caused by Christianity? Both sides were majority Christian. What about WWI and WWII? I’ve never seen it claimed that those were religious wars at all. I’d agree that most wars have been waged for “worldly reasons”. Of course, you still have to concede that, as most Western scientific discoveries are being credited to Christians, than likewise most of those worldly wars must have been waged by religious believers. You don’t get to claim all the good things in history for godly folk and blame all the evils on an insignificant minority of atheists!

What follows is predictable.

Indeed, in the last 100 years alone, upwards of 360 million people were killed by governments—and close to half of those people were killed by atheist governments!

Yes, there is a profound and frightening connection between atheism and death. Atheist leaders like Stalin, Mao Zedong, Hideki To ̄jo ̄, Pol Pot and many others bear the blame for the overwhelming majority of deaths caused by war and mass murder in history. And while many atheists make the preposterous claim that Adolf Hitler was a Christian, his private diaries, first published in 1953 by Farrar, Straus and Young, reveal clearly that the Fuhrer was a rabid atheist: “The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity,” Hitler stated, “was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew… Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.”

Interesting shift. One minute he’s arguing that almost all wars can be blamed on “worldly reasons”, in the net he leaps to claim that’s synonymous with atheism in the last century. To buttress his argument, he claims that Hitler was not a Christian, citing his private diaries. This is bogus. The “diaries” that were published in the 1980s were entirely fake; he must be referring to the “table talk” transcripts. These were not diaries, and they weren’t even particularly complete or accurate transcripts, and they weren’t good sources for Hitler’s state of mind, let alone the goals of the German leadership or the German people. They’re also plagued with a history of bad translations.

[Hitler] was that classic German type known as Besserwisser, the know-it-all. His mind was cluttered with minor information and misinformation, about everything. I believe that one of the reasons he gathered so many flunkies around him was that his instinct told him that first-rate people couldn’t possibly stomach the outpourings.

Hmmm. Sounds like he’d be a natural as a Fox News pundit nowadays.

But even if Hitler were a flaming satanist, it doesn’t change the fact that the German people were almost universally Lutheran and Catholic, and yet they willingly went to war with the world, and many participated in the Holocaust. His public speeches endorsed religion, Mein Kampf is full of religious claims of righteousness, and he had the support of the German Catholic hierarchy.

He goes on longer, but I’m bored now. To be honest, I was bored after his second paragraph. I’ll just point out that the Fox News staff must have gone looking for the most “arrogant, ignorant and dangerous” illustration they could find, and this is what they came up with.

Oooh. Scary.

Please, I would like to hear more and join the Cult of the Void

Aaron Rabinowitz summarizes his cult:

Someone asked what are the views of our cult. Thoughts on this:

  1. The truth is complex and painful but intrinsically valuable, so help others learn it and help others suffer through it.
  2. Luck drives everything, so have as much empathy as you can for those who suffer and do wrong.
  3. Morality and value are still real, because experience is real and instills in us a variety of obligations that, when enacted, promote flourishing.

This is what atheism could have been. I think many atheists accepted #1 — loudly proclaiming that we have the truth has been a big deal all along — but balked at #2. So many atheists are proud adherents of the cult of capitalism, which insists that all personal progress is a result of merit, and were willing to accept the science of evolution only because of the concept of natural selection, which they considered to be the natural representation of capitalism. They don’t like to hear that modern evolutionary theory puts much more emphasis on chance, or even that selection is a stochastic process rather than an inevitability.

They choke before they even get to #3, because they are so busy cheering for Ben Shapiro’s facts don’t care about your feelings that they don’t notice that feelings are also part of reality. I’ve noticed that a lot of atheists run away angrily at the very notion of moral obligations, because, as they tell me all the time, “atheism means nothing more than a disbelief in gods”. The virtue of Rabinowitz’s formulation is that it moves beyond a statement of fact to a recognition of the implications of that fact.

I think they may have misinterpreted #1, come to think of it, as “The truth is complex and painful but intrinsically valuable, so be sure to feel superior about your possession of it”.

Skepchicks, assemble!

This is good news. After a long hiatus, Rebecca Watson is gathering her team of superheroes to relaunch Skepchick. I find her reason personally inspiring.

I’ve long had it in the back of my head that I should relaunch, but depression, anxiety, and life found a way to stop me (or allow me to stop myself). Then, a few months back, a lawyer emailed me threatening to sue me over something one of my writers wrote ages ago. I realized I needed to do something, as I was spending thousands of dollars on server space and now I was preparing to spend many more thousands of dollars on a legal case, all for a website I’d been ignoring for years. I decided I would shut everything down.

Then I talked to some very kind lawyers, who told me the person threatening me was a troll who makes his living scaring bloggers into paying him off in the hopes they won’t go to court. They gave me information on how to go about fighting him, and I thought, “Oh yeah, this is what I love doing.” I love fighting bullies. I love exposing scam artists. And I love providing a platform for other writers and activists to do the same.

