The Ultimate Proof of Creation!

We’re in big trouble on our trip to the Creation “Museum”, people. We’re going on 7 August, and on that very same day, they are planning to present…

THE ULTIMATE PROOF OF CREATION!!!

What is the Ultimate Proof of Creation, you might ask?

There is a defense for creation that is powerful, conclusive, and has no true rebuttal. As such, it is an irrefutable argument–an “ultimate proof” of the Christian worldview. This presentation will equip you to engage an unbeliever, even a staunch atheist, using proven techniques.

Holy crap! It’s a trap! I’m going to be bringing along a whole mob of young atheists from the Secular Student Alliance, and this speaker, Jason Lisle, is going to be like Darth Vader among the younglings. I might be able to put up a fight against Emperor Ham, just like Samuel Jackson, but then his apprentice will show up and zap, blam, zowee, I’ll be chopped up and blown out a window. We’re doomed. DOOOOOOOMED.

At least I insist on being informed before going to my ignominious fate. The first chapter of the Ultimate Proof of Creation is available online, so I read it cautiously, fearing that I would see science demolished with an irrefutable argument.

Wait a minute.

This thing is complete garbage. It’s the same old routine that Answers in Genesis always trots out: “We’re using the same evidence,” they say, “only we’re just interpreting it differently. We’re just as sciencey as you are!” Only they aren’t. They’re leaving out all the evidence that contradicts their views, and twisting the bits they want in inappropriate ways. And then they make stuff up! Here’s an approach I’ve been seeing a lot from creationists lately: they invent scientific “laws” and then declare that evolution is unscientific because it violates those “laws”. The most common one is the so-called “law of biogenesis” that dictates that life can only come from other life, but here’s a pair that Lisle pulls out of his butt:

  1. There is no known law of nature, no known process, and no
    known sequence of events that can cause information to originate by itself in matter.

  2. When its progress along the chain of transmission events is
    traced backward, every piece of information leads to a mental
    source, the mind of the sender.

These are quite simply false. Chance can generate new information in genetics, so we know the first law is bogus, and since we can trace a useful piece of genetic information back to unguided mutations, we know the second is yet more baloney.

I don’t think I’m too worried about the Ultimate Proof of Creation anymore. I suspect it is going to be more like this.

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Ireland has a blasphemy law

And it’s a strange thing. It’s a law that slaps anyone who offends “a substantial number of the adherents of a religion” with a €25,000 fine — which is equal to most of my yearly salary, and also means I’m one of the few people that one could make a good case for having committed blasphemy. I guess I won’t be vacationing in Ireland any time soon.

Fortunately, some people are speaking out against the law, especially Atheist Ireland. Join in if you can, work to repeal this medieval nonsense.

Cheerful news from the UK

I’m feeling a bit uplifted at the word from the other side of the Atlantic: some doom and gloom from the Anglican church.

A long-serving Church of England bishop has predicted that the Church of England will cease to exist within a generation. In an article in the Sunday Telegraph, the Right Reverend Paul Richardson said declining church attendance and the rise in multiculturalism meant that “Christian Britain is dead”.

The Church is rapidly declining, with attendances at its services in freefall, a proposal on the table at the next General Synod meeting to cut the number of bishops, and huge holes in its finances due to the economic downturn and a lack of congregants to donate to the collection plate.

Richardson said that the Church had lost more than one in ten of its regular worshippers between 1996 and 2006, with a fall from more than one million to 880,000.

The only concern would be that some other, more malevolent church could rise to take its place. Maybe the next step would be for the state to declare that the official state religion was atheism, just to preclude any nastier replacement.

What not to do in the neighborhood of Temple Square

How often have you seen this? An affectionate couple are walking along holding hands, and one gives the other a kiss on the cheek.

The only way you might have missed seeing that fairly often is if you are legally blind. It’s common, it’s harmless, and it’s rather sweet — and we normally approve of such mild public expressions of affection.

Unless, of course, the couple consists of two young men, and especially if it is in Utah.

A gay couple says they were detained by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints security guards after one man kissed another on the cheek Thursday on Main Street Plaza.

