Other people get email

I’m a bit jealous — I didn’t get this amazing email:

As for myself, I believe that science has proved that there has to be a creator (The best mathematicians, physicists, biologists, astronomers,etc all admit they cannot explain how the DNA data gets into each cell/gene and can only be put there by intelligent design. But a campaign of disinformation from the atheist scientific communtity was exposed on British TV (I have the documentary), that proves that even the atheists admitted in secret scientific unpublished journals that all organic life in the universe had to come from a designer creator, and cannot appear randomly. The documentary exposed these findings and carried the atheist scientists through to their final statement and conclusion (which was pretty weak) that all artificial intelligence can appear randomly, but they admit that all organic life has to have a creator. THAT WAS THE COVER UP! THIS WAS EXPOSED AND THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY WERE INFILTRATED BY OCCULT SECRET SOCIETIES AND PAID TO NOT PUBLISH THEIR FINDINGS. (MOSTLY HIGH RANKING FREEMASONS, ROSICRUCIANS, ORDER TEMPLAR ORIENTALIS,ETC). tHE DOCUMENTARY PART 2 STATES THAT 90% OF THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY DO NOT BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION BUT AGREE WITH CHRISTIANS SCIENTISTS THAT NATURAL SELECTION IS A CORRECT THESIS, BUT THEY CANNOT ADMIT THIS, BECAUSE THEIR FUNDS WILL BE STOPPED BY POWERFUL INSTITUTES CONTROLLED BY THESE OCCULT FREEMASONS/BUSINESSMEN WHO OWN MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS

That is impressive, a classic kook-rant that hits all the high points: paranoia (“secret scientific unpublished journals”); conspiracy (“freemasons, rosicrucians, order templar orientalis”); delusions that a majority secretly agrees with them (“90% of the scientific community do not believe in evolution”); and of course, everything is completely made up. And the sudden ramp up into all-caps hysteria is beautiful.

I’m going to have to add something to my to-do list, though: contact the freemasons and find out what happened to my checks. I’ve got about 30 years of outspoken evolutionism that I’ve been giving out for free, and they owe me big time.

Australia’s current afflictions

A big chunk of Australia is on fire — over 700 homes have been burned, and it’s estimated that over 300 people have been killed. We know the cause: a drought that dried tons of brush to tinder, lightning strikes, and deplorably, apparently a number of arsonists.

Well, that’s what I would say were the causes. But then, I’m one of those materialists. Danny Nalliah, pastor of one of those cheesy evangelical organizations, has a different idea.

CTFM leader, Pastor Danny Nalliah said he would spearhead an effort to provide every assistance to devastated communities, although he was not surprised by the bush fires due to a dream he had last October relating to consequences of the abortion laws passed in Victoria.

He said these bushfires have come as a result of the incendiary abortion laws which decimate life in the womb. Besides providing material assistance, CTFM will commence a seven day prayer and fasting campaign for the nation of Australia tomorrow Wednesday the 11th February.

CTFM has called upon all Australian Bible-believing God-fearing Christians to repent and call upon the Lord Jesus Christ for His mercy and protection over Australia once again.

There’s a simple word for people like Danny Nalliah:

Ghoul.

He sees a catastrophe, pain, and loss of life as an opportunity to proselytize for his idiotic religion. His faith is a parasite that feeds on death and destruction and fear. That’s all he’s got. This is just more of the same from this wretched ghoul: before the fires, he was making similar accusations of blame.

He had previously said drought and the world financial crisis could be partly blamed on human sin.

These people are useless lunatics.

Singularly silly singularity

Since I had the effrontery to critize futurism and especially Ray Kurzweil, here’s a repost of something I wrote on the subject a while back…and I’ll expand on it at the end.

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Kevin Drum picks at Kurzweil—a very good thing, I think—and expresses bafflement at this graph (another version is here, but it’s no better):

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(Another try: here’s a cleaner scan of the chart.)

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(Click for larger image)

You see, Kurzweil is predicting that the accelerating pace of technological development is going to lead to a revolutionary event called the Singularity in our lifetimes. Drum has extended his graph (the pink areas) to show that, if it were correct, these changes ought to be occurring at a still faster rate now…something we aren’t seeing. There’s something wrong in this.

