CFI response roundup

Despite all my purported attempts at mind control and cunning psychological manipulation, we don’t get all that much unanimity here on freethoughtblogs. Sure, we occasionally get some outrage on the far right wing or the Catholic Church or the wacky patriarchal Religious Right that get a bunch of us fired up, but rarely do we get so many similar posts expressing outrage at one of our own.

But then, a sense of betrayal will do that.

Here’s a collection of FtB posts made in the last day about that astonishingly brief and empty statement from CFI. I have no idea what they were thinking; it was absolutely the worst PR effort since the BP oil spill. Ron Lindsay playing Tony Hayward would have been a better response.

Here’s what the locals had to say:

Be sure to read Dana’s post — she’s an under-appreciated warrior around here.

Center for Inquiry has really blown it, and I’m getting so much email and seeing so many comments from people who are abandoning the organization. It’s terribly sad. Please don’t forget that the staff at CFI are a fine and dilligent and dedicated and aspirational group of people who have always impressed me, and that this is a failure at the top — they could still rebound from this when Lindsay retires (as long as bad leadership doesn’t perpetuate itself, that is).

In the meantime, there are plenty of other organizations that haven’t gone full metal asshat on us. Throw your support in these directions, as your temperament suits you:

Also, a matter of significant importance: build your own local groups. It’s fine to have national organizations that provide leadership, but what really counts is your community. Build one. You don’t have to bow in obedience to any pope of skepticism, you know, and we biologists know that building networks from the bottom up rather than top down always produces more complex and rewarding results.

Do Texas legislators have some kind of bet on who says the dumbest thing?

I have to ask, because a Texas Republican has just argued that abortion needs to be banned because fetuses are masturbating.

As the House of Representatives gears up for Tuesday’s debate on HR 1797, a bill that would outlaw virtually all abortions 20 weeks post fertilization, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) argued in favor of banning abortions even earlier in pregnancy because, he said, male fetuses that age were already, shall we say, spanking the monkey.

“Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful,” said Burgess, a former OB/GYN. “They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?”

Hey, I watch embryonic zebrafish do all kinds of flips and kicks at an age before any of the descending motor outputs have grown into the spinal cord. Motor activity is simply not a necessary indicator of cognition.

But also, I think the good Christians of Texas ought to regard this as an argument for abortion — the sinful little self-polluters must be punished!

Amanda Marcotte politely discusses the consequences of the CFI statement

Far more politely than it deserves, anyway.

If you want an effective movement with a broad reach, this is roughly the dumbest move you could make. However, if your goal is to reinforce the public’s belief that secularism and atheism particularly is nothing but a bunch of misanthropic white guys whose only real goal is feeling superior to believers but who don’t care about making real change in the world, well job well done. And fuck you.

I really wish I could have overheard what was going on in the CFI boardroom, because while straining to avert a PR disaster, they seem to have instead launched a PR armageddon. What were they thinking?

Even if they were trying to chart the maximally inoffensive course between jagged shoals, that horribly written limp noodle of a mindless document was going to offend simply due to it’s astounding vapidity.

The KEY to understanding Genesis!

Daniel Friedmann has found it! It’s the scaling factor that lets you convert the ‘days’ of God in the book of Genesis into human years. This is reported with total credulity in the Toronto Star.

Let’s take the word “day.” In terms of the first six days, they’re “creation days,” which are different from just days. There are a number of sources in all the religions that interpret those days as periods of time.

I’m certainly not the first. What is unique about my work is that I went into the sources and I said, “Look, if the Bible is self-contained and if I say a day is not 24 hours, then what is it? Whatever it is it, it must be in the Bible. I can’t make it up from science, or from what I know today, and push it back on the Bible.”

What I discovered was a scaling factor — just like when you look at the blueprint of your home. It doesn’t make a lot of sense until you look at the right-hand corner and it says “one inch equals eight feet” and so on. So I went looking for that in the Bible and I found it. It told me that one day is 2.56 billion years. That is the epoch of time that each of those six “creation days” is.

Now when you read Genesis, which tells you what happened on each day, and use other sources to put those events in a timeline and then convert through this 2.56 billion per day you get an astonishing thing! You get the age of the universe to the decimal place of where science has measured it. You get the first life to the decimal place of where science has measured it. You get the age of the sun and so on.

