The Bible Belt can never improve if everyone refuses to question religion

This is appalling. This video of a supposedly secular high school biology classroom will show you what we’re up against.

These students are simply expressing uninformed incredulity — they can’t imagine how anything could have evolved. And the incompetent apologist of a teacher, who is sympathetic to creationism himself, isn’t doing his job, which is to explain to them exactly how biology explains these phenomena. Instead, he makes excuses: “How could I say to a student, ‘your ideas are trash’?”

It’s not hard. One student at the end says this:

How can like an African-American person evolve from a white person? We’re different skin.

Hey, student! Your ideas are trash!

So’s your teacher if he can’t address these trivial questions. You must be able to tell your students when they are wrong if you’re going to teach at all.

Frickin’ electricity, how does it work?

This is a scanned page from a Christian science textbook published by Bob Jones University. I think they’ve been listening to too much Insane Clown Posse.

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We’re all just mindless zombies here at scienceblogs, but somehow, BJU is even more brainless. I swear, a creationist could walk by right now and I wouldn’t even drool. But even in my decaying state, and as a biologist, not a physicist, I can answer this one.

Electricity is not a mystery on the level this book is discussing. There is a lot we don’t know about fundamental particles, but we understand the principles of electromagnetism so well that we can use it to build hair dryers and Large Hadron Colliders; to make the argument that we are mystified by it is lying to the kids.

The common creationist argument that we can only know what we directly perceive with our unaided senses is also nonsense. One could argue that we don’t really see people, what we do is gather photons that have been perturbed, we think, by a body, and infer the existence of a person…but that’s sophistry. It is no less ‘seeing electricity’ to say that I can hook up a current meter to a couple of wires and see a needle move in response to the flow of electrons.

That second paragraph is a horror of gobbledygook. Apparently, they think electricity is something like oil, a substance lying in large deposits that must be harvested and poured into your hairdryer to make it work. A current, as mentioned above, is produced by the movement of charged particles, nothing more or less. The sun produces moving charged particles, so it is a source of electricity, and the movement of the earth generates an electromagnetic field, but I can also do the zombie shuffle across the carpet to build up an excess of charged particles and touch the cat to allow them to flow, creating electricity myself, like unto a God. I do not have to create particles to make electricity, I just have to make them move.

Also, if that little girl did not use electricity, she would be dead. All of the cells in your body create charge imbalances by pumping charged ions across their membranes, and using the flow of ions back across those membranes to create chemical energy — they are machines that convert chemical energy into electricity that is used to power little dynamos that create stored chemical energy. We also use the gated movements of charged ions to generate electrical currents in our nerves and muscles, which is how we think and move.

Isn’t it nice how clearly religion is shown to be a science-stopper? Just take common questions, declare them a mystery and that no one has an answer, and presto, religion becomes an authority. An authority stuck at a dead end.

(via @jbrownridge)

Neandertals were Nephilim

Hold onto your hats, don’t be too shocked, but a creationist has lied about science. I’m constantly getting email from fundagelical groups insisting that I must obey and join their One True Faith, and I got one from the Worldwide Church of God aka Radio Church of God aka Grace Communion International aka whatever the heck they’re calling themselves this week. They’re kind of a quirky, long-separated splinter group of the Seventh Day Adventists with their own idiosyncratic theology, but one thing they definitely are: stark raving mad young earth creationists. I was sent this bizarre article, “Cavemen are people, too!”, that grossly misrepresents the science of the recent neandertal genome sequencing. Here’s their summary of the work:

What did the scientists find? Simply put: Neanderthals are human. There was virtually no difference between the two codes. The few differences they did find were so slight that researchers say that they are functionally irrelevant–and that if more Neanderthal genomes could be compared there might be no differences at all!

But that is not all the scientists found. The data suggests Neanderthals are as closely related to humans as Chinese are to Germans, or French to Javanese. Furthermore, the genetic material analyzed indicated that Neanderthals and humans interbred and produced offspring that interbred–and regularly.

Uh, no. Did they even read the paper?

