Saudia Arabia calls for interfaith dialogue for the pupose of persecuting atheists

So the leader of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, has called for an interfaith dialogue. It sounds like a wonderful meeting of the minds. Read below:

“I ask representatives of all the monotheistic religions to meet with their brothers in faith,” Abdullah told delegates to a seminar on “Dialogue Among Civilizations between Japan and the Islamic World,” according to the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA).

“If God wills it, we will then meet with our brothers from other religions, including those of the Torah and the Gospel… to come up with ways to safeguard humanity,” he added.

Abdullah said the country’s top clerics have given him approval to pursue his idea and that he plans to get the opinion of Muslim leaders from other countries.

 I love how people use words like "safeguard humanity" when they they really mean is "vanquish atheists and fags":

"We have lost sincerity, morals, fidelity and attachment to our religions and to humanity," Abdullah said Monday, deploring "the disintegration of the family and the rise of atheism in the world – a frightening phenomenon that all religions must confront and vanquish." [emphasis mine]

 While we most assuredly lose attachment to religion when we become atheists, this is one more example of atheism being linked to disintegration of the family (by this I think he means homosexual rights) moral depravity, infidelity, insincerity, and... detachment from humanity.

Now, I am all for having more atheists in the world, but it is not my goal to vanquish religion. I'd like to vanquish irrationality, the undermining of science, and infringements on mine and others' rights, but those are the negative things about religion. If there are no negative consequences, religion doesn't really bother me, and people absolutely have the right to be religious.

Abdullah's call for dialogue comes at a time of religious tensions caused by the re-igniting of a two-year-old controversy over Danish cartoons deemed by Muslims to be insulting.

 To me, there is a huge problem with this world - people think that they have the right to not be insulted.  If people drew silly pictures of me, or of anything else that matters to me, I might get insulted (probably not). But the fact that I am insulted does not mean you do not have the right to insult me.

Also, why only monotheists? Why not pagans, Hindus, Buddhists, pantheists, deists, spiritualists? How does this group of monotheists plan on vanquishing us?

In case you have not seen the picture that caused such an uproar, here it is.:

Ray a Day Guest Post: X-Zilla

Today's Ray a Day is by blogger/commender X-zilla, who blogs over here.

Here is the text I chose to send off to him, in it's entirity:

Just how long are the “last days” supposed to last?... The Bible says that none knows when the end will come, but then it gives some clues. And the clues it gives are all things that have happened since the dawn of human beans.

Yes, the questioner did write “beans” instead of “beings,” revealing that he has a strange belief about where we sprouted from, or he’s a big Mr. Bean fan, or he’s just like the rest of us and makes mistakes when typing.

Human beings are prone to err, and the greatest error any of us can ever make is to be wrong about God. The religious leaders at the time of Christ made that mistake continually. They came to Jesus with questions for which they didn’t really want answers. Instead their intent was to trick Him so that they could catch Him in His words. One such time was when they asked Him about the resurrection. They concocted a scenario in which a woman had seven husbands who died one after the other. Then they asked, “In the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be? For all seven had her as a wife.” Jesus answered, “Are you not therefore mistaken, because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God?” (See Mark 12:18-27 for the whole story.)

The same answer could be given to 90 percent of the questions asked by skeptics. According to the Bible, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; a good understanding have all those who do His commandments” (Psalm 111:10). So a professing atheist who has no fear of god also has no understanding at all of the character and power of God. Even those of us who know Him know only tiny drop in an infinite ocean of his greatness. He is omnipresent-he dwells everywhere, filling the infinitude of space. Every tiny atom in the universe is displayed before Him. He is omnipotent-nothing is impossible for God. He is omniscient-seeing every thought of the human heart. These thoughts are too much for human brains that can barely juggle a few thoughts at a time, let alone comprehend the greatness of the God who gave us life.Skeptics also don’t know the Scriptures. Most of the verses cited in questions are read with an ignorance of corresponding verses to give them their biblical context.

So, in answer to the question: God’s timeframe is different from ours-“For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it is past…” (Psalm 90:04), and “…with the Lord one day is a thousand years and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). The Bible tells us that the “last days” began on the Day of Pentecost (see Acts 2:17). We have been in the last days for two thousand years (not much in God’s timeframe). Most of the signs that the Bible speaks of have been around for many years; however, prophecies about the increase of travel and the increase of knowledge are far more evident in recent years. And, of course, the Jews obtaining Jerusalem in 1967 is the fulfillment that started the prophetic clock ticking. How long will the last days last? God only knows… but we are certainly getting close to when the door of His mercy closes.

 X-zilla says:

The question presented is not the question of a ‘skeptic’ or an atheist. It is a question from a person who is curious. The question alone does not indicate any belief system. It does however indicate a healthy curiosity about the world and the constructs we live under.

End time prophecy surrounds us in American culture. The Weekly World News, the A&E and History channels, Evangelical Protestants, Catholics, Hollywood movies, the Left Behind book series, Tom Robbins, Muslims, and Jews present and/or perpetuate myth about the end of the world. The concepts of a prophetic end of the world envelopes our culture. The power of these myths is fascinating. The deconstruction of prophecy is interesting. More interesting is the progression of these ideas over time. That these ideas subtly and dangerously permeate our politics and diplomatic agendum is frightening absolutely terrifying.

Fortunately for me and the spot on my wall where I bang my head in flabbergasted frustration Comfort does not deconstruct Revelations or Daniel for us. He ultimately answers the question with, “God only knows” so repent and accept Yeshua as Jesus Christ before the horn blows and the righteous disappear leaving nothing behind but sinners and neatly folded clothes.

Comfort begins his response with a lighthearted teasing about a typing error on the questioner’s part, noting that he’s just like the rest of us and makes errors. This is used as a segue into the danger of being wrong about god. The next segue is a subtle and scary one. Comfort equates questioners now with the skepticism of religious leaders during the week leading to the crucifixion (picture Jewish caricatures ala Mel Gibson jeering at Christ) which does nothing but further the divide between non believers and Comfort believers. His example is taken out of historical and political context as well. Yeshua (a member of a fringe Judaic group) came to town, declared himself the Messiah (Christ) and then flipped over the money changers table in the Temple (this sealed his fate, if you want to get nailed to a tree so you can suffer the sins of man and grant absolution and then prove this through resurrection and ascension the thing to do would be to espouse radical concepts and go after the money changers). Other people had reported miracles and supernatural attributed to Christ but that was other people’s observation and Christ himself refused to perform miracles for skeptics to validate his claim. I am one to seriously avoid victim blaming but really if Yeshua was treated poorly and looked upon with disdain by the powers that be it was because he was seriously asking for it. Many people before and after Yeshua have claimed to be a prophet or even the Messiah. It is good whether you believe in no god or Yahweh or whateverism to ask or even demand verification of such claims. Comfort claims that these skeptics do not know the power of god and neither do current skeptics. In order to understand even a little bit of the power of god you must fear him first. In the interest of finishing this review part I’m just going to state that fear is not an effective vehicle for promoting understanding and knowledge.

“Skeptics also don’t know the Scriptures”, Comfort states. Some believers also don’t know the scriptures (are they true believers then?). Some believers and skeptics are well educated in regard to ‘the scriptures’. Using blanket statements about a skeptic’s ignorance of the scriptures is not enough to validate your belief in what they mean.

In the final paragraph of his answer Comfort provides us with verses that indicate he has a non literal interpretation of time as represented in the Bible. Apparently time exists differently for us than it does for god (Does that make god a singularity or does he just live in one?). References to time are metaphorical and not literal. Except of course in Genesis where it is the literal inerrant word of god. Confused? Thankfully we have Ray comfort who knows which is which and what is what.

JREF account suspended

As of this moment, the James Randi Educational Foundation's YouTube account has been suspended. We in the skeptical community have yet to receive an explanation.

Randi publishes an ongoing segment called "Randi Speaks" on YouTube fairly frequently. He usually speaks out against various forms of woo-woo such as homeopathy, dowsing, psychics, etc. We can only speculate as to why the videos were removed. Similar bans have happened in the past with other skeptical or athiest groups such as the Rational Response Squad. 

To complain to youtube follow this link;
Scroll to the very bottom and click on “new issue”
Select “suspended account” from the options and express your opinion.

The account ID is JamesRandiFoundation. 

 

IAM Ziztur

I'm starting to realize that other than the random blatherings I post on this blog, you fair readers know next to nothing about me. I don't really share much of my personal life unless it seems relevant.  If you think that this is because the topics covered here are all I think about, you're  not terribly far off, honestly. But amazingly, I have a life outside of atheism and skepticism!

Ten things about me you might not know yet:

IAM: The oldest of three siblings - we're all atheists. My parents were raised Catholic but raised us completely secularly except for sending us to a Lutheran Pre-school. (Crap, I've mentioned the atheist thing already. I failed)

IAM: Totally native to St. Louis - I've never lived anywhere else and sometimes I regret that. I feel (quite erroneously I'm sure) that St. Louis is the only real place to live. Though I am also fond of Boston.

IAM: Formerly a very private person, but decided about a year ago that I could no longer shut people out. I felt like even those who were closest to me barely knew me. It was the intensity of interactions at an atheists meetup group that made me realize what I was missing.

IAM: Always drinking Mountain Dew (so is Flimsy...). We basically don't drink anything else - we can even wake up in the middle of the night, drink some, and then go back to bed. It's our Nectar of the Nonexistent Gods. (aw hell, I mentioned atheism again)

IAM: Terribly bad at small talk. I'd rather know you intensely immediately after meeting you. I don't talk to people in typical social situations (like at the dog park or something) because I just don't see the point in talking about the weather, evening sitcoms or the latest silicone bakeware.

IAM: Described as being "pathologically unemotional" by some, "beautifully rational" by others. My friends used to get angry at me for my lack of emotional response, and I have been told that I am hard to read. A big load of crap happened to me about a year ago, and when I explained all of it to a group of my classmates, they were in awe that I was recounting said events in such a detached, matter-of-fact way.

IAM: "W" sitting, even at 26. That's when you sit with your legs in a "W" shape, with your butt on the floor, your knees to either side of you, and your feet externally rotated.

IAM: Not sure how to describe my sense of humor, but Flimsy says it's "silly". I'd like to think I am more sarcastic than silly, and I also like to see what kind of humor I can get away with.

IAM: Formerly a member of my high school drama club.I was the head of the sets department, and was Juror 12 in "12 Angry Jurors". I used to want to be an actress, but my brain would have been wasted in such pursuits.

IAM: Never wearing makeup. I have some, but I really don't see the point.

