Roy Varghese and the exploitation of Antony Flew

I have not been shy about my contempt for the crackpot, Roy Varghese — he’s one of those undeservedly lucky computer consultants who struck it rich and is now using his money to endorse religion. He’s a god-soaked loon who pretends to be a scientific authority, yet he falls for the claim that bumblebees can’t fly and therefore there flight is evidence for a god. Really. He’s that deluded.

I’ve been too kind, however. You must read this New York Times article, The Turning of an Atheist, in which it turns out that Varghese is also a contemptible manipulator.

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One if by theater, two if by DVD

It must come with the name that Revere has to sound the warning — we’ve got anti-god/anti-religion movies available now, and more on the way. I’m a little surprised that movies that preach moral responsibility (don’t torture people, don’t imprison them without trial, don’t ship them off to countries that will torture them), sympathy and tolerance (gay people feel love and suffering, too) are considered anti-Christian, but if that’s the way they want it, that’s fine with me.

I’m also a little puzzled why they would find a documentary like Jesus Camp anti-Christian. It simply describes the activities that go on in a kids’ camp dedicated to religious indoctrination. Shouldn’t they instead be condemning hysterical dogma as practiced in that camp, rather than the movie that merely reveals it?

The one movie mentioned that I’m looking forward to seeing is The Golden Compass, even though I hear they may have toned down the anti-religious sentiment that’s present in the book. There is a little misconception there, though: the book condemns an institution dedicated to preserving dogma and that willingly sacrifices individuals to achieve its aims, and it is associated with religion, but it isn’t quite as flamingly anti-religion as some of the critics portray it, and I’m beginning to suspect that many of the religious fanatics who hate Pullman’s books haven’t actually read them.

I mainly want to see it because I like the polar bears and witches, myself.

Brain has rebooted now

I have been sleeping the sleep of the dead—it turns out that if you don’t bother to sleep for 40 hours you get really tired and when you lie down your brain shuts off. This is very good to know. It means I’ve been completely ignoring Pharyngula for a long, long time, and wow, did the comments pile up. So let me deal with a few things quickly.

  • I am pleased to see that the comments did not descend into total anarchy, but come on, don’t pick on Robert O’Brien because he looks like a dork. I look like a dork. I suspect that if you people had to verify your comments with your passport photos we’d discover that Pharyngula is Dork City.

  • The most amazing stupidity in the comments, though, is coming from a certain dork from Conservapædia. Listen: you know you’re a paranoid kook if post a comment late at night, get a message that it’s being held for approval, and then start repeatedly ranting that you’re being suppressed, and make it an issue for the front page of conservapædia.

    I was asleep, man.

    I think the conservapædia articles on evolution and homosexuality are excellent examples of right-wing stupidity, and I may get around to critiquing them at some point…after I clear the backlog of work I’ve got on my desk. It might be a while. And I’m willing to put off as long as a whining fool from conservapædia is actively demonstrating his inanity for me in the comments.

  • How about happier news? Yes, I’m going to be in Washington DC this weekend (the 10th and 11th), returning on Monday evening. I’m doing some stuff with Americans United for Separation of Church and State, so I’m not totally free, but I’m sure we can work out some time for a meetup.

    Notice I said “we”…another fellow, among others, who will be there is Phil Plait. We’re even rooming together (before you assume too much, you should know that Phil has a man-crush on Wil Wheaton, not me (nor William Riker)).

    I bet with a little negotiation we could arrange to have both Phil Plait and PZ Myers in the same public place for a few hours, and you all could stop by and buy us beer and calamari and make pointed comparisons and tell us how dorky we look.

So there you go. Lots of travel last week, brief recovery from exhaustion this weekend, lots of teaching to do this week, then more travel next week. I’ve got to spend some time at home!

This weblog awards thingie

All right, I won this once already, crushing the starry-eyed vacuum-head before, but I see he’s trying to be competitive in the polls again. Doesn’t he realize that I need merely reach out with a single tentacle to effortlessly nullify his efforts?

This year, I think I’ll rest on my laurels and instead urge everyone to vote for the Invasive Species Weblog. We need to encourage wider attention to many good science blogs, not just the ones sitting on the top of the heap. If you’ve been voting for me, give your daily vote to Jennifer instead. If you’ve been voting for Bad Astronomer, give your vote to Jennifer instead. Diversify!

I’m back! I’m exhausted!

My travels are done for a whole week now (according to my calendar, I’m going to have to go to Washington DC next week), and I’m very, very tired. I’ll put up some of my thoughts on the Beyond Belief conference later (short summary: exhilarating!), but for now I’ll acknowledge the wonderful time I had at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. It was a big audience — much bigger than I expected — and they asked really sharp questions and tossed back a few important ideas on communicating science that I appreciated. Special thanks to my host, Miriam Goldstein.

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I promised to mention the Three Seas Program, which looks like an excellent opportunity for students interested in marine biology—actually, I wish I could do it—and I’m going to be sure too suggest to my students who think marine biology and oceanography are cool (we get a few of these students from the midwestern prairies every year who dream of the distant seas) that they ought to consider the Scripps for grad school.

Thanks also to Hao Ye, official photographer to the PZ Myers Southern California Tour 2007.

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I can’t really thank this guy for showing up, since he missed my entire talk and therefore missed the opportunity to absorb the PZ mojo and have his IQ doubled but some of you may know who he is. If you can’t, here’s a hint.

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Of Books in Neurobiology

Over the last few weeks, we the Neuro class have finished our last book and we began Time, Love, Memory by Jonathan Weiner. The theme of this book is experiments on behavior on fruit flies, drosophila.

I’m beginning to see why fruit flies would be such a good choice. They are low maintainance and are offer much more statistic data potential. T. H. Morgan was known for his early work on fruit flies. From my understanding, he’s the first one to use them as a model species. Seems much more economical than the classic mice or dogs.

I also find it pretty cool that Seymour Benzer, a pioneer in molecular biology, was previously a physicist who helped develop the transistor. After working on the transistor, he became a biologist. It seems like quite a shift. Since the 40s/50s, has there been a change in the ability of people to change fields at such an advanced level? If we turn the clock back to the 1600s, the time of our previous book: Soul Made Flesh, there was much more of an interplay between fields. I guess all sciences are united by the Scientific Method, but it does seem like kindof a jump.

2007 Weblog Awards?

I’m surprised to see Pharyngula has been nominated for Best Science Blog in The 2007 Weblog Awards — I hadn’t been paying attention at all. I am a bit disturbed by the company I’m keeping over there, though: I’m in the running with a couple of conservative junk science blogs. Go vote for one of the other people: I like In the Pipeline, Invasive Species is terrific, bootstrap analysis ought to do well, and they’ve even got that space-case, Bad Astronomy in there…sure, you can give him one or two votes (this is the one where you get to vote every day).

There’s also this odd blog called “Paryngula” — I’m pretty sure that’s me.