The work by Pääbo’s team found that Neandertal’s were distinct and different from modern humans in a small but significant number of ways; they were our close cousins, but they were also a separate and unique population. The differences were small — 78 genes were identified that were fixed to a different form in modern human populations — but they definitely weren’t irrelevant: everyone is rather excited about the genes associated with the development and function of the brain that differ between the two. The stuff about being related to Chinese, Germans, etc. is totally garbled. What the researchers found is that there was some transmission of Neandertal genes into human populations that were ancestral to Europeans and Asians, but not to Africans. They did not find evidence of regular interbreeding — they found that Neandertals made a small contribution to European and Asian DNA, on the order of 1-4%. And most of this was a result of a few early interbreeding events in the small but rapidly expanding population of modern humans expanding out of Africa.

They didn’t understand the paper at all, and got most of the conclusions completely wrong. You can guess what they conclude, though.

Did you get that? All those supposed pre-man, caveman bones are actually just plain old human skeletons.

It is a startling admission for evolutionists because it throws a monkey wrench into conventional evolutionary theory.

And then they’re off and running. All those prehuman fossils? Either man or monkey, nothing in between. Transitional fossils? If there aren’t any differences between man and ape-man, than there can’t be any. It’s all just “DNA passed down from generation to generation” (Yeah? So?).

The heart of their argument is that one class of ancient hominids had so few genetic differences from us that their differences are negligible, and therefore evolutionary theory is all wrong. It’s bizarre; don’t they realize that we expect that the genetic differences between sibling species recently separated will be much smaller than those between species separated by long periods of time? The discoveries in the Neandertal genome are what we expected, and fit just fine into evolutionary theory.

The author of this little piece instead decides that “science proves the Bible correct”, and that the Neandertals were actually the pre-Flood Nephilim, part of the mob of evil, warring bad guys who motivated God to kill everyone except Noah and his family. Same ol’, same ol’.

That’s not a shoehorn, it’s a sledgehammer

The apologetic gang at BioLogos is complaining again — Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins and I didn’t understand their recent piece by Daniel Harrell on Adam and Eve, and oh, it is so hard to be the ones in the middle of all those atheist and creationist extremists.

Note to BioLogos: squatting in between those on the side of reason and evidence and those worshipping superstition and myth is not a better place. It just means you’re halfway to crazy town.

The core of Falk’s article consists of complaining that we didn’t understand what they were talking about, and took their article out of context. Unfortunately, as Falk attempts to restate the original bogus argument, it becomes apparent that the only ones who were clueless and confused were the theistic evolutionists. What they were doing in the original article was distinguishing between two alternatives: #1, Adam and Eve were created literally as the Bible says, and #2, that Adam and Eve were historical figures who were chosen by God out of existing populations that had evolved as science explains. #1 is patently ridiculous, as they admit, and comically, they argue that #2 is eminently reasonable and supportable by science, and assume that therefore all our criticisms must have been made under the misapprehension that we thought BioLogos was endorsing #1. No! We can read, and we could see exactly what they were saying with their goofy dichotomy, and we’re saying the whole effort to reconcile science with the book of Genesis is a misbegotten waste of time — we were addressing #2, not #1. (Although Harrell also argues that #1 could be true, since his god can do anything).

#1 and #2 are both wrong, and there is also a #3. There was no Adam and Eve. There is no reason to believe there was; the authors of the book of Genesis had no source of information about prehistory, no authority to outline anything but their own recent history, which they were only able to do rather poorly and inaccurately, and the whole story was simply made up. Furthermore, this fable of a few unique individuals founding the whole human race is contradicted by the evidence: we are descended from populations with a pattern of continuous variation, grading over long ages from species to species to species. Not only is it irreconcilable with the Genesis myth, but there is no reason to expect it would be.

What they are attempting to do is shoehorn the evidence into their theological preconceptions. They need to face up to facts: it’s not a shoehorn in this case. When you’re reduced to using a hatchet and a sledgehammer to wedge the divine foot in, the shoe simply doesn’t fit.

Adam and Eve did not exist. Done.

One of the things I failed to mention when I discussed the Bergman-Enyart dialogue was that the spent some time talking about whether Adam had a navel or not, and the general historicity of Adam and Eve. I did not mention it because it was stupid, and that discussion already had a surfeit of stupid.

But now I discover that BioLogos is also carrying on about the historicity of Adam and Eve, with their usual load of waffle and metaphor and vague ways of trying to say it was really true, and God made us really, really special anyway.