I peered at that graph myself, and the flaws go even deeper. It’s bogus through and through.

Kurzweil cheats. The most obvious flaw is the way he lumps multiple events together as one to keep the distribution linear. For example, one “event” is “Genus Homo, Homo erectus, specialized stone tools”, and another is “Printing, experimental method” and “Writing, wheel”. If those were treated as separate events, they would have inserted major downward deflections in his chart a million years ago, and about 500 to a few thousand years ago.

The biology is fudged, too. Other “events” are “Class Mammalia“, “Superfamily Hominoidea“, “Family Hominidae“, the species “Homo sapiens“, and the subspecies “Homo sapiens sapiens“. Think about it. If the formation of a species, let alone a subspecies, is a major event about a million years ago, why isn’t each species back to the Cambrian awarded equivalent significance? Because it wouldn’t fit his line, of course. As he goes back farther in time, he’s using larger and larger artificial taxonomic distinctions to inflate the time between taxa.

It’s also simplifying the complex. “Spoken language” is treated as a discrete event, one little dot with a specific point of origin, as if it just poofed into existence. However, it was almost certainly a long-drawn-out, gradual process stretched out over hundreds of thousands of years. Primates communicate with vocalizations; why not smear that “spoken language” point into a fuzzy blur stretching back another million years or so?

Here’s another problem: cows. If you’re going to use basic biology as milestones in the countdown to singularity, we can find similar taxonomic divisions in the cow lineage, so they were tracking along with us primates all through the first few billion years of this chart. Were they on course to the Singularity? Are they still? If not, why has the cow curve flattened out, and doesn’t that suggest that the continued linearity of the human curve is not an ineluctable trend? This objection also applies to every single species on the planet—ants, monkeys, and banana plants all exhibit a “trend” if you look backwards on it (a phenomenon Gould called “retrospective coronation”), and you can even pretend it is an accelerating trend if you gin it up by using larger and larger taxonomic divisions the farther back you go.

Even the technologies are selectively presented. Don’t the Oldowan, Acheulian, and Mousterian stone tool technologies represent major advances? Why isn’t the Levallois flake in the chart as a major event, comparable to agriculture or the Industrial Revolution? Copper and iron smelting? How about hygiene or vaccination?

I’ll tell you why. Because not only is the chart an artificial and perhaps even conscious attempt to fit the data to a predetermined conclusion, but what it actually represents is the proximity of the familiar. We are much more aware of innovations in our current time and environment, and the farther back we look, the blurrier the distinctions get. We may think it’s a grand step forward to have these fancy cell phones that don’t tie you to a cord coming from the wall, but there was also a time when people thought it was radical to be using this new bow & arrow thingie, instead of the good ol’ atlatl. We just lump that prior event into a “flinging pointy things” category and don’t think much of it. When Kurzweil reifies biases that way, he gets garbage, like this graph, out.

Now I do think that human culture has allowed and encouraged greater rates of change than are possible without active, intelligent engagement—but this techno-mystical crap is just kookery, plain and simple, and the rationale is disgracefully bad. One thing I will say for Kurzweil, though, is that he seems to be a first-rate bullshit artist.

I don’t think he’ll be sending me a copy of his book to review.

I got one thing wrong in my original article: he did send me a copy of his book, The Singularity is Near! I even read it. It was horrible.

Most of it was exactly like the example above: Kurzweil tosses a bunch of things into a graph, shows a curve that goes upward, and gets all misty-eyed and spiritual over our Bold Future. Some places it’s OK, when he’s actually looking at something measurable, like processor speed over time. In other places, where he puts bacteria and monkeys on the Y-axis and pontificates about the future of evolution, it’s absurd. I am completely baffled by Kurzweil’s popularity, and in particular the respect he gets in some circles, since his claims simply do not hold up to even casually critical examination.

I actually am optimistic about technological progress, and I think some of the things he talks about (nanotechnology, AI, etc.) will come to pass. But I do not believe in the Singularity at all.

