Did he just compare atheists to the Washington Generals?

I am offended! But I’m too busy waging war on the ubiquity of Christmas to care very much.

I have a plan. As Stewart notes, Christmas has been expanding, reaching gigantic size as it gobbles up Thanksgiving and threatens Halloween. It’s massive size means it has some vulnerabilities, however; there is a small thermal exhaust port located on 25 December itself which leads directly to the core of the religious system, and which we believe can be reached by a small elite strike team…either the atheists, or if they aren’t available, the Washington Generals. Your mission is to fly in close and drop a torpedo directly down their holiday by treating it as an entirely secular event: give material presents to family and friends, eat non-imaginary food, discuss real events, and just generally treat it as a period of time in the rotation of our planet at a particular point in its rotation about our home star.

This is going to work.

Oh gob, evo psych again?

You may have already heard that Ed Clint, a guy who has been dedicated to bashing Skepchick and Freethoughtblogs for over a year, has cloaked his biases in a pretense of objectivity and written a long critique of one of Rebecca Watson’s talks, accusing her of being a science denialist and anti-science because she so thoroughly ridiculed pop evo psych. The excesses and devious misrepresentations in that post were painful to read, as was the revelation that Clint is throwing away his career by jumping on the evo psych bandwagon in graduate school (I frequently advise students on good disciplines to pursue in grad school; bioinformatics and genomics have a great future ahead of them, as does molecular genetics and development, but evolutionary psychology is one I would steer them well clear of, as a field that has not and will not ever contribute much of substance. The good papers in evo psych are the ones that use the tools of population genetics well and avoid the paleolithic mumbo-jumbo altogether).

Fortunately, Stephanie Zvan has already torn into his ‘analysis’, showing that it’s mostly misplaced and misleading. I’m relieved, because I’m going to be tied up for a while, and I found Clint’s response to be extremely irritating.

One think that particularly rankled is that Clint puts up a pretense of being objective and that his criticisms are nothing personal; bizarrely, he even puts up a photo of himself taken with Rebecca Watson as if that were evidence that he’s not biased against her. What he doesn’t mention is that he’s been sharpening an axe since the “elevatorgate” episode; together with a disgruntled ex-FtB blogger who left in a bizarre huff over not getting enough respect, he founded a competing network (which is fine, of course) which they proceeded to stock almost entirely with writers with an an anti-FtB and strongly anti-Skepchick slant — I’ve had to laugh at the lineup which looks largely drawn from the ranks of the Slymepit, a notorious anti-feminist/anti-Rebecca Watson hate site, and my list of banned commenters. And looking at the people who comment there, again, they seem to be largely driven by hatred of Watson and feminism in general.

Again, that’s fine — we have biases here at FtB, too, in that we tend to be pro-feminist and when we founded it, I specifically told Ed Brayton that we needed to be sure to include more than just old white guys like us — but what isn’t fine is to lie about your motives. Any day, I’ll prefer open antagonism from an avowed enemy than fair and dissembling words from an Iago.

For example, after telling people to avoid insults in the comments, this is what Clint has to say:

Although PZ’s behavior is unfortunate, I would urge a modicum of compassion. I believe he lashes out because he feels so small and vulnerable, and because he is. I can think of few other reasons for such unprovoked barking. He is making a mistake in coming after me. He will be wounded by it. I wish it didn’t have to be this way, and that we could just have a calm chat about it.

Condescending and smarmy, isn’t he? Ick. He won’t call me names, he’ll just call me “small and vulnerable.” Man, I despise that kind of sliminess.

I’ll follow up on Stephanie’s post later this week, when my schedule calms down, and what I intend to do is dig into the substantive flaws in both Clint’s hatchet job and in that awful discipline of evolutionary psychology. Seriously, in the reviews Clint recommended to give the background on what evo psych is, I was appalled — do these people have any understanding of modern evolutionary theory at all? I think the answer is clearly “no.”

Hammy gets it wrong, again

Ken Ham is mad at Bill Nye again, because in the wake of the Rubio nonsense, Nye went on the air to explain why the earth is actually 4½ billion years old. Here’s the clip:

Now here’s where Ken Ham wigs out.

Well, children’s TV host Bill Nye’s understanding of science is worse than I thought. A few days ago, Bill Nye was interviewed on CNN about the age of the earth (this topic was a hot one in America because of headline news after Sen. Marco Rubio was asked a question about what he believed concerning the age of the earth).

