May the Fourth proven false by a religious twit!

It’s fun to watch religious conservatives grapple with pop culture, because they really don’t get it. Today is the goofy pseudo-holiday called May the Fourth (it’s not a real holiday, ‘k? It’s a silly riff on the phrase “May the force be with you from Star Wars). The big dumb dorks at Answers in Genesis would like to get in on the fun in the worst possible way. Like a particularly clueless high schooler showing up at the prom to tell everyone dancing is stupid, their way of celebrating a fake holiday is to announce that Star Wars is fake.

We know, guy.

The AiG approach, though, is to “prove” that intelligent aliens don’t exist using theological “logic”. They imagine a group of fictitious aliens finding a Bible.

Let’s consider physical, intelligent beings like Wookies, Klingons, or other “humanlike” beings. Although they definitely make for good entertainment in sci-fi movies and shows, the concept of advanced alien races is theologically problematic. Let me explain using the following (imaginary) scenario, with Chewbacca, Superman, and Spock reading the Bible: can these intelligent aliens be redeemed from the curse? (See Genesis 3 and Romans 8.) In other words, does God’s plan of salvation apply to them?

These imaginary aliens would not think about that at all, any more than you would wonder whether you were going to be rewarded with some kind of paradise if you found some book of mythology. Are you wondering if you’ve been sufficiently “cleared” to earn Scientology’s afterlife? Probably not. Chewbacca is going to be similarly unconcerned about meeting weird-ass Christian criteria. However, AiG’s theology says poor Chewie is either “fallen” or irrelevant.

Romans 8 makes it clear that Adam’s sin affected all creation—not just mankind. So then we have to ask the question: are these high-level sentient aliens fallen? If not, then they’re redundant. God already has the angels (the cherubim, seraphim, etc.). And even if these aliens have never sinned, they would still suffer the effects of sin, suffering under the bondage of corruption—despite having never sinned!

So are they claiming that the Bible accuses the Wookies of Kashyyk of being slammed with the guilt of sin when Eve bit into the apple? Because it doesn’t say that. No human has any knowledge of aliens on other worlds, so it would be really weird if Moses, the putative author of certain books of the Bible, had enumerated all these unrelated alien creatures. So this is a rather stupid assertion. Also, sin is not an actual phenomenon — it’s invective used against certain behaviors, rather than something intrinsic to humans or aliens — so claiming it’s a property of people as well as Wookies is not demonstrable.

As for being irrelevant…that’s an ugly anthropocentric and often racist attitude.

Obviously, it makes no sense to have intelligent beings—who suffer because of Adam’s sin—but cannot be saved! Christ is able to redeem man because he represents man by taking upon himself a second nature—as being fully God and fully man. Christ is the God-man (i.e., he’s not the “God-Klingon” or the “God-Wookie”).

“Obviously” and “it makes no sense” are phrases no fundamentalist/evangelical Christian should ever use. The whole premise of their religion, that a god turned into a man who died and thereby allowed everyone to go to heaven, “obviously” “makes no sense.”

AiG somehow turns this strange twisted logic into proof that aliens don’t exist, because “it makes no sense.”

Simply put, the work of Jesus cannot atone for the sins of advanced alien beings. And so, the idea of intelligent life existing on other planets is completely unbiblical! Actually, these kinds of issues highlight the problem of trying to mix unbiblical ideas into a biblical worldview. I mean, can you imagine a gospel message that begins with: “Long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” No, that would obviously trivialize the gospel!

And speaking of the gospel, I should also quickly mention that it’s unbiblical to believe Jesus somehow visited multiple alien worlds, lived there, died for them, rose again . . . and repeated this process on each world. In other words, Jesus dying multiple times is NOT biblical! The Bible makes it very clear that Jesus died once (e.g., Romans 6:10; Hebrews 9:28; 1 Peter 3:18).

There’s an awful lot of bullshit excused as “biblical”, so “unbiblical” is not the condemnation they think it is.

They then leap to rebut an argument no one has made. What about unintelligent life? The argument from sin and salvation wouldn’t apply, so maybe tauntauns could exist? Nope. Any planets orbiting those 1023 stars in the universe must be completely sterile.

…recall from Genesis 1 that God created everything for man’s benefit and enjoyment. In other words, we have dominion over God’s creation (Genesis 1:28), which is also stated in Psalm 8. So the question would be: do we have dominion over those plants and animals on alien worlds? What purpose would they serve for us? So, for this reason alone, I believe it’s unlikely that there’s any non-intelligent life out in the cosmos.