In my first book I showed 19 different dates that came out of the Bible and came out of the scientific record and they match. That’s mathematically impossible unless the scale of 2.56 billion years works.

This is standard day-age creationism; it’s a tactic that’s been used to try and reconcile the Bible with geology for over a century. One problem: it doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter what your scaling factor is, the biblical order doesn’t fit the scientific order, and a a simple linear scaling factor produces dates that are totally out of whack with reality. Here, look: these are the events by day from the first book of Genesis, multiplied by the magic scaling factor. Multiplying 6 god days by 2.56 billion years per god day, doesn’t give you a number that’s even close to the scientifically measured age of the universe, and the dates don’t line up in even an approximation for the origin of life.

Day 1 15.36 billion years ago God creates the earth The currently known age of the universe is 13.8 billion years; the earth is 4.5 billion years old.
Day 2 12.8 billion years ago God separates firmament and waters This one doesn’t make a lick of goddamn sense, until you understand that in middle eastern mythology 3,000 years ago, the universe is filled with water, and we’re inside a bubble floating in it.
Day 3 10.24 billion years ago God creates dry land and plants fruit trees, grass, and herbs 10 billion years ago, the earth didn’t exist. The oceans formed as a hot rock cooled, at the end of the Hadean, and plate tectonics were in action about 4 billion years ago.
Day 4 7.68 billion years ago God creates the sun and the moon The sun’s formation preceded that of the earth. Need I point out that this model has plants growing for 2.56 billion years without a sun?
Day 5 5.12 billion years ago God creates birds, whales, and fish 5 billion years ago, the solar nebula was condensing from clouds of interstellar gas. “Fish”, loosely speaking, evolved in the Cambrian, half a billion years ago; his dates are off by an order of magnitude. Birds evolved in the Mesozoic, and whales in the Cenozoic, so he’s off even further there.
Day 6 2.56 billion years ago God creates cattle, creeping things, and people So cows and people would be older than Eukaryotes? I don’t think so.

Daniel Friedmann’s model only works for people so primitive that they don’t know how to use a calculator and are baffled by simple algebraic manipulations. He claims he has made the scientific and biblical timelines correlate — I don’t see how.

Furthermore, he claims that the biblical account is perfectly concordant with the scientific explanation, with just three exceptions, phenomena that science fails to explain but that the Bible can account for perfectly.

The most famous one is the beginning. If you look at the Big Bang theory, it explains absolutely everything from the beginning until today very nicely but it has no idea how the beginning came about.

The next most famous one is what the Bible calls the human soul. The Bible says the bodies of humans were made just like the bodies of animals. In some cases science recognizes the soul, in some cases it says there is no soul, we’re just super-intelligent. The key thing is, what does a soul bring to a human that it doesn’t bring to anyone else? The ability to speak and the ability to envision the future.

We’re the only species according to science that can do that. That leads to painting and art and things that in an evolutionary context are completely useless. The Bible tells us that these behaviours come from the soul, the divine soul, from the outside. Science agrees that these behaviours are completely unique to humans but they don’t have an explanation for where they come from.

The third thing is the appearance of sea creatures during what science calls the Cambrian explosion. What happened then came out outside of the scientific natural process. God interfered and did something miraculous.

Those are the only three times that something was happening that was not just cause and effect within the normal laws of nature.

No, we’ve got a good idea of how multicellular animal life evolved prior to and during the Cambrian—which was 500 million years ago, not 5 billion, as his timeline would claim. The capabilities of humans are a product of their material brain, no soul (which kooks like Friedmann can neither define nor measure) required. And if we have no idea what initiated the Big Bang, neither does Friedmann — “God did it” is not an explanation.

Would you believe that Friedmann is an “engineering physicist” and “CEO of Canada’s leading aerospace company, MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates”? Incredible as it sounds, I checked, and it’s true. There’s no denying he must have a certain kind of intelligence, but jeez, religion can really throw a good brain off the rails, can’t it?

David Silverman vs. Justin Vacula

Silverman appeared on Vacula’s “Brave Hero” (jeez, but it hurts just to type that ridiculous name for a show dedicated to hating) radio tonight and gave him a good chewing out. Silverman was far more diplomatic than I could ever be: he encouraged Vacula, telling him he could be a great activist, while also unambiguously telling him to step away from the aptly named slymepit, to stop “poking and prodding” — that is, harassing people — and to stop supporting the nonsense, the lies, the photoshops, the sniping coming out of that den of lunatics. It was a solid rebuke, and an unambiguous denunciation of the slymepit. It was great.

