An atheist can be pro-life only by lying about the science

Hemant Mehta let an anti-choice atheist romp about and make her secular pro-life argument, but since he thinks it’s important to give a forum to bullshit but doesn’t think it’s important enough to criticize, I guess I have to. It’s by Kristine Kruszelnicki, president of Pro-Life Humanist, and we’ve dealt with her before; she’s the one who debated Matt Dillahunty in 2012, and lost miserably. She acknowledges that right at the beginning of her post, and then proceeds to make the same stupid argument.

Before we address the question of bodily autonomy in pregnancy, let’s meet the second player. What does science tell us that the preborn are? To be clear, science doesn’t define personhood. It never could. When I debated Matt Dillahunty on the issue of abortion at the 2012 Texas Freethought Convention, I’m afraid that as a first-time debater I really wasn’t clear enough on this point — and was consequently accused of trying to obtain rights from science. Science can’t tell us whether it’s wrong to rape women, torture children, enslave black people, or which physical traits should or should not matter when it comes to determining personhood. Science may be able to measure suffering in living creatures, but it can’t tell us why or if their suffering should matter.

Notice what she’s doing here. She recognizes that she totally got skewered on her claim that Science says abortion is wrong, so she’s nominally distancing herself from making moral claims with science. But guess what her very next sentence is?

However, science can tell us who among us belongs to the human species.

She’s doing it again. She’s claiming that science justifies her position.

She is at least aware that the right of women to autonomy is an extremely strong argument against her position — it’s how Dillahunty slammed her in the debate — and the entire post is about how she gets around that tricky problem of denying women control of their own bodies. Her solution? Simply decree by fiat, with the stamp of approval of her version of science, that the fetus and the woman have fully equal status as human beings, and that all discussion has to grant the fetus every privilege we do the woman.

If the fetus is not a human being with his/her own bodily rights, it’s true that infringing on a woman’s body by placing restrictions on her medical options is always a gross injustice and a violation. On the other hand, if we are talking about two human beings who should each be entitled to their own bodily rights, in the unique situation that is pregnancy, we aren’t justified in following the route of might-makes-right simply because we can.

At least this time, she didn’t sprinkle photos of bloody fetus parts in her post, and she avoided the most egregiously absurd elements of her position. This is my summary of what she said at the debate:

She made it clear that she opposes a whole gamut of basic rights: birth control methods that prevent implantation are wrong, because that’s just like strangling or starving a baby; no abortion in cases of rape or incest, because the baby doesn’t deserve punishment; she did allow for abortion in cases that threaten the life of the mother at times before fetal viability, simply because in that case two fully human lives would be lost.

She sounds like a very liberal Catholic atheist.

But that’s the entirety of her argument, both in that piece and on the pro-life atheist web site: the fetus is fully human from the moment of conception, and science says so.

When it comes to normal human reproduction, sperm and ovum merge to form a new whole. They cease to exist individually and become a new substance that is not the mother and not the father but a new body altogether, one that is also human and has the inherent capacity to develop through all stages of development.

When we talk about rights and personhood, we leave the realm of science for that of philosophy and ethics. History is ripe with examples of real biological human beings whose societies arbitrarily decided they didn’t qualify as equals, on account of criteria deemed morally relevant. At one point (and still, in many ways, today), it was skin color, gender, and ethnic background. Now, we can add to that list consciousness, sentience, and viability. We haven’t evolved so fast in 50 years as to be immune from tribalistic us vs. them thinking. If science defines a fetus as a biological member of our species, is it possible that our society is just as wrong in denying them personhood?

What happens when both a woman and her developing fetus are regarded as human beings entitled to personhood and bodily rights? Any way you cut it, their rights are always going to conflict (at least until womb transfers become a reality). So what’s the reasonable response? It could start by treating both parties at conflict as if they were equal human beings.

You get the idea. If she repeats that the conceptus becomes fully human at the instant of fertilization, and that science says so, over and over, we surely must be persuaded that she’s right, and we have to concede that she’s making an entirely secular argument, because SCIENCE. Unfortunately for her, she’s not actually using SCIENCE, but has mistaken BULLSHIT for science.

Let me tell you what science actually says about this subject.

Science has determined that development is a process of epigenesis; that is, that it involves a progressive unfolding and emergence of new attributes, not present at conception, that manifest gradually by interactions within the field of developing cells and with the external environment. The conceptus is not equal to the adult. It is not a preformed human requiring only time and growth to adulthood; developmental biologists are entirely aware of the distinction between proliferation and growth, and differentiation. So science actually says the opposite of what Kruszelnicki claims. It says that the fetus is distinct from the adult.

