I sent the following message to Eric Hovind of Creation Science Evangelism, concerning his video on the “Chickenosaurus”.

2009-04-20 07:45 PM

You disabled comments, so I’m just going to publish any conversation had here on my channel.

Quick hint: Scientific magazines aren’t scientific journals.

Here, for example, is a listing of all the scientific journals published by BioMed Central.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/browse/journals/

Onto the “Chickenosaurus”.  The goal of the experiment is not to “prove evolution”.  That road’s quite well-worn already.  The goal is to use the predictable features of evolutionary biology to see if they can intentionally controllably trigger cause atavisms.  The term “chickenosaurus” is goofy, yes. Scientists are a goofy sort, I’ve come to know. That makes the experiment no less feasible.

The practical upshot, if the experiment can be refined to a technique, is better control over genetic switching, and thus, potential cures for heritable diseases.

So please.  Yuck it up.  While you laugh, these geneticists will be creating new cures - using, by the by, predictions made with the use of evolutionary theory.  Predictions that only work out correctly if evolutionary theory accurately describes the process of evolution.

Check back later; if he responds, I’ll post it here.

This post is a response to the following video:

1. Q: How can you prove to me that God doesn’t exist?A: Don’t need to. You’re making the assertion that one exists; the burden of proof rests on you, or on the person that convinced you of your position. I am not convinced that God does not exist, as I was never convinced of his existence in the first place.

   Meanwhile, even if a God were proven to exist to me, I have enough knowledge of both Judeo-Christian scripture and science to know that said proven God is not the Christian, Jewish, or Muslim God. Nor Hindu, Greek, Sikh, Roman, Zoroastrian. Maybe some flavors of Buddhist, but it’s not convincing without first proof of a God. (Yes, I’ve read their scriptures too; do you have any idea how difficult it was to find an English translation of the Adi Granth?)

2. Q: If nothing creates nothing, then how is the Big Bang theory real?A: The Big Bang theory doesn’t suppose that origin was nothing. It can’t make reactive predictions beyond the Planck epoch (the first 1×10^-43 seconds after the origin of the universe).
3. Q: If evolution is real, then why are humans endowed[sic] with a knowledge of a higher power at such a young age?A: Most of us (the human race) are repeatedly told of a God before we know that the sound “gahd” has a meaning.

   Additionally, when we are young, our authority is our father and mother. Then, as we grow older, we learn that our parents have to answer to someone, and they to someone else. We expect that there must be an ultimate authority, whether one exists or not, just from extrapolation.

4. Q: How can you disprove intelligent design without saying that it just doesn’t exist?A: ID doesn’t make a lot of predictions, but it does predict two things: First, that there should be unevolvable complexity in biological systems; second that, at some point looking backwards backwards, the tree of life should terminate at multiple roots, rather than one. Neither of these predictions pan out well: “irreducibly complex” systems have been repeatedly shown not to be unevolvable; the fossil record, when organized by phylogeny, traces origins to a single common ancestor.
5. Q: How could life come from non-living [matter]?A: Abiogenesis is a complex and fascinating topic on which research is presently being done. As such, no one is yet equipped to give you a clear answer.

   If, however, you are interested in a basic outline of one of the various theorems, I suggest cdk007’s video entitled “The Origin of Life - Abiogenesis” (embedded):
6. Q: If evolution is real, then where are the transitional fossils?A: Generally, in museums. You’ve been lied to if you believe there are none. There’s no cat-turning-into-a-dog fossil - nor does evolutionary theory predict such a thing - but if you know anything about evolutionary theory, you’ll know that every fossil (and life-form) is transitional. If you’re looking for fossil evidence of speciation events (which requires three fossils; an origin, a transition on one branch, and a transition on the other), just google for “speciation fossil”. The first article that comes up has an excellent set of links to entire groups (by phylogeny) of transitionals.
7. Q: Why would 40 people write 66 chapters to a book over the span of 1,500 years, just for it to mean nothing?A: The Bible doesn’t “Mean nothing”, even to an Atheist. The Torah is a history of the Jewish people from around 4,000 BC to around 500 BC; it contains the laws of a culture, the wisdom of its elders, etc. The New Testament contains the collected philosophy of the Gnostics (early christians). That the book also contains mystical nonsense is not deprecating to the quality of the other information held in the book. For a comparison, read some of the Roman archives from the same period; in their historical accounts, there are mentions of “miraculous” happenings and prophecy fulfillment at about the same frequency as there are in the Bible. That does not lessen the value of the true history that is also recorded in those pages.
8. Q: What will you do the day you’re left behind? (That is, if you live long enough…)A: I assume you’re talking about the “Rapture”. 144,000 people being taken bodily into heaven would be sufficient evidence for the existence of God for my tastes. I’d become a Christian, likely on the spot. I’d also have to figure out how everything in science fits into Christianity, as the presently promoted explanations are not convincing. In short, I might be a Christian, but I would still not be an ID’er. On the up side, given rapture, I’d have the opportunity to ask. Even if I couldn’t ask God, I’m sure someone in hell would know - whether I’d get a straight answer is another question, but I’d have eternity to verify, and I’m sure torment would become a drag after a while.
9. Q: How can Evolution be classified as science, when science only uses things that can be hypothesised[sic] and tested?A: Evolutionary theory makes predictions, which can be tested.