Nanotech is overhyped, though. They seem to be aspiring to build little machines that do exactly what bacteria and viruses do right now…and don’t seem to appreciate the compromises and restrictions that are a natural consequence of multifunctional systems. I also don’t believe in the gray goo nightmare scenario: we’re already surrounded by a cloud of miniscule replicating machines that want to break our bodies down into their constituent molecules. We seem to cope, usually.

I think we will develop amazing new technologies, and they will affect human evolution, but it will be nothing like what Kurzweil imagines. We have already experienced a ‘singularity’ — the combination of agriculture, urbanization, and literacy transformed our species, but did not result in a speciation event, nor did it have quite the abrupt change an Iron Age Kurzweil might have predicted. Probably the most radical evolutionary changes would be found in our immune systems as we adapted to new diets and pathogens, but people are still people, and we can find cultures living a neolithic life style and an information age lifestyle, and they can still communicate and even interbreed. Maybe this information age will have as dramatic and as important an effect on humanity as the invention of writing, but even if it does, don’t expect a nerd rapture to come of it. Just more cool stuff, and a bigger, shinier, fancier playground for humanity to gambol about in.

I get email

Sometimes these kooks reveal that they even read the blog…somewhat obsessively and angrily. This one seems to be a follow-up to yesterday’s email, and I think he’s unhappy that I put up that other crank’s letter and not his. I’m sorry, but I don’t even remember what his previous letter’s point was, and if this one is any indication, it was another spittle-flecked disjointed ramble, and I’m afraid I don’t read those with much attention. However, since he really wants to join the pantheon (a very crowded pantheon) of irate readers, I’m happy to oblige.

Don’t get any ideas, though, all you other crackpots! This guy got away with it, but if you all start demanding your tirades be posted, I’m not going to be accommodating.

Well sir,

I hesitate to believe that your silence is some kind of assent to the truth of what I tried to express in my previous e-mail message yesterday. I notice in your “blog” today—somewhat amazingly considering the typical time constraints on an associate professor—that you graciously acknowledged receiving
“11 weird harangues . . . in my mailbox this morning.” Perhaps my harangue was one of these? Well mister you need to get a few harangues in your mailbox in the morning, if you don’t mind my saying so. You opened up this silly door by being a “public figure” with an exceptionally big mouth who likes to put down other people—seemingly every day of his life—so take it like a man, would you please? Go ahead, dismiss me all you want, laugh at me, lump me in with all the other people you marginalize and stereotype. Oh I know, you probably feel so useful in your roles as atheist “blog-meister,”
small-town scientist, condemner of “inferior people,” Lord over ALL “creationists” and defender of truth (as you seem to perceive it anyway), and you probably don’t have time for my little rants. So be it. I don’t care, I will write my rants anyway. Really, I am not trying to be clever or to persuade you of anything. Why would I do that? What would be the point? You’ve obviously heard it all before and you obviously know everything you need to know for your own personal fulfillment. So be it. What I am doing, in fact, is condemning you, as best I can. Why? Because in my estimation your actions reflect something that is fundamentally wrong and disgraceful, and I feel that it is my duty to write whether you read it or not—whether you butcher up my comments in your silly “blog” or not. Since we will probably never meet in person, this is the best I can do. It is, for me, a matter of principle or I would not feel or speak so strongly about it. Like you, I will not remain silent when I am offended by something or someone, especially something or someone in the public eye. This is not an attempt to offend you, rather, it is me telling you what I think about you since you have chosen to enter my world with your public presence. How is that you say? When, as of late, I have often to read about a certain person named “PZ Myers,” often just in my ordinary non-specific reading, and when this person often does ridiculous bizarre things, apparently to gain attention to himself in furtherance of what appears to be a
self-perceived “cause,” it becomes a nuisance to me, and to many others who don’t take the time to write you. Since you are a “public” person, I am entitled to tell you what I think and feel, whether you care or not. I am not writing depending on whether you care or not, obviously. Why do you think so many people write these “harangues” anyway, professor? Or perhaps you ONLY prefer to listen to the people who react favorably to you as a public entity? Wouldn’t that be nice, if everyone thought you were peaches and cream? Think about it, would you please? To pretend to worship you, as others might, for sharing some superior insight you believe you have into the nature of things, would be lying on my part to say the least. I don’t think that in much of any way, obviously quite the opposite is what I think: I think that you offer NO insight into the nature of things of any real or lasting value, and the only reason that you persist is most probably because you enjoy being a nuisance for its own sake. I think that if you actually did value getting at the true nature of our planet and the cosmos of which it is part, it wouldn’t be so important for you to have daily opportunity to belittle others in a public forum like the internet—you would instead, as most decent people have in ages past, offer your particular contribution to knowledge humbly and with respect for others. You have earned my disrespect with your actions and words against others, and you do no service to humanity with such behaviour, no matter how strongly you feel about your scientific insights—they are not worth the pain you cause to others. Of course, you probably don’t care to hear this.