Ray a Day: 4:2

Today, Ray's angry skeptic brings up the fact that the bible has some funky things to say about wisdom. specifically:

So God doesn't like smart people/ the thoughts of the wise are worthless...that's flirting with contradiction. The unavoidable implication is that God like 'em dumb and ignorant.

Ray responds:

But let me see if you are a "wise" person. Can you make honey, from nothing? How about a glass of milk, from nothing? ... Make me a fully functioning eye, using no materials.

Since when does "wise" mean "having the ability to make those things for which their is no known maker?" You can't win arguments br redefining words to suit your own personal agenda. Besides, even when the Bible speaks of being "wise", it does not mean, "having the ability to make those things for which there is no known maker", so I honestly can't figure out what is even going on here. So we'll just move on:

The next skeptic wonders how one can accept that the bible is the word of god, taking as evidence only that those who wrote it claimed as much. Said skeptic also wonders how the Bible can be the inerrant word of God when there are so many differences and contradictions.

The interesting thing here is that when theists are presented with obvious contradictions in the Bible, they will move mountains to try to convince you that such contradictions are not, in fact, contradictions. It seems to me that the whole body of "apologetics" is about insisting, to patholigical and nonsensical degrees, that the Bible is perfect, even when it is abundantly clear that it is not. People like this can easily point out contradictions in other religions, I.E.the Top Ten Reasons Islam Is NOT a Religion of Peace. Here, a theist might argue like this: "Islam says it is a religion of peace, but the Quran advocates whipping adulteresses and adulterer. Thus, it is not a religion of peace:

(24:2 Strike the adulteress and the adulterer one hundred times. Do not let compassion for them keep you from carrying out God’s law—if you believe in God and the Last Day—and ensure that a group of believers witnesses the punishment. (MAS Abdel Haleem, The Quran, New York: Oxford UP, 2004)

When you point out that the same kind of brutality is present all over the Bible, people jump through hoops to try to justify it.

"And the man that committeth adultery with [another] man's wife, [even he] that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death." (Leviticus 20:10)

To me, there's not much of a difference between Christianity and Islam - the texts on which they are based are both equally illogical and horrific.

Speaking of Islam, I'm on page 80 of Ray's book. On page 115, Ray goes on to say that atheists are "chicken-livered" because they criticize Christianity and not Islam, because atheists "know" that if they do, Muslims will "come after you to lop off your head."

It's almost as if religion is a brain-virus when people can easily point out the inconsistencies in other religions, can easily use logic and rationality to condemn religions other than their own, but when it comes to their own religion, somehow it is perfect, even in the face of identical contradictions. It feels like I am overhearing a conversation on a coffeehouse where all three women are of a victims of domestic abuse:

Woman 1 (to woman 2): If your partner beats you, you need to leave him. Your relationship is not healthy and he won't change.

Woman 2 (to woman 3): Yes, you are not to blame for your partner's abuse. He is wrong. You need to find someone better for yourself.

Woman 3: You guys need to end your relationships. My boyfriend, on the other hand,  is so awesome.

Woman 2: Wait.. Didn't I see him hit you the other day?

Woman 3: Oh no.. I totally deserved that. But you guys really need to end your relationships. NOW. Your partners are clearly evil for beating you. Don't let him convince you that you're the victim.

Woman 2: Oh no. My partner yells and might hit me a tiny bit, but I know he really loves me and is doing it for my own good. You guys though.. your partner can't possibly love you if he hits you and yells.

Woman 1: You guys need to get real and stop insisting your man is perfect - he can't be perfect if he hurts you. I don't know what you're talking about with my partner though, he's perfect for me. You have to understand the hitting in context. You're taking it out of context.

Woman 3: Duh, your man can't be perfect. What context? I know my man hits me only because I am a rotten person, and have been since we got into the relationship. I am the bad one.

... and so on.

If you define any given thing (The Bible, God, your hateful partner, whatever) as perfect and insist that everything that entity does/says is perfect even if it appears to be horrible, imperfect or contradictory, then you are not using observational evidence to determine whether or not something is perfect - evidence, in fact, does not matter at all. If you define something as "perfect" and do not use evidence to determine it's "perfection", then the whole idea of it being perfect becomes pretty much meaningless, as it's status of perfection is incapable of changing. This is what apologietics does - it takes whatever observations it has and twists those observations until it fits into the apropriate mold. This is not rational, it's certainly not scientific, and it gives logic a gigantic, leather-bound middle finger.

In every other aspect of our lives, we determine somethings goodness or perfection based on observational evidence - we observe it's lack of flaws, we observe it's apropriate fit, and we determine based on these observations that something is perfect.

We say that a round peg fits perfectly into a round hole when it actually fits. Apologetics is the fine art of saying that a square peg fits perfectly into a round hole after cutting, burning, carving and stomping the peg into a somewhat circular shape, and then carving out the round hole until the square peg finally fits.

New Nonstampcollector video!

Nonstampcollector wins so hard - here is his newest piece of Youtube goodness. It's a little foul-mouthed and NSFW, which is what we like best :)

Ray a Day - 3:6/4:1

This chapter of Comfort's book, titled "Salvation in Christ - The Promise of Heaven and Eternal Life," is basically just a sermon.  Lots of simple talk about how great God is for allowing us worthless humans into his perfect home in heaven, etc.; not much original or interesting material.  All I want to note here is a very brief discussion of alternate theologies.

A skeptic says, "If 'salvation' is a 'supernatural' act of a 'supernatural God,' then evangelism would be superfluous, no?"  Comfort responds by briefly discussing Armenian and Calvinist theologies.  I'll refrain from giving an exaustive analysis of these, but I would encourage anyone who is interested in looking into them further (that is, if you're even partially as interested in theology as I am).  Briefly, then, Armenian theology (or more commonly Arminianism) and Calvinism have a few differences between them, some minor, some major, depending on your theological persuasion.  Of course, to an atheist, saying that these slightly divergent theologies are "diametrically opposed to each other," as Comfort says, is like saying that there's a huge difference between Scottish folks and Irish folks, when their all just crackers to a brotha.

The interesting point here is that Comfort actually extolls people to not willfully divide themselves over minor points of theological contention.

Sadly, church history has shown us that Christ-centered men of God have clashed over these isssues (e.g., Westley and Whitefield).  More recently, I have seen brethren make a theological stand and much to their dismay, they were marked by their home church as "troublemakers."  Fine missionaries have been pulled from the field, pastors fired from the ministry, and churches have split, simply because of different views of God's sovereignty.

Well Ray, that's a nice thought and all, and personally, as I hinted above, I'm always a little confused when theists of slightly differing theologies so radically divide people into True Christians and False Christians.  However, I find it difficult to give you any points for this statement, considering that:

1.  On page 7, he states that evolution is an 'idol,' and that no one can worship an idol and Jesus at the same time, therefore, you cannot accept the Theory of Evolution and be a Christian.

2.  On page 12, he rants about how Catholics are not Christians.

3.  On page 36, even a Christian who says that, "I think that men who don't have God can be good, normal people, just not perfect," is way off base according to Comfort.  He says that there is no one "good" except for God, and this is apparently such an important theological point that Comfort is made to"doubt the genuine nature of the Christian's salvation, because it seems that he has no biblical knowledge of sin himself."

Onto the introduction to Chapter Five, The Testimony of Holy Scripture.  This will be a very interesting chapter, as it seems to be all about the biblical proof for the existence of God, and biblical questions raised by skeptics.  In the into, here is what he says about biblical commentary on "wisdom:"

There are different types of wisdom.  There is the wisdom of this world ("after the flesh"), and there is the wisdom of God.  The message of the passage is that God has chosen a seemingly foolish message of childlike faith, to confound those proud folks who think that they are wise.

So it seems that at least a portion of this chapter will be all about how badly the Bible abuses the concept of "wisdom."  I've noticed that many Christians are fond of quoting a number of Bible verses that seem to praise wisdom, yet without acknowledging that more often than not, in Bible-speak, "wisdom" means fearing and obeying God, and actual knowledge is called "foolishness."  Comfort makes such a distinction between "Godly knowledge" and "worldly knowledge" here, but without acknowledging that it is "worldly knowledge" that has enabled humanity to improve our civilization.  It is true that there is scientific knowledge, philosophical knowledge, and/or theological knowledge (among others), and they are very different.  Is Comfort really going to argue that out of these, it is theological knowledge that is most important?

Only one other thing to point out:  Comfort mentions, as an example of a shallow example of biblical dificulty raised by skeptics, the story of Japheth, who Comfort acknowledges sacrificed his daughter to God.  Now, first off, Comfort doesn't reference the Bible verses that this story comes from.  Perhaps so that people won't actually read this story?  Judges 11:29-39, by the way.  Secondly, his name is, so far as I know, properly translated as Jephthah, not Japheth.  Third, Comfort's explanation makes no sense.  He claims that the Bible merely recounts the story of Jephthah sacrificing his daughter, but does not condone it.  This is dead wrong - in the Bible, verse 29 specifically states that God 'came upon' Jephthah, verse 30 states that he made this vow directly to God, verse 32 states that it was God who gave the enemy into his hands, and it states several times that he vowed the sacrifice to God.  Not once does God ever forbid him from doing so, set him straight, or save his daughter.  It is impossible to come to the conclusion that God did not approve of the sacrifice, based on an objective reading of the text.

This chapter seems to be all about the difficult questions raised by skeptics concerning the Bible, and proofs based upon scripture.  As I myself rejected Christianity literally by reading the Bible, I admit that I'm looking forward to this chapter.  Stay tuned.

Descrimination of atheists...

This is an old special, but worth watching:

Ray a Day: 3:5

In today's Ray quote, Ray talks about heaven, and says that science has discovered lots of "invisible realms" in the last couple of centuries. He gives radio and television "waves" as an example, saying,

We can't see them, but they are there whether we believe in them or not. It's the same with the spiritual realm. It, like television and radio waves, is invisible to the human eye.

No, it's not the same. There is a massive difference between the "invisible realm" of radio waves and the "invisible realm" of heaven. Radio waves have an observable affect on the universe. We can measure them and their affect. Reliably. Replicably. The same is not true for heaven, which is akin to an invisible dragon in one's garage.

I am now going to quote a small chunk of Carl Sagon's delicious book, The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, in a completely unapologetic manner:

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

Suppose I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle--but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick."

And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.

The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility.

Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative-- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons--to say nothing about invisible ones--you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages--but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence"--no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it--is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

Comfort is clearly comforted (um... ...ha?) by the dragon in his garage. He goes on to talk about how wonderful heaven will be, how it will actually come down to earth from... wherever it's coming from (?)... how the earth will be restored to the purity of Eden, how those who trust Jesus will be given bran new bodies, how there will be no natural disasters, lions will lie down with lambs, there will be glorious fruit and fish and birds and waterfalls... He says that we won't need the sun because God will be the light.  But if we don't trust Jesus, we'll end up in hell. Comfort says that we justly deserve this eternal torment instead of pleasures that "don't even come close" to the pleasures on this "sad old earth" because we won't change our minds and repent.

It is very sad to me that so many people in this world believe that this earth is a sad old thing. If one believes that this earth is old and that Jesus is coming to rain heaven down to the earth and make everything new again, what is the onus to protect the planet? What is the onus to make life better here, if it is to be so much better later on due to supernatural intervention? Why intervene to have a positive impact on humanity, if you believe your god will do it for you?

The other day I attended a lecture by a fellow occupational therapist, Frank Kronenberg - author of Occupational Therapy Without Borders: Learning from the Spirit of Survivors.  Frank talked (among other things) about the philosophy of Ubuntu, which can be summed up succinctly at thus:

A person with ubuntu is open with others and affirming of their intrinsic value. They delight when others are successful, able and good without feeling threatened if they do not do the same. The reason they do not feel threatened or ashamed is because they recognize that they are a part of the larger whole that is humankind. He or she is uplifted when others are uplifted and recognized, and diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, tortured, oppressed, or treated as less than who they are. For people with ubuntu, social harmony is the greatest good and anything that subverts or undermines this good is to be avoided. A person with ubunto says "I am because you are. My value comes from my positive interaction with those around me."

 A Comfortian Christian, on the other hand, is nearly the polar opposite of this. Instead of affirming an individual's intrinsic value, he affirms an individual's intrinsic worthlessness. Instead of delighting when others are successful, he asserts that they are incapable of being good. Success is measured not in actions or deeds but in firm, unwavering belief in a deity and that deity's ability to save us from our own worthlessness. We are seen as deserving of consequences that by their definition cannot be equal. The greatest good is not social harmony but servitude, thanks and belief of the entity with the most power. Comfortian Christians, believing that eternal torment for those who reject god is absolutely perfect justice, are not humiliated or diminished when others are tortured - for how could one possibly be diminished by perfect justice? They see eternal torment as perfectly justified and an example of perfect morality and righteousness. I guess this means that they are actually lifted up by this perfect justice - a concept I find to be abjectly repulsive.

From the mouth of St. Thomas Aquinas: "In order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned." [Summa Theologica, Third Part, Supplement, Question XCIV, "Of the Relations of the Saints Towards the Damned," First Article, "Whether the Blessed in Heaven Will See the Sufferings of the Damned. . ."]

P.S. This is my 300th post!

Anti-aging pill fail: RezV

Today I got some new spam in my inbox: this time, it's for RezV, a supplement pill containing resveratrol, a substance largely touted as being found in red wine.

The body of the e-mails says, in big letters: "discover how YOU can live to be 150"

When you go to their website, you're greeted with a video of an Oprah (Pseudoscience Queen) segment, where a very hyperactive dude with creepy eyebrows hawks a bunch of green horse pills that apparently contains a concentration of resveratrol. You'll also find the logos of USA Today, NBC, CNN, Discovery Channel, Fox News, CBS, People, NBC (again?), Reader's Digest, Cosmopolitan, and PBS.

Their moneyback guarantee:

MONEY BACK GUARANTEE
We are so confident that you will love RezV that we are not only going to give you a free trial period for the full month supply, but a RISK FREE 14 day money back guarantee. You will have 14 days from the date of your order to evaluate the product. If you decide you are unhappy with the product, cancel at any time during that 14 day period and pay nothing except shipping and handling. If you do not cancel, you will receive every 30 days a fresh one-month supply of RezV as part of our delivery program, for which you will be automatically billed $87.97 per month (a 21% savings off the regular price!) There are no obligations, and you can
cancel at anytime via our customer support line.

Since when does  "RISK FREE" mean that if you don't cancel within 14 days of placing your order (which means that if it takes a week to get from their warehouse to your doorstep, you have 7 days to try it) you'll be automatically billed $90+ per month. It seems to me that purchasing your "free trial" comes with the risk of your credit card being charged if you don't hop up and call the customer service line - and you know that they are going to try to convince you to keep using their product.

Oh come on Ziztur, you say, they can't really mean that the 14 day trial period begins from the moment you order it, can they? Yep, it says as much under "Terms & Conditions":

14 DAY TRIAL PERIOD INCLUDES SHIPPING AND TRANSIT TIME

Some of the "testimonials" on the website are just frightening. Take "Kelly Ann's" Testimonial:

My muscle tone is so much more firm, especially around my waist area, without actually having to work out.

 Oh shit! She's had a brain injury! Abnormal muscle tone is a sign of serious central nervous system dysfunction. I have to recommended that she stop taking her placebopills and see a real doctor.

Studies on humans have shown that even in doses much higher than the pull form offered (5 grams vs 20-200mg, depending on who is hawking it) did... nothing. The headline-grabbing Harvard study, published in 2006, showed that obese, middle aged mice who had resveratrol added to their high-calorie, high-fat diet became healthier and lived longer. A similar study, published later by the same researchers, showed that middle-aged healthy mice fed regular diets did not live longer or have increased health when given resveratrol vs. a placebo. [1] There are no studies showing that resveratrol has any positive affect on humans, though there are studies showing that it increased the lifespan of some fish, a fruit fly, and a type of worm. Yet before appropriate studies can be conducted on humans, countless pill-peddling companies are selling their supplements for unforgivably expensive prices.

It's funny that all of the websites and videos show people drinking red wine, or show pictures of red wine, and talk about how the compound is found in red wine, but most (all?) resveratrol supplements are not made from wine or grapes (or peanuts, which also contains resveratrol) but japanese knotweed. I guess it doesn't sound quite as enticing and sophisticated to say your supplement is derived from  Japanese knotweed as it does to say it's from red wine.

All of this red-wine-makes-you-healthier stuff comes from the idea of the French Paradox - wherein the French supposedly consume a diet higher in saturated fats, but have less heart disease than Americans - a 60 Minutes show in 1991 suggested that this was due to the French's consumption or red wine. Even the Wikipedia article on the subject suggests that the French Paradox is an overblown case of misplaced causation. The idea has been debunked with research by ... ironically ... some researchers in France. The French Paradox has also been debunked by statisticians - but this doesn't stop weight-loss companies from continuing to use it to their advantage.

1. Schard, D. Nutrition Action Health Letter; Mar2009, Vol. 36 Issue 2, p9-9, 3/5p, 1 color

Ray a Day Guest Post: Gordon

Good day and welcome to today's special edition of Ray-a-Day, written by me, Gordon, master and commander of this defunct blog. Much thanks and hugs should go to the wonderful Ziztur and Flimsy for hosting this book review party. Please grab a comfy seat, a stiff drink and try not to spill anything on their upholstery.

Today's "angry skeptic" is somewhat peeved at Ray Comfort over something:

I just wanted to let you know that you're an @$#!! You start out talking to people by questioning them on their bad behaviors, then you tell them they're gonna burn in hell. After scaring them with this method you turn around and start running your mouth about Jesus and how he died for them and how you don't want to see them go to hell, which then makes them sad. You think you're getting results when you do this? You think you're changing lives? Maybe for those couple of seconds when you twist people's emotions around and warp their mind into believing they are terrible people and they will die and go to hell. You talk to them like you're the @!#$& higher power! And you have the nerve to talk about self righteousness? You're a joke, take a good look in the mirror before you go out judging others. Who knows, that may be you burning in hell's eternal flames, and your little %$@!# buddy too...

Allow me to begin by confessing, I have no idea what this person is referring to when he/she is slagging off Comfort. My only exposure to Comfort prior to reading Ziztur's review of his book, is a clip of Comfort performing this comedy routine:



Seriously, to this day I still believe this was a silly attempt at Poe-rady, and I harbour half a hope that Ray and Kirk would pop up one day and say, Python-esque: "Sorry, ladies and gents, that was all for a lark. Wasn't it tip top stuff, eh?". That's the thing about Poe's Law, there's always a non-zero percentage chance that this would happen in the future.

But thanks to this book review assignment, I am forced to dig up Comfort's other works, better known as "The Way of the Master" ministry. A sample of what they... em... "do", is in videos like the ones below:

After witnessing these few videos I am even more convinced Comfort is a parody and, as the "angry skeptic" have pointed out, a joke. How anyone can attempt such a blatantly transparent three card trick in this age is certainly laughable. (Thunderf00t offers a simple refutation of this clumsy ploy, from 02:30-07:20, or what I like to call "The Heathen's Gambit")

Yet Comfort and his crew of evangelists seem to win many fans amongst their quarter, so for the moment I shall grant him the benefit of doubt and treat him as a serious preacher and not as some sly street-corner snake-oil salesman.

Comfort's reply to the "angry skeptic" is as thus:

It's true that I do ask people about their bad behavior, and I do tell them what the Bible says about hell. But how could I not? If I am fully persuaded that someone is in terrible danger, I have to at least warn them.
...
There is one thought that skeptics don't seem to take into account. What if hell does exist? What if the Bible is right? What if God is holy and just and will punish murderers and rapists in a terrible place called hell? What if every single person will get what's coming to them? If what we say is the gospel truth, then what we are saying is justified and most necessary.

Ahhh, the familiar yet severely vulture-pecked carcass that is Pascal.

Ever since I was a little kid, I often wondered what is the deal with the theological preoccupation with this Hellfire thing, and why is it at all frightening? Sure, eternity is a long time ;-) , but being roasted continuously... hmmm... on a pain scale of one to ten register no more than a mere six. And it doesn't score much on the imagination scale neither.

If I was to be scared of hell, it would a hell where 10,000 volts are jolted through every one of my appendages, whilst I am languishing in a sea of Sulphuric Acid, at the same time crushed on all sides by a tonne of radioactive fissionable Plutonium-239, where they easily achieve critical mass to cause a nuclear chain reaction around my material body... as well as within my immaterial soul... for all of eternity. Now that is a ten out of ten kinda hell!!

Now for argument sake, I am "fully persuaded" that:

1. The almighty Flying Spaghetti Monster exists, and he presides over this Electric, Acidic, Nuclear Hell^TM.
2. The noodly FSM considers anyone sporting any facial hair to be a abominable sinner.
3. The merciful FSM will send all such sinners straight into this special Hell^TM.

I am duty bound to warn Ray Comfort that his afterlife is in peril and he must repent to FSM, to shave off his mustache and do the chicken dance after downing 14 shots of vodka. If he doesn't, a grim radioactive annihilation awaits him.

