At least Don McLeroy is consistently stupid

We were just womping on the new president of the Texas State Board of Education for his foolishness about evolution, but it turns out he’s got the all the symptoms of full wingnut syndrome: he’s also a proponent of ignorance-only sex education.

It is strange that there’s this whole suite of positions that would seem to be unrelated, but almost always seem to be adopted wholesale. If you know someone is against evolution, you can pretty much predict their positions on abortion, stem cells, the death penalty, education, GW Bush, and homosexuality. I wonder what common force ties all those disparate ideas together?

What? Royalty doesn’t come with common sense?

Those European countries seem to have relics of old feudal hierarchies still prancing about, which we (and they) mostly seem to ignore except when they do something amusingly silly. The latest royal clown is Princess Märtha Louise of Norway, who is opening an “alternative therapy center,” which is loony enough, but now we learn that this particular center is going to specialize in harnessing the power of angels. She claims she got in touch with the angels through her experience with horses.

I hadn’t known there was a connection. This makes My Little Pony look a little more ominous.

She’s fourth in line for the Norwegian throne. I hope she isn’t applying her wacky quackery to the first three — is this part of a cunning plan?

Filling the gaps in my argument

Perhaps I was a little too surprised at the utterly bizarre criticisms Michael Egnor made of my talk at the Minnesota Atheists this weekend — he wasn’t there, he didn’t know what I said, but he went ahead and tried to rebut what he thought I would have said anyway — that I was more interested in spelling out what I did say than in wrestling with his absurd arguments for a magic invisible ghost that lives inside his cranium. Fortunately, a few other people found Egnor’s flailings sufficiently entertaining that they took a few shots at addressing them: you’ll find more discussion on dualism at Harvard College Democrats, Synapostasy, and Notes from Evil Bender. Poor Dr Egnor. Most people seem to be aghast at the thought that someone so foolish is a trusted and respected neurosurgeon.

I’m actually not too surprised. The fact that he’s shilling for the Discovery Institute, that magnet for kooks, cranks, sloppy philosophers and dishonest scientists, says it all.

Hide the guillotines, they’re on to us!

We should be quaking in our jackboots: a media counterattack is being launched against us wicked atheists. They have a website!

American Vision is launching a relentless and systematic response to militant atheism. We’ve produced a brilliant 2-minute commercial that we plan to broadcast globally via the Internet and Television. Atheists present themselves as enlightened and civil. But this new commercial will reveal the shocking truth to viewers. The French Revolution, Communism, Nazism, etc. have taught us that the atheistic worldview will inevitably lead to the persecution of Christians and the killing of anyone who gets in the way. What’s worse is that atheism is paving a wide road for Islam to advance in our nation and around the world.

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A general predilection for delusion

The first review of my talk yesterday is in! Too bad it is from somebody who wasn’t there and who is a world-class fool. Yes, it’s Michael Egnor again, and he’s got a lengthy post up with the pretext of giving me advice on future talks, but is really an attempt to preempt my arguments and chide me for my crazy materialist position. He doesn’t even come close to any of my arguments, and he makes false assumptions all over the place about what I and the audience think. I’m used to straw men from creationists, but this is ridiculous.

Here’s what I actually said at the talk.

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My eyes are dry and clear

It’s a personal tragedy that Tammy Faye has died, but someone else will have to let their mascara run. She and her husband bilked thousands of people, lied lied lied, perpetuated superstitious myths, lived lives of gag-inducing hypocrisy, and wallowed in outrageous self-pity when their empire of corruption crumbled. I’m sorry she lived a wasted and deluded life, but beyond that … good riddance.

It’s a good thing I’m traveling today and will have to miss the sanctimonious, dishonest media accolades.

A little more on Lifecode

One other thing about Stuart Pivar’s book: he has collected a few endorsements. They are a little strange. One is by Robert Hazen, a chemist, and if you read it, it’s more like a review of a paper in which the reviewer is trying to state some things he finds plausible about the work. In this case, he likes the idea of the fluid-filled plastic models for making “a more rigorous mathematical exploration of the relationships among such variables as length, width, viscosity, forces, and resultant segmented morphology”, which is fair enough. I don’t think Pivar has demonstrated the competence to carry out such a study, and the fundamental flaws in the rest of the work do not justify any confidence in him.

Another endorsement is by Neil deGrasse Tyson. A funny thing…I’ve written to several of the people Pivar cites as supporting his work. Tyson replied, and has said that part of the quote is an out of context reference to a completely different subject, and that another part is a fabrication. He has asked that Pivar remove his name from his website, which he has not done. Tyson’s name is also prominently used on the back cover of his book—I don’t see that going away, either.

Almost two thirds of the book is taken up with copies of articles and book chapters by other authors. I wonder if Pivar got permission from the authors and publishers before using their work wholesale like that?