Of course, science also has to concede that because there is a continuum of transformation from conception to adulthood, it can’t draw an arbitrary line and say that at Time Point X, the fetus has acquired enough of the properties of the adult form that it should be now regarded as having all the rights of a member of society. That’s a matter for law and convention. But we already implicitly recognize that there is a pattern of change over time; children do not have all the same privileges as adults. Third trimester fetuses have fewer still. First trimester embryos? Even less. We all understand without even thinking about it that there is a progressive pattern to human development.

But what about this claim that science can tell us who among us belongs to the human species?

First question I have is…which species concept are you using? There are a lot of them, you know; I daresay we might be able to find a few, that when inappropriately and too literally applied, would define away my status as a human, which simply wouldn’t do. There are also a lot of non-scientific or pseudo-scientific definitions of what constitutes a human that have been historically abused. Were the Nazis being scientific when they defined sub-species of humans and classed Jews, Gypsies, and Africans as something less than fully human? What, exactly, is Kruszelnicki’s “scientific” definition of human, that she’s using so definitively to declare a fetus as completely human?

She doesn’t say. She can’t say. She’s not applying a scientific test, but a traditional and colloquial one, which she’s then claiming by implication as synonymous with an unstated scientific definition. That’s dishonest and more than a little annoying.

Reading between the lines on her horrible little website, I’m guessing that she’s using a trivial and excessively reductive definition of human: it’s human by descent. The cells come from the division of human cells, so it is by definition not a monkey or a llama or a beetle cell, it’s a human cell.

Of course, that’s not enough: by that definition, sperm and eggs would be fully human, and women would be committing murder every time they menstruate, and men would be committing genocide every time they ejaculate. So she has a patch to work around that:

There is no such species as “sperm” or “ovum”. Sperm and ovum are not distinct unique organisms. They are in fact complex specialized cells belonging to the larger organism, namely the male and female from which they came. In other words, they are, like skin cells and blood cells, alive and bearing human DNA but nonetheless parts of another human being, even when mobile like the sperm.

There is no such species as “man” or “woman” either; we can always find some characteristic of an individual to distinguish them from a species (well hey, just the fact that they are an individual is enough). Her waffling about the status of sperm and ovum is ridiculous; I can give you species definitions that would recognize haploid gametes as fully human. If your restriction is simply that one is a complex, specialized cell belonging to the larger organism, well gosh, the zygote fits that, too! A fertilized egg is not a generic human cell: it is incredibly specialized and complex.

I can’t help but notice that multicellularity isn’t part of her definition of “human”. Nor does it include any craniate characters, like having a notochord or a brain or branchial arches. There are a lot of scientific definitions of our species that the zygote fails!

If we’re going to emphasize the “not part of a human being” aspect of her fuzzy definition, then we have another problem. If you pooped this morning, that turd contained shed human epithelial cells, now swimming free. I could actually say, with full scientific accuracy, that that was a human turd. Why aren’t you giving it full legal protection?

She has an escape clause for that, too.

Sperm and ovum lose their individual identity and their function as sperm and ovum once they have merged. Instead of being parts carrying 23 chromosomes from two different human beings, the unification and merging of their chromosome pairs has now created a new whole with a new set of chromosomes and a cellular structure that now contains the inherent capacity to grow and develop itself through all stages of human development. This of course is something that neither sperm nor ovum parts had the inherent capacity to do on their own. It’s something that only whole human beings can do.

Oh. So here’s her full definition of a fully human being: it is a totipotent cell with the capacity to develop into a human being. Alas, her last sentence is wrong. Whole human beings cannot do that. It means I am not human, only a few small bits of me can aspire (in vain! I’m done with that) to someday fuse with another haploid cell and briefly become fully human, in the few days of happy cleavage before their cells become committed to specialized fates, which then are not fully human.

The only logical scientific conclusion one can make from Kruszelnicki’s hopeless definition is that blastocysts are fully human, but people are not.

Which actually doesn’t surprise me at all, and fits quite well with what I hear from the fetus-worshippers.

As I said before, there certainly are secular arguments for all kinds of nonsense — “secular” is not a synonym for “good”. We have to do more than simply accept arguments because they don’t mention gods, we also have to apply logical, reasonable philosophical and scientific filters to those secular arguments. The one obvious conclusion from any examination of these so-called “pro-life” arguments is that they are sloppy and dishonest, and not deserving of recognition by reasonable secular people.

Being atheist is not enough. One of the implications of an absence of gods is that revelation is invalid, and that we have to rely on reason and evidence to draw conclusions…and further, I would add, that we have to define values that we consistently and rationally apply, and we have to assess whether our methods appropriately serve those values. I choose to value the equality of a community of living, fully-born human beings, and when irrational superstitious attachment to status of a blastocyst compromises the autonomy and worth of members of that community, I choose to reject that belief. It helps quite a bit, though, that the “pro-life” position is so incoherent and anti-scientific.