So should Comfort follow the bidding of the lord FSM? I certainly hope not.

For fear not, young Ray Comfort, this Hell^TM have as much evidence for its existence as your standard garden-variety fiery hell. And if any fundamentalist FSM worshipers try to convert you with such a shallow sales pitch as "What if Hell^TM does exist? What if the FSM is holy and just and will punish the beardy and the moustachy in a terrible place called Hell^TM?", you are well within your rights to laugh vigorously at their faces, like any rationally thinking folks will do for you.

Ray continues by insisting he is able to critically examine himself when it comes to his own sins:

... I am as bad, if not worse than most of the people to whom I speak. I have broken all of the Ten Commandments, in spirit if not in letter. I have committed a multitude of sins, and that's why I need a Savior. Being a Christian means that all that sin is forgiven.

Sorry, come again?

Being a Christian means that all that sin is forgiven.

I just want this statement to sink in a little bit here.

Which brings us back to this point, there is something truly appalling about this whole enterprise which can arbitrarily set the definition of a sickness, a sin, and then arbitrarily prescribe a cure only they can administer. But for Comfort to parade around his contemptuous banner of "I am saved, but you will burn (if you don't do as I say)", is compounding the bile that rises in my throat.

Only now can I truly appreciate what this "angry skeptic" is railing against, the comedy act that is Ray Comfort is beyond a joke. A hypocrisy dressed up as a self-righteous pretension. You sure can lead an atheist to evidence, but so far all I can witness from Comfort is an argument of "neener-neener-neener, God likes me better than you".

And this makes his "Banana ergo Deus" argument positively cerebral.

Atheists overcoming Alcohol dependency

Flimsy and I don't drink (it makes me antisocial and it makes him cry. It's not that we don't drink at all, rather he will sip alcoholic drinks to see what they taste like and I might have one drink every few months or so, if that.) but the other day I was thinking about how there are so many secularists in the US these days (15% of the population!) and AA (alcoholics anonymous) just doesn't work for everyone.

For those of you who don't know or have never been to an AA meeting, they employ a 12-steps to recovery program. The steps are as follows:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His Will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Obviously I - and many others - take issue with steps 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 11.

I interned at a locked mental health inpatient unit at Harvard (Beth Israel Hospital, to be precise) and while I was there, tons of people had problems with alcohol dependency. When we asked them if they had tried or considered AA, most of them told us that they had a problem with the references to god, or the idea of surrendering to a higher power. It didn't sit right with them.

I was always willing to pass along the information about secular programs I knew of that used behavioral therapy and scientific research, rather than an obviously theistic approach. Instead of teaching people that they are powerless, these programs teach people self-reliance. My favorite one is Smart Recovery, which is very specific about it's non-spiritual approach:

SMART Recovery® has a scientific foundation, not a spiritual one. SMART Recovery® teaches increasing self-reliance, rather than powerlessness. SMART Recovery® views addictive behavior as a maladaptive habit, rather than as a disease. SMART Recovery® meetings are discussion meetings in which individuals talk with one another, rather than to one another. SMART Recovery® encourages attendance for months to years, but probably not a lifetime. There are no sponsors in SMART Recovery®. SMART Recovery® discourages use of labels such as "alcoholic" or "addict".

 They are also more than honest:

From a scientific perspective, the effectiveness of all support groups for addictive behavior is unproven. The only way to answer that question is to attend meetings from all available groups, and reach a personal conclusion about the best approach to recovery.

There are literally hundreds of scientific references that might be used to provide a foundation for the SMART Recovery® Program. A good place to begin reviewing them is with the works listed in "Is SMART Recovery® as Effective as AA?", in the July, 1996 newsletter (Vol 2, #3). In particular Hester & Miller, 1995 (Handbook of Alcoholism Treatment Approaches: Effective Alternatives, Boston: Allyn & Bacon) provides a good current overview.

 Smart Recovery isn't nearly as prolific as AA, so you might not be able to find groups in every community, which is unfortunate. There are other secular and non-religious substance abuse treatment groups out there such as Lifering Secular Recovery, Rational Recovery, and even Women for Sobriety. So, if you know someone who wants to overcome substance abuse who is an atheist, agnostic, secular humanist, or non-religious, let them know that there are alternatives.

Ray a Day - 3:4

Today's question-and-answer from Comfort't book is very interesting.  This skeptic feels that Christianity would never have been nearly as successful as it is, were it not for the fear of hell (I don't consider the fear of hell to be quite as significant as the aggressive religious and military campains of centuries past, or as important as the near-universal indoctrination of one's offspring into one's religion, although the fear of hell is certainly an important factor in the latter).  Indeed, this skeptic even mentions how children can be traumatized by this irrational fear.

Comfort agrees that people, even children, can be suffer psychological damage from the fear of hell.  Of course, he disagrees that this fear is irrational or even undesirable, saying that "I think that you are right.  The existence of hell is a legitimate reason to come to the Savior, and it is perhaps why so many profess faith in Christ."

Comfort goes on to say that no children he knows that were raised Christian have been traumatized by the fear of hell; they actually don't fear hell at all, because they know that they are saved from it by Jesus.  Well, Ray, that makes sense, but only if none of these children ever stop to consider just how many people are being tormented in hell under the "moral law" of your perfectly just god (or if they have and still don't care because they personally have escaped hell, then they are horribly unfeeling, selfish little bastards).

Comfort also says that there is a different legitimate fear that psychologically cripples people:  Death.

As an atheist, what do you tell your beloved children when they, with fear in their eyes, say, "Daddy, I don't want to die!"?  Do you tell them that it's nature's way, and that they just have to deal with it?  Or do you tell them that they shouldn't think of negative things and to concentrate on life?  Christians don't need to cop out when that question is asked. (emphasis added)  We can tell our children how we were created (you don't know), why we were created (you don't know), why we are all going to die (you don't know), what happens after death (you don't know), and what we can do about it (you refuse to listen to that one).

So here we have an interesting question about how people deal with a very touchy topic:  Teaching your children about death.  Of course, it's immediately followed by a hilarious example of the pot and the kettle.


Well, first off, I personally intend to explain to my child(ren), in an age-appropriate way, of course, that everyone will die someday.  However, we have time here on earth in which to live, and the fact that it will end one day only makes our time alive that much more important.  Think of all the infinite possible people that could have been born, and it is only us that have life.  Fate has given us life, and so we must use this life to make a positive impact on the world.  That is how we live forever, that is true immortality; ensuring that our deeds were selfless and just, and that the world is a better place for our having lived in it, for the world will survive when we are long gone.  Aristotle and Socrates, Confucius, Jesus, Jefferson, Paine, Edison (irrelevant side note:  why are dudes named Thomas such badasses?  I'm naming my kid Thomas, hands-down), Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, FDR, MLK, etc.  All long dead, but through their great deeds, the world progresses; humanity grows.


As far as the rest of this foolishness, Comfort doesn't even attempt to consider the naturalists' perspective.  Let me get this straight:  The atheist, asked about death, replies that while it's true that everyone dies, this is all the more reason to make our lives a worthy and positive impact on humanity; to ensure that our actions make the world a better place, because the world and humanity will survive us.  The believer in an afterlife, asked the same question, replies that human beings somehow keep living after our heart and lungs stop working and we keep thinking after our brains cease to function.  The believer says that this is why we don't need to worry about death, because in essence, it doesn't really happen, not in any meaningful sense (regardless of what all our powers of observation and logic tell us).  Aaaand . . . it's the naturalist that has to "cop out" in his reply?


This is exactly the problem with naturalism vs supernaturalism.  Naturalism has one answer, but it's not a very satisfying answer to many.  Supernaturalism has a different answer, a much more satisfying one . . . except that supernaturalism actually does not have an answer.  It is simply calling the terrifying unknown factor something else.  They give it different properties to make it sound better, but there is never any evidence to believe it.  It is up to each one of us whether being happy and  satisfied with an answer is desirable enough that we should accept it, regardless of whether we have a logical reason to do so.  For my own part, I want the truth, regardless of how comfortable, or otherwise, it makes me.  I can only attempt to change a fact that makes me uncomfortable if I accept that fact in the first place.

Photography: Abandoned Church

For those of you who are new to my blog, I strong encourage you to go to the main page of my website and click the "photography" link on the left side. There, you'll find lots of pictures - mostly of abandoned buildings and odd things, but hidden in there are pictures of Flimsy and I.

Recently, we visited another abandoned church. This church is especially interesting because the roof has caved in and all that is left is the stone shell. There is a mostly intact social center attached to it, and people continue to worship in the social center on Sundays. Last summer in the sweltering heat we drove by on a Sunday, and we could hear the preacher belting it out from the street. Looking through the broken windows we saw unbalanced fans on high, and could smell a faint scent of sweat.

 

There are trees growing up through the floor and collapsed roof, reaching to the open sky - naturalistic congregants. 

 

Bits of weather beaten windows with intact stained glass panels lay scattered among the leaves.

  

Here, you can see an unsteady ground created by the collapsed roof. When we walked over it, we could hear echoes of bits of the roof falling into the empty space below.

Flimsy is looking on...

 

You can see the rest by going here, and you can also see the entirety of what I have published online here.

Ray a day: 3.3

Today's Ray a day questioner tells Ray that it's okay because when he dies he will have paid for his since, since the bible says "The wages of sin are death".

Ray responds by saying that those who say such things are gambling on the meaning of the word "death", and assuming it means "termination". Ray says:

But it doesn't, and a little reasoning should reveal that fact. Take Hitler for instance. ... Was his death the "wages" of his unspeakably terrible sins? If death is the end, then God has given you the same wages as Hitler. That would mean that God is unjust, which is unthinkable.

 Okay, let's break this down into it's component hypothetical reasoning:

P. The wages of sin given by God are X.
1. Hitler will suffer X.
2. I will suffer X.
3. My wages are the same as Hitler's.

P. Two people paying the same price for radically different crimes is unjust.
1. Hitler committed unspeakable sins.
2. I did not commit unspeakable sins.
3. My wages are the same as Hitler's.
4. This is unjust.
5. God created this law.
6. God is unjust.
7. An unjust God is unthinkable.

Ray thinks that by proposing eternal torment as a wage for sin instead of just death, he is solving the problem of the unthinkable conclusion that his god is unjust. But the problem is not solved by insisting there is a hell, and everyone goes there unless they believe in Jesus. Instead of looking like the example above, it looks like this:


P. The wages of sin given by God are X.
1. Hitler will suffer X.
2. I will suffer X.
3. My wages are the same as Hitler's.

