This can currently be visualized live on the “How to respond” thread,in abundance.
Nerd of Redhead, OMsays
IDiots making things up as they go? Gasp, shock, horror! :-)
Maybe we need to make this thread the overflow from the “How to respond” thread, which has now surpassed the 1000 post milestone.
Wowbaggersays
I’ve really got to bookmark the link to that picture that shows the two ways of reaching conclusions – the scientists saying ‘here are the findings – what can we interpret’ and the creationists with a bible saying ‘here are our results – what have we got to support it’.
Because that’s much along the same lines.
Claudiasays
Did anyone see the comments at the bottom, where someone called “Dutchboy” says something along the lines of ‘sounds exactly like what the evolutionists do…’? Wow.
I wouldn’t say it’s like creationism at all. With this method, surely you can work back to find yourself an answer. Creationism has an equation and an answer that both can never work together, and some fudged maths to make it look plausible.
NewEnglandBobsays
This is also one of two plays in the playbook of the Republican party. The other is “solution to any problem: cut taxes”.
JackCsays
I recently participated in a “Doubt Night” put on by a (more or less) local Baptist church. They were pretty much hooked on this nut, Rob Bell. Very Scary Dude. He fits this cartoon quite well. Among some of his marvelous math [some slightly paraphrased for space] taken from “Everything is Spiritual”:
“The largest thing ever measured is 10^26 meters. The smallest, 10^-25 meters. By Design, Mankind’s average height is 1 metre – exactly in the middle…” [Don’t get me started on how we are an average of 1m tall]
“Scientists have divided atoms over 100 times…”
“A subatomic particle called the Lepton… is only observed in clusters of three or two.” [what this means, I am not really sure… but since he had just come out of the trinity… And yeah, I KNOW Leptons are a class, not a single particle.]
“Our Galaxy [NOT the Universe!] has 2 million Black Holes…”
“The Earth orbits the Sun [kind of surprised he admitted THAT] at 93M miles – at 92M, no life. at 94M, no life.” [We are nearly circular – but not THAT circular: 91M – 94.5M miles.]
I am really glad our Physics Major member didn’t show up. He would have been yelling. Alot.
Were they putting him up as an example someone you should definitely doubt?
Darbysays
Science can be like this too, unfortunately. I get this feeling every time I read about dark matter and dark energy, and even biologists aren’t immune.
Don’t tell anyone, but all of this stuff (including, of course, the religious stuff) is done by humans, and it’s tough to keep our notions in check or give up our old ideas.
Don’t tell anyone, but all of this stuff (including, of course, the religious stuff) is done by humans, and it’s tough to keep our notions in check or give up our old ideas.
I’m not sure that’s really the case with science as it is self checking. If someone is wrong eventually another scientist will call them on it. Some wild hypothesises may sort of start that way, but they don’t end that way.
In creationism, all creationists are going to always agree that all evidence points to creation.
Junesays
All of science seeks to explain observations with assumptions, hypotheses, theories, laws. Creationism is simply the early science of a young humanity: An angry god explains the pain of childbirth; a huge flood explains seashells on mountain tops.
A thousand years from now, science will chuckle at some of our current concepts of Astronomy, Biology, Cosmology, Evolution, Medicine, etc.
All of science seeks to explain observations with assumptions, hypotheses, theories, laws. Creationism is simply the early science of a young humanity: An angry god explains the pain of childbirth; a huge flood explains seashells on mountain tops.
A thousand years from now, science will chuckle at some of our current concepts of Astronomy, Biology, Cosmology, Evolution, Medicine, etc.
That’s all great and everything except we’ve moved past needing silly explanations for for things we can and do explain naturally.
Creationism has no usefulness now.
clinteassays
Darby,
I think you are confusing the act of doing real science,starting with a theory and then trying to prove it,reproduce the results or make predictions based on your theory,with the psychological tricks every human brain is susceptible to,like say confirmation bias.Thats something you cannot escape,but in general will be corrected if its science,by people trying to reproduce your results.
