Hobby Lobby poll

The Hobby Lobby craft store apparently flogs Christianity fairly heavily during the Easter season — not just because it’s a crafty time of year, but because by their own admission, they are using the stores to proselytize. A customer named Sarah complained that it was “exclusive and insensitive”. She got the run-around by some utterly oblivious service representative, who among many other things, said Since we know that Christ is the only way to heaven; it would truly be insensitive for us not to share Christ with the world.

Of course, they have the right to do that…just as godless consumers of craft products should now be looking around for an alternative source. But first, we get to slam a poll!

Whose side are you on in this situation?

Hobby Lobby 44%
Sarah 34%
John Locke 22%

The John Locke answer is going to split the vote, I’m afraid.

Quantum Everything

When anyone other than a particle physicist talks about “quantum”, it is almost always a magic word used to project a pseudoscientific aura onto sheer raving lunacy. “Quantum” as a prefix is almost universally used to signify that the noun it modifies is about to be made crazy stupid. So you know when you see something called the Quantum Bible, it’s not going to be refined, elegant, coherent, or intelligent.

Here are the first bits of this rewritten version of the Bible. I’m being kind and sparing you the associated annotations, which are even longer than the text.

1 And behold the Great Singularity is everywhere and nowhere. 2 Without form nor mass and without space and time – It is, has been and will be, eternal. 3 An Eternity in space, an Eternity in time incorporating all that is known and then some. 4 But eternally restless and driven to manifest in form, time and space.
5 And so it is that manifestations cyclically occur and our worlds gain their existence. 6 But we are manifestations of the Cycle of the Great Singularity for we emanate from Its bosom and return thence in accordance with Its Universal Order.

7 And so it comes to pass that the Great Singularity becomes pregnant with the energy for manifestation and in accordance with the Great Universal Order that lies at the heart of its existence there follows a mighty cataclysmic manifestation. 8 In that instant all the parts of matter materialize, each to become the building blocks of all form yet to be. 9 For at that instant the quarks, electrons, protons, neutrons, neutrino’s and all their anti-matter shall give rise to a world of form, a world of time and a world of distance; but yet all are imbibed with the stuff which is the Great Singularity – timeless, formless and Eternal.

10 And lo the great Illusion is initiated ; and for they who are blinded by form and distance and time there is no merging eternally of the form and the formless. 11 And wretchedly shall they live their days in the half truth and never connect with the Great Singularity which is their birthright and from whose bosom they emanate and exist and to whence they return unconsciously.
12 And so it is that the particles of form receive their kernel which shall determine all their interactions and all form that shall yet follow. 13 Indeed the kernel shall support the breadth of all form and being, all of the sea and the great land masses, all of life and of death. 14 For each kernel is complete as it imbibes all of the Great Singularity and indeed so is it also with the collective of all kernels of all particles of form. 15 Such is the completeness of the manifestation in form that no adjustment nor interference nor correction is required nor will be forthcoming by the Great Singularity.

16 In the restlessness of the Great Singularity has a need arisen – to create consciousness of Itself. 17 And so form is manifest so that consciousness shall ultimately arise and lo the consciousness shall feed upon the great environments which are none other than the manifestation of the Great Singularity! 18 In this way shall the Great Singularity create consciousness of Self through the manifestation and they that shall be conscious of the manifestation shall be the consciousness of the Great Singularity in form. 19 And so shall they passage with consciousness as they de-form and reconnect at physical death with the Great Singularity. 20 For this passage of return has the Great Singularity manifest the black holes of de-materialization; both in form and in consciousness shall these be as a portal for passage from form to formless, and so shall consciousness disconnect from form to merge with the eternal formlessness which is the Great Singularity. 21 And so shall it come to pass that those who access true consciousness of all things will prepare their passage through the black hole, as they shed form and mass, time and distance, and disconnect their consciousness from that domain – so shall they pass through the portal and inherit eternity within the bosom of the Great Singularity.

In case you missed it in that great wallow of babble, the guy (who is a neurosurgeon! What is it with neurosurgeons and goofiness?) also doesn’t like evolution, and has a weird deterministic theory in which all the potential in every species was set within it at the instant of its creation by the Great Singularity. I am unable to bear the thought of reading any more of any of Ian Weinberg’s essays, though: my kernel is incapable of coping with any more Quantum.

Pope poll

Here’s what we’re used to: crazy poll choices that make the right answer obvious.

Do you support attempts by atheists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens to have Pope Benedict XVI arrested over his handling of child sex abuse claims?