P. Two people paying the same price for radically different crimes is unjust.

1. Hitler committed unspeakable sins.
2. I did not commit unspeakable sins.
3. My wages are the same as Hitler's.
4. This is unjust.
5. God created this law.
6. God is unjust.

7. An unjust God is unthinkable.

You'll probably notice there is actually no change, except that now, instead of a comparably peaceful death in which Hitler goes underpunished, we now have eternal torment, in which people are grossly overpunished. There is no difference. If it is unjust for two people to have to pay the same price for two very different crimes, then the idea of heaven and hell is unjust. If the only thing that matters to Ray's god is belief that he manifested himself as human to save humanity from himself, then people have no reason to be good to each other.  People can absolve themselves of the guilt of their crimes simply by believing that belief is enough to wash their sins away.

I fail to understand how maximal punishment for all people - regardless of their works -due to a technicality, is just.

There is, of course, more:

In Christ, God freely justifies all those who come by childlike faith to the Savior. That means He proclaims us innocent - as though we had never sinned in the first place. however those who die in their sins "fall into the hnds of the Living God." That's a very fearful thing, because He will give them justice - their wages, and if that happens, there will be hell to pay.

 I fail to understand how coming to childlike faith absolves you of all sin. How is this just? This means that if Hitler comes by childlike faith to Jesus at the end of his life, he gets to spend an eternity in paradise, while someone who is a positive influence on humanity but does not accept Jesus gets maximal punishment.

According to Comfort, what this means is that because Hitler believed in Jesus (he was Catholic, after all), Hitler has more of a chance of obtaining an eternal reward than all of the millions of Jewish people (who did not believe in Jesus) he killed. If Comfort believes Hitler went to hell, then all of the men, women and children he murdered are suffering the exact same eternal torment. This being called "perfect justice" makes my head hurt. It is just about as far from "just" as I can imagine.

Perhaps it makes people feel good that there is a perfect judge waiting around to even out all of the badness in the world. I get that Comfort does not like that Hitler was a terrible human being and when he died he just died. I suppose this is why other people believe in Karma, but the justice Comfort describes is as far from Karma as one can get.

It's not comforting to think that some people get away with rape, murder,  torture, or all of the other atrocities humans are capable of performing. I hate the idea that the world is unfair. The world is full of injustice, and we can either do something about it, or sit back in smug satisfaction that one day an Ultimate Judge will fix everything. I prefer doing something about it, and if the Ultimate Judge is the god Comfort describes, I'll take my world full of injustice, thanks. No one deserves eternal, maximal punishment - the punishment can never fit the crime, as we're incapable of inflicting anything like infinite punishment or harm. The idea if an eternal maximal punishment is by definition far out of proportion to any crime we could possibly commit.
 

another silly diet fail: Slimchews

Today in my e-mail box I discovered an e-mail ad for Slimchews, with the message heading, "chew away those unwanted pounds".

Slimchews are apparently a product endorsed by Oprah (Mrs. Tabloid TV Herself) and "seen on CBS News and 60 minutes". Of course, the site has the obligatory statements that their product was "created and scientifically tested by our team of physicians and dietitians ... After years of research..." without giving us any references to research articles or the names of the physicians and dietitians. I e-mailed them and asked if they could please provide me with references to the research that has been done by their "scientists", but I'm not holding my breath for a response.

The e-mail I received was for a $1.00 "Risk free" trial pack of 15 chews, which also carries with it a $4.95 shipping fee.

Apparently these days, "Risk Free" trials mean that if you order their 15 day trial, on the 15th day after your order is placed, the company will start billing you monthly recurring bill payments of $43.95. If you want to cancel, you have to return the unused portion of the product within 15 days of your order being placed, which really means that this company is making it impossible for your trial to be "risk free". Here is the fine print, literally, in a low-contrast font with the price conveniently written out in longhand so it is less noticeable, at the bottom of the page. It looks something like this, and is found on the order page and not the main page:

By submitting this order, you have read and agreed to the full terms and conditions of this offer and understand that this is a risk-free trial of SlimChews. If you are enjoying the product after the fifteen-day trial period, you will be charged forty-three dollars and ninety-five cents and enrolled into the home delivery program. We will replenish your supply every thirty days and you will be charged a total of forty-nine dollars and ninety cents so you may achieve the weight loss you desire. You may suspend or cancel your membership at any time by calling our customer service department at 1-800-314-5113. Remember, most customers see noticeable results by using SlimChews consistently for 3 months.

 So essentially, my guess is that when you call to cancel your 15 day trial, you have to return the unused portion, but only after listening to the customer service representative's long-winded monologue about how you need to use it for three months to see any results.  The product site also claims that:

Our exclusive Rapid Absorb technology supplies your body with a full dose of nutrients quickly and efficiently for maximum results

Technology? Nutrients? What is in this product? I looked at the package labeling and apparently the ingredients are: South African Hoodia and Brazilian Cha De Bugre, and some other useless stuff like palm kernal oil, starch, and flavoring. It doesn't actually have any nutritional value, so it's pretty rediculous that the product is claiming to supply your body with a full dose of nutrients. Hey look, it's got 100%* of your daily value of Red #40!

The two main "weight loss" ingredients in this product have a total of zero (0) decent research articles claiming it works for weight loss. I can't find any references at all to Cha De Bugre in any journal or on Google Scholar. On top of that, several researchers have published articles stating that when testing "hoodia" supplements, they actually found NO hoodia in them. [1] there is a reason for that - it's an endangered species, which puts it right up there with using ivory tusks to increase sexual vigor. I know that things sound enticing when you know that they are rare or secrets of some far off land, but really, claiming that your diet pill is "revolutionary" and backed by nameless scientists and un-referenced clinical research is effectively a giant "buy my useless product" sign.

This is just another sham snake-oil diet aimed at milking people of their money. Real weight loss takes work. I'm sorry, but it really does. Also, here's a tip to all of those would-be senders of spam to my inbox: this is what happens.

 

FAIL

So why is this junk endorsed by Oprah? Because Oprah endorses crackpot pseudoscientific debauchery all the time. Apparently it is claimed to be "endorsed" by CBS and 60 minutes because a journalist hung out in Africa and ate a hoodia cactus plant and "didn't feel hungry all day".

...

What great evidence. What do you know, shortly after running the CBS bit on hoodia, ads for the supplement began popping up on their website. Coincidence?

 

1. HOODIA: MIRACLE WEIGHT LOSS HERB? Prevention May2007, Vol. 59 Issue 5, p36-36

*This statement not reviewed or endorsed by the FDA. Satire, folks.

Ray a Day Guest Post: Petter

For those of you just joining us, I've decided to let my commenters take a crack at doing Ray a Day blog posts. Originally, I was going to start them next week, but I've just been hit with a load of work - I'm graduating in May! Thus, I am eternally thankful for Petter who got his post to me early, which lessons my burden. Here we go:

Hi there, fellow Zizturians. I’m Petter, a materialist rationalist atheist humanitarian who runs Ubuntu, all of which makes me feel kinship directly or analogously with Ziztur herself; and I have been invited to tackle an installment of Ray-a-day. If you read this and want to read more of my thoughts once the exhaustion wears off, you can find my blog here (or by RSS; you can use tags to narrow it down to essay-style posts, or only posts related to skepticism or religion).

---

When I first saw the snippet from the book that Ziztur had assigned to me, my initial reaction was disappointment—it seemed so trite and vacuous that I wasn’t sure I could write anything about it. Upon further reflection, though, it provides a fairly illustrative microcosm of his style as a whole; and since I am but a guest poster, I shall deconstruct it at some length, such opportunities being rare… I’ll intersperse my own thoughts among the Comfortian ejaculations, but first, let’s set the scene. The “Angry Skeptic” asks,

The difference between the Bible and an instruction book is the myriad of untestable (and detestable) claims the Bible makes. How do you know that if I “sin” I will go to hell? Only from the Bible, which is a source of such dubious credibility as to be laughable. Can you prove to me that ANY of what the Bible claims about hell and “sin” is true? Can you prove to me that hell exists? If not, you, along with all your pulpit-pounding ilk, are nothing more than a carnival ride of empty threats.

To which Ray replies,

Hell is no empty threat. If I believed it was, I wouldn’t bother warning you. However, the way for you to avoid the subject is to say that you don’t believe in God. That cuts the problem off for you at the Source. All you have to do is ignore your God-given common sense. He doesn’t exist because you don’t believe in Him. You could carry this further if you didn’t like gravity, history, the wind, or love. These things can’t be seen, and therefore wouldn’t exist if you didn’t believe in them either. Anything that you don’t like will not exist if you just say that you don’t believe in it.
The key to being a committed atheist is to be totally unreasonable. When someone denies the obvious, you can’t reason with them. That’s why you can be presented with the absolute and clear evidence of Creation (which screams of a Creator to any reasonable person), and you can say that there’s no evidence for God.

We first notice that, true to form, Ray’s immediate response is to avoid meeting the question. The ad hominem accusing every skeptic of being dense, unreasonable, and lacking in common sense has all been seen before—Ray is increasingly looking like a one trick pony. What should leap out at us is that if we go back to the “Angry Skeptic’s” question, the question does not in any way imply that the questioner is an atheist. For all we know, the question could have come from a deist, a non-Christian theist, or a different flavour of Christian who doesn’t accept the Bible as an authoritative source and doesn’t believe in hell. Ray’s accusation, therefore, isn’t just avoiding the question and issuing an ad hominem, but also a red herring, packing a remarkable number of fallacies and dishonesties into such a short space.

(May I suggest a side project, Ziztur, of measuring the book’s fallacy density? I suggest that a fallacy density of N per thousand words, N being established by critical analysis, be dubbed a “kilocomfort” [the “comfort” being the average fallacy/word ratio]. People like Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman presumably deal in microcomforts or less, C.S. Lewis in decacomforts, Ray by definition in kilocomforts, and slime like Phelps in the same ballpark.)

Belief in a ‘Creator’ does not necessitate the belief in the god of the Hebrews and Christians, Yahweh. Belief in Yahweh does not necessitate belief in the Bible as inerrant—while this sort of literalism is characteristic of Islam, such a blindly literal and accepting reading is not diagnostic of all Christianity. And even if you believe in the Bible, there’s precious little mention of hell… He never does return to why belief in a Creator necessarily implies a belief in hell; he simply asserts that the one must lead to the other. (Granted, attempts to do so have always been a bit heavy-handed and short on intellectual persuasion. For example, a sect in mediæval France believed in the New Testament, but saw the wrathful tyrant God of the Old Testament as a different entity altogether, and rejected the Old Testament as lies of the devil. They were wiped out in a brutal crusade. It was in the siege of one of their cities that the cardinal leading the attacking army was asked how the soldiers should tell heretics from innocent city-dwellers and famously replied “Kill them all; the Lord will know His own”.)

