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

Jan. 2009 Introduction & Addendum: The following snarkalicious post has since become somewhat legendary in the atheist/creationism/science blogosphere.

To cut a long story short, this is the one that led self-styled "conservative columnist" Yomin Postelnik to respond vengefully with bizarre edits to my Wikipedia entry (accusing me of all manner of crimes and misdemeanors, including fraud, drug addiction and pedophilia — vandalism that Yomin wasn't smart enough to realize would be stamped with his IP address, 74.233.115.163), to launch a series of blogs solely geared toward smearing me (since taken down), and to eventually make an Internet-wide nuisance of himself by posting to such forums as RichardDawkins.net (link expired) and ChristianForums.com accusing me of harassment and something he called "Google stalking." This activity only led people back here, where they could see for themselves what Yomin was really up to, and that his histrionic claims of being victimized by "militant atheists" led by me was revealed to be projection at its worst. The only one engaging in unbridled harassment and defamation was Yomin, against me.

My opinion is that Yomin is not merely a thin-skinned adolescent unable to handle criticisms; I think he has full-blown narcissistic personality disorder. The Wikipedia entry on the condition notes, "To the extent that people are pathologically narcissistic, they can be controlling, blaming, self-absorbed, intolerant of others’ views, unaware of others' needs and of the effects of their behavior on others, and insistent that others see them as they wish to be seen... People who are overly narcissistic commonly feel rejected, humiliated and threatened when criticised. To protect themselves from these dangers, they often react with disdain, rage, and/or defiance to any slight criticism, real or imagined.... With narcissistic personality disorder, the person's perceived fantastic grandiosity, often coupled with a hypomanic mood, is typically not commensurate with his or her real accomplishments."

This is Yomin to a tee. He likes to imagine himself — hell, he's desperate to imagine himself — a powerful and influential leader, and anything that threatens to tarnish this inflated self-image is met with ferocious outbursts of emotion.

The second half of 2008 appears to have been the worst six months of Yomin's life. In September of that year, he had his pre-paid legal service send me a cease-and-desist letter, which was odd, because I wasn't doing anything to him while he was actively maintaining no fewer than three anti-Wagner blogs. It transpired that this was a lame attempt to intimidate me into removing posts from this blog revealing his libelous activities. Basically toothless, because C&D letters carry no legal weight. In response to this, to get Yomin, basically, to pull his head out and back off, my attorney filed an online defamation suit at the end of October. Dumb luck, however, smiled on Yomin here, because for two months, the investigator employed by my lawyer in Florida claimed he could not find Yomin, and the two addresses we had for him were no longer current. This kept Yomin from actually being served for two months.

At the end of December, Yomin sent me a bizarre array of increasingly unhinged, delusional and vituperative emails, alternating pleas to end our conflict (which was entirely of his own making) with threats of further harassment if I didn't take certain posts down from this blog. I forwarded all of these to my lawyer, who advised me that the whole affair was "just getting petty...you need to get this guy out of your life!" Also, to continue to pursue the suit would cost thousands of dollars I didn't have. I had raised the filing fees initially through the help of online donations promoted by folks like PZ Myers. But I didn't feel right continuing to go back to the same people for more money, when this was, truthfully, turning into a childish battle of egos in which Yomin was simply baiting me and trying desperately to drag me down to his level of juvenile vindictiveness. Therefore I agreed to a tentative truce with Yomin at the end of 2008.

Part of me regrets this, as, given Yomin's narcissism, it basically means he thinks he "won" and that he's been able, essentially, to get away with the kind of behavior that, had he been held accountable, would have (hopefully) resulted in some desperately needed character building. The evidence I had linking Yomin to the Wiki vandalism was, in my opinion, ironclad enough to assure a court decision against him. But I didn't want to do this out of other people's pockets, and, knowing the personality type I was dealing with here, it is dead clear that a legal victory against Yomin would have been portrayed by him as further evidence of his victimhood. It is simply better to have this poor sad fellow gone.

In his last emails to me, Yomin, in a revealing moment, exclaimed, "I have to defend my reputation." What the narcissist never understands is that any damage to his reputation is the fault of his own actions. Ultimately, I decided it simply was not my job to help Yomin grow up. Materially, I had not been hurt in any way by Yomin's foolish behavior, while Yomin's name ultimately became synonymous with online hysterics of the most absurd sort. One of our commenters coined the phrase "pulling a Yomin" to refer to anyone having a four-alarm meltdown online. That's a legacy hard to undo, and, in its way, more deflating in the long term than even a court decision.

So, enjoy the following, if you are so inclined.

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August 2009 addendum: A number of people have brought it to my attention that Yomin is running for the Florida House in 2010! No wonder he was so frantic to get me to remove embarrassing information about his activities from this blog. While I am amused by this, and by the way a little amount of Googling reveals he is already alienating his hoped-for voter base with his usual online behaviors (like sockpuppeting in blog comments to make it appear he has hordes of supporters, a stunt he pulled all the time in his little battle with me, which was always rendered infinitely sillier by the fact he thought no one would notice he was doing it), I have to say I just don't care. Yes, it is funny that a man who cannot even handle criticism on a blog thinks he's got what it takes to enter the snake pit of politics. But as the GOP has sunk so thoroughly into extremism that many of them actually view an airhead like Sarah Palin as White House material, then I have to say their standards are now such that Yomin ought to be considered an entirely viable candidate. So I wish him the very best of success for victory in his campaign!