So instead of shutting Skepchick down, I decided to relaunch. I contacted our writers and many of them were excited to come back on. You can see the full list of them (thus far) here. You’ll once again see our daily Quickies, and you’ll be able to read voices other than mine.

A troll is threatening to sue her, and instead of caving in, she gets angry and reinvigorated? That’s excellent. That’s what I need to hear, because…well, there’ll be some ugly news I share later.

Swept away in a storm of buzzwords!

It’s obvious that the one thing that is keeping Answers in Genesis afloat is that they’ve tapped into the same vein of fear and lunacy that Donald Trump draws strength from — so today Ken Ham posted cartoons to show all the things the rabid right fears most.

It’s a little weird that he’s got “male and female restrooms” whirling around in his imaginary tornado, and it’s a rather incoherent soup of words (is “creation” contributing to the chaos as much as “racism”?), but it’s also revealing. None of those words leave me feeling confused. Apparently, though, poor Ken and his cult-like followers want all the ideas to stop challenging them so he can cuddle up to his biblical anchor.

Occasional reminder

We’re still paying off our lawyer in that ridiculous SLAPP suit by Richard Carrier — his case went down in flames, it’s over as far as we’re concerned, but man, legal fees certainly do stack up fast. Our GoFundMe page is still open. And before you tell us we should have counter-sued, we’re not interested in sinking more time and money into that futile pursuit, and unlike the people who just wave the flag of Free Speech, we have no interest in silencing anyone.

I will also remind you that if you had any doubt that Richard Carrier was a serial harasser, all you need to see is that he’s been harassing me, Stephanie Zvan, Amy Frank-Skiba, Lauren Lane, and the organizations of FtB, Skepticon, and the Orbit to the tune of many tens of thousands of dollars in a pointless, punitive lawsuit; he’s also failed all of his friends from whom he sucked away an equivalent or greater sum of money. And yet he’s still getting booked for appearances around the country. It’s amazing how being a petty scumbag only enhances your reputation in the atheist community.

YouTube skepticism is a sham

Several years ago, I engaged this blithering twit who called himself Armoured Skeptic. He was one of a faceless horde of cartoon avatars on YouTube who were making bank on whining about feminism (see also Thunderf00t and every response video to Anita Sarkeesian). Even now his schtick is to complain about Atheism+ and SJWs and self-righteously declare himself a crusader for Free Speech. I guess it’s a strategy that works, because he’s got almost half a million subscribers. Even back in 2015, though, it was obvious that he was a shallow incompetent who titled himself a “skeptic” because that was a shortcut to the claim of critical thinking that didn’t require actually, you know, thinking.

He’s still pumping out the crap, giving “skepticism” a bad name (as if it could be besmirched even more), and now he has appeared on Rebecca Watson’s radar because he, a so-called skeptic, gave credence to conspiracy theories that the Muslims set fire to Notre Dame.

It’s true. You can be a gullible, bumbling, pretentious goofball like Armoured “Skeptic” and gain a large following on YouTube simply by spitting on social justice.

Oh, and here’s another notorious YouTube skeptic/atheist personality who promotes racialist pseudoscience:

Yay, archaeologists!

It’s too bad a few rotten apples are tainting the archaeology barrel, because we need more responsible archaeologists speaking out. Fortunately, the fightin’ archaeologists are on the job.

Pakal’s supposed seat in a spaceship is just one example of what Anderson and others call “pseudoarchaeology,” which ignores the cultural context of ancient artifacts and uses them to support predetermined ideas, rather than test hypotheses, about the past. Common beliefs include that aliens helped build the Egyptian and Mayan pyramids, that refugees escaping Atlantis brought technology to cultures around the world, and that European immigrants were the original inhabitants of North America.

These outlandish beliefs have been circulating for decades, but archaeologists like Anderson are now mobilizing to counter them. They are taking to Twitter, blogs, podcasts, YouTube, and newspapers to debunk false claims and explain real archaeological methods, and they plan to compare notes this week during a symposium at the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) meeting here. “My profession … needs to do a better job of speaking out,” Anderson says.

It’s getting worse, and some of the blame has to fall on gullible media. All those aspirational cable channels that bloomed in the last few decades, planning to teach and educate people about the wonders of the universe have all fallen into corruption.

He and others are alarmed by the rising popularity of pseudoarchaeological ideas. According to the annual Survey of American Fears by Chapman University in Orange, California, which catalogs paranormal beliefs, in 2018, 41% of Americans believed that aliens visited Earth in the ancient past, and 57% believed that Atlantis or other advanced ancient civilizations existed. Those numbers are up from 2016, when the survey found that 27% of Americans believed in ancient aliens and 40% believed in Atlantis.

“I look at these numbers and say … something has gone massively wrong,” Anderson says. He can’t say exactly what is driving the rise in such ideas, but cable TV shows like Ancient Aliens (which has run for 13 seasons) propagate them, as does the internet.

