Fleas flock to Dawkins’ lecture

Richard Dawkins lectured in Michigan yesterday, and apparently, some silly Christian group was handing out a flyer beforehand, “Five Topics to Consider During Tonight’s Lecture”. It contained a small set of yawningly familiar arguments. I haven’t heard of these brave Christians actually attended the lecture or tried to ask these in the Q&A (I would be surprised if they did — I had someone try this stunt at one of my talks, and not only did they run away without listening, but everyone who saw the questions on the handout just laughed at them), but I thought I’d take a quick stab at how I’d address them if I were handed that piece of paper. I’ve put a short version of their long-winded questions here — see the link for the complete version — and my brief reply, although I’d actually be tempted to just laugh and shoo the goofy kook away around about the second question.

  1. Is there an objective truth (and where did it come from)?

    Yes, there is an objective truth that we discern by studying the natural world, and by constantly subjecting hypotheses about its nature to testing. That nature is not separate from its existence.

  2. Does evolution obey the second law of thermodynamics?

    Yes, and you’ve already descended into ignorant idiocy with your second question. There is nothing in evolution that violates the laws of physics or chemistry.

  3. What are the statistical probabilities of life evolving from non-life, and the accidental evolution of a single strand of DNA

    1.0. Life exists. What you’re really trying to claim, in your clumsy and unschooled way, is that you think evolution argues that the extant complexity of the biosphere emerged in one abrupt accident. It did not, and if it did, it would be an exceedingly unlikely event. It would be creationism.

  4. Why does the existence of God make Dawkins so angry, and how can a scientist say with absolute confidence that there is no god?

    Dawkins is not angry at the existence of god, nor am I. We are a bit peeved at intrusive nitwits like yourself who try to impose your quaint superstitions on others.

    By the way, you apparently have not read Dawkins’ book (which is ironic in light of the next question), since he does not claim with absolute confidence that there is no god. I will go further, however, and claim with absolute confidence that you have no good evidence for any god.

  5. [Assorted Jesus babble and bible quotes] Have you ever read the Bible?

    <snort> Yes. It’s an incoherent collection of delusional muck, cobbled together by generations of priests trying to promote the status of their tribe and their role within it. It contains brief sparks of literary brilliance, but mostly, it’s garbage. And the whole Jesus story is illogical nonsense that no rational person should accept.

Of course, the whole problem with bothering to argue with these people is that they won’t accept any of the answers, and will just start repeating the questions at you, at greater length. I’ve been on that merry-go-round before.

Florida poll

The Orlando Sentinel asks the same old stupid question: Should Florida schools be required to teach intelligent design along with the scientific theory of evolution?

Yes. Intelligent Design provides an alternative explanation to evolution, which is just a theory. It’s healthy to give students a choice. (3 responses)
17.6%
No. Evolution is a time-tested scientific theory, like gravity. Intelligent design is inspired by religion and has no place in a science classroom. (13 responses)
76.5%
Not sure. I don’t know enough about either subject to make an informed choice. (1 responses)
5.9%

Aaargh. “Just a theory” again; and the claim that ID is an “alternative explanation” is about as true and as relevant as claiming that the “my socks are so grungy, they evolved intelligence, built a time machine, and flew back to the Hadean era to seed life on earth” explanation is a reasonable alternative.

Forget the grungy socks. Maybe this is the alternative we need to teach in the classroom.

Here I thought he was just giving me copies with red, blue, and green covers

I was wondering why Harun Yahya kept sending me new copies of his remarkably tedious tome, the Atlas of Creation. It turns out he’s been busy expunging it of embarrassing errors, like the infamous caddis fly fishing lure presented as an example of a modern insect. Several of these revisions have been documented now — the Atlas evolves! I think in this case we can safely say that no intelligent design was involved.

In addition to the Holocaust, we’re responsible for this, too?

Anytime something wrong happens, there is a Christian who will blame it on atheism and evolution. The latest is the case of the foolish woman who kept an adult chimpanzee as a pet, and got badly mauled for her trouble. This, of course, is Charles Darwin’s fault.

How is it that we live in a culture where people think it’s safe to have a chimpanzee as a pet? Where do people get the idea that we ought to take a wild animal and treat it like a human being? The chimp owner treated the animal like a son who ate at her table, slept in her house, and even drove her car.

…

Last week the world celebrated Darwin’s 200th birthday. Universities placed tributes to Darwinism on their home page (examples include Oxford and Cambridge) and major networks such as BBC ran extensive programs devoted to Darwin’s great contribution to the world.