Nice example btw is Einstein and Eddington regarding starlight’s deflection by the sun in 1919.
“A subatomic particle called the Lepton… is only observed in clusters of three or two.” [what this means, I am not really sure… but since he had just come out of the trinity… And yeah, I KNOW Leptons are a class, not a single particle.]
He has confused leptons (electrons, muons, tauons, neutrinos). Quark confinement means that quarks come in clusters of a quark and antiquark (mesons), 3 quarks (baryons) or 3 antiquarks (antibaryons). There are (or have been) candidates for 4 and 5 quark systems (Google tetraquark and pentaquark)
Actually, it seems that start with an answer, start with a question, and if the two don’t fit then they try to twist the answer and question a few times until it does fit… kinda. “Presto! I get a question that has the right answer… kinda” is more fitting, I would think.
Dutchboy1 says: “That sounds like how evolutionists do it: come up a theory, then make up some ‘facts’ to explain it.”
farren says: “Better than Dutchboy’s process, where it’s lies from top to bottom.”
Of course, “making up facts” is lies either way. Dutchboy here seems to think that the fossil, morphology, &c. evidence is all made up or something.
Allen Nsays
June..
I don’t think we’ll be as much of a source of amusement to our progeny as you might think. To describe the last century as a knowledge explosion is not much of an exaggeration. Are we wrong about stuff? Hell yes. But to quote one of my heroes, Isaac Asimov:
“…when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.”
Noni Mausasays
…which also sounds like business fundamentalism. Damn circular arguments.
=====
Free enterprise is the most efficient at producing the best possible outcomes!
[point to crashing markets]
Not our fault! Free markets weren’t free enough!
[Point to millions of jobless]
No prob! Creative destruction, new paradigm a’coming!
[point to cuts to research and innovation funding]
No prob! The crash is an OPPORTUNITY to cut the deadwood!
[point to top scientists and researchers leaving the USA]
The History of Science and Technology can be truly instructive as part of the general History of Ideas; 19th century concepts like “The Ether” gave way to Einstein’s Relativity, but it was a hard sell, since so much of it seemed counter-intuitive and hard to wrap one’s mind around.
Phrenology was once taken seriously but no longer is. But on the other hand, Newtonian mechanics still has its uses, as does the Pythagorean theorem. In pure hypothetical form if not his specific crude content, Democritus’ narrated speculations about the origins of life, when applied to the rise of multicellular organisms, are actually surprisingly not that far off from the best, much more sophisticated theories around today. The old Greek would probably get a kick out of that if he could be revived and shown that example from modern biology (though first he’d have to master Modern Greek to have the proper language to really understand what was being expressed to him, and get caught up on history a little). I loved the Star Trek episode where Scotty was sent far into the Next Generation future and felt himself useless as an engineer, so far behind on the times. But some principles are timeless and he was eventually able to do something to save the day…
Why do you people have to engage in anti-Christian hate speech by mocking creationism? Don’t you know that not just one but both of the Genesis creation accounts are Divinely inspired and literally true?
Endorsays
#27 – To quote Monty Python: pull the other one!
Nerd of Redhead, OMsays
Creationism is false. Period. The bible is a work of fiction. Period. And if it was “true”, which creation version in the bible are you talking about anyway?
KIsays
@27
SCROTM? You owe me a new keyboard, this one is covered in snot.
Rogersays
#27-Super Poe.
Zeteticsays
This is exactly what my best friend used to do when we were taking grade 12 math. He’d look up the answer to the first problem and try to figure out his own method of getting the answer. Then he’d wonder why his new equation didn’t give him the correct answer to all the other problems. Eventually our teacher would carefully show him the correct method, but sometimes on exams he’d confuse his version with the correct one and get all the answers wrong.
What’s funny is that he did this over and over again, every time we learned something new. Sitting next to him was an exasperating experience.
Allen Nsays
#27”’
Takes balls to post that stuff.
Alsays
Whatever happened to the Society of Christians for the Restoration of Old Testament Universal Morality?