Bill Nye in this CNN interview actually equated the age of the earth to the invention of smoke detectors. Hard to believe—but he did!

No, Ham really didn’t understand anything Bill Nye said, and it’s richly ironic to see Ham claiming someone else has a worse understanding of science.

Ionizing smoke detectors use a tiny amount of radiactive material to generate charged ions by their decay; these ions are released into the space in a capacitor, and their movement generates a constant trickle of current. If smoke particles enter the detector, they bind to the ions and block the current; that easily measured decline in current is what triggers the alarm in the detector.

This is a very simple system that depends entirely on our quantitative understanding of radioactivity. If radioactivity didn’t work like we thought it did, your smoke detector would not be very reliable, and for that matter, no one would have thought of using this function to work as a smoke detector.

Bill Nye did not equate the age of the earth to smoke detectors. He used smoke detectors as an example of how scientists have a very thorough understanding of radioactive decay. What he did use as an indicator of the age of the earth was a very brief summary of how rubidium decays into strontium with a half-life of about 48 billion years, allowing us to estimate the age of a sample by measuring the relative amounts of the two elements.

Ham then goes on his usual ignorant tangent of observational vs. historical science (ignore it, it’s rank inanity and I’ve dealt with it before) and challenges Nye to explain the very fact he explained in the video: I’ve highlighted a particularly relevant bit.

I once again challenge Bill Nye to give us one example of how evolution has anything to do with the development of technology and to explain how smoke detectors have anything to do with the age of the earth—when a detector is actually the result of intelligent observational science and the accumulated information about the properties of matter that enabled inventors to build such technology.

Yes, exactly. We have accumulated information about the properties of matter that allow us to build smoke detectors, and that same information rules out the possibility that the earth is 6000 years old. The information contradicts Ham’s claims. But what Ken Ham wants to be able to do is throw out the scientific information that makes his biblical exegesis into nonsense, and keep the bits that allow smoke detectors to work.

You don’t get to do that.

But the smoke detector discussion wasn’t about evolution, anyway. It was about a measurable physical property of the universe, its age, which Ham denies. I wish these guys could get it straight: evolution is about biology, and describes processes in living creatures that occurred on this one planet; physics is describing more general physical properties that are not specific to biology.

Ham is screeching about a debate between Nye and one of his clueless staff people. I do not recommend that Bill Nye take him up on it — as we can see, the Answers in Genesis folk don’t understand anything, don’t pay attention to what other people say, and don’t learn anything, so a debate would just be an opportunity for a creationist to preach from a podium with a credible and credentialed real science educator right next to them. Not a good idea.

HOLY CRAP! Pat Robertson repudiates Young Earth Creationism!

I really shouldn’t be surprised; Pat Robertson is kind of a dinosaur himself, and this literalist creationism pushed by Answers in Genesis is actually a relatively new development, but Robertson did come out and plainly reject the notion that the earth is only 6000 years old, or that dinosaurs and humans lived together. That’s sort of good news, but it’s really just old school creationism of the type that was common at the time of the Scopes trial and up through the 1950s.

But still…it’s always helpful to see the religious right splitting this way. You just know that Ken Ham is spitting blood in fury at this horrible liberal Christian who is denigrating the holy word of god! For the Hamites, the young earth is a bloody battle flag emblematic of their whole struggle for a Christianist nation, and to see Robertson under the banner of “Millions of Years” must be irritating.

(via The Friendly Atheist.)

Wasn’t Ron Lindsay just pinin’ for the days of the Accommodation Wars?

Yes, he was. We could happily bring them back, though, because Nicholas Wade is still writing for the NY Times, as Jerry Coyne mentions today.

Wade’s column is practically an exercise in nostalgia, harking all the way back to 2005. He’s very concerned that people are bashing poor Marco Rubio for not understanding that there is no confusion about the age of the earth — it’s 4½ billion, not 6000, years old. Wade is almost Mooneyesque in his tribute to the old tropes. Look here:

The inevitable clash with science, particularly in the teaching of evolution, has continued to this day. Militant atheists like the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins beat the believers about the head, accomplishing nothing; fundamentalist Christians naturally defend their religion and values to the hilt, whatever science may say.

There’s Richard Dawkins! He’s militant! He’s beating up the Christians, who are all just meekly defending themselves!