I was in the chatroom for the show, and it was like being in a mob of baboons. They were barking mad and raving — rather than arguing for Vacula, their approach was solely one of throwing around false equivalencies, in particular, demanding that Silverman denounce me as severely as he was the slymers (this was before I’d even logged in. Silverman was not there to talk about me, it was a debate between Silverman and Vacula, but Vacula and his cronies did an awful lot of yelling about me.) It ended up with a bunch of them just typing in all caps that I SUPPORT TENTACLE RAPE, and that I HATE ATHEISTS IN THE MILITARY, so I left.

It was ridiculous. Here, I’ll make it easy for everyone: let’s stipulate that I’m an evil, lecherous old man, creepy and horrible, far worse than anyone on the slymepit; Pharyngula is a hotbed of wickedness, all the commenters here are demonic (sorry); and that everything I’ve ever done has been irredeemably destructive to atheism, skepticism, science, and the American way. OK? Call me the Atheist Satan.

Now, what the heck does that have to do with the Silverman/Vacula discussion? How does it excuse fake twitter accounts, rape threats, bad photoshops, a multi-year campaign of denigration against Rebecca Watson, Ophelia Benson, Stephanie Zvan, Amanda Marcotte, Jennifer McCreight, and basically anyone who argues that the atheist movement ought to support greater equality? How does it justify Vacula acting as a representative for A Voice For Men at conferences advocating for greater support for women in secularism, a cause he opposes?

David Silverman can disagree with me on various issues and can tell me I’m wrong in no quibbling terms, and I might argue with him, but the one thing I won’t do, that would make me look pathetic, childish, and weak, is argue that what I do is OK because Vacula or some other boogeyman is worse than I am. And yet that’s the only argument these pathetic, childish, weak bozos had.

That’s not obnoxious. I could show you obnoxious, if you’d like.

Down there in sunny wingnutty Florida, a judge recently decided that Christian groups could “passively” distribute Bibles in public schools — that is, they could leave them on tables and allow students to pick them up. Mary Elizabeth Williams thinks that’s a bad idea, and I agree — it’s a decision that opens the door to “passive” proselytization.

The Central Florida Freethought Community decided to make a reasonable response, by passively distributing some literature of their own. And now Williams decides that atheists are just as obnoxious as Christians.

But after “1,700 students left school with Bibles” in the wake of one of those “passive” distributions in 11 schools last winter, the atheist groups decided to make a point. They asked for permission to distribute some materials of their own, including books and pamphlets with titles including “An X-Rated Book,” “Jesus Is Dead” and “Why I Am Not a Muslim.” Which if I’m not mistaken is a douche move.

Ms. Williams is mistaken. It is not a douche move. It is a responsible protest. Is the only protest that she won’t regard as a “douche move” one that is completely unobjectionable and does not annoy anyone in any way? Because that isn’t any kind of protest action at all.

And what’s so bad about these particular pamphlets and books? “An X-Rated Book: Sex & Obscenity in the Bible” is a biblical exegesis. Jesus Is Dead is Robert Price’s analysis of the historicity of Jesus; it’s a serious book that examines the sources and the myths. Why I Am Not a Muslim is Ibn Warraq’s call for human rights and rejection of the dogma of Islam.

In the light of a court decision that allows Christian groups to flood the schools with lies and nonsense, a secular group decides to offset that influence by providing honest scholarship and serious discussions of the issues within religion. What’s douchey or obnoxious about that? Did Williams just recite the titles expecting people to react emotionally with shock and horror because they’re obviously critical of faith? Has she read any of the books in question?

What’s really a douche move is for a columnist to blow the Jesus dog-whistle to get knee-jerk support for labeling atheists as “obnoxious”, without considering for an instant the substance of their arguments. Oh, no, they said “Jesus is dead,” they must be bad, bad people, and you must agree because they are giving kids rational reasons to turn away from faith. Oh dismay. Oh fretful dithering. Oh how dare they.

And I say, oh fuck Jesus and Mohammed and all those other frauds, and be grateful that atheists are being gentle and generous in their efforts to help educate children. Because those pious fanatics who oppose us won’t be generous in return.