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January 2011 addendum: After polling less than 6% of the vote in the GOP primaries, Yomin was arrested on November 12, 2010, on charges of misdemeanor domestic battery.

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. (Or as dumb as the way you chose to respond to this critique of your essay.)

Zondervan blog

Mike writes:

Great post! I’ll get this off to Chuck today and hopefully we’ll hear back from him shortly. It depends on his schedule, but I’ll keep you posted as I get word from him. I’ll probably post up Chuck’s reply on the Zondervan blog I’m thinking and link over to your post, etc. Thanks again.

Since I wasn't aware of the existence of a Zondervan blog, I went looking for it and thought you might like to take a look too. Here is the section dedicated to Chuck Colson.

I looked over what was previously written, and it looks as though Chuck's "blog tour" has already been in progress for a while, since around March. He appears to be dropping by apologetics-friendly blogs first to answer brief questions.

I haven't read all the others yet. As far as I can see, mine is the first atheist response (although I don't know whether others are still waiting on their response). Perhaps unsurprisingly, I also appear to be the only one who has written a long critique rather than a short set of basic questions.

What to expect from Chuck Colson

A few weeks ago, I made the following requests of Mike, who has kindly put in the effort to set this up:

1. Allow me to post any comments I have simultaneously to the blog and to him.
2. Always provide a link back to the original post in his reply, so that readers can visit the source if they choose.
3. Include a URL to at least the main blog page, and preferably to each post, in any printed material that may be generated based on our conversations.
4. State in his first public comment that he intends to do this.

I would, of course, do the same.

I would also like to ask one more favor. As I'm sure you're aware, the web in general, and the blogging environment in particular, can be a pretty chaotic place. I have control over what I say, but I don't have any authority over the people who read and comment on our blog. We almost never moderate for content, which means that any random person can arrive at our site and say whatever they choose.

Recognizing this fact, I am sure you'll acknowledge that the comments section can be a wasteland of bad language and indelicate remarks. I will gladly agree to have a civil dialogue with Chuck, but there is no means by which I could enforce such a request on readers. From your direction, I'm fairly positive that any additional traffic we receive will include many comments which could be interpreted as "angry" and will accuse us of being everything from terrorist sympathizers to child molesters. This is past experience speaking.

If and when such comments come, I don't feel that they should in any way reflect negatively on Mr. Colson or his positions, and I ask that you extend the same courtesy to me. Please recognize the boundaries between posts and comments, and refrain from pulling quotes from other commenters to stand in place of what I am saying.

Naturally I mean no disrespect to the great majority of our regular commenters, who are of course almost universally courteous, witty, and attractive. I'm simply hedging against any drive-by postings that might make us atheists look bad.

I am posting this here so that you folks will understand what my expectations are. From my perspective Chuck Colson has agreed to these requests by proxy, and so if he doesn't honor them then I will politely refer back to this post and then end the conversation.

I don't really know what to expect in the way of future guests to this blog, but I would ask the regulars — not to hold back, but please be as friendly as you can manage with visitors who don't share the same perspective as you.

Letter to Chuck Colson on "The Faith"

For a background on what to expect from this discussion, I request that regular readers of the Atheist Experience blog please visit this message before getting involved in any commentary.



Hello Chuck,

Let me introduce myself. I am a software developer in Austin, where I recently acquired a Master's Degree in Computer Engineering from UT. I am also a life long atheist, which makes me something of a rarity. The great majority of atheists I know started out religious and eventually deconverted. In my case, my parents are both physicists. My father is a staunch atheist, while my mother is somewhat more "spiritual" but still does not believe in a traditional god. I definitely take after my father in this area. Both parents come from a Jewish background as well, so I have had a variety of religious instruction including a bar mitzvah. I write for the "Atheist Experience" blog as a hobby, and I also appear regularly on a cable access TV show and an internet podcast on behalf of the Atheist Community of Austin. I am a confirmed family man, with a wonderful wife and a son who just finished kindergarten, and two stepdaughters, one teenaged and one young adult.

First of all, I want to thank you for asking me to participate in this dialogue, and for sending me a copy of The Faith. I often go out of my way to listen to and read material with which I disagree, as I find it educational to consider a variety of perspectives. The last full book I read for this purpose was Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe, about three years ago.

In order to avoid confusion, let me define some terms. I designate myself an "agnostic atheist," a term that I presume you will deny has meaning, based on my reading of chapter 2. In an anecdote, you attributed an aspect of certainty to both words: atheists are certain that God doesn't exist, and agnostics are certain that no knowledge is possible. You acknowledged this as a rhetorical "ploy," and I agree: it leaves no word available to describe my view. I do not believe in the existence of any gods (hence I am an atheist) because I do not believe that sufficient evidence has been presented to justify one. I recognize that I do not "know" in the absolute sense whether there is a god or not (hence I am an agnostic), but remain in a default state of disbelief until such time as better support for one is provided.

The above is a summary of my use of the words, and I can support them from the dictionary if you really want to spend time nitpicking about definitions. Otherwise, if you are uncomfortable with describing me as an atheist, feel free to pick whatever word you want to apply instead. "Infidel" would suit me fine, for example.

As I read your book, one major theme to which you frequently returned was your contempt for post-modernism, which you see as the philosophical rejection of objective truth. In this case, I find myself on common ground with you. Speaking as a person with a strongly held respect for science, I have on several occasions found myself arguing with post-modernists. A certain breed of armchair philosopher loves to describe science as "just another religion," implying that it is arbitrary and irrelevant, and thereby ridiculing the idea that reality is something that can be investigated and understood. So I heartily share your general opposition to post-modernism.

