Oh, no! Look at this: Stephanie Zvan is dissing me.
PZ’s talks on biology are okay and stuff. I mean, they’re educational and all, but…don’t tell PZ, but bio just doesn’t sing to me the way it does to a lot of people.
I’m going to curl up in a ball and cry now.
Far right wing talk show host Kevin Swanson has a few things to say about birth control.
I’m beginning to get some evidence from certain doctors and certain scientists that have done research on women’s wombs after they’ve gone through the surgery, and they’ve compared the wombs of women who were on the birth control pill to those who were not on the birth control pill. And they have found that with women who are on the birth control pill, there are these little tiny fetuses, these little babies, that are embedded into the womb. They’re just like dead babies. They’re on the inside of the womb. And these wombs of women who have been on the birth control pill effectively have become graveyards for lots and lots of little babies.
I am astonished at the specificity of that citation: “some evidence from certain doctors and certain scientists”. If anybody can track down the scientific paper in which that was published, I’ll not only post the verification, but I’ll reproduced the illustrations of the uteruses with the little tiny baby graveyards in them.
For now, this is the best I can do. I’ve taught histology, we even have slides of sections of uteruses (which, unfortunately, do not have the information about whether the source was a godless fornicator on the label), and this is what they look like.
What Swanson said wasn’t science. It’s something different. I think the technical term is making shit up.
Craig is not one of the clever ones. He’s one of the glib, superficial ones, and he impresses a lot of superficial people. Here’s one of his latest, the Argument for God from Intentionality.
God is the best explanation of intentional states of consciousness in the world. Philosophers are puzzled by states of intentionality. Intentionality is the property of being about something or of something. It’s signifies the object directedness of our thoughts.
For example, I can think about my summer vacation or I can think of my wife. No physical object has this sort of intentionality. A chair or a stone or a glob of tissue like the one like the brain is not about or of something else. Only mental states or states of consciousness are about other things. As a materialist, Dr. Rosenberg [the interlocutor] recognizes that and so concludes that on atheism there really are no intentional states.
Dr. Rosenberg boldly claims that we never really think about anything. But this seems incredible. Obviously I am thinking about Dr. Rosenberg’s argument. This seems to me to be a reductio ad absurdum of atheism. By contrast, on theism because God is a mind it’s hardly surprising that there should be finite minds. Thus intentional states fit comfortably into a theistic worldview.
So we may argue:
1. If God did not exist, [then] intentional states of consciousness would not exist.
2. But intentional states of consciousness do exist!
3. Therefore, God exists.
The link is to a philosopher’s debunking, pointing out the obvious fallacies and some of the more subtle arguments against it from serious, non-superficial philosophers. It doesn’t bring up the first counter-argument that came to my mind, though.
We know what the physical nature of intentional states are; they are patterns of electrical activity in a network of cells with specific physical properties. We don’t know how to read that pattern precisely, but we can measure and observe them: stick someone in an MRI and ask them to think about different things or engage in different cognitive tasks, and presto, blood flows shift in the brain and different areas light up with different levels of activity. These are properties not seen in chairs or stones, which lack the neuronal substrates that generate these patterns.
Intentional states are ultimately entirely physical states; they are dependent on organized brain matter burning energy actively and responsively in different patterns. There is no evidence that they require supernatural input, so Craig’s first premise that these could not exist without supernatural input is not demonstrated.
There is hope! Steven Novella has replied to my reply to his original disagreement (making this a reply to a reply to a reply to a blog article…I take it back, maybe there is no hope.) But no, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and I don’t have to be as long-winded as last time. Let’s jump right to his new conclusion:
I think it would be helpful to critically examine our own narratives about what the rationalist, skeptical, and atheists movements are, what different groups believe, and what motivates them. I see many straw men that persist despite the evidence and despite numerous attempts at correction.
Exactly! That’s what I’ve been saying! Now in my last post, I provided lots of evidence that my characterization of a skeptical movement rife with bias and stereotypes against atheists and other non-traditional (for skeptics) causes was valid; now I just have to ask Novella one more time to critically examine his own narrative, and because he’s a good guy dedicated to the evidence, he’ll recognize the problem. And what do you know, his argument is based on kicking the stuffing out of a straw man atheist.
