Mark Mathis doesn’t like me

Mark Mathis does not come off as a nice man in interviews. You may have listened to the SciAm interview, a truly painful experience in which he made claims about evolution and then backtracked when confronted with his mistakes…and admitted that he knew nothing about the subject. He’s done it again in an interview with a Detroit weekly (scroll down to the “Unevolved” article on that page).

I confront Mathis with this point, and he counters that evolutionary theory is also untestable. This is patently untrue—to give just one example, scientists have witnessed speciation, the arisal of a new species from an old one.

When I point this out, he interrupts me immediately: “Whoa! Wait a minute! Please send me whatever material you have that demonstrates that we can observe speciation because I have not seen anything. I’ve never heard anyone even claim that!”

Is he serious? He’s just produced a film about evolution, and he’s never heard of the fact that speciation has been observed and thoroughly documented in the scientific literature? I’m stunned. I send him peer-reviewed research confirming this fact via e-mail, and he later responds, “This isn’t an important argument for me.”

So I ask him about falsifiability. Clearly, evolution could potentially be disproved, but how could one ever disprove the existence of a deity? He laughs. “You can’t apply falsifiability to Darwinian evolution. How is it falsifiable?”

I respond by quoting the biologist J.B.S. Haldane: “Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian.” One instance of fossils appearing in the wrong strata would disprove current evolutionary theory in an instant. Mathis pauses before saying, “If you want to get into the science…” He then trails off and mutters something irrelevant before finally confessing, “Look. You can get into the intricacies of the science on both sides. And I am not qualified.” On that point, we can both agree.

It’s really easy to find descriptions of speciation events on the web, there are thousands of papers on the subject, and there are even whole books discussing it (with difficult, hard-to-find titles like Speciation, which must be why Mathis couldn’t find them). It is cute how the poor man melts down when he meets anyone with even a hint of scientific knowledge. I don’t think “Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian” counts as a scientific intricacy, at least not in the circles I hang out in, where it’s more of a glib quickie. But then, even that level of science probably leaves poor Mathis floundering and lost.

You’ll have to read the rest to find out what he says about me, personally. I guess calling him the ass-prod was an insult that really stung.

Sagittarius: Uh-oh. A Republican is going to notice that you are a man-animal hybrid today. Expect vicious denunciations on the steps of the Capitol; beware of federal agents in white lab coats.

Florida license plates redux

I mentioned this new religious license plate in Florida before, and now it looks like it’s closer to reality. I don’t object strongly to it — it’s optional, and people who want it have to pay an extra $25 — but some of the arguments against it are embarrassing, and the arguments for it are even worse. There are a lot of variations of the slippery slope being thrown around.

Rep. Kelly Skidmore said she is a Roman Catholic and goes to Mass on Sundays, but she believes the “I Believe” plate is inappropriate for the government to produce.

“It’s not a road I want to go down. I don’t want to see the Star of David next. I don’t want to see a Torah next. None of that stuff is appropriate to me,” said Skidmore, a Democrat who voted against the plate in committee. “I just believe that.”

What? So the objection to a blatantly Christian plate is that it might encourage those Jews in Florida to brag about their religion on their cars? Is Judaism that offensive?

There is a better example of what kinds of interest groups the state might have to accommodate: the ACLU suggests that this could open the doors to KKK plates. That’s definitely much more offensive than driving while Jewish, but still…on giving it a little thought, I don’t think I’d mind if the hateful idiots of the KKK all labeled themselves, and paid the state for the privilege.

Simon, of the ACLU, said approval of the plate could prompt many other groups to seek their own designs, and they could claim discrimination if their plans were rejected. That could even allow the Ku Klux Klan to get a plate, Simon said.

But then there is the usual Christian hypocrisy. These plates are going to be offered selectively, only to groups of which the Florida legislature approves. Guess who’s left out?

Bullard, the plate’s sponsor, isn’t sure all groups should be able to express their preference. If atheists came up with an “I Don’t Believe” plate, for example, he would probably oppose it.

That’s the way, Bullard old boy; stop the slide down a slippery slope and replace it with an official state sponsored religious preference.

Virgo: You may think you’re sitting pretty, but there’s a really ugly test cross with a triple mutant in your future.

Who knew?

The things you learn from crazy clerics…

A prominent cleric, Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawy, said modern science had at last provided evidence that Mecca was the true centre of the Earth; proof, he said, of the greatness of the Muslim “qibla” – the Arabic word for the direction Muslims turn to when they pray.