There are such things as stupid questions. Stupid questions are questions that have no reasonable or rational referent, that out of the blue ask us to rationalize and reconcile, on the one hand, a patently silly fable with trivial content, to, on the other hand, the whole of known science. Just by asking, it’s an effort to equate the neglible to the substantial, to the benefit of the fluff and to the detriment of the serious.

There was no Adam. There was no Eve. We are the product of populations and pools of genes that are briefly instantiated in individuals, and it’s a great conceptual error to even fuss over finding “the” many-times-great grandparents of us all. It’s an even greater error to try to use poorly understood genetics to justify believing in a goofy myth created by people who hadn’t even imagined genetics yet.

I am amused to see both a couple of crazy young earth creationists and the pompous apologists at BioLogos have something so clearly in common, though.

Bob Enyart wants me to respect his intelligence

I was cured of any interest in debating creationists by Jerry Bergman, that astonishingly awful whiny young earth creationist I crushed last November. It was embarrassingly bad — Bergman wandered all over the place, made absurd claims (did you know the periodic table of the elements was irreducibly complex — even Behe says it isn’t), and spent more time bragging about his many degrees and his evangelical history than he did on the topic at hand. Everyone I talked to, including the creationists, thought Bergman’s performance was dreadful. And you know that the hosting organization, the Twin Cities Creation Science Association knew it was bad for one obvious reason: they brought in a a lot of video gear, recorded the whole event, and “promised” (we all know how little a promise means to a Christian) to send me a DVD copy, but for some reason, the DVD has never appeared, and the debate also hasn’t appeared on youtube or any other video sites. They are doing a good job of burying it.

But here’s why it’s a waste of time to debate these frauds. The TCCSA immediately sent me a letter trying to spin the outcome in their favor. As is their usual M.O., the local evangelical radio station brought Bergman on afterwards to defend himself — of course I was not invited. The TCCSA also surveyed the audience: there was little change in opinion.

So I come home to several emails from some radio wacko named Bob Enyart challenging me to a debate — and after I briefly and rudely told him to get lost, I get the lame retort that if he’s so stupid, I should be able to demolish him easily, so I must be afraid to debate him. Jebus, talk about not getting it — I’ve come to the decision not to debate after one-sided triumphs with people like Bergman and Simmons — it’s not about winning or losing, it’s about how the creationists will lie and twist and distort no matter how it goes.

For example, they tried to pad Enyart’s résumé to make it sound like he was a worthy opponent. In particular, a previous debate was crowed over, in which Enyart’s opponent praised him for his intelligence.

Richard Dawkins once said that “if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).” It rapidly became clear that Bob was none of these things. For a start, I know a fair bit about evolution and genetics. But when it came to familiarity with the arguments, he was way ahead of me. On epigenetics, RNA/DNA chemistry, and animal physiology, I was hopelessly outclassed. Bob is not ignorant. And it is pretty clear he is neither stupid nor insane. He came across, in fact, as extremely intelligent. So perhaps he is wicked? Well, despite a brush with the law a few years ago, I am sure he is nothing of the sort. Comments such as those made by Dawkins only further undermine the presumption of good faith on the part of creationists and Darwinists.

Wow. This summary was written by James Hannum, a theistic evolutionist who has written a book about medieval history and philosophy. Enyart had to find a medieval historian to find someone who might think he was scientifically competent.

As for “a brush with the law a few years ago”, that’s painting lightly over the facts. Enyart has a history of law-breaking derangement. He was an activist with Operation Rescue and was frequently arrested for his, shall we say, vigorous protesting style. He was divorced, and was later convicted of child abuse for beating a girlfriend’s son — he’s very big on beating up children. He was most recently arrested for trespassing at Focus on the Patriarchy — they weren’t conservative enough for him, having endorsed John McCain for the presidency.

I think it’s safe to say that Enyart is both insane and wicked. Ignorant, too, and maybe even stupid. I tried listening to the Enyart-Hannam discussion for evidence of his knowledgability about biology, but I’m sorry — tl;dl. It’s mostly Hannam and Enyart fawning over each other and not talking about biology, which neither know anything about anyway. I did hear enough to learn that Enyart is a young earth creationist and Biblical literalist, which is enough to indicate that he’s pretty damned ignorant.