I swear, I thought we fought our way past those old stereotypes years ago — only the terminally clueless still refer unironically to “militant atheists”. But have no fear, Wade has a solution to the conflict between scientists and creationists: all we need to do is admit that evolution is a theory.

By allowing that evolution is a theory, scientists would hand fundamentalists the fig leaf they need to insist, at least among themselves, that the majestic words of the first chapter of Genesis are literal, not metaphorical, truths. They in return should make no objection to the teaching of evolution in science classes as a theory, which indeed it is.

It’s like one of the oldest creationist misconceptions in the book! Of course it’s a theory, but it’s a scientific theory, which means that it is a broad explanation that encompasses all the available evidence and has excellent predictive power to guide research. It’s not going to console creationists, unless we plan to also encourage them to continue believing that it means “just a guess”. And seriously, Wade believes that that’s enough to make all the creationists in the world simply fold up shop and go back to church, blissful and happy in a world full of singing angels and magic spun sugar fairy-tale castles? That is quite possibly the dumbest resolution of a chronic problem in the conflict between science and religion that I’ve ever read.

Hey, I’ve got an idea: we can solve all the problems in the Middle East by just getting the Jews and Christians and Moslems to admit that they’re all worshipping the same god. Presto! The fighting ends! (Sorry, I just felt my own words were a challenge and had to come up with an even dumber idea.)

And please, if you’ve ever read the Book of Genesis, practically the last word you’d ever apply to it is “majestic”. Petty, tribal, vicious, demented, small-minded, violent, bizarre…those are better words. And the first chapter isn’t really great poetry, I’m sorry to say — if you think otherwise, you’ve been brainwashed by the repetition. I’m really not prepared to abandon a commitment to scientific evidence just so some dim bumpkin can cling to his cherished belief that a poem saying a magic man poofed everything into existence is a deep insight.

I save the worst for last.

A scientific statesman, if there were such a person, would try to defuse the situation by professing respect for all religions and making a grand yet also trivial concession about the status of evolution.

I’m no statesman, but…you will never catch me lying and saying that I respect all religions. I do not, sir. Religions are systematic collections of threats and cajoling lies intended to bully a population into living in fear and supporting a parasitic priestly caste. They do not deserve respect. What they need is dismantling.

You will also not catch me making concessions about science simply to appease pious politicians. I will state the strengths and limitations without regard for the sensibilities of ignorant charlatans.

Damn, I really am not a statesman. But if that’s what a statesman does, you shouldn’t be able to find a scientist so willing to compromise on their principles to be one.

What I really want to see is the DNA sequence of an alien Grey

Dr Melba S. Ketchum has made press release of an astonishing discovery: she has sequenced Bigfoot DNA, she claims.

“Our study has sequenced 20 whole mitochondrial genomes and utilized next generation sequencing to obtain 3 whole nuclear genomes from purported Sasquatch samples. The genome sequencing shows that Sasquatch mtDNA is identical to modern Homo sapiens, but Sasquatch nuDNA is a novel, unknown hominin related to Homo sapiens and other primate species. Our data indicate that the North American Sasquatch is a hybrid species, the result of males of an unknown hominin species crossing with female Homo sapiens.

Hominins are members of the taxonomic grouping Hominini, which includes all members of the genus Homo. Genetic testing has already ruled out Homo neanderthalis and the Denisova hominin as contributors to Sasquatch mtDNA or nuDNA. “The male progenitor that contributed the unknown sequence to this hybrid is unique as its DNA is more distantly removed from humans than other recently discovered hominins like the Denisovan individual,” explains Ketchum.

“Sasquatch nuclear DNA is incredibly novel and not at all what we had expected. While it has human nuclear DNA within its genome, there are also distinctly non-human, non-archaic hominin, and non-ape sequences. We describe it as a mosaic of human and novel non-human sequence. Further study is needed and is ongoing to better characterize and understand Sasquatch nuclear DNA.”

Wait. Fully human mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from your mother, so she assumes that all Sasquatches had human women as relatively recent ancestors, but at the same time, the nuclear DNA is some bizarre mish-mash that includes non-ape sequences? That makes no sense at all.

Well, there’s one way it makes sense: it’s the result of sloppy lab work and high levels of contamination, and a complete lack of discrimination on the part of the investigators. No details have been released yet, but I imagine that what they’re sequencing are from hair samples turned in by Bigfoot investigators: dirty, grimy hair samples collected by a mix of charlatans and naive, deluded hunters. I wonder if there are raccoon and possum genes in their sequences…

The paper has not been published, and I don’t see how making a press release about a paper in peer review would help. I expect that no reputable journal will touch it, and it will sink unpublished…except that the myth that Bigfoot DNA has been examined and found to be unique will live on.