I was troubled, however, by your method of arriving at a conclusion about what is true. Let me give you a small example, from chapter 4, titled simply "Truth." You wrote:

"The only thing the god of tolerance hates more than Christians making truth-claims is Christians proving them. Beginning with a facility in Houston, Prison Fellowship now runs residential programs, 'spiritual boot camps,' within prisons in locations scattered across the country. This is called the InnerChange Freedom Initiative — or IFI. We have, since the beginning, contended that these demonstrate the truth of the Gospel in transforming lives. University of Pennsylvania researchers reported that IFI graduates had an 8 percent re-incarceration rate versus 20 percent in a comparable control group (and 67 percent nationally). Prison officials were astounded.

"It was the first empirical evidence that this faith-based approach to corrections works -- in other words, that the Gospel is true. And that's when Barry Lynn of the Americans United for Separation of Church and State decided to sue. To prove our truth-claims proved an outrage that tolerance could not abide."

In a brief endnote, you mentioned that you actually lost that case and IFI was ordered to cease and desist. However, you didn't trouble yourself to explain why.

In fact, I had already heard about this study, but I had to go and look it up again to see if your claims were right (in an objective, factual, and decidedly not post-modern sense). What I discovered was that when you claim a re-incarceration rate of only 8 percent, you are not describing all people who took your program. Instead, you selectively defined a graduate of your program to be someone who remained with the "boot camp" until their release, and then got and held a job outside of prison. In other words, someone could go through the program, be paroled, attempt to re-enter society, and STILL not be considered in your statistics if they failed to find a job.

I sometimes say that if you take an aspirin and pray to God, then your headache will go away. But that doesn't mean that the prayer was what cured your headache. The situation that you've offered is similar: if you get a job and go through spiritual boot camp, then you'll be less likely to go to jail, leaving you free to jump to your own conclusion about which one was the cause. People who have a job and money are less likely to commit crimes -- this is true whether they take your program or not.

That doesn't mean that IFI can take credit simply for disqualifying participants without a job from the survey. It would be like writing a rule that says their graduate status is automatically revoked if they ever go back to jail. If such a rule existed, then you could claim a 0% recidivism rate among "graduates," and this would remain true even if the program accomplished nothing constructive at all.

I'm no sociologist, but I have taken a few classes on statistical methods and data analysis in my time. One of the first things that anyone should learn about citing a study is that if you taint the set of data in advance to selectively mask underlying causes, then any results you come out with are meaningless. And in this case, when you look at the whole of the study which you claimed provided "empirical evidence that this faith-based approach to corrections works," what you find is that among all people who enrolled in your program, the recidivism rate was actually worse than the control group.

(Here is a link to the original study. On page 5 it is revealed that "Among the total number of IFI participants, 24.3% were incarcerated compared to 20.3% of the comparison group during the two-year post-release period.")

This is just one example of a cavalier attitude toward the facts in evidence, and it puts a very different perspective on your pursuit of "capital T Truth." What you describe as "Truth," on many occasions I perceive as "an unwavering certainty in situations where none is warranted." Or to put it more succinctly, "faith."

The scientific method is built primarily on the principles that:

1. There is objective truth that may be discovered through investigation, but
2. Human perception of that truth is always subject to errors

In other words, science embodies the principle that we should always be vigilant against the possibility that we may be wrong, and be ready to recognize mistakes even in our own deeply held opinions.

I don't see this kind of acknowledgement of your own fallibility in your writing. Even though you see things in terms of the fallen nature of mankind, you feel sure that the omniscient creator of the universe wrote a book which contains the answers to everything, and that your own interpretation is always the right one. From where I sit, this looks as if you have granted yourself infallibility. As long as your beliefs are in tune with what you think God wants, no error is possible.

Yet being certain is not necessarily the same thing as being right. Several times throughout the book, you emphasize the role of Christians who fought for the abolition of slavery, an act that we both applaud. You also dismiss the role of Christians who fought for the preservation of slavery. You curtly acknowledge their existence in chapter 12 by saying "It's true that some Christians have been hypocritical about slavery, condoning it for too long. The record of the church is not without blemish."

As I do not share your inclination to defend the Bible, it's not clear to me that this is hypocrisy at all. Far from disregarding the Bible's advice, many devout 19th century Christians saw the Bible in itself as proof that slavery was an act sanctioned by God. For example, in 1856 Reverend Thornton Stringfellow, a Baptist minister from Culpepper County in Virginia, wrote an essay called "Scriptural View of Slavery", which is full of passages that support his opinion, such as:

"Job himself was a great slave-holder, and, like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, won no small portion of his claims to character with God and men from the manner in which he discharged his duty to his slaves."

"See Lev. xxv: 44, 45, 46; 'Thy bond-men and thy bond-maids which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you: of them shall ye buy bond-men and bond-maids. Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land. And they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession, they shall be your bond-man forever.' I ask any candid man, if the words of this institution could be more explicit? It is from God himself; it authorizes that people, to whom he had become king and law-giver, to purchase men and women as property; to hold them and their posterity in bondage; and to will them to their children as a possession forever; and more, it allows foreign slaveholders to settle and live among them; to breed slaves and sell them."

