How can you tell when a creationist is making stuff up?

I read this paper, “Using statistical methods to model the fine-tuning of molecular machines and systems”, a while back, and it was obvious crap. You can tell right there in the abstract where it makes a promise it does not deliver on, that “molecular fine-tuning…challenges conventional Darwinian thinking”. It then goes on to make a statistical argument that the probability of producing a functional protein with chance and selection is infinitesimal, that the waiting time problem is a killer for Darwinian mechanisms (it isn’t), and cites Behe extensively. The authors, Thorvaldsen and Hössjer, might as well have fired off a flare that exploded in flaming glitter letters that spelled out “I AM A CREATIONIST”, followed by Thorvaldsen doing a happy dance because he got his garbage published in a legitimate journal.

Now the journal has published an apology (not a retraction, an apology — it’s weird).

The Journal of Theoretical Biology and its co-Chief Editors do not endorse in any way the ideology of nor reasoning behind the concept of intelligent design. Since the publication of the paper it has now become evident that the authors are connected to a creationist group (although their addresses are given on the paper as departments in bona fide universities). We were unaware of this fact while the paper was being reviewed. Moreover, the keywords “intelligent design” were added by the authors after the review process during the proofing stage and we were unaware of this action by the authors. We have removed these from the online version of this paper. We believe that intelligent design is not in any way a suitable topic for the Journal of Theoretical Biology.

Hold on there, cowboy. Your reviewers and editors were unable to figure out that this was a creationist/intelligent design paper except that the authors added the keywords “intelligent design” post review? And you think removing the keywords now is sufficient action? If “intelligent design” is not a suitable topic, why is the paper still there with only the most superficial change?

I am not impressed with the perspicacity of the Journal of Theoretical Biology, and suspect that whoever wrote that strange disendorsement is lying.

Catholicism…REVOKED!

Were the right magic words spoken during your baptism? If not, you might not be truly Catholic, according to the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

For centuries, the baptismal formula in the Roman Catholic Church has been: “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Most Protestant churches have also used this formula.

Toward the end of the 20th century, however, a few baptismal ministers began tinkering with the formula. A few ministers have said “We baptize” to bring out the familial or community dimension of the baptism.

For example, a priest might say, “In the name of the father and of the mother, of the godfather and of the godmother, of the grandparents, of the family members, of the friends, in the name of the community we baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

In June the congregation, which deals with doctrinal issues, ruled that a baptism was invalid if the minister said, “We baptize” instead of “I baptize.…”

This kind of literalist stickling has led to major imaginary problems! One priest saw in a video of his baptism that the guy said “we” when soaking his head, and that meant his life was a lie, and he was never a Catholic or a priest.

But since his ordination in 2017 was invalid, people who went to Hood’s “Masses” did not really attend Mass and did not receive consecrated bread at Communion. It also means that his absolutions in confession were not sacramental. His confirmations and anointing of the sick were also invalid. When he performed these sacraments, he was not even a Christian, let alone a priest.

And look at this — clearly, SJWs and their goofy pronouns are servants of Satan, undermining Christianity by spawning hordes of the unshriven.

This isn’t the first time the formula, which the congregation holds was mandated by Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel, has been tested. Some priests have tried gender-neutral nouns: “I baptize you in the name of the Creator, the Redeemer and the Sanctifier.” Others used “Creator, Liberator and Sustainer.”

As an atheist, I have to ask why some Catholics think God is so stupid that he can’t understand meaning and is ridiculously focused on the precise formula of the words. I mean, this is the same god who accepts Catholics baptized in Latin, Spanish, German, French, Ukrainian, and Chinese, where the specific words are entirely different from English, so shouldn’t he be fully capable of grasping a range of minor variations in phrasing? He sounds a bit like my bank voice recognition system, which only accepts a limited range of words as input and gags if I mumble a bit.

Still, I halfway wish it were true. It would be hilarious if I got to heaven and got admitted because my childhood priest said the right incantation while the Pope got kicked out on a technicality. Although it would also kind of suck if you were condemned to an eternity in hell and had to tell your roomie in the Pit that you were there because your priest used gender-inclusive language, while he gets to brag about being an axe-murderer.

The lies that form the popular misunderstandings of genetics

Marcus Ranum discusses an outrageous article on racist abuses of genetics.