Think about these two statements for a nanosecond:

What do you know that I don’t know? What do you know that I need to know?

I don’t believe that you can answer these questions at all. “Ahhh”, you might say, (just to give a random example I picked up from your so-called “blog” today. You might say: (imagine a real arrogant guy with a beard for a second saying this)

“You need to know that whales had babies on land at one time, and what a profound revelation that is!”

This is an example of what you daily worry about? This is what I, therefore, need to worry about? I need to worry and think about how scientists think whales used to reproduce in the past? Or, I need to overly concern myself the fact that scientists believe that whales may have changed over millions of years? That’s IT? That is an example of the kind of earth-shattering insight that you would share with humanity as a scientist? This is why you are so incessantly noisy and bothersome and offensive to others who don’t happen to be scientists? This is why God is dead for you? Because whales like everything else in this incredible universe, have changed over time? That’s just wonderful. Great. Do you think it is then justifiable to condemn other people because (for whatever reason) they may not believe just as you do as a professional scientist, (and who gives a fig whether it’s about whales, it could be anything, that’s just my example). Should we condemn the “common” people if they do not subscribe to certain ideas in other academic areas as well? Should this be the calling of all practitioners of academic subjects, to condemn others in an offensive manner, oh yes . . . in the name of truth? I honestly don’t think you really care a bling for any brand of truth, but unfortunately that seems to have made you especially vociferous, and miracle or miracles the internet allows you to fully vent.

Probably you protest that we are strangers, and you object to receiving this kind of e-mail where I ask these kinds of questions and make these kind of observations. Perhaps we are strangers, but only in the sense that I have never met you in person as a fellow human being, that is to say, as a flesh and blood person; but your persona, which is to say, your social facade via the internet, and your actions as a person in the public forum are regrettably there for all to see, and this is what I know about PZ Myers; and it is this public persona that offends me that I am addressing. You are a professor at a university, but that of itself engenders nothing special to me, nor does it earn my automatic respect. You went to college and majored in biology. Would you like a medal or something? You seem to equate the noble profession of science, and particularly the subject of biology with atheism? My question is, why? And by what authority do you speak for scientists? Do you have a right to speak for all scientists? Or even all atheists? Can you see how your arrogant, dismissive attitude towards others might be offensive and an embarrassment to many, if not most scientists? Or, to many if not most atheists? Do you think scientists or atheists want to be thought of as being like that “communion-wafer maniac.” Based on your example, should all scientists crusade against people of religious faith in the most offensive possible manner? I may have majored in biology myself, for all you know, I may have more degrees than you, but that is not the point. I have known and worked with many fine professors, and you sir, are not one. Not because of what you do or do not know, but because of your actions as a public figure and your lack of comportment as a supposedly learned man in the public eye. You undoubtedly believe that you are in some sense “saving the world” by condemning others, but what in God’s name do you hope it will accomplish ? In the hope that there will be more “intellectual”, sarcastic, blow-hards such as yourself? How liberating! What a positive boon for thinking people everywhere! What a vision for the future well-being of the human race! La-de-dah-de-dah-de-da. I have looked hard for a while now to find some redeeming qualities in all your brouhaha, but from one intellectual and humanist to another, they just ain’t there.