"This, by the way, is a singular circumstance, that Jesus Christ should put a system of measures into operation, which have for their object the subjugation of all men to him as a law-giver--kings, legislators, and private citizens in all nations; at a time, too, when hereditary slavery existed in all; and after it had been incorporated for fifteen hundred years into the Jewish constitution, immediately given by God himself. I say, it is passing strange, that under such circumstances, Jesus should fail to prohibit its further existence, if it was his intention to abolish it."

"If, therefore, doing to others as we would they should do to us, means precisely what loving our neighbor as ourself means, then Jesus has added no new moral principle above those in the law of Moses, to prohibit slavery, for in his law is found this principle, and slavery also."

So you can see here that faith and conviction in the truth of the Bible were at one time used to support the continuation of slavery. I don't think that Reverend Stringfellow's faith was any less sincere than yours; even though I think, as you do, that he was wrong.

Please don't assume that this way of thinking is too old-fashioned for modern, enlightened Christians. I have engaged in many conversations with very earnest Christians who, rather than explaining away passages such as those in Leviticus which clearly prescribe slavery, worked hard to justify them. They argue that "Biblical slavery" was very different from the slavery in the American South, and that it simply wasn't such a problem for those living in ancient Israel to own slaves as long as the slaves were treated humanely. In a few extreme cases, I've even had Christians essentially tell me that having a job is no worse than being a slave, and it would therefore not be such a bad thing if "Biblical slavery" still existed.

Christians arguing for slavery? Is this the fault of post-modernism and relativism? Or is it simply an honest effort to reconcile a book which is "known" to contain absolute immutable truth? Assuming that your faith is incompatible with slavery, by what method should I choose the truth-value of your faith over the faith of Stringfellow? I could apply reason based on core values, of course. But if this is possible, as I think it is, then I would argue that "faith" is a useless contribution to the discussion altogether.

One of the main things that motivates my atheism -- beyond the simple fact that I do not see any compelling reason to believe in God -- is that I cannot regard faith as more reliable than evidence as a means to learn about truth. Sometimes I must make decisions without enough evidence to be certain. In those cases, I recognize the possibility that I may be wrong, while still choosing to believe whatever best fits the available facts; and I expect that my beliefs may change when new information is available. This is not similar to the Biblical description of "faith," which is "being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." (Hebrews 11:1, NIV translation) It is this sense of "being certain" despite a lack of evidence that troubles me.

The perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks had a tremendous amount of faith. You can say whatever unflattering things you want about their actions and their motives, and I'd certainly agree with you; but one thing you cannot accuse them of is a lack of faith. I see no reason to think that they did not sincerely believe their own doctrine which said that they would be honored as martyrs in the afterlife and awarded 72 virgins.

Was it a bad thing to do? Absolutely. Many innocent people were hurt and killed due to the faith of the hijackers, and that is a terrible thing for the victims and their families; it is also extremely sad for the rest of us, as people who have empathy and compassion. Yet if I were to speak reasonably to a fundamentalist Muslim, as I am speaking to you now, I do not think I would be able to persuade that Muslim that he was wrong. Why? Because he doesn't believe that there is any such thing as truth? Of course not -- it is because he has very concrete beliefs about the truth of his god, which cannot be proven on the basis of observation or reason, but which are confidently accepted on the grounds of faith.

Throughout your book, you lumped unbelievers in with both post-modernists and radical Islam as cooperative forces that you imagine are working to destroy our culture. From my perspective, this is a categorical error. On the contrary, I tend to think that what divides "us" from "them" is not which religion is claimed by the majority of citizens. It is our willingness to recognize that although people have different opinions, it is worth the effort to communicate with them and resolve our differences peacefully. War is an option, but a last resort. We even understand that other people might continue to believe things that are wrong, and yet strive for a solution that involves conversation rather than blowing stuff up or crashing airlines. I know you must desire this approach in some cases, because you sent me your book and asked for a dialogue, even though it is clear from your text that you believe I am your enemy.

Ultimately I reject the faith of the hijackers as insufficient grounds to claim knowledge, just as I reject yours. This leaves me free to judge their actions and yours based on the consequences, as viewed through the lens of my values and my concerns about justice. You may say that this is subjective, and perhaps it is. Unlike "the physical world," which can be observed, values are ultimately the domain of the person who possesses them and the society in which they live. You presume that your values are the same as the values of a god who is always right. But in thousands of years of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, faith and devotion have been used to defend slavery as often as condemn it; to promote unproductive wars as often as prevent them; to suppress freedom as often as to champion it.

By no means does this imply that I think all atheists are wonderful, nor that Christians are evil. Certainly not in the same sense that you seem to believe my point of view is evil. On the contrary, from reading the historical anecdotes that you highlighted in the second half of your book, I would venture to say that we admire many of the same character traits in people, and love many of the same aspects of humanity.

In practice, though, I believe that you make many clear factual mistakes due to your insistence that belief in God and Jesus can never steer you wrong. And because I am still not impressed with the arguments for the accuracy of the Bible -- which we can discuss in future correspondence, if you wish -- I ultimately don't feel that supporting your faith is worth enough to justify the extreme tolerance for error.

Thanks again for initiating this discussion, and I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,
Russell Glasser

The antidote to Expelled?

This looks like it will be really very funny.

sniff... Is nothing sacred?

Even Jesus is being stolen and sold as scrap!

God's anger and jealousy prove his unfailing "love"

One of the more bizarre aspects of Christian belief is the way it turns fundamental concepts like love and goodness completely inside out, to the evidently enthusiastic support of the faithful. I have been in an on-again, off-again discussion with a Christian called SuperFlyingNick on YouTube, and here he makes the following case for God's love. Does any of this strike you as internally contradictory and self-refuting?

