This is mere satire, but it would be much more interesting if Ben Stein were to challenge Newton, rather than Darwin. It would be just as absurd, but I think physicists need more abuse than just a few flaky zero-point energy guys and the New Agers using the word “quantum” in every sentence.
And hey, where are all the chemistry abusers? Won’t someone criticize Boyle and Lavoisier?
Evolution, & natural selection as it s principal driving force, are fundamental to understanding human origins & agency. Physics & chemistry are not, except at a much deeper level, (which may explain religionists interest in the anthropic principle).
Acceptance of natural selection removes the major need for a theistic god to explain us. For some people, with a sufficient knowledge of physics & chemistry to wonder at the fine tuning of physical constants making a life-supporting universe possible, there ia a secondary opportunity for a theistic god to explain us.
So, I guess, Darwin will always be the ‘Aunt Sally’ (object of an unreasonable attack).
Chemistry is too mundane to attack. But, I guess, it will change once we finally solve the riddle of abiogenesis. (organic) chemistry will be then attacked like any other sciences relevent to (their) worldwiew.
Well, we also have our share of Relativity denialists bothering us. Maybe those could get church support, too, if they would only reframe their crankery.
I would say that homeopathy qualifies as an attack on chemistry. Not to mention sanity and logic.
be well
-h-
Chemistry and physics just don’t get emotional in the same way, since they don’t touch us, and our perception of who we are, as directly.
I mean, what would be the chemistry/physics equivalent of “My grampa sure wasn’t no monkey!”?
hey PZ, did you notice that you were mentionned as an influential physicist in that article…and Dawkins is a gravityist.
So, I wonder who is a non-gravityist ?
Wonder what this notion of intelligent gravity looks like.
Well you guys obviously haven’t heard about Intelligent Falling – “Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, ‘God’ if you will, is pushing them down”
TEACH BOTH THEORIES!
–Simon
Pick on Physics? Reminds me of the story in The Onion a couple of years back…
I saw one gravity denier who argued like :
If I exert force with my muscles, I spend energy.
No energy is spent by an apple resting on a table, so there are no forces acting on it, so gravity doesn’t exist.
( if stupidity would antigravitate, this guy would be ejected into space at near speed of light )
Gravity is a Myth.
The earth sucks!
(ask people who survive hang-glider crashes)
“Anti-falling physicists have been theorizing for decades about the ‘electromagnetic force,’ the ‘weak nuclear force,’ the ‘strong nuclear force,’ and so-called ‘force of gravity,'” Burdett said. “And they tilt their findings toward trying to unite them into one force. But readers of the Bible have already known for millennia what this one, unified force is: His name is Jesus.”
Thanks to the Bible, and its incredible wisdom, evangelical physicists discovered how the Jesus unifying force causes the semiconductor effect.
I am in awe !
Yeah? i withstood an assault by an engineer, of drunken poofters, trying to proclaim that engineers were more fundamental than us phycisists.
And My Bio teach in high school used to drive me to skip class when he ranted on the fundamental importance of biology, from which no other science could arise without.
Sorry folks, but gluons and baryons (and of course our little friends, the hadron collection) are hard to beat when it comes to original matter. The words physics and chemistry just plain scare fruitloops, and even rational folk, away. Biology? Too easy.
Why don’t the fundamentally stupidists pick on Psychology? Now there’s an easy target ;)
There are chemistry denialists out there… at least in Florida, so I’d imagine elsewhere.
When I took my first chemistry class, our professor explained the concept of valence electrons during the first week of class. One student raised her hand and asked if anyone had ever actually seen an electron, and the professor answered that no one had. The student then asserted that since nobody had seen one that it couldn’t be proved that they actually existed; electrons were “only a theory.” The professor said that this was more-or-less true, but all the evidence in the world points to their existence. The student said, “I don’t believe that, though. I think it’s God’s love at work.”
The professor looked puzzled but calmly responded, “You’re free to believe whatever you want on your own time, but in here we’re going to learn about electron theory. If you answer based on something else on the next exam, you’ll lose points.” The student bristled a bit and insisted that her answer was equally valid because nobody could see either electrons or God, so the professor told her that if she was going to insist on this theological theory, she’d be better off not taking the class.