Hey, Ken Ham: don’t run away!

The Houston Atheists have a challenge for you. Aron Ra and I are willing to lower ourselves to engage you in debate. This is a very rare exception to my policy of refusing to debate clowns — you should take advantage of it.

Houston. 1 August. You’re going to be there anyway. We’ll meet you to discuss your belief that the earth is only roughly 6000 years old, and that common descent is false. Imagine the prestige you’ll acquire when you rout the scientists with your logic and evidence! Imagine real hard!

If you don’t show up, Houston Atheists will be putting on a series of talks that directly refute the nonsense Answers in Genesis peddles, without you there to challenge it.

These cancers aren’t curing themselves! Nurse, more radioactive lead atoms on whirling rays of light!

This guy, Ramachandran Lyer, has been spamming my email pretty much nonstop today. He’s very excited, I guess — he thinks he has discovered a cure for cancer. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Radioactive lead can cure Cancer- Mechanism: My view

The human body is made of atoms. Every cell, in Skin, bone, nerves, veins is the compound of various atoms. The deficiency of a particular mineral will result in diseases. For example iron deficiency results in thrombasthenia, hemophilia and anemic.

Not so fast! This is an amazing preface. So the justification for your treatment begins with the fact that we’re made of atoms? Oh my god, that’s true! I can’t argue with that at all!

And yes, mineral deficiencies can cause health problems! Ramachandran is like an oracle speaking nothing but truth — sweet incontestable truth. This has been established in his very first paragraph.

For curing this we are injecting blood and platelet. The blood transfusion, if often carried out will weaken the walls of veins and lungs. If the same iron/ Hb is eaten by cancer cell, the iron cannot be replaced by more blood as the mound will suck the Hb and cancer cell grow and block the way.

Wait, curing “this”? What is the referent here? Cancer, I presume, from the title?

But we don’t cure cancer with blood transfusions. We don’t even try. Well, I suppose we try to address leukemias that way, but isn’t it more to keep the patient alive than to actually treat the cancer? I’m getting confused, Ramachandran. Your aura of infallibility is fading.

So, cancer is a mound that sucks iron away from healthy hemoglobin. OK, that’s novel. Do you know anything about cancer biology, Ramachandran? Because it’s a little bit more complicated than that.

To prevent this cancer cell from sucking the iron, we are to coat/ laminate the iron with lead, and lead cannot be sucked by the cancer mound. This lamination on Hb will stay for 2 to 3 days and comes out through motion.

Whuzza…laminate the iron with lead? Just like that? But the iron ions in hemoglobin are all bound up in this lovely heterocyclic ring — how do these lead molecules fit? How do you “laminate” the iron without disrupting its respiratory function? And what does this have to do with cancer?

The physical atom of lead or any metal cannot be broken as astral atoms.

I do not know of these astral atoms.

But if the same atom is sent in to the body as whirls of light rays, in the form of vibrations (here is a theory the air / aether carry the light rays) created by lighting herbal oil which produce/ let out lead, on heat, penetrate in to the body through skin, as ascorbic acid, forms amino acid in bile, mix with blood and laminates the haemoglobin and prevents cancer cells from sucking the iron as it’s nourishment.

I knew vibrations would have to come into play somewhere in here, but Ramachandran also tosses in aether and herbal oils! Bravo!

I guess I see how Ramachandran’s planning to laminate the iron with lead, with a kind of photonic airbrush, with whirling light rays swooshing out of burning herbal oils. That could be dramatic, but I’m not convinced that Ramachandran actually has any evidence that he can do that.

The blood that produced heat due to friction of cells will create vacuum in the blood compound/ components. This vacuum should be filled with aether immediately which has the attraction power to pull the light rays created by the oil lamp lit with herbal oils that is filled with other minerals along with lead and resins in the same herbal. This heat created by vacuum, if not filled will shrink and to adjust itself, will suck hydrogen from the blood for neutralizing and oxygen is eaten by Cancer mound, and patient needs more oxygen and water. The heat shows the blood is acidic, and we feel the increase in pH with salt water may give some relief to the patient.

OK, now that’s just crazy talk.

