New Jersey lawmakers are waffling over a bill to allow gay marriage. The story is depressing: lots of reps busily weaseling and straining to find an excuse to vote it down. There is also a poll at the site: I trust readers here to be a little more decisive.
Do you support the gay-marriage bill up for a vote in the New Jersey Senate?
Yes 30% (1,334 votes)
No 70% (3,173 votes)
Get in there an demonstrate some positive activity, without excuses.
The National Library of Medicine has released scans of classic science texts from the 15th-16th century — they’re beautiful.
And the amazing thing is, they’re still better science than anything you’ll find from a creationist!
More autotuned science lectures:
I’ve been reading Meyer’s awful Signature in the Cell lately, and I have to say — there’s no poetry in creationism.
They’ve gone too far. It was bad enough that the creationists treat science with such contempt, but now…the fundy kooks hate science fiction, too!
Science fiction is intimately associated with Darwinian evolution. Sagan and Asimov, for example, were prominent evolutionary scientists. Sci-fi arose in the late 19th and early 20th century as a product of an evolutionary worldview that denies the Almighty Creator. In fact, evolution IS the pre-eminent science fiction. Beware!
Hey! Sagan was a physicist, and Asimov was a chemist; of the other evil science fiction authors listed, Heinlein, Clarke, Vonnegut, and Roddenberry, not one is a biologist! I think I’m offended.
I told you all to not vote for me in that poll looking for the most influential female atheist of 2009, but you just had to go and disobey me. The photo at that link is photoshopped, I swear; I’m sure I’d be more bosomy.
However, one good thing has come out of it. Jen has compiled a good (but still, as always, incomplete!) list of notable godless women. Please, organizers of atheist/humanist events, take a look at that list when thinking about speakers, because I’m tired.
Travel season begins again for me. I’ve already mentioned that I’m off to Winnipeg this weekend; the weekend after that is the Science Online conference. And then the whirlwind begins: I’m invading California, singlehandedly. Here’s my schedule:
W, 1/20: UC Santa Barbara
Th, 1/21: UC Davis
F, 1/22: Berkeley
Sa, 1/23: UC Santa Cruz
Su, 1/24: De Anza College (Cupertino)
M: 1/25: CSU Chico
T: 1/26 Sacramento City College
W: 1/27: Stanford
Th: 1/28: Sierra College
That’s insane. I may regret this when I stagger away from that grueling series. At least I’m giving the same talk at all of them, on creationism and complexity, so I won’t have to struggle to keep the topics straight.
And that’s not all! I’m coming home from California to hop on a plane to Ireland! I’m still working out a few details, but I can tell you that I’ll be speaking at University College Dublin on 2 February, and Galway on 4 February. I’ve got pending invitations from Cork and Belfast that I’m still trying to squeeze into the schedule; I may do both if I can work out transportation, but I’ll do at least one of them. It would be nice to visit all four so I can say I’ve done Ireland east, west, north and south.
And then I come home in time for the Darwin Day madness! I’ll be going to the University of Northern Iowa and South Carolina. More about those later.
Carl Wieland, the creationist clown from Australia, wrote a bitter article denouncing atheists and scientists for refusing to give him a platform to yodel nonsense on, and one of the things he did was link to my my public refusal to debate him. Unfortunately, what that meant is that all of his Too-Stupid-To-Know-They’re-Stupid acolytes came charging over to declare that creationism was too scientific, evolutionism is a religion, scientists are afraid to debate their pet idiots, you’re all mean poopyheads who call us names, yadda yadda yadda. It’s turned into a regular storm of argument that has filled up the thread with over 1100 comments.
I’ve closed the thread and added an invitation to resume in this one, if they must.