So trillions of dead planets many light years away must have been put there for “man’s benefit and enjoyment.” How does that work, anyway? What benefit do I get from an unreachably distant scorched cinder orbiting Betelgeuse, pray tell? Doesn’t the fact that I don’t, and that I don’t have dominion over distant planets, show that their interpretation of the Bible is already wrong?

I want you to know this was a challenge

A swarm of Parasteatoda have hatched out in my compost bin, and I’ve tried a few times to get decent photos of them, but it’s hard. They’re young and tiny — less than half a millimeter long — and they’re busy, scampering all over to build webs, so shooting them is tough. Also, I’m rusty from a long winter neglecting my camera.

Here’s one being spooky, its cephalothorax in shadow with just the pair of posterior median eyes visible and glowing.

I’ll keep practicing and they’ll keep growing.

Wouldn’t you know it?

This is the first day of my summer break.

Of course, then, in the middle of the night, the toilet float assembly breaks. The water won’t stop running. My wife is disturbed by this, and gets up at 1am to fuss over it to no avail — she can’t close the water valve to the toilet — and wakes me up. I tell her it’s too late to be worried about this, just turn off the main valve in the basement and go to sleep, which she does.

This morning I get up, close the shutoff valve to the toilet, turn the main valve back on, and make coffee. Then I start disassembling the float valve so I can replace it. No rush; we have another bathroom upstairs.

But then, I’m informed that as long as I’m doing this little job, she’d really like a whole new toilet that’s a bit taller, since this one is practically a squat toilet, and as long as I’m doing that, can I get a bidet installed? This has turned into such a big job that I’m going to just call a plumber on Monday.

Maybe it’s a good thing I haven’t retired yet, I had a terrifying vision of what life would be like if I didn’t have a formal job.

SCHOOL’S OUT FOR SUMMER!

Last class today; I’m not giving any finals, but I do have some term papers coming in on Monday evening. I’m wrapping this thing up in short order.

This week my eco devo course has been nothing but student presentation. I encouraged them all to be creative, and one student gave us a grand finale with a song. Here it is!

Hex here! And welcome to “hi I made another song for a school project because I can” 2 electric boogaloo.

Context for the regulars on this channel, the Ecological Development class I’m taking this semester has some rather lax requirements in that like- It has to be 15-20 minutes, but I could do music and such.

So I’m doing a presentation on allergens because I discovered I’m allergic to cats and wanted to know WHY when I’ve been around cats all my life. Sadly, my research didn’t give me any good news, and in fact I might’ve developed worse allergies from being around so many cats for a solid 18 years of my life before spending the past few years in college.

As for this song? Basically me incorporating some of my research into a song that’s basically me being like “WHY AM I ALLERGIC TO CATS WHEN I LOVE THEM SO MUCH???”

Anyways, now onto the classmates who might be watching this. Hello! These aren’t humans singing. They’re vocal synthesizers! The feminine vocal is Mai, and the masculine vocal on the harmonies is Kevin. I had no reason to pick them other than Mai is cute and then Kevin gets used for memes.

If y’all are curious about exploring my channel or commenting, just remember to avoid breeching my privacy when you do. I do not share any of my personal information like my name on this channel for safety reasons.

A frustrating news article

I read this article, “Where seas are rising at alarming speed”, with rising exasperation. Look: the Gulf Coast is slowly drowning at a rate that is now obvious.

It’s great at explaining how the consequences of climate change are harming people right now, and they’re only getting worse, but…WHY is the Gulf Coast in particular experiencing this rapid rise? The article doesn’t say. So I had to look elsewhere, like NASA.

Although the average acceleration of global sea level rise has also increased over the decades, it was mainly due to melting ice in regions like Greenland. For the Gulf Coast, the team used tide-gauge readings and satellite data from NASA missions like GRACE to rule out a few potential causes.

“We checked vertical land motion, for instance, and could relatively quickly say no,” he said. “We looked into the ice-melt component but it couldn’t explain the magnitude of the change that we have seen in that particular area.”

This left them with one other possibility: sterodynamic sea level, or the combination of ocean-water expansion in response to warming, saltiness, and ocean circulation. The team found that beyond Cape Hatteras, this acceleration extended into the North Atlantic and the Caribbean Sea.

But what is the source of this shifting circulation? According to Dangendorf, climate models reveal two factors at play.