It’s really depressing if you study the history of how Darwin’s great idea was immediately grabbed and warped into social darwinism (racism), and scientific racism (racism) with a sprinkling of pop psychology and garbage social science thrown in, to create a witches’ brew of wrongness that is still with us, to this day: [politico]

“You’ve never seen him sick. You’ve never seen him without energy,” Brenden Dilley, a self-described “MAGA life coach,” told his viewers on his radio show Friday. “[He’s] not walking around with weak-ass, p—- f—— genetics. He ain’t got those liberal genes. These are, like, god-tier genetics; top 1-percentile genetics.”

That’s a nearly perfect summary of the stupidity and ignorance of scientific racism. I’m not going to try, but I’m pretty sure one could write a book, or a goodly thick pamphlet, just digging into what’s wrong about that chucklefuck’s stated beliefs.

You could, but it would be exhausting and would have to start with teaching biology from scratch. Just the idea that there is something called “god-tier genetics” or “top 1-percentile genetics” has me reeling at the depth of the misconceptions in this guy’s head. There’s no such thing, he has no idea of what genes Trump has, and he probably couldn’t even explain what a “gene” was if you pinned him down on it, or what makes for “god gene” vs a “mere mortal gene”.

That Politico article, by the way, is just horrible lazy “journalism” — it quotes MAGA twit after MAGA twit, reporting their idiot takes without taking any time to point out that they’re all wrong, anti-scientific, and based on nothing but ignorance and fantasy. Brendan Dilley is a high school graduate (at least he got that far) and is now a “MAGA life coach” and “works in the world of commercial real estate development” and has now had his dumbass ideas about genetics promoted far and wide without any pushback from Politico. This is one of the ways we got into this situation, journalistic outlets dumping bad ideas on the media without any critical thought…and further, specifically seeking out the very worst ideas to publish for their entertainment value.

Where’s the evaluation of their sources? Where’s the statement that Brendan Dilley is an unqualified buffoon who is wrong about genetics? At the very least, where’s the “he said she said” journalism, the lowest form of reporting, in which they balance the bullshit with comments from real geneticists who know what they’re talking about? Politico can’t even do that. Journalism has a responsibility to inform in addition to dumbly reporting the opinions of fools.

As the Wormhat turns, so goes the nation

That was a busy weekend, but I still disciplined myself to crank out a Sunday video, even if it didn’t appear until the 11:00 hour. What I talk about here is the sad case of Hans Wormhat, a YouTuber with a very strange channel.

What’s interesting about him, though, is that he is neither stupid nor crazy — he’s a person with an absurdly strong ideological and religious commitment that he is furiously rationalizing. The world is coming at him with both barrels, but he carries all the baggage of fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity, and his way of reconciling reality and his faith is to deny everything that causes a conflict. Noah’s Ark was real, but couldn’t possibly have held millions of species…therefore, there are Illuminati high schools with sports teams and mascots used to train up puppeteers, fursuit wearers, and animatronics experts who populate the world with fake animals, with the intent of undermining your faith in the simple truth of God, who created a flat plate world with a firmament above and just a few useful, normal animals for people. There are no sharks or penguins, they are demonic creations built by Satan to deceive you into denying Jesus.

He has crazy ideas, but take him and his kind seriously: he’s not crazy or dumb, he’s just way way out there on the spectrum of ideological zealotry. He’s not all that unusual, though. He’s like a QAnon or Trump supporter with the dial turned up to 11. Ignore his kind and next thing you know, you’ll be living in a country that has come totally unmoored from reality.

On a lighter note, if you watch to the end, you’ll see my lovely list of Patreon supporters in the scrolling credits, and I also put in some drone footage shot from 60m above my front yard. It’s fall! The trees are turning all orange and yellow! I think. Unless the local Illuminati high school students have been out pranking us again with paint.

Arguing with evangelicals is like wrestling with a bollard

I hope you all have some fun with this conversation between the Knechtle evangelical group and some radical materialist named “Meyers” or “Meyer”.*

They were congenial enough, but I kept slamming up hard against their presumptions about what an atheist must think. No headway was made. I’m pretty sure that they’ll continue to assume that every atheist they meet is an amoral robot or is secretly imbued with the spirit of Jesus.

*I surrender. I have totally given up on correcting people misspelling or mispronouncing a name that is only 5 letters long.

Why? I dunno.

I was asked by this fellow, Stuart Knechtle, to have a chat on his YouTube channel, so I guess I am. I’m easy that way, especially since it’s not framed as a debate. I don’t know if it’ll be live (it’s scheduled for 7pm Central tonight), I don’t know what they want to talk about, but looking over the channel it seems to be a pretty mundane evangelical Christian apologetics sort of place, so I don’t expect much. Tune in if you’re bored.

