Today is the 10th Annual Paul Nelson Day!

I think the appropriate way to celebrate is to do nothing at all, but just to pretend to have a big party.

Paul Nelson Day commemorates the fabulous concept of Ontogenetic Depth, a metric that Paul Nelson invented and presented at the 2004 Society for Developmental Biology meetings — he claimed that it was a measure of the complexity of a developmental process, and that it was a serious problem for evolution. Look, he said, all of a sudden in the Cambrian these creatures appeared with high Ontogenetic Depth values! Only he couldn’t tell us what those values were, or how he measured them. But they sure were a big problem for evolution!

Well, at least he couldn’t tell me right then and there at the meetings how to calculate Ontogenetic Depth. But he’d get right back to me with the details. Tomorrow. Right away. Some day.

Despite having actually had the gall to present this stuff at a legitimate scientific meeting, those details have receded farther and farther away, to the point where he finally admitted in 2011 that ontogenetic depth is impossible to measure. But we can still keep on rubbing his nose in his phony pseudoscience.

As for me, I have a cadre of strippers and a marching band here in my office, have dismantled all of the local churches to get the raw materials for a gigantic bonfire in the parking lot outside, and plan to have a picnic on the moon this afternoon to celebrate. I promise. I’ll post pictures to prove it…tomorrow. Pinky swear!

The abortion problem…solved!

Dana publishes the simple, brilliant solution to abortion. I can’t see any downside to it. We already live in a culture where pointless surgical alterations to boy’s genitals are common, and this just adds one more.

I’m thinking we could also make it a ritual of passage into manhood. You aren’t really a man until you’ve had The Procedure.

Islam and science are compatible, as long as you cut out the bits of science you don’t like

I visited Brighton, once. I took a pleasant stroll down along the beach, dipped my toe in the water, and I liked it! Therefore, my current physiological state is entirely compatible with swimming the English Channel, and how dare anyone criticize my lack of swimming practice and stamina and strength as somehow incompatible with being a successful English channel swimmer. Didn’t you see in my first sentence that I liked it?

That’s how I read Sana Saeed’s article in which she declares that Richard Dawkins is completely wrong about the incompatibility of science and religion. Her reasons are remarkably superficial and trivial, and she manages to kill her own case midway through. Here’s why she thinks they’re compatible:

I spent my childhood with my nose firmly placed between the pages of books on reptiles, dinosaurs, marine life and mammals. When I wasn’t busy wondering if I wanted to be more like Barbara Walters or Nancy Drew, I was busy digging holes in my parents’ backyard hoping to find lost bones of some great prehistoric mystery. I spent hours sifting through rocks that could possibly connect me to the past or, maybe, a hidden crystalline adventure inside. Potatoes were both  apart of a delicious dinner and batteries for those ‘I got this’ moments; magnets repelling one another were a sorcery I needed to, somehow, defeat. The greatest teachers I ever had were Miss Frizzle and Bill Nye the Science Guy.

I also spent my childhood reciting verses from the Qur’an and a long prayer for everyone — in my family and the world — every night before going to bed. I spoke to my late grandfather, asking him to save me a spot in heaven. I went to the mosque and stepped on the shoes resting outside a prayer hall filled with worshippers. I tried fasting so I could be cool like my parents; played with prayer beads and always begged my mother to tell me more stories from the lives of the Abrahamic prophets.

That’s all very good — it’s a great start to have a childhood in which she was enthusiastic about science, and perhaps she could have even gone on to be a practicing scientist when she grew up (she didn’t) — and she could have even continued to be a practicing Muslim. There is nothing in her story that rebuts any claim of the incompatibility of science and religion.

But here’s where there is an incompatibility: she could do experiments with magnets and potatoes, but did she ever ask herself if those long prayers really worked? Did she ask her grandfather how he knew heaven existed, and would she have been content if he’d simply said it was a tenet of their religion? Did she ever examine those stories of the Abrahamic prophets and ask if they were really true?

No, she did not. She comes right out and says it: magnets and potatoes, sure, but there are some things you are not allowed to question.

In other words: There’s plenty of wiggle room and then some. On anything that is not established as theological Truth (e.g. God’s existence, the finality of Prophethood, pillars and articles of faith), there is ample room for examination, debate and disagreement, because it does not undercut the fabric of faith itself.

She’s so blinkered by her faith that she doesn’t even realize that setting boundaries on what you may question is completely antithetical to science, and that her religion compels her to accept counterfactual nonsense. The only way she can say religion is compatible with science is by imprisoning a broken science within the limited boundaries of what the patriarchs of her faith will allow.

