Garbage in, garbage out

flood

Bill Nye has a new book coming out in November, Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World. In it, he’s going to write about climate change, among other subjects.

This has Ken Ham annoyed. Don’t you know that if you look at everything through the lens of the Bible, you don’t have to worry about climate change? He gives a nice succinct summary of his version of climate history.

Originally, the climate was created perfect, but sin changed everything (Genesis 3), and we no longer have a perfect climate. During the global Flood of Noah’s day about 4,350 years ago the climate was radically changed when the surface of the Earth was reshaped by the Flood. The Flood was followed by an Ice Age, which further changed our climate, and climates have gone up and down since. Fluctuations can happen quite quickly and are not cause for grave concern in regard to man’s supposed impact as Bill Nye claims. So when you start with God’s Word, you have an entirely different worldview through which to view climate change and therefore you reach entirely different conclusions about the nature and severity of it. It is true that Bill Nye’s religion of evolutionary naturalism causes him to wrongly interpret climate change. So, in essence, Bill Nye’s new book is indeed a religious book!

I don’t even know what “perfect” climate is.

But I do know he’s wrong. When your “worldview” is based on false facts, it crumbles.

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I learned something new

I already knew that acupuncture had failed to show significant effects in clinical trials, but this video also mentions some things about the history of acupuncture in China — it was rejected by Chinese scholars long ago, and was only revived as a tool for propaganda.

The comments on the video are amazing. A lot of people don’t like the guy’s beard, but there is also this sentiment I’ve heard many times before:

Your are such a jerk. You are making fun about thousands of people who just believe in something. Is that so wrong ? Even if its just placebo, who cares ? Just let people be happy. They arent hurt by acupuncture, so just let them do what they want. Because of these videos I dont wanna follow this channel anymore.

Spoken like someone who really doesn’t care about the truth at all. Note that the speaker isn’t taking away anyone’s acupuncture needles…he’s merely saying the facts, that acupuncture is junk science.

The JREF is changing

James Randi is retiring, and he’s irreplaceable. Apparently the JREF board agrees, and isn’t even going to try — they’ve announced a change in focus for the organization. I presume that means there will be no more Amazing Meetings; they’re going to shift to becoming a grant distributing organization, and are no longer accepting membership applications or donations.

I have mixed feelings about that. TAM was always the best and worst of organized skepticism — early on they had the most inclusive and diverse meetings of any group. Rather than old academics droning on, they had showmanship and enthusiasm, and brought in a younger, livelier audience. I think they inspired a lot of other organizations and influenced the new wave of skeptic and atheist meetings.

But TAM was also a refuge for reactionary skeptics: the ones who despised atheists, who had a bizarrely narrow view of what was acceptable “skepticism” (which didn’t align well with science at all), who actively resented new ideas even as they were courting a younger audience. This was the TAM that hated the idea of openly displaying policies of attendee conduct, preferring secret proceedings, and claimed that there was no harassment of any kind going on, because they clamped down on any news and dishonestly denied any problems.

I’m not going to miss the latter TAM at all. But the former TAM is a real loss. I guess we’ll all have to go to Skepticon instead.

I get email

I often get requests from students to answer questions about biology — typically, they’ve been told to write to a scientist and get a response, and somehow they’ve picked me. I try to answer them, but due to the number of requests, I usually only give brief answers. Here’s an example:

Dear PZ Meyers,

Yeah, I know. Somehow my name is impossible to spell correctly. I’m resigned to it and just let it slide nowadays.

My name is XXXX and I’m a 19-year-old junior in college.

Now this part was a little weird. They’re a college junior…but the questions are more like what I’d expect from a grade school kid. But OK, I’ll go with it.

I know you might be quite busy, but I wanted to ask if you could assist me with a simple assignment for one of my college courses dealing with the origins of life on earth. I am required to ask anyone (preferably someone who is science-minded such as yourself) the following four questions:

Here are their four questions, and my short answers.

1. How long are the days in Genesis 1? Why?

The bible is not a science textbook, and trying to pin a specific length to a vague metaphor is a category error. All that matters is that the events described in Genesis 1 cover a period of billions of years, and are presented in an incorrect order.

2. How old is the earth and life? Why?

The Earth is approximately 4 1/2 billion years old. Life arose approximately 4 billion years ago. We have multiple corroborating lines of evidence from physics and astronomy that confirm the first date, and genetic and trace fossil evidence confirms the second.

3. Did man and apes share a common ancestor? Why or why not?

Humans ARE apes. Yes, all modern primates share a common ancestor. The last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees lived roughly 6 million years ago. Again, this is confirmed by molecular and genetic evidence.

4. Were Adam and Eve real people? Why or why not?

No. Humans have more genetic diversity than could possibly arise by divergence from only two ancestors; also, a population of 2 lacks the genetic diversity that would allow the population to survive. Population genetics tells us that the greatest population bottleneck in our history occurred about 80,000 years ago, when the human population was reduced to 15,000-20,000 breeding pairs. Not two.

I fired those off, and thought I was done. I just got a thank you from the student, though, which was nice.

Dear PZ Meyers,

I hope you’ve been doing well.

First, I’d like to thank you again for helping me with this assignment because I got all the points on my grade for it! As promised, my professor sent some comments (quite a bit in fact) for me to read over and share with you. I don’t know how much you’ve heard already, but if you have the time, you can read them over and give a reply. I’m not as knowledgeable in this scientific area but I do believe in God and that his Word is true.

Uh-oh. Their professor did send a reply.

Jebus, did they. 11,000 words of pure, ripe, grade-A creationist bullshit. I’m exhausted just looking at it.

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A new reason to hate religion

energygrid

It’s a tool of the alien interlopers, the Anunnuki, who control the entire planet!

The race of beings that dominate and control the planet today as the Illuminati are speculated by many sources to be a race of ET’s called the Anunnaki. The story is that Anunnaki came to Earth to create a human being that they could enslave and mine gold for them. The gold was needed to repair their plant’s atmosphere (presumed to be Niburu).

Michael estimates that there were more than 10 million stone circle ruins in South Africa that were used to presumably connect and form sound energy grids that would allow the Anunnaki spaceships to come and get shipments of gold. This was in the time of Enki, or of the time of the legend of Adam and Eve.

With the discovery that most all ancient sites with monolithic structures are located along the grid lines of earth, the bigger picture comes into play. The Anunnaki scientists built these first energy conductors like the circular stone ruins in South Africa and then began to build more powerful monuments along Earth’s ley lines. Stonehenge and the pyramids at Giza are basic examples, but they continued to get more powerful and complex with each generation. Aerial views of these silica based grids all over the planet show the similarity to today’s computer board circuits.

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Not quite there yet

I was sent this list of 10 “biblical” beliefs that poison Christians, hosted on a site that opposes ‘spiritual abuse’. It’s a weirdly twisty look into the views of a fairly liberal but clearly fervent Christian — I actually agree with them that a lot of these beliefs are actively harmful, but the reasoning they use to reach that same conclusion is odd, to me. That makes it interesting to read, because it provides a peculiar perspective on concerns that are familiar to atheists.

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There’s an Australian Huffington Post?

I’m so sorry, antipodes. It seems the HuffPo Empire of Gullible Idiocy has expanded into the Southern Hemisphere. Fortunately, some people are already fighting back. It’s a good start.

I notice, too, that the Australian edition has yet to include their notorious “sideboob” category, or anything by Deepak Chopra. I guess they’re going to gradually ratchet up the sleaze and stupidity. Brace yourself, Australia, Ariana Huffington has no reservations at all about racing to the bottom of the sludge pit.