You are a curiosity to me, as I find curious anyone—and forgive me here but I think that you yourself have made this a fact—as I find curious anyone who holds themselves in the public spotlight as possessing “special revelations” that we all need to know about as educated human beings. For those who daily “blog-in” to praise you for your “special insights,” it seems perfectly natural to them in their eagerness to identify with you, and you become a kind of (forgive me) messiah to some of them undoubtedly in their zeal. I repeat: What do you know that I don’t know? What do you know that I need to know? Answer: you don’t know anything that I need to know. You think you know something profound about the way the world works? So what. Many people have this same delusion. You think evolution explains the world. So what, could be. I don’t object to your science, I object to your arrogance in the public forum. I have known and admired some wonderful iconoclasts who had some genuine insights worth considering, but my God, they knew when to shut up! You are an embarrassment to the academic world. With all your knowledge, your are in my estimation a failure as an educator, at least as far as one can judge from your public utterances and actions. You educate others in the false way to behave. You are doing more damage than good. You are a negative karma engine. As an atheist, perhaps the idea of doing damage while you can is for you a point of personal pride, but not everyone on the planet really gives a rat’s behind about how you inject your personal vengeance against faith into your professional career, or how good you are at pretending to be superior to others. It would be a hoot, I am sure, to sit in on one of your classes. Who cares what the “truth” might be if it comes from some arrogant, prattle-mouth such as yourself. God forbid that one of your students may not think as you do! Do you really think you are doing scientists, your students, and the general public a favor by pretending to be some kind of lunatic, defacto “defender of the scientific cause”? Even the other atheist scientists of the world find you obnoxious, and wish you would be quiet. Probably never happen.

Don’t let all the insipid praise that you may receive on your “blog” go to your head. Do something surprising and print this e-mail in your little internet newspaper, I would love to read 500 tons of criticism of what I have just written by your fellow maniacs.

just another human being,

David Hartmann

Man, this guy really needs to learn that if I put something on the web, he is not required to read it, especially since he has declared that I don’t know anything he needs to know. I’m very concerned for his blood pressure.

Ben Stein is a bit peeved

Stein has a little tantrum over outcry against his address at the University of Vermont. It’s not at all notable, except for one little comment.

Stein said he has spoken at many universities, including Columbia, Yale, Stanford, and American University, “and no one has said boo. Somehow at UVM, it has become a big issue.”

I recommend that we make it a big issue at every university where he speaks. The man who said flatly that “science leads you to killing people” should not be honored at any university.

Well, OK, he would fit right in at Liberty University and such places as that. But no real university.

Keep your prayers to yourself, Nurse

A nurse on a home visit decided to offer her services as a personal intermediary to a deity and pray for her patient. The patient objected and complained to the health organization — after all, the patient may not like her nasty bronze age god, and may feel put upon that a presumed professional is proposing to waste her time on chanted magic spells. It’s also a matter of courtesy: when I’m teaching, I don’t hector my students on matters outside the course content, like atheism, and when I’m being treated by a nurse or doctor, I expect them to leave irrelevant superstitions out of the examining room.

Anyway, poor suffering Nurse Petrie, martyr of the Baptist faith, is currently under disciplinary review for springing hare-brained mysticism on a patient in her care. Good. I don’t think she should lose her job over one infraction (although apparently she’s done similar things before), but she ought to be disciplined and taught what is appropriate.

But no, that’s not enough for the deranged dingbat Melanie Phillips, who declares that “This is the way society dies“.

I am a Jew; but when my mother was in the last stages of her terminal illness she was cared for by deeply devout Christian nurses who regularly prayed for her. Far from being offended by this, I was touched and comforted by this signal that they cared so much about her.

They cared so much that they bowed their head and babbled to an imaginary being while doing nothing. If someone wants a litany of nonsense recited nearby, sure, go for it…but purveyors of such useless fairy-stroking wastes of time think they have the privilege of pushing it on others, they’ve got another thing coming. And then she plays the Muslim envy card.