Another take: even if you accept Kruszelnicki’s premise that a conceptus is “fully human” (I don’t), her argument doesn’t work and was dismantled over 40 years ago.

Which atheists get exemption from criticism?

Some people are really unhappy that some of us disagree strongly with David Silverman’s CPAC strategy. JT Eberhard has invented a series of rationales for why people had the temerity to question the president of American Atheists (and he didn’t call me up to ask if any of them were valid!).

1. People took this to mean that David Silverman was anti-choice.

Interesting. Could you name some? I didn’t see anyone accuse Silverman of being personally anti-choice, although admittedly I could well have missed some. For myself, I simply took it for granted that Silverman himself was pro-choice, and that he was simply trying to acknowledge some arguments that are floating around out there…bad arguments. It would have mitigated a lot of the criticisms if he’d come right out and said that, but he didn’t.

2. People were upset that he was trying to make inroads with conservatives.

Take that sentence apart, JT. “Make inroads”…how? When I heard that American Atheists was going to be represented at CPAC, I was baffled — I didn’t understand the purpose. I assumed that he was going to be a bit confrontational, as he’s so good at doing — that it would be analogous to his appearances on Bill O’Reilly’s show, where he’d be forthright in presenting the atheist position. I’m all for that kind of honest confrontation.

I was even more confused by the statements he made to the press, though. Instead of confrontation, I saw an attempt to empathize with far right radicals. That was troubling. Silverman’s specialty is not subtlety, and there he was trying to balance between provocation and conciliation. He failed.

3. While not saying or believing that anti-choice arguments are sound, what he still did was a “tip of the hat” to the anti-choice crowd.

That’s more like it, and I think that’s a more accurate representation of what Silverman’s critics are thinking. As I already pointed out, a fairly solid majority of the atheist membership have a strong opinion on abortion, and actually, those “secular arguments against abortion” are abysmally bad.

It is simply not enough for an argument to be atheist or secular — it also has to be sound. We don’t simply accept bad arguments if they have the consequence of reinforcing atheist perceptions, we’re supposed to be better than that.

4. People think making the statement in the context of CPAC made it easy to misinterpret.

That’s a good point. When you’re representing a politically liberal organization (you may think the charter has no political leaning, but the membership most definitely does), you had better be acutely conscious of perils of attempting to recruit within the ranks of one of the more rabidly conservative conferences out there. Why is anyone surprised that many of us fail to see the point of this exercise, when Silverman failed to make the case to us?

He still hasn’t made the case, either. I still don’t understand what he hoped to accomplish at this meeting.

JT then makes a set of accusations that I’ve typically heard from the misogynist side of the atheist community, including, on twitter, a claim that David Silverman was a victim of a “witch hunt”. Good god. I like David Silverman personally, I support American Atheists, but that doesn’t mean I can’t disagree with tactics, and openly say so. This is simply ridiculous:

Holy crap, can we stop trying to make it out like people who have fought for causes we love for years are suddenly betraying them?  Can we stop shoving words into allies’ mouths they never said to support that narrative?  We’re the atheist movement, we should at least be able to deal with what each other actually say.  That is the minimum standard to which we should live up.

As was done. No one shoved words into his mouth; we quoted literally what he was reported to have said, and took issue with that. Apparently, we’re supposed to have an imaginary David Silverman in our head who only says things we agree with, and interpret those words in that light.

So many atheists are sick and fucking tired of the in-fighting and the inability to resolve things without just talking to one another (and questioning their loyalty).  

You know what I’m sick and fucking tired of? Atheists who value unity so much that they won’t tolerate dissent from the leadership. Our strength is our willingness to object and argue, that we don’t bow down before dogma, that no one is above criticism. People are disagreeing with Silverman; I haven’t heard a one question his “loyalty” (which is a really weird statement in the first place — when did loyalty to the movement become a criterion for membership?).

If this is the way atheism is supposed to be, how about if we get a list of all the people we are not allowed to question? That would be helpful, since there is some ambiguity in who the infallible ones are. I know I’m not one of them, since other atheists are quite comfortable with savaging me in terms that make David Silverman’s treatment look quite cuddly. Are we really going to go down the road of setting up authority figures and condemning dissent as disloyalty now?

How many people do you think actually said to themselves “Dave Silverman is anti-abortion?  That doesn’t sound right given everything I know about him.  Maybe I’ll ask him before making a big deal out of this.”  The answer: not many, and that’s a damn shame.  There are plenty of real enemies to atheism out there, we really don’t need to fabricate more out of the people who are on our side.