So I poked around to see if I could find something shorter and clearer in which Enyart would demonstrate some scrap of sense about science. And what did I find? A mutual backslapping session between Bob Enyart and Jerry Bergman! Listen and be amused — it’s like a two-stooges routine.

Of course they start by being awed by Jerry Bergman’s NINE DEGREES, as if they indicate some great intelligence. Sorry, guys, you’ve got it backwards. A graduate program is a training program that culminates in the award of a degree — it is not an accomplishment to require multiple education attempts. Somehow, I think that if I mentioned that I had a bike with training wheels for a month or so when I was six, Jerry Bergman would try to top me by claiming that he kept his training wheels on his bike for 9 years, and is currently getting it fitted with a new set.

They then spent some time talking about vestigial organs, one of Bergman’s favorite topics, because he thinks if he finds some tiny function for an organ, it’s proven to be non-vestigial. This has never been the criterion for assessing whether an organ is vestigial or not, and Charles Darwin himself was very clear on the topic.

An organ, serving for two purposes, may become rudimentary or utterly aborted for one, even the more important purpose, and remain perfectly efficient for the other.

Bergman tried flailing away on this hobby-horse during our debate, too. All it tells us is that he doesn’t understand evolution.

Another topic discussed was sexual selection, in reference to the peacock’s tail. Bergman doesn’t believe in it! And worse, he lied shamelessly about the science, claiming that peacock tails have no influence on female mate choice, when exactly the opposite is true. Enyart really revealed the depth of his competence in evolution when he claimed that these fancy patterns on tails were evidence against evolution because…well, look at his analogy.

If tattoos become really popular so that women are attracted to men who have tattoos, how long will that be the fad before kids start being born with tattoos? When is that going to happen? How stupid could Darwin be and all the world full of evolutionists?

Oh, gosh, I guess that settles it, then — how dare all those scientists believe so fervently in the inheritance of acquired characteristics?

Sorry, Bob Enyart, I won’t be debating you. I don’t respect you in the slightest, and I’m not going to give you an opportunity to claim parity. You’re a raving loony!

What does the Biologic Institute do?

A few years ago, the Discovery Institute set up laboratory to do research, the Biologic Institute, which is in principle a good thing — they do claim to want to take a scientific approach to understanding the origin of life, after all. So far, it’s been less than spectacular. They published one paper on software that models encoding Chinese characters as an analogy to protein folding. It’s mildly interesting, but its connection to intelligent design is tenuous and abstract, and it’s not at all clear how they can use it to expose problems in evolution…and even if they do find a problem in their model, it’s not a given that it will apply to real biology. One has to wonder what the Intelligent Design creationists are actually doing in their lab. Others have wondered and tried to peek into the goings-on, but have been turned away.

Those madcap jokers at antievolution.org have found another way to peek in. The Biologic Institute is a tax-exempt organization, which means they had to file a form with all kinds of interesting information in it — follow the money! You can look at their Form 990, too, just search for “biologic institute” and you’ll get a nice pdf back.

Their income for 2008 was $300,000. That’s a tidy sum of money — compared to what I need to run a small lab at a teaching university, it’s a spectacular sum of money, and is actually about 10 times more than the yearly supply and maintenance budget for our entire biology department (not counting salaries, of course; the Biologic Institute does pay salaries out of that $300K). Oh, what we could do with that much support…

On the other hand, it’s not very much money at all for an outfit with the grand goal “to conduct basic scientific research on topics relating to the origin, organization and operation of living things and their parts, and to the nature of ecosystems and environments conducived to life”. The DI is getting some cheap PR out of this, but nowhere near the amount is being invested that would be needed to address their grandiose goal. By comparison, the National Center for Science Education (you can get their Form 990, too!) had a budget of about $1.3 million in the same period. Here are their goals:

Science Education. The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is a membership organization providing information and resources for schools, parents and concerned citizens working to keep evolution in public school science education. NCSE educates the press and public about the scientific, educational, and legal aspects of the creation and evolution controversy, and supply needed information and advice to promote and defend good science education at local, state, and national levels.

The NCSE is specific, focused and actually has a good-sized staff that does a lot of work that is visible to the public. We’re getting a bargain there. The Biologic Institute is vague, and while they’re operating on a quarter of the budget, doesn’t seem to do much.