The student walked out and never came back.
So, yeah, there are definitely chemistry denialists out there who envision molecules being held together by little cherubs.
Well, I guess you have to put the cherubs somewhere…
And hey, where are all the chemistry abusers? Won’t someone criticize Boyle and Lavoisier?
Well, read Peter Plichta’s “Das Primzahl Kreuz”. It’s a real treat. And don’t tell me he’s just another silly fool. I already know that today’s self-proclamed “scientist”, who’s vocabulary mainly consists of terms like “Denier!”, are not really openminded. Even better, scientists are never and have never been openminded.
It is funny indeed that scientists play this catty game about “my discipline is better than yours” to rationalize their beliefs / lack thereof.
Did I say funny? Sorry – I actually meant pathetic.
I still maintain that rabid, outspoken, atheist scientists – regardless of the discipline they practice – are every bit as moronic as Bible-thumping, literalist evangelicals. The only thing the scientists have in their favor is that they normally don’t go around killing off non-scientists for not ascribing to their views. Instead, you all put together blogs like this – thereby allowing the world to peer in with wonder at your petty insecurities.
Don’t you have research you should be doing? ;)
Even better, scientists are never and have never been openminded.
I have to ask you : What piece of science do you deny ?
There was some resistance to organic chemistry by vitalists, but it didn’t amount to much because it didn’t get bigtime institutional church-state sponsors. Alternative medicine has a vitalist streak, but they talk about proteins and vitamins the same way anyone else does. (Though they often claim that synthetic Vitamin C isn’t real Vitamin C, etc., etc.) Once you get into Deeprak Chopra type anti-naturalist spiritualism, though, I think that there’s an implicit rejection of biochemistry.
A bigger point: the lack of controversy in the history organic chemistry has led to a neglect of the whole field in popular thinking about philosophy, science and history. It was a very exciting, revolutionary period of scientific research, but the story couldn’t be dramatically told because there was no real villain.
There’s a question I ask people as a test. Here at Pharyngula many are probably able to answer it, but it’s not part of general educated knowledge. The question is: “Who were the pioneers of organic chemistry?” Plenty of educated people don’t know any of their names. And in part, that makes sense, because it wasn’t a dramatic story.
You know- if I ever want to give my brain a rest, I’ll switch from physical chemistry to something easy like genetics/biology.
15 & 16
Translation: I’m not taking my meds and you can’t make me.
Physics cranks aren’t as well organised as biology cranks. They are still at the writing insane, badly-organised rants that show how the world really works and then mailing them to professors and science magazines. You can be sure that when there’s political utility in denying the basic premises of the physical sciences, the Discovery Institute will call them out of hiding, give them a haircut, a clean shave and a nice suit and send them around the country to lobby schoolboards and declare astrology a form of science.
Until then, though, it’s coffee-stained manuscripts and USENET cross-posting for them.
Which reminds me: the Crackpot Index is a great resource to have around, although it needs some amendments to cope with the rise in ‘postmodernist’ justifications for pseudoscience.
To go on, I think that chemistry gets too little respect because it’s not “fundamental” and “eternal”. Molecules are composites that come into being and go out of being, whereas atoms (or at least subatomic particles) are fundamental eternal realities which never disappear but merely change from state to state. that seems like a cheesy, self-serving way to think, but then, chemists do it to biologists and so on all the way down the latter to historians.
“ladder”.
You know- if I ever want to give my brain a rest, I’ll switch from physical chemistry to something easy like genetics/biology.
You have missed the point. I didn’t mean chemistry is easy, or boring. I meant, it seems too mundane to the ignorant. (for them) it is simply mixing one chemical with another to get yet another chemical. No link with “The Ultimate Question Life, the Universe, and Everything”. At least no one they can perceive”
I confess that I wasn’t sure that the Ben Stein piece was satire when I first read it.
Actually Einstein did pick on Newton.
Moreover, Lee Smolin and other are picking on guys like Brian Greene, pointing out that String Theory and “Multiverses” are going nowhere and may not even be science.