Have you seen Missourie House Bill 291? Wow, it’s pushing intelligent design, um, boldly. Like a gibbon that just sat down in a pool of sriracha sauce in a big tub of feces, that kind of “boldly”.
It starts by defining evolution in one paragraph, and by evolution we mean just common descent. It says nothing specific about mechanisms or evidence, and is most concerned that evolution denies “operation of any intelligence, supernatural event, God or theistic figure”. And then we get 12 paragraphs defining Intelligent Design, which consist mainly of pointing to biological processes and phenomena and claiming that they are the result of intelligence.
I only point out the disparity in the length of the treatments to contrast it with one of the major demands of this law: equal treatment.
(6) “Equal treatment”, the approximate equal teaching of each specified viewpoint for a single course of instruction in course textbooks as follows:
(a) Course textbooks contain approximately an equal number of pages of relevant material teaching each viewpoint. Textbook materials include text, pictures, illustrations, graphs, tables, questions, discussion items, student exercises, teacher support material and other material supplied with the textbook, with freedom allowed the textbook publishers to arrange, substitute, or size material to provide an approximately equal teaching of each viewpoint for a specific textbook;
(b) In the absence of course textbooks which provide equal treatment, written interim material may provide alternate viewpoints, with interim textbook material developed pursuant to subsection 6 of this section as a recommended source;
No credible science textbook on the planet meets those requirements, and they’re just plain silly. Even setting aside the content, the scientific community is churning out hundreds of papers on evolutionary biology every week, we have a million scientists in biology, while Intelligent Design creationism is a fringe idea producing virtually no results of any worth, virtually no publications (and most of what they’ve got are in house journals, hothouse environments set up to protect their work from criticism), no data, no signficant complexity that needs careful pedagogical explanation—yet they’re demanding equal page counts in our textbooks?
I’m looking at our current introductory biology textbook, Life, by Sadava, Hillis, Hiller, and Berenbaum. Not counting the appendices and index, it’s 1259 pages long, it’s saturated with evolutionary biology, and it doesn’t say anything at all about intelligent design. So those authors had better get to work and make it 2518 pages long, half of it fluff, to satisfy a Missouri crackpot? Who gains from that? (Well, the textbook publishers would, I suppose.)
Their demands are also contradictory. Here’s their definition of “standard science”, which must be taught:
3. All science taught in Missouri public elementary and secondary schools, including material concerning physics, chemistry, biology, health, physiology, genetics, astronomy, cosmology, geology, paleontology, anthropology, ecology, climatology, or other science topics shall be standard science. All standard science course materials and instruction shall meet the following criteria:
(1) If empirical data is taught, only such data which has been verified or is currently capable of being verified by observation or experimentation shall be taught. Data with the appearance of empirical data which has never been verified and is currently incapable of being verified shall be identified as nonverifiable when taught orally or in writing;
(2) If scientific law is taught, written textbooks statements identified as scientific law shall have no known exceptions of verified empirical data;
(3) If scientific theory is taught, the theory shall be identified as theory when taught orally or in writing. Empirical data and conjecture may be presented to support taught theory where considered instructive. As used in this subsection, the term “theory” shall mean theory or hypothesis;
(a) If a scientific theory concerning origin or destiny is taught without the teaching of opposing scientific theory, the taught theory may be criticized by the teaching of conflicting empirical data where considered instructive;
(b) If scientific theory concerning biological origin is taught in a course of study, biological evolution and biological intelligent design shall be taught. Other scientific theory or theories of origin may be taught. If biological intelligent design is taught, any proposed identity of the intelligence responsible for earth’s biology shall be verifiable by present-day observation or experimentation and teachers shall not question, survey, or otherwise influence student belief in a nonverifiable identity within a science course;
(c) If scientific theory concerning biological origin is taught in a textbook, the textbook shall give equal treatment to biological evolution and biological intelligent design. Other scientific theory or theories of origin may be taught;
(4) If an event previous to written history is taught, the event shall be supported by physical evidence. Physical evidence and data concerning the event may be taught where considered instructive. Conjecture concerning an event previous to written history as to the occurrence of the event, cause of the event, date of the event, length of time for the event to occur, subsequent effects of the event, or other speculative details shall be taught as theory or hypothesis as specified in subdivision (3) of this subsection;
(5) If a naturalistic process previous to written history is taught, the naturalistic process shall be duplicated by an analogous naturalistic process. Details of the analogous naturalistic process may be taught where considered instructive. Conjecture concerning a naturalistic process previous to written history as to the occurrence of the process, cause of the process, date of the process, length of time for the process to occur, process conditions, process mechanisms, process materials, or other speculative details shall be taught as theory or hypothesis as specified in subdivision (3) of this subsection;
(6) If a scientific theory or hypothesis proven to be false is taught for historical, illustrative, or other reasons, the theory or hypothesis shall be identified as false when taught orally or in writing.
