How not to begin a blog post

Avoid the “I don’t want to…but” construction. It always leads to asininities like this:

I don’t want to trivialize the inhumane horrors that African slaves endured on slave ships destined for the Americas. But after a recent airplane trip, sitting tightly next to my neighbor in steerage seats, I feel the discomfort and pain endemic to the current air experience has certain curious similarities.

Because once you get past the extremely superficial similarity of an abstract packing problem, you’re stuck calling sitting on well-cushioned seats while stewardesses bring you drinks “discomfort and pain” while also reminding your readers of what real pain was like. Perhaps Steven Heller was forced at gunpoint to make his flight, leaving his weeping children behind? Was he forced to sit in his own feces for a few weeks while the plane slowly hauled him thousands of miles from his home? If he asked for an extra bag of peanuts, would the angry stewardess throw him out through a porthole in mid-flight? Was he refused a round-trip ticket because he was expected to spend a lifetime at his destination in menial labor?

I think, perhaps, the exercise of comparing a slave ship to a modern jetliner ought to lead one to emphasize the differences, instead.

You know, David Barton has a reputation for inventing quotes, but this is ridiculous

Let’s see…Darwin revealed the theory of evolution in 1859, and the United States declared their independence from Britain in 1776 — but our founding fathers were such magical geniuses that they foresaw the whole thing and debated the subject there in Philadelphia and resolved that evolution was a bunch of hooey. Right.

the founding fathers…already had the entire debate on creation/evolution…and you’ve got Thomas Paine, the least religious of the founding fathers, saying you got to teach creation science in the public school classroom, the scientific method demands it!

Hey, David Barton, could you find that quote where Thomas Jefferson explained mathematically how black holes form, and the the quote where Madison deduces the detailed chemical structure of DNA? I’m sure you’ve got it somewhere at your fingertips.

Maybe most importantly, you should dig up a citation from George Washington in which he testifies that David Barton is a credible historian.

I grow concerned for your craniofacial integrity

I’m going to do it again. You’re all about to facepalm once more, just as you did yesterday. By now, you should know this blog and be conscious of the need for deliberation and caution when putting your hand to your face.

I was sent this example of science proving atheism wrong. Perhaps you should gently place your hand on your forehead before you start reading, to forego the possibility of slamming your palm into your face with great force.

i-fc355a03c9d933a3f1479eff79dd0c57-waterproof.jpeg

So…this clever calculation is contingent on the premise that there has been 6 billion people on the earth for 3 billion years, and, tragically, that every drop everyone drinks stays in their body and disappears when they die. Hey, I’ve been visiting pubs here in England, and I’ve noticed that every pint I take in is followed a little later by a pint flowing out to, eventually, the sea. Which has led me to a complementary calculation that similarly disproves atheism.

Let’s assume that 6 billion people have been hanging out at the pub every day, and right after last call they stagger to the pisser and evacuate two liters of urine. By that calculation, there ought to be roughly 10 times as much water as we observe on the planet, and we ought to be completely submerged and swimming in pee. We are not, therefore we can conclude that there must be something wrong with my estimates, and since I am an idiot, I will assume that it can’t possibly be a failure to recognize an important concept like physiological homeostasis, and must be because one parameter, the length of time, must be fudged by 6 orders of magnitude to fit the innumerate presuppositions of bronze-age goat molesters.

Working blue

Stop writing to me about Mairson and Grossman. I have no respect for their opinions at all.

Grossman is the religion columnist at USA Today; Mairson is some disgruntled ex-employee of National Geographic who has appointed himself guardian of all propriety of anyone associated with NatGeo. Grossman is wondering “if the august Society would try to rein in Myers, just let him quietly bear the coveted NGS brand or whether Myers would high tail it out from under editorial control.” Mairson is concerned about my “profanity-laced diatribes and my lack of “civil discourse about religion”.

Bugger ’em.

My policy has been and always will be to write as I will, to say without reservation what I think, and to have a damn good time while doing it. I will not mute the way I express myself because a couple of delicate little flowers wilt when a blog does not have the same formal tone as a long-established magazine, and I will categorically reject the criticisms of idiots who look at what I say and see only shrill, rabid, militant, screaming, hysterical, obscenities — that is a slanderous mischaracterization that immediately calls into question their capacity for critical thought. It is also the very same clumsy character assassination that we atheists are entirely familiar with — every one of us seems to get accused of savagery and barbarous abuse of the mores of decorous civilization, when we’re not the ones bombing abortion clinics, raping children, or moronically believing in an invisible telepathic superman in the sky.

So to all of you who’ve been pestering me with Grossman and Mairson’s ginned-up non-controversies and bluenosed fussings, don’t worry. Nothing is changing for me. Web servers might change, blog software can shift, different paymasters might try to borrow my pages, but I am completely free: I write what I write because it is what I want to write, not because I am obligated to put myself in a straitjacket to please an advertiser. And I am especially not constrained by a pair of prissy, shallow whiners who have no association with me, no input into what I say, and absolutely no relevance.