This is stupid.

Again, where are these people who said Silverman was anti-abortion? I know I wasn’t one of them. Ophelia Benson wasn’t, either. Neither was Jason Thibeault. Who called David Silverman an enemy to atheism? I think he’s usually a good advocate; I also think this case was a misstep. That doesn’t in any way imply that I suddenly have changed my tune and think he’s an enemy who must be deposed.

And here’s another thing I find naive and annoying: did I call up Dave and ask him if he was anti-abortion? No, because for one thing, I assumed that he was pro-choice, like almost all atheists, and for a second, who the hell does that? I notice that no one called me and asked whether I thought Silverman was anti-choice. Never in my entire blogging career has anyone called me or written to me and asked me to expand on something I said before they started publicly criticizing me for it, whatever it was.

What was criticized was a set of published statements that we disagreed with. It was that set of comments that we thought important enough to address; a personal communication that said he didn’t really mean it doesn’t make the public record disappear.

I want people leaving religion to see an atheist movement that is patient and eager to understand, not a group of people chomping at the bit to question the motives/character of people who have been doing the legwork in our interest for years.

There you go again, JT. You’re taking vocal disagreement with policy and tactics as character assassination. It wasn’t. I think the CPAC mess was a mistake, and poorly handled. That doesn’t mean I’ve been calling for anyone to be burnt at the stake. And I’m not going to abstain from saying so out loud out of deference to some abstract notion of “loyalty” to a movement, an attitude that I find detrimental to freethought.

I want people leaving religion to see an atheist movement with the integrity and honesty to question its own. Not another dogmatic institution with authority figures that will accuse you of disloyalty if you disagree with them.

Kent Hovind challenges me

I’ve been issued a challenge from Kent Hovind.

Open Letter to self proclaimed “atheist” PZ Myers of U of Minnesota – Morris,

Dear PZ,

1. Someone sent me the post you have about me concerning my new lawsuit against “Rational” Wiki Foundation. I don’t know the web address your comments are posted on but maybe someone who posts this can add it <here>?

2. In your post you made several errors and false accusations so I thought I’d set the record straight. I am NOT looking for a fight but you wrote first and started this.

3. If you are going to write things about me please add me to your mailing list so I can refute things that are in error (or just dumb). I get email at: [email protected]. TO ALL- In the likely case he does not add me – would one of you reading this blog send me anything he says or writes about me please? PZ qualifies for the Titus 1:11 prize!

4. In your post you said I go home from prison in August, 2015. This is incorrect. I go to Pensacola Feb. 2015 at the LATEST. There are several suits in the various federal courts I could win and bills in congress that could make it much sooner. I also have a lawsuit in the NH fed court to make the BOP obey the 2nd chance law and give me 6 months half way house as well which puts me in Pensacola THIS August when I win.

5. The lawsuit against “Rational”* Wiki is NOT “planned.” It is filed in the Federal Court for the Northern District of Florida Case #3:14cv94/RV/CJK and is on their web site and 2peter3.com. The filing fee was paid last week and two of the authors have been located. *It is NOT “rational” to believe you came from a rock 4.6 billion years ago! It’s STUPID!

6. I don’t “plan” to sue anyone now or when I get out unless they break the law. I didn’t start ANY of these fights including the one that put me here. Anyone who obeys the law will have no trouble from me. Accusing someone of a crime (like “Rational” Wiki did) IS a crime of libel unless they can prove their accusations. The courts will handle that now. If you accuse me of a crime that you cannot prove (libel) I will use the law (I Tim. 1:8) to correct the record and protect myself.

7. I am NOT in prison for “tax fraud.” In the unlikely even you actually are interested in the truth I suggest you go to www.2peter3.com in the legal section and read the complaint I filed with the Committee on Conduct in the federal court in Denver against the Assistant US Attorney in my case-Michelle M. Heldmyer. Filed Dec. 19 , 2013- Case #14-CC-1. It has the 3 items I was charged with spelled out clearly for all to see. I did NOT break any laws but the government probably did. She has not responded yet but her reply to my complaint should be very interesting! Please show me from the 3 charges in my case where I was charged with “fraud” as you allege or apologize for lying about me.

8. I do not lie to children or anyone else as you falsely allege but you do. In your classes at the U of Minnesota you use “evidences” for evolution that have long been proven to be lies. See my DVD #4 “Lies in the Textbooks” for a few examples. Also please show me ONE specific case where you can prove I lied to children.