Ray also trots out that tired old horse, flogged perhaps to death and beyond, that “you can’t see the wind, but you know it exists; God is the same way”. But this is a stunningly naïve assault on empiricism. We philosophical materialists certainly acknowledge the reality of wind, but we do so precisely because it can be empirically verified to exist. In attempting to find something that cannot be seen but both sides agree upon, the apologists necessarily eviscerate their own argument. The painfully obvious reason is, of course, that seeing isn’t the only way of materially perceiving, and we happily rely on our other senses, as well as mechanically, electronically, optically, and otherwise enhanced versions thereof. It’s true that the wind doesn’t cease to exist if I cease to believe in it, but my belief can be shown to be erroneous by use of a balloon, windsock, or weather-vane.

A related argument is that “you can’t see love, but it’s real; God is love or is analogous to this”, which appears to assume from an agreement that “love exists” that we also agree that love is something justifiably reified. But love can be observed to exist only where it is expressed in words or actions. Underlying it may very well be something as material as neurochemicals and electric impulses through neurones and glia. To say that God exists in a similar way is trivial and uninteresting: Certainly God exists as a concept, but not all concepts deserve to be reified, let alone deified.

---

Next is the moral portion of today’s Ray—by which I mean “the portion concerned with morality”; moral it is not. In fact, it is so full of egregious errors and immoralities that I hardly know where to begin. Here’s what Ray has to say:

If you were reasonable, I would say that we know that hell exists because we know intuitively that God is good. And if He is good, He must by nature punish a man who has tied up and raped three teenage girls, and then one by one, strangled them to death. In this case, justice delayed is not justice denied. God will bring that murderer to judgment and see that he gets exactly what he deserves, and hell is the place of God’s justice. It’s His prison. Common sense says that if God is good, it is right that He is also just. However, God is so good He will also punish thieves, liars, fornicators, adulterers, blasphemers, and everyone who has violated His perfect and holy Law. That leaves us all in big trouble. Without a Savior we will get exactly what we deserve, and that is a terrifying thing, whether we believe it or not. If you want proof, then simply repent and trust Jesus Christ, and you will know that what I am saying is the Gospel truth.

The simplest way to address this is to say that even if we accept a number of propositions that I am not prepared to actually subscribe to—“God/Yahweh exists”; “God is good”; “God is just”; “God punishes sinners”—it does not therefore follow that all punishments should be or necessarily are equal. While Ray and his peers may claim at the pulpit that multiple rape and murder is equal to telling a lie in the eyes of God, as both are sins and both fall short of Divine Perfection, I expect that no one actually feels that they are equivalent. Rape and murder are terrible crimes that destroy lives; telling a small lie may hurt no one at all (though I advocate and practice a policy of never telling lies, because dishonesty morally offends me and because honest communication is conducive to good and healthy interpersonal relationships). Even if I were to accept that they both deserved divine punishment, I would never accept the notion that they deserve equal punishment. And, as has been often pointed out, infinite torment is by definition out of proportion to any crime it could possibly be inflicted for.

But I take a further objection to this whole idea, because it appears to be entirely based on human desires for retribution. These are natural and serve a useful function in our biology and social lives, not because retribution is somehow morally appropriate and good but because it provides a deterrent to wrong-doing. If we weren’t vengeful, bad people wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage of us. Knowing that we will take offense and may take revenge, they are deterred. Prisons and corrective facilities serve as this sort of deterrent. We don’t send them to prison because it’s morally right to imprison criminals. Maybe they “deserve” it, but we don’t send them there because they deserve it—we send them there to scare others away from doing harm; or we send them there to prevent them from doing more harm; or perhaps we send them there in the hopes of reforming them. “Deserving” it is the moral justification that gives the rest of society a right to do so, but it is not the motivation. In other words, the whole point of our judicial system (and, I confidently hypothesize, of the vindictive instinct itself) is not predicated on a goal related to criminals, but making life better for non-criminals.

From this point of view, Ray’s view of divine justice seems extremely misguided. Terror of hell is indeed a deterrent in the same way (qualitatively) as fear of imprisonment or execution. The other goals, however, fly right out the window: We don’t need eternal torment to keep dead criminals out of trouble (it’s quite enough that they are dead; obliteration is more than sufficient), and clearly there is no hope of reforming (they are tormented eternally no matter how much they repent).

What, then, is the purpose of inflicting eternal torment to punish a victimless crime? It doesn’t help anyone—there’s no victim to help. It doesn’t help make the sinner a better person; he is denied any possibility to improve. All it does is increase the level of suffering of humanity as a whole. It is the human instinct of vindictiveness raised to an ideal, the inflicting of suffering for its own sake rather than for anyone’s benefit; a horrifying climax of the uglier side of human nature.

---

Having read and thought about this, it seems abundantly clear to me that Ray’s book is not actually intended to persuade anyone of anything. The arguments are far too vacuous, all questions too consistently evaded rather than answered. I cannot believe that Ray is so stupid—or rather, that the conglomerate of Ray along with his flunkies, editors, agents, and aides are all so stupid, in the face of feedback, blog comments, and so forth—as to be less than perfectly aware of how flimsy his arguments are, how inaccurate the strawmen of concepts like atheism and evolution. He has no intention of addressing them honestly; if he did, he’d have done so by now.

Instead, this book is intended to insult us; its target audience is not skeptics, not even agnostic fence-sitters, but the most insulated and uneducated masses; those either most stupid, or least availed of education and critical thinking skills (or both). It is, in a sense, very much the mirror image of the book that many Christians have claimed that Dawkins’s The God Delusion is, with the difference that Dawkins actually attempts to answer theists’ questions head-on. Ray provides no mirror image of that honesty; he never gives a straight answer where he can deliver an ad hominem; never accuses anyone of being misinformed when he can accuse them of being unreasonable or morally deficient.

And from this perspective, the possibility emerges that it’s not that Ray doesn’t care about representing his opposition honestly; rather, it is in his best interest not to do so. If he presents skeptics’ arguments in a straightforward manner and tackles questions like evolution honestly, if he acknowledges the real intellectual and moral positions of atheists, then he exposes this potential target audience to reasonable counter-arguments. Argue against the reality of evolutionary biology and you have to present present an argument (compelling or not) against a well-reasoned theory; if all you want to do is cater to the ignorant and despise the enemy, it is much easier, indeed strategically a better idea, to say “Hur-hur-hur, those stupid evilutionists think that men and women just happened to evolve to have tab A compatible with slot B”. It also explains the infamous banana video, which otherwise invokes nothing so much as Poe’s Law.

I do not mean to say that he would necessarily undercut all of his arguments and conclusions—I’m sure that he could address the real concepts of evolution and atheism and still believe as he does. But if he presented the real opposition rather than strawmen, his readers would be forced to acknowledge that even though they reject the alternatives, there are alternatives. Some of them might think; some of them might falter. And that’s not what anybody wants: You can lead an atheist to evidence… isn’t about making people think, or tackling serious challenges to apologetics. It’s about keeping the ignorant ignorant and provide a sense of superiority in their ignorance, a theocratic circle jerk; about bolstering the faithful’s misconceptions and ensuring that they continue to take an unreasoned stance against propositions they do not understand.

Check it: business cards!

I decided to blow some money on some really spiffy business cards, as I often go out and about and people ask me about the things I do, and I want to point them to my blog. Here is the front:

 

(which reads: www.ziztur.com/Atheism is freedom of the mind/A fine mixture of attempted intellectualism, photography, and snark.)

And the back:

(Which reads: Ziztur is a twenty-something iconoclastic skeptical ignostic strong atheist existentialist determinist naturalist ... Biomechanist scientist researcher occupational therapist urban explorer poet photographer. She lives in St. Louis City.)

I'm hoping to be able to hand them out to random people I talk to while I am at TAM7, assuming we get enough funds together to go. :)

Ray a Day: 3:2

I'll start off today's Ray a Day with a quote by Ray:

Mockers think that they have a "smoking gun" as evidence against God, and are the sort of people in the front row of a lynching mob. ... They can't see clearly because they have a sequoia in their eye.

While I am somewhat amused that Comfort is saying Bible mockers have huge redwood trees (sequoia) in our eye. Is he saying we're missing the forest for the trees? If so, this is actually sort of clever, and so if this is what he means then I am officially awarding Ray another point. He now has two [2] points. Of course, the fact that he is one again painting atheists as terrible people ("in the front row of a lynching mob...") is pretty ironic considering in the next paragraph he tells us to stop whining about God commanding his followers to dash the heads of infants on rocks because that same God also ordered the death of all humans ("as a result of their sin").

Ray goes on:

The reason [when I was a child] that I believed in a creator was simply because I had a brain. ... the dictionary can help those who are a little slow to figure this out by checking out the words "creation" and "Creator".  Creation - noun, "the Creation, the original bringing into existence of the universe by God". Creator - noun, "the Creator, God"

 Thank you, Ray, for this absolutely perfect illustration of just how circular your position is. Not only did you (once again) not bother to cite the source you are quoting from, but your source is self-referential. Once again - the dictionary is a source of words and their commonly-used meanings. We're already aware of the fact that one uses creation and creator in these ways, so consulting a dictionary can only tell us how people commonly use words.

Moving on:

The reason anyone should fear God is because He is to be feared.

 Cool! and the reason God does not exist is because he doesn't exist. Moving on, a skeptic says, "Everything dies, everything dead rots, and everything rotten may serve as fertilizer for new life." Ray responds:

Skeptic's often unwittingly talk in the language of "absolutes." They say that "no one" can know if God exists, or, "no one" can know if there is life after death, or, as in this case, that "everything" dies and rots. Yet, those who talk in absolutes (as though they had absolute knowledge) reveal a lack of knowledge. For a skeptic to say, "No one knows what happens after death," he must know what everyone knows in order for him to know that no one knows. ... to be truthful, he has to say, "With the limited knowledge I have at present, I have come to the conclusion that no one knows what happens". ... The professing atheist is in the same boat. He can't say, "There is no God" and be truthful. ... The Skeptic isn't aware that God never dies. What's more, God promises that any living human being who comes to Him through repentance and faith in Jesus will not perish, but have everlasting life.

  So, in the same paragraph, Ray insists that anyone who talks in the language of absolutes reveals a lack of knowledge, and he then goes on to talk in the language of absolutes. This is obviously not the only time Ray has talked in the language of absolutes, so I find this to be beyond ironic. Apparently he is allowed to talk in the language of absolutes, but others who do so when claiming things he does not agree with reveal a lack of knowledge.