You may not question god, angels, the Qu’ran, Mohammed, the existence of the afterlife, or God’s will, but hey, as long as you unquestioningly accept everything the antique holy book says about the nature of the universe, it’s totally compatible with science.

She gives an example of how Islam and science are compatible, but it’s enough to make one cry in despair.

Muslims, generally, accept evolution as a fundamental part of the natural process; they differ, however, on human evolution – specifically the idea that humans and apes share an ancestor in common.  

Well, then, that means you don’t accept evolution. There is no good reason to single out humans as exceptional — the science says one thing, religion defies the evidence, and Saeed accepts the religion.

In the 13th century, Shi’i Persian polymath Nasir al-din al-Tusi discussed biological evolution in his book “Akhlaq-i-Nasri” (Nasirean Ethics). While al-Tusi’s theory of evolution differs from the one put forward by Charles Darwin 600 years later and the theory of evolution that we have today, he argued that the elemental source of all living things was one. From this single elemental source came four attributes of nature: water, air, soil and fire – all of which would evolve into different living species through hereditary variability. Hierarchy would emerge through differences in learning how to adapt and survive.

This is a “theory” that is not founded on evidence and experiment, propagates archaic ideas about the structure of the universe (water, air, soil, and fire are not the fundamental attributes of nature), contains erroneous statements about biology (al-Tusi endorsed a hierarchical ladder of life, and also set humans apart as a special case), and completely lacks the population thinking that was the core of Darwin’s insight. He was a smart fellow who did some brilliant things, but he was also a person of his times and his biological explanations were most definitely not comparable to what Darwin came up with 600 years later.

That Saeed thinks they are is just another sign of her ignorance.

Al-Tusi’s discussion on biological evolution and the relationship of synchronicity between animate and inanimate (how they emerge from the same source and work in tandem with one another) objects is stunning in its observational precision as well as its fusion with theistic considerations. Yet it is, at best, unacknowledged today in the Euro-centric conversation on religion and science. Why?

Because it was wrong? Because it did not lead to greater understanding of how biology works? Because it was all tangled up in ridiculous religious beliefs that you were not allowed to question?

I think Saeed understands her religion very well. But despite some early promise in childhood, it’s clear that she doesn’t understand science at all.

What’s causing the boom in atheism?

It is only appropriate that now, while I’m at Skep-Tech 2, we should get an article about the influence of technology on religion. It seems to be primarily corrosive.

Back in 1990, about 8 percent of the U.S. population had no religious preference. By 2010, this percentage had more than doubled to 18 percent. That’s a difference of about 25 million people, all of whom have somehow lost their religion.

LosingReligion

(By the way, I’m not a fan of graphs that mislead by having different scales: the percent change in the adoption of the internet is far, far greater than the percent change in the adoption of atheism — this chart illustrates a similarity in timing, only.)

A computer scientist, Allen Downey, has dissected these trends to identify the major components affecting religiosity, and has narrowed it down to three big ones: upbringing, education, and access to the internet.

He finds that the biggest influence on religious affiliation is religious upbringing—people who are brought up in a religion are more likely to be affiliated to that religion later.

However, the number of people with a religious upbringing has dropped since 1990. It’s easy to imagine how this inevitably leads to a fall in the number who are religious later in life. In fact, Downey’s analysis shows that this is an important factor. However, it cannot account for all of the fall or anywhere near it. In fact, that data indicates that it only explains about 25 percent of the drop.

He goes on to show that college-level education also correlates with the drop. Once it again, it’s easy to imagine how contact with a wider group of people at college might contribute to a loss of religion.

Since the 1980s, the fraction of people receiving college level education has increased from 17.4 percent to 27.2 percent in the 2000s. So it’s not surprising that this is reflected in the drop in numbers claiming religious affiliation today. But although the correlation is statistically significant, it can only account for about 5 percent of the drop, so some other factor must also be involved.

That’s where the Internet comes in.  In the 1980s, Internet use was essentially zero, but in 2010, 53 percent of the population spent two hours per week online and 25 percent surfed for more than 7 hours.

This increase closely matches the decrease in religious affiliation. In fact, Downey calculates that it can account for about 25 percent of the drop.

That’s a fascinating result. It implies that since 1990, the increase in Internet use has had as powerful an influence on religious affiliation as the drop in religious upbringing.