9. For those who would like to see you admit you are a fish and a relative of a banana (and several other dumb “confessions” you made on camera) I would highly recommend that you get the 35 min. DVD “Evolution vs. God” from livingwaters.com or evolutionvsGod.com/bulk. There the world can see you reveal yourself for a complete fool (Psalm 14:1).
Anyone can (and SHOULD) make copies of this DVD and give it to every one of your students. I may even fund the drive to give a copy to every student on the entire campus with the damages I get paid from the “rational” wiki suit. Hmmm? THAT would be poetic justice!

10. Marianne-please see how many students there are at the U of M Morris campus and check with Ray Comfort to get a cost on that many DVDs. I know people who will gladly distribute them. As a matter of fact-if any of you wish to pass them out at any university campus, Marianne can add you to a list and when I win the $ and if God leads I will seriously consider paying for them.

11. CHALLENGE- PZ, When I get out and can travel I will come to your university at my expense and debate you on the evolution topic. Since you are using tax dollars to promote your religion and the burden of proof is on you I would like you to supply the 5 or 10 best evidences for evolution above the level of minor changes within kinds as the basis for the debate.

12. You can have as many “assistants” on your side as you wish but I get 50% of the total time and we only discuss one topic at a time. I will also pay only you $150/hr up to a max of 3 hrs actual debate time.

13. I will also pay all expenses to have the debate professionally video taped and give you a master copy. The only edits allowed will be adding better graphics and PowerPoint slides in post-production and typical trailers for other materials or web sites you or I wish to promote. You and I will each retain rights to sell copies of the DVD ONLY IF they are unaltered.

14. As a teacher there you should be able to get a hall for 2-3 hrs for free. I suggest one that seats 1500 minimum! Watch any of my other 20 debates on you tube or drdino.com to see why. UC Irvine turned away nearly 3000.

15. You seem to love to promote your religion of evolutionism in class where you have an obvious psychological and academic advantage. You cannot fire me, fail me, intimidate me or bamboozle me. Marianne at [email protected] is keeping a list of any churches wishing to schedule me to speak and any evolutionists willing to debate me. Please contact her to get on the list.

16. If you DO NOT contact her within a reasonable time of say-30 days (April 9) – to tell her you are willing to debate (once a time can be worked out) I will presume (as will any REAL “rational” people) that you are a coward and do not intend to take me up on my offer.

17. You are NOT the enemy PZ. Your father (John 8:44) hates my Father (I Jn. 3) and his attitude has rubbed off on you. I suggest you repent and accept Jesus Christ while you are above room temp. That will not always be the case!

18. The God that you claim not to believe in loves you and told me I’m supposed to try.

Kent Hovind 3-9-14

A few comments from me.

Why the scare quotes around “atheist”? I am one. Are you a “Christian”?

1 & 3. I’m at freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula. I don’t push my views on others; if you want to subscribe to the newsfeed, that’s at freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/feed, and apparently when you’ve registered as a reader here, you can subscribe and have links sent to you as email. You have to do it; I’m not going to make you read it.

4. You’re a convicted felon. Sorry if I don’t pay as much attention to the details of your release as you do.

5 & 6. You’re a litigious twit. I’m also not concerned with the details of your petty legal harassments.

7. You are a convicted fraud. That you now claim that the government was wrong suggests that you haven’t learned a thing from your conviction. Good luck with getting early parole! Your lack of remorse suggests you’re going to get out and commit the same crimes all over again.

8. “Evidence” is already plural, you twit. I’ve seen your “lies” video, and it’s full of lies itself.

9 & 10. Ray Comfort lies and quotemines about as much as you do. Feel free to sink money into spreading that noise at UMM; we have about 1900 students.

11-14. Woo hoo! $450! Sure, we can do that. We can’t do a 1500 seat auditorium, though; we aren’t that big. It’s good that you insist we only discuss one topic at a time; I know from your recorded talks that you usually insist on superficial and wrong discussions, so a little depth would completely founder your claims.

I will insist on a couple of restrictions, however.

  • We will define together a small number of specific issues to be discussed — no grand fuzzy declarations that give you room to Gish Gallup your way through the debate.

  • I insist on choosing the moderator, who will be someone from the science community, given specific instructions to keep the discussion on topic without editorial intrusion of their own. I have had bad experiences with your co-religionists — they have not been trustworthy.

  • Any and all profits from the debate, such as from the distribution of the “professionally video taped” DVD, will be shared equally between us, in addition to the $150/hour fee you’ll pay me. I will be donating my part of the revenue to a pro-science organization.

15. There is no religion of evolution. In the classroom, my colleagues and I teach the evidence.

16. Oh, please. What are you, twelve years old?

17. Calling my father the devil is not the way to win me over, asshole.

18. I don’t believe that the voices in your head are the voice of a god, so your attempt to usurp divine authority leaves me unimpressed.