Oh, well — if a prominent cleric said such a thing, who am I to argue? I’m sure there must be an utterly dazzling, deep theological argument to explain how one specific point on the surface of a spinning sphere, a point which doesn’t seem to have any special relationship to the pattern of rotation, can be defined as a “center”. I’m probably not smart enough to understand it, though.

I get email

The email below the fold is a fairly typical rant from a creationist who has a teeny tiny bit of information, and therefore thinks he has uncovered an irrefutable disproof of evolution. In this case, he has noted that different species have differing numbers of chromosomes, and therefore, because he believes variation in chromosome number is an absolute barrier to fertilization, evolution could not have occurred.

He’s missing a few key pieces of information. One is that, contrary to his belief, variation in chromosome number is not a barrier to reproduction, although it can reduce fertility. Chromosomes are fairly arbitrary collections of genes; they’re like a small collection of filing cabinets in the cell, in which genes have been tossed haphazardly by chance and time. Chromosomal rearrangements are like grabbing one stack of stuff from one cabinet and shoving it in another — it doesn’t change what stuff is present, it just changes the filing system. And since the filing system is remarkably disorderly in the first place, it really doesn’t make that much of a difference.

The other problem with his screed is that barriers to reproduction aren’t really a problem for evolution, either. If you look at the speciation literature, what you find are lots of people talking about how reproductive barriers between populations are constructed, either geographically or genetically.

Most of the papers in that literature, though, do not depend on the argument from extreme capitalization, on strange color changes in the text, or a peculiar dislike of the space bar on their keyboard. At least this guy didn’t use Comic Sans throughout.

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How people convince themselves to vote for idiots for president

I’m late to the party again; only because Hilzoy mentioned it did I see this hilariously inane article by Michael Medved. I don’t know what Medved’s qualifications are; he seems to be the Clever Hans of the Right Wing chattering classes, the guy who doesn’t actually have a functioning mind but is good at stringing random words together. So now he has written an article claiming that it is perfectly reasonable for Americans to discriminate against atheists in politics, specifically that they should resist the possibility of an atheist as president.

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God hates Porsches

A doddering old fool who shouldn’t have been driving in the first place cruised into a car dealership in his cheap little Ford Fiesta, and managed to demolish two Porsches outside the showroom. Total damage: £60,000.

So what does the senile twit say afterwards? You guessed it:

It was a miracle I got out alive and I put it down to the power of prayer and God looking after me.

Why was he praying to wreak havoc on expensive German cars?

We’re getting blamed for everything

Would you believe that atheists are to blame for the Westboro Baptist Church?

They can’t be real Christians. They must be part of an atheist cabal.

Their goal? To undermine churches. To give religion a black eye. To plant in the minds of the young a twisted and evil view of Christianity.

Somebody needs to be introduced to Poe’s Law. Besides, everyone knows that crazy religion can’t be blamed on the godless … it’s actually a conspiracy by squirrels.

I choose to view this as a positive development

Some of the politicians in the benighted state of Florida want to sell a new license plate.

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The Florida Legislature may create a new license plate that features the words ”I Believe” and the image of a cross in front of a church stained glass window. The measure is moving in both the House and Senate.

Rep. Ed Bullard, a Miami Democrat and a sponsor of the license plate, conceded that ”some people” may find something wrong with it, but he said it was a license plate for those people who may want something other than a plate that has a manatee or picture of the Challenger space shuttle.

Look at it this way: the stupid people in Florida are going to be conveniently self-labeling themselves with the Mark of the Buffoon.

(And seriously, this is OK with me. They’re going to be charging people an extra $25 for the privilege of sticking something so silly on their car; consider it another dumb tax.)

Davis apologizes

Well, it’s something. After her crazy tirade against atheists, now Monique Davis has apologized.

…after being on the receiving end of a week’s worth of public criticism, Davis called Sherman yesterday to apologize.

Sherman says Davis told him she “took out her frustrations and emotions on me and that she shouldn’t have done that.” Sherman says Davis’ explanation was “reasonable” and that he forgives her.

According to Sherman and State Rep. Jack Franks…Davis claims her outburst was triggered by learning shortly beforehand…that there’d been another Chicago Public School student killed.

Ugh. She would have been better off if her friends hadn’t made that stupid excuse for her. It’s tragic that a student was killed, but it has nothing to do with Rob Sherman, or atheists in general, and it does not excuse her attitude in any way.