Good work, Minnesota talk radio

For once, I approve. Corey Cove, a talk radio host on KFAN in Minneapolis had that shameful and shameless psychic fraud, Chip Coffey on his show…and he shredded the kook. None of that Oprah/Larry King style simpering credulity, he just ridiculed his predictions and demanded that he back up his claims with evidence.

Coffey was upset and complained that the host was rude to him and called that unprofessional. You know, I’ve been on a few radio shows, and I never go into them on the assumption that the host will suck up to me; I expect that I will have to defend my ideas, and I actually prefer it if the host is open about any disagreement.

I guess psychics don’t get very far if they can’t demand deference.

That is a good cartoon

The Digital Cuttlefish has found an excellent expression of religious thought.

show-me-a-sign-cartoon

That isn’t photoshopped or fudged in any way — that is the actual, complete cartoon that Ken Ham has happily encouraged everyone on the internet to share around.

It’s perfect. We ask for evidence of their god, they point to one of their own silly texts. And we really are stunned, shocked, and surprised, just like the guy in the cartoon…because we had no idea anyone could be that stupid.

Who the hell is @Becky_Garrison?

And how can a journalist have so little regard for the truth? Stephanie Zvan documents her bizarre behavior — apparently she was deeply offended by the fact that someone briefly put her on the block_bot a few months ago, and now she’s fully bought into this myth that FreethoughtBlogs is out to get her by sending our shadowy agents at the block_bot and Atheism+ to harass her.

I have no idea who she is, nor do I care.

But I did learn something from her ill-founded accusations and weird evasions, I think.

There are people who get really, really upset if you don’t pay attention to them — it’s an ego thing. I heard secondhand, for instance, that Thunderf00t had triumphantly announced that he was teaching me a lesson by blocking me on twitter — to which I could only say, “WTF?” I have no problem at all with people blocking me, or not reading my blog, or deleting my comments elsewhere. I have no sense of entitlement that says anyone is required to pay any attention to me. Go ahead!

So the block_bot is of zero concern to me. I could be put on it, and I’d shrug my shoulders and bravely soldier on. I don’t use it, so I’m doubly unconcerned. Atheism+ has some good goals, I think it’s great that they’re promoting their cause, but if I were banned there (and I could be, someday — I’ve been criticized by people on Atheism+ before), I would be unperturbed, and I’d still think what they were trying to do is good.

I’ve said all that before. It’s not what I learned from Becky Garrison’s disconnected discomfiture. I got some insight into a tactic being used.

These Ego Warriors are desperately trying to connect the dots. They don’t like being on the block_bot, and they have this vague unease about not fitting in with the community on Atheism+ — so they must be the same thing! Throw them into the pot!

And then FreethoughtBlogs…it has a loud voice, it has members who share some common ideals with Atheism+ — never mind that no one on FtB has anything to do with the block_bot, and I don’t know that any of us even use it, and none of us seem to be particularly active on the Atheism+ forums, even if Greta and Jen were instrumental in inspiring a greater focus on social justice — toss them in the pot, too! Anyone who is ever critical of the Big Names in Atheism must be in cahoots to destroy the godless community (Love It Unquestioningly or Leave It could be the Ego Warriors motto), so, in true conspiracy theorist fashion, they must all be working together, and someone must be pulling the puppet strings.

Here’s what they see as a win:win situation, though. Either we’ll all unreservedly announce that yes, We Are All One, We Are The Freethought Borg, your suspicions are all confirmed, or we’ll start throwing people under the bus. We’ll disown Atheism+ or the block_bot, and thereby use our loud voice to put down those terrible individuals who crush their ego by not listening to them.

Listen, Becky Garrison and all the other clowns who throw around the term “FtBullies”, and wrap your biased little brains around this: I do neither. I am not going to fit into the twisted dichotomy that you so deeply desire.

I support Atheism+, the block_bot, American Atheists, American Humanists, the IHEU, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, CFI, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the National Center for Science Education. That does not mean I own or control any of those groups. They do not even ask me for advice, I do not have any official input into their operations, and sometimes, even often, they may disagree with me, and I may criticize them. And when I do criticize them, it’s because I generally support them, and have opinions (which they rarely share) about how they can better do their job.