I can’t resist: in differential equations, there are sets of differentiable functions that are never solution (as a pair) to the same differential equation of a certain type!
Example: t^2 and |t|*t are never, as a pair, solutions to any linear second order differential equations. Hence the little girl’s technique fails in this setting. :)
Why do you people have to engage in anti-Christian hate speech by mocking creationism? Don’t you know that not just one but both of the Genesis creation accounts are Divinely inspired and literally true?
If you’re going to do a good poe, make it easily accessible.
PDFs are teh suck compared to just being able to view your website.
Feynmaniacsays
I am really glad our Physics Major member didn’t show up. He would have been yelling. Alot.
Well I am a Physics major and I nearly punched a hole in the wall after reading that.
It never ceases to amaze me how people can accept really crappy arguments when the conclusions favour their point of view. Just search Pharyngula for “facilis” and you’ll see an horrible argument repeated over and over for the existence of God. We kept telling him to substitute God for Flying spaghetti monster, Greek gods, Wowbagger’s Sideshow Bob figurine, etc. to see how bad the argument was. He refused to do so because we didn’t really believe in those gods (why that mattered, I don’t know).
This cartoon doesn’t just represent creationism, but all apologetics. The whole field boils down to assuming your religion is right and finding a way (any way) to justify it, completely disregarding the principle of parsimony, intellectual honesty, etc. It’s just rationalization of the fairy tales your parents told you.
OMG some of the comments in the comic thread are really scary. Are there actually people with masters’ in biology who take the bible seriously? The stupid… the stupid…
JackCsays
RBDC@11: Kind of. I certainly did. I was probably the only one in an attendance of maybe 45 that was even remotely qualified – and qualified I really am not. I did bring up a “fast and loose with the facts” point though.
alias Earnest @19: That was not the only thing he confused. His entire shtick following anything he was preferentially pulling out of his …er … Bible… was so far off the mark as to be laughable. Thing was though, I am certain he knew without doubt (!) that his audience was – for the greatest part – totally incapable of questioning him on his “facts”.
Feynmaniac@37: I am pleased with myself that I did not scream many, many times in the hour-plus video. I DID take a number of notes though – and brought up actuality in the discussion following (there were two of us godless in the crowd – and we were rather well received, really – though I did have the definite sense that some wanted us strung up by our thumbs…). I am a physics groupie, really – barely qualified to comment, but way more knowledgeable than this dweeb Bell.
As a sample to the group I was with of what Bell was doing – and to the church pastor after the meeting – I made the following statement: In Matthew 7:23, it states “It is a foolish man that builds his house upon sand.”
I then solicited comment on this – no one – NO ONE – not the group I was with nor the pastor nor two or three people listening afterward “called me” on this. I intentionally made (at least!) two errors – one was the verse. It really is – in my references anyway – 7:26 – a minor, overlook-able “error” (much like some of Bells less egregious comments) – and it is not at all an accurate quote, which is what I represented it as. No one knew or realised this (and in truth, it was pretty weak, but I DID just throw it together!)
I am working on a talk with as many lies in it taken from the Bible as I can come up with. It should be fun to give at some point.
JC
michelsays
damn, do i love europe… from a report of the council of europe:
“Creationism in any of its forms, such as “intelligent design”, is not based on facts, does not use any scientific reasoning and its contents are pathetically inadequate for science classes.”
Dutchboy1 says: “That sounds like how evolutionists do it: come up a theory, then make up some ‘facts’ to explain it.”
I suspect that Dutchboy is too busy with his fingers in a dike t0o do any actually useful thinking…
michelsays
the document in the link above (#43) even mentions the fsm. win!
noodlessays
NewEnglandBob: This is also one of two plays in the playbook of the Republican party. The other is “solution to any problem: cut taxes”.
Republican-Libertarian actually. And it’s more correctly “cut taxes and deregulate.” You see, if peanut processors don’t pay taxes and aren’t bothered by nosy health inspectors… Utopia results. If cutting taxes, deregulating, and getting rid of health inspectors doesn’t work the way you planned; it’s not because is wasn’t the correct answer, it’s because the rest of the economy isn’t anarcho-free-enterprise and thus the system is corrupted.