My dear friend Ramachandran is a graduate of the Utkal University of Culture, which does not have a medical or scientific program of any kind. I haven’t quite been able to figure out what they teach or do there, but they do have a kind of mission statement.

Culture in its essence is viewed here as ways of loving together.

Odisha has a unique distinction of acting as a confluence of diverse faiths by striking harmony amongst religious faiths from animism, fetishism, shamanism, ancestore worship to highly evolved froms of religions like Brahminism, Jainism, Buddhism, Islam, Chiristianity and Mahima Dharma.

Vaishnavism, Saivism, Saivism, Sakta , Ganapatya, Sour-all forms of Brahminic worship are conceived in the wonderful matrix of the great and grand cult of jagannath that embraces in its grandeur quintessences of different religions signifying world-view. The Oriya literature contained this world-view in its essence;

“Let my lie rot in hell”
But be the world saved’’ –(Bhima Bhoi)

These lines of the saint poet Bhima Bhoi express sentiments of self-sacrifice and selflessness for the well-being of the world at large. Through centuries, the state retained its cultural identity within the mainstream of pan-India culture. Odisha is a land of rich and diverse artistic achievements. Its ageless art and flourishing cultural are the products of a long historical process.Spiritual, philosophical, professional and human dimensions are merged into the process to yield finest efforts of cultural life. Against this background, Odisha Justifiable pioneered the establishment of the first ever University of culture of the country.

Well, alrighty then! They teach word salad and oogley-boogley piety. Ramachandran certainly is a fine product of his education.

Is it a Godwin if it’s accurate?

Yet another Republican has once again argued that the trauma of rape makes women infertile: Trent Franks of Arizona claimed “the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are [sic] very low.” He’s just one more in a long line of thugs spouting pseudoscientific lies.

“In the aftermath of Akin’s statement, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on a 1972 essay by an obstetrician named Fred Mecklenburg, who cited a Nazi experiment in which women were told they were on their way to die in the gas chambers—and then were allowed to live, so that doctors could check whether they would still ovulate. Since few did, Mecklenburg claimed that women exposed to the emotional trauma of rape wouldn’t be able to become pregnant, either. (He also argued that rapists are infertile because they masturbate a lot.) The essay was published in a book financed by A.U.L.”

A.U.L. is Americans United for Life, a pro-life advocacy group with increasing clout because of its success in drafting model state laws to restrict abortion. The line from the Nazis to Mecklenberg to Akin and Frank runs through Jack Wilke, a doctor who is the former head of the National Right to Life Committee. He said, "What is certainly one of the most important reasons why a rape victim rarely gets pregnant, and that’s physical trauma." And he stuck with this when the Los Angeles Times called to ask him about Akin last year. When I asked A.U.L. head Charmaine Yoest about the claim that rape rarely results in pregnancy, she was smarter and called it “a distraction.” Abortion opponents sure do keep bringing it up, though.

Right, the “argument from hideously unethical evil Nazi experiment” is just what I’d expect Republicans to do.

They always surprise you

Creationists most powerful weapon is their ability to catch you off guard with their unbelievably stupid answers to questions, and here’s a beautiful example. Someone tries to get creationists to explain how they reconcile deep space with a young earth.

I would like to discuss what appears to be a major body of evidence against young earth creationism – astrophysics.

The distances to a large number of astronomical objects have been measured by a variety of methods. Astrophysicists consider the distances to galaxies to be of the order of millions of light years, and the majority of stars within the Milky Way to be up to 100,000 light years away. If this were true, and given the invariance of the speed of light, clearly YEC is false (irrespective of the status of evolution).

Just as one example, a cepheid variable star in the galaxy M81 was observed by the Hubble telescope and measured at about 11 million light years away. See here: http://outreach.atnf…e_cepheids.html

So what is the YEC position in regard to this. Is it:

a ) The speed of light is not invariant, or

b ) All of the objects observed by astronomers, from stars to galaxies to quasars, do in fact exist within 6000 light years of Earth?

I read that, and thought, I know! I know! It’s c) they’re distant, but the light was created en route! I’m so smart.

And so wrong. Surprise! Here’s the answer one creationist gave.

If it takes 11 million years to travel to earth, how can i see it now? I’m only 20.

If it takes 11 million years to travel to earth then the viewer would need to be 11 million years old.

Aaaaaand…we’re done here. I’m gonna go close my eyes and rest a bit.