“They targeted us,” said Matt Aune, 28. “We weren’t doing anything inappropriate or illegal, or anything most people would consider inappropriate for any other couple.”
Aune and his partner, Derek Jones, 25, were cited by Salt Lake City police for trespassing on the plaza, located at 50 East North Temple, according to Sgt. Robin Snyder.

I know exactly where that is — it’s near the huge office building that is headquarters for the Mormon Empire. Good work, Matt and Derek! If there is any place on the planet that most needs some demonstration of gay endearment, that’s one of the best (oddly enough, all the others that I can think of are also centers of established religion…). Maybe a few hundred loving couples of all sexes ought to descend on the place and show the Mormon security guards that they can’t quell people’s feelings for one another.

Mr Aune did show a little naivete, though.

The kiss happened on a former public easement given up by city in 2003 in a controversial land-swap deal. The easement became private property, allowing the church to ban protesting, smoking, sunbathing and other “offensive, indecent, obscene, lewd or disorderly speech, dress or conduct,” church officials said at the time. In exchange, the city got church property for a west-side community center.

Aune said he was one of those who protested the transfer at the time.

“They claimed in 2003 this would never happen, they were never going to arrest anyone,” he said. “It’s clear now they do have an agenda.”

It’s clear now? Trust me, when a church lobbies for the right to police offensive behavior in any place, they’ve got some very specific stuff in mind, and the people who don’t fit into their narrow fundamentalist pigeonhole should know it doesn’t matter what you do — they’re going to get you. You probably don’t even want to bend over to tie your shoelaces when some straitlaced repressed Mormon authority figure with a nightstick is standing somewhere behind you.

Looking for some godless hymns?

Eric Jayne has put together a list of his top 30 atheist songs. It seems like it ought to be longer — to my mind, if it isn’t praising Jesus or any other supernatural entity, it’s an atheist song…which means just about every decent piece of music there is. (That is not to say, of course, that there aren’t any good religious songs — I’ve got a small collection of gospel music on my iPod that’s pretty darned lively).

An annoyed query

Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum are discussing their book on Daily Kos. The subject of my review has come up a few times, and one commenter cited this sentence from me:

Following this, he proceeds to damn the “New Atheists” for “collapsing the distinction” between methodological and philosophical naturalism, and argues that Dawkins is taking a philosophical position and misusing science to claim it “entirely precludes God’s existence.”

Then the commenter asks, “My question is, did you in fact say that Dawkins uses science to ‘entirely preclude God’s existence?'”

Here is Chris Mooney’s dumbfounding reply.

we use that phrase
although it is not attributed to dawkins.

i’ve read dawkins book in some detail, and our objection is to his making god’s existence a scientific question. i realize he does not ascribe full certainty to his atheistic conclusion–but he claims he can reason scientifically about god’s existence. we’re saying that a lot of theologians, philosophers, etc, would say that’s a category error.

i really have to ask that you read our book, rather than its misrepresentation in skewed reviews.

This annoys me. Mooney can disagree with me, he can argue his side all he wants, but to accuse me of misrepresenting his book is inaccurate. I will now quote the entire damn paragraph from the Mooney/Kirshenbaum book. You tell me if I have in any way misrepresented what he said with my short summary.

But much like the anti-evolutionists do, the New Atheists often seek to collapse the distinction between methodological and philosophical naturalism. In The God Delusion, for instance, Richard Dawkins makes the dubious claim that the existence of God is, as he puts it, “unequivocally a scientific question.” Quite a lot of philosophers — and scientists — would disagree. It is one thing to say that scientific norms and practices preclude ascribing any explanatory force to God in, say, the movement of atoms, or the function of DNA. It’s quite another to say they entirely preclude God’s existence. In rejecting God or any other supernatural entity, Dawkins is taking a philosophical position.

Mooney has promised a reply to my comments later this week. He should take his time, or not even bother; I think his tactics have been foreshadowed enough here that I’m not going to find much of interest in his response. Although at this rate he may end up simply disavowing everything they actually wrote and trying to pretend it was a completely different book.