Wednesday science-y goodness in Austin

CFI-Austin, along with Texas Citizens for Science and the UT Section of Integrative Biology, is sponsoring a trio of talks this evening to be held at UT's Burdine Hall, room 108. I think I had some classes there back in the day. The general theme is "Science Education in Texas," which, as you may well know, is under a cloud due to the ideological machinations of the arch-conservative State Board of Education and its young-earth-creationist dentist chairman, Dan McLeroy.

Admission is free and it all starts at 6:30. The speakers include the TCS's own Steve Schafersman, on "How Will Texas Oppose Aggressive, Organized Creationism in Texas?"; Ed Brayton, author of the blog Dispatches from the Culture Wars, on the religious roots of ID (there's also a Dispatches blog meetup for Ed at Stubb's BBQ Thursday night at 7); and Josh Rosenau, NCSE staffer and author of the blog Thoughts from Kansas, on the evolution of the creationist movement.

I'm going to do my level best to attend. Hope lots of you can too. If you see me there, wave.

---

Addendum: Well, bummer, you won't see me there. If any of our readers do attend, please post a report in the comments.

Just how silly are they over at RememberThyCreator.com?

Young-earthers are just about the most reality-challenged folks around. But over at the RememberThyCreator.com site — you know, the one with the silly poll that got spiked recently by Pharyngulites, hopefully teaching the RTC team a thing or two about what and what not to do on the intarweebs — they have just about the silliest set of reasons why people should "not accept millions of years," but rather, presumably, 6000 years, as the proper age of the Earth. "Wow!" you must be thinking, "you mean they have actual evidence the Earth is young?" W-e-lll, no, not exactly. What they have is simply a list of indignant assertions that accepting an old Earth contradicts Biblical myths, and thus must be rejected out of hand. Here's a sample:

The Bible clearly teaches that God created in six literal 24 hour days a few thousand years ago.

The Hebrew word for day in Genesis 1 is yom. In the vast majority of its uses in the Old Testament it means a literal day and where it doesn’t the context makes this clear.

Similarly, the context of Genesis 1 clearly shows that the days of creation were literal days. First, yom is defined the first time it is used in the Bible in its two literal senses: the light portion of the light/dark cycle and the whole light/dark cycle (Gen 1:4-5). Second, yom is used with “evening” and “morning”. Third, yom is modified with a number: one day, second day, third day, etc., which everywhere else in the Old Testament indicates literal days. Fourth, yom is defined literally in Genesis 1:14 in relation to the heavenly bodies.

You see the unimpeachable brilliance of their scientific methodology here: if the Bible says it, it's true, full stop. Boy, and here we all were thinking that knowledge about how the world works took a lot of hard work and study. You know, decades of research, learning, field work, experimentation, trial and error, cataloguing your findings, revising them, publishing them, have them peer reviewed, going back to the drawing board when it's been shown some of your findings are wrong and need further study.

Nope! Don't have to do none o' that! As the intrepid Dr. Terry Mortenson reveals over at RTC.com, all you have to do is check what's written in a book of Bronze Age myths and legends, and voila, all you ever need to learn about anything is right there, and unquestionably true!

"But what about all that doggone pesky evidence we have that the earth is, in fact, billions of years old?" you ask? Never fear. It's denialism to the rescue. Mortenson writes:

The idea of millions of years did not come from the scientific facts.

It was developed by deistic and atheistic geologists in the late 18th and early 19th century. These men used anti-biblical philosophical and religious assumptions to interpret the geological observations in a way that plainly contradicted the Biblical account of creation, the Flood and the age of the earth. The “deep time” idea flows out of naturalistic assumptions, not scientific observations.

Radiometric dating methods do not prove millions of years.

Radiometric dating was not developed until the early 20th century, by which time the whole world had already accepted the millions of years. In recent years creationists in the “RATE project” have done experimental, theoretical and field research to uncover … evidence and to show that decay rates were orders of magnitude faster in the past, which shrinks the millions of years date to thousands of years, confirming the Bible.

Mortenson's bio tells us he has a Ph.D. in the "history of geology" from Coventry University in England. I'd very much like to know what Mortenson has published professionally. That he has retreated to the AiG stable indicates that his academic or scientific career has not been especially impressive, at least in terms of achievements as a working geologist. Mortenson's achievements as an evangelical are not in dispute, as Googling him reveals nothing but page after page of creationist, Christian, and conservative sites, and nothing from any mainstream scientific source to show that the man has done anything in the way of field work at all. And the only papers Mortenson seems to write have titles like "Boundaries on Creation and Noah’s Flood: Early 19th century scriptural geologists," and are presented exclusively at religious seminars and similar forums.

Given Mortenson's lack of post-collegiate work in his field (he went to get a doctorate in "divinity," so it seems clear he's been focusing on that), it's still kind of surprising he would collapse into a life of anti-science so completely. But what's funny about the things he says regarding radiometric dating above is what immediately precedes it. He launches into a deliriously silly conspiracy theory, naming no names and citing no sources, that the notion of "deep time" was in fact concocted by "deistic and atheistic geologists in the late 18th and early 19th century" (!) with an agenda to discredit the Bible. All their scientific work was just in aid of promoting a predetermined agenda.

Can you say, "Project much?" It's a common character flaw of creos that they project all their own least commendable traits onto those of us they hate. But this takes the cake. Who is this sinister cabal of Regency-era atheists and deists? Why would deists and atheists work together anyway? And how did it come to be that they gained such control over the geological sciences? Maybe Mortenson learned all this while getting his doctorate in the history of geology, and his dissertation is a blistering exposé of these people. But we certainly can't know from reading this little article, and frankly, I have no interest in donating to AiG to get Mortenson's full "brochure" promising further details. (Another blow against peer review! Brochures! The vanity press of the evangelical anti-science movement!)

We know, on the other hand, that YEC's and other creationist "scientists" do all their work in the interests of furthering a predetermined ideology and shoring up preconceived dogmas. And if we didn't know it before, we would now. Because the Wedge Document tells us so, and this little article of Mortenson's tells us so. If it contradicts the Bible, throw it out. It's wrong. Mortenson's scientific "objectivity" could not be clearer, could it?

The RATE project itself was one of those desperate creationist "research" projects whose participants had decided in advance what results they would collect and accept. Far from debunking the validity of radiometric dating techniques, its methods were deeply flawed — not the least because, as J.G. Meert has pointed out, none of the project's members had any expertise in experimental geochronology, nor had they published anything involving radiometric dating in the mainstream scientific literature. (Oh yes, but there's that horrible Big Science cabal with their secret decoder rings and handshakes who expel these noble Christian scientists from their august pages. I forgot. Thanks, Ben.) ICR's Grand Canyon Project has been taken apart on TalkOrigins, as well.

"Science" that is done to validate an ideology, whether extreme examples like Adolf and the boys looking for "racial purity" through eugenics, or merely pathetic examples like creationists hoping against hope for a 6000-year-old Earth (which they seem to think is the only kind their omnipotent God is capable of), always crumbles into chaos and confusion. Shoehorning the supernatural into the natural never explains anything, and always muddies the waters. Lately, we've had another creationist troll pop up here flogging the usual foolish notion that any "gap" in scientific knowledge is necessarily filled only by his God. But what's at the heart of this isn't science, let alone the spirit of curiosity and passion that leads to scientific inquiry and the knowledge gained thereby. It's merely the insecurity of the religious mind, seeking, in Isaac Asimov's words, "a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold." The idea that the universe might not be all about us is still deeply, existentially terrifying to most people.