I am not surprised that you feel that my God is made up in the minds of men. I've heard plenty of people say that.

And I understand that the Bible says God made man in His own image. However, the characteristics you described to me are very unique to God. I'm not saying that humans can't be loving and so forth, but God's love is genuine and unfailing - something humans will never posses. God is jealous because he doesn't want you to have any other gods before him (he wants your attention). His mercy is the fruit of his love, and his anger goes along with his jealousy and how humans can be disobedient.

If you really think about it, God's characteristics are pure and genuine.

And I respond:

I confess to being utterly baffled at the way in which Christians are willing to accept jealous anger as some sort of indicator of "genuine, unfailing love." Is it truly the benchmark of "genuine" love that it comes with a jealousy and possessiveness that erupts into anger if the love is not returned? I cannot for the life of me think so. This is more like the love of an abusive spouse. If a man told a woman, "Honey, I love you, but so help me, if I ever see you so much as look at another man, I'll break your neck," most people would not consider that any kind of love, least of all "genuine" and "unfailing," and indeed they would do all they could to convince the woman in question to leave that man as fast as possible. But when their God essentially behaves the same way, erupting with jealous wrath and consigning people to eternal torment for failing to reciprocate his "love", Christians seem to think this is all A-OK. One rule for people, another for your God, apparently.

I cannot see any reason to declare my allegiance to anyone — deity or otherwise — simply because not to do so means they'll be angry with me and hurt me. For one thing, on God's part, that isn't love, merely power and control, and on my part, it wouldn't be love either, merely fear. That Christianity has persuaded millions of its followers to be convinced that power, control and fear are all examples of "loving" behavior is deeply disturbing, as they really distort what love really means out of all recognition. Doing something because you fear being hurt otherwise is known as terrorism.

In any case, it makes no sense that, if God is — as Christians describe — a "perfect" being, that any lack of attention or obedience from me or anyone else could matter to it at all. For God to be perfect means that there is nothing you could possibly add to him to improve him in any way, nor is there anything you could deny him that would damage that perfection. No perfect divine being would care what I felt about him any more than I would care what the ants crawling on my windowsill think about me. For God to be described as perfect on one hand, and jealous, angry and wrathful on the other is an oxymoron. And anything that contradicts itself cannot exist.

PS: This is the AE blog's 500th post. Yee!

Finally!

Jeezis. And I thought the format war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs was the ultimate example of a completely lame and unnecessarily drawn-out battle towards a foregone conclusion. Now that Barack Obama has the delegates to get the Democratic nomination — an outcome perfectly obvious and inevitable for a long time to all but Hillary Clinton and her most doe-eyed disciples — hopefully we can get on with things and enjoy an exciting campaign between now and November.

There seems to be a lot of pressure right now on Obama to offer Hillary his VP slot. I'm agin' it, mainly because I dislike Hillary intensely and am convinced she's simply been body-surfing her ego for the last several months, putting her ambition above the good of her party and the country. People praise Hillary for her never-say-die "fighting spirit," failing to recognize that that isn't a praiseworthy trait in and of itself. After all, creationists have plenty of "fighting spirit." If your "fighting spirit" is rooted in hubris and delusion, and a mule-headed refusal to acknowledge reality, then your role model for said "spirit" is the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. That isn't the kind of "fighting spirit" I want in the White House. It's what we've had for the past seven years, and look how that's turned out.

The argument for offering the VP slot to Hillary is that she does have a thoroughly fanatical contingent of supporters who seem to have bought into her ideas that the presidency is some kind of entitlement for her, and if she isn't the Democratic nominee, will cast a revenge vote for McCain in November, thus plunging the country into four more years of Republican-led foreign policy disaster (McCain has voted with Bush over the years on damn near everything, so anyone who thinks he's going to be a standard-bearer for "change" really needs to start taking better drugs) simply to salve their bruised feelings. Bring Hillary into the frame as Obama's running mate, and perhaps her supporters will chill and, most importantly, not jump ship.

Still, I can't help thinking that Obama's choosing Hillary for his running mate would be not unlike a long-suffering parent caving in and buying a toy for an ill-behaved and unruly child, simply to stop it constantly screaming and crying and carrying on. Not exactly a character-building choice, if you take my meaning. I've read from more than one source that an Obama/Edwards ticket will trounce McCain/Anybody come November, and that would be a ticket I could get behind with enthusiasm. Still, if Obama does choose Hillary (and she accepts), he will still get my vote. After all, my vote's not about my ego, it's about what I think will be the best way to undo the damage that eight years of the cretinous Bush have left us in. And that comes down to casting my vote for a fresh voice and a sincere agent for change, not a huggy sycophant.

Okay, Hillary lovers, bring it on...!

Judge lifts injunction against Expelled

In an interesting development, U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein (no relation to "Evolution Doesn't Explain Gravity!" Ben) has ruled that Expelled can use the 15-second clip of John Lennon's "Imagine" under the fair use doctrine. Over at PT, commenters are pointing out that this isn't an end to the lawsuit, but it may be moot at this point. I disagree with the decision — I think it could open the gates to all manner of dodgy copyright infringement — but at this point it really has no impact either way for Expelled, which is already out of theaters in the US after tanking with a pitiful $7.5 million haul after six weeks. The movie simply wasn't the takedown of science its producers were hoping for. But since they've created a nice little insulated world to live in, only exposing themselves to tightly controlled pre-release screenings to which the scientifically-illiterate choir were exclusively admitted, they'll never know that. So it's on to the church-basement DVD circuit, where it was going to end up anyway — while, off in the real world, science marches on and people with brains are actually learning new things.