Yes, what happened to these children is horrific and the Pope should be held accountable for his role in the cover-up.

71%
No, they are using the terrible tragedy of child sex abuse to pursue their vendetta against religion.

29%

Next, we’ll have a poll about adult rape cases in which one question tries to distract everyone from the guilty by deploring the terrible tragedy of what happened to the women and the vendetta feminists have against men.

Witless wanker peddles pablum for CFI

It looks like Michael De Dora is calling me out. The wishy-washy, sloppy-thinking director of the NY CFI, whose main claim to fame lately is a series of blog articles notable only for their fuzziness and willingness to accommodate any nonsense from religious BS artists, is now taking me to task for my post arguing that the Tennessee case of a creationist objecting to a textbook calling creationism “the biblical myth that the universe was created by the Judeo-Christian god in 7 days” was a) an example of a true twit peddling ignorance, and b) that the textbook phrasing was accurate and justifiable.

De Dora disagrees. He thinks it is inappropriate for a biology text to directly address a damaging social trend that is hurting the teaching of science — and that we shouldn’t refer to religious stories as myth. He even has the gall to call what he wants to promote a “science only approach,” and in a remarkably weasely bit of wording, tries to imply that I think that just teaching science would “negatively impact the quality of public school education”. Interesting move. Sometimes, lying about your opponent’s position does work.

But he forgets what we’re fighting against.

Why is it that our biology classes — or even public schools in generally — must reject religious beliefs to educate children? I think we will find that, even if decided that our children would be better off hearing critique of their parents’ religious beliefs, this question is irrelevant, as according to our laws we cannot do such a thing. In turn, the answer seems to be that we should ensure our high school science teachers are instructing students on how to think like a scientist, and imparting to students the body of knowledge scientists have accrued (and that all of our teachers generally are doing similar in their respective fields).

Oh, let us confine our discussion to the nebulous vagueness of “religious beliefs”, that we may continue to pretend that charlatans are not lying to our children. There should be nothing special, nothing privileged about calling a falsehood a “religious belief”. When religious ideas directly contradict the scientific evidence, we must be able to point out that they are wrong…and please note, the textbook in question did not even slam creationist foolishness that hard, but merely pointed out that it is the product of a religious myth.

This isn’t simply about religious freedom. It’s about a loony-tunes popular bogosity that explicitly claims the earth is 6,000 years old and was created in six days, both assertions false, unsupported by any credible evidence, and contradicted resoundingly by the body of evidence discussed in the textbook. Those are “beliefs” that must be rejected by any scientist, by any textbook purporting to describe how science works and what conclusions it reaches — anything less is cowardly intellectual dishonesty.

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I am not opposing a “science only approach”. I am saying that a science only approach has a story to tell that must contradict the ridiculous myths our Sunday schools are feeding our children. We don’t need pablum-pushers like De Dora helping the pious frauds further gut our science curricula.

I haven’t even reached the worst part of De Dora’s quisling approach. He has a footnote.

It is important to note that creationism and related ideas like intelligent design do belong to the field of religion, not science; they are theology and philosophy (bad theology and philosophy, but that’s another matter). Hence, science cannot reject them in full — for how does the scientist answer the claim that God made it look like there’s been evolution, and that we are merely natural products, to test our faith? Or that God has been the hand behind the process of evolution? A scientist must here put on the philosopher’s cap to continue.

Great. Creationism? Can’t criticize it in our science classes. Somebody says the universe appeared magically a few thousand years ago, I guess that has to be a valid answer on the test question, “How old is the universe?”. To actually state that it is about 14 billion years old, and make such an answer a necessary part of the student’s grade…why, that is philosophy or theology, and not to be discussed in science class.

And here’s ever-helpful Michael De Dora, reassuring the creationists that “science cannot reject [their ridiculous ideas] in full”. Thanks heaps. Did I mention “cowardly intellectual dishonesty”? Yes, I did. And that’s what De Dora is endorsing.

And a special thanks to CFI. What the hell were they thinking when they gave this milquetoast marshmallow a soapbox? Does CFI stand for the Church of Fatuous Incompetence now?

Botanical Wednesday: A mystery!

I have no idea what this is. I was sent the photo by a reader who discovered it in a jungle of ferns on Hawaii. It looks vaguely familiar, but perhaps someone here can identify it.

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I have a feeling this feature might turn into something like a county fair on Discworld, where people bring in odd-shaped turnips that have curiously titillating shapes when looked at just so.