But trying to cloak that insecurity in pseudoscience to validate it does no one any good. Better to admit — as so few fundamentalists can — that maybe you're wrong, an attitude indispensible to any real scientific mind. And from that point, to see where the evidence actually leads you, which can often be in surprising and fulfilling directions.

There's a gag from an old Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode that I'm reminded of here. In one dreadful movie, there's a white-coated scientist working late in his lab, and one of the 'bots riffs, "Wow, what a day! I invented Gaines Burgers and I didn't even mean to!" Silly as that is, it does sum up what happens in real science, as opposed to the dogma-bound pseudoscience of the YEC's. Often unexpected results lead you down entirely new and undreamt-of paths of inquiry. How tragically sad that there are those out there who think themselves scientists, may even have a shiny Ph.D. saying they've got the training for it...and who choose to throw all that away in favor of hiding behind the skirts of religion's insecurities, and the lies that must be told continually to keep the rents in those skirts patched.

Money and thermodynamics

Here's an addendum to Sunday's show on financial scams. It's a thought that I had while preparing the topic, but didn't wind up using while on the air.

Your financial situation is a lot like the second law of thermodynamics -- a concept which creationists frequently and (perhaps) deliberately misunderstand. The second law of thermodynamics deals with entropy, which is hard to explain in abstract terms, but it is often described as "chaos." It is a function of the amount of energy in a system which is no longer available to do work.

In a closed system, entropy always increases, which means that orderliness is being drained away all the time. The only way to restore that order is to bring new energy into the system which can do work. Here on earth, the sun is always shining down, bringing new energy from space. That energy is absorbed by plants, which are eaten by herbivores, which are both eaten by people, which channel that energy into creating orderly things. If all the people in the world were to disappear tomorrow, within a very short time our buildings would decay and rust, and eventually fall down. What is biodegradable would be eaten by bacteria. And so on. Keeping our civilization going takes work.

The sun provides "free energy" for us and so powers order and life and yes, evolution too. Eventually the sun will burn out, but this is too far in the future for us to care about that problem right now. You can't just keep spend energy without bringing more of it in: if the sun vanished, all life on earth would likely be dead in a matter of days. It doesn't matter how clever our science is at that point; without new energy coming in, you can only shuffle existing energy around for so long before using it up.

In your personal life, money plays a similar role to order. Most of the things you do as a citizen of the 21st century require money in some way. Keeping a roof over your head costs money, or it costs somebody else money (if, for example, you live with your parents). Feeding yourself costs money. Traveling around costs money. The highways and buildings that keep our economy running cost money to maintain.

So in order to keep this system afloat, we have to do new things all the time that generate wealth. At a basic level, we have to grow enough food to feed everyone. We have to build houses, and create roads. At a less crucial level, we give each other reasons to go on living when we create art and design cool technology and educate one another. These are the things that we do that are of lasting value to our species, and they are things that are worth paying for.

A financial scam is the economic equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. Scam artists will tell you that you can get your money for nothing (and, as Dire Straits tells us, your chicks for free). They say that if you mail their chain letter to other people, or build your downline as an Amway distributor, or hype up Liberty Dollars, or "pay the processing fee" to release the funds from your rich uncle in Nigeria, then you'll get money without doing work.

Thanks to thermodynamics, we know that perpetual motion machines don't work, and that anyone who claims to have built one is a charlatan. In order to create motion, you have to spend new energy. In order to keep a lifestyle going, you have to do something of value that brings in new money. In other words, an economic closed system is guaranteed to burn itself out sooner or later.

In a nutshell, that is what I mean when I say that you should always approach a new financial opportunity by asking: "Where is this money coming from?"

Yomin turns up, defends himself by running and hiding

This is hardly surprising. In a cutpaste-heavy comment the length of War and Peace, Yomin Postelnik has only this to say in response to my refutation of his ridiculous Canada Free Press article. It's the usual "you've distorted and misrepresented me, but I don't have time to debate you" dodge.

Your distortions should be quite clear. It's amazing that you see the need to skew everything said into your narrow prism and definitions, most of which diverge greatly from their intended meaning. It's also interesting that you fail to make a proper case against the main point of the column.

If my "distortions" are "quite clear," why doesn't Yomin help us out by explaining what they are? I invite everyone here, if you have the stomach for it, to re-read Yomin's original article, to which I linked in my critique, and try to pick out where I skewed and distorted, or where I "failed to make a proper case against the main point of the column." I invite you to do this because, of course, Yomin doesn't point these things out himself. He simply declares that I have done this, then ducks under his desk.

In short, he's simply dishonest. Here's the difference between Yomin and me. When I criticized Yomin's article, I backed up my criticisms. In detail. When Yomin tries to tell me I've distorted, skewed, and failed to address his points...he can't back it up.

As far as I can tell, the "main point" of Yomin's column was to try to show that his theism was logical and atheism was illogical. But I showed, giving specific examples, where Yomin trotted out logical fallacy after logical fallacy, demonstrating that all his blustery references to "logic" were masking a lack of actual knowledge as to its principles and proper application. I also pointed out numerous other flaws in the piece, which Yomin fails to rebut except to claim I distorted him. And precisely what does he think the "narrow" definitions are that I'm presumably employing? Yomin doesn't say, making this remark yet another empty diversion. The only definitions of things I ever use are the accurate ones. If they don't support the ideologies of poseurs like Yomin, that's his problem.

This kind of rhetorical Mexican Hat Dance is typical of bad apologists. When you slam them with facts they can't counter, they simply bawl "you misrepresented me" or "you took my words out of context" or "you didn't even address my main point" (especially if you did), and then run off. And they set off smokebombs like this as a further dodge:

Unfortunately I have no time to debate in detail on every board. I will therefore copy a debate on here. Some parts, as you will see, were interrupted by clowns on your side with all kinds of fascinating personal insults and accusations. Still, you will see that it is in fact those on your side who are ignorant of science and of Darwin's theory. I critique it honestly and they can't defend it with the same honesty.

Which is, of course, laughable, given that Yomin's scientific illiteracy stands out like a cockroach on a wedding cake. I went ahead and approved Yomin's comment, despite the fact it's nothing more than an epic-length cutpaste in which he attempts his "critique" of evolution. Interestingly, evolution was not a subject talked about at all in the article he wrote that I critiqued. So Yomin is, in effect, trying to deflect my criticisms of the absurd arguments he made in one article (which was all about how atheism is "illogical") by drawing everyone's attentions to a whole new set of absurd arguments he tries to make about evolution. This is apologetics as slapstick.

As for his "honest" "critique" of evolution? Well, get ready for another collection of dusty old canards. (The guy also looks to be a global warming denier too, surprise, surprise.) Here is the salient silliness, complete with bad grammar and sentence structure, for those of you who don't want to wade through the cutpaste.

Specification is just one aspect, but it’s a leading one. If we say that order formed out of a primordial pool, without intelligent guidance, we’re saying that randomness begot intricate specificity, to the tune of billions upon billions of species, the existence of many being are interdependent.