Demonstrating ‘a personal and professional commitment to equality and diversity’ apparently means that offering Christian solace to anyone at all, even if they don’t belong to another faith, somehow damages ‘equality and diversity’. Would the same action be taken, one wonders, against a Muslim nurse offering to pray for a Muslim patient?

First of all, “Christian solace” is only solace if you share a belief in the virtue of prayer; to rationalists, it’s all humbug and noise and not comforting at all. And secondly, yes, it doesn’t matter what religion the looney person is practicing. If they’re bowing on a prayer mat, ululating, waving burning incense over my head, sacrificing a chicken, clicking magic beads, or hollerin’ for god to come down and smite the devil in me, get them the hell out of my hospital room.

By the way, there is a poll on the odious Phillips’ screed.

Would you object to a nurse offering to pray for you?

Yes 11%
No 89%

Needs fixin’.

For those of you who think atheists are being too touchy, here are two additions.

  1. Put yourself in the position of the patient. You are sick and dependent on this person to help you get better, and she declares that your belief in her god is important. What do you do? There is an element of coercion here that should not be ignored.

  2. If the nurse were sincere in her faith, there’s something very easy she could do. Don’t ask, just go quietly off by herself and pray for the patient. The request is an unnecessary element that is little more than a ploy for attention, a declaration of her piety.

What happened to Conservapædia?

You can’t get to Conservapædia right now — it seems to have been taken offline. It’s not clear why, exactly, but there is a curiously hideous article that was posted there, as noted on Wonkette.

The Constitution provides that if a senator is unable to complete his or her term then the governor of the state will appoint a replacement Senator. Below is a list of Senate Democrats from States with Republican Governors. Currently the Democrats hold a 58 seat majority in the Senate. If these Senators were unable to complete their terms and were replaced by qualified Republicans by their Republican governors, the Republican Party would regain a commanding majority in the Senate sufficient to prevent Barack Hussein Obama from socializing medicine, nationalizing the financial and auto industries, and creating a socialist wealth redistribution scheme.

What follows is a list of all the Democratic senators in states with Republican governors. It’s very difficult to read that without seeing it as a hit list.

Conservapædia issued a disclaimer, saying that the article was an act of vandalism, but a little detective work by Tony Sidaway shows that the author seems to have been a long-term wiki editor with a history of writing stuff that is fairly typical of Conservapædia.

I’m trying so hard not to cry for the poor babies at the site.

You will be stupider after watching this

A hint: Glenn Beck. James Dobson. Together. This will rot your mind.

They are complaining about a court decision that ruled that a ‘moment of silence’ rule in a public school was a veiled attempt to introduce sectarian religious belief into the classroom. Nobody is afraid of prayer; kids can pray all they want, however they want, whenever they’ve got the free time. However, you don’t get to tell my kids that they have to contemplate your god — do me that favor, and I won’t insist that the schools force your kids to stop whatever they’re doing and think about the nonexistence of same.

By the way, Dobson, you confused the Constitution with the Declaration of Independence. Our constitution is a secular document that says nothing about the endowment of rights by a creator.

Not surprising at all

Ted Haggard is in the news again — it seems he has been involved in long term homosexual relationships, and has been abusing his power for sexual favors. Raise your hands if you would never have expected it!

Hey, how come none of you lifted your fingers from your keyboard?

Here’s his latest excuse, and it’s actually a good one.

In an AP interview this month before an appearance in front of TV critics in California, Haggard described his sexuality as complex and something that can’t be put into “stereotypical boxes.”

Yes! Now if only he could understand that everyone’s sexuality is complicated and difficult and personal, and that the real problem is people like him and his fellow evangelicals who insist that there is only one tolerable, one-size-fits-all box for us all.

Maybe they should change their name

Here’s another gagworthy media experience for you all: an interview on Skeptiko with Denyse O’Leary, author of one of the worst books I’ve ever read, The Spiritual Brain. O’Leary is awful, as usual, but the interviewer is horribly credulous as well — I had to turn it off when he started nattering on about the wonderful evidence of near-death experiences.

I’m feeling terribly cruel this morning. It must be the fact that on Thursdays I have to teach an 8am class.