I did find this part of the MSNBC article enlightening.

At a hearing last month, Falzone had argued that the segment of the song in the film — "nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too" — was central to the movie because "it represents the most popular and persuasive embodiment of this viewpoint that the world is better off without religion."

The film, he said, is "asking if John Lennon was right and it's concluding he was wrong."

It's a nice admission that religionists wouldn't think the world a happy place unless they had absurd ideologies and irrational beliefs to kill and die for.

Can I just be the 5 millionth person to say, "Eeewwww!"

Possummomma, being a parent, has quite a lot to say about this:

I know I haven't commented much on the recent FLDS raid or its subsequent fallout, particularly as it's practically a local occurrence. Mainly, my reaction was just to shake my head. It now appears that the state was completely punk'd, at least as far as that original phone call that led to the raid, now widely considered a hoax, is concerned. And the state's draconian approach to its raid — simply to swoop down and haul everybody off without much at all in the way of a preliminary investigation — has led to its humiliation following the court's recent ruling that the raid was just all kinds of wrong.

On the other hand, what clearer evidence do you need that pedophiliac sickness was part of these people's standard operating procedure than the above photographs, showing übercreep Warren Jeffs smooching one of his child brides? I mean, it just makes you ill to look at it.

Something clearly has to be done to put the kibosh on these little cults that victimize children — as yes, you can call what you do "spiritual marriage" all you like, but all you've done is concoct a spiffy metaphor for "rape" — and shield themselves from repercussions by saying "But it's our religion!" But the state's raid wasn't the right one. And you just know the FLDS will simply see this as a vindication of their way of life in opposition to the Satanic government that seeks to oppress and criminalize them. What to do?

Yes, I know, it's been rather quiet

That's because it's been a rather busy last week or so for me. But I can announce at least one exciting thing to look forward to in June, which is that I am, in fact, attending The Amaz!ng Meeting 6 in Vegas!

Last year's meeting was an experience I'll always remember (and you can read my reports about it — which I sadly didn't get to complete fully, but still — here), not just listening to such fantastic speakers as Phil Plait, Scott Dikkers, Neil Gershenfeld, Mike Shermer, Lori Lipman Brown, Adam Savage, Penn & Teller, plus South Park dudes Trey Parker and Matt Stone, but also getting to meet and chat with Phil, Richard Wiseman, and old Randi himself. This year, guys like Shermer, Savage and Wiseman are back, while PZ will be one of the speakers and the keynote address is given by none other than Neil DeGrasse Tyson! Yes, I'll be blogging the whole conference once more, with photos.

It's an expensive vacation to take, especially in this year of soaring gas (and everything else) prices, but it's one I'll try never to miss, as it's simply too fantastic to get to hang out with such a great group of skeptics, scientists and thinkers from all over the world in one spot. Onward to Lost Wages!

A quick reminder why science is the coolest thing ever

Latest reason: It lets us go to Mars!

The cost of abandoning reason is measured in lives

From the news today:

A group of up to 300 young men killed 11 people who were accused of being witches and wizards in western Kenya, in some cases slitting their throats or clubbing them to death before burning their bodies, officials said....

"The villagers are complaining that the (suspected) wizards and witches are making the bright children in the community dumb ... These (suspected) witches are not doing good things to us," Makori told The Associated Press.

Deputy police spokesman Charles Owino said that the gang hunted down the eight women and three men in the western Kenya villages of Kekoro and Matembe. Most of the victims were over the age of 70, Owino said.

A typical amateur apologist's mistake: atheism requires omniscience

This thread is generating lots of comments, mostly in the form of an amusing ongoing exchange with our old pal Rhology, who's going all postmodern and solipsistic on us in a frankly bizarre bid to deny that requiring evidence for claims is rational. But this comment from a reader named Jay contains a very basic mistake that Christians make when trying to argue with atheists, and so I thought I'd top-post it as a kind of counter-apologetics primer. My response in full follows. Jay declares:

Ok Martin,evoultion does not require you know how the universe was created, but atheism does... Unless you can prove how the universe was created and in doing so also disprove there is a God, then atheism is not rational.

Yes, I know, we all thought arguments that silly had gone the way of Pascal's Wager and Ray Comfort's banana. Alas, we find people who are new to this whole debating thing who still think they're brilliant stumpers they can whip out like an "Instant" card in Magic The Gathering, to counter your atheist mojo. Sorry, not so fast.

Atheism is simply a statement of disbelief concerning the existence of gods. It does not require knowledge of how the universe was created any more than disbelief in leprechauns requires you to know why rainbows exist.

(In the case of rainbows, of course, we do know why those occur, but a person would not have to know this in order to disbelieve in leprechauns.)

Jay's second sentence is the fallacy of shifting the burden of proof. The statement assumes the truth of its conclusion, to wit, that God exists because atheists cannot prove God does not exist. The flaw in this argument is glaringly obvious simply by a slight edit to what Jay wrote.

Unless you can prove how the universe was created and in doing so also disprove there is a Flying Spaghetti Monster, then a-spaghetti-monsterism is not rational.

Literally any mythical being can be substituted for "God" in Jay's statement. So it's a fallacious argument rooted in a false premise.

