Interesting associations

So we’re going to have this event called the Reason Rally next month.

The opposition is beginning to stir, weakly and ineffectually, with a contribution from a creationist fool.

I have already commented on it here, but I will also note that they are calling this rally of people who profess to support "reason," "science," and "secularism" the "largest gathering of its kind in history." I guess they forgot about the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Maybe they should add "history" to their list of emphases.

No word yet on whether national park officials will allow them to operate a guillotine on the Mall.

There will, of course, be no Bastille to storm, but will we be doing this the same way we’ve done large-scale atheist projects before? Will we consider women "passive citizens" who were denied the vote because they didn’t have "the moral and physical qual­ities" to exercise political rights? Will we deny the égalité in "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" to non-whites?

No wonder we can’t get any decent intellectual progress in this country: we contain idiots who hear the words “reason”, “science”, and “secularism” and leap to the conclusion that we’re talking about guillotines. I guess that’s why they’re so anti-science and anti-reason — they’ve made some maddeningly stupid associations with the words.

And why should Martin Cothran leap to this bizarre scenario of atheists going all 18th century and discriminating against women and minorities? That’s more of a 21st century obsession of religious fundamentalists.

But then, he’s not even being creative. This is Rick Santorum’s line that equates science, social justice, and secularism with chopping people’s heads off. No one is advocating tyranny or revolution here, and decapitation is a signature move of terrorist extremists nowadays…so how can anyone take seriously a trembling nitwit who screams bloody murder because Richard Dawkins or Taslima Nasrin or Lawrence Krauss or Hemant Mehta or Jamila Bey or Greta Christina talk about liberty and equality without gods or priests?

There will be no guillotines on the mall unless the religious right brings them. We cannot be responsible for the imaginary terrors the stupid and ignorant conjure up when confronted with knowledge and good sense and a dismissal of superstition.

Next, throw a bag over the Washington Monument

Wasilla High School has a piece of art called “The Warrior Within” on display. The artists describe it this way:

Emerging from the powerful stone form are two warrior shields encircled by glowing feathers,” the description says, adding the art is a monument to the warrior spirit. “The bronze shield has a hand impression showing ‘good deeds.’ The aluminum shield has a flame symbol representing the ‘spark of inspiration.’ The stone form represents the strong material from which a warrior is made.

And here’s what it looks like:

I suppose one might think it looks very vaguely like a vulva, if you squint and don’t know much about anatomy and kinda ignore all the details to the point where any oval is going to be interpreted as a vagina. Or if you just have a dirty mind.

So of course the high school has now covered it with a sheet. The sniggering philistines of Wasilla lose again; if they think they will silence criticism of their town because they have a vulva sculpture, they instead get to have us laughing at them for being close-minded prudes and censorious prigs.

Relax, people. Go with it. It’s a shield, but if you think it looks like a vulva, even better — that’s a lovely symbol, too. Just think…it could have been a sheela-na-gig, instead.

That’s from a Christian church, by the way. Just in case someone there thinks it’s godless and profane.

Because Denyse O’Leary is so much nicer than Jerry Coyne

I could have warned him. Jerry Coyne had an interview on Skeptiko, that nest of feeble-minded credulity, that was a hilarious collision of reason with idiocy. The last time I looked at Skeptiko was when he interviewed Denyse O’Leary, on her ghastly book, The Spiritual Brain.

Strangely, that interview went smoothly and without any argument. Clearly the problem must lie with Jerry Coyne’s temperament.

Quantum Christianity?

Hallelujah! At long last, we can reconcile Jesus and science — all we need is to know a little quantum physics. Very little quantum physics. So little that we can get it all wrong, and it really doesn’t matter. Heed this call to improve the world by having Christians embrace physics!

It is time for the spiritually faithful to openly support the acceptance of this new science, which is called quantum physics theory. It replaces Newtonian physics theory, which is based on concepts developed in the 17th century when scientists separated themselves from the Church of Rome to avoid being burned at the stake when their discoveries were at variance with the teachings of the church.

Uh, hey, what? I had no idea that Newtonian physics was a cop-out to avoid conflict with Catholicism. The things you learn on the interwebs…

The Newtonian physics the-ory describes most day-to-day physical phenomena well, but does not support concepts of intuitive, spiritual or other "nonphysical" phenomena, such as electricity and field theories.

This is getting weirder and weirder: electricity is non-physical? It’s an intuitive, spiritual phenomenon? I know James Clerk Maxwell was a devout evangelical Christian, but he managed to keep all of that out of his work.