Truthfully, when I say something like, "everything dies and rots" I am speaking in shorthand. I am saying, "with my knowledge and observation, coupled with the knowledge and observation of those around me, coupled with knowledge and experimentation by scientists, and coupled with rational thinking, I have come to the conclusion that everything (that is, everything carbon-based, with the possible exception of Twinkies) dies and rots." If I had to say this every time I wanted to make a claim about the natural world around me, my conversations would take twice as long, so we use shorthand.

Interestingly, we can make absolute claims without revealing any kind of lack of knowledge at all. For example, I can say, "All bachelors are unmarried" and this will be true - indeed it will be true independent of my experience with bachelors or unmarried men.

This is what is known as an analytic proposition. So too, is "creation has a creator". However analytic propositions do not tell us, for example, if bachelors exist (in this particular world we have overwhelming evidence that they do), or if a given man is a bachelor. Analytic propositions are grounded in meaning.

Contrast this to synthetic propositions, which are grounded in fact (according to Quine) and rely upon experience as a determinant of truth. A few examples: "All bachelors are happy", "God punishes sinners", etc.

We can, in fact, say something like, "there is no god" and be truthful. Once we come up with a reasonable (falsifiable) working definition of God, we can refute it in the same way that we can refute the idea that drinking 8oz of cranberry juice cures facial paralysis.

If I were to claim that drinking cranberry juice can cure facial paralysis, how would we decide if my propostion were true? We would observe, experiment, and think about it. If we give people (with facial paralysis) 8oz cranberry juice to drink, and this doe not cure their facial paralysis, are we wrong to say that cranberry juice does not cure facial paralysis? If we give 100 people the juice, and no one is cured, can we still claim it works? If we give it to 1000 people, conduct double-blind, placebo controlled studies, and not one person is cured, are we wrong to say that cranberry juice does not cure facial paralysis? Do we need to give 8oz of cranberry juice to all people who have facial paralysis to conclude it doesn't work? Will we then say that since we can't possibly test all people (since some of them have died, and eventually we will die and our research will halt, leaving people with facial paralysis to never try the remedy) and so therefore we can't possibly say with absolute certanty that cranberry juice does not cure facial paralysis? Technically yes, but qualifying our knowledge with, "with my knowledge and observation, coupled with the knowledge and observation of those around me, coupled with knowledge and experimentation by scientists, and coupled with rational thinking, I have come to the conclusion that cranberry juice does not cure facial paralysis"

Demanding absolute knowledge from empirical evidence is a cop-out. It is a red herring. It is untenable. But in the everyday language we use, when scientists say, "entity Z always does Y", they really mean that to the best of our knowledge, entity Z always does Y. The Confortian theist, on the other hand, really does mean "entity Z always does Y", which is one of the biggest problems I have with theism. When confronted with a skeptic, a comfortian theist admits he cannot know for sure, but then insists that he does.

Letter from the USDA on Homeopet

Here is an e-mail I received today from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Organic Program:

Re: HomePet

Dear ------------:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture National Organic Program (NOP) has concluded its investigation of the inquiry you filed regarding HomeoPet’s certified organic status. Our investigation determined that HomeoPet is not certified and had misrepresented their products as organic on their website. HomeoPet has been notified of this violation and has since corrected its website and any other representation to their product(s) as “organic.”

We have closed our files on this matter. Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. We appreciate your support of the NOP and the United States Department of Agriculture.

Sincerely,

Compliance & Enforcement

National Organic Program, USDA

For those of you who don't remember my fiasco with Homeopet, see these three blog entries here. Basically, they used to market their products as the only FDA approved organic homeopathic medication for dogs, I decided they were probably misrepresenting themselves, so I reported them.

I know this is only a tiny step in the right direction, but it's a step nonetheless. Since I received this letter, Homeopet has removed its claim of containing organic ingredients.

Ray a Day - 3:1

On to Chapter Three!  This chapter is titled "Humanity's Sin Deserves Punishment."  Maybe this chapter will explain why victimless "sins" deserve an eternity of torment in hell.  Right?  Um, no.

The introduction to this chapter is highly entertaining.  Comfort gives an analogy.  He describes how his 'earthly' father left his family by themselves for long periods of time, physically beat his children, including Ray Comfort, and even killed a defenseless animal with his bare hands.

He then gives us some "missing information."  His father left his family to work long hours, ensuring that his family was well provided for.  His "beatings" were corrective spankings, given only out of love.  The animal he killed was badly injured and dying, so he killed it out of compassion.

This is Comfort's analogy for a negative portrayal of the Bible and the biblical god.  He says, "Quote mine the Bible and you can, as some atheists do, paint God as a tyrant."

Well, first off, Comfort obviously doesn't know what quote-mining is.  Quote-mining means to take a quote completely out of context in such a way as to make it sound like the source is saying the opposite of what they actually are.  See here for a textbook example of quote-mining from Ben Stein's travesty . . . er, movie, Expelled:  No Intelligence Allowed.  Comfort himself is very fond of quote-mining, especially Stephen Hawking, for some reason.  You might recall a few such instances here and here from previous portions of this book.  He also dismissed accusations of quote-mining in "The Atheist Starter Kit," which can be found on his website and in the back of "You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence . . ."

1. Whenever you are presented with credible evidence for God's existence, call it a "straw man argument," or "circular reasoning." If something is quoted from somewhere, label it "quote mining."

So . . . Comfort quote-mines all the time, he dismisses the idea that quote-mining is not a legitimate debate method . . . and then accuses atheists of using arguments that are irrational because they are quote-mining the Bible.  Wow.

Furthermore, I've never seen an atheist quote-mine the Bible.  For example, I could post these verses from the book of Numbers, saying:

³²And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day.
 ³³And they that found him gathering sticks brought him unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation.
 ³⁴And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him.
 ³⁵And the LORD said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp.
 ³⁶And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the LORD commanded Moses.

Now, it would be a very different story if verse 37 read:  "And the Lord spake to Moses and the people, saying, 'See, guys?  That is what I would command if I were a complete sack of shit.  Happily, I'm not, so I forbid you from killing people just because you found some random dude gathering sticks on a certain day of the week."

Atheists (or any other non-Christian) don't have to quote-mine the Bible.  The decrees of Yahweh can be quoted completely in context.

Comfort, of course, doesn't give any examples of such, unfortunately.  He describes how, like in the analogy with his father, God gives us life and comfort, as well as salvation from hell, regardless of how it sounds if you only have a small amount of info from biblical "quote-mining."  The difference between his analogy and the Bible is that he obviously words his information about his father in as deceptive a way as possible to hide the truth.  Is Comfort saying that the Bible does this?  Does the Bible hide the truth as deliberately and deceptively as Comfort does in his analogy?

If the Bible isn't hiding the truth deliberately, as Comfort's analogy does, then we can have a rational debate concerning whether the Biblical god is moral or not.  In Comfort's analogy, he hides and distorts the information, and that's why you reach an incorrect conclusion.  But he, presumably, claims that the Bible does not hide or distort the information.  So if the evidence of the Bible shows that Comfort's god is indeed a tyrant, then so be it, and Comfort cannot weasel his way out of that conclusion by claiming that information is still hidden.

So does the Bible describe a tyrant, or a loving father?  Comfort is obviously uncomfortable (nyuk nyuk) with the question itself - he says, "If I have a question about the character of God, I have the good sense to hold my hand upon my mouth until I am in heaven, and there God may see fit to answer it."  So I'll have to speculate without him.

Simply put, read the above passages from the Bible again, very carefully.  Now consider that if I posted, here, on this blog, one such Bible story that horribly offends my moral conscience each day, I could go for months . . . or years.

Comfort's other arguments are similarly flawed.  For example:  God gave us life.  But in his analogy, a father can work hard to provide for his family while not commanding some of their violent deaths.  The analogy would be more accurate if the father left the family for long periods of time (although to work to provide for them), beat them (although to spank them as a moral correction), and kill an animal (if only to put it out of it's agony), and torture some of his children for disobeying arbitrary rules.

In the same way, the argument that 'God can't be all that bad because he offers us salvation' is moot, as well.  God is (supposedly) only offering us salvation from the torment that he himself inflicted.  It truly boggles the mind . . . Comfort says that God sentences mankind to hell for any minor transgression, no matter how victimless (such as lust, as we saw in the previous chapter).  To grant someone a reprieve from horrible torture (that you yourself have proclaimed) as long as they agree to serve as your slave is not justice.

All you rational and fair-minded readers out there, I can hear you asking . . .  "C'mon, Flimsy, Comfort can't possibly mean that God has personally pronounced such torment for humanity, right?"

If the skeptic still wants to complain that God killed women and children in the Old Testament, he should realize that He did more than that.  He proclaimed the death sentence on the entire human race - every man, woman, and child.  We will all die because we have sinned against God.  So if you are a skeptic, stop whining, get right with Him through the Savior, and escape the damnation of hell, while you still have time.

Comfort, pay very close attention here - I left your religion precisely because of my moral outrage, it was exactly a crisis of conscience like you belittle and dismiss here.  Please - I sincerely mean this - you cannot convince me to completely abandon the entirety of my morality with threats of torment in the afterlife.  I simply have no reason to believe in your god, your heaven, or your hell.  And yes, if I did, I would still never follow your God.  In a very real sense, if there is anything of which I am certain enough to stake my life on, it is that the deity described in the Christian Bible will never have my worship, my adoration, or even any small degree of my least respect.

Happy earth circling the sun 27 times day Flimsy

The earth has officially circled the sun 27 times since Flimsy's mom told him to "get the fuck out of my womb, you parasitic little brat".

I don't know about you guys, but I am glad he didn't just decide to stay in there.

Happy oh-look-the-earth-has-circled-the-sun-27-times-how-interesting day!

If birthdays were measured in mars circling the sun integrals then Flimsy would be 14.

Ray a D-- oh wait--Nonstampcollector vids!

There won't be a Ray post today because as I write this, it's already late and Flimsy and I have to get up early! Don't worry, our regularly scheduled beating-of-a-dead-horse will continue tomorrow, I promise.

In the meantime, enjoy these awesome videos from one of my favorite youtubers, NonStampCollector:

Another reason alternative medicines are harmful

This link is going to be a little old, but I came across this story while browsing the internet and had to share.

The story, essentially, is of a surgeon who was presented with a client who had a 1cm mass discovered in her breast by a mammogram. After biopsy, it was determined that this mass was cancer - the good news being that it was such a small cancer that it could be excised by a simple surgical procedure.