In the famous words of Stephen Weinberg, “Science is what scientists do.”
Definition of a scientists: “Men who pretended to be able to understand everything, until there was NOTHING LEFT to understand”. (The Omega Man)
Well, there’s always the Group Of Intellectuals Negating Godless Atomism + Generic Atheism. :)
Hello, jspreen! Hello, truthilicious!
For everyone else’s information: these two are AIDS and, at least in the case of jspreen, 9/11 denialists whose minds are so open that their brains have fallen out. As a result, they keep trolling the Aetiology blog whenever AIDS is mentioned. They are among the people who believe they aren’t only entitled to their own opinions, but also to their own facts.
Here’s a great quote on openmindedness:
— Thomas Henry Huxley
jspreen and truthilicious are not going to give up the preconceived notion of the evil scientist anytime soon. And they won’t go to any abyss, except those they have created themselves.
Hello, jspreen! Hello, truthilicious!
For everyone else’s information: these two are AIDS and, at least in the case of jspreen, 9/11 denialists whose minds are so open that their brains have fallen out. As a result, they keep trolling the Aetiology blog whenever AIDS is mentioned. They are among the people who believe they aren’t only entitled to their own opinions, but also to their own facts.
Here’s a great quote on openmindedness:
— Thomas Henry Huxley
jspreen and truthilicious are not going to give up the preconceived notion of the evil scientist anytime soon. And they won’t go to any abyss, except those they have created themselves.
Only flat-earths can now challenge Newtonism, and the intelligent gravitists don’t want to join that “Big Tent;” seeing as how satellites maintain their orbit for as long as their momentum will allow.
Although, now that I think about it, creationists use “angular momentum” to prove that the solar system can’t be old, and intelligent gravitists are in bed with them.
But this seems to be an actual quote:
The problem is that the connections that ID wants to re-draw to Paley’s Watchmaker, have been severed by “where the evidence leads;” and they want to return to the 19th century and the evidence that existed before natural selection was described.
David Marjanović – you definitely have me confused with someone else… check your facts and when you do, I will be happy to accept your apology.
On the contrary – I love science. I come from a family of educators – a few of them science educators. I seek and embrace knowledge daily… which is why I read a lot of scientific news, magazines, and blogs. I respect the hard work and dedication of scientific professionals, and even though my own vocation is not really “scientific” per se, my natural love of the various scientific disciplines drives me to always learn more.
What I dislike is the over-zealous attitude that many here have that they are never to be questioned about their positions on matters of faith simply because they are scientists. My point is that there is as much intolerance among many here as there is among over-zealous Christians, Muslims, etc. When I am called a “troll” or a “fuckwit” (as I have been on this blog), it only backs up my assessment because a very common response of someone who is backed into a corner is to lash out by name-calling, etc. You all claim to be so open-minded, yet the irony is that you are just as closed-minded as many of the religious nutjobs that are screwing things up in the world (see the current POTUS and friends, al Qaeda, etc.)
Be open to intelligent dialog – and tolerant of others’ views. You can start by re-reading that quote by Thomas Huxley and apply it to your own life.
truthilicious – be open to spellcheck. “dialogue“
Whew, truthi, thanks for letting me off the hook. I are an engineer.
So where’s some facts? Point them out. If you can’t, or there aren’t, why not speak out against thought-control cults?
As for name-calling, I bolded yours, and also bolded where you presume so much about so many (i.e. who you calling close-minded?).
Thanks, you fuckwit troll ;-)
Actually, spellcheck wouldn’t have helped you. Dialog is a word, too. It’s just not the one you were looking for.
Oh, don’t get me started on that evil liar Lavoisier! Or his simpering stooge Laplace, either!!!!1!
And hey, where are all the chemistry abusers? Won’t someone criticize Boyle and Lavoisier?
Boyle was a hamster, and Lavoisier smelt of elderberries!
My work is done here.
“Why don’t the fundamentally stupidists pick on Psychology? Now there’s an easy target ;)”
Your question nearly answers itself: The fundamentally stupidists (sic) pick on biology precisely because psychology is NOT an easy target. Of all the sciences, I would argue that the field of psychology integrates findings from the broadest range of other fields, including biology, chemistry, mathematics, cosmology (etc) in an effort to discover new facts that help us to understand ourselves (and to repair ourselves when we break). It’s probably in the Wedge document somewhere; attack the easy sciences at the root, and the really hard ones will fall.
seems truthiculous is the archetypal concern troll
psychodelict
I disagree. Not that psychology is an easy target, but that “scientologists” have been railing at it for years.
No one has mentioned George Deutsch yet. His “Big Bang Theory” shenanigans at NASA should have been a wake up call to physicists.
I don’t know, tidal physics probably gets abused a bit to square the moon’s orbit with a young universe.
Same for the physics of the Earth’s core dynamo (linearly extrapolate the field strength back into the past and Earth would have outclassed the magnetars or something…)
As for the Expanding Earth brand of woo…
T-U-T… classic tactic… when someone’s opinion differs from yours – silence them. Have PT add me to the “banned list.” Score one for open-minded scientists! You’d fit right in with the current crop of “leaders” in D.C.
True_Bob – I didn’t call anyone a moron – I called an action moronic…. There’s a very subtle distinction there, you fuckwit. :)
Mike P – dialog is an accepted variant of dialogue – at least it is in the United States. I’d recommend getting yourself a dictionary. :)
This is fun…
Science is superior, and while fundies may only talk about the end of the world, science makes it possible!
Truthi,
Please clarify how moronic actions come from those who are not morons.
Your actions are trolltastic, and fuckwitted, but of course I respect you.
Hey, concern troll, here a cake for you :
No one wants to “silence you because you have different opinion” but you fling around accusations without a shred of evidence to back them up. So, either back them up, or we will conclude that you are yet another concern troll and ignore you.
For everyone else’s information: these two are AIDS and, at least in the case of jspreen, 9/11 denialists whose minds are so open that their brains have fallen out.
Hey, David Marjanović! Hey, yes you there. Hey, listen I’m talking to you. Why do you beat around the bush here? Is it to avoid questions you cannot answer elsewhere? Come on man, the photographs. How must I look at them to see debris and corpses? Answer, please?
BTW, truthi, Random House won’t separate moron and moronic.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/moronic
truthilicious, why ever would we ask PZ to ban you, not that he would listen to us anyway. I fear you have a much overblown opinion of yourself to think that you are worth banning, as your only sin, if it may be termed such, is a degree of what you accuse posters on here of. That and an obvious complete humour bypass, going by your post #16, in not understanding that PZ’s post and those in reply to his were humourous in nature.
If by that you mean “making up their own version of history which has nothing to do with what really happened during the 1990s” and “misrepresenting the current state of research”, then sure.
So, basically, I should imagine all their posts being delivered in the same tone of voice that guy ranting about chemtrails on the Providence-Newport ferry a few days back was using?
I just want to know why Ben Stein is dressed up like Angus Young on the movie poster? Is he also a denier of the Sex, Drugs, & Rock n’ Roll Theory of Everything? Intelligent Chordage?
andy (#40):
Young-Earth Creationists have been attacking astronomy for years now. See, e.g., the TalkOrigins FAQ on supernovae.
True Bobby said:
OK – that’s fair TB. I can respect that. I apologize for calling Bible-thumping, literalist Evangelicals and closed-minded, holier-than-thou scientists with an inability to be tolerant of others’ views and opinions “moronic,” and ergo “morons.” Happy now, fuckwit? :)
Hey there T_U_T… to your astute observation:
Bravo! I completely agree. I like to use the old adage, “In God we trust – everyone else must supply data.” I realize that invoking “God” in a discussion with this crowd may cause some dander-raising, but conceptually it’s spot-on with scientific thought. :)
Which accusations require back-up other than the comments of many here? I will happily comply.
John Phillips – the humor was not lost on me, thanks. When being “flagged” as a Concern Troll (by T_U_T – #37), how else was that supposed to be taken? Dissenting voice among us! Must…silence…the…heretic! :)
Getting back to issues of substance, this Ben Stein movie looks to make some pretty powerful points:
In addition for these types of discriminatory practices, there are educators in the public school system who are being sued simply because the parents think their kid deserved a better grade in their class. I’ve heard that these types of parents actually are engaged in similar activities at the university level as well. This all-out assault of education should frighten people more than anything. (Yes – I agree that a faction in this assault is comprised of the Evangelicals).