So half of the pages of the textbooks must be dedicated to intelligent design, and all the pages must contain only material backed up by evidence. But intelligent design lacks evidence. If this were entered into a computer on Star Trek, it would blow up.
Pay special attention to this very interesting clause.
If biological intelligent design is taught, any proposed identity of the intelligence responsible for earth’s biology shall be verifiable by present-day observation or experimentation and teachers shall not question, survey, or otherwise influence student belief in a nonverifiable identity within a science course;
Think that through. So if you’re going to teach intelligent design, you’re either going to have to be totally silent about the identity of the designer, or you’re going to have to back up that identification with evidence. So either you’re going to teach this stuff as supported by evidence while avoiding any suggestions about how it was done by this designer, or you’re going to have teachers turning the science classroom into a Bible studies class while they trot out tired theological arguments about the nature of God.
But catch that cunning last bit: you’re also not allowed to use evidence to question the students’ faith in a nonverifiable being — an entity without evidence or contradicted by the evidence.
There isn’t going to be a single textbook on the market anywhere that meets these criteria. But they have an out: they’re going to put together a committee that will provide supplemental material on creationism of equal weight to the textbooks. And that’s where the state of Missouri will throw a big chunk of their education budget…into authoring and publishing a creationist textbook that will be given to all of their schoolkids, written by a select team of “nine individuals who are knowledgeable of science and intelligent design and reside in Missouri.”
There is another problem there. All of the people who are knowledgeable about both, who actually understand how science works, will also know that intelligent design creationism is bunk.
I notice the bill was introduced in August, and the last action was to refer it to the elementary and secondary ed committee; there are no hearings scheduled, and it’s not on the House calendar. I suspect that means it’s going to die the slow silent death of neglect. That’s good, but how about if you Missourians take the next step and make sure the author of the bill, Rick Brattin, and his partner in crime, Andrew Koenig, don’t get elected anymore?
Ken Ham was doing an interview, and he was asked a difficult question: “How did men get the dinosaurs to not buck them off of their saddles when people rode then? Were the dinosaurs more domesticated and well behaved because there wasn’t as much sin back then?” Good one. The creationists do tend to smuggle in a lot of rather unbiblical stuff into their mythology while simultaneously claiming to be strict literalists, so I’d like to see how they came up with that story, too.
Ham’s answer: Gosh, I don’t know. Where did you ever get that weird idea?
I don’t know where people get the idea that people rode dinosaurs. I mean, there’s no evidence in the Bible that that is so. When Job was looking at Behemoth, the description there… there’s nothing to do with people riding dinosaurs. We don’t know how people interacted with dinosaurs.
Go read the post, it’s hilarious. Where did people get that idea? From Ken Ham. He publishes books with illustrations of people riding dinosaurs, and he’s got a fiberglass dinosaur with a saddle on it in his “museum”.
He also distributes powerpoint slides for educators, loosely defined, to use in the classroom. Like these:
It’s rather disingenuous of him to declare that he doesn’t know where these wacky ideas come from, isn’t it?