By the way, the platypus genome is similar similar to other so-called “transitional” fossil, the Archaeopteryx. That one had fully developed feathers and nothing transitional in nature. A transitional fossil would have half scales and half feathers, etc. What we have instead is a species that’s not uniquely mammal or amphibian, but it’s not transitional.

I agree with you that the Creator can’t be physical and to my knowledge no religion believes in a physical Creator, rather, one that is higher than physicality. All I’m saying is that physicality itself points to the fact that there is an Intelligent Creator, above the physical realm. What that Creator is remains a partial mystery, in as much as we only understand the physical and have an idea of the spiritual and the Creator needs to be higher than both (as physicality cannot emanate from spirituality - more on that later). [So Yomin thinks an intelligent creator is the only logical answer, and yet when he tries to discuss the nature of this creator, we get more drunk-driver-style rhetorical meandering as this? Gee, how could I ever have doubted him? MW]

But evolution’s not a fact. It’s a theory. [Pow! — Didn't see that one coming! MW]

There are many prominent creationist scientists. Granted, they don’t get much media attention (what else is new), but their findings are challenging and profound. [Who are these scientists, and where do they publish their challenging and profound findings? Astonishingly, Yomin doesn't say! Who'da thunk it? MW]

We don’t see the platypus as a link in any evolutionary chain, just as a unique creature. The fact that all these characteristics are fully developed makes it even less likely to be part of an evolutionary chain and seems to point to it being a unique species in and of itself. [You are the weakest link — goodbye! MW]

What I’m saying is that if you want to make a valid case for evolution, you need to find some forms that document it. These are what’s referred to as transitional forms. They’d show real gradual transition from amphibian to mammal or something of that nature. This is the premise that evolution is based on and such fossils have yet to be found (a platypus has fully formed reptile features and fully formed mammal ones, nothing that shows gradual transition). [Except, of course, for all the transitional fossils that have been found. Otherwise, Yomin's point is, er, devastating. Yeah. Note to Yomin: your ignorance is not evidence. MW]

The late Steven J. Gould, who obviously had a very different take than I did on the issue of evolution, nevertheless said “the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology.” He, as did Darwin, understood transitional fossils in the way that I laid out. [Lying about Gould's position on transitional fossils is typical of creationism's dishonesty. MW]

So you see, Yomin's whole case against evolution is based on his standard repertoire of false analogies (again with the encyclopedias!), the good old argument from incredulity, and the insistence that transitional forms — which any expert biologist and paleontologist will tell you are as common as table salt and about the actual nature of which Yomin is eye-rollingly clueless — don't exist.

Verdict: he's your typical ill-educated, scientifically illiterate religious ignoramus, who hasn't been any nearer a biology class than Uwe Boll has been to the Oscars. Like his arguments for God, Yomin's arguments against evolution offer nothing new, every one of them a boilerplate canard that's been demolished again and again and again, though the facts simply never seem to sink in to the skulls of the aggressively ignorant. Rather than rebut me with his comment, he simply ducked into the punch and validated my entire critique by parading his ignorance more proudly than ever. Gold!

If any of you feel like trudging through the comment yourselves and further torpedoing Yomin's antiscience clichés, feel free. Or, you could stick with reality, and read about this week's latest news in evolutionary science's actual findings.

Yomin Postelnik, poster-boy for arrogant theistic fractal wrongness

It's been a while since I bloodied my knuckles and let some smug ignoramus have it right in the teeth. So I figured it's time. This is a l-o-n-g one, but a fun one. I hope.

Via Dawkins' site, I learn of a lengthy essay over at Canada Free Press by a nincompoop with the improbable name of Yomin Postelnik, with the grandiose title of "Logical Proof of the Existence of a Divine Creator, Why Atheism is Not Logically Sound". If you thought Ray Comfort was a cocky assclown, you'll love this guy. Postelnik fancies himself a master of logic (if not proper punctuation or English), and yet doesn't seem to notice that his entire, long-winded blather amounts to one spectacular logical fallacy, namely, the argument from incredulity, with a heaping side dish of straw men. Here he sums up his whole position on why atheism is logically unsound.

No one in their right mind would claim that 10,000 hundred story buildings built themselves from randomness, even over time. Yet those who doubt the existence of a Creator believe that an entire universe, containing all of the billions of elements necessary for life to form, may have come about without a builder. As such, they give credence to billions of times more coincidences to having come about.

Ah, yes. It's the old "just look at all the trees!" argument that Matt Dillahunty and I goofed on on the TV show last week, just on a slightly grander scale. Apart from making the fundamental dumb apologist mistake of inferring design in nature from observing it in known artifacts like buildings — I'll explain why Paley's famous "watchmaker" argument actually does not demonstrate intelligent design in nature a little later — Postelnik's whole rant reveals little more than boilerplate religious scientific illiteracy, total ineptitude at this whole "logic" thing for which he repeatedly flatters himself, and a laughable tendency to recycle any number of long-refuted and feeble apologist canards as if they were amazing new concepts no atheist had ever considered before.

Let's have fun going through Postelnik's catalog of failings here, shall we?

Reading through this, you might wonder: why bother? Postelnik is so stupid that he can say this with a straight face: "Would human beings survive if one organ or cavity was missing or displaced, even after somehow being otherwise perfectly formed with no designer?" Well, knowing, as I do, several people who have had kidneys, bladders, appendixes, uteruses removed, I'd say, well yeah, duh. He's so silly that he launches his whole article with false analogies and unsupported a priori assumptions like this, which reveal the pitiful depth of his idiocy in living Technicolor...

The simplest proof (yet one that no atheist has ever been able to counter effectively) is that a universe of this size and magnitude does not somehow build itself, just as a set of encyclopedias doesn't write itself or form randomly from the spill of a massive inkblot.

Well, I bother because millions of people sadly think like this twat, that's why, and they're the ones launching all-out assaults on science education around the world in the name of their invisible magic sky fairy. It's incumbent upon atheists not merely to refute their nonsense, but to take some of the air out of their puffed-up egos by blasting it to smithereens and peeing on the ashes to boot. I've written before about the way Christianity allows its dumbest believers to adopt an air of faux-intellectualism. Here the stupid is unmasked for all to see, and laugh at. Postelnik is the very model of fractal wrongess.

1. Postelnik thinks scientific explanations are all about "random chance." Towards this end, he offers up variants on the old "tornado in a junkyard" argument.

   [Atheists] believe that not only did whole planets appear spontaneously, but also believe that the fact that these planets do not collide as meteors do, that they have gravity, that they contain the proper atmospheric conditions for life to take hold and contain sustenance to sustain this life all happened by mere fluke.

   Reality check: Naturally, nothing in science (let alone atheism) promotes any of the nonsense Postelnik spews. Where in physics or cosmology is the theory proposed that planets emerged "spontaneously," or that collisions between worlds never happen? (Such a collision is, in fact, why we have a moon, and an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.) Nowhere, of course, but Postelnik is typically butt-ignorant of the science he attacks and, like so many apologists, doesn't realize what a fool he's making of himself parading his lack of education in public. Planets, as any first year astronomy student will tell you, form within accretion discs of dust and other particles surrounding a star. Gravity, which Postelnik seems to think of as some ineffable magic property (he refers to celestial bodies as "possessing" gravity) when it's nothing more than the natural attraction between objects based both on their respective masses and the inverse square law, eventually causes the particles in all this whirling dust to coalesce into planets. It is only a "spontaneous" process if you're a fool who thinks spontaneity takes place over lengthy periods of time. But that seems to be a basic misunderstanding of creationist twits.