I suspect that my demands that diminish the potential for profit to creationism and Kent’s own pockets will completely squelch Hovind’s interest in this debate, but I’ll let you know if he perseveres.

Hmm. Actually, he’s a convicted con artist. I might need to bring in a lawyer to make any agreement between us official and enforceable.

Egregious idiocy

The IDiots are crowing: they found a scientist who doesn’t understand evolution. One catch that they don’t think is very important: he’s a synthetic chemist. I think it’s fair to say that he’s as clueless about the issues in evolutionary biology as I am of those in synthetic chemistry, but at least I have the humility to recognize that my understanding of one discipline does not imply understanding of a completely different one. So the Uncommon Descent crowd is ridiculously enthusiastic about a scientist, James Tour, who doesn’t understand something, and they’ve got excerpts from a talk he gave, on “Jesus and Nanotechnology” (the title kind of clues you in, doesn’t it?) in which he professes his ignorance, as if that’s some sort of indictment of evolution.

… I will tell you as a scientist and a synthetic chemist: if anybody should be able to understand evolution, it is me, because I make molecules for a living, and I don’t just buy a kit, and mix this and mix this, and get that. I mean, ab initio, I make molecules. I understand how hard it is to make molecules. I understand that if I take Nature’s tool kit, it could be much easier, because all the tools are already there, and I just mix it in the proportions, and I do it under these conditions, but ab initio is very, very hard.

When all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Why would you think that knowledge of synthetic chemistry should make you able to understand evolution? I agree that building molecules to a spec, as Tour does, is very very hard — but that’s not what evolution does, so that skill is not relevant. What’s clearly happening here is that Tour is totally incapable of recognizing a process that lacks a guiding hand, because his work involves acting as the guiding hand.

Evolutionary biology is not the same as synthetic chemistry, OK? That I understand evolutionary biology better than Tour does does not make me capable of building nanocars.

I don’t understand evolution, and I will confess that to you. Is that OK, for me to say, “I don’t understand this”? Is that all right? I know that there’s a lot of people out there that don’t understand anything about organic synthesis, but they understand evolution. I understand a lot about making molecules; I don’t understand evolution. And you would just say that, wow, I must be really unusual.

Of course it’s OK to say you don’t understand evolution — I encourage all ignorant people to first confess their ignorance as a step towards understanding. However, what’s not OK is to use your ignorance, combined with authority in other domains of science, to suggest that evolution is false. Learn some humility, guy; I don’t profess greater knowledge of a discipline outside my own, but instead defer to the experts in those fields.

Let me tell you what goes on in the back rooms of science – with National Academy members, with Nobel Prize winners. I have sat with them, and when I get them alone, not in public – because it’s a scary thing, if you say what I just said – I say, “Do you understand all of this, where all of this came from, and how this happens?” Every time that I have sat with people who are synthetic chemists, who understand this, they go “Uh-uh. Nope.” These people are just so far off, on how to believe this stuff came together. I’ve sat with National Academy members, with Nobel Prize winners. Sometimes I will say, “Do you understand this?”And if they’re afraid to say “Yes,” they say nothing. They just stare at me, because they can’t sincerely do it.

Right. He sat down with other prestigious synthetic chemists, and they don’t understand evolution, either. Therefore, there’s something wrong with evolution.

Next time you’re playing poker with your buddies, ask around the table if they understand synthetic chemistry. When they shrug, or look at you blankly, or admit they know nothing about the subject, you have ammunition to go public and condemn those phonies who make molecules. It’s all a lie because some people don’t know how it works!

I must also point out that if you sit down with any intelligent scientist, and ask them if they have all the answers to the big questions in their discipline, they’ll say no, and even better, they’ll bring up a whole series of difficult questions that you probably never even thought of. That’s the nature of science; every answer inspires a dozen new questions, and inquiry leads you ever deeper into harder problems. Only a dishonest hack would think that somehow brings the science into disrepute.

Macroevolution happens. It’s documented. We know it happens. We know some of the mechanisms, but there are legitimate questions about the relative importance of various mechanisms, about the details of specific lineages, about possible novel mechanisms—but not about the reality of the process. It is sleazy to imply otherwise.

Oh, and just a hint: when you confront a Nobel Prize winner with a stupid question, and they just stare at you, it’s not because they’re afraid to say the truth: it’s probably because they’re wondering why they’re having this conversation with this idiot.

Who is Dave Silverman representing?

In the wake of David Silverman’s claim that the case for abortion rights is “maybe not as clean cut as school prayer, right to die, and gay marriage,” the American Secular Census asked atheists what their views on those subjects were. Now of course, these numbers don’t say which answer is right, but only what the majority of atheists, those people American Atheists are supposed to represent, think is right. We have a decidedly liberal bias.