The burden of proof for a claim always rests upon the person claiming the existence of the thing in question. There is no such burden upon those who take the skeptical view. If someone wishes to tell me that fairies live in his backyard, it is not my obligation to prove to him that they don't, it is his to prove to me that they do. If he fails, I will not believe in his fairies. Similarly, not knowing precisely how the universe was created does not preclude someone saying, "I don't believe the cause was the Biblical God or any other god, including Zeus or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, because I don't think there is adequate evidence for it."

When it comes to questions with as-yet-unknown answers, such as exactly how the universe originated, we admit the limitations of our knowledge and look at the whole mystery as a compelling subject for ongoing study. We're not inclined simply to place our ignorance on an altar and call it "God."

Remember Expelled?

You know, the flop creotard propaganda movie that, after 5 weekends in theaters, has only scraped up a sad $7.5 million? (In a comparable time frame, TBN's 1999 cheesefest The Omega Code had done $8.2m, and tickets were cheaper then.) Didn't think so. Well, PZ reports today that the ill-begotten and unlucky movie's latest misfortune is that the judge hearing the case Lennon v Premise Media has ruled to continue the injunction against the film. EMI has also sued Premise over the film's unauthorized use of John Lennon's "Imagine." Premise's claim that the inclusion of the song constitutes "fair use" seems a rather feeble thing, considering they properly licensed all the other songs that also appear in the film. Stupid is as creationism does, you know. This movie, as one of PZ's commenters points out, could very well go down as the Reefer Madness of the 21st century.

Islam is evil, Part ∞

Note I didn't say Muslims, I said Islam. Don't lecture me about all the nice Muslims. I used to live in Dubai and met more of them than you ever will. But any religion whose extremism is capable of the following has no place in a modern, civilized world, full stop.

The suspect, who is unshaven and appears to be in his 20s or 30s, was arrested by Iraq security forces after they retook most of Basra in April.

CNN was shown what authorities say was his first confession. On it are the names of 15 girls whom he admitted kidnapping, raping and killing. The youngest girl on the list was just 9 years old....

Women bore the brunt of the [Shiite] militias' extremist ideologies. The militants spray-painted threats on walls across Basra, warning women to wear headscarves and not to wear make-up. Women were sometimes executed for the vague charge of doing something "un-Islamic."

In the wasteland on the outskirts of Basra, dotted with rundown homes, the stench of death mixes with the sewage. Local residents told the Iraqi Army that executions often take place in the area, particularly for women, sometimes killed for something as seemingly inocuous as wearing jeans.

Chuck Colson's dubious prison statistics

I am saving up material to discuss with Chuck Colson, but I couldn't wait on this bit. While reading his new book, The Faith, I came across a passage in which he touted the great success of his prison ministry. In a chapter called "Truth," Colson writes:

"The only thing the god of tolerance hates more than Christians making truth-claims is Christians proving them. Beginning with a facility in Houston, Prison Fellowship now runs residential programs, 'spiritual boot camps,' within prisons in locations scattered across the country. This is called the InnerChange Freedom Initiative — or IFI. We have, since the beginning, contended that these demonstrate the truth of the Gospel in transforming lives. University of Pennsylvania researchers reported that IFI graduates had an 8 percent re-incarceration rate versus 20 percent in a comparable control group (and 67 percent nationally). Prison officials were astounded."

Maybe they were astounded by the audacity with which Colson trumps up statistics.

I remembered discussing this on "The Non-Prophets" years ago, and had a vague memory that there was something fishy about these numbers. Like, for instance, people who start the program but then drop out were not counted, and when you factor this in, there is actually a HIGHER recidivism rate (the percent of them who return to prison) than average. It's old news, but I had a hard time calling back the details.

Still, I imagined bringing this point up with Colson, and he would probably say: "Of course I am not responsible for prisoners who do not finish my program. They didn't really get the faith. But look at the wonderful results based on people who did finish!"

I looked up the story on this, and I found out that it's much worse than even I remembered. Here's the story:

Faith-Based Fudging

Actually, not only do they not count people who didn't finish the program in prison... they actually discount many of the people who did go through the entire program. This is pretty astounding, but here it is:

If you don't get a job after you leave prison, you are not counted as a graduate.

Unbelieveable. In order to get these results, their own study was cherry picking a reduced set of people who have already achieved a measure of success — getting a job after leaving prison — and then they claimed credit for it!

Think about it. If you were to simply take a master list of all prisoners who get out of jail, regardless of whether they attended Colson's "boot camp" or not, and then you only counted the ones who managed to get a job, then of course they would have a much lower tendency to go back to jail. If they have a job and money, there is less need for them to commit more crimes.

I'm almost surprised that Colson doesn't simply discount everyone who goes back to jail as a "graduate." Then he could claim that his graduates have a 0% recidivism rate.

I want to give Colson the benefit of the doubt and claim that he simply is not aware of the error in his method. But this study has been out for five years. Furthermore, in the very next paragraph, he verbally assaults reverend Barry Lynn, who sued IFI. Colson's take on this is: "To prove our truth-claims proved an outrage that tolerance could not abide." I looked up Americans United's page on the case. The study I just mentioned was cited as part of it.

There is, of course, not a mention of this. Not a response, not a refutation; he simply goes on repeating statistics that were shown invalid years ago.

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.

PZ Myers on The Non-Prophets

In case you haven't heard it already, this past Saturday we got a chance to interview PZ Myers, author of the wildly popular Pharyngula blog, on "The Non-Prophets." The resulting show is here.