It is a good racket, though. The director, Douglas Axe, receives a salary of $92,000, which is a heck of a lot more than I get paid (not that that means much: college professors in general aren’t exactly rich). Man, if I were in this business for the money, I should have gone into creationism. By comparison, though, you might wonder how much Eugenie Scott gets paid: $77,000. I was surprised — sure, she’s also making more than I am, but she’s a national figure with far more experience than I have. There is also a collection of well-known people like Barbara Forrest and Kevin Padian who serve on the board of the NCSE and get paid nothing. Again, don’t go into science with the expectation of riches.

Forget salaries. They’re the biggest part of most organizations budgets, but the news that people are working there isn’t news — we want to know what kind of nifty science gadgets are whirring away there. That’ll tell us what they’re up to. PCR machines? Sequencers? Lasers? Giant saltwater aquaria and bags and bags of squid chow? Here are there reported assets. Don’t get too excited.

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I guess that’s reasonable for an outfit that’s coding up software, and not much else. It’s kind of a let-down if you’re expecting the Biologic Institute were doing biology. (I know, they aren’t; they’re doing biologic, whatever that is).

But let’s not be quick to judge. Maybe they’ve achieved amazing things with a small lab and limited resources. Here’s what they proudly announce as their accomplishments for 2008.

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Hang on there…Doug Axe is getting paid $92,000 for getting 4,000 visitors a month to his website? I get more visitors than that in an hour! I’ve got to do some quick calculations here…if I were getting paid an equivalent amount per visit, based on last month’s traffic, I should be getting $67,677,045.43 for a year of Pharyngula! Where’s my money?

Now, unfortunately, I can’t link to the Biologic Institute web site, because if I did, I’d probably increase their productivity 100 fold.

I get email — arrogant insincerity edition

I try to be patient with all the email I get, I really do, and usually the greatest forebearance I can offer is to simply set a piece of email aside and go on. There simply is not enough time to answer everything, especially when my correspondent is better off going to the library, and most especially when the only reply I’m inspired to give is to snarl, “Go away, kid, you bother me.”

So let me introduce you to young Mr Rosenberg. He has written me twice, the first time with a fairly routine set of questions that I politely set aside because I get a few hundred of these every week, and because he was asking the wrong person, and the second time with a pushy rude letter that prompts me to now be impolite and actually answer him. Here’s his first letter, in which he introduces himself, and as is so common in these things, tells me how smart he is. Well, if you’re so clever, Mr Rosenberg, why are you asking me the questions?

Questions on the Universe

Hi Professor Myers,

My name is Andrew Rosenberg, I am 18 years old and I live in Racine Wisconsin. I have been raised in the Lutheran Church since I was born and view myself as a Christian. Recently I have been pondering the universe, especially the existence of God in general. I have the belief that if God exists, then Christianity makes the most sense for me to follow. But that brings up the question…does God exist? I am an intelligent individual, whose thoughts go beyond the typical 2010 senior’s tangents. I graduated valedictorian of my class, and so I thoughtI would like to contact another intelligent individual, such as yourself, who has conflicting viewpoints from me. After all, if you surround yourself with the same types of people all your life, then you will never learn anything or make your own decisions.

My first question for you is this: Christianity aside, what makes you an atheist? I know I could probably find the answer deep in your blog, but to me, atheism is just ignorant of the universe around us. Existence….just the simple existence of a hydrogen atom gives me the thought that something had to, and I hate to say this, create it. With something to create, how could the materials and fabrications that make up the universe–atoms, protons, neautrons, electrons–come to be? What cause the theories such as the big bang? Put the universe’s energy into action. As easy as it is to say that a God does not exist, its just as easy to say that one (multiples?) does.

On the topic of evolution, I have further questions– I fully believe in micro evolution, whether it be by mutation of natural selection…but how can the existence of the world’s first bacterium be? How can proteins and other chemicals come together to make an organism? For if you take that same organism apart and puts its pieces back into a jar of water, it will never come back to life or reassemble itself. So how did such a thing happen in the beggining of time?

The bottom line for me is, yes the existence of some supernatural being who has divine powers seems very far fetched. But the non-existence of such a being seems far less plausible to me. How can we be without a supernatural beggining at some point in the univeral timeline? Something, from nothing. Its a supernatural question in itself that puzzles me, but makes me view atheists as ignorant. No God, yet countless molecules and building blocks that just….appeared? No, it doesn’t make sense.