I think there’s more to the story than this, though. The internet is too big and messy to be simplistically causal: there are also a great many sites dedicated to reinforcing the lies of religion, obviously, and there are Chrisians and Moslems who use the internet as a tool for evangelism and tribe-building. A more interesting question would be about how people use the internet. I don’t think a person’s faith would be challenged by the internet alone, but only if they use the internet to explore and compare conflicting views.

Australians denying science!

I have been informed that the courts in Australia are making anti-biological rulings. This is horrible news.

Now they are even making rulings on biology, and in a new case, informing us that they can also trump reality.

Oh, my.

We have just been informed by our enlightened justices that biology no longer exists, but is simply a social construct.

I am outraged!

Biology is now simply a matter of judicial decree.

This abuse of good science must end!

After all, biology does not exist anyway. We just make these things up to suit our fancies.

No!

So the courts can now determine whether reality exists or not. Those are certainly some sweeping powers. Of course these activist judges have been playing God for quite some time now.

This abuse of biology and science is terrible. So, Bill Muehlenberg, defender of science, what exactly have these wicked activist judges done in defiance of all evidence?

A Sydneysider has won a High Court case to be recognised as gender-neutral. Norrie, who was born male but underwent gender reassignment to become a woman, identifies neither as male or female and has taken legal action against NSW’s Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages to be granted a non-specific certificate.

…

Norrie stopped taking hormones after surgery, preferring to live as neither male nor female. Counsel for Norrie said it is the register’s purpose to record the truth. “Norrie’s sex remained ambiguous so that it would be to record misinformation in the register to classify her as male or female,” a judgment summary reads. Sitting in Canberra on Wednesday, the bench unanimously found in favour of Norrie.

What? Well, that was a bit of a damp squib.

Sorry, Bill, biologically, that is a perfectly reasonable decision. Sex is complex, and gender layers another unfathomably difficult welter of complexity on top of that, so, speaking as a biologist, I have to say there is nothing in the science to defend your black and white, absolutist, rigidly binary view of human behavior. Men aren’t all one way, and women aren’t all another way, with the empty set between them. The court wasn’t being ‘activist’ or defying the science, but actually making a rather sensible decision in accord with reality. Norrie would know better than you or a judge that they don’t fit neatly into your limited and limiting pigeonholes.

But hey, Bill, you have another problem. It’s very kind of you to rush to defend ‘science’ (or rather, your unfortunately ill-informed version of it), but if you’re so enamored of it that you wield it as a shield and bulwark to defend your personal bigotry against homosexuals and transgendered people, how come you’re also attacking evolutionary biology?

The entire framework of Darwin’s theory leads inevitably to the gas chambers and the concentration camps. The biologically inferior had to be exterminated in order for humanity to survive and flourish. “If one society crushes another, that is not wrong. That is not even a shame. That is natural selection at work.”

And outright advocating creationism (and bad theology, too)?

The Judeo-Christian worldview is unique among the religions and philosophies of the world in affirming that human beings are made in the image of God. It is the uniqueness of humans that sets these two religions apart from all others.

And then to also be a climate change denialist…tsk, tsk.

But this makes sense, since the warmists and their media stooges really have embraced a new religion here. The religion of climate change requires as much faith – if not more – than most other religions. It is an article of faith to believe the warming hysteria, and anyone who dares to question it is branded a heretic and an apostate.

Evolution and anthropogenic climate change are actual facts, Bill; why do you think your twisted views trump reality, and that you can pretend biology and the science of our environment no longer exist? When it suits you, that is.

It’s sweet that science has become the assumed default standard of truth, but it’s not so cool that wingnuts seek to appropriate it to defend clearly anti-scientific positions.

It’s been a bad month for the creationists

I almost pity them. First there’s the discovery of gravitational waves that confirm a set of models for the origin of the universe — I can tell they’re trying to spin that one (it confirms the universe had a beginning, just like the Bible says!), but it’s obvious which perspective, scientific or religious, has the greater explanatory power.

Then there’s Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos, in which every episode so far has taken a vigorous poke at creationist nonsense. I think they cry every Sunday after church, because they know that later that evening they will be attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture. It’s been great.

And now, look, the Cassini spacecraft has found an ocean beneath the ice of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus.

For years, the motto among astrobiologists — people who look for life in distant worlds, and try to understand what life is, exactly — has been “follow the water.” You have to start the search somewhere, and scientists have started with liquid water because it’s the essential agent for all biochemistry on Earth.

Now they’ve followed the water to a small, icy moon orbiting Saturn. Scientists reported Thursday that Enceladus, a shiny world about 300 miles in diameter, has a subsurface “regional sea” with a rocky bottom.