The best thing about Republican-Libertarianism is that it’s overtly anti-intellectual and negates the need for any analysis or study. Simplicity really. It offers the same answer to every economic situation and thus eliminates the need for Economics as a field of study. Why bother studying Japan’s economic problems in the 1990s when you already know the answer? Cut taxes, deregulate, get rid of all the rules, fire the nosy government inspectors and regulators – the free-market will sort it out in a wild-west sort of way.
In the future unregulated free-enterprise Utopianist society that results; men will be real men, women will be real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri will be real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
Republican-Libertarian actually. And it’s more correctly “cut taxes and deregulate.” You see, if peanut processors don’t pay taxes and aren’t bothered by nosy health inspectors… Utopia results
oh for fucks sake.
Please don’t bring that up.
Thread ruined in 3…2…1….
Qwertysays
Yes, this reminds me of the Ken Miller’s lecture in which he states that scientists come up with a theory; test it; come to a concensus; then, write a textbook.
Creationists write the textbook first (Of Pandas and People). Who needs testing or a consensus when you have the Bible. It has all the answers.
Sastrasays
Feynmaniac #37 wrote:
This cartoon doesn’t just represent creationism, but all apologetics. The whole field boils down to assuming your religion is right and finding a way (any way) to justify it, completely disregarding the principle of parsimony, intellectual honesty, etc.
I think the cartoon philosophy (“start with the answer, then go back to make up an equation that fits it”) is also representative of one of the common misunderstandings of what science is, and how it works.
I recently got into a discussion (ok, argument) with someone who does energy healing for pets, on what it is to scientifically test an idea. She thinks she is “testing” her theory on chi energy every time she ‘smooths the energy field of a troubled dog,’ and then the dog’s problem improves. She is doing an experiment, by looking for evidence that supports her theory. That’s science.
I tried to tell her that science isn’t about looking for — and finding — confirming evidence. People tend to find evidence for what they know is true, because of all sorts of problems we have with subjective bias and verification.
Instead, science has to do with controlling factors which eliminate other possibilities, and setting up a situation where a theory (or hypothesis) can be falsified. And vetting your results among critics who will look for holes. A happy pet owner saying that Duke or Fluffy is now “so much calmer and well-behaved” is not equivalent to persuading the experts on physics and biology in the scientific community through controlled and replicable studies.
If chi energy exists, the mainstream science community will want and need to know that. It’s not enough to point to studies in nursing journals which — if true — would blow the roof off of physics, merit a Nobel Prize, and change the scientific model — and then explain that they’re using a different “approach” when they do science, so they’re not contradicting anything the other scientists say.
Say what?
What she — and the nurses — are doing is not “science.” It’s like this cartoon, doing it all backwards.Yet she is convinced that the only reason I say that is because I don’t like her results, they don’t fit into my “dogmatic world view.” As she puts it, she knows what she knows.
Qwertysays
This cartoon is similar to the Uncommon Descent blog of “The Intelligent Design Community” in that their resources section says “Coming Soon.”
Just search Pharyngula for “facilis” and you’ll see an horrible argument repeated over and over for the existence of God.
lol, his arguments may be horrible but his legend will live on.
eigenvectorsays
Ironically enough, just for the record, there is a branch of mathematics that studies ”inverse problems” where you know the answer and try to find the equation that gives that answer. One of the more famous in recent times is: Can you determine the shape of a drum from the sound it makes? (No.) Kepler’s discovery of the shape of planetary orbits is another example: lots of experimental measurements, but no theory until he had ‘played’ with the data enough to realize it was describing an ellipse. On the other hand creationism/ID will never give the right answer!
mandrakesays
As she puts it, she knows what she knows.
Which puts it exactly on the same level as the guy I met who, with all sincerity, told me about the conversation he was having with ex-president Jimmy Carter just the other day.
What makes people think they can get away with that “explanation” (I know what I know) and still live in something approaching reality?
