Have you ever felt like you were hanging out with a mob of anti-social, clumsy nerds who need everything spelled out literally for them?

I know I do. When the minimal basics of simple social interactions have to be spelled out, you know you’re in trouble.

I say that as someone who has always been a shy and cautious wallflower, too. If I understood this stuff all along, and you didn’t, you’ve really got a problem.

Of course, an alternative hypothesis is that you’re hanging out with a bunch of predatory assholes who are pretending to be unable to understand social mores so they can violate them.

Another thing that bugs me: if you’re bragging about how you feel safe at an event, so what? I’ve always felt safe in my travels, because I’m a cocky brash guy who has never been seriously threatened in my life, and because most of the events I attend are safe — going to an academic conference is not like walking into a biker bar. To deny someone you want on your side even the slightest reassurance of security because you have to preen about your privileges just tells me that you lack the slightest modicum of empathy.

Science: It’s a Girl Thing!

The European Commission is trying to get more women involved in science, which is good, except…look at their Science: It’s a Girl Thing campaign. Jesus wept.

Serious man sits at microscope. Fashionable, slender girls slink in on ridiculous high heels and vogue to shots of bubbling flasks, splashes of makeup, twirling skirts, and giggling hot chicks. Seriously, this is not how you get women excited about science, by masquerading it as an exercise shallow catwalking. This is a campaign that perpetuates myths about women’s preferences. The lab is not a place where you strut in 3″ heels.

How do you get people excited about science and science careers? By talking about science. Ben Goldacre made some excellent comments on twitter about this.

The EU have funded a campaign to make women in science wear shorter skirts. http://bit.ly/KYRkBk #sciencegirlthing

Time and again with these high budget state funded science communication activities, they dumb down, shoot for the mainstream, and miss.

Meanwhile I can’t help noticing that the really nerdy stuff done by ppl like me and @robinince is commercially successful in the marketplace

I realise that sounds cocklike, but it’s true. Dumbed down state funded sci comms is patronising and fails to meet its stated objectives.

People – not just nerds – like nerd stuff. They like the details. They’re not thick.

@flypie @robinince we fill out rock venues, my book sold 400,000 copies, i dont know what more metrics you want. Nerd detail sells.

@edyong209 @robinince we make, a fucking, profit. we sell nerd details, and people buy it, while state £ sci comms patronises tiny audiences

The real tragedy is that somewhere, a marketing cock is celebrating that their “controversial” campaign is being discussed #sciencegirlthing

Also, to my vast surprise, for once the youtube comments are actually intelligent.

Oh wow, I can’t remember when I last felt this patronised. I’m pretty sure the message “scientists think that women are giggly, superficial and obsessed with fashion” isn’t going to get more of us doing science. Just eww. I have a physics degree. I managed to get it without strutting around a lab in a minidress and stupid shoes and doing ‘sexy’ pouts.

Rachael Borek

Please tell me that this is a sad joke. Being female and working in a laboratory I find it patronising in the extreme. I can’t believe that any intelligent woman watching this would not want to punch the advert-makers in the face. Is this REALLY what you think women interested in science want?? Go look at clips of Kari Byron hosting Mythbusters and then come back and apologise to everyone.

Catherine Du-Rose

Oh my god. I haven’t been this revolted by something since I heard about the human caterpillar. This is so insulting! I can’t find the words to properly articulate how irritated I am by this. Please tell me this isn’t a trailer – I mean, there’s not going to be more like this? I cannot imagine anything that would turn an intelligent girl off a subject faster than being patronised.

littlelixie

I’m a girl and I’m a scientist. I definitely do not go prancing around making make up. I work on a computer and do processing. Science is not a girl thing, it’s an everyone thing, everyone who is passionate enough about doing what they love. This is a terrible, terrible video, and I feel very offended, and I know my male colleagues do not see me like this. I feel rather disgusted.

chandratap

Hey, next time an organization tries to do the right thing and encourage more diverse people to participate in science, how about if you actually talk to scientists and try to understand what motivates them, rather than dragging some refugee from the fashion and music video world to tell women how to be scientists?

