A creationist engineer cracks a biology textbook! And doesn’t understand it!

All-too-common-dissent finds another crazy creationist engineer. This one opens a molecular biology and genetics text, discovers that it doesn’t talk about “Darwinism” (not surprising), and concludes that biology doesn’t need evolution.

My hypothesis is that the field of molecular biology is simply not understood by the majority of biologists and thus pretty secure from rational debate by laymen. By claiming that this discipline (which they probably don’t understand either) proves Darwinism and that Darwinism is vital to understanding molecular biology, the Creationists can be silenced, humiliated and put in their place by simply invoking superior knowledge.

This is a rather extravagant claim coming from someone who knows no biology and who’s impression of the field is derived from one specialist text that I suspect he didn’t understand. I’d argue the other way: that there’s a trend towards emphasizing molecular biology at the expense of other aspects of biology in undergraduate education. However, even so, it’s extremely silly to claim that molecular biology isn’t being driven in substantial part by evolutionary ideas, or that molecular biology isn’t providing huge amounts of new information in support of evolution.

I don’t need to say more—Doppelganger piles on.

Atheists and morality?

The Atheist Ethicist has written a book: A Better Place: Essays on Desire Utilitarianism.

When I was young I decided to try to leave the world better than it would have been if I had never lived. To do this, I had to know what ‘A Better Place’ actually was. Thus, I spent 12 years in college studying moral philosophy. This book contains a set of essays describing pieces of the answers I think I found. I argue that we cannot reliably find those answers in scripture, in subjective sentiment, or in evolved dispositions. In fact, those who look in these places for answers often leave the world worse than it would have otherwise been. Instead, I argue for ‘desire utilitarianism’ – the idea that morality involves using praise and condemnation to promote desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and to inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires. The details and my defense of those answers can be found inside this book. I hope that what you find inside will also inspire and help you, too, to try to make the world a better place than it would have otherwise been.

You can find a more detailed summary of the contents here—it looks interesting, but I have this intimidating stack of books I have to finish first, and my own mountain of writing to do. It’s on my list now, though! If anyone else has read it, let us know more about it; a rebuttal to the theist claim that there is no morality without god always benefits from another counterexample.

Grounded in unreality

Oh, man: this is classic crank pseudoscience:

The heretofore unknown science of “earthing”, patented by Clint Ober, is that your body needs to be earthed so that you can have the earth’s antioxidizing flow of free electrons to go through your body and extinguish free radicals.

Earthing Axiom:

The earth’s infinite supply of free electrons will neutralize free radicals in your body and will thus help to stave off disease and aging. YOUR BODY WAS DESIGNED TO BE IN CONTACT WITH THE EARTH FOR MANY HOURS PER DAY.

Being connected via our barefeet to the earth appears destined to provide us with many far-reaching health benefits, which when coupled with modern medical prowess and optimum nutrition will offer mankind the best opportunity for health and longevity possible.

It’s an impressive web page. There’s just about everything you might want to see to persuade you that you’ve entered kookdom.

  • Sweeping claims of incredible health benefits from one simple mechanism.
  • All you need to “earth” yourself is a grounded pad—which they’ll sell you for the low, low price of $349.95.
  • Grain-of-truth biology (free radicals can cause cellular damage) coupled to extravagant and silly claims (the infinite flow of electrons from the earth will stop free radicals from hurting you).
  • Lots of repetitive, long-winded gobbledygook to justify freaky ideas.
  • Fond reminiscences of the good ol’ days, when people were always grounded and never, ever got sick…you know, like in the 19th century.
  • Random font size changes, and ALL CAPS SENTENCES.
  • Bizarre color schemes—brown and orange text, and dark purple text on a light purple background, all in the same paragraph.

It’s insane. It’s unbelievable. I sure couldn’t believe it. But then I saw the one thing that absolutely convince me that there had to be something to it. The one piece of awesomely professional evidence…

[Read more…]

Chopra rambles on some more

Shorter Deepak Chopra: “I don’t know how DNA works, so there must be an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient God-field who does.”

Wow, but that guy is one long-winded, boring gomer. It sounds like he might be planning to fart out just one more of these stinkers, but I’d thought he’d run out of gas somewhere around part 0.

A scientific contribution from Intelligent Design

I take my criticisms back. It seems Intelligent Design creationism has made a profound contribution to computer science.

Introduction

Intelligent design sort is a sorting algorithm based on the theory of intelligent design.

Algorithm Description

The probability of the original input list being in the exact order it’s in is 1/(n!). There is such a small likelihood of this that it’s clearly absurd to say that this happened by chance, so it must have been consciously put in that order by an intelligent Sorter. Therefore it’s safe to assume that it’s already optimally Sorted in some way that transcends our naïve mortal understanding of “ascending order”. Any attempt to change that order to conform to our own preconceptions would actually make it less sorted.

Analysis

This algorithm is constant in time, and sorts the list in-place, requiring no additional memory at all. In fact, it doesn’t even require any of that suspicious technological computer stuff. Praise the Sorter!

Grim Death awaits you, O my children

Any parents out there? I bet you know the children’s book, Goodnight Moon. I read it a few million times myself, with each kid as they came up through those preschool years, and I can still remember each page and how the little ones had to repeat each goodnight. Lance Mannion finds the strangest summary of the book, though—it’s a dark nihilist tract that portrays the inevitability of death.

Whoa. Heavy, man.

The other obsessive touchstone of my children’s early years was Pat the Bunny, where each page had a different texture glued on — a piece of sandpaper, a feather, some soft fluff — and the kids were supposed to touch it as we read it. I anxiously await the review that reveals this was actually naturalistic/materialist propaganda designed to inculcate the all-ness of the physical world into impressionable young minds.

I don’t remember much about my early reading habits, although I think Mike Mulligan’s Steam Shovel was in there, along with lots of Dr Seuss (One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish…oh no, he did warp my brain!) I know that once I got away from picture books, some of the earliest reading my father passed on to me were the Mars books by Burroughs, which perhaps explains my current fascination with many-limbed creatures and naked hotties who lay eggs.

Retroactive reinterpretation of kids’ books is fun!