This cryptic body of water is centered around the south pole and is upwards of five miles deep. It has a volume similar to that of Lake Superior, according to the research, which was published in the journal Science.

Enceladus

There is hope yet for Space Squid! Or maybe space progenotes. Isn’t it wonderful that we keep finding gloriously natural discoveries in the universe?

The tears will flow again in a few weeks, when Neil Shubin’s new series, Your Inner Fish, premieres on PBS. I’m really looking forward to this one.

It is a good time to be passionate about science.

All these debate invitations, suddenly

I just mentioned on twitter this curious phenomenon that lately I’ve seen a major upsurge in requests to do debates — four in just the last two weeks. It started happening right after the Nye/Ham debate, in which Ham got clobbered thoroughly, but still bragged right afterwards that it had brought in enough attention and money to fund the preliminary work on the Ark Park.

Hmmm. Debate. Lose. Profit! Wonder why they’re suddenly more interested in debates?

Anyway, as I said, I mentioned this on twitter, and then moments later I check my email, and here’s this very polite, very nice letter.

Dear P.Z Myers

My name is Imran Hussein and I work for an Islamic outreach charity called IERA. You are most likely aware of our activities as some of our members engaged with you out side the atheist world convention a few years ago.

We have been undergoing some strategic changes in the way we have been engaging with academics and thinkers such as yourself. For instance Hamza Andreas Tzortzis recently had a very friendly nuanced discussion with Professor Peter Simons on consciousness. You can see how much we have changed and improved here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77J6g04UeY0.

In this light we would like to invite you to the UK (flights, accommodation etc. paid for) to engage in a discussion on “Is Consciousness Evidence for God’s Existence?”

We are very flexible concerning dates. If you are interested I would be grateful if you can send me a range of dates that suits you.

I would like to inform you that it will be a great honour to have you as although we carry different world views you have positively influenced the way we work and we hope that a future interaction with yourself can further improve the way we connect with others.

Warmest Regards,

Imran Hussein

You know, it’s so tempting…how often do you get an offer for an all-expenses paid trip to Europe? All it would take is an hour or two of work on the stage, and selling out my integrity to help promote Islamist bullshit. It’s friendly nuanced bullshit, but still bullshit.

I think my answer will be…

[Read more…]

When will this situation improve?

Maybe never. I know a lot of you hate facebook (with good reason), so I’ll just copy this straight from facebook so you can read it here.

From former JREF Outreach Coordinator Brian Thompson:

“Let me explain why I’m supporting Karen Stollznow’s legal defense fund. Maybe some of my Facebook friends don’t know who she is or what this is all about. Karen is a linguist, writer, and investigator who looks into claims of the paranormal, the supernatural, and the outrageous with a skeptical eye. Skeptics like her do a lot of good for the world in ways large and small. They’re the ones fighting against the kind of scientific ignorance that keeps people from vaccinating their kids, for example. And if it weren’t for skeptical investigators, I might still be cowered in fear every night thinking aliens were going to abduct me or ghosts were going to throw things around my bedroom. Now I’m just cowered in fear thinking that I might never be on one of those interior design makeover shows. This is progress.

I believe so strongly in the good work these skeptics do that several years ago I started hanging out with them, working on activism projects with them, and drinking lots and lots of booze with them. I went to their conferences and meetings and pre-swingers’ parties, and for a couple of years I even worked in an official capacity with one of the world’s most well-known skeptical activism nonprofits, the James Randi Educational Foundation.

In that time I got to know a lot of great people. I’m not going to name them all, because I know I’ll leave out Christian Walters, and then our lovemaking will take a passive-aggressive turn. But a lot of people who share this common interest in making the world a better place through rationalism are kind, honest, funny, talented, and valuable friends. Then there are people like Christian who are maybe just two or three of those.

But I no longer identify with this community of benevolent know-it-alls, because not all of them are the best folks in the world. In fact, a good percentage of the top ten worst humans I’ve ever met are prominent members of the skeptics’ club. They’re dishonest, mean-spirited, narcissistic, misogynistic. Pick a personality flaw, and I can probably point you to someone who epitomizes it. And that person has probably had a speaking slot at a major skeptical conference.

I grew particularly disgusted with the boys’ club attitude I saw among skeptical leaders and luminaries. The kind of attitude that’s dismissive of women, sexually predatory, and downright gross. When I first started going to skeptical conferences as a fresh-faced know-it-all, I started hearing things about people I once admired. Then I started seeing things myself. Then I got a job with the JREF, and the pattern continued.