PZ’s point was humorous – but the message of this film should be of great concern for anyone who reads this blog or, in the larger sense, who cares about education.
Wow.
You’re really in over your head.
Do you know what expelled is REALLY about?
Truthi, stop now. You’re only looking dumb and dumber.
but the message of this film should be of great concern for anyone who reads this blog or, in the larger sense, who cares about education.
concern troll is as concern troll does
truthi,
Can I safely assume you are a follower of the FSM? His many noodly appendages push us each (and every thing to boot) downward.
RAmen
PS: See you at the stripper factory/beer volcano.
Truthilicious, if you get banned, it’ll probably be for insulting behaviour, i.e. calling people ‘fuckwit’ for no reason whatsoever.
NelC,
I think truthi is only calling ME a fuckwit, and probably because I called him/her one (my post #32). Of course I did that because, from his/her post #30, I didn’t want his/her experience incomplete.
Boo hoo hoo. The big bad scientists. Boo hoo hoo. They’re calling me names, what ever shall I do? Boo hoo hoo.
The difference is, so far he’s wholly earned the title.
I was going to post the intelligent falling article from the onion but Simon beat me to it, so I’m just going to point out the in joke that the rev in the photo is John Sulston.
He’s not even interesting enough to get banned.
truthilicious writes:
When I am called a “troll” or a “fuckwit” (as I have been on this blog), it only backs up my assessment because a very common response of someone who is backed into a corner is to lash out by name-calling, etc. You all claim to be so open-minded, yet the irony is that you are just as closed-minded as many of the religious nutjobs that are screwing things up in the world
That’s one possibility. The other possibility is that you are a troll and/or a fuckwit. We’re just teaching the controversy…
Well truthilicious, going on past behaviour of concern trolling and the fact that post #16 was long before T U T’s I fail to see where you saw the humour, at least not from the wording of post #16. But, please, feel free to redefine or rationalise what you actually wrote in that post so that we may reflect on your appreciation of the humour of the original post and replies. By the way, as far as I can see, nobody has tried to shut you up, though some have taken you to task and disagreed with you. Or is it that you simply see any criticism as an attempt to muzzle you. Strangely, another ploy we are well used to seeing when someone doesn’t like that criticism, along with claiming that we will try to get them banned.
Yes, about time we had some chemistry abuse. A revival of
vitalism, maybe?
Some people criticized Lavoisier in 1794 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier)
#4 is correct. Homeopathy abuses chemistry, particularly physical chemistry in reference to water crystals.
People probably don’t attack chemistry so much as physics (ala astonomy, more precisely) and biology (ala evolution) because they fail to see the fundamental godlessness in the interactions of molecules. I have yet to find god in any of my gibbs-space plots or in any of my beakers. I think I would piss my pants if I did.
Well, there was that one time I thought I saw Jesus laughing at me, but then the intoxicating effects of the organic lab goof-up wore off and revealed the laughing Jesus was my instructor (who, sortof looked like Jesus anyways). *shrug*
“Who were the pioneers of organic chemistry?”
Freidrich Woehler!
My favorite chemistry quote of all-time comes from Woehler…
“Organic chemistry just now is enough to drive one mad. It gives me the impression of a primeval tropical forest, full of the most remarkable things, a monstrous and boundless thicket with no way to escape, into which one well may dread to enter.”
When I am called a “troll” or a “fuckwit” (as I have been on this blog),
now, now, the correct terminology is “demented fuckwit”.
…and let me be the first to apply it to you.
The fallacies of Mendeleevian chemistry and the evil Mendeleevian world-view are elegantly described here:
http://www.re-discovery.org/
Teach the controversy.
Lots of people are challenging physicists. We can start with anti-nuclear-power activists and continue through young-Earth creationists, astrologers, people who think depleted uranium has cooties, people who believe quantum mechanics means that refusing to perceive something means it doesn’t exist, etc….