I have a simpler solution for those two. Don’t read my blog. Is that so hard to comprehend?

Oh, I’m sorry. You’ve never heard of the Streisand Effect? Would you like to learn?

I, and a number of other people, were sent a link to this goofy picture of Kirk Cameron. I ignored it. Unfortunately, it was followed a little later by the demand below:

To whom it may concern:

I am Kirk Cameron’s manager. I would suggest you remove this picture from your sight with the false caption immediately, other wise we will turn over to our attorney to deal with this defamation. It is sad you don’t have better things to do with your time.

Mark Craig

Self-righteous pricks piss me off, so I had to post it.

Another IDiot projects

Man, what is it with Christians? Another one goes after me in an article titled Why P.Z. Meyer is Afraid, and a fellow just has to wonder how deeply they are capable of reading when they so grossly misspell my name all the time. “Myers”: it’s only five letters long, and it’s the most common spelling variant of that name in the US.

Anyway, it’s the usual litany: I’m uncivil and rude, I’m popular, I have a brute squad, I’m nasty, and I “attack the person rather than the argument”. That last one is particularly ironic because the entire post is nothing but an attack on me, and doesn’t even tackle my argument.

And what prompted this outburst? My post on Moshe Averick and his lack of understanding. Go ahead, read it; despite fuming over it, my IDiot critic doesn’t bother to include a link to it, possibly because it refutes his claims. The worst thing I say about Averick is that he’s a clueless creationist, right after explaining why he has missed the point. The post is about how complexity and design are independent properties, and how you can’t use complexity as a proxy for design, despite the fact that that is almost the entirety of the intelligent design case.

It was an attack on the argument, not the person. Sad, deluded Joel doesn’t even understand that. But then, his brain has been addled from “dealing with matters of deep theology (in particular the Trinity and Incarnation)”. Poor boy. [Yes, that’s an attack on the person. Study it, Joel, and learn what it actually is.]

Another reason to dread the airport

On my last flight, I sat next to a woman who had the worst case of fear of flying I’ve ever seen. She spent the entire trip clutching the armrests and breaking into frequent bouts of tears; when I asked if there was anything I could do, she said, no, she knew it was completely irrational, but she just felt extreme terror every time she got in an airplane.

I wonder if she’d pass this new ridiculous test Homeland Security is installing in airports?

Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) programme designed to spot people who are intending to commit a terrorist act, has in the past few months completed its first round of field tests at an undisclosed location in the northeast, Nature has learned.

Like a lie detector, FAST measures a variety of physiological indicators, ranging from heart rate to the steadiness of a person’s gaze, to judge a subject’s state of mind. But there are major differences from the polygraph. FAST relies on non-contact sensors, so it can measure indicators as someone walks through a corridor at an airport, and it does not depend on active questioning of the subject.

Feeling anxious about the job interview you’re flying to? You will be strip-searched. Angry because the incompetent boob at the ticket counter bumped you from your flight? Your body cavities must be inspected. Steely in your resolve, forthright in your determination to strike the infidel? Welcome aboard!

I predict that, like most of the security theater we go through now, there will be huge numbers of false positives to keep TSA busy, and there will be no real terrorists caught. It’s like the tiger repellent rock from the Simpsons…

Only difference is that this rock is going to cost us at least tens of millions of dollars.

I don’t want any more magic gadgets. I’m just hoping for the day that they come to their senses and let us keep our shoes on.

I am lectured in logic by a man who believes in invisible magic men in the sky

Rabbi Moshe Averick asks, “Seriously, Aren’t Atheists Embarrassed by P.Z. Myers?“

Seriously, aren’t you? What’s the matter with you people?

What prompts his outrage is his discovery of a lecture I gave some time back on the complexity argument from intelligent design creationists. He is appalled at my total lack of logic! Unfortunately for him, his misconceptions arise because he makes some unwarranted leaps about what I was saying.

He specifically objects to the fact that I showed a slide of a wall of driftwood at a beach, and that I explained that it had accumulated by chance and the properties of wind and water along the shoreline…and then I stated that it was very, very complex. And it is! Rabbi Averick is deeply incensed by this. I think you’ll spot his logical error in the second sentence of this paragraph from the rabbi’s rant:

To be honest, when I saw this lecture for the first time, I thought Myers was joking. A pile of driftwood as being analogous to the “complexity” of a living cell?! Myers is arguing that since a “complex” and “complicated” pile of driftwood can accumulate through an undirected natural process, so can a living cell. I guess if by “complexity” you mean a chaotic collection of junk, then I would have to agree; a large pile of driftwood is certainly “complex.” In any case, no self-respecting ID theorist would ever use the term “complexity.” The terms that are always used are “functional complexity” or “specified complexity.” In other words, complexity that achieves some pre-determined goal, complexity that clearly functions towards a specific purpose. The argument is that “functional complexity” and “specified complexity” clearly are the result of intelligent intervention. A pile of driftwood is immediately recognizable for exactly what it is; a random, disorganized, purposeless collection of…well, driftwood! To describe this argument as flawed logic would be misleading; we first would have to dignify it by labeling it as some form of logic in the first place. It is not flawed logic, it is simply ridiculous.