I’m going into this totally open to what they’re going to ask, expecting no surprises, and just willing to listen and express my opinion. Could be a soporific hour, so if you’re trying to get to sleep it might help.

Ditzy DNA and Black Holes at the center of the Earth

A commenter, BCWebb, mentioned this recent paper, which is mind-blowingly bad. It’s a combination of crackpot physics plus crackpot biology, so it should never have cleared review, but there it is in the Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences…oh, wait, which means it may not be peer-reviewed, although the journal claims it is. It has an optional peer review process in which the paper apparently gets published, but a reviewer can email comments that get added to it? I think? Anyway, the paper is titled “A Black Hole at the Center of Earth Plays the Role of the Biggest System of Telecommunication for Connecting DNAs, Dark DNAs and Molecules of Water on 4+N- Dimensional Manifold”. Oooeee, sciencey! Black holes and DNA! Here’s the abstract.

Recently, some scientists from NASA have claimed that there may be a black hole like structure at the centre of the earth. We show that the existence of life on the earth may be a reason that this black hole like object is a black brane that has been formed from biological materials like DNA. Size of this DNA black brane is 109 times longer than the size of the earth’s core and compacted interior it. By compacting this long object, a curved space-time emerges, and some properties of black holes emerge. This structure is the main cause of the emergence of the large temperature of the core, magnetic field around the earth and gravitational field for moving around the sun. Also, this structure produces some waves which act like topoisomerase in biology and read the information on DNAs. However, on the four-dimensional manifold, DNAs are contracted at least four times around various axis’s and waves of earth couldn’t read their information. While, by adding extra dimensions on 4 +n-dimensional manifold, the separation distance between particles increases and all of the information could be recovered by waves. For this reason, each DNA has two parts which one can be seen on the four-dimensional universe, and another one has existed in extra dimensions, and only it’s e_ects is observed. This dark part of DNA called as a dark DNA in an extra dimension. These dark DNAs not only exchange information with DNAs but also are connected with some of the molecules of water and helps them to store information and have memory. Thus, the earth is the biggest system of telecommunication which connects DNAs, dark DNAs and molecules of water.

Whoa. I’m going to have to stop you at the very first sentence. Really? NASA says there may be a black hole at the center of the earth? I had to dig deeper. In the intro it says,

Newly, some scientists who worked in NASA claimed that there is a black hole at the centre of the earth which is the main cause of the high temperature of the core and magnetic field around the earth [6].

What is reference 6?

6. Riofrio L. Scientist Claims Theres a Black Hole in Center of the Earth. 2019 May 3; https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/05/scientist-claims-theres-a-black-hole-in-center-of-the-earth.

Umm, Houston, we have a problem. “Mysterious Universe” is a blog that posts articles about “ancient mysteries”, “ghosts & hauntings”, “cryptozoology”, and “conspiracy theories”. The article itself cites one source, a woman named Louise Riofrio, as a scientist who used to work at NASA, it claims, although no credentials are given and no specific role is mentioned. Thousands of people work for NASA. It sounds like she had a job there for a while and is now citing that vague experience as making her an authority, and using it to tint her wacky crackpot theory as having the imprimatur of NASA. It doesn’t.

Further, “Mysterious Universe” is citing a single source for Louise Riofrio’s idea: a YouTube interview with a site called “thirdphaseofthemoon”, another woo-woo UFO site, titled NASA Insider PROVES Time Travel Is REAL! Black Hole Discovered In Earth’s Core? 2019-2020. It’s just Riofrio babbling about her self-published book that claims her formula, GM=tc3, is equivalent to E=Mc2, and shows that the force of gravity is a function of the age of the universe (t) times the speed of light cubed.

She does not have any evidence that there is a black hole at the center of our planet. She only has kooky theories.

Well look at that. I only got as far as the first sentence of the abstract, and it has already sent me tumbling down a rabbithole to crazytown. I didn’t even get to the biology!

OK, just a little taste of the biology.