“Approximately 40% of the acceleration that we have seen since 2010 can be attributed to man-made climate change, but there’s a residual 60% that we couldn’t explain with climate models,” said Dangendorf.

The remaining percentage was caused by natural wind-driven ocean circulation unique to the Southeast and Gulf Coast, the researchers found.

“It’s a region bounded by the western boundary current, or the Gulf Stream, so that makes it very prone to fluctuations and therefore we can see these massive changes on decadal time-scales,” said Dangendorf.

OK, now I can read the WaPo article without looking for a causal explanation, and truly appreciate how screwed the citizens on our southern coast are. It’s not just that the seas are creeping into their streets and basements, but that there are no practical solutions available — they talk about exorbitantly expensive pumps, but where are they pumping the water to?

Do I need to point out the irony of all those oil refineries on the Gulf Coast that are not being shut down, while proposing to build water pumps (that would probably be driven by coal and oil fired power plants)? That’s not to diminish the tragedy and struggle of all the people who have to deal with these consequences, but to point out that we need to stop thinking about stopgap solutions in the short term.

The University of Minnesota stands down

The encampment on campus has been disbanded. It didn’t require the police, or the National Guard, or any tanks — representatives from the administration met with protesters, listened, and negotiated an agreement.

You can read the negotiated settlement.

I don’t know. For such a ferocious gang of militant radicals, they gave in fairly easily. Most of the administrations concessions are things like allowing students to meet with the board of regents and present some formal demands, or to “explore” new programs, or to disclose more budget information. Meanwhile, the students promise to not disrupt commencement. It’s not very exciting stuff, and mostly just defers actual changes to some later date, maybe.

Other universities should pay attention. The students are actually reasonable, but the university had better follow through.

University of Minnesota grad student Taher Herzallah’s family is from Gaza, and he has lost nine family members due to the violence since October of 2023. “We are prepared to disrupt,” he says in reference to the university keeping its promises.

Bad books

Here’s a short blurb promoting a podcast, If Books Could Kill.

If Books Could Kill focuses mostly on the impact many of these books had on society, and through multiple episodes has broadened their scope to examine how the authors of these books are impacting society in many negative ways. Although it always feels good to hear a bad book eviscerated — there’s a reason we all read the 1-star reviews of our most hated books on Goodreads, right? — hearing the motivations behind these self-help superstars is enough to make you raise your eyebrows. IBCK covers the exploits of Robert Kiyosaki and his years-long real estate grifts, the cringeworthy gender essentialism behind John Gray’s Men Are From Mars series, or the head-scratching evolution of conservative politics after reading William Frank Buckley, Jr.’s 1951 book, God and Man At Yale. And as a listener and a skeptic of self-help generally, it feels so good to understand why exactly these books are so obnoxious.

I remember John Gray from my college years — we had a copy of that Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus crap somewhere in the house, getting kicked around but never read. It looked terrible. I wouldn’t be caught dead reading Buckley, and Kiyosaki is one of those investment gurus who endorsed Trump. These aren’t particularly interesting topics to me, but maybe they are to you.

Then it mentions a book by Jonathan Haidt. I’ve met that guy…didn’t like him, but would I be interested in reading his book? No, I don’t think so.

I was personally affected by one of these books. As a high school graduation gift I was given the bestseller The Coddling of the American Mind, warning me against the “brainwashing” that I was sure to encounter in university. I read it — I make a note to read every book I am gifted, damn it, it’s the right thing to do — and there was something about it that didn’t feel like it was adding up to me. Surely, I thought, in the midst of all this fearfulness about how my generation is going soft, there had to be something more than punching down on student activists rightfully making their voices heard? To then encounter IBCK discussing exactly why the arguments of the book don’t hold up — such as how it misrepresents recent student protests — are vindicating.

But I was still curious, so I turned to the summary on Amazon. Uh-oh. It was worse than I thought.

Something is going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and afraid to speak honestly. How did this happen?

I’m not afraid to speak honestly, and I’m not walking on eggshells. I think some speakers should be shouted down, or better yet, not even invited on campus. These sound like fictitious problems. They sound like what right-wing Fox News viewers imagine is going on at college campuses. I read further, skeptically.

First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths are incompatible with basic psychological principles, as well as ancient wisdom from many cultures. They interfere with healthy development. Anyone who embraces these untruths—and the resulting culture of safetyism—is less likely to become an autonomous adult able to navigate the bumpy road of life.