And further, there’s an ugly strain of fanaticism behind pseudoarchaeology.

Today, “Most archaeological research is unavailable to the public,” she says, obscured by jargon and locked behind paywalls. “But you want something from pseudoarchaeology? I can find you 15 references,” all easily accessible online and on TV.

Re-engaging with the public is an uphill battle, Head says. Debunking specific claims, as Anderson did with Pakal’s “spaceship,” is merely a first step. To make a lasting impact, she and others say, archaeologists must proactively share their work and, in particular, explain their methods step by step. That’s important to counter the common pseudoarchaeological claim that researchers are hiding evidence for aliens or Atlantis.

This isn’t easy work, especially online. All the women interviewed for this article have been harassed online after tackling pseudoarchaeological interpretations. Mulder recently fielded replies that included a knife emoji after she tweeted about research showing that people of diverse ancestries, rather than only Western Europeans, lived in Roman Britain. Colavito reports receiving death threats after a host of Ancient Aliens urged his fans to send Colavito hate mail.

I didn’t get that much hate mail for fighting creationism. It ramped up when I criticized Catholicism (there are some extraordinarily fervent Catholics out there who’d clearly like to burn me at the stake), and it went into overdrive when I openly supported feminism, and now most of my hate mail comes from … atheists, some of whom are even more fanatical than Catholics. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not so much religion that drives the hatred, but dogma about race and gender roles that turns people into foaming-at-the-mouth hate machines (but of course, religion does contribute to promoting that dogma).

The flat earth cult

I don’t think I could survive attending a flat earth conference. The stupidity is a huge backward step for humankind. Michael Marshall attended one, though, and survived. He’s a stronger man than I am, because this would wreck me.

The Earth, according to Nesbitt, is more likely a diamond shape, with East-West travel facilitated by 4D space-time warps along the edges, allowing for a “Pac-Man” version of reality – where a traveller might sail off one side of the screen, and appear at the other side. That diamond is propped up on seven circular pillars, “because God likes the number seven”. This version, he explains, fits the evidence better, and is supported by the Bible, in the book of Job.

Several speakers throughout the weekend take time to highlight that evolution is a myth, accompanied by occasional heckles of “monkey men!” from audience members.

Here’s a telling excerpt. This whole flat earth nonsense is simply weaponized religiosity.

Nesbitt shared what he called the “Flat Earth Addiction” test – seven questions Flat Earth proponents should ask themselves, including “Have people said that you are pushy or obsessive about Flat Earth?”, “Have you thought that if only everyone knew about Flat Earth the world would be a different place?”, and “Have you noticed that you spend less and less time with your family and friends and more and more time talking to Flat Earthers?”.

Looking around the room, I could see knowing nods, as people recognised themselves in each question. The questions, Nesbitt explained, were taken from a checklist used to determine whether someone is in a cult. The implication seemed lost on the audience.

“It’s just a joke” is a joke of an excuse

Matthew d’Ancona has seen through the game and noticed that the excuse of “satire” is a hollow shell of a rationalization, especially when listeners know that the plain, literal meaning of the “joke” is what’s actually intended, and what they find most amusing is that you’ll actually be flustered and unable to cope if they say their horrible statement was “just a joke”. It’s the tool that Carl Benjamin, Nigel Farage, and Boris Johnson have used to crawl to prominence.

In what moral universe is the statement “I wouldn’t even rape you” categorised as “satire”? For this is how – in an interview on Sunday with the BBC’s Andrew Marr – Gerard Batten, Ukip’s leader, described a tweet sent to the Labour MP Jess Phillips in 2016 by Carl Benjamin, now one of his party’s principal candidates in the European elections.

According to Batten, Benjamin is a “classical liberal”, “not a bad person”, “a proponent of free speech” and “wasn’t actually making a literal statement”. And there we were, thinking that he was just a vile misogynist, using social media to declare whether, in his opinion, a member of parliament should be raped or not.

In this universe, let’s assume that everyone is of average intelligence and able to comprehend their native language. The Benjamin rape “joke” is a gimmick that is read by everyone for what it is — a statement of misogyny and cruelty and contempt. The “it’s satire” claim is a pretense that everyone can see right through, but that defenders of misogyny, who are also intelligent enough to know it is socially unacceptable, can use to argue to their mothers that they don’t really think about harming women, while they can simultaneously snicker with the lads down at the pub about judging women on their fuckability.

d’Ancona and many others can see right through the rhetoric, and the people who pretend they can’t simply don’t want to.

Benjamin was invited to an atheist conference (a damning fact in itself), and the audience cheered and whooped when he repeated that remark. Don’t ever try to tell me that your typical atheist is gifted with greater intelligence and insight into reality — I’ve seen the fact that they’re just as susceptible to self-delusion and ignorance put on display. And also just as easily manipulated by terrible people who reassure them that their prejudices are righteous.