   Here's what Postelnik is too thick to grasp. Science understands the eons of time required for celestial objects like stars and planets to form. And instead of the mere guesswork Postelnik seems to think scientists engage in (typical twaddle: "...they outrageously chalk up to coincidence billions upon billions of times more detail and design in all parts of life found in this universe"), there are in fact well understood laws upon which everything in the universe operates. The "spontaneous" appearance of a planet or a life form would, in fact, refute everything science understands about how nature works, since science does not argue for the spontaneous generation of these things. The laws of physics allow us to understand why planets, once they are locked in their orbits, don't collide willy-nilly, though eventually their orbits could change or decay, and then they could. After all, whole galaxies collide, so certainly planets could.

   (Incidentally, you would think that with all his dogging on science, Postelnik ought to have some pretty impressive CV's, don't you? Well in fact...I know this will come as a shock...no. His bio identifies him as "the President of IRPW, a company that offers business plans, funding advice and facilitation, SBA loan applications, SWOT analyses, bold and effective marketing strategies, general business development and grant writing and research for non-profits and certain qualified businesses." Clearly he has all the expertise he needs to explain why all the world's leading astronomers, physicists, cosmologists, and biologists are wrong. One hopes, for the sake of IRPW's business clients, the "research" Postelnik does for them isn't as deficient as that which he's done here.)

2. Again with the "spontaneity"! Postelnik continues to demonstrate he snored his way through junior high science class by bringing up "spontaneity" straw men over and over again.

   Even if all the planets somehow formed themselves, all somehow staying in perfect orbit and possessing gravity, even take for granted that all the chemicals needed for life were so how [sic] there as well, by sheer happenstance, would it then be possible for billions of species to spontaneously come about, each with a male and female of each kind so that they could exist in the long run?

   Reality check: I'll take "Scientifically Illiterate Verbal Diarrhea" for $1000, Alex.

   Let's set aside the fact planets didn't "somehow form themselves," they were formed by well-understood natural laws. Let's set aside the fact that most life on Earth is microbial, with many species reproducing asexually, some reproducing both sexually and asexually, and some, like viruses, unable to reproduce on their own at all. Let's set aside the fact that, while the ultimate origins of life are still an open question, no one in science is arguing for its spontaneous — as in "poofed into existence in a puff of smoke" — emergence. Let's set aside the fact that the vast majority of Earth's life forms, even the ones like dinosaurs who had the run of the place for far longer than we have or will, have eventually gone extinct. Let's set aside the fact that, for over a billion years of Earth's early existence, the whole planet was unable to harbor life. In fact, let's set aside every fact that science has established about the development of life at all. And once we're that stupid, we can begin to think along the lines of Yomin Postelnik. Because it's only through a totality of ignorance that one can hold the views he holds.

   Where does his whole obsession with things popping up spontaneously come from? Why, from religion, of course. Remember, it isn't science claiming that stars, planets, galaxies, people and puppy dogs emerged spontaneously. It's religion. You know, God said "Let there be," and poof, there it was. That's how tards like Postelnik think things really did happen. And once you think things really did happen in that way, then certainly it will seem illogical to think they happened that way all by themselves, without some agency bringing them about. But of course, things did not poof into existence spontaneously. Not even the universe. Remember: the Big Bang theory is not a creation ex nihilo theory. The Big Bang only describes the event that caused the universe to expand into its current state. There had to be something to go bang in the Big Bang, after all.

   Nothing in science, outside of the more esoteric realms of quantum mechanics, argues for the spontaneous creation of things from nothingness. Religion does. Postelnik is, hilariously, attacking his straw man of science by accusing it of making the very claims his religion makes. The problem isn't that Postelnik doesn't accept spontaneous creation. Being religious, he does. But religion offers up a god, and science doesn't, and so in that context, science has the sillier explanation, you see? This is how people with a head full of Bronze Age myths and no education in actual science think. Pathetic, isn't it?

   Postelnik babbles on a bit, repeating his bogus analogies (remember, encyclopedias couldn't write themselves!), occasionally pausing to compliment himself on his brilliance (he has to, as no educated person would), ignoring all of the detailed fields of scientific study that do in fact show that everything we observe in nature can very easily evolve and develop over time. Like many apologists, he seems to think blustery rhetoric constitutes evidence.

   Then he offers up what he thinks are three "stand out" arguments for God, which have been demolished many times, and which I will now demolish all over again.

3. And the "stand out" arguments are: (And savvy readers will note that Postelnik isn't even clear on what he does claim to believe. His definitions of the three following arguments are rather confused and conflated, overlapping one another oddly. The way he defines the anthropic principle is closer to the definition of the first cause argument, while his definition of the teleological argument actually sounds more like the anthropic principle. The man argues like a drunk driver.)
   • The anthropic principle.

     Postelnik thinks: The anthropic argument contends that the universe is too complex to have no Creator. This is in effect the central point of this column, although explained in a more common manner.

     A more foolish manner, you mean. Let's deal with the obvious initial objection, which is that if complexity requires a Creator, then that Creator must be at least as complex as his universe and must have had a Creator too, and so on, ad infinitum. I mean, it's just logical!

     The anthropic principle has been punctured so many times and in so many different ways that one has to wonder just how many rocks Postelnik has been hiding under all his life to convince himself that "I have yet to meet an atheist who can make even a feeble argument to counter any of these points." I don't get the idea he's met many atheists at all, and certainly has read no atheist literature, all of which has nuked every silly argument Postelnik proudly flogs. To date, the most interesting and unusual refutation of the AP isn't so much a refutation at all: in The God Delusion, Dawkins makes the fascinating point that the AP is not an argument for God, but a substitute for one. Properly understood, what is known as the Weak Anthropic Principle fully supports a naturalist explanation of reality.

     Douglas Adams lampooned the AP in his famous bit about the puddle of water remarking on how amazing it was that the hole it was in was so perfectly formed to contain it. This is the problem with the AP if used to support theism: it's a tautology. Any universe whose properties for supporting life such as ours we could marvel at would have to be one in which we existed in the first place. This fact alone says nothing about a godly designer, nor does it address the likelihood of other possible universes containing entirely different properties, under which entirely different forms of life might arise. Hey, the believer might say, there's no evidence for those other universes, so that's just hypothetical guesswork! To which we say, by Jove, I think you've got it! Your God is the same kind of hypothetical guess, chum. At least the concept of other universes or other physical properties for sustaining life are hypotheses about natural rather than supernatural things.

     Understood as supporting natural processes, the AP points out that life developed after an environment in which it could exist arose. We, along with millions of other species (making the term "anthropic" both arrogant and inaccurate — since dogs exist, why do we never hear theists argue the "caninopic" principle?), were fortunate enough to be that life. Such an environment could just as easily not have arisen, as in the false start we see evidence of having occurred — remnants of vast flows of water, etc. — on Mars. In other words, we have been fine-tuned (by the ongoing processes of evolution) for our environment, not vice versa.