Yet, ironically, this week we witness a brutal act that seems to logically follow from Darwin’s ideas. You may be wondering how I can possibly link Darwin to this atrocious event. But think about it, if humans are deeply related to chimps then why not expect them to act that way?

“…seems to logically follow…” — I don’t think that Mr McDowell understands that word “logic” very well. I don’t think Darwin ever endorsed the idea that one should keep large, powerful, temperamental animals with the strength to rip your arms off as pets; I’m quite confident that neither did he regard the differences between animals as trivial. I’m also even more closely related to Charles Manson than I am to any chimp, something with which even a brainwashed parrot for jebus like McDowell would agree, yet this imposes on me no desire or obligation to go on a psychopathic killing spree.

It’s funny that McDowell complains that the owner treated the chimp like a son. After all, if we obeyed the rules of his religion, this is how we should treat a son.

Police said a 58-year-old man stabbed his teenage son after he refused to take off his hat at church earlier in the day. The father and his 19-year-old son got into an argument on Sunday afternoon. That’s when police said the father went to a car, got a knife and stabbed his son in the left buttock and fled.

Quick, shut down the churches! Christianity leads to filial buttock mutilation!

What’s the matter with Forbes?

They gave a gang of Discovery Institute hacks a free run to publish their delusions (bad). Then, under protest, they gave Jerry Coyne an opportunity to rebut (good). Now, after all that, they add another, final word to the whole mess…and guess who they published?

Phillip Skell.

Perhaps you newbies to Pharyngula have never heard of the fellow, but he’s a wacky evolution denialist who got obsessed with me several years ago, and dunned me with email. (Actually, I think he might be one of the first kooks to inspire my “I get email” series.)

He’s got one note that he plays repeatedly and discordantly: evolution doesn’t matter. It’s a scam. Biologists just made it all up. You don’t need to use evolutionary theory to explain anything. Nothing has changed in his Forbes article, except that he must be on his meds now: he’s dialed back the crazy shrillness, but he’s still whining about the same silly point.

WIll Forbes get the message? They had to go to the Discovery Institute to find their initial mob of loons, and now to reply to Coyne (with a mass of irrelevancies, of course), they had to really scrape deep in the bottom of the barrel. Perhaps next they’ll give some space to Ray Comfort, or the Time Cube guy.

Got $100,000?

Ray Comfort desperately wants to debate Richard Dawkins, and has even offered to pay him $10,000. Dawkins has a counter-offer: he’ll do it for $100,000, to be donated to the RDF. Comfort has now upped the ante to $20,000. It’s not enough.

I would encourage teams of creationist philanthropists to get together, scrape up the $100K, and pass it along to Comfort, who will then deposit it in the coffers of the Richard Dawkins Foundation. Not only would creationists have finally done something productive and contributed to the promulgation of reason for once, but the spectacle of this debate would be a source of endless hilarity for years to come.

Richard does have a few other requests: that Comfort reprise his banana argument, and that the event would have to be recorded by the RDF team, for the enlightenment of the world. It’s not too much to ask.

Thunderf00t under attack again

We’ll have to see how long this video remains available. Thunderf00t, the well-known godless anti-creationist creator of fine youtube videos, is routinely targeted by Christian/creationist scriptbots to downgrade his videos and even get them banned, and he’s had enough — this clip takes the youtube management to task for kowtowing to the ignorant god-crowd. It was, of course, deleted by the youtube management, but not before it got copied to many other places.

It’s actually rather sad to see. There have been a lot of shenanigans like this recently, and I’ve gone from regarding youtube as merely poorly managed to suspecting that they are actively evil.

Bright lights in the Texas legislature

The Texas legislature is generally the butt of jokes, and it’s not hard to see why: it’s an awesome body of distilled stupidity. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some good ones among the chaff, and State Senator Rodney Ellis and State Representative Patrick Rose should be counted among them. They’ve written an excellent op-ed for the Houston Chronicle in which they point out the contradiction of a state that wants to build a leading-edge set of scientific research institutions with a State Board of Education led by a mob of incompetent creationist cretins. They’ve put together some legislation to hold the SBOE accountable for their performance — a marvelous turnabout of the No Child Left Behind philosophy of policing schools on their performance. Let’s see the rascals who want to put together bogus curricula scrutinized on the basis of long-term performance in science by the kids!

Here’s something you can do right now. Thank these two smart politicians by signing a letter. It’s the least you can do. And if you’re a Texan in their districts, vote for them!