PZ dropped by at 27:23 in the broadcast, and we got to chat with him for about an hour. Topics we covered included Ben Stein's "Expelled," science education, Michael Behe's latest book, and thoughts about what you would have to do in order to make a good pro-science documentary.

Remember to drop by this thread and say thanks!

News good and bad from the British Isles

Via Dawkins' site, I caught this article from the London Times, and its headline is a thing of such beauty it practically made me weep for joy: Churchgoing on its knees as Christianity falls out of favour. The article's lead practically has you grabbing the phone to hire a marching band and sending out eVites for a block party. If only this were America.

Church attendance in Britain is declining so fast that the number of regular churchgoers will be fewer than those attending mosques within a generation, research published today suggests.

The fall - from the four million people who attend church at least once a month today - means that the Church of England, Catholicism and other denominations will become financially unviable. A lack of funds from the collection plate to support the Christian infrastructure, including church upkeep and ministers’ pay and pensions, will force church closures as ageing congregations die.

But then, read on a bit, and the other shoe drops.

In contrast, the number of actively religious Muslims will have increased from about one million today to 1.96 million in 2035.

According to Religious Trends, a comprehensive statistical analysis of religious practice in Britain, published by Christian Research, even Hindus will come close to outnumbering churchgoers within a generation.

Okay, it's great to see one pernicious religion biting the dust somewhere, but the idea is not that we just want to see its former prominence supplanted by yet another pernicious religion...one even more pernicious, since, while Christianity's fanatics (say, Paul Hill) only occasionally resort to outright murder, Islam's are all too gung-ho about it. When Muslims will parade with signs that say "Behead Those Who Insult Islam!" you know you're dealing with something far too FUBAR to be dealt with through civilized dialogue. Reason may win the fight fairly easily against Christianity, but if Islam, with its barbaric sharia laws and general bent towards theocratic fascism, simply slipped in and took its place, we'd be even worse off than where we started.

Atheists and rationalists still have a long way to go, and a lot of work to do, before the civilized world gets the message that the best way to get through life and get along with your fellow man is actually to use that little lump of grey matter between your ears.

A nice bit of snark from Ebert

I'm a big fan of Roger Ebert, the famed movie critic who's been out sick for most of the last year or so undergoing various surgeries. He's back in the saddle now, while during his absense, most of the reviewing was done by his website editor Jim Emerson, himself a very astute critic.

Anyway, in this week's Movie Answer Man letter column, it appears as if Ebert's gotten an indignant email from, one assumes by the text, a creationist who asks:

Q. Readers want to know if the Movie Answer Man is too PC to review "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed"?
Ruddy Spencer, Tucson, Ariz.

The real answer would mostly be that Ebert, being a movie critic, only goes to see movies when they're screened for critics, which Expelled was not, for obvious reasons. But I like Ebert's reply to Ruddy Spencer better.

A. The last I heard, it is not considered Politically Correct to agree with Darwin. I think it is more like, oh, intelligent.

Zing!

Why abandoning reason is, like, bad

In the news today:

Two children and their mother lived for about two months with the decaying body of a 90-year-old woman on the toilet of their home's only bathroom, on the advice of a religious "superior" who claimed the corpse would come back to life, authorities said Friday...

She said she propped Middlesworth on the toilet and left the room to call [Bishop John Peter] Bushey, who told her to leave the woman alone and pray for her, the complaint said. He said he had received signs that God would raise her from the dead with a miracle.

A mind is a wonderful thing to waste, eh?

So...where did they go to the toilet all that time? No, I don't want to know.

The Colson thing already getting amusing

Kazim and I have heard back from Mike Pritchard, who told us he's sending us Colson's book and all that. Kazim then set out a few parameters for how we would like any dialogue to go, mindful of the fact that our usual dealings with apologists reveal them to be, oh, less than scrupulously honest, shall we say. Mike responded with this interestingly worded note.

Yes, this all sounds great to me. I thought about the difference between the posting and comments too, and explained this to my liaison with Chuck. Basically, we know the comments could go in a million different directions, but we'll just keep focused on the main blog postings and realize the comments are a bit of the Wild Wild West if you will.

Let me run all this by Chuck's folks, but I'm confident they'll agree too. I'll keep you posted. Thanks for documenting this all out.

"My liaison with Chuck"? "Chuck's folks"? First we're told that Colson wants all dialogue to go through Mike Pritchard, and now it looks like everything is going to get filtered through Mike and a small army of handlers. It's as if Colson doesn't want to talk to the evil godless heathens without a bunch of redshirts shielding him or something. Our suspicion is that Colson is having his "folks" contact quite a lot of atheist blogs, with the intent of choosing the one offering the most lightweight arguments against his book. People who tend to be hard arguers like us could well end up not being chosen to participate in this "dialogue" at all.

Still, we'll see. Kazim, Matt and I are all finding the whole thing kind of entertaining, and if the book turns up, all I can promise to do is read it and be as honest in my critique as I can. Which will probably mean he won't want me to join in. But we'll just play it as it lays.

Since I haven't really read any of Colson's books or columns, I plan to do so over the next few weeks to see what his standard points are. I already know he's got a list of "Ten Questions About Origins," which an initial reading reveals to be the usual McDonald's menu of creationist canards and ignorance (where are the transitional fossils? what about the 2nd Law? what about irreducible complexity? yada yada). I suppose I'll respond to that one first, probably early next week, and then see what else he's got.