But here’s what really bugs me: it’s from a DNA lab called DNA Diagnostics, Inc. They do forensics, paternity testing, and consulting/expert witnessing in the court system in Texas. Would you trust results from that lab? How many other labs doing forensic DNA testing are run by people who think they can identify Bigfoot in a sample? If Ketchum has dealt with any criminal cases, I foresee grounds for future court challenges in her future.

Scary, scary radio waves

When I started cob-logging here a couple months ago I made a stray reference to conflicts I’ve experienced in having been a skeptically oriented person in the environmental activist sphere. A few of you suggested you’d like to hear more about that. I found an example today, one of probably several hundred of this particular phenomenon I’ve seen in the last 20 years or so.

[Read more…]

Creationist distortions of science

Answers in Genesis, that awful creationist organization, has a couple of tactics that they use to argue that they’re doing Real Science and the real scientists aren’t.

  1. They set up a dichotomy: you have to choose between God’s word and Man’s reason. God’s word is obviously perfect (because they say it is), while Man’s reason is flawed and prone to error. Therefore, all true accounts of the history of the world will take into account the “primary evidence” found in the Bible. This is a theme throughout their museum: they present two views, one derived from the book of Genesis and the other from scientific research, and tell you you have to choose. I imagine it works for the usual yokels whose brains short-circuit at the idea of questioning God, but for me, it just confirmed that the Bible is bullshit — I choose reason and evidence every time.

  2. They claim that all science involves interpreting the data, and that they use the exact same data that all scientists use — they just interpret it through the lens of a biblical worldview, while secular scientists interpret it through the lens of an evil, fallen, Satanic worldview. So which do you choose? Of course, they’re lying: the creationists throw away 99% of the evidence — everything that contradicts their predetermined conclusion — and the only bits of scientific observation they actually use are those where there is some ambiguity or potential for willful misinterpretation.

  3. They claim that there are two kinds of science: observational and historical science. The only respectable kind of science, they say, is observational: where an eyewitness is present to actually see the results. Anything where you try to interpret past events is not subject to repeatable observations, therefore it can’t be determined, and should be rejected in favor of eyewitness accounts — especially God’s eyewitness account from the Bible.

Every one of those arguments is complete crap. But they do love to state them with definite authority, as if these are actual fixed laws of the universe that must be accounted for in any science, rather than post hoc rationalizations by charlatans trying desperately to put a false front of reason over their superstitions.

I want to address their third argument, though, because Ken Ham has been throwing it around lately.

Ham quotes Jerry Coyne dismissing the value of theologians in determining scientific truths (as Ham usually does, though, he declines to actually link to the article he’s supposedly rebutting — at least he does Coyne the courtesy of naming him, I’m usually just referred to as some “atheist professor from Minnesota”). And there it is, in flaming great display, the creationists’ peculiar understanding of how science works.

Coyne’s comment raises a couple of issues that are common with secularists, and I thought it would be good to address them. First, he confuses observational (or operational) science and historical (or origins) science. By claiming that only scientists can determine the origin of the universe, he is implying that it can be discovered through repeatable, testable methods—but it cannot.

No, Coyne isn’t confused at all. Scientists are fully aware of the difference between studying, for instance, changing allele frequencies in a population of fruit flies right now, and using historical evidence to infer changes in allele frequencies (actually, phenotypes) in extinct populations. What we deny, though, is that we can’t study those through repeatable, testable methods. Every lagerstätte is a sample of the species of an ancient world, and paleontologists are constantly making hypotheses, testing them against existing data, and seeking out new data to confirm or disprove their ideas. Physicists can aim their instruments at a series of stars and test their ideas about their makeup and history. These creationist kooks want to pretend that in the absence of scientific tools to study the past, they are therefore free to make up any story they want, and it’s just as valid as one founded on hard-earned evidence.

But if they reject the idea that we can know anything about the past by observing the present, what’s the alternative? Ken Ham continues:

Historical science is really just the process of trying to figure out what really happened in the past based on evidence existing in the present—or based on primary source of information. And you know, the best place to start is with an eyewitness account, or our assumptions may lead us in the wrong direction. Coyne’s assumptions are evolutionary, and he clearly does not see Genesis—the only record of an eyewitness account of our origin—as authoritative.