Sastrasays
mandrake #55 wrote:
What makes people think they can get away with that “explanation” (I know what I know) and still live in something approaching reality?
I blame it partly on the remains of the so-called ‘self-esteem movement’ and its constant stress on the importance of believing in yourself; trusting your instincts; owning your own truths; keeping the faith; and surrounding yourself with “positive energy” (ie avoid anyone who is going to criticize or question anything you say or believe in.)
puseaussays
This is just like Waldorf-mathematics. (Rudolf Steiner) Works some times. Approved by liberal educational authorities worldwide.
This can currently be visualized live on the “How to respond” thread,in abundance.
IDiots making things up as they go? Gasp, shock, horror! :-)
Maybe we need to make this thread the overflow from the “How to respond” thread, which has now surpassed the 1000 post milestone.
I’ve really got to bookmark the link to that picture that shows the two ways of reaching conclusions – the scientists saying ‘here are the findings – what can we interpret’ and the creationists with a bible saying ‘here are our results – what have we got to support it’.
Because that’s much along the same lines.
Did anyone see the comments at the bottom, where someone called “Dutchboy” says something along the lines of ‘sounds exactly like what the evolutionists do…’? Wow.
The stupid… it burns.
Sorry, post get posted on accident too early, I meant:
The stupid, it burns! How dare that ignorant moose challenge her new viewpoint with sarcasm…for shame.
Exactly like creationism.
I wouldn’t say it’s like creationism at all. With this method, surely you can work back to find yourself an answer. Creationism has an equation and an answer that both can never work together, and some fudged maths to make it look plausible.
This is also one of two plays in the playbook of the Republican party. The other is “solution to any problem: cut taxes”.
I recently participated in a “Doubt Night” put on by a (more or less) local Baptist church. They were pretty much hooked on this nut, Rob Bell. Very Scary Dude. He fits this cartoon quite well. Among some of his marvelous math [some slightly paraphrased for space] taken from “Everything is Spiritual”:
“The largest thing ever measured is 10^26 meters. The smallest, 10^-25 meters. By Design, Mankind’s average height is 1 metre – exactly in the middle…” [Don’t get me started on how we are an average of 1m tall]
“Scientists have divided atoms over 100 times…”
“A subatomic particle called the Lepton… is only observed in clusters of three or two.” [what this means, I am not really sure… but since he had just come out of the trinity… And yeah, I KNOW Leptons are a class, not a single particle.]
“Our Galaxy [NOT the Universe!] has 2 million Black Holes…”
“The Earth orbits the Sun [kind of surprised he admitted THAT] at 93M miles – at 92M, no life. at 94M, no life.” [We are nearly circular – but not THAT circular: 91M – 94.5M miles.]
I am really glad our Physics Major member didn’t show up. He would have been yelling. Alot.
JC
Were they putting him up as an example someone you should definitely doubt?
Science can be like this too, unfortunately. I get this feeling every time I read about dark matter and dark energy, and even biologists aren’t immune.
Don’t tell anyone, but all of this stuff (including, of course, the religious stuff) is done by humans, and it’s tough to keep our notions in check or give up our old ideas.
I’m not sure that’s really the case with science as it is self checking. If someone is wrong eventually another scientist will call them on it. Some wild hypothesises may sort of start that way, but they don’t end that way.
In creationism, all creationists are going to always agree that all evidence points to creation.
All of science seeks to explain observations with assumptions, hypotheses, theories, laws. Creationism is simply the early science of a young humanity: An angry god explains the pain of childbirth; a huge flood explains seashells on mountain tops.
A thousand years from now, science will chuckle at some of our current concepts of Astronomy, Biology, Cosmology, Evolution, Medicine, etc.
Maybe so, but for now it’s the best explanations we have so it’s important to defend them.
That’s all great and everything except we’ve moved past needing silly explanations for for things we can and do explain naturally.
Creationism has no usefulness now.
Darby,
I think you are confusing the act of doing real science,starting with a theory and then trying to prove it,reproduce the results or make predictions based on your theory,with the psychological tricks every human brain is susceptible to,like say confirmation bias.Thats something you cannot escape,but in general will be corrected if its science,by people trying to reproduce your results.