I think you can see where this is going: wicked Catholic-appeasing Newton doesn’t support spirituality (which is already ridiculous and ahistorical), but quantum physics does.

Quantum physics theory sees the universe as an infinite, interactive field of energy patterns (quantum holograms) in which the true intentions of humankind influence the application of infinite sources of energy in our physical world.

See?

I don’t think quantum physics includes human intention as a factor at all. This sounds more like Deepak Chopra’s version of physics, i.e., total bugwackin’ nonsense.

So how does this guy justify this idiosyncratic version of physics? By personal experience, of course.

I have personally experienced and observed the moving of physical objects, the changing of chemical compositions and the healing of sickness by means of true intentions, alone. I foresee a near future in which each of us "who does not doubt in his heart" quietly and without ostentation, helps to keep turning the wheels of industry, transportation and electric generation, as required. How many Christians truly believe in the teachings of Jesus?

I look forward to our bright future in which the prayers of devout Christians cause the turbines of dynamos to whirl about telekinetically, generating free godly energy for us all.

If you doubt this, you do not truly believe in the teachings of Jesus, who was all about magic-powered industrial machinery.

A wild jewelry idea

Did you know that Rick Santorum thinks atheism leads to beheading people?

“They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is a government that gives you rights. What’s left are no unalienable rights. What’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do, and when you’ll do it. What’s left, in France, became the guillotine. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re a long way from that. But if we do, and follow the path of President Obama and his overt hostility to faith in America, then we are headed down that road.”

Which led me to a crazy thought…maybe the atheist symbol should be a little guillotine. I understand there’s a peculiar trend in religions to use an execution device as a fashion statement, so it would fit right in.

It would also be of some practical utility to cigar smokers.

And what overt hostility to faith does Obama have? Did you see his prayer breakfast remarks? He’s so fucking pious I don’t want to vote for him.

How a Christian brain works

Pat Robertson and his cohost are trying very hard to understand us evil atheists, so they do a little projection and a little Christian logic. They deduce that we…well, you’ll have to watch it to believe it.

Here’s how it goes:

  1. Atheists hate all gods. Actually, they hate everything.

  2. Wiccans worship trees as gods.

  3. Therefore, atheists should all want to cut down trees.

Yes, it’s 8am here. I waited a few hours to drop that on you. A headache is as good as a cup of coffee for waking you up, isn’t it?

Soft, squishy, mushy fodder

I took one look, and facepalmed. I’m not even going to try to plow through this mess, but in case you were bored and looking for a chew toy, take a look at this guy.

Who am I? Around 2007 upon arising from higher states I started awakening this strange innate ability for argumentation logic that I have which surpasses even Aristotle and William of Ockham. I started unintentionally getting involved in lots of arguments and debates. This happened when I entered into higher states and started seeing all arguments in systematic patterns.

…

I don’t really know what’s going to happen next in course of the future…but now I can finally share and preserve my thoughts online with this blog.

With the highest innate ability for argumentation logic (probably the highest that ever existed), high intelligence, high intuition, and high originality I wonder how much of my knowledge I should share with the world…and how much I should keep secret…

I don’t think there’s much point in addressing that level of arrogance and obliviousness, and if you venture there, give up any expectation of convincing him of anything.

For example, have fun with The threat that atheists pose to science.

Throughout history atheism and atheists have always been detrimental to scientific progress and advancement. It’s time that someone speaks out against what atheists are doing.

Atheists and atheism have been given a free pass for far too long. Everything atheists touch and take over immediately becomes ruined and destroyed. Atheists are just like uncivilized animals, it’s up to Theists to civilize these uncivilized savages.

Since atheists don’t seem to understand what science even is it’s up to Theists to teach them.

The worse thing that ever happened to society was atheists taking over science. Theists have to make science become scientific again now that atheist animals are trying to ruin science and turn it into a pseudo-scientific joke.

Yeah, this is the same guy who also claims that Nazis are a “left-wing liberal movement”.

Can prayer get any more useless?

Yes, yes it can. Instead of invoking magic to achieve material ends, it can invoke magic to inspire more magical thinking. Here’s a charming technique called “theophostic prayer”.

The TPM Basic Training Seminar Manual defines TPM as, " Intentional and focused prayer with the desired outcome of an authentic encounter with the presence of Christ, resulting in mind renewal and subsequent transformed life."