     The vast bulk of this universe is deeply inimical to life. Most of it, as Postelnik might have overlooked, is hard vacuum hovering around zero Kelvin. And of all the planets we know of, ours is the only one we yet know of teeming with life.

     An all-powerful universe-creating God could easily have populated every single planet and satellite and asteroid out there with highly advanced forms of life. Argue for an all-powerful God, and suddenly the need of the universe to possess specific properties for the support of life becomes superfluous. Unless the theist wants to argue that natural laws don't permit that. In which case, they've just argued their God is subject to (thus not transcending) natural laws, and not likely to be the creator of them. An omnipotent being would not be bound by the kinds of natural laws that keep the planets on their courses, and only allow life on our little blue globe while seven other perfectly lovely planets full of pretty exotic real estate go to waste. He wouldn't need to "fine tune" the universe for life. He could merely say, as the Bible has him say, "Let there be..." and there it is.

   • The cosmological argument.

     Postelnik thinks: The cosmological argument maintains that finite matter (original matter, which was clearly finite) cannot create a universe that is greater than itself.

     The cosmological argument is better known as the "first cause" argument, one basic objection to which I've mentioned above: the problem of infinite regress of Gods. Postelnik adds confusion to the whole thing in trying to skirt this objection, by qualifying his version of the argument to state that "finite matter...cannot create a universe that is greater than itself." But he offers no support for this simple assertion, and in terms of its content, it's really nothing more substantial than the creationists' routine insistence that complexity cannot arise from simplicity through natural processes. Postelnik simply wants to throw the phrase "finite matter" into the mix as a way of differentiating his God, which he naturally assumes is "infinite matter." But in making this distinction, our Master of Logic has fallen into another fallacy, that of special pleading. Nature has to obey these particular rules which disallow it from creating a universe, says the apologist. So here is my God, who doesn't have to obey those rules. Convenient, eh?

     Cosmological arguments answer no questions at all while raising more than they ever can. Why make assumptions about the supposed limitations of "finite matter," and what evidence does Postelnik provide for the "infinite matter," a.k.a. God, that he clearly sees as the "logical" alternative? Why assume, even if such "infinite matter" exists, that it needs to bear any resemblance to Postelnik's ideas about a God? Finally, the fallacy at the core of cosmological arguments is that they assume knowledge of conditions at the beginning of the universe — mainly, that it was "caused" — that simply are not known. Their very premises are insupportable. They fail before they even get going.

   • The teleological argument.

     Postelnik thinks: Especially compelling is the teleological argument, that the existence of a Creator can be seen from the fact that the universe works in perfect harmony, as would a giant machine. Gravity, orbits, chemical atmospheres and all other ingredients needed for life to exist come together in unison to allow such existence to happen. An enormous machine that works like clockwork needs to have a Creator.

     Postelnik embarrasses himself hopelessly here. His scientific illiteracy is complete, and his fondness for bad analogies is simply spewing over. Again, good old natural laws that have been understood and derived through observation — all the way from classical Newtonian physics to the more exotic fields of study that new research and knowledge are just now opening up — are proving entirely sufficient to explain why the universe functions the way it does, and though we still have numerous unanswered questions, we don't need to invoke any magic man in the sky just yet to fill our knowledge gaps.

     And it's hardly a flawless, clockwork-like process. Some planets have atmospheres conducive to life (though ours is the only one we know of), most have deadly atmospheres or none whatsoever. There is evidence at least one of our sister planets, Mars, started out warm and watery, which would be life-friendly conditions, then failed. Where in that fact is evidence of a creating hand, let alone that of the Biblical God who supposedly made us in his image, whom Postelnik is clearly trying to argue for? If anything, what we observe about the way life has developed on Earth (and more importantly, where life has failed to develop) is ideal evidence of the way evolution allows organisms to adapt. Speaking of which: there are over 1,000 species of parasites that can live in the human body. Evolutionary explanations for why they exist make sense, but why would Postelnik's God need, let alone desire, to "design" such creatures to infect us? Is this part of his "perfect harmony"? Maybe it's part of our punishment for Eve's "fall," eh?

     Once more with feeling: argue for an omnipotent God, and all this talk about the universe needing to obey specific laws, work in "harmony" like a "machine," have only certain planetary conditions to harbor life, and all that, is so much superfluous noise. Postelnik's all-powerful creator God could, if he so wished (and, given this God's obsession with being worshiped by as many sentient beings as possible, there's no reason for him not to wish), have intelligent beings living on every planet in the solar system, on every airless asteroid, hell, even on the surface of the sun and floating in pure vacuum between the worlds. The great irony of apologists who employ such things as design and anthropic arguments is that they don't realize they are using limits to prove the existence of their limitless God. The premise of their arguments contradicts the nature of the God they're arguing for.

4. And now for a little projection. Postelnik goes on to make a further fool of himself by throwing out some vacuous twaddle about how (he thinks) scientists think that will utterly fry your irony meters. After falsely claiming, without citing sources, that more scientists are embracing theism than otherwise, he goes into what can only be called weapons-grade projection. Try this on for size.

   However, we must realize that while the sophistry it takes to purport a falsehood can be easily countered, the person who has upheld such notions for decades must have each of his or her counterpoints addressed. This is able to be done smoothly, in light of the inherent logic that necessitates the existence of a conscious Creator, but it must be done thoroughly.

   Encouraging atheists to open their minds to pure logic and to possibilities that they hitherto only sought to counter or to avoid on any pretext also involves an emotional challenge for them, as they must open themselves to the possibility of having to shed preconceived notions that they’ve held firm for decades. And that, rather than facts, is the primary challenge to exposing them to insightful logic. However, if they are willing to address the issue honestly, a search for the truth should be of paramount importance and enough reason for them to take an open look.

   *snort* Yeah, whatever you say, Captain Logic.

   Postelnik also amusingly advises all us atheist sophists to read Anthony Flew's book, There Is a God. Thing is, Richard Carrier has investigated this book thoroughly, and even corresponded with Flew. And the fact is that the book was not written by Flew at all, but entirely by evangelical Christian Roy Abraham Varghese, who is given a co-author credit on the cover. And one of the arguments in the book is one that Flew, in a letter to Carrier, had abandoned before the book was published. (Questions about Flew's possible mental decline remain, but are ultimately irrelevant. If a former atheist suddenly became a theist, and did so on the basis of lousy arguments, that would not undermine the views of rational atheism. It would simply mean we had a stupid ex-atheist out there.) So if Postelnik wants to shore up his case for theism with another fallacy — argument from (ex-atheist) authority — he'll have to do better than Flew.

And ba-dee, ba-dee, that's all, folks. I was going to go on another round of ridicule over Postelnik's final paragraphs, in which he claims the Bible reveals the first and second laws of thermodynamics before any stoopid scientist ever thought of them, so there. (He grossly misstates both laws, unsurprisingly.) But by this point I would hope I've exposed Postelnik's staggering silliness in all its tarnished glory, and frankly I'm as tired of writing this as I'm sure you are of reading it (assuming you still are). Maybe you folks will have fun refuting those final paragraphs of his yourselves. The fellow is your typical fundamentalist apologist, an intellectual poseur through and through, and in his entire article he never once advances a single new argument. He merely recycles every tired falsehood and fallacy that defenders of the faith have tried again and again, and they work no better for him. The only novelty about Postelnik's writing is watching a bozo who thinks he's some kind of logical paragon when what he really means by "logical" is "Gawrsh, it makes sense ta me!"