Deepak Chopra discovers…learning

He seems very surprised. I guess it’s something he’s never experienced before.

Chopra has a little story to tell. It seems colobus monkeys have discovered that eating charcoal absorbs some of the irritating toxins in their diet, so the monkeys have been chowing down on the stuff for several generations. This is cool and clever, but not at all surprising — organisms adapt and take advantage of their environment all the time. But Chopra being Chopra has to put a very weird spin on it.

He argues that the behavior isn’t genetic, because it’s too recent — not quite right, novel mutations have to arise sometime, but in this case I agree with him that it isn’t likely to be genetic, because it spread more rapidly through the population than genes do. Then he claims that it can’t have been by chance, because, he claims, monkeys don’t eat random stuff. There, of course, he’s wrong — it’s practically a hallmark of monkeys that they are curious and try all sorts of things. What he then tries to do from this fallacious exclusion, though, is leap to an amazing conclusion.

What we are witnessing is an intelligent discovery on the part of creatures who stand far below Homo sapiens on the evolutionary chain, and that discovery is being passed on from mother to child without genetic adaptation. To me, this means that quite a blow has been struck for intelligence being innate in the universe. It suggests that evolution itself has never been random but is guided by the principle of intelligence — not “intelligent design,” which is a red herring supplied by religious conservatives. The intelligent universe is a cutting-edge idea, not a throwback to scripture. As a theory, it gives us a much more elegant explanation for many things that are clumsily explained by falling back on randomness to explain every new development in Nature.

Monkey discovers new material in its habitat, charcoal left by human fires. Monkey eats some. Monkey discovers it has soothing effect on its guts. Monkey eats more, more monkeys watch and learn, habit spreads through population.

That’s it. That’s the simple story. From this, Chopra invents this bizarre idea that an intelligent universe is pushing clever ideas into monkey brains, and is guiding ‘evolution’. It’s a crazy claim spun out of a fairly straightforward observation of entirely natural behavior by some monkeys.

Chopra doesn’t know what evolution is.

At the moment, evolutionary theory refuses to abandon the notion of random selection, and geneticists cling stubbornly to the doctrine of random mutations to explain why new things appear in the unfolding story of life. We all have a stake in this argument, however. Seeing the red colobus evolve before our eyes cannot be denied. It didn’t happen randomly, and their new discovery represents a quantum leap forward in their survival. There’s much to think about here, since we want to know how early humans made their first discoveries and passed them on to us. Rather than saying that a larger brain made intelligence possible, why not say the opposite, that intelligence dictated a larger brain so that it could expand? Life moves forward inexorably, no one doubts that. Now it’s up to us to explain the hidden forces behind evolution, in hopes that we can tap those forces and guide our own future.

The colobus story is not an example of evolution at all — it involves no changes in, or transmission of, heritable traits in a population. It is explainable entirely in terms of simple behavioral plasticity, and requires no intervention by an external intelligence, challenges absolutely nothing in evolutionary theory, and doesn’t demonstrate any hidden forces. If he were to try and present such a fable at a scientific meeting, he’d be laughed out of the room.

The only mystery here is why newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle continue to publish his drivel. Is someone under the misapprehension that he is a respected or even credible thinker? He’s a loon.

First contact!

You’re the first to meet an intelligent alien species. What are you going to do? Here’s a brief, handy guide — I’ll just excerpt a few points.

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I like this idea: there’s no way we’re going to war with them. Our technologies will not be comparable, and we have to note the obvious: they’d be the ones with interstellar space flight, not us. So, yes, it will be a case of nuclear weapons vs. sponges, and we’d better be careful.

But there is one important matter to consider about the comparison. If you found a sponge on a beach crowded with sponges, how much remorse would you feel if you took a sample? You don’t want to be the first contactee. Or the second. Or any of them. This is going to be a personally dangerous event. Your best bet is to run away rather than try to chat.

There are several more suggestions for how to communicate, and it ends with this example.

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Now if we’ve gotten this far, we’re going to have to assume that the aliens do see us as something more than sponges. If we’re close to them technologically, then yes, it’s worth your while to show off your awareness of your place in the universe. If we’re not close, then face it — the aliens won’t care how much knowledge of our species’ history we have. They’re going to be sizing us up for edibility, or suitability for mindless labor, or whether we’d be useful scrubbing implements in the shower, none of which require any philosophical or scientific capabiity at all.

It’s an interesting thought exercise, but only if we meet an alien species that isn’t too far beyond us intellectually.