One thing I’d like to see the creationists consider is a simple fact. When scientists make interpreting the totality of the evidence their priority, with even the believers among scientists regarding the natural world around them as part of their god’s message to human beings, they come to the conclusion that the book of Genesis is a myth or a non-literal parable of some sorts, because it does not line up at all with the physical evidence. The rocks speak out against the earth being less than ten thousand years old, and the molecules in our bodies all speak for billions of years of descent from a common ancestor. The only ‘evidence’ for a young earth is a very specific, and rather skewed, interpretation of one book written by a scattered conglomeration of non-scientific priests, accompanied by a lot of unfounded ‘revelations’ by seers, mystics, and obsessed numerologists (oh, and a related question to you creationists: how many of you are aware that many of the details of the creation myth that you regard as gospel truth have their source in the visions of the Seventh Day Adventist prophetess Ellen White and her agent, George MacReady Price?).
Now be honest. If you peel the Bible away from the argument, just pretend for a moment that it doesn’t exist, do you appreciate the fact that there is no independent evidence to support the story you draw from it? Think like a heathenish pagan who has no respect for biblical authority, and you’ll realize why your claims have no weight. What creationists are always trying to do is to cobble up some of that evidentiary support for their beliefs, while refusing to acknowledge that their entire claim rests on a presupposition that the bible is a valid source of prehistoric information.
If you did honestly try to separate your beliefs from your religion, you’re probably a bit dizzy and nauseous right now. Go ahead, go back to embracing your clumsy old book…but realize this. Here, you’re arguing with a group of people who not only disbelieve your crutch, but actively despise it as a source of lies. You can try to pretend that the source of your doubts about science are polonium halos and the Grand Canyon and missing transitional fossils, but we see right through you: we know the only thing propping up your absurd beliefs is the Bible.
And guess what? It’s just another cranky old book written by cranky old men who tried to replace their ignorance with a foolish certainty.
This is weird: if you go to the Google page and start typing in search phrases, it helpfully tries to offer suggests…sometimes. There are some odd restrictions going on behind the scenes.
In the search field type “Christianity is” and you will see recommendations of “bullsh*t, not a religion, a lie, false, a cult, wrong, fake, dying, Jewish, and not a religion t-shirt.”
In the search field type “Hinduism is” and you will see recommendations of “monotheistic, false, polytheistic, the majority religion of, the oldest religion, not a religion, fake, most commonly found, characterized by, and wrong.”
In the search field type “Buddhism is” and you will see recommendations of “not a religion, wrong, not what you think, bullsh*t, polytheistic, a religion, false, based on what concepts, the best religion, and atheism.”
In the search field type “Judaism is” and you will see recommendations of “false, not a race, not a religion, a race, a religion of the book, not Jewish, a gutter religion, monotheistic, a cult, and a religion.”
Try typing “Atheism is” and you will see recommendations of “a religion, dead, not a religion, wrong, the new fundamentalism, growing, a non-prophet organization, so senseless, illogical, a religion supreme court.” Clearly they are not holding back on the Atheists.
Now, let’s try Islam. Type in “Islam is” and you will see…
Absolutely nothing. That’s correct. Google makes no recommendations based on searches of “Islam Is.”
Why is Google blocking search recommendations for “Islam is?”
Good question.
One of the big problems with YouTube is that science channels that criticize creationists are often shut down — they are targeted by votebots that lower their ratings, and there are plenty of people who file frivolous notifications of DMCA violations that lead to whole channels being shut down until the case is fought out. This is not good — the system is hair-trigger sensitive to complaints, but does nothing to filter out the noise of unwarranted claims made solely to silence people.
A science regular on YouTube, Andromeda’s Wake, has put up a short video requesting more confrontation with Google/YouTube on the issue of DMCA abuse. The problem has been brought to the attention of Google developers, and there is a petition demanding censorship reform. You should sign it!
(Hmmm…I wonder if this approach would work to get Seed to fix the broken comment registration system here…)
Tragic news from Portugal: thousands of dead octopuses are washing up on the beaches. Not only is it sad news for the cephalopods, but it tells us that something unpleasant is going on out there in the sea. Unfortunately, no one knows what just yet.