Induced DNA black brane interior of the core by imaging all DNAs on its meta

…we should design a model which explains the relationship between earth, water and life. To this aim, we can use ideas of scientists for the existence of a black hole at the centre of the earth. This black hole may be constructed from a DNA black brane with 109 times longer than the core of the earth which is compacted interior of the core. The number of excited states of this object is similar to the number of microstates of a black hole. However, its material is similar to the material of a DNA. This structure produces a temperature around 6000 K which is in agreement with the predicted temperature of the core. Also, this structure is the main cause of the emergence of the magnetic field around the earth and gravitational waves for moving around the sun. We show that DNA black brane of the earth is the biggest system of telecommunications which exchange waves with all DNAs and molecules of water. Also, we introduce a new type of DNAs called dark DNAs on the eleven-dimensional manifold. In fact, on the four-dimensional manifold, DNAs are contracted at least four times around various axes and waves of earth couldn’t read their information. However, by adding extra dimensions, the separation distance between particles increases and all of the information could be recovered by waves.

For this reason, each DNA has two parts which one can be seen on the four-dimensional universe, and another one has existed in extra dimensions, and only it’s effects can be observed. This extra dark part of DNA called as a dark DNA in an extra dimension. Waves of the earth’s DNA connect DNAs on four-dimensional universe and dark

DNAs in extra dimensions and act like topoisomerases in biology. These waves are different for males and females and also different from linear waves which radiate by electronic devices.

Perhaps you are curious about these different DNAs in males and females, and what this dark DNA is? Don’t ask.

We can write below results from our model and calculations: 1. Molecules of water are in related to dark DNAs in extra dimensions. On the other hand, dark DNAs have gender like normal DNAs.

Thus, molecules of water can have some properties like gender, and each molecule of water with the gender of the male can attract by DNAs with the gender of female and reversely, each molecule of water with the gender of a female can attract with molecules of water with the gender of male

I told you, don’t ask.

However, by adding extra dimensions to four dimensions of the universe, the separation distance between elements of DNAs increases and waves of earth could recover their information. Thus, each DNA has an extra dark part in extra dimension which we call them dark DNAs. These extra parts couldn’t be observed, however, their effects can be seen. DNA black brane of the earth’s core exchange waves with both dark and light parts of DNA and connect them. These waves are different for males and females and play the role of topoisomerases in biology.

On the other hand, our calculations and experiments show that these waves interact with molecules of water. However, the chemical structure of water (H2O) is very simple and cant store any information. This means that there are some extra dark DNAs on the 4+n-dimensional manifold which are related to molecules of water and play the role of memory for it. These dark DNAs have gender like other DNAs and give properties of gender to molecules of water. On the other hand, DNA black brane of the earth could emit some special waves to molecules of water and extract dark DNAs from extra dimensions. This means that the origin of life could be a system of telecommunication which is formed by DNA black brane interior of the earth, dark DNAs, waves and molecules of water.

Wow. So there’s a black hole spinning around the core of the earth, producing a black brane which encodes all this dark DNA, which no biologist has ever found, which is transmitted to life on the surface. There is no evidence for any of it, nor for the idea that water molecules are gendered.

Any physicist want to tackle the physics in this article? I gave up when I found the source, and lost all enthusiasm for addressing the bullshit biology.

Q Go Home…to that pig farm in the Philippines

The Black Death inspired the flagellants — it seems to be a common human response to extremes of stress, that they may fall into religious manias and magical thinking. Our modern American equivalent, in response to a threat nowhere near as severe as the Black Death, seems to be QAnon and the cult of Trumpism. The cult of Q emerged from an unlikely place.

Yet, a consensus of leading researchers and critics who study and debunk QAnon disinformation told ABC News that a key to identifying “Q” has been hiding in plain sight for years — on a pig farm south of Manila in the Philippines — at least until recently.

And now it’s growing fast.

At least 24 candidates who have “endorsed or given credence to the conspiracy theory or promoted QAnon content” — 22 Republicans and two independents — have secured a spot on the ballot in the 2020 congressional elections, according to the media watchdog Media Matters, though it remains unclear how many could actually win their races. Last month, one candidate who pollsters say is almost certain to win her heavily GOP district in Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, appeared to rescind her previous support for QAnon, telling Fox News that “once I started finding misinformation, I decided that I would choose another path.”

We also know who Q is now. It’s Jim Watkins.

This is the deranged conservative wackjob so many people have been following, hanging on his every insinuation, “prophecy”, and whisper. The cult is already doing real harm, beyond just seducing people into a loony religion. People have been murdered over this, crackpots have been threatening people, all over this nonsensical claim of “saving the children” from imaginary pedophiles. Most commonly, it’s been destroying families as individuals get lured into kooky conspiracy theories.

I think I’d prefer flagellants. If you’re a Q enthusiast, just go away right now.