Nice example btw is Einstein and Eddington regarding starlight’s deflection by the sun in 1919.
That is faith-based science. Totally respectful with the different ways to see and understand the world. There is faith-based technology, too.
He has confused leptons (electrons, muons, tauons, neutrinos). Quark confinement means that quarks come in clusters of a quark and antiquark (mesons), 3 quarks (baryons) or 3 antiquarks (antibaryons). There are (or have been) candidates for 4 and 5 quark systems (Google tetraquark and pentaquark)
Actually, it seems that start with an answer, start with a question, and if the two don’t fit then they try to twist the answer and question a few times until it does fit… kinda. “Presto! I get a question that has the right answer… kinda” is more fitting, I would think.
Someone in the comment section of the cartoon accused “evolutionists” of being like the little girl.
Here are the comments:
Dutchboy1 says: “That sounds like how evolutionists do it: come up a theory, then make up some ‘facts’ to explain it.”
farren says: “Better than Dutchboy’s process, where it’s lies from top to bottom.”
Of course, “making up facts” is lies either way. Dutchboy here seems to think that the fossil, morphology, &c. evidence is all made up or something.
June..
I don’t think we’ll be as much of a source of amusement to our progeny as you might think. To describe the last century as a knowledge explosion is not much of an exaggeration. Are we wrong about stuff? Hell yes. But to quote one of my heroes, Isaac Asimov:
“…when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.”
…which also sounds like business fundamentalism. Damn circular arguments.
=====
Free enterprise is the most efficient at producing the best possible outcomes!
[point to crashing markets]
Not our fault! Free markets weren’t free enough!
[Point to millions of jobless]
No prob! Creative destruction, new paradigm a’coming!
[point to cuts to research and innovation funding]
No prob! The crash is an OPPORTUNITY to cut the deadwood!
[point to top scientists and researchers leaving the USA]
… traitors …
For those who missed it, more creationism, just like the cartoon, in the NPR story on the “origin of mind”. Sadly, they have closed comments on the thread before I could add this one:
http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2009/02/creationism-dance.html
The History of Science and Technology can be truly instructive as part of the general History of Ideas; 19th century concepts like “The Ether” gave way to Einstein’s Relativity, but it was a hard sell, since so much of it seemed counter-intuitive and hard to wrap one’s mind around.
Phrenology was once taken seriously but no longer is. But on the other hand, Newtonian mechanics still has its uses, as does the Pythagorean theorem. In pure hypothetical form if not his specific crude content, Democritus’ narrated speculations about the origins of life, when applied to the rise of multicellular organisms, are actually surprisingly not that far off from the best, much more sophisticated theories around today. The old Greek would probably get a kick out of that if he could be revived and shown that example from modern biology (though first he’d have to master Modern Greek to have the proper language to really understand what was being expressed to him, and get caught up on history a little). I loved the Star Trek episode where Scotty was sent far into the Next Generation future and felt himself useless as an engineer, so far behind on the times. But some principles are timeless and he was eventually able to do something to save the day…
Why do you people have to engage in anti-Christian hate speech by mocking creationism? Don’t you know that not just one but both of the Genesis creation accounts are Divinely inspired and literally true?
#27 – To quote Monty Python: pull the other one!
Creationism is false. Period. The bible is a work of fiction. Period. And if it was “true”, which creation version in the bible are you talking about anyway?
@27
SCROTM? You owe me a new keyboard, this one is covered in snot.
#27-Super Poe.
This is exactly what my best friend used to do when we were taking grade 12 math. He’d look up the answer to the first problem and try to figure out his own method of getting the answer. Then he’d wonder why his new equation didn’t give him the correct answer to all the other problems. Eventually our teacher would carefully show him the correct method, but sometimes on exams he’d confuse his version with the correct one and get all the answers wrong.
What’s funny is that he did this over and over again, every time we learned something new. Sitting next to him was an exasperating experience.