Whoa, what kind of horseshit is this? Their three terrible ideas are not part of any standard educational curriculum I’ve ever encountered.

what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker: Nope. That’s nonsense. I do believe that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is false, but that doesn’t mean their inversion of the cliche is true. In what context is anyone teaching that terrible idea? I don’t know where a discussion of the merits or dangers of exposure to something that almost kills you would come up.

always trust your feelings: Oh hell no. Feelings are valid and feelings matter, but they are also treacherous things that you should be wary of. Test your feelings, maybe? Investigate them? Try to figure out the source of your feelings? This is another Great Untruth that no one is teaching.

life is a battle between good people and evil people: Amazing. You know how every conservative accusation is actually projection? I thought us liberal wimps were all talking about shades of gray and rainbows and rejecting that black-and-white dichotomy. But now Lukianoff and Haidt are saying we explicitly teach it? Madness.

This is just confirming my opinion of Haidt — he’s railing against imaginary dangers. I guess that’s one tactic for drumming up sales.

Another demonstration of the relationship of money and intelligence

In my previous post, I suggested that there was an inverse correlation between intelligence and wealth. Look! I got another data point!

i don’t know who needs to hear this but having children is *literally* free
can we please stop with the “kids are expensive” nonsense?
your lifestyle is expensive, not children
Elon Musk: Exactly

Speaking as a parent, we basically drained our life savings to raise three kids. And that was with public schools and a lower class lifestyle.

Speaking as a biologist, there’s a vast literature on energy budgets and the cost of reproduction.

Children have never been free. Maybe they seem free to billionaires for whom the expenditures on food and nannies and private schools and so forth are a tiny fraction of their ill-gotten wealth, but they really aren’t.

Maybe really rich people think their kept women pop out larvae that scuttle off into the woodwork to forage on pigeons and rodents, only to emerge years later with a magical trust fund, but that doesn’t work for the rest of us.

The Silicon Valley venture capitalists are not all right

There’s a twisted, deformed culture of rich capitalists in California who come up with some of the worst ideas and get lauded for them, and one of the wackiest is a guy named Balaji Srinivasan. You know he’s bad when he’s endorsed by Marc Andreessen.

“Balaji has the highest rate of output per minute of good new ideas of anybody I’ve ever met,” wrote Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the V.C. firm Andreessen-Horowitz, in a blurb for Balaji’s 2022 book, The Network State: How to Start a New Country. The book outlines a plan for tech plutocrats to exit democracy and establish new sovereign territories. I mentioned Balaji’s ideas in two previous stories about Network State–related efforts in California—a proposed tech colony called California Forever and the tech-funded campaign to capture San Francisco’s government.

Balaji, a 43-year-old Long Island native who goes by his first name, has a solid Valley pedigree: He earned multiple degrees from Stanford University, founded multiple startups, became a partner at Andreessen-Horowitz and then served as chief technology officer at Coinbase. He is also the leader of a cultish and increasingly strident neo-reactionary tech political movement that sees American democracy as an enemy. In 2013, a New York Times story headlined “Silicon Valley Roused by Secession Call” described a speech in which he “told a group of young entrepreneurs that the United States had become ‘the Microsoft of nations’: outdated and obsolescent.”

So he hates democracy and wants all the rich people to leave the US and establish independent countries (where?) that they can control. If he’s building his own little fiefdom, though, he’s going to need a population to rule over, one that he’s denying any political influence. How will he entice people to join his movement and work for him? He has a vision.

“What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (“spiritual father” of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street … you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.”

The Grays’ shirts would feature “Bitcoin or Elon or other kinds of logos … Y Combinator is a good one for the city of San Francisco in particular.” Grays would also receive special ID cards providing access to exclusive, Gray-controlled sectors of the city. In addition, the Grays would make an alliance with the police department, funding weekly “policeman’s banquets” to win them over.

“Grays should embrace the police, okay? All-in on the police,” said Srinivasan. “What does that mean? That’s, as I said, banquets. That means every policeman’s son, daughter, wife, cousin, you know, sibling, whatever, should get a job at a tech company in security.”

In exchange for extra food and jobs, cops would pledge loyalty to the Grays. Srinivasan recommends asking officers a series of questions to ascertain their political leanings. For example: “Did you want to take the sign off of Elon’s building?”

Oh. He’s fantasizing about an authoritarian cult. Raise your hand if you want to put on a gray shirt covered with corporate logos and surrender your autonomy to a pampered class of cops who obey a tiny group of rich boobs!

Is becoming a demented sociopath a prerequisite to becoming rich? It sure seems like it.