   For example, the generic form of one of the most commonly tested prediction of evolutionary geology is: if we dig to a certain depth, in a certain location, we should find a certain set of fossils. This particular test has been run several thousand times; each test has both confirmed the theory itself (we do find the fossils), and adjusted the assumptions we’ve made along the way (sometimes we find some of the fossils, but not others, and look for evidence of an extinction; sometimes we find that the rock is wrong, and we have to adjust our assumed geology of that location).

   A more specific test was in the chromosomal difference between humans and our closest cousin, chimpanzees. They (and every other primate species) have 24 chromosomal pairs, while we have 23. You can’t just drop a chromosomal pair without dying, so evolutionary genetics predicts that there must have been a chromosomal fusion, and that we should find the evidence of that fusion in one of our own chromosomes. Chromosome 2 ended up being the culprit, with not only the telomeres (chromosomal termini) and centromeres (chromosomal centers) in the right places to indicate fusion, but with matching of the component chromosomes to their counterparts in chimp DNA consistent with the rate at which chimp DNA matches our own overall.

10. Q: Why would Jesus endure what he did just for it to mean nothing?A: Given that, in the story, Jesus had Romans at his back, and kinsfolk that weren’t willing to risk undergoing the same torture to save him, I would suggest that, once betrayed, Jesus didn’t have a choice. A lot of people got crucified in those days. Some fled to avoid their sentence - and woe be to the criminal and those helping him escape when the Roman Soldiers got a hold of them. They weren’t known for being nice guys. Best case scenario, Jesus was attempting to protect his comrades by not resisting.

    There’s an old saying about Jesus: Liar, Lunatic, or Lord. I would add, “Legend”; as was stated above, in the answer to question 7, people in those days tended to mystify things. Remember, the Bible is not the word of Jesus, but the word of his Apostles, as handed down for at least one generation (3-4, in some cases) before getting put to parchment.

11. Q: If evolution is real, then explain Laminin and its [parallel] with Collosians 1:17A: I have to call you on this: you’re making a decidedly stupid parallel. Are you suggesting that a protein is God? You could suggest the same parallel between Col 1:17 and electrons; laminin physically holds most animal life together (cellulose does the same for plants), but electrons, they literally hold EVERYTHING together, aside from subatomic particles.
12. Q: Why did Darwin say before he died that [evolution] was just a theory?A: I Googled for: [Darwin quote "Just a theory"]. I couldn’t find the quote by Darwin you were referencing. Perhaps you could lead me to it?
13. Q: Why are so many biblical prophesies coming true, and how long can you pass this all off as coincidence before it’s too late? (ref: Matthew 24:27, “For as the lightning flashes from the east to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be”A: I’m unaware of the prophecies you are referring to. Specifics are in order.

    “As the lightning flashes from east to west” Does it? I haven’t heard of lightning move circumferential around the globe in any direction. I’ve seen it muddle in short bursts up in cirrus clouds, but that’s been going on for eons now.

14. Q: Are you ready?A: Am I ready for what?

When I saw that McCain was running for the Republican Nomination in ‘07, I thought to myself, “Hey, this could make the election interesting; McCain is an entirely different sort of animal from the rest of his party.”  I thought, “If he shows signs of returning to actual fiscal conservatism, I might vote Republican this time.”

Now, in ‘08, I can’t say that I feel the same way about the man.  I’m voting Obama now, incidentally.

The reason for my vote.