Homeopaths appear to be the most important group challenging chemistry.
Economists are also complaining about being picked on.
In the case of mathematics, the anti-Cantorian cranks are still completely disorganized.
Economists are also complaining about being picked on.
Someone named the economists as “the linear people” because they can comprehend simple linear trends, but any nonlinearity will bring their brains to a gringing halt. And, as your link bears witness, when someone points it out, they feel picked on.
hint :
1. mean (real) wages are rising
2. most of the people complain about shinking wages
Both statements are true and the complains are justified. How can it be ?
error “shinking” = falling
Physics crackpots have been around for well over a century. In the 19th cy., they were often vehemently anti-Newton, and some of them attacked the wave theory of sound, preferring a particle theory.
Curiously, according to quantum mechanics, sound is also quantized, with the quanta of sound being particles called “phonons”. But quantum mechanics has a little something called wave-particle duality, meaning that sound remains wavelike.
But more recent physics crackpots have often been anti-relativity, and they often see themselves as bring back Newtonian physics.
There were even some Nazi anti-relativity crackpots who denounced relativity as “Jewish physics”, and called for the restoration of the “Nordic physics” of Kepler and Newton. There was a very reputable physicist who had joined them, Philipp Lenard, who had won a Nobel Prize for his experimental work. But he had a grudge against Albert Einstein for (he thought) stealing some of his thunder for getting a Nobel Prize for his work on the photoelectric effect.
“Shinking” is the sound an IDiot makes when he finds a good quote mine.
“SHINK! I just read an awesome PNAS paper by an evilotionist author that debunks general evolution!”
~S. Cardova
BTW, for anyone who loves reading about crankery through the history of science (as well as interesting relics from the “big ones”), read >Discarded Science by John Grant.
You musta skipped most of the exegeses of C. Hitchens in the previous posts, if you have to ask that…
Truthi, most of the people have learned not to feed the trolls, but I still feel compelled to answer one of your points.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1227842.html?page=6
A major publication has long since debunked all the essential bits of the pentagon conspiracy theory. More specifically to the point of the Penti-lawn farce, if you look at the examples of other airline crashes, the scorching is pretty much just around the final resting place of the plane. The skid marks visible are relatively minor and easy to see because it’s an aerial shot. All the pentagon pictures are low-to the ground shots that don’t highlight any incoming skidmarks, if there were any, and the final resting place of the plane was mostly inside the building.
In fact the pictures actually match what should be expected if you investigate the specific details, and don’t match the cartoonish expectations of random trolls. This applies to quite a lot of the criticisms of science, actually.
The plane did not explode as soon as the nose touched the wall, throwing body parts everywhere. The momentum carried most of the debris and bodies into the building. What was left outside were scraps of the tail, wings, engine parts.
…
More to the point, the reason that you are summarily dismissed so frequently is because it’s obvious that you haven’t even attempted to do the 5 minutes of research and critical thinking called for. It is a waste of time for anyone to correct every crackpot theory you can dig up every time. All the information is available, it’s not our job to play fetch every time the conspiracy theory center of your brain starts to twitch. I’ve done so in this case partly because it amuses me (and I’ve got a lot of compiles to wait for), but also because I know you weren’t going to go google ‘911 pentagon conspiracy debunk’ if I just told you to.
Cheers, and apologies to the rest for the long off-topic post.
I think the main reason there’s not a lot of chemistry abuse is because chemistry has no simple principles.
The same idea explains why the biology opposition is usually very very focused, while the physics opposition is diffuse – biology has one simple concept and everything else is just consequential, while physics has a lot of simple concepts.
Meanwhile, chemistry is just an unholy mess.
Physicists, particularly Einsten, had their discipline and their character attacked visciously in the early twentieth century on the “religious” grounds that science was becoming Hebrew! Anti-semitism comes from the same soil as anti-Darwinism: the soil of ignorance and bigotry.
Other than homeopathy, I don’t know of any widespread direct pseudochemistry. But there have been some net.popular pseudochemistry stuffs that have been passed around. Anyone remember from about 10 years ago something about ORMUS METALS or something bizarre like that?
Steve_C – No – I am not in over my head.
Ben Stein is essentially advocating ID.
I was going to write something a lot more nuanced there – but when it gets down to brass tacks – it is my perception that this community doesn’t feel that there is any need for nuance when it comes to the concept of an intelligent designer having any sway in the creation of / current state of the universe. By that I don’t even necessarily mean something like the Judeo-Christian notion of “God.” This community seems to even shun the notion of a God like that put forth by Spinoza. I just find that a bit obstinate, but we’re all entitled to our opinions, yes?
At any rate, Steve… yeah – I get it.
I was attempting to make a related point about the state of education in general – but hey – I am humble enough to admit that perhaps I didn’t take the time to carefully construct an appropriate segue into the broader subject area. I was between crises at work, and wasn’t on my “A” game. (And I know – one person’s “reason” is another person’s “excuse.” Save the witticisms). I’m not interesting enough to be banned, though? We’ll see.
RAmen – spaghetti is not a deity – it’s a delicious dish that I prefer to eat with marinara sauce. Mmmmm… spaghetti god goooooooood. The whole FSM thing is pretty juvenile – but I guess in your position of obvious intellectual superiority to me, that it’s just fine to belittle me using such a ridiculous construct.
NelC – I would have loved to have been the first to tell you to get your facts straight, but True Bob beat me to the punch. Truth be told, I was kidding around with True Bob when I called him a “fuckwit,” and I only invoked the term in the first place because the illuminato of Clearfield County, PA – Mr. Marcus Ranum himself – first used the rather unimaginative slur against me. I know though – it’s soooooo much fun to jump on the bandwagon and beat up the blog’s new punching bag – isn’t it? It’s a cool way to impress your friends, I’m sure… and to give yourself that little ego boost you probably so desperately need. Punch away, my friend… punch away! :) (This applies to you too, Rey Fox #58). I hope that schoolyard showboating helped out your ego as well. You’re welcome.
Ichthyic – you neatly fall into (or perhaps crawled from) the same bucket of primordial ooze as NelC, Rey Fox and Marcus Ranum. My guess is that you probably possess a very fragile ego – and the mere act of virtually puffing out your bony, ill-defined chest to engage in a little name calling from the safety of your Mom’s basement is the only joy in your life. ::shurgs:: Hope that works out for you.
T_U_T – your silence is quite telling… you accused me of not backing up any of my arguments – yet when I asked you for examples of what you meant – you provided none. My only guess is that you are as confused as GTMoogle…
GTMoogle – the only thing I can determine from what you wrote is that you must have me confused with someone else. I never EVER made any post ANYWHERE claiming that there was a conspiracy theory behind any part of the 9/11 attacks. I own that Popular Mechanics book you mentioned – I’ve read it and, let’s just say as someone with a background in CE, I thought it was superbly done. So – this is clearly a case of mistaken identity. I would never want to be in the same camp as Rosie O’Donnell. ::shudders::
And to all – I don’t want to fight… I’d rather have enlightening discussion. To that end, I will promise you this: going forward, I will definitely bring my “A” game at all times (that means no half-baked replies – I meant what I said, Steve_C – I get it.). That being said, I am not so foolish to think that my “A” game is even on the level as many peoples’ “D” games here, so I furthermore promise to practice humility when appropriate. It’s my belief that everyone should spend less time posturing on the defensive, and more time helping others understand the issues- whatever those issues may be. No – that doesn’t mean coddling / spoon-feeding a noob – I’m perfectly fine with tough love – but supercilious condemnations are in a totally different realm than “tough love.”
Now, something actually germane to the original post: The only observation I have about this movie – that I don’t think has been touched upon yet – is that WHY would people like PZ go on-camera about their views on ID in a production featuring Ben Stein? Ben Stein isn’t exactly cut from the same cloth as Al Franken.
…that and the apparent fact that the production company behind the film was also behind The Passion of the Christ. That wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow or two?
Doh! Sorry Truthilicious, I was in fact responding to jspreen.
My sincerest apologies.