There’s a particular guy popular with the skeptical crowd who writes books, gives talks, and wears bicycle shorts. What’s not to love? Well, a female friend of mine told me she didn’t like it very much when he locked eyes with her from across a room and pointed to his dick. When I started working for the JREF, my boss described this same guy as an “old school misogynist”. Then a friend told me this same skeptical celebrity had groped another speaker at a conference. Grabbed her breast without invitation. Sexually assaulted her. Then my boss told me that not only did this assault happen, but that he witnessed it and intervened. The woman who was assaulted won’t name names for fear of being dragged through the mud. Another woman I know has told me that this same guy assaulted her. Others have confirmed her story to me. I believe her. But she’s remained anonymous for much the same reasons.

I’m tired of this. I’m tired of hearing about sexual predators like Mr. Bicycle Shorts, who has yet again been invited to speak at the JREF’s annual conference. I’m tired of hearing things like what I’ve heard from [redacted]. That my old boss grabbed his junk in a car and said he would be “presidentially displeased” if [redacted] didn’t give my old boss a kiss.

I’m tired of people like Richard Dawkins, whose lashing out at my friend Rebecca Watson for having the nerve to talk about what kind of male attention makes her uncomfortable has led to years of the most heinous abuse being flung at her and her colleagues. Heinous, woman-hating abuse from enthusiastic members of this broken little community of freethinkers.

Pardon my Yiddish, but oy, that shit’s fucked. And it’s also fucked that people are afraid to speak out about their stories for fear that it will become the focus of their careers or that their privacy will be destroyed or that they’ll be sued or that they’ll somehow damage organizations that do a lot of good work.

This makes me sick, and it makes me mad. So of course I’m going to help Karen speak up and fight back.

Here’s the situation in a nutshell: Karen used to work with another writer and investigator named Ben Radford at an organization called CFI. Karen says Radford continually harassed and abused her. She brought the situation to CFI, which found Radford guilty of some of Karen’s charges. Then they let him off with a slap on the wrist. Karen blogged about this. Radford sued her for defamation.

Based on the evidence I’ve seen, my own experience with Radford’s dishonest and creepy behavior, and the assurances from friends of mine who know more about this situation than I do, I’m willing to believe Karen. And more than that, I’m willing to put my money behind her efforts to fight back in court. Because she deserves the chance to make her case instead of having to fold under insurmountable financial pressure. Defending yourself in court isn’t cheap.

Also, I don’t like bullies or creeps. Especially the kinds of bullies and creeps who have been protected by their peers and allies in a community that places pseudo-celebrity and books about how lake monsters aren’t real above the well-being of women who are at least as vital to fighting the good fight. A fight, by the way, that’s about the righteousness of the truth.

So I’ve given to Karen’s fund. You can do the same here:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/give-a-voice-to-harassment-victims/x/6875853“

As long as atheism is about nothing but disbelieving in gods, and as long as skepticism is about nothing but demanding evidence, as long as there is no human heart behind the goals of these organizations, this behavior will continue. We must have secular values beyond simply rejecting claims; we must recognize the import and implications of living in a material, natural world; there must be secular values that give us purpose.

Secular Pro-Life lies

Wow. Secular Pro-Life has accused Planned Parenthood of cheating their donors. Why? Because they had an increased budget by 3 million dollars, but they did fewer breast exams. So, yeah, SPL looked at a big, complex budget for an organization offering multiple services, noticed that one number went down, and libelously implied that all the money went to some other mysterious service, hint hint hint.

This year, we cut out meat at the Myers household, and if you looked at our total budget, despite the fact that our income rose very slightly last year, we spent much less in the meat department at the grocery store. Where did the extra money go? FRIVOLOUS ABORTIONS ON DEMAND, of course. All the money we saved by not buying steaks was rerouted into KILLING BABIES.

That’s the game SPL plays. TheTruePooka actually looks at Planned Parenthood’s detailed budget, in a way that SPL should have done if they were honestly evaluating their expenditures, and found that while breast exams were going down, other, related services were going up: for instance, follow-up care with ultrasound and biopsies (you know that breast exams are just one small part of preventing breast cancer, right?), providing educational resources so women can do their own exams, and expanding outreach to Latinas and other countries. To make it short, SPL was distorting the budget and misleading their readers, but Planned Parenthood was honest and accurate.

Follow the link and go read the whole thing, or if you’d prefer, here’s the author reading it to you: