Freakshow highlighted in NY Times

It’s getting to be a regular feature—every year, the NY Times must do a story on that bizarre miseducation monument, the Creation “Museum”. This time around, the story isn’t too awful — it focuses on the recent NAPC meeting, in which several professional paleontologists paid a visit to the creationist carnival to be alternately appalled and amused.

Several people have asked when I’m going to visit Ken Ham’s temple. It’s been settled! It’s all arranged, but no thanks at all to Ham. Here’s the deal: I’m going to be speaking at the Secular Student Alliance conference in August, which is being held in Columbus, Ohio…only two hours away from the museum! Sharp-eyed and chronologically aware Phil Ferguson noticed this interesting conjunction, and suggested that I adjust my travel schedule a tiny bit and come down a day early, and we’d take a little side trip. The SSA was amenable and tweaked my flight dates, and it is all happening!

On Friday, 7 August, a small group of godless people, including yours truly, will be at the “museum” when it opens at 10am on Friday, 7 August. Everyone is welcome to join in—we’ll pack the joint with quietly chortling science-minded people. When I get back from Lindau, I’ll also write to Ken Ham and request the pleasure of an audience, inviting him to come on out and evangelize to secular students.

It should be great fun. I’ve got a long list of questions to ask the docents…so long that I’m going to have to prune it down a lot. Come on out and join the party! And as long as you are, you might want to think about signing up for the SSA conference, which should be more informative.

Actually, a half-hour at a nearby sewage treatment plant would be more informative. The SSA meeting will be even better than that!

Clock reset in progress

It is time for the first big challenge of the week: getting my circadian rhythms straightened around. It feels like about 11:30 in the evening, my biological time, but it’s actually 6:30am Lindau time. Today is actually tomorrow.

My strategy was actually planned. Yesterday was mostly travel through the night, and I got no sleep. I noticed as I was flying east and getting very, very tired that, as the sun came up at what was an unnatural time for me and started zapping my photoreceptors, I woke up very nicely…and then kept going through the agonizing day of missed flights and boring waits. Then last night (local time) I finally got to Lindau in time for some of the social events and just kept my brain going through the evening. I finally went to bed about 10:30 Lindau, and slept wonderfully.

I had set an alarm, but didn’t need it — again, the first rosy light of dawn comes in through my window, and I was up and feeling pretty good. I think I’ll take the next step in completing my adjustment to this 7 hour shift in time, and I suspect it’s one the circadian researchers haven’t contemplated (I shall have to ask Bora): a fine breakfast of German pastries. That should keep me going through the morning talks.

By the way, this is the Lindau Nobel conference, and the topic this year is chemistry. I am not a chemist, which means I may not have a clue what anyone is talking about. However, I’ve got one angle that may help: I am a microscopist. This morning, I’m looking forward to Neher talking about caged compounds — there’s also some juicy stuff on protein degradation and renewable energy. Later this week, of course, it’s Shimomura, Chalfie, and Tsien on bioluminescence, which is all grist for the microscopist mill. I might just come out of this with some new understanding.

Und Bier! Tonight I must find a good dunkel — last night the conference only provided a so-so bottled Pils. Then this evening I shall try to post some summaries of the day’s science while under the influence. It should be entertaining!

In Lindau, at last

I really need to learn a good collection of creative German cuss words. It’s been a harrowing, overlong day and a half of travel, with late flights leading to missed connections leading to long periods standing in lines with Germans, who were all very nice and helpful, except that I learned that even if your flight is leaving in ten minutes they will politely tell you that no, you cannot move to the front of the line. And now at last, though, I have finally arrived at my lovely funky hotel in Lindau, and it’s a beautiful afternoon, and I’m going to take a pleasant walk down to the lake, and maybe I don’t need those rude German words after all.

I do need a shower first, though. Running through airports tends to generate a bit of musk.

Expelled redux

They’re doing it again. There’s a new movie being released, The Voyage That Shook the World, that you can tell from the tagline — “One man, one voyage, one book ignited a controversy that still rages today” — is creationist trash (hint: there is no scientific controversy anymore on this matter). Look a little further, and you’ll find it’s produce by Creation Ministries International, which tells you right there what their agenda is: to tell lies for Jesus.

Here’s where the parallel to Expelled lies…in the lies. They got several Darwin experts (Peter Bowler, Sandra Herbert, and Janet Browne) to appear in the “documentary” by concealing their motives. And then they admit to cherry-picking the interviews to put together their story.

You know, if they actually had an honest message, if they could be trusted to present the opinions of the experts accurately, they wouldn’t need to deceive to get people to contribute to their projects. As it is, all we can trust them on is their ability to mangle the facts. Doesn’t this tell you something about the credibility of the creationist movement?

At least they didn’t hire Ben Stein as a frontman.

I may not be perfectly rational, but my magic invisible monkeys are!

John Wilkins has tried to make some arguments for accommodationism. I am unimpressed. He makes six points that I briefly summarize here, with my reply.

  1. It’s the job of the religious to reconcile their beliefs with science, and atheists don’t get to “insist that nobody else can make the claim that their religious belief is consistent with science.” The first part is obvious — we aren’t going to compromise science with superstition, nor are we going to make excuses for them. The second part makes no sense. Nobody has been making that demand…but we will point out how silly the excused people make are.

  2. The usual excuse that making nice with religion is strategic, coupled with the claim that religion is always going to be around. Other people can be strategic. Scientists just ought to be honest. As for the tired argument that religion will always be around — no. Some of us have shed the old myths. More will follow. I don’t have any problem seeing a coming future where religious belief is an irrelevant minority position. Of course, if you start out with a defeatist attitude, it becomes a bit more difficult.

  3. Some scientists are religious, and we don’t have the right to insist that they give it up. I have not heard a single atheist insist that anyone must give up their religion. I can imagine a majority voluntarily giving it up, but my imagination fails at the idea of going up to some believer and ordering them to stop believing. How do we do that? So, sorry, Wilkins — it’s another complaint about something no one is proposing.

  4. Scientific institutions shouldn’t be asserting that science is compatible with religion — let the religious do that themselves. That’s the very same thing the atheists have been saying all along.

  5. Religion has always been wrong about the natural world, but religion is seeking knowledge of something different. Again, first part fine, second part weird. What knowledge? Can you even call it “knowledge” if it’s nothing that anyone can know? Why should we accept any claims by religion?

  6. NOMA is wrong, and there is no war between religion and science. Wilkins continues his pattern of being half right. I agree that NOMA was a false attempt at reconciliation. I disagree that there is no conflict between religion and science. Religion is an archaic, failed mode of thinking that continues to demand greater respect than it deserves, and exploits tradition, fear, and emotion to maintain its undeserved position. Wilkins tries to compare it to two dancers jostling for space on a dance floor, I prefer to think of it as one dancer, humanity, afflicted with lice, religion, and twitching and squirming unpleasantly while struggling with a persistent parasite.

So, a resounding “eh”. However, then he tosses out this bizarre bit of philosophical insipidity that irritates, like an annoying bit of grit in my shoe. It’s one of those superficially reasonable comments that, with just a little thought, looks awfully stupid.

Only those who are completely without self-knowledge think they are entirely rational on every subject, and that this licenses attacking others for their perceived failings in that respect. I know I won’t change their mind either.

Grrr. Once again, we’ve got a caricature of the atheist position: who among us claims perfect self-knowledge and flawless rationality? We’re human beings, last I looked. However, to imply that we can therefore have no license to criticize irrationality is to claim that no one can say anything ever against foolishness. It’s an abdication of intellectual responsibility.

If I were to announce that I were absolutely rational and that I had perfect knowledge, I would expect to be rightfully attacked by people like John Wilkins for my obvious failing. Hey, he just did — even though I’ve never made such an assertion. But I think we’d both agree that such an extravagant claim would most definitely be an astonishing foolishness that ought to be smacked down. What a crazy idea!

John clearly thinks some philosophical claims are wrong. But the curious thing is that he thinks certain other claims are beyond our capacity to criticize.

If, for instance, someone believes that a god gave us magical absolution by turning into a man and dying temporarily, well, heck—that may not be an irrational, wacky idea at all. If this someone claims that they have a magical communication line to an omniscient superman who assures him that the 36-hour death absolution was really, really true, we should step back, take a charitably philosophical view of the idea, and abstain from calling him a very silly man.

There are limits to what we can attack as bad ideas.

But, apparently, there are no limits to the absurdities that the religious can advance.

It’s an asymmetrical situation that will be maintained as long as we have people insisting that we grant religious ideas a specially protected status. I reject that — I’m going to insist that it is fair game to attack the obvious failings of religion. And it’s not because I am unaware of the limitations of my knowledge, or because I believe I’m flawlessly rational.

It’s because the invisible monkeys in my pants dart out every once in a while to whisper the truth in my ear, in the ancient language of omniscient primates. And that is a source of knowledge nobody can attack me on, by Wilkins’ rules.

The last radio reminder

Sad (in some ways) to say, Atheists Talk radio will make its last broadcast Sunday at 9am Central time. They will continue, but they’ll be moving to a podcast format rather than continuing to be sandwiched in between woo-woo altie nonsense programs, which is a good thing.

The show tomorrow will feature Greg Laden discussing missionaries. He doesn’t like ’em. Neither do I. It should be a very good last hurrah.

Nice ankles

It took a while to convince the Trophy Wife to let me take pictures of her feet and post them on the internet. Wait, that’s not as kinky as it sounds! She’s been loafing about in these nice socks she was sent by our very own Patricia, OM, using yarn colors based on the Spanish Shawl nudibranch, and I just think they need to be acknowledged — but maybe you haven’t noticed, but she likes to avoid the whole interwubbley fanfare. Finally, though, I caught her with her toasty warm tootsies atop an ottoman and snapped this shot, so there you are: beautiful socks and a rare image of the Trophy Wife.

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Thanks, Patricia!

Jodi and Jason

In case you missed the trail of links that magically appeared on several blogs this morning, here it is:

Almost Diamonds → Skepchick → Greg Laden’s Blog → Whitecoat Underground → Traumatized By Truth → My Fair Scientist → Neurotopia → A Blog Around the Clock → Pharyngula

What it all led up to was a marriage proposal from Jodi Haynes to Jason Thibeault, which would have been a bit of a bummer if he’d said “No”, but we’re all pleased to hear that he said “Yes!”

A few people seem to be baffled by the business of a pair of proud atheists going through this “marriage” stuff. Isn’t that a religious ritual?

No! It’s an example of human values and human commitment that has been coopted by religious institutions — just as they want you to think you can’t be born and you can’t die without an attending parasite from some superstitious dogma, they also want you to believe you can’t stand up and declare your love for another person without a holy gatekeeper. No gods intervene, no priests can sanctify, and no government can dictate when two people care enough about each other that they willingly and publicly declare that they have a lasting bond. Nothing else matters.

So good godless congratulations to Jodi and Jason, from one happily married pair of atheists to another.

Sally Kern is at it again

Oklahoma’s bible-thumpingest congresscreature has issued a Proclamation of Morality.

WHEREAS, the people of Oklahoma have a strong tradition of reliance upon the Creator of the Universe; and

WHEREAS, we believe our economic woes are consequences of our greater national moral crisis; and

WHEREAS, this nation has become a world leader in promoting abortion, pornography, same sex marriage, sex trafficking, divorce, illegitimate births, child abuse, and many other forms of debauchery; and

WHEREAS, alarmed that the Government of the United States of America is forsaking the rich Christian heritage upon which this nation was built; and

WHEREAS, grieved that the Office of the president of these United States has refused to uphold the long held tradition of past presidents in giving recognition to our National Day of Prayer; and

WHEREAS, deeply disturbed that the Office of the president of these United States disregards the biblical admonitions to live clean and pure lives by proclaiming an entire month to an immoral behavior;

NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that we the undersigned elected officials of the people of Oklahoma, religious leaders and citizens of the State of Oklahoma, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world, solemnly declare that the HOPE of the great State of Oklahoma and of these United States, rests upon the Principles of Religion and Morality as put forth in the HOLY BIBLE

Notice that the only solutions she proposes to her perceived problem of immorality is 1) pray for a day, and 2) read her holy book. Even if you grant that her declared problems are real moral problems (and I do not: I find it incredibly offensive and obtuse that she would lump same sex marriage together with sex trafficking) these are solutions that do not work. If you want to find a hotbed of divorce, illegitimate births, child abuse, alcoholism, etc.…just look for a high density of churches.