Oh gob, the stupidity. The latest wave of anti-choice legislation is based on one trivial premise: it’s got a heartbeat! You can’t kill it if its heart is beating! So stupid bills have been flitting about in the Ohio, Mississippi, Wyoming, Arkansas, and North Dakota legislatures trying to redefine human life as beginning at the instant that a heartbeat can be detected. Here’s Wyoming’s story, for instance:
About two weeks ago, state Rep. Kendell Kroeker (R) introduced a measure to supersede the medical definition of viability. Current state law says abortions are prohibited after a fetus has “reached viability,” and Kroeker sought to replace those words with “a detectable fetal heartbeat.” The Republican lawmaker said the idea for his heartbeat bill just came to him one day because “it became clear that if a baby had a heartbeat, that seemed simple to me that it’s wrong to kill it.” On Monday, a House panel struck down Kroeker’s bill because it was too medically vague. But if Ohio and Mississippi are any indication, this likely won’t be the last time that fetal heartbeat legislation shows up in Wyoming.
It’s a step back from the inanity of declaring that life begins at conception — you can’t detect the heartbeat until 5-6 weeks of gestation — but still, it’s an arbitrary and ridiculous definition that relies entirely on folk knowledge about living things. If we’re going to do that, though, I propose that we go to the One True Source of knowledge and accept the Biblical definition of living creatures: they have breath in their nostrils. Therefore, abortion is legal right up to the instant that the baby draws its first breath.
Don’t argue with me! It’s in the Bible! Do you want to go to hell?
But the heart thing? Nonsense. Here’s what I routinely see:
Zebrafish embryos have a heartbeat one day after fertilization. That one above is a two-day embryo, and it’s even more special and sacred because it carries a heart-specific GFP, so it’s heart glows green. We don’t suddenly think of the organism as complete and inviolate because cardiac cells are twitching.
Or even better, you can dissociate the heart tissue of just about any animal, including humans, and culture single cells in a dish…and look! They beat!
If that were a human cell, does that means we could never throw that petri dish away? Speaking of human, let’s jack up the consequences. Here’s a clump of induced pluripotent stem cells, adult cells forced into an embryonic state by transfection with a few genes that reprogrammed this population into a cardiac cell state. It’s the religious right’s nightmare, transformed by the hand of scientists into living embryonic tissues, growing in a lab under a microscope…and it’s alive! IT’S ALIVE!
Is anyone seriously going to decide that that is human and deserving of all of the rights and protections we accord to adult people?
I suppose it depends on whether those cells are derived from a female or not.
Islamic extremists have been destroying ancient manuscripts in an important library in Timbuktu. You know what that means? It’s time to chastise Richard Dawkins!
The latest furore comes after Islamist extremists burned down a sacred library in Timbuktu, Mali, during the ongoing conflict there. Prof Dawkins tweeted "Like Alexandria, like Bamiyan, Timbuktu’s priceless manuscript heritage destroyed by Islamic barbarians."
Cue much clutching of pearls and fainting. "He’s been mean about a religion!"
The article makes a very good point: “if you burn down a library, ‘barbarian’ is probably the right term.” I’d also add that if libraries are burnt down, your priority ought not to be to wag a finger at the people protesting the vandalism, but to at least wag that finger in the right direction…at the vandals.
That god character’s actions are always contemptible.
(NSFW, because God is a potty-mouth.)
Don’t forget to check the latest Jesus and Mo, too. He’s not a nice guy in the slightest.
Steven Novella has written a post taking exception to some things I’ve said, specifically on the issue of the overlap of science, skepticism, and religion. I have to say, though, that what his post actually does is confirm my claim: that a lot of skeptics strain to delimit the scope of skepticism in ways that are not rational, but are entirely political and emotional.
But there’s also a lot I agree with. He has a lengthy introduction in which he lists many of the core elements of skepticism, including for example, promoting science and critical thinking, opposing pseudoscience, etc. (he also includes “methodological naturalism”, a claim I’ve grown disenchanted with…but that’s something for another day. Here’s something from Larry Moran for a contrary view.)