Stick with, uh, your "bold and effective marketing strategies," dude, okay? I have no idea if you do that well, either. But it can't be as bad as your oh-so-"logical" attempts at apologetics.

A quick reminder why science is the coolest thing ever

Latest reason: It lets us go to Mars!

How laughable can Christian anti-intellectualism get?

I've probably mentioned before that I have somehow ended up on the mailing list of the wackos at Christian Worldview Network, a group of fundies who are so hardcore they can honestly be said to be living in a different world, not only from most of humanity, but most other Christians as well. These people are old school, "turn or burn" fire-and-brimstone Biblical literalists. Their newsletters excoriate such movements within contemporary Christianity as the "emergent church," in which pop-pastors like Rick Warren and Joel Osteen preach like motivational speakers a form of inoffensive I'm-okay-you're-okay soft religion that the Worldview Network crowd considers appallingly watered down. (And from a Biblical standpoint, you'd have to say they're right. Scripture really makes it clear that God is a vindictive, hateful bastard who loves to kill people, and that refusal to accept his divine "love" will get your ass fast-tracked to hell in a turbocharged handbasket.)

Occasionally, one of their articles will catch my eye, and one titled "The Limits of Human Reason", by some nincompoop improbably named Israel Wayne, had me chuckling the instant I saw it. In it, you will see the feeble justifications of fundamentalist misology laid bare. It's quite obvious these are people who simply do not know how knowledge works, and their flawed (to put it politely) thinking is exactly the sort of thing that feeds the absurd rhetoric you hear from fundies who want to argue, for instance, that evolution and creationism are simply two different "worldviews" and thus both should get equal time in class.

The whole theme here is that human reason is untrustworthy because everybody's ideas are skewed through their worldview. Bask in the following for a thoroughly riotous example of burning stupid.

For example, let's say that you are with a team digging for dinosaur bones in Alaska. You come across some fossilized remains of a duck-billed dinosaur laying in a certain rock strata. An evolutionist on the team says, "Ah! This dinosaur is from the beginning of the Triassic period! That means this dinosaur is about 858 million years old!"

"How do you know?" you ask.

"Oh that's easy, you can tell from the rock layers. You date the fossil by the surrounding strata."

You turn to a creationist who is also part of the team and ask him for a second opinion.

"I'd say this dinosaur is less than 4,500 old and was probably buried during or shortly after the flood of Noah's day."

You scratch your head. "How can your assessment be so contrary to your evolutionary colleague?"

"Well, he is using General Revelation, and interpreting it through his worldview, which excludes Special Revelation, but I am using a mix of both observable facts and the recorded history of Someone who was around in the beginning. Namely...God."...

So you can see that the "facts" do not always speak for themselves. Our presuppositions affect the way we perceive and interpret reality.

I'll give you a minute to stop laughing at all of that. (A creationist part of a paleontological dig? Uh-huh.) Exactly how much absurdity can be packed into a single argument? Clearly a lot, if this is any indicator.

One tiny little detail that this dimwit Wayne is missing is that of evidence. You see, scientists don't just find stuff in the dirt and pronounce it to be one thing or another by fiat. There are any number of ways a paleontologist would know how to identify a dinosaur bone he's dug up, and all of them involve recourse to bodies of evidence available to the scientific community at large, gathered and collated and verified over a process of study spanning years and years.

How does a scientist know the age of the rock strata in which he's digging? Wayne, being an idiot, thinks it's just a wild guess the scientist pulls out of his ass, filtered through his "presuppositions" and "worldview," whereas in reality, that strata has been subjected to a number of reliable dating techniques. (Not to mention there is a complex, advanced field of science called geology dedicated to such study.) There are probably other samples of fossils of the species unearthed already on record, too, which have been tested and dated and fit into their appropriate position in history through such advanced disciplines as cladistics, taxonomy, etc. In other words, in science, "worldview" is irrelevant and filtering your findings through whatever "presuppositions" you might have is already known to be an improper way to go about determining your findings, and is in fact why there is the whole process of peer review in the first place.

In short, science recognizes — better than this fool Wayne, to be sure — that people are prone to inaccurate, prejudiced thinking, and has self-correcting methods in place to guard against such thinking producing untrustworthy results. And these self-correcting methods are, sadly for the creationists, what keeps their pseudoscience out of the club, by catching out people who think that the purpose of science is to validate their "presuppositions" and "worldviews" in the first place.

What does the creationist have in place to ensure that he's not off-base in his babblings about floods, a young Earth, and his god? None. (Which is why you don't tend to see those people wasting everyone's time out on legitimate digs either. For one thing, they wouldn't have passed muster scientifically to qualify for such a team in the first place.) All he has are his bizarre, invented concepts like "General Revelation" and "Special Revelation," which Wayne capitalizes as if they were actual terms referring to something real. The evolutionist in the above story could easily trounce the overconfident babbling of his creationist "colleague" simply by sending the fossil sample back to the lab to see what the evidence actually showed.

When talking about the conflict between science and faith, fundies like Wayne always leave out little details like evidence, independent confirmation of facts, concepts like falsifiability — in other words, all the proper methods of determining facts that science actually does employ. And they leave those things out because religious pseudosciences like creationism do not have those methods at their own disposal. Or, when they do employ them, the findings tend not to jibe with their precious "presuppositions." Creos can whine all they like, but when the findings come back from the nuclear dating labs, the results of that fossil will, in fact, be 251-199 million years (the actual date of the Triassic period, not 858 million, as Wayne could easily have found out if he'd devoted two seconds to Googling the topic — or maybe such a basic fact-checking process was beyond the limits of Wayne's reason) and not 4,500.

Time and again, Christians who want to stamp out evolutionary biology education through bogus "academic freedom" bills and what have you always come from the same false premise: that there's no such thing as a fact, that everything is all just "worldviews" and "beliefs" and "opinions." It's postmodernism in a nutshell. They ignore entirely the voluminous body of work that actually exists, either out of sheer pig-ignorance or defiant contempt, and then they wonder why science is so willing to lend its support to the evolutionary "worldview" and not their invisible-magic-man-in-the-sky one. That the former is backed up by mountains of independently verifiable evidence and the latter is only backed up by an ancient holy book, lunatic conspiracy theories and petulant hand-waving is hard to get through their skulls.

Sure, facts in science are provisional, always subject to disconfirmation should compelling new evidence arise. But that is far, far different from Wayne's asinine misrepresentation of the whole process as being one of "everyone just makes stuff up based on their worldview." That may certainly be how religious pseudoscience does its business; it is the polar opposite of how real science goes about its own.

Can Wayne get sillier? What do you think?

Because an unconverted man has a rebellious heart, he choses to reject the clear Revelation of God. Autonomous man has listened to the voice of the serpent and cut himself off from the only certain source of truth. In our apologetic method, we must remember that we will not be able to "reason" someone into the Kingdom of God. The problem isn't that they don't have adequate information or reasoning capabilities, but rather they have "suppressed the truth in unrighteousness" (Romans 1:18).

I believe in the military this is what is known as a "target rich environment." One hardly knows where to begin.

Let's just settle for cutting to the chase, which is that Wayne all but admits that Christian faith is an irrational process. Truth is redefined, not as that which one can confirm and verify through the scientific method, but simply as that which comes from God. A believer cannot use reason to persuade the unbeliever because reason is, in fact, a hindrance to understanding truth and not the proper method to use in its pursuit. God, we are told, gives us reason (why, since it's so useless, he would bother is not explained, but then logical consistency is not these people's strong suit), but ultimately the only way to know the capital-T Truth is through emotions, by cutting through to the "rebellious heart" of the unconverted man.

Well, I can only say that, if surrendering my rational mind in favor of being stupid on purpose is the only way for me to appreciate the "Truth" of Christianity's God, then I can only wonder what possible value this "Truth" can have, given that only irrationalism will reveal it. And why would this God give us minds if, in Ben Franklin's hilarious phrasing, he wished us to forego their use? What kind of idiotic God would bestow reason upon his creations, only to require that we dispense with it utterly in order to know the great "Truth" of his existence and our salvation? What value can such salvation have, if you have to be a moron first to receive it? Why would I want to spend eternity in Heaven surrounded by a bunch of remedial clods?

Israel Wayne has essentially handed science and atheism the whole debate here. By admitting to the open irrationalism of his religion, by freely testifying that you have to disdain reason itself, to refuse to demand evidence for claims, simply to not think at all in order to receive this "Special Revelation" into your "rebellious heart," then he's basically conceded his whole religion is pure emotionalism and wishful thinking, stupid from the ground up and stupid from the roof down on the other side. And if I have a "rebellious heart" towards anything, it isn't Israel Wayne's imaginary sky-friend. It's the stupidity I'm told I must embrace to believe in it.

Kip Thorne at UT

Regrettably, I may have to miss this depending on what my schedule for that day looks like. But I wanted to post the information for the science-minded among you. This ought to be another good talk. It's in the same lecture hall where Ken Miller spoke.

Date: Friday, May 2, 2008
Time: 3:00pm - 4:00pm
Location: WEL 2.224
Parking Info: http://www.utexas.edu/parking/maps/index.html
San Jacinto or Speedway Garages are probably best.

From the FaceBook page for the event:

Famous Physicist Kip Thorne to Speak About Big-Bang and Black Holes.

The Warped Side of the Universe: From the Big Bang to Black Holes

There is a Warped Side to our Universe: objects and phenomena that are made from warped space and warped time. Examples include black holes and the big-bang singularity from which the Universe was born. The ideal tool for probing this mysterious Warped Side is radiation that itself is made from warped space-time: "gravitational waves". Thorne will describe the warped side of our universe and the quest to probe it with gravitational waves.

According to Discover magazine (where the tagline is from): Kip Thorne revolutionized physics, fixed up Contact, and straddled the Cold War divide.

Thorne's research has focused on gravitation physics and astrophysics, with emphasis on relativistic stars, black holes and gravitational waves. A longtime friend and colleague of Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, he is the current Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech and one of the world’s leading experts on the astrophysical implications of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. He is one of the three founders of the LIGO project.

Thorne was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1972, the National Academy of Sciences in 1973, the American Philosophical Society in 1999, and (as a foreign member) the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1999.

With John A. Wheeler and Charles W. Misner, Thorne coauthored in 1973 the textbook Gravitation, from which most of the present generation of scientists have learned general relativity. He is also a co-author of Gravitation Theory and Gravitational Collapse (1965) and Black Holes: The Membrane Paradigm (1986), and the sole author of the best-selling book Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy (1994).

In 1975, cosmologist Stephen Hawking bet fellow cosmologist Kip Thorne a subscription to Penthouse magazine for Thorne against four years of Private Eye for him that Cygnus X-1 would turn out not to be a black hole. It was, so Hawking lost.

See, who says physicists never have any fun? Anyway, I'd wager this guy is probably a bit more knowledgeable about the whole Big Bang thing than whoever the complete fool was our foolish buddy Dan cutpasted from the other day. Once again, see an actual scientist who's spent an actual career doing actual research explain why the blatherings of uneducated fundamentalists about "no evidence for this!" and "science requires blind faith too!" are deeply, pitifully stupid and wrong.

Oh noes! Big Science iz in ur Skool Bored, bashin ur Yung Erf Creashunists

Why oh why do they hate the Ceiling Cat so much? In what will doubtless be trumpeted as more suppression of "free speech" by Dr. Evil and the Nazi Darwinist Stormtroopers of "Big Science," the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board took a big fat sanity pill and unanimously denied the request of the Institute for Creation Research to be granted certification to offer a master's degree program in science education in Texas.

The reason is, of course, obvious. Young Earth Creationism is in about as complete a state of opposition to actual science as the movies of Pauly Shore are to actual comedy. There is just a contingent of ideologues among the Christian faithful who simply cannot comprehend that it is not the purpose of science to validate preconceived religious beliefs, however precious those beliefs are to those who hold them. And in their bleating over the supposed denial of any "free exchange of ideas" in an academic setting, they are, of course, failing to make another meaningful distinction: free speech and free inquiry are not synonyms for "you get to teach whatever you want, even if it's false, if enough people believe it." Each person is entitled to their own opinions and beliefs; what you are not entitled to are your own facts.

But at least the creationists can take some cold comfort in the fact they aren't the only ones being oppressed by the dogmatic, iron fist of "Big Science"!

Why science is despised by religion

When I reviewed the movie Jesus Camp, I mentioned that I was surprised by weird opposition to global warming research which is displayed by the homeschooled fundamentalist kids. I thought, sure, I expect them to be anti-science to the extent that they're opposed to evolution and believe in a young earth. But why global warming, exactly?

I guess that if you think the world is ending within one generation, then you might be disinclined to care about environmental issues that will cause problems for the next generation, or the one after. But "disinclination" doesn't begin to describe the outright hostility that conservative Christians appear to have for the issue.

The study of global warming is a relatively recent field -- compared with, say, evolution (150 years) or Newtonian physics (300 years) or even relativity and quantum mechanics (about 100 years). As such, it is a field particularly active in generating new data and interpreting what this data means. Like evolution, there is a scientific consensus on the big picture (global warming is real, it is a recent development, and it is in some significant way affected by worldwide human behavior) but the details are open to debate (i.e., what will be the particular short term and long term effects, and what policy actions should be enacted as a result).

This is a fundamentalist gold mine, because what anti-science religious folks love to do is highlight a particular controversy and then say "See? Science is unreliable because it's changing all the time!"

Case in point:

Noted Hurricane Expert Kerry Emanuel has publicly reversed his stance on the impact of Global Warming on Hurricanes. Saying "The models are telling us something quite different from what nature seems to be telling us," Emanuel has released new research indicating that even in a rapidly warming world, hurricane frequency and intensity will not be substantially affected.

"The results surprised me," says Emanuel, one of the media's most quoted figures on the topic.

From a scientific perspective, if you believe one thing and then later you recognize that you were mistaken based on new evidence, it's simply part of the process. It's an important component of intellectual integrity. Science changes, just like people do. In both cases, it's otherwise known as "learning new things." Dawkins sometimes admiringly tells the story of a scientist who profusely thanks the man who shows that he has long been in error about an important concept.