Which of these statements best describes your opinion about abortion?

  • 55.4% Abortion should be legal without any restrictions beyond those applied to any other medical procedure.

  • 43.0% Abortion should be legal but with reasonable restrictions on gestational stage.

  • 00.9% Abortion should be legal only in cases of rape, incest, or to save the woman’s life.

  • 00.2% Abortion should be legal only to save the woman’s life.

  • 00.0% Abortion should be illegal.

  • 00.5% Undecided / other

Which of these statements best describes your opinion of school-sponsored prayer in public education?

  • 76.6% School-sponsored prayer has no place in public education.

  • 22.8% School-sponsored prayer should not occur, but official minutes of silence when students can pray/meditate privately are fine.

  • 00.2% School-sponsored prayer should be accommodated but only at special events such as graduation.

  • 00.2% Parents and/or student bodies should be able to vote whether to have school-sponsored prayer.

  • 00.1% School-sponsored prayer is fine.

  • 00.2% Undecided / other

Which of these statements best describes your opinion about gay couples marrying?

  • 97.3% Gay couples should be able to marry in all states.

  • 01.0% States should be able to decide whether to perform gay marriages and whether to recognize marriages performed in other states.

  • 00.6% Gay marriage should not be recognized in any state but all states should allow gay couples to enter into civil unions.

  • 00.2% States should be able to decide whether to formalize civil unions and whether to recognize civil unions from out of state.

  • 00.0% Gay couples should not be able to marry or enter into civil unions in any state.

  • 00.9% Undecided / other

So what’s going on here? Is David Silverman trying to appease the 0.0% of atheists who think abortion should be illegal, or the 0.1% who think school prayer is fine, or the 0.0% who oppose gay marriage? Because that’s kind of like the Sierra Club pandering to the vanishingly small fraction of their membership that think California condors ought to be poisoned. I don’t quite see the point. Or is he trying to encourage more anti-choice misogynistic praying homophobes to sign up? Because that sounds like a stupid idea that would only alienate 99.9% of the existing membership.

I’m going to pretend it’s a stupid PR stunt. It’s definitely getting American Atheists some media attention, but it’s all man-bites-dog counter-intuitive sensationalism, and I don’t think it’s going to pay off in the long run.

The abortion story is getting all the press, but I also have to object to something else Silverman said.

He describes himself as a “fiscally conservative” voter who “owns several guns. I’m a strong supporter of the military. I think fiscal responsibility is very important. I see that as pretty conservative. And I have my serious suspicions about Obama. I don’t like that he’s spying on us. I don’t like we’ve got drones killing people…” In the final analysis, “the Democrats are too liberal for me,” he says.

You know, I’m getting really tired of the schtick of so many people that they are “socially liberal, but fiscally conservative”. In a country where the primary social challenge of our time is the obscene wealth of the privileged few and the growing economic inequity, you don’t get to separate those two so neatly anymore: you are not socially liberal, you are not in favor of equality and opportunity, if you’re associating yourself with the poisonous economic policies of the rabid right.

I can agree with him on the issues of privacy and drones, but to call the Democrats, a centrist conservative organization that rolls over for the Right every time they bark, “too liberal” is simply insane.

There’s a secular argument for wearing underpants on your head. So?

Sarah Moglia points out that David Silverman has been saying some weird things recently.

Yesterday, an article was published about atheists at CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference). Featured prominently in the article was Dave Silverman, president of American Atheists. In it, Dave was quoted as saying, “I will admit there is a secular argument against abortion. You can’t deny that it’s there, and it’s maybe not as clean cut as school prayer, right to die, and gay marriage.” Is that so?

I’m trying to figure out what this ‘secular argument’ actually is; he didn’t say. I have encountered anti-choice people tabling at an atheist convention, and they couldn’t say either — I got the impression these were actually religious people trying to evangelize to the atheists with a pretense, and they stood out oddly from the rest of the crowd…rather like an atheist shilling at CPAC. So speak up, Dave, tell us what these secular arguments are.

I’m also wary because in my business we’ve run into folks peddling religious bullshit under the guise of being secular before: we call them intelligent design creationists. No one is fooled. Similarly, the anti-choicers who claim to be making a rational secular argument are easy to see through, since they ultimately always rely on some magical perspective on the embryo.

But here’s the bottom line: it is not enough to make a purely secular argument. It has to also be a good argument, unless atheism is to become a smokescreen for nonsense, to be accepted purely because of its godless label. And then atheism might as well just be another religion.

More like the Dork Enlightenment, am I right?