In case you haven’t been a regular around here, this has actually been discussed quite a bit. You might want to start with the this post on the subject, but the short version is that Ben Stein wasn’t involved in the actually interview and it was initially presented as a documentary looking at the legitimately interesting issues of how religion has interacted with ideas of evolution. It wasn’t until later that it started getting presented as ID propaganda.
That’s what I get for not previewing. I wanted to link here:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/08/im_gonna_be_a_movie_star.php
Insults and baseless accusations the truthtrollous pulled out of his ass here
:
Note also, that nobody has even mentioned you before your first post #16, so you can’t twist the angry reactions that followrd it as a kind of evidence for you.
That would be “God does not play dice with the universe”. Sorry Albert.
If you’re in NY you can attend this ORMUS workshop
Coincidentally (or perhaps not) I read this on an AIDS Denialist webboard.
Cranks of a feather flock together.
http://www.re-discovery.org/
Here are the chemistry abusers. They especially attack the periodic table, which was given to us by Mendeleev (russian bigamist) and lewis structures. “Is that an electron? No, it’s a dot. Is that a hydrogen atom? No, it’s the letter H. Teach the Dot Structure Controversy!”
They even use the thermodynamics argument.
With this second “tribute” to science, I found myself reevaluating the possibility that Benjie-bub is attempting to pull some weird kind of a Colbert. Then Occam’s Razor came to the rescue and I remembered that bottomless assholes don’t need satire to demonstrate the depth of their understanding.
Hey PZed,
I know you got to meet Ellory Schempp at the convention, he wrote a nice little parody about intelligent design and gravity (google: schemp+gravity).
Cheers
I always figured that the reason biology gets the brunt of wingnut attention is that its the branch of science that involves the intimate study of fucking. Aside from a handful of token shills, most wingnut’s training in biology ended the last time they visited a petting zoo. Sure, other disciplines involved in natural history also get some abuse (geology, astronomy, etc.), but ultimately, biology is just a little sexier.
Chemistry abuse? Oh, there’s plenty to go around, but without the special subject focus on sex, chemistry abuse never developed along the rigid right-left party line as biology abuse seems to have done. still, we live in a deeply chemophobic society, where “chemical” = “bad”. People have already mentioned the homeopathy and other popular forms of quackery, but I would also describe the thimerosal = autism anti-vaccination movement as staunchly anti-chemistry. There’s loads of pseudochemistry in marketing; as much as I’m in support of sustainable agriculture, the idea of marketing organic foods as being healthier than their non-organic counterparts is questionable. On the other side of the political isle, one could easily consider climate change denialists as also promoting pseudochemistry, but really they’re pushing a multi-disciplinary aproach to pseudoscience.
mcmillan – Thank you for the link. I really just started reading / posting here recently – so I really do appreciate the info. (Note to self – use search function more often). :)
…and my friend T_U_T… with all your apparent merits, I find it odd that you would include several of those items on the list. I will admit, there are items on there that are my opinion. The last time I checked, however, we’re all entitled to that sort of thing. The fact that current affairs seem to indicate that the USA may be sliding down a slope towards fascism (see the Patriot Act, et. al.), I would sincerely hope that you would not seek to silence an opposing viewpoint – lest ye be guilty of the very things that most freedom-minded people are fighting against.
Now, many of those items on your list are backed up by actions and words of people on this very blog. In the interest of letting this whole thing go – I will not go through each one individually and provide examples, however if you insist that i do so, (which would be fair, as I pressed you to do the same), then I will kindly provide backup. I would hope, however, that it would be intuitively obvious to you that someone who is (1) fairly new to this blog, and (2) shares some – but not all – of the viewpoints of the general populace herein, should be entitled to the same rights as anyone else here… regardless of whether or not you happen to agree with that individual. As I stated above, I don’t wish to be confrontational, but I will be when baselessly attacked or associated with things that I never posted. Also – the right to be a smartass is not reserved to any one group herein. Admittedly, this all did start with me being a smartass (in another post) – but if you just read a few posts here, I think it’s plain to see that I’m not the first to use that tactic – nor, do I suspect, I will be the last.
Ultimately, I am here to learn, not bicker. Thanks for reading.