#27”’
Takes balls to post that stuff.
Whatever happened to the Society of Christians for the Restoration of Old Testament Universal Morality?
I can’t resist: in differential equations, there are sets of differentiable functions that are never solution (as a pair) to the same differential equation of a certain type!
Example: t^2 and |t|*t are never, as a pair, solutions to any linear second order differential equations. Hence the little girl’s technique fails in this setting. :)
If you’re going to do a good poe, make it easily accessible.
PDFs are teh suck compared to just being able to view your website.
Well I am a Physics major and I nearly punched a hole in the wall after reading that.
It never ceases to amaze me how people can accept really crappy arguments when the conclusions favour their point of view. Just search Pharyngula for “facilis” and you’ll see an horrible argument repeated over and over for the existence of God. We kept telling him to substitute God for Flying spaghetti monster, Greek gods, Wowbagger’s Sideshow Bob figurine, etc. to see how bad the argument was. He refused to do so because we didn’t really believe in those gods (why that mattered, I don’t know).
This cartoon doesn’t just represent creationism, but all apologetics. The whole field boils down to assuming your religion is right and finding a way (any way) to justify it, completely disregarding the principle of parsimony, intellectual honesty, etc. It’s just rationalization of the fairy tales your parents told you.
Um, shouldn’t that be SCROTUM?
Oh crap, Al @34 beat me to it.
Hey, that’s how you write College Algebra textbooks. No lie. Rational roots theorem, anyone?
OMG some of the comments in the comic thread are really scary. Are there actually people with masters’ in biology who take the bible seriously? The stupid… the stupid…
RBDC@11: Kind of. I certainly did. I was probably the only one in an attendance of maybe 45 that was even remotely qualified – and qualified I really am not. I did bring up a “fast and loose with the facts” point though.
alias Earnest @19: That was not the only thing he confused. His entire shtick following anything he was preferentially pulling out of his …er … Bible… was so far off the mark as to be laughable. Thing was though, I am certain he knew without doubt (!) that his audience was – for the greatest part – totally incapable of questioning him on his “facts”.
Feynmaniac@37: I am pleased with myself that I did not scream many, many times in the hour-plus video. I DID take a number of notes though – and brought up actuality in the discussion following (there were two of us godless in the crowd – and we were rather well received, really – though I did have the definite sense that some wanted us strung up by our thumbs…). I am a physics groupie, really – barely qualified to comment, but way more knowledgeable than this dweeb Bell.
As a sample to the group I was with of what Bell was doing – and to the church pastor after the meeting – I made the following statement: In Matthew 7:23, it states “It is a foolish man that builds his house upon sand.”
I then solicited comment on this – no one – NO ONE – not the group I was with nor the pastor nor two or three people listening afterward “called me” on this. I intentionally made (at least!) two errors – one was the verse. It really is – in my references anyway – 7:26 – a minor, overlook-able “error” (much like some of Bells less egregious comments) – and it is not at all an accurate quote, which is what I represented it as. No one knew or realised this (and in truth, it was pretty weak, but I DID just throw it together!)
I am working on a talk with as many lies in it taken from the Bible as I can come up with. It should be fun to give at some point.
JC
damn, do i love europe… from a report of the council of europe:
“Creationism in any of its forms, such as “intelligent design”, is not based on facts, does not use any scientific reasoning and its contents are pathetically inadequate for science classes.”
http://www.assembly.coe.int/Main.asp?link=/Documents/WorkingDocs/Doc07/EDOC11297.htm
I suspect that Dutchboy is too busy with his fingers in a dike t0o do any actually useful thinking…
the document in the link above (#43) even mentions the fsm. win!
NewEnglandBob: This is also one of two plays in the playbook of the Republican party. The other is “solution to any problem: cut taxes”.
Republican-Libertarian actually. And it’s more correctly “cut taxes and deregulate.” You see, if peanut processors don’t pay taxes and aren’t bothered by nosy health inspectors… Utopia results. If cutting taxes, deregulating, and getting rid of health inspectors doesn’t work the way you planned; it’s not because is wasn’t the correct answer, it’s because the rest of the economy isn’t anarcho-free-enterprise and thus the system is corrupted.