Nowhere in that talk do I claim that a pile of driftwood is analogous to a cell. I think there’s a rather huge difference between a cell and a pile of debris; one replicates and is therefore subject to iterative natural selection, and the other doesn’t. I was making a different point. I have been giving a similar talk lately, and in that I have added another slide that might help clarify the logic he’s missing. I show this:

i-7e4b1df6aba3d7004252a9f0c76fbcc9-nike_swoosh.jpeg

Recognize it? It’s only one of the most well known corporate logos in the world, the Nike swoosh. It’s very, very simple, and it’s also most definitely designed. No getting around it; a graphic designer sat down and designed that simple swooshing logo.

Is it clearer now? We have complicated things that are not designed, and we have simple things that are designed. We also have complicated things that are designed, and simple things that are not. The message you should take away from these examples is that complexity and design are independent properties of an object. One does not imply the other. You cannot determine whether something was designed by looking at whether it is complicated or not.

Yet as we see just about every time some clueless creationist, like Rabbi Averick, starts bellowing about design, we see the same blithe assumption: they look at a cell, they say “gosh, O Lord, it’s really, really complicated”, and then they start blithering about how it must have been designed. The two are not connected!

Also familiar, I’m afraid, is the usual indignant waffling about it being “specified complexity”. I have read Dembski, who uses the term. I have read Meyer, who practically spews the phrase out on every single page of his book, Signature in the Cell. I have never seen it operationally defined.

I had to read Meyer’s godawful book twice, because I couldn’t believe he failed to do something so fundamental; the second time I was looking carefully for any discussion of what “specified complexity” means, or how to measure it. Here is the closest he comes:

The term specified complexity is, therefore, a synonym for specified information or information content.

Oh, yes. That is so helpful. He equates complexity with information content, but the mystery word here is “specified” — how do we determine that? None of these clowns has a clue.

Forget about the complexity part; that’s irrelevant, and has nothing to do with whether something is designed. The problematic issue is whether something, complex or simple, was specified — which, alas, is a modifier for which you can freely substitute “designed” in all of the creationist literature, which means that all they are arguing is that designed things are designed.

To which I ask, “How do you know that is specified, or designed?”

To which they reply, “Because it’s awesomely complicated.”

Go back to line 1. Repeat endlessly.

The power of faith

It’s amazing what religion can do. In this case, it motivated some dim old fart who ought to have been loafing about watching Glenn Beck and drowning his anger with a six-pack of Bud to go out and try to murder gynecologists. He didn’t actually succeed, fortunately: he was playing with his gun in his cheap room at the Motel 6 when it went off and sent a bullet flying into the room next door…so bad-ass that he is, he called up the front desk to mention that he was worried he might have hit someone else.

Then the police came and found out what he was really up to. He didn’t want to accidentally shoot someone, but he definitely intended to march into Planned Parenthood and murder as many people as he could.

Ralph Lang, 63, told a Madison police officer at the Motel 6, 1754 Thierer Road, that he had a gun “to lay out abortionists because they are killing babies,” according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court.

Lang said he planned on shooting the clinic’s doctor “right in the head,” according to the complaint. Asked if he planned to shoot just the doctor or nurses, too, Lang replied he wished he “could line them up all in a row, get a machine gun, and mow them all down,” the complaint said.

And he’s proudly confessing all this to the police! These religious excuses do attract the dumb ones, that’s for sure. And yes, he had a vague plan to go on a nationwide shooting spree, and he was driven by his religion.

Sgt. Bernie Gonzalez looked around Lang’s motel room and saw a box that contained several documents, including a map of the U.S. with dots in each state and the handwritten words “some abortion centers.”

Also written on the map was “Blessed Virgin Mary says Hell awaits any woman having an abortion.”

I think someone needs to lock up Ol’ Grandpa Gunman in a nice institution somewhere with a chapel and an absence of firearms and a multituded of locks on the doors, for the safety of society.

Stay classy, Kirk!

I missed the classiest part of Kirk Cameron’s remarks about Stephen Hawking — the source I cited apparently edited out the over-the-top preliminaries as words that should not be witnessed. We don’t exhibit such decorum here, so I’m willing to repeat what Cameron said.

To say anything negative about Stephen Hawking is like bullying a blind man. He has an unfair disadvantage, and that gives him a free pass on some of his absurd ideas.

Oooh, he went there. So the only reason physicists pay attention to Hawking is out of pity? Kirk Cameron is so far out of touch, and such a boorish asshole.