A quick peek at the future Louisiana science curriculum

Oh, boy — Bobby Jindal’s new program to open up state funds to support all kinds of random nonsense in schools is going to have some interesting (that is, horrifying) effects. They are going to be throwing money at A Beka Books and Bob Jones University texts, and Accelerated Christian Education. What kinds of things will Louisiana kids be learning?

Science Proves Homosexuality is a Learned Behavior

The Second Law of Thermodynamics Disproves Evolution

No Transitional Fossils Exist

Humans and Dinosaurs Co
Existed

Evolution Has Been Disproved

A Japanese Whaling Boat Found a Dinosaur

Solar Fusion is a Myth

It’s not just science! Look what else they’ll learn:

Only ten percent of Africans can read or write, because Christian mission schools have been shut down by communists.

“the [Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross… In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians.”

“God used the ‘Trail of Tears’ to bring many Indians to Christ.”

It “cannot be shown scientifically that that man
made pollutants will one day drastically reduce the depth of the atmosphere’s ozone layer.”

“God has provided certain ‘checks and balances’ in creation to prevent many of the global upsets that have been predicted by environmentalists.”

the Great Depression was exaggerated by propagandists, including John Steinbeck, to advance a socialist agenda.

“Unions have always been plagued by socialists and anarchists who use laborers to destroy the free
enterprise system that hardworking Americans have created.”

Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential win was due to an imaginary economic crisis created by the media.

“The greatest struggle of all time, the Battle of Armageddon, will occur in the Middle East when Christ returns to set up his kingdom on earth.”

Watch the video. It’ll show you that I’m not just making this all up.

Fortunately, the student body at my university is largely from the upper Midwest, so I don’t think we’ll have to worry too much about an influx of miseducated kids here — but other universities may have to look at Louisiana enrollments. How much remedial teaching do you want to do?

How about some good news to cheer you up on a Monday morning?

Gregory Paul has been looking at trends in the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) and other polling data. We’re behind in some countries (I’m looking at you, USA), ahead in others, but the overall trend is good: atheism is winning out around the world.


(Note: These are predominantly ISSP results. Solid lines indicate atheists from absolutist to marginal, empty spaces to the right are theists from marginal to absolutist, and results for western and eastern Germany are combined proportional to their populations. Differences between the 1998 and 2008 ISSP results are indicated by dashed segments.)

We’re growing!

It appears that Ameroatheists have expanded by 10 million since the turn of the century—representing about a million a year, and about a third of overall population growth, to a total of 60 million out of more than 300 million. Atheism has made large gains among the young, while congregation size has dropped by as much as a fifth. Even so, the ISSP results confirm that the United States is still the most theistic prosperous democracy—yet not nearly as theistic as some Second and Third World countries.

A multinational waxing of atheism and waning of theism seems to be occurring, and may well be universal in Western countries. The increase in Western atheism appears to be continuing a long-term trend that probably started in the 1800s, if not earlier, and has accelerated since World War II with no signs of slowing down, if the ISSP results are correct. Losses in theism have occurred in both Protestant and Catholic nations, albeit with the latter somewhat more resistant to losses. In most Western nations, the religious right is already weak, and in the few where it is a strong minority, it is losing ground. Demographically driven by a growing loss of piety among youth, the rise of secularism in the advanced democracies is in accord with the socioeconomic dysfunctionality hypothesis that predicts and observes that improving levels of financial and economic security in middle class majorities strongly suppresses interest in supernatural deities.

That last bit is what worries me. Atheism thrives on economic stability; religion prospers when people are desperate and ignorant. Here in the US, the theocratic party, the Republicans, have no interest in keeping the majority in good economic shape — they’d like to destroy the social safety net and increase economic inequity. I see an awfully strong correlation there between religiosity and economy-wrecking.

The thesis that popular secularism is dead, or at least dying, is clearly false. In the most advanced and successful nations, it is religion that is in the demographic ICU. Also entirely discredited is the premise that religion is universal to the human condition, like language—while theists vary from constituting nearly entire populations to less than a third, verbal skills are nearly uniform across the board. Demographic extrapolations that suggest fast-reproducing fundamentalists are on a statistical course to outgrow low-fertility secularists are proving flawed because they fail to account for mass nonchalant conversion due to modernity.