In 2000, 2004, and even as near as 2006, McCain had fundamental disagreements with the Bush Administration; he was respectful of his colleagues in the Senate, was incensed by the Republican’s “attack machine” method of political debate, and he generally had an excellent sense of humor. Strangely, though, the second he donned his “game face”
he aligned with the existing Administration, and adopted their attack machine as his own personal election winner.

His primary election success was based on his stance on the issues; a stance that, while it did alienate some of the conservative vote, appealed to centrists and even some liberals. That this stance was abandoned in favor of, essentially, the Bush Doctrine - this screams intellectual dishonesty. This screams, “I want the election, and I’m willing to swap my position to whatever it takes to get it”.

I understand the motivation: the Democrats have an inspirational candidate; it’s going to be hard to get any Democrat to defect, we’ll concentrate on solidifying the existing conservative base instead. Add to that, the republicans have a Nader-esque spoiler in the form of Bob Barr this year, when they rarely have to deal with spoilers of the Nader variety - at a time when a significant number of their base has been leaning towards the pre-McCarthy conservatism that the Libertarians have been appealing to. (The Ron Paul vote, around 2-3% nationally, IS significant when you’re considering the presidential race, which has been remarkably tight in the last couple of cycles). This is particularly damaging this year; much of the Green democrats have been both severely disillusioned by Nader and strongly attracted to Obama; Nader isn’t going to spoil the Dems nearly as badly as Barr is going to spoil the Republicans.

The problem with this campaign method - solidification of your base in light of internal attrition and the difficulty of oppositional attrition - is that it ignores the centrists that more or less make or break a campaign. The centrists, at the outset, agreed more with the even-handed McCain of ‘06 than the hamfisted McCain of ‘08. By attempting to pander to the moderate right, and by utilizing the Rovian political tactics against a candidate who’s platform rests partially on the idea that Washington’s politics are broken, he essentially lost the center and moderate left in one stroke.

At that note, McCain essentially helped Obama prove his point: every attack, every smear, was an opportunity for Obama to say, “Hey, see what I mean? This isn’t appropriate behavior for a politician. What happened here? We need to fix this. Help me fix it. Prove to the other politicians that this sort of appeal to fear and outright lying won’t win them an election.”

So, some of the smears that are kind of laughable.  The “Empty suit” rhetoric, for example.  Given that Obama appears to know what he’s doing, and McCain appears not to, this just looks like another typical example of Rovian transference tactic: get the public to scrutinize the other party on your faults, so that when it comes out that you have them, the effect is mitigated by the portion of the public that was convinced by your initial accusation.

It’s a brilliant - but entirely dishonest - tactic. I can’t think why the Dems don’t use it often, but the “moral” majority does. It couldn’t be because those with strong absolutist morals are relatively easy to emotionally exploit in that respect, now, could it?

The “Socialist” charge is equally ridiculous.  It essentially goes this way: Obama has been exposed to socialism, and has socialists’ support so he’s a socialist.  Now, the easiest failure of this argument is that exposure doesn’t equal agreement, nor has it resulted as such in Obama’s case - at least, not to any visible degree.

The implication is that an individual’s supporters dictate his politics. If you’re going to take this logical fallacy to its conclusion: Obama may have socialists / communists who agree on more points with him than with McCain, and thus support him - but McCain has Neo Nazi’s and other forms of fascists who agree with him on more points than they agree with Obama, thus supporting him.

Socialists are generally well thinking people with an idealistic flaw (that is, that people are selfless enough at the national scale to allow pure socialism to work - they just aren’t; pure socialism generally can’t work with anything but small populations for this reason - but in balanced hybrid with capitalism, it works rather well). Neo-nazi’s, on the other hand, are disgusting examples of the ideological danger involved in a eugenic mindset (that is, one race is superior, but in a way that nature apparently hasn’t caused to overtake the species).

In short, by invoking a sort of “guilt by association”, McCain’s campaign is playing a losing game, even if we play by his intellectually dishonest rules.

Below the fold are some points on the economy, and not really related to the election.  Read on if you’re interested.

(more…)

How I mourn:
If I liked, even loved the person, I’m glad that I was able to be a part of the life of a wonderful person, and to be enriched by that person’s existence.
If I didn’t like the person, I’m generally glad to see the back of them.

That’s it, really.

Addressing theists.

