But family get-togethers must be uncomfortable affairs…

Phillip Skell has a long and sleazy history of lying to support creationism. His usual tactic (actually, his only tactic) is to claim that evolution is irrelevant to science, denying the importance of the theory to understanding discoveries about the natural world, and refusing to believe that it has any application at all to anything. In a clear and straightforward op-ed, Stuart Faulk points out how easy it is to pick up any popular science magazine and find counterexamples to Skell’s claims. And then he picks up a knife, sticks it in, and twists:

Given how easily Skell’s arguments can be dismissed, it is reasonable to ask why he would make them in the first place. He is just as capable of reading Scientific American as I am, and probably more qualified.

The short answer is that this is not a debate about factual truth and science, but about public opinion and religion. What Skell neglects to mention (but any Web search will show) is that he has long supported creationist causes. His guest viewpoint is but one of many letters supporting “intelligent design” and opposing the teaching of evolution in public schools, which he equates to “indoctrination of students to a worldview of materialism and atheism.”

That’s an important approach we have to take more often. The vocal charlatans of creationism are actually relatively few in number, and their histories need to be directly addressed and made public. Skell is most definitely not an impartial scientist looking at the evidence objectively: he has his made up, ignores the evidence (where he is even aware of it—professionally, he is a chemist), and then uses his faux authority to claim that the biological sciences lack substantial evidence that we actually have, all in the service of his religious dogma.

One interesting fact emerges at the end of the piece. Stuart Faulk is Skell’s son-in-law. I’d like to know how the family copes with Skell’s uninformed obnoxiousness…

Blasphemy Day

Mark it on your calendar: 30 September is going to be Blasphemy Day. Join the Facebook group, if that is your kind of thing.

Blasphemy Day International is an international campaign seeking to establish September 30th as a national day to promote free speech and stand up in a show of solidarity for the freedom to mock and insult religion without fear of murder, violence, and reprisal. It is the obligation of the world’s nations to safeguard dissent and the dissenters, not to side with the brutal interests of thugs who demand “respect” for their beliefs (i.e., immunity to being criticized or mocked or they threaten violence).

So if you support free speech, and the rights of those who disagree with religious views to voice their opinions peacefully, support our group and join the cause!

I like this take on the matter:

Blasphemy is a joyous, funny, socially progressive, and profoundly moral act. It deserves its own day. Join the group. Spread the word.

I only have one reservation. Every day should be Blasphemy Day.

(via The Freethinker)

Fleas flock to Dawkins’ lecture

Richard Dawkins lectured in Michigan yesterday, and apparently, some silly Christian group was handing out a flyer beforehand, “Five Topics to Consider During Tonight’s Lecture”. It contained a small set of yawningly familiar arguments. I haven’t heard of these brave Christians actually attended the lecture or tried to ask these in the Q&A (I would be surprised if they did — I had someone try this stunt at one of my talks, and not only did they run away without listening, but everyone who saw the questions on the handout just laughed at them), but I thought I’d take a quick stab at how I’d address them if I were handed that piece of paper. I’ve put a short version of their long-winded questions here — see the link for the complete version — and my brief reply, although I’d actually be tempted to just laugh and shoo the goofy kook away around about the second question.

  1. Is there an objective truth (and where did it come from)?

    Yes, there is an objective truth that we discern by studying the natural world, and by constantly subjecting hypotheses about its nature to testing. That nature is not separate from its existence.

  2. Does evolution obey the second law of thermodynamics?

    Yes, and you’ve already descended into ignorant idiocy with your second question. There is nothing in evolution that violates the laws of physics or chemistry.

  3. What are the statistical probabilities of life evolving from non-life, and the accidental evolution of a single strand of DNA

    1.0. Life exists. What you’re really trying to claim, in your clumsy and unschooled way, is that you think evolution argues that the extant complexity of the biosphere emerged in one abrupt accident. It did not, and if it did, it would be an exceedingly unlikely event. It would be creationism.

  4. Why does the existence of God make Dawkins so angry, and how can a scientist say with absolute confidence that there is no god?

    Dawkins is not angry at the existence of god, nor am I. We are a bit peeved at intrusive nitwits like yourself who try to impose your quaint superstitions on others.

    By the way, you apparently have not read Dawkins’ book (which is ironic in light of the next question), since he does not claim with absolute confidence that there is no god. I will go further, however, and claim with absolute confidence that you have no good evidence for any god.

  5. [Assorted Jesus babble and bible quotes] Have you ever read the Bible?

    <snort> Yes. It’s an incoherent collection of delusional muck, cobbled together by generations of priests trying to promote the status of their tribe and their role within it. It contains brief sparks of literary brilliance, but mostly, it’s garbage. And the whole Jesus story is illogical nonsense that no rational person should accept.

Of course, the whole problem with bothering to argue with these people is that they won’t accept any of the answers, and will just start repeating the questions at you, at greater length. I’ve been on that merry-go-round before.

The Bible is not an economics textbook

I am no fan of Stanley Fish — I thought he was a blinkered lackwit before, but now, with his latest appalling column in they NY Times, I see that he is a gospel-thumping charlatan on a par with Pat Robertson. He looks at our faltering economy like we all do, with great concern, and then, unlike the kinds of rational people we need making decisions, claims that the answer lies in the Christian Bible. Seriously, read that article and you’ll see nothing that wouldn’t have come out of a cheap Bible college stocked with pseudo-scholarly theologians. It’s so stupid it hurt to read it.