FreethoughtBlogs is not controlled in any way by any of those organizations, or the Democrats, or the Republicans, or the Libertarians, or the UUs, or the Mormon Church. We are a completely independent entity, containing a diverse group of writers who don’t even completely agree with each other, although we do tend to skew our selection for membership in the direction of supporting progressive values. We are not the propaganda arm of any organization, we eke out a small amount of money to keep ourselves going with ads (and soon we’ll be offering a subscription service), and are beholden to no one, which means we are free to disagree with just about everyone. Also, need I mention, I do not run FtB, and the other bloggers here can disagree with me on just about anything. And we like it that way.

So please, stop trying to fit a complex set of diverse voices into your pathetic, simplistic narrative. And if you find something we say bruises your fragile ego, just stop reading us. We won’t mind. Actually, we’d prefer it if you freaking narcissists would take a hike and leave us alone.

Sean B. Carroll talking to atheists

This morning, in 45 minutes, I’ll be tuning in to AM950 to listen to Sean B. Carroll on Atheists Talk radio. He’s going to be talking about his new book, Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize, the story of Jacques Monod and Albert Camus. Bringing the Two Cultures together!

Validating religious symbolism…with a poll

This is a cross in Middleboro, Massachusetts. It’s on public land in the town.

middleborocross

Would you believe that the people of the town stupidly looked at that and decided there was no conflict at all between a great big Christian symbol that says OBEY WORSHIP and secular government? None at all. Let’s just pretend that that is a secular message.

They have a poll, of course. It was apparently going very much the wrong way yesterday, but Cuttlefish has had his minions shredding it. I’m just coming along to administer the coup de grace.

What’s your take on the Middleboro cross?

It’s a religious symbol that has no place on public property 53%

It’s an appropriate expression of religious freedom 46%

How can smart atheists be bamboozled by Joseph Atwill?

Atwill is this guy who claims to have evidence that Jesus wasn’t real: Christianity was a cunning product of a Roman imperial conspiracy, intentionally designed to placate those troublesome Jews, and he claims to have a Roman confession that he’ll reveal next week.

I think a few too many atheists are seeing “Scholar Says Jesus Was Fake” and are not thinking any more deeply than that. The whole idea is ridiculous.

The Roman idea of social engineering was to plant a legionary fortress, or retire a bunch of legionaries, into an area that they wanted to pacify. Incorporating regional gods into their pantheon by synonymizing them, sure; far-fetched long-term plans that would require centuries to mature into a tangible result, no.

Has there ever been a religion that was created by a government that actually caught on? Most religions die young; they have a very low success rate. It’s not a smart investment — it’s like buying a lottery ticket. If Romans had been in this game of inventing religions to win over the natives to Romanism, we’d see more examples of failures than long term success.

What would you think of a conspiracy theorist who announced that Joseph Smith had been a secret government agent with the mission of persuading a large number of people to settle that barren Utah territory? Or that L. Ron Hubbard was J. Edgar Hoover’s boy, part of a plan to provide an alternative to the Communist Party for impressionable youth? There are always people to whom a conspiracy theory is attractive, but more rational people would just laugh at the very idea.

Finally, as Russell Glasser points out, real scholars don’t spring the evidence on their audiences by press release or by public lecture — it is first reviewed by independent scholars for authenticity.

If you’re one of the many atheists who gleefully forwarded this to me or credulously mentioned it on twitter…hello, there. I see you’ve already met the good friend of so many half-baked wackos in the world, Confirmation Bias.

Richard Carrier demolishes Atwill in detail.

How cute

Answers in Genesis has gotten in the billboard business, just in time for Christmas.

To all of our atheist friends: THANK GOD YOU'RE WRONG

To all of our atheist friends: THANK GOD YOU’RE WRONG

To which I can only say…but I’m not wrong, there’s no god to thank, so why are you talking to yourselves so publicly and loudly? It’s a bit embarrassing, actually.

Just in case you think you’re talking to us, I’m sorry — that message isn’t going to change our minds in the slightest.

Isn’t there a dank dark hole you should be crawling into somewhere?

A hopeless muddle

James May, one of the presenters on Top Gear, is trying his hand at providing a little science education. I want to say…please stop. Here he is trying to answer the question, “Are humans still evolving?” In the end he says the right answer — yes they are! — but the path he takes to get there is terrible.

It’s little things that make me wonder if anyone is actually editing his copy. For instance, he helpfully explains that you, the viewer, were produced by your parents having sex. Then he says:

That’s how evolution is driven: by reproduction. But is that still true?

Uh, yes? We haven’t stopped reproducing, so we should be able to stop right there then.