Theo (GOD) Phostic (light) is a ministry of prayer that is Christ centered and God reliant for its direction and outcome. Simply stated, it is encouraging a person to discover and expose what he/she believes is falsehood; and then encouraging him/her to have an encounter with Jesus Christ through prayer, thus allowing the Lord to reveal His truth to the wounded person’s heart and mind. It is not about advice giving, diagnosing problems, or sharing opinions or insight. It is about allowing a person to have a personal encounter with the Lord Jesus in the midst of the person’s emotional pain.

So it does nothing at all then?

Oh, wait. It does something for someone. There’s this little line of icons on the page.

Somebody profits — you’ll shell out $300 buckeroos to learn how to imagine Jesus harder.

Isn’t there something about Jesus and moneychangers in the temple in that Bible thingie? Maybe it’s only in the atheist bible that Christians don’t read.

Say what, Ron Paul?

No one seriously wants this loon in the White House, do they? I’m having trouble parsing this:

On the eve of Saturday’s Nevada caucus, Ron Paul sits down with Piers Morgan for a revealing interview, during which the Republican from Texas shares his views on rape and abortion: "If it’s an honest rape, that individual should go immediately to the emergency room, I would give them a shot of estrogen."

The estrogen, I understand: it’ll prevent any potential pregnancy. But what is an “honest” rape? What is a “dishonest” rape, and what would he do with a woman who was dishonestly raped? He seems to be making weebly distinctions with no meaning at all.

Islamic science has come to this pitiful end

The words of the Prophet Muhammad (sallallahu ‘aleihi was-sallam) have been tested scientifically, and found hilarious. In work carried out under the direction of Dr. Jamaal Haamid, students at Qassim University examined a saying by the prophet, and have published it in a freely available pdf, The Hadeeth on the Fly, which you can download if you desire. Or you could just read this post, which summarizes entirely the complete content of the short paper, which is pretty much unpublishable and unbelievable anyway.

Here are the holy words.


(Notice that I include the original Arabic so there can be no confusion!)

If a housefly falls in the drink of anyone of you, he should dip it (in the drink), for the one of its wings has a disease and the other has the cure of the disease.

I do find that rather disturbing: so in Arabia, if a fly touches your water, you’re supposed to catch it, dunk it in deeper and slosh it around, to prevent disease? Arabian flies buzz around with pathogens segregated to just one wing, while the other one is healthy? How do they do that?

OK, setting aside the sanitary habits of Arabians and the mechanism by which this holy aphorism could be true, our intrepid students do carry out the obvious experiment: they drop a fly in a flask of sterile water, and then they pluck out the fly and immerse it completely in a second flask of sterile water. But then it all goes horribly wrong.

Here is the result of experiment #1.


Plate 2- Cultured water sample taken from a flask containing sterilized water and where a fly fell (without submersion). Growth of pathogenic (disease causing) bacterial colonies of the E. coli type were identified after taking samples from the water in the flask for culture.
Plate 1- Cultured water sample from the same flask following the complete dipping of the fly. An entire disappearance of the bacterial growth seen in Petri-dish 2 is clear. The new bacteria growing in plate 1 was identified as Actinomyces, the one from which useful antibiotics can be extracted. This explains the complete inhibition of growth in plate 2

Plate 2 on the right is the one from water merely touched by a fly. There is no explanation for how the plate was produced, or how the bacteria were identified; the strange brown sludge suggests poor technique, though, and I’ve cultured E. coli myself — and that hideous thick fecal-colored glop looks nothing like E. coli.

Plate 1 on the left, made from water in which the fly was fully immersed, looks nasty too. It’s a poor photograph, but that looks like a thick lawn of colonies everywhere. How do they know it’s Actinomyces? I have no idea, they don’t say. It’s also a mistake to simply declare it beneficial — Actinomyces are opportunistic pathogens.

Experiment #2 was a different fly, two flasks of water, same result.

Experiment #3 was a third fly, two flasks of water, same result.

Having done the experiment to death, our brave students retired at the third repetition, wrote it up with no methods, no discussion, no literature cited (except for their holy book, of course), and no reliable, believable data. They also didn’t do the other obvious experiment, of snipping off the wings and examining the bacterial flora living on the left vs. right, but then, maybe they’re leaving that for the advanced students.

Any 10 year olds looking for a quick and easy science fair project, there it is. I’m sure you can replicate this experiment trivially — but please, talk to a real microbiologist first and learn how to streak a plate. You might also learn something about a control plate, which our U of Qassim students didn’t bother to do.

Of course, this work wasn’t carried out by 10 year olds. It was done by university students in a “Med 497” (a medical course?) in a department of medical microbiology. I strongly urge anyone visiting Saudi Arabia to avoid getting sick. They might try to treat you by swishing a fly around in your coffee.

(Also on Sb)