Yes! I have never been concerned about all the people moaning about how the fundies and Muslims are outbreeding us — I see them as busily making minds that will be ripe for reason and knowledge.

Oh. So that’s the truck full of stupid that hit Joycelyn Elders

What is it with these prudish, stupid Americans? They want T&A on their TVs, they want crude humor and nekkidness in their movies, and they rent porn to watch when the kids are staying at grandma’s place, but just the thought of sex education makes them freak out.

The latest hysteria: a teacher in Washington state explained how STDs can be transmitted orally and anally.

According to KCPQ, the principal of Onalaska Elementary School was talking to 11- and 12-year-old students about HIV and sexually transmitted diseases when she was asked about oral and anal sex.

The principal’s answer allegedly included verbal descriptions of those sex acts.

Parent Jean Pannkuk recalled to Fox News Radio what her daughter said she was taught: “You take a man’s penis and you put it in your mouth – that’s what the girls do to the boys. … The boys spread the girls legs apart and put their mouths down on the vaginas.”

“Basically, how I feel and others that I’ve talked to, it’s just the same as raping somebody, but you’re raping their innocence instead of their physical being,” parent James Gilliand explained to KCPQ. “When you hit those levels and the sexual acts, you might as well hand them a Kama Sutra book or something, you know?”

“Just the same as raping somebody”…yeah, James, you’re an amoral asshole. Probably a Christian, too, but I wouldn’t want to get too insulting.

And sure, what’s wrong with handing them the Kama Sutra? Well, it’s a little bit opaque and full of euphemisms, and you’d have to define “yoni” and “lingam” for them…how about just giving them a copy of The Joy of Sex instead? We should have absolutely no problem explaining to children how sex works — why are these slackwitted freaks getting so upset over a dry, mechanical description of how oral sex works, especially when it’s in the context of explaining how scary sexual diseases are transmitted?

I can only read Plantinga for the lulz

In a review of a new book by Alvin Plantinga, Christopher Tollefsen claims that Plantinga, “one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries”, has “systematically dismantled…the claims of the new atheists”. I think we can take that about as seriously as his assessment of Crazy Alvin’s status as a philosopher.

I have zero interest in Plantinga’s “philosophy” — what I’ve read of it convinces me that it’s nothing but deranged Christian apologetics gussied up in academic dress, and the words of Plantinga himself pretty much have persuaded me that I couldn’t address him without frequent invocations of the frolics of shithouse rats. But I am interested in how these gyring rodents see the New Atheists — it’s always such an easy confirmation that they don’t know what they’re talking about.

The claim of the new atheists is that Darwin’s “Dangerous idea,” as Dennett calls it, proves that there is no divine agency responsible for the world. As Dennett explains, “an impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe.” But the claims of Darwin show no such thing: even if Darwinism accurately identifies the mechanism by which evolution has occurred, Plantinga notes, “It is perfectly possible that the process of natural selection has been guided and superintended by God, and that it could not have produced our world without that guidance.”

The emphasis is there in the review; the first sentence just sings with ignorance. Here they are, carping at those New Atheists, and the first thing they say about them is blatantly false: no New Atheist claims to have a disproof of any god. We’re extremely forthright about saying it, too: Richard Dawkins explicitly laid out a scale of belief in The God Delusion, and it seems that every ferocious critic of that book never bothered to read it, because they were all stunned when Dawkins repeated the same thing on television: we don’t have absolute certainty about the nonexistence of a deity. We’re very confident that you might as well go on about your life as if gods don’t exist, but that’s about it.

Plantinga’s reservations at the end of that paragraph are also very silly. Evolution is the mechanism by which species have been shaped throughout the history of the world, and that is a fact; we can concede that there are other mechanisms besides natural selection (and in fact, we study them), and that one possibility, offered so far without evidence, is that intelligent entities have manipulated our ancestors. We don’t think it’s likely or necessary, but OK, it’s possible that one could find evidence supporting such a scenario.

As for Plantinga’s assertion that intelligence was required to create the diversity of life we have, well, please Alvin, at least wipe your filthy feet before spasming out on the carpet.

But there are things that I, as a New Atheist, am certain about, even if I remain open to the possibility of evolutionary interventionists of an undefined nature.