Right. The only stuff that counts is eyewitness accounts. “Were you there?” is their mantra, and it reflects a terribly naive understanding of science.

First of all, eyewitness accounts are the worst kind of evidence. What real scientists prefer is measurement or the collection of recorded data via known, well-calibrated instruments. I assure you, the scientists at the LHC aren’t putting on goggles and standing at a window looking at protons colliding — they’re storing many terabytes of measurements via sensitive instruments from every event. Even in my admittedly mushier work where I do use my eyes directly to watch developmental events, everything is recorded and stashed on a hard drive so I can later extract precise timings and measure intensities of probes.

Secondly, everything, not just the historical sciences, are inferential. All of our senses are flawed and impose biases on our observations — you may think seeing is believing, but ask any psychologist, and they’ll tell you that your brain is very easily tricked, and that any memory you might have of an event is largely a reconstruction. Ask any physiologist, and they’ll explain to you that your eyes are not cameras, but elaborate processing devices that filter visual information and pass it back to a cortex that further deconstructs and reassembles the patterns of light that fell on the retina into a model of the world around us. We repeat observations using multiple modes precisely because you can’t trust what your eyes tell you to be an accurate model of the external world.

Thirdly, and most obviously, why should we believe Genesis is an eyewitness account of our origin? Were you there, Ken Ham, when God wrote the book? What reason do you have for believing that a god wrote it, rather than teams of Jewish scribes…scribes who weren’t witnesses of the creation? You can bet Coyne doesn’t see the Bible as an authoritative account, nor do I; those of us who have studied the history of the Bible know that it was the product of humans, that it evolved over time as additions and revisions were made, that we can look at the text and see evidence of multiple authors in multiple eras, that its translations differ, that it contradicts itself in many places, and that the accumulated weight of objective evidence demonstrates that it was not poofed into existence by a supernatural being, but has a much more prosaic and earthy origin.

But, oh yeah, I forgot: Ken Ham rejects all historical sciences, even history itself, by claiming that they cannot determine anything. This is a belief he needs to hold in order to cling to his fatuous idea that the Bible was written directly by a myth wiggling the hands of the prophets.

I just wish he’d be consistent and admit that he believes the Bible is true in every word because he has faith, rather than trying to abuse science and redefine it to accommodate his preconceptions. He just lacks that much faith.

Eulogy for a lost mind

As some of you may know, both Aron Ra and I cut our teeth together in the creation/evolution battles that raged on the usenet newsgroup, talk.origins, back in the 1990s. One of our colleagues-in-arms was a fellow named Glenn Morton, a petroleum geologist, who brought his expertise to bear in debates with young earth creationists. Morton is a Christian, but he thought it was disgraceful how creationists brought his faith into disrepute with their flouting of the evidence.

One of the concepts he crystallized, in addition, was the idea of Morton’s Demon. One of the notable things about arguments with creationists (perhaps you’ve noticed this too) is how they can stand there slack-jawed and dead-eyed while you explain an uncomfortable fact to them, and how they’ll suddenly leap into action when you say some word or phrase that cues a creationist script — you can be describing how the chemistry of the cell works, for instance, and if you mention “thermodynamics” suddenly you’ll get “The second law of thermodynamics proves that everything trends towards disorder, and is proof of a Fallen World!”…followed by slack passivity as you explain that no, it does no such thing. Morton’s Demon is the mental game creationists have going: they selectively shut out evidence against their pet theories and only allow in ideas their pastor has assured them are completely wrong.

Aron has now made me very sad. It turns out Morton’s Demon was an especially appropriate name for the concept, because Glenn Morton is severely afflicted with one. He escaped the Young Earth Creationist trap because his work exposed him to the counter-evidence every day, hammering the YEC-demon into submission…but I mentioned that he was a Christian. It turns out that he’s a right-wing conservative Christian, with a fully functioning filter tuned to select out anything from any source other than Limbaughesque talk radio.

Glenn Morton has torn down the entirety of his web archive — years worth of articles and explanations refuting young earth creationism. Why?

Because it turns out he was less interested in addressing the truth than he was in defending Christianity. Atheists and agnostics had been using his evidence to argue not only against Biblical literalists and religious extremists, but against the entirety of Christianity. Arguing against religion is bigotry, you see, and he got tired of all those liberal leftist godless bullies who have taken over his country.