Please explain any view point or answer that you have to my questions. I am not afraid to be proven wrong.

Andrew Rosenberg

“atheism is just ignorant of the universe around us”…well, la-de-da, says the high school student who hasn’t bothered to look up anything in basic physics, and is demanding that a biologist explain it all to him in an email message.

First strike against him: I am a biologist. It says so right up there at the top left, under my picture. I am not a physicist. As a biologist, I’m even more narrowly specialized than that: ask me about the evolution of multicellular animals, ask me about development, ask me about various bits and pieces of molecular evolution in the last half billion years, and I can probably give you a decent answer, and I might even talk your socks off for an hour. Ask me about physics, the big bang, and cosmology and…I’m a well-informed layman, nothing more. A literate 18-year-old could be just as current on the topic, if not more so, by going down to the library or bookstore and picking up a few texts and, you know, reading them. This isn’t hard.

Go read a book by Brian Greene, Lawrence Krauss, or Sean Carroll; Scientific American has a primer on cosmology, even. If you can work your way through Steven Weinberg’s Cosmology, you’ll be much, much smarter than I am. But pestering random biologists with misspelled missives demanding that they explain particles to them? Dumb.

It’s often part of a cunning ploy, of course, not that I know that this is the case with Mr Rosenberg. I’ve noticed that, after many of my more detailed talks on biology, some clueless creationist will raise their hand and ask me to explain what existed before the Big Bang, completely ignoring the topic I’ve just explained to them. I’ve also compared notes with a few physicists; they’ll give talks on the origin of the universe, and afterwards be asked to explain the evolution of the eye. I think they know better than to ask a question in which they may get a deep and knowledgeable answer, because they don’t want an answer.

I would just have to give a very general answer that we know that heavier atoms are assembled by processes in stellar evolution, that many complex molecules are constructed by natural processes (formaldehyde forms in space, for instance), and that fundamental particles arose in the Big Bang; that physicists I have talked to, like Lawrence Krauss, have pointed out that stuff spontaneously forms all the time, and that there is no such thing as empty space. Try this on for size.

I can say why I’m an atheist, though, and I’ve talked about it numerous times. Here’s a short, succinct image that explains it all.

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Mr Rosenberg has not explained why I should believe in his Christian deity at all, and his only explanation for why he believes in his peculiar god is a self-confessed complete lack of knowledge and imagination, which given that he’s the clueless fellow asking a biologist to explain physics to him in 200 words or less, is not at all impressive.

But now, today, I get another message from him. I get these all the time, too, demands from ignorant jerks who are so infused with a sense of entitlement that they think they can demand that I spoonfeed them. “Christian humility” is just an ironic phrase for arrogant insincerity.

A Few Questions for an Atheist.

Hello PZ Myers,

My name is Andrew Rosenberg. Last week I sent you an email talking about why I believe in a creator. You did not respond. I would really like to hear your opinion on what I sent you. I also have another concern about you. I have been following your blog and youtube videos for a little while. I think that it is extremely rude of you to constantly criticize religeous groups on your blog. You do it everyday. I don’t know if lashing out at people gives you confidence because your followers laugh at your witty, little remarks, but I certainly think its rude. Especially when you get in person and you are just a little man with a quiet voice. Yet on the internet you spew forth brash criticisms like a volcano.

But besides those opinions of mine, I would really like to hear your take on my question of existence itself that I sent you.

Andrew

Hey, Andy — GET STUFFED.

You’re a perfect example of why I am rude — I am really tired of pretentious twits who’ve barely got a high school education, which isn’t much to begin with, and who think they’re brilliant because they can answer everything with “goddidit.” Am I rude? You bet. It’s not going to change, either.

But then you exhibit typical inconsistency: I’m a “little man with a quiet voice.” Would I have more authority if I glopped on some pomade and bellowed at you? Do you even listen to what I say in those videos? It’s nothing different from what I write — it’s just that my presentation is different than the howling protestations you get from televangelists.

I will remember what you expect, Andrew Rosenberg of Racine, Wisconsin. If we ever meet, I’ll make a special effort to yell rudely at you and just you, and do my best to send your know-nothing pious butt away crying. And don’t bother writing to me again.