I am certain that “god” is a useless term. It’s utterly incoherent; some people babble about the god of the Christian Bible, which is an anthropomorphic being with vast magic powers and the emotional stability of an 8-year-old on meth. Others talk about an all-pervasive force in the universe, or use meaningless phrases like “the ground state of all being”, or chatter about a reified emotion like “love”. The really annoying thing about discussions with these people is that they’ll cheerfully switch definitions on you in mid-stream. Getting battered because the whole concept of an omnipotent being existing in the form of an Iron Age patriarch in the sky is silly? No problem! Just announce that god is everywhere and in you and that god is love. Trying hard to justify your regressive social policies using an amorphous principle like love, and finding the atheists turning the whole principle of benignity back on you? No problem! Just announce that god so loved us that he became a man, and if you’re opponents reject that concept, they’ll be thrown into Hell by God the Judge.

Plantinga is an excellent example of this theological muddle. On the one hand, he wants to argue for a cosmos-spanning Mind; on the other, a bigoted narrow being with a chosen race and a preferred position for sexual intercourse, who wants to be cosseted and praised for all eternity. Pick a clear definition for god, and be consistent about it, please. And then persuade all the other theologians that your definition is the correct one. Then come argue with the atheists when you know what the hell you’re talking about.

I am certain that theists have no credible evidence for their claims. Oh, sure, they can say their holy book says so, which is a kind of weak evidence; they can recite anecdotes; they can point to people who believe. But that’s about it, and it’s not adequate. I want to see independently verifiable empirical evidence that can be assessed independently of one’s sociocultural background; I want to see the stuff that would convince a Christian that Islam is an accurate description of the universe, or vice versa, and that would persuade a scientist that here’s some preliminary support for a phenomenon that is worth pursuing. Theologians don’t have that. They’ve never had that.

Religions have grown most often by the sword, or by fostering fear and emotional dependency, or by hijacking secular institutions and forcing beliefs on others, but they never expand by right of reason. Why isn’t a specific god-belief a universal, like mathematics or physics? Because unlike math or physics, religion doesn’t actually deliver on its promises. The power of religion has always been in psychological manipulation of the human mind, empowering a priesthood at the expense of genuine human advancement and understanding.

I am certain that evolution occurred. The evidence is in; the process occurred and is occurring, there are no known barriers to natural processes producing modern life from proto-life/chemistry over the course of 3.8 billion years, and all the evidence we do have shows modern forms being incrementally modified versions of earlier forms. We don’t know all the details, of course, and just maybe someone somewhere could discover a real hurdle that could not have been overcome without intelligent aid, but I know for a fact that no creationist has ever come up with a defensible objection, and that nearly all the creationists who pontificate so ponderously on the impossibility of biology, Plantinga among them, always turn out to be profoundly ignorant of the science. There’s a good inverse correlation between knowledge of biology and certainty that evolution can’t work.

So Plantinga-style arguments, that evolution cannot occur without intelligent guidance, therefore god, leave me cold. They begin with a false premise, easily refuted by the evidence, and therefore the credibility of their entire line of reasoning collapses. This true of all of the Intelligent Design creationism arguments that rest on showing natural selection (it’s the only mechanism they’ve heard of, sadly) doesn’t work, therefore you have to accept the only other alternative they offer, which is godly intervention. Not only is it bad science, it’s bad logic.

Unfortunately for them, the alternative to taking potshots at an explanation that works is to provide specific positive evidence for design, and they can’t do that. For instance, they could say, “My designer enhanced human brain performance by introducing a specific allele of microcephalin into select populations 37,000 years ago”, but then they’d have to face those awkward, demanding questions from scientists: “How do you know? What’s your evidence? Why couldn’t natural mechanisms of genetic variance have produced that specific allele?” And we know they can’t cope with those questions, because their only reason for believing that is that they wish it were so.

That’s all Plantinga has got: a peculiar historical myth-figure that he can’t define without making his whole enterprise look ridiculous, a total lack of reasonable objective evidence to support his myth, and a reliance on criticizing a science he doesn’t understand in the hope that if he stirs up enough doubt, people will cling to his myth rather than all the other myths swirling about in the confusion of his own creation. It’s pathetic. And this is from “one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries”? How sad that would be for philosophy, if it were true.