It’s an epic, rambling, incoherent, angry rant.

The powers that be think that everyone MUST be forced to pay for contraception for the YES, slutty life style of Sandra Fluck who gave a speech at the Democratic convention bemoaning that we don’t pay for her contraception. (Rush Limbaugh got in lots of trouble for saying she is a slut, yet it is Sandra who wants to live a life of sex where everyone else pays to keep her from getting pregnant). Why must I as a Christian, who thinks such behavior abysmal, sinful and self destructive pay for her to have sexcapades without consequences? Why must my taxes be used to support what I view as her responsibility? Why does she have a right to pick the money in my pocket when she didn’t earn it? But, it seems, if you question this simple fact in today’s world, everyone will cluck their tongues at you, making you out to be the evil one. Why is it that they think that everyone MUST be forced to believe that what Sandra does is OK AND PAY FOR HER TO HAVE PLEASURE WITHOUT WORRY FOR THE CONSEQUENCES???? She can do what she wants, but don’t ask me to pay for it and don’t force me to approve of her behavior. The modern political left, and make no doubt, most anti-YEC folk are from the political left, want to enforce their conformity upon us because we can not be allowed to actually have an independent view of Sandra Fluck’s behavior or anything else, including anything they deem to be wrong. That is not to be allowed. Enforced conformity is what they want. I must smile while I give Sandra my money to pay for her sexcapades.

I think he means Sandra Fluke. Her speech wasn’t about paying for her hedonistic pleasure, but that the omission of contraception from her school’s insurance plan was a selective disadvantage to low-income students, and she talked about a friend whose contraceptive prescription was necessary to manage polycystic ovary syndrome. But Morton’s Demon won’t let him hear that…all that gets through is “sexcapades.”

He also rages against the expectation that Catholic organizations should cover birth control and abortions in their hospitals — it’s abhorrent to them, you know, and therefore their personal opinions should be allowed to dictate how non-Catholics live their lives. Chick-Fil-A should have the freedom of speech to hate gays…but their customers should not, apparently, be allowed to choose where they eat. The religious ought to be allowed to put up monuments in the public square, because removing them is a theological view.

And apparently the Democrats are a “leftist party” that hates god.

I watched the leftist party vote 3 times to drop God and Jerusalem and then watched their leaders steal that election on national TV and everyone knows that election was stolen. but then I watched delegates of the convention saying church goers weren’t welcome in their party.

Do follow that last link. It doesn’t say what Morton says it does — it’s about some Democrats expressing contempt for red-necked Teabaggers, not church goers (which would be very odd, given we just elected a church goer to the presidency). Morton’s Demon strikes again.

He goes on and on. He’s all for teaching young earth creationism and racism in the classroom despite disagreeing with them and recognizing that they’re built on lies, but gosh darn it all to heck, he’s absolutely committed to freedom. He has shut down all of his evidence-based arguments against young earth creationism because he’s a freedom fighter. And he really, really hates atheists.

I no longer want to worry about what a YEC believes. I no longer wish to be used to destroy my religion. The American Indians lost because the tribes hated each other more than the English and they couldn’t join together to beat them. The Scots lost to the English for the same reason. I do not intend to make the same mistake with the atheist war on religion. It doesn’t matter one whit that someone is a YEC and I am not, it does not matter a whit if I am protestant and someone else is Catholic, or Mormon. I urge all religious peoples to cease bickering about such trifles, when the wolf is at our door. We are in danger of losing our religious freedom, I will NOT argue inconsequential stuff with my co-religionists, ignoring the real danger to our religion, you, the religious bigot and Christophobe. YEC is a trifle; a mere philosophical debate. Freedom is dear; and you, the religious bigot, are a danger to my freedom.

I will note the irony of his signature, which has included this comment for a long, long time:

Banned forever by the Amer. Scientific Affiliation, a Christian Scientific Group, for the crime of discussing the ethics of ignoring scientific data.

Apparently it’s not unethical to ignore the scientific data if it contradicts the teaching of your church. Morton’s Demon strikes again!

Unfortunately for Morton’s goals, his diatribe simply reaffirms to me that religion poisons the mind…or that minds poisoned by an information deficit are more receptive to religion. Either way, it’s a shame.

In case you’re wondering what got him kicked out of the ASA, it’s buried in a thread here. It was a fight over Morton’s climate change denialism, and I notice that he announced his resignation.