The accusation comes to light often enough that Atheists are immoral - even less moral than other religions that aren’t yours - because they don’t have a divinely inspired - or even a fixed - moral code.  In order to refute this, without actually defining the content of my moral code, I’ll now lead you down a quick logical pathway.

I will assume for the sake of argument that your religious text is divinely inspired.  It contains a moral code.

There are many other religious text - not divinely inspired, as per the assumption, but written by humankind - that also contain moral codes.  They may be inferior, for lack of divine inspiration, but they are serviceable for those that follow them.

These other religions are still around, sometimes for thousands of years.  So they must at least be serviceable enough to prevent societal collapse.

At this point, we can agree that it is possible for humans to write a moral code without divine inspiration that is at least sufficiently servicable to prevent societal collapse for societies following it.  This is exactly what the an atheist moral code would be.

So, no.  Atheists aren’t by definition immoral.  Sinful, by your standards, surely, but in no way immoral.

As I’d mentioned before, I see the term ‘Respect my beliefs’ as equivalent to ‘Follow my beliefs’.  This doesn’t mean I go around blaspheming at a religious person for the hell of it - I’m more inclined to respect someone’s feelings in this case.

However, I do take some offense at anyone who decides it’s their business to inform me of my ’sins’.  It’s bad enough that you assume moral authority without some form of objective justification - but to judge another person based on your arbitrary rules is decidedly rude.

And, yes.  To this, I respond in turn.  I live by a set of rules - one of which is intellectual honesty.  I am inclined to, and often do force people attacking me with accusations of iniquity to question how often they lie to themselves.

It’s, unsurprisingly, a lot - even if they won’t admit it.  Hell, even with the rule in place, I have the occasional self-deception going on.  It’s one of those things that takes constant vigilance - but is pretty rewarding in a real sense when it comes down to it.

That is, when you avoid lying even to yourself, you tend to get a reputation for almost superhuman honesty.  Such a rep is a valuable thing in a society that, primarily, is based on trust.  Such a rep also tends to excuse the almost immediate smile accompanied by a polite ‘No thank you’, when presented with things like offers to accompany another person to church, crosses, pamphlets, etc.  I may be a heathen, but at least I’m honest.

Title lifted from MC Hawking

When doing my debatey thing, I often come across the “Something can’t come from nothing” argument against Big Bang theory.  Here’s a few reasons it’s illogical:

1. Big Bang describes the events that occurred immediately after universal formation: planck, Unified fields, inflation, electroweak, quark, hadron, lepton, photon, and recombination.  Prior to that - the first Planck time after universal formation was kicked off, we don’t know anything - can’t know anything - because it occurred outside observable reference (that is, we can only derive the universe in reverse to a point; beyond that point, the laws of physics don’t work and the math fails).  So the first failure is in addressing that they think we’re talking about ultimate universal origin, rather than speaking about the universe’s history after that.  (sort of like telling one life story, but omitting the conception)
2. The arguer is assuming that there was ‘nothing’ before the events described by Big Bang.  As pointed out by (1), this isn’t necessarily true - is probably not true - because, as said, we don’t know the state of the universal system before the start of inflation.  If you’re going to assert that something can’t come from nothing, the only thing to say for it is that, obviously, something was there.  Don’t know what, but you asserted it.  Can be God if you like, but you, like me, would have to figure out what that something is made of - God included.
3. Generally, it’s followed up or used in support of, “so the only alternative is God.”  Leaving aside the false dichotomy here, we’re still claiming a something from nothing scenario: God speaking it into existence doesn’t change the fact that it’s still something from nothing - and reiterates the question: why doesn’t anything spring from nothing today?
4. It’s kind of fallacy that nothing can spring from nothing: virtual particle pairs spring from vacuum all the time, always in particle-antiparticle pairs.  I’m not a physicist, so I can’t really speak as to the application of this to universal formation, but I do find it interesting.  (I can say, however, that in Zero Point Energy, which is what describes this phenominon, the VPP’s are ‘borrowing’ energy from the baseline).

The below extension of a comment is my reaction to this video:
Mohammed Brand Condoms

Fundie Muslims demand respect for their religion - in itself a hypocrisy.  Muslims, like any other religion, are obligated to disrespect the religions of others.  ‘Respect my religion’ means ‘follow my religion’.