The best thing about Republican-Libertarianism is that it’s overtly anti-intellectual and negates the need for any analysis or study. Simplicity really. It offers the same answer to every economic situation and thus eliminates the need for Economics as a field of study. Why bother studying Japan’s economic problems in the 1990s when you already know the answer? Cut taxes, deregulate, get rid of all the rules, fire the nosy government inspectors and regulators – the free-market will sort it out in a wild-west sort of way.
In the future unregulated free-enterprise Utopianist society that results; men will be real men, women will be real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri will be real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
Cretinism is more like “The dog did it. Again.” The question, problem, puzzle, or whatever is neither relevant nor stated.
oh for fucks sake.
Please don’t bring that up.
Thread ruined in 3…2…1….
Yes, this reminds me of the Ken Miller’s lecture in which he states that scientists come up with a theory; test it; come to a concensus; then, write a textbook.
Creationists write the textbook first (Of Pandas and People). Who needs testing or a consensus when you have the Bible. It has all the answers.
Feynmaniac #37 wrote:
I think the cartoon philosophy (“start with the answer, then go back to make up an equation that fits it”) is also representative of one of the common misunderstandings of what science is, and how it works.
I recently got into a discussion (ok, argument) with someone who does energy healing for pets, on what it is to scientifically test an idea. She thinks she is “testing” her theory on chi energy every time she ‘smooths the energy field of a troubled dog,’ and then the dog’s problem improves. She is doing an experiment, by looking for evidence that supports her theory. That’s science.
I tried to tell her that science isn’t about looking for — and finding — confirming evidence. People tend to find evidence for what they know is true, because of all sorts of problems we have with subjective bias and verification.
Instead, science has to do with controlling factors which eliminate other possibilities, and setting up a situation where a theory (or hypothesis) can be falsified. And vetting your results among critics who will look for holes. A happy pet owner saying that Duke or Fluffy is now “so much calmer and well-behaved” is not equivalent to persuading the experts on physics and biology in the scientific community through controlled and replicable studies.
If chi energy exists, the mainstream science community will want and need to know that. It’s not enough to point to studies in nursing journals which — if true — would blow the roof off of physics, merit a Nobel Prize, and change the scientific model — and then explain that they’re using a different “approach” when they do science, so they’re not contradicting anything the other scientists say.
Say what?
What she — and the nurses — are doing is not “science.” It’s like this cartoon, doing it all backwards.Yet she is convinced that the only reason I say that is because I don’t like her results, they don’t fit into my “dogmatic world view.” As she puts it, she knows what she knows.
This cartoon is similar to the Uncommon Descent blog of “The Intelligent Design Community” in that their resources section says “Coming Soon.”
Sounds like differential equations to me.
lol, his arguments may be horrible but his legend will live on.
Ironically enough, just for the record, there is a branch of mathematics that studies ”inverse problems” where you know the answer and try to find the equation that gives that answer. One of the more famous in recent times is: Can you determine the shape of a drum from the sound it makes? (No.) Kepler’s discovery of the shape of planetary orbits is another example: lots of experimental measurements, but no theory until he had ‘played’ with the data enough to realize it was describing an ellipse. On the other hand creationism/ID will never give the right answer!
Which puts it exactly on the same level as the guy I met who, with all sincerity, told me about the conversation he was having with ex-president Jimmy Carter just the other day.
What makes people think they can get away with that “explanation” (I know what I know) and still live in something approaching reality?
mandrake #55 wrote:
I blame it partly on the remains of the so-called ‘self-esteem movement’ and its constant stress on the importance of believing in yourself; trusting your instincts; owning your own truths; keeping the faith; and surrounding yourself with “positive energy” (ie avoid anyone who is going to criticize or question anything you say or believe in.)
This is just like Waldorf-mathematics. (Rudolf Steiner) Works some times. Approved by liberal educational authorities worldwide.