But no, he continues on. He tries to explain evolution, and does manage to verbally describe natural selection correctly as differential survival and reproduction, but it’s illustrated with a pair of goats with telescoping necks. That doesn’t help. He’s describing Darwinian selection and showing it as Lamarckian — it’s a very mixed signal. And as we’ll see, he still seems to be thinking like will and experience drive evolutionary changes.

And do I need to mention that he doesn’t seem aware of processes other than selection in evolution? You need to realize the importance of drift to answer the question of whether evolution is continuing in humans, especially when you’re prone to say glib nonsense like “humans have turned the process of natural selection on its head,” whatever that means.

He also claims along the way that Darwin “tracing this evolutionary process backwards proved that all life came from a common source.” No, he didn’t. A hypothesis is not proof. He found morphological evidence for the relatedness of some groups, but the evidence for common ancestry of all forms wouldn’t really become overwhelming until the molecular evidence linked animals and plants and mushrooms and bacteria together.

By the time he gets around to talking the details of human evolution, we’re mired in a hopeless mess. Apparently, one reason we’re still evolving is that “certain characteristics will improve your chances of breeding” but then he helpfully explains that “its not as if ugly and stupid people don’t get to have children”. So which is it? Is natural selection selecting away for chiseled abs, or whatever he regards as a significant advantage, or isn’t it? And if people he judges as unattractive are having children, that driving force of evolution, then isn’t that undermining his understanding of the process?

And please, if you can’t even get selection straight in your head, please don’t try to explain population structure. He has a weird discursion in which he explains that “the genetic mutations that drive evolution can be most commonly found in a small gene pool” and then somehow tries to argue that we’re “too cosmopolitan,” that the fact that people from all over the world can now intermarry somehow “cuts down on those mutations.” I have no idea what he’s talking about. I suspect he doesn’t either.

Then, as evidence that we have been evolving, he points to big screen TVs as proof that we’re smarter than Stone Age people. Great — we now have a new IQ test. Just measure the dimensions of the individual’s TV. It’ll probably work about as well as regular IQ tests.

He tries to get to specific traits: lack of wisdom teeth is evidence of human evolution, apparently. Never mind that the changes are recent and mixed, and that it’s more likely a plastic response to changes in our diet than a trait that’s been selected for specifically. It’s a very bad example, unless he’s going to argue for selection for people with fewer teeth in their jaws. Do you typically count your date’s molars?

His ultimate proof that humans are evolving is the appearance of lactose tolerance in adults. That is pretty good evidence, I’ll agree…but he messes it up completely.

10,000 years ago, before anybody had had the bright idea of milking a cow, no human could digest the lactose in milk beyond childhood. But now, after a hundred years of drinking cream and milk and squeezy cheese in a can, 99% of people can.

He doesn’t even get the numbers right. North Europeans have a frequency of lactose tolerance of about 90%; in South Europeans it is about 30%, and less than 10% in people of Southeast Asian descent. This is not a largely lactose tolerant world.

And of course, his explanation is screaming nonsense. We are not lactose tolerant because we’ve been drinking milk; we’ve been drinking milk because we’re lactose tolerant. It is not a trait that appeared in the last century.

Why is this guy babbling badly about evolution? Did he have any informed, educated scientists to consult who could tell him not to make such a ghastly botch of it all?

There’s a reason we need good science journalists

It’s because the bad ones are appalling hacks. Here’s an ad for The Sun looking for a scientist to give them the answer they want.

Media outlet: The Sun Freelance journalist: Matthew Barbour Query: Further to my last request, I also now urgently need an expert who will say tattoos can give you cancer. We can plug any relevant organisation, give copy approval, and pay a fee. Please get back to me asap if you can help.

Media outlet: The Sun

Freelance journalist: Matthew Barbour

Query: Further to my last request, I also now urgently need an expert who will say tattoos can give you cancer. We can plug any relevant organisation, give copy approval, and pay a fee. Please get back to me asap if you can help.

May I suggest that Matthew Barbour ought to be drummed out of journalism, and that any “expert” who is cited in his article promoting lies for cash ought to be similarly ridiculed?

If anyone sees this article appear, let me know.

Are we done with Bigfoot yet?

Yeah, I think it’s over. Ketchum’s group — you know, the one that collected possum hairs and sequenced random garbage and called it Bigfoot — now is airing a Bigfoot video, supposedly the best evidence yet. You be the judge.

They spent half a million dollars gathering that, and they couldn’t even hand the camera over to someone who knew how to focus.