Mike G. over at Spinoza’s Bicycle has some advice for YECs trying to argue that the Earth is a young creation: “What I Need.” Hint: it’s not a blanket assertion that conventional science is one vast conspiracy.
Mike G. over at Spinoza’s Bicycle has some advice for YECs trying to argue that the Earth is a young creation: “What I Need.” Hint: it’s not a blanket assertion that conventional science is one vast conspiracy.
Orac of Respectful Insolence points out the flaws and follies of Complementary and Alternative Medicine’s touting of “natural” medicine. I like to spell it out because when I see “CAM” I think Crassulacean Acid Metabolism.
Hat tip to Prof. PZ Myers of Pharyngula. PZ wrote:
This is a wonderful video debunking the Kalam Cosmological Argument. What I really like about it is that it takes the tortured rationales of theologians like William Lane Craig, who love to babble mangled pseudoscience in their arguments, and shows with direct quotes from the physicists referenced that the Christian and Muslim apologists are full of shit.
So the theists cherry-pick misunderstood factoids from science to steal the legitimacy of scientific research for their myths. Then if someone points out that the research has changed its answer, they whine about the lack of evidence? I think my irony meter just sproinged its guts all over the room.
But are their cherries Jesus-approved? (Hat tip to Greta Christina:
“They cherry-pick scripture to support their position; you cherry-pick scripture to support yours—how do you know that your cherries are the ones Jesus would approve of?”
and Hamstur:
Now there’s a starburst for every Christian author’s book: “My cherries are Jesus approved!”
It’s almost unbelievable to think that there are people so cut off from reality that they long for the good old Dark Ages of the Inquisition defending the geocentric earth, but they do exist. Do they expect their doctors to say, “Take two leeches and send me a messenger in the morning”?
New blogger Flora at Subspecies has a detailed accounts of a debate between a degree-mill ‘expert’ and a science student. See “In which the universe revolves around Robert Sungenis” (and the Bible is always right). (Part 2.) Sungenis appears to be quite the jerk as well as an all-around crank and conspiracy theorist. She has picked apart his arguments neatly and politely.
*image from WearScience
Go to this delightful website and buy a T-shirt, a coffee mug, or some other item to bring a little serious humour into your life. (Images are from WearScience.)
Science blogger and outspoken atheist PZ Myers is often accused of insulting religious people just for being religious. But that isn’t so. He has no problem with people who have a quiet religious belief and mind their own business, except insofar as they legitimize religious extremists. He is angry at people who do things like this:
Isaac Asimov in 1983:
[Someone asked] quite aggressively, “Where do you stand on astrology?”
She could scarcely have read much of my writing without knowing the answer to the question, and so I gathered she wanted a fight. I didn’t, and so I contented myself with a minimal statement of my position and said, “I’m not impressed with it.”
She must have expected that, for she said at once, “Have you ever studied astrology?”
She felt safe in asking that, I suppose, for she undoubtedly knew that a hard-working science writer such as myself is constantly breaking his neck trying to keep up with legitimate science, and that I could scarcely devote much time to a painstaking investigation of each of the many fringe follies that infest the public.
I was tempted to say I had, of course, for I knew enough astronomy to know that astrological assumptions are ridiculous, and I have read enough of the writings of scientists who have studied astrology to know that no credence need be given to any part of it.
If, however, I said I was a student of astrology, she would have asked if I had read some nonsensical book by jackass number one, and some idiotic tome by jackass number two, and she would have nailed me as not only someone who hadn’t studied astrology, but who had lied about it.
So I said, with an amiable smile, “No.”
She said, promptly, “If you studied it, you might find that you would be impressed with it.”
Still responding minimally, I said, “I don’t think so.”
That was what she wanted. triumphantly, she said, “That means you are a narrow-minded bigot, afraid to shake your own prejudices by investigation.”
I should have shrugged, smiled, and walked away, but I found myself driven to a retort. I said, “Being human, miss, I suppose I do have a bit of bigotry about me, so I carefully expend it on astrology in order that I won’t be tempted to use it on anything with a shred of intellectual decency about it.” —And she stamped off angrily.
The problem, you see, was not that I had failed to investigate astrology; it was that she had failed to investigate astronomy adequately, so that she didn’t have a know how empty of content astrology was.
It is precisely because Americans to know no science, even though they may be well educated otherwise, that they so easily fall prey to nonsense.
They thus become part of the armies of the night, the purveyors of nitwittery, the retailers of intellectual junk food, the feeders on mental cardboard, for their ignorance keeps them from distinguishing nectar from sewage.
I’ve heard the phrase “Get in the #*@!% sack” bandied around, but I didn’t know where it came from. This might be the origin, or perhaps the sack originated in fairy tales such as Molly Whuppie or this Indian folk tale, but Dan Dara O’Brien certainly popularized it when he addressed homeopathy and media balance.