To a fundamentalist, on the other hand, this story is treated as an opportunity to dismiss the entire science of climate change. "Ah, so they were WRONG! Knowing this, how can we trust anything those scientists say?" In this frame, change is treated as a sign of weakness rather than a sign of improvement. While creationists often pay lip service to the importance of science ("Our beliefs should totally be taught in science classes, you Nazis!"), when science appears to contradict the Bible, they do more than argue against the theory; they denigrate science itself. I get the distinct impression that science is viewed as a threat because it is a competing method of knowing things in general.

---

I've heard numerous sermons -- some on the radio, some live -- where the theme appeared to be "Everything in life is garbage unless you have Jesus." Often repeated in this flavor of sermon are verses such as Isaiah 55:8-9:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."

And 1 Corinthians 3:19:

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.

Human knowledge is garbage. So says the Lord. And since we can't rely on our own poor knowledge, the default option available should be to look to the church for answers. If someone purports to say something that does not match what the church says, don't listen to them, for their ways are not His ways.

Then along comes science.

Science proposes a systematic, reliable, testable method for gaining more knowledge over time. It is not based on the Bible. It is not inherently hostile to religion; it just disregards religion completely in the pursuit of understanding the world.

That's not something the church can accept. It undermines authority-based teaching, and it removes the feeling of helplessness that Isaiah's words are meant to invoke.

So as a result, a large body of work has grown around the effort to frame science as simply a competing worldview, devoid of merit in its own right. It's not just fundamentalists who do this; post-modernist writers also get off on the idea that there is no such thing as reality. In their works, they reduce science to one of many "belief systems," neither better nor worse than any other way of understanding.

To paraphrase George Carlin: "Same as God. Same as the four leaf clover, the horse shoe, the rabbit's foot, and the wishing well. Same as the mojo man. Same as the voodoo lady who tells your fortune by squeezing the goat's testicles. It's all the same." (Carlin, of course, was not talking about science, but about offering prayers to Joe Pesci.)

Science is a threat to religious beliefs not only because it sometimes contradicts them, but because it offers a way to be correct without relying on supposed magic powers.

Talking to a victim of Expelled

Some of our Christian commenters are just idiots or mean-spirited trolls, but occasionally we get someone who's sincere and easily duped by the lies spewed by Ben Stein's little movie. One of these, a young woman (I assume) calling herself Verity, has commented here, and my comment, straightening out a number of the falsehoods and misconceptions she holds as a result of taking Stein at his word, follows right away.

While I have no sympathy for the fundie fanatics of the world, for the people who concoct the lies Expelled is selling to begin with, I do have sympathy for the victims of their deception, and how their view of the world is thus impoverished by trusting in ignorant ideologues like Stein, rather than in reality. Go have a look see, and comment yourself if you see any details I might have missed.

Meanwhile, the weekend estimate for Expelled is shaping up to place the movie at 9th overall, with earnings of around $3,153,000. Its per-screen average of $2,997 means that it was getting about 111 viewers a day on each of its 1,052 screens. Of course, distribution will not be even, so that means some showings each day were nearly empty while others would have been fuller. But mostly this means that Expelled had a thoroughly average opening weekend, actually a bit above average due to its being a propaganda film "documentary." But a far cry, I'd have to say, from the projected $12-15 million that Mark Mathis said was the opening he'd consider "successful." I suspect that on Monday, however, he'll have downgraded his expectations accordingly and be raving about what a blowout success the movie was.

Mostly, though, I think we can consider Expelled pretty much a blip on the "culture war" radar at this point. Hopefully now that they're done being vilified as Nazis, all of America's hard-working and underpaid scientists can get back to work now. You've earned it, gang.

Another chance to push back against the New Dark Age in Austin

Remember how the nutbags at the Institute for Creation Research (second cousins to the Institute for Hobgoblinology, one presumes) have been trying to gain legitimacy in Texas by being allowed to offer degrees in science education? Well, the meeting is coming up, and I hope a zillion people from the pro-science side turn up and tell the board just what a ridiculous proposal this is. Or, at the very least, ask that the creos show their peer reviewed research proving that the Earth was created after the domestication of the dog.

Heads up to George Innis, who posted the following to the CFI-Austin Yahoogroup mailing list:

It appears that The Coordinating Board, TheCB, will take up the Institute for Creation Research, ICR, request for a Certificate of Authority at their meeting on 25 April. This Certificate is the next step in ICR's effort to offer a fundamentalist oriented advanced degree in science education. TheCB was scheduled to consider this matter earlier this year but ICR requested a delay when TheCB indicated that additional documentation would be required. TheCB's Committee on Academic Excellence and Research will consider the proposal from 10AM until noon on the 24th in the Board Room. At this meeting the public may make statements of up to 3 minutes each. I am told that following this meeting the commissioner will finalize his recommendation. A decision is expected at the Board meeting the next day where discussion will probably be brief.

TheCB's offices are at 1200 East Anderson Lane and the Board Room is Room 2.140.

Got that? April 25. If you want Texas to have 21st century — as opposed to 14th century — educational standards, take off work and be there.

Have a look at someone who really was "expelled"

Kenneth Miller's lecture at UT

Kenneth Miller spoke at UT last night as part of an ongoing lecture series, Hot Science - Cool Talks, sponsored by the university's Environmental Science Institute. I had no real idea of what to expect, and while it did not draw Dawkins-sized crowds, attendance was still huge, overflowing the lecture hall in Welch to SRO capacity. Prior to the lecture, several organizations like CFI-Austin and the Paleontological Society of Austin had display tables set up in the lobby, with cool fossils and that sort of thing. The crowd got so thick at one point that, while I was standing at the CFI table chatting with James Dee, the heat started making me feel a little woozy on my feet. Didn't last long, though, but still another indicator that I need to get back in shape something awful.

I won't go into as much detail about the lecture as I did Dawkins', mainly because the webcast is archived and I strongly encourage you to listen to it yourself (you have to install something called Envivio first), as this was one of the best lectures about evolution and the ID debacle I've ever heard. Miller is a witty and engrossing public speaker, as only someone who's been a professor at Brown for a quarter century can be. His Keynote presentation was excellent, far better in quality than Dawkins' Powerpoint.

Miller spoke about the central scientific failing of ID, that its proponents just automatically want acceptance as a viable theory to be taught in schools without having to produce the actual science that would earn it acceptance, and he went on to document ID's downfall at Dover. Some of Miller's information here overlapped that of Barbara Forrest, who spoke here in November at a lecture that got Chris Comer (who was in attendance, as well as many folks from Texas Citizens for Science) fired. (One of Expelled's many lies is that it's the courageous, forward thinking proponents of ID who are losing jobs for their views, but as reality makes clear, the opposite is actually true.)

However, the bulk of Miller's talk was given over to impressively concise explanations as to how we know evolution is true, and where the claims of the ID camp collapse. Just to give a couple of quick examples: Miller first demolished Michael Behe's claims about "irreducible complexity" in the bacterial flagellum. Behe's claim in a nutshell is that, if you take apart the individual components of a complex system, and those individual components themselves have no function, than that proves irreducible complexity and refutes the notion that such a system evolved. However, Miller explained, if you take apart all of the little bits of the flagellum's little rotary tail, you find those components