I am told I’m supposed to take The Dark Enlightenment seriously. I can’t. I just can’t. What it is is mostly a bunch of pretentious white dudebro computer programmers with a fascist ideology who write tortuous long-winded screeds off the top of their heads, with most of their ‘data’ coming from pop culture movies like The Matrix, and a few similarly clueless nerds who think it’s neat-o. I take it seriously only in the same way I take Libertarianism seriously: it’s a nucleus for idiots to coalesce around.

They also throw the term HBD around a lot. If you’re not in the know, HBD is short for Human BioDiversity, and it’s the hot new sciencey word for racism. The only people who use it are racists.

Human biodiversity is the rejection of the “blank state” of human nature. Creepily obsessed with statistics that demonstrate IQ differences between the races, the darkly enlightened see social hierarchies as determined not by culture or opportunity but by the cold, hard destiny embedded in DNA. One blogger calls it “The Voldemort View” (adding Harry Potter to the Star Wars/Matrix mix), claiming that, “mean differences in group IQs are the most likely explanation for the academic achievement gap in racial and SES [socioeconomic status] groups.”

Oh, please, fuck the whole “blank slate”, nature/nurture dichotomy. Biology affects everything human, and everything human is affected by the environment.

I’m gonna boycott unless they rename it “Utnapishtim”

The Christians are upset by ‘historical inaccuracies’ in this new Aronofsky movie, “Noah”. Wouldn’t you know it would inspire bickering among them?

At the request of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), Paramount added a disclaimer which reads, in part, that “[t]he film is inspired by the story of Noah. While artistic license has been taken, we believe that this film is true to the essence, values, and integrity of a story that is a cornerstone of faith for millions of people worldwide. The biblical story of Noah can be found in the book of Genesis.”

NRB board member Phil Cooke told The Wrap that the disclaimer was necessary because the film is “historically inaccurate.” It is, Cooke said, “more of an inspired movie than an exact retelling.”

How can a myth be historically inaccurate? None of it happened; there was no global flood, there was no rescue of all the animals on earth with a floating zoo, humans never went through a population bottleneck of 8 people, the whole thing never occurred. I just want to tell them to calm down and recognize that a major film studio has just spent $130 million making a propaganda film for your cult, so you’ve got nothing to complain about.

But OK, here’s a test. Which of these images is “historically inaccurate”, and have you also sent off letters of complaint to them?

ARK_PACKAGE

background-construction-wide_sm1

Noah Ark_dreamstime

noah-ark2

Noahs-Ark-

noahs-ark-600

noahs-beaver-problem

Whining about inaccuracies is just silly. Here’s another silly complaint:

Brian Godawa, a screenwriter whose Christian films have repeatedly failed to be profitable at the box office, wrote that Noah‘s script “is deeply anti-Biblical in its moral vision.”

Oooh, mean dig at the guy for making unprofitable garbage, but he does have me wondering what “moral vision” he’s talking about? Slaughtering every person on the planet for their purported moral failings?

Yes, actually, that’s the moral vision he wants promoted.

Another problem with Noah is that it fails to acknowledge that while, from a Christian perspective, “[k]illing all humans but eight in order to start over (as the Bible portrays) may seem harsh to our thoroughly Modern Millie minds…it reaffirms that Image of God in Man that gives man value despite the evil.”

It may seem harsh…right. This is the logic that says it is OK to kill people who do not properly affirm their idiosyncratic image of a god. I will say unabashedly that such a perspective is humanly evil, and the excuses of the faithful for their bloodthirsty demon-god do not reassure me that they have the slightest understanding of moral behavior.

Did I say it was a mean dig to point out Godawa’s failure as a screenwriter? It wasn’t. He also makes a point of the importance of money.

Godawa is also concerned that this “uninteresting and unBiblical waste of a $150 million” will make it difficult for Christian screenwriters like him to find employment. He fears that it “will ruin for decades the possibility of making a really great and entertaining movie of this Bible hero beloved by billions of religious believers, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim.”

Gosh, thank you for giving me the bright side of this movie. Hey, if the Christians all boycott it, and the Muslims (who are also unhappy with the movie) skip it, and the atheists, who aren’t at all interested in yet another bible movie don’t show up, then Noah will tank at the box office and no one will ever make another bible movie, and Godawa will live in penury, never able to make a movie promoting his murderous, callous vision, and we’ll all be better off.

Well, except Godawa. But screw that jerk.

Charles Pierce and David Silverman at #CPAC2014

American Atheists still has a presence at the gathering of the wackaloons called CPAC, despite having their booth expelled. This promises to produce some great stories from both of them, but I’m getting a little worried that Silverman is going to try and bring some of the assholes home to atheism with him. Could we try to grow the movement at a progressive conference instead, please?