That is, to a follower of a religion, disagreement with the Dogma is disrespect of it.  You can’t disagree with what’s written in the Holy Bible!  It’s scripture!  It’s Holy!  It’s Biblical, even! As such, dissent - a generally rational and useful tool for wrenching out truth and action - becomes heresy. While the punishment for this has waned in these enlightened days, it still breeds a certain closed-mindedness.  Even an attempt at humorous dissent - as this video is (a bad attempt, rife with light-hearted bigotry) - becomes something to despise.

So, I am certain that someone will cast this video as hate - as certain as I am that most people will find it either funny or cringe-worthy.  But it does speak a couple of basic rules on human behavior to me.  Tenative though they may be, here is the list.

The phrase, ‘methinks thou dost protest too much’ applies here; as loudly as fundie Muslims demand respect, have they respect for their own religion?  Or do they see their often violent outbursts of ignobility as a way to forgive their own transgressions against Islam?  Rule 1: The more loudly a person complains, the more likely they are guilty of the subject of the complaint.

Additionally, the more fundie Muslims in particular have a recent history of being loud and confrontational about getting the respect they ‘deserve’ just for adhering to their flavor of bronze age desert fiction.  Rule 2: Those who demand respect the loudest, will receive the least.

Meanwhile, governments (not so much the US yet*, but Eurpoe and Canada have been bad with this) bow down to pressure for ‘respect’, by giving muslims special privileges.  Rule 3: The squeaky wheel gets the grease - even when it’d be better to get a new cart.

Of course, fundie muslims can’t see with the objective clarity that an onlooker can.  They don’t see themselves as protesting too much - they see themselves as righteous.  They don’t understand why we shun their incessent cries for respect as we would a child crying wolf.  They’re frustrated.  It’s rather clear to most that Islam will not spread over the whole world**; we’re simply not listening.  Rule 4: Frustration comes from aspired, but persistently unachieved goals.

We’re tying our best to let you live in our countries, chill with us, be cool humans - and a lot of your more moderate types are exactly that: quite cool.  I’ll admit they’re not mentioned much here - but frankly, they don’t cause problems.  Rule 5: The most visible members of a class will be the representation of that class.

We (speaking unworthily for the secular world) would love it if Afghanistan, to pull an example, turned into an idyllic mountain-ribbed nation of prosperity in whatever form its culture devised.  It’d be a place to spend our tourist money, take snapshots of, meet quality people, and tell our friends about.  Rule 6: It doesn’t matter how paranoid you are; you’re not so important that ‘they’ are out to get you.

Lastly, and this one’s a biggie, it always seems to me that insularity breeds conflict.  When a class of people makes themselves separate from everyone else, it’s unaviodable to start using distasteful pronouns like ‘us’ and ‘them’.  ‘Us’ has this connotation that whatever ‘we’ think, it’s better than what ‘they’ think.  ‘Them’ has a connotation that ‘they’ are a threat to ‘us’.  As such, the initator of this mentality forces it on those they strike out against. Rule 7: The initiator of the ‘Us v. Them’ mindset automatically becomes ‘Them’.  And ‘They’ always lose.

Wow.  Got a lot out of a really bad video.  Go figure.

* The reasons for this have more to do with Christian Fundamentalism in the US than proper secularism.  After all, Europe is mostly secular.  So yeah, we’re doing the right thing, but for the wrong reasons.  Meanwhile, Christians get special priveliges here because they have the voting power to make it so.  I don’t think this is right, but I’m no more in a position to dismantle the natural result of a democratic republic with a Christian pluarlity than I am of a mind to become a dictator.  Fascism just tastes funny to me.  I’d rather see secularism become a majority voice.

** As said before, respect for religion = adherence to religion.  Demanding universal respect, especially in Islam, is demanding universal worship - which, let’s not fool ourselves, is a goal OF Islam.

Hey, this happened on my birthday (Jul 14), so I decided to post a comment on it. I realize that given VFX’s history with comment censorship, it’ll never see the light of day on his page, but I thought, hey, why not post the comment on my blog?

You’re finally shutting down?

I’ll tell you, I had a lousy birthday: I got selected for a jury trial, which killed my birthday plans; I had to work on a Friday when I had specifically requested off for a nice long weekend with my fianceé; nothing went as planned - still we made the best of it.

Still, when a disinformationist such as your self shuts down; it’s an awesome birthday present.

Mind you the cause, death threats, not cool. But the results are nice.

Goodbye.

All the cool kids are doing it…

Please rate fairly and discuss on YouTube (not here).