The Bible, they tell us, contains 2,350 verses “that have to do with money and possessions.” If we attend to the lessons of these verses and learn how properly to husband the resources God has given us, we will be doing his work, for “God desires a life for us that is free of debt , and the entrapments and common pitfalls related to financial difficulties” (Cross). “The way out of debt,” Dayton teaches, “is not a declaration of bankruptcy, but surrender to the word of God.”

You know, people are concerned with money and possessions; it’s a very human state of mind. What this means is that lots of books will reference those subjects: you could count the sentences that deal with money and possessions in Moby Dick, A Tale of Two Cities, The Fountainhead, and Das Kapital and find thousands. The number of mentions of money and houses and carriages and ships and businesses does not make them legitimate authorities on economics, and doesn’t mean they can’t be utterly wrong (and of the last two, at least one must be wrong as a simple logical necessity).

Now I’ve read the Bible myself, and it really doesn’t seem to be big on economics. Most of its proscriptions are rather anti-wealth, for one thing, and there’s a fairly broad emphasis on the moral compromises of crass materialism — poverty, or rather, distancing yourself from greed and the accumulation of earthly wealth, are regarded as virtues. There really isn’t that much about bankruptcy anywhere in it, and this author, Kevin Cross, who pretends to be speaking for a god, seems to be making stuff up. I’m sorry, but God is not going to descend with a collection of legal writs to protect you from creditors, nor is he going to give you a low-interest loan to help you get over short-term cash flow problems. Surrendering to a god is a way of running away from real-world problems without fixing them. It is definitely not a solution for a nation.

Stanley Fish, of course, gobbles this nonsense right up and suggests that this is how we can fix our economy.

This economy, in which funds depleted are endlessly replenished, is underwritten by a power so great and beneficent that it turns failures into treasures. Some economists identify that power as the market and ask us to have faith in it. God might be a better candidate.

How a god is going to help the economy is something bleating theologians always fail to tell us. Similarly, there’s no explanation for how this imaginary supreme being is propping up our economy. Magic? Conjuring gold? Selling timeshares and commemorative coins?

Maybe this god’s assistance can be encapsulated in a sentence: God help us if morons like Stanley Fish were to have a say in maintaining the American economy.

God, the petulant, petty whiner

That’s the message I get from this horrible little video. The conceit is that someone writes a letter to god, asking why he let violence occur in the schools, and he replies…and gee, god sure sounds like a snide pissant. The omnipotent, omniscient lord of the cosmos couldn’t do a thing because those liberals put a restraining order on him. Right. Crazed madmen run through a public school murdering children, and good ol’ Jehovah channels Cartman and says, “Whoa, let ’em bleed to death — some of the kids don’t pray to me, and the principal doesn’t begin the school day with a public obeisance. Screw you guys, I’m going home.”

Fundamentalist theology sure is an ugly thing, isn’t it?

This might be the start of a Monty Python sketch

They even titled the announcement “And now for something completely different…”. I’m going to be doing a new monthly science column for the Guardian, so once again, I have blithely stacked another deadline on top of the groaning pile already on my desk. This should be fun, though, and one must constantly be building beachheads on other continents if one hopes to take over the world. Besides, I’ve also been promoted to “leading American evolutionary biologist”, which will surprise leading American evolutionary biologist everywhere, but which will look wonderfully pretentious on my CV.

It’s also going to be a weekly column — we’ll be cycling a stable of science writers, including Simon Singh, Chris French, and Andy Miah, to keep up some regular science content on the Guardian, and you have to applaud the effort of the paper to do that, especially when science coverage seems to be weakening everywhere else.

I’m already whipping up a little something for my inaugural column. It’s got snails in it. I hope it’s not too continental for the British.

Florida poll

The Orlando Sentinel asks the same old stupid question: Should Florida schools be required to teach intelligent design along with the scientific theory of evolution?

Yes. Intelligent Design provides an alternative explanation to evolution, which is just a theory. It’s healthy to give students a choice. (3 responses)
17.6%
No. Evolution is a time-tested scientific theory, like gravity. Intelligent design is inspired by religion and has no place in a science classroom. (13 responses)
76.5%
Not sure. I don’t know enough about either subject to make an informed choice. (1 responses)
5.9%

Aaargh. “Just a theory” again; and the claim that ID is an “alternative explanation” is about as true and as relevant as claiming that the “my socks are so grungy, they evolved intelligence, built a time machine, and flew back to the Hadean era to seed life on earth” explanation is a reasonable alternative.

Forget the grungy socks. Maybe this is the alternative we need to teach in the classroom.

At last, a school board agenda I can fully support

Our local school boards tend to be institutions of endless tedium punctuated by madness. One bold innovator seeks to change this situation by increasing the insanity.

“Our schools are orderly, sanitary places where students dwell in blissful ignorance of the chaos that awaits,” West said. “Should our facilities be repaired? No, they must be razed to the ground and rebuilt in the image of the Cyclopean dwellings of the Elder Gods, the very geometry of which will drive them to be possessed by visions of the realms beyond.”

I like it! It definitely beats the usual creationist lunacy.