The client flat out refused any and all "conventional medicine", including the simple surgery that would have been required to remove this tiny tumor, and any and all chemo or hormonal therapy. No amount of coaxing, persuasion or informed consent would change her mind.

Three years later, she returned to the same surgeon. Now, her tumor had attached itself to the chest wall and was ulcerating through the skin in a "five centimeter area of bleeding, disgusting goo". There was also evidence that this tumor had metastasized, as her lymph nodes were swollen and she was experiencing bone pain. Literally, the simple procedure with a high likelihood of success had turned into an oozing mess.

The surgeon figured that she was ready for treatment, as her alternative treatments had obviously not worked.

He was wrong. He still could not reach her, and she was convinced that her healer could save her.

It makes me wonder – why would this woman seek the opinion of a surgeon like this but refuse any treatment? Why do people continue to claim that “alternative” medicine is safe? I think that part of the problem is that it is hard to separate real medicine from quack medicine, and reputable sources of medical information from irreputible sources.

As an illustration, I did a quick Google search of the term “cure cancer”, which is something someone might do when they or their loved ones are faced with a cancer diagnosis. Here is what I found on the first page:

2 news articles on Obama’s pledge to conquer cancer by increasing research funds.
A CBS story on how a guy claims he cured himself of his own cancer using radio waves.

A site on curing all cancers with detox (which claims that scientists don’t want a cure for cancer because it would dry up lucrative research grants, and that pharma companies don’t want a cure for cancer because then no one will buy their drugs) .
A site on how vitamin b17 will make it 100% impossible to develop cancer and will kill existing cancer.

Two sites on how dichloroacetate will cure you cancer, but it’s cheap so pharmaceutical companies won’t invest research into it because they won’t profit from it.

A fundraiser site to help canine cancer.

A website selling graviola supplements to cure cancer (claiming pharma companies don’t want people to know because they can’t patent an herb).

An amazon.com link for a book claiming that the cure for cancer has been suppressed for 50 years.

No wonder no one can find credible information. You can either go to these lovely websites with pictures of herbs and happy people and appeals to anti-corporatism, or wade through stuffy medical journals.

Atheist pride day!

Today is atheist pride day... at least on Facebook.

All you have to do to take part is to add the red scarlet letter to your Facebook profile (or any other online profile you have, for that matter):

 

You can find more info at the Facebook event page,  and when you're all done there, you can become a fan of ziztur.com!

Ray a Day - 2:5

Let's wrap up this silly chapter on the human conscience, shall we?

Here is a typical rant from this chapter, and it sums up Comfort's theology of morality pretty well.

Your sins are heinous in the sight of a holy God.  The Bible says that they stir His just wrath (see John 3:36).  What will you say?  What would you think of a man who said, "Judge, I raped and murdered that woman, but I picked up a sick bird and didn't kill it.  You should therefore let me go"?  In doing so, he somehow thinks that he balances the scales of justice.  He offers kindness to a sick bird as payment for raping and murdering a woman.  What sort of twisted individual would he be to say that?

This chapter is nothing more than Comfort repeatedly claiming that if you ever looked at a woman's breasts, even once (unless they were your wife's), that you are guilty of rape and murder.  Ray Comfort, you do not do your god any justice.

Firstly, obviously, it makes no sense to claim that all wrongdoing is equal, and that a moral code that is perfect will equate lust or telling a minor lie, regardless of intent or consequences, with the crimes of rape and murder.  If Comfort, or any other fundamentalist, believes that this is how a genuine moral law functions, then I'm inclined to ask if they would have a government's law punish lawbreakers the same way.  No more fines for jaywalking or double-parking, it's now the death penalty for your horrible crimes.  If this sounds absurd, it's because it is.  Why is it perfectly logical for God's justice to work this way?

Secondly, Comfort doesn't even try to explain why lust, or any similar victimless sin, is immoral.  He literally does take it at face value that the Bible calls these actions immoral, and there's no further need to justify it.  However, he simply must accept that a non-religious person obviously will not take the Bible's word as their morality.  He has an entire chapter about morality here, and he never once even tries to explain how or why a victimless sin is immoral.  He simply states that since everyone is guilty of lust, we are all as good as thieves, rapists, and murderers.


Another skeptic points out that if Comfort (or almost any other Christian) had been born in an overwhelmingly Islamic nation like Saudi Arabia, he would be a Muslim.  Comfort simply reiterates that we all deserve to suffer horrifying fates in Hell, and so we cannot complain if God and Jesus decline to save anyone.  Comfort says that God and Jesus will save whomever they feel like/whomever begs them to do so . . . and so we should all beg them to save us.  He doesn't even address the question of why so many people who believe in a specific god are found in the nations where (drumroll please . . .) the parents and culture of those nations teach children to believe in that God.

Elsewhere, Comfort says, "Human nature trivializes lying and theft.  God, however, doesn't.  Because they are so counter to His perfectly holy nature, they are extremely serious in His sight."  One, human nature does not trivialize lying and theft.  There are a great many people who do, in fact, strive to be as honest as possible (and many of those manage to be honest people without fear of Comfort's god), and theft is a very serious crime in virtually every human society in our species' entire history.  Two, Comfort's god certainly does trivialize lying and theft, at least more than human society.  If a person commits fraud or theft in a way that does materially infringe upon the rights of others, then our justice system punishes them, sometimes very severely, depending on how much harm they did or intended to do.  Comfort's god, in contrast, equates them with any other minor, victimless "sin" one might commit, and a person who commits any sin at all, no matter how horrifying, pays no penalty at all (as long as they agree to be God's slaves).

Another skeptic asks why God would give us such incredibly powerful sexual desire while also making lust a sin, thus setting us up to fail.  Comfort says:

So God isn't the one to blame for "setting us up to fail."  To believe that would be like a criminal saying to a judge, "Judge, I raped that woman, but is really isn't my fault.  God made me with sexual desire so it's His fault."  If that won't hold water in a court of law, it's not going to be a valid defense on Judgment Day. 

Bear with me here; I could easily rant for an entire post about just how hard this analogy fails, but I'll try to be brief.

1.  This defense doesn't hold water in a court of law because God doesn't fucking exist.  Less flippantly:  A court of law makes no allowances for such things because justice would never be achieved.  One cannot justify their wrongdoing by claiming that God, the devil, angels, demons, or pink dragons were actually the ones that committed the crime because these forms of defense cannot be refuted by any evidence.  An assertion that cannot ever be supported or disproven by evidence is not a strong assertion, it is a meaningless assertion (we smarty-pants call that an unfalsifiable hypothesis).  The principles that our justice system was founded on are not perfect, but they are sound enough to prevent this kind of childish defense.

2.  Again, Ray, lust is not equivalent to actually committing rape (for fuck's sake, is this concept really that complicated?).  A civilized justice system does not punish lustful feelings exactly because human beings cannot help having lustful feelings.  We evolved that way.  That's just the way it is, and lustful feelings (in and of themselves) do not infringe upon the rights of others in any way, so genuine justice doesn't punish such feelings.  If lust is the motivation for an actual crime like rape, then the law enters the picture, to punish the actual crime, not sexual desire itself.  Hunger isn't a crime either; mugging someone to buy a burger is.  It is staggering to me that Comfort can't grasp such extraordinarily simple logic.

3.  Let's try to fix that analogy.  It also fails because the judge is the one who is going to decide between punishment or mercy, but is not the one who cause the "evil" thoughts.  Comfort claims that God is both the creator of these evil thoughts and the one who will judge them to be evil.  If lustful thoughts themselves were a crime, and, as Comfort says, the 'judge' in this analogy were the one who created us to have those thoughts in the first place, then yes, the judge would be guilty of entrapment on a mind-boggling scale.  Let me get this straight . . .

A)  "Lust" is a nearly universal reaction to an attractive person of the sex(s) one is attracted to; to all intents and purposes, such thoughts are about as close to involuntary reactions as we get.
B)  God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and incapable of making mistakes.
C)  God put these thoughts there.
D)  Lustful thoughts are evil.  They are so evil that they are equivalent to rape and seemingly justify a horrible torment in Hell.

To any Christian readers of a more fundamentalist bent - please reread the above statements of mainstream Christian theology.  Kindly continue to do so until it sinks in that by this theology, God is responsible for staggering evil; so much so that he deserves hell far more than any single mortal that he gave such thoughts to.  Comfort does not seem to realize that such a judge absolutely does not have any business judging people whom he created to possess the exact attributes that he condemns.

Calling all rational writers: Ray a Day guest post week

Hey!

How would you like to be a guest blogger here?

In a few weeks, just for fun, I am going to farm out Ray a Day posts to guest bloggers!

I don't care if you're a theist or an atheist, if you think you can write a response to one of Ray's questions/answers like Flimsy and I can in a thorough and thoughtful manner, I want you.

No, we're not going on vacation. I've noticed a recent influx of great commenters to my site and I am loving all of the content it is generating in the comments section.

If you'd like to write a Ray a Day drop me a line - Ziztur at Ziztur dot com. If I pick you (I expect more than 7 people to respond), I'll send you a question and answer from Ray's book. If you've got a personal blog or web address, I'll link you in your post so the rest of the world will know how cool you are.

Ray a day: 2:4

Today we have a rather interesting quote from Mr. Comfort:

I now live an ethical life out of an appreciation for mercy. This ethical life may or may not be as ethical as that of an atheist, but that will have no bearing at all on Judgment Day

So what Comfort is saying here is that a person's ethics does not matter at all with regard to Judgment Day. Frankly, I am starting to be slightly fonder of Islam than Comfort's version of Christianity - they teach that good works and belief get you a pleasurable afterlife.

Honestly, of all of the times Comfort has proclaimed that atheism is a moral issue (except when it's not) and made comparisons of atheists to serial killers, rapists, and pedophiles, he is honestly going to say he "may or may not" have as ethical a life as an atheist? He basically says that atheism is a large part of the cause of all of the ills in society because doing good does not matter to them, but that according to his religion, good works do not matter to Jesus/God, either. I am starting to think that Comfort's belief in God and Jesus is the real "moral issue" here.

Comfort proclaims repeatedly that atheists "pretend there is no god" in order to be moral free agents. But according to this brand of theology, people are moral free agents anyway - morality and ethics don't matter at all, what matters is belief. So what's the difference, exactly? People who believe in this type of theology are free to do what they see fit, knowing that their ultimate reward will be attained in the afterlife only if they believe. This life is the only life that matters to me, I'm not screwing off waiting for it to end.

This type of morality and ethical outlook is despicable - and any god who only cares that you believe and doesn't particularly care what you do (since we're all sinners, and all sin is equal, god doesn't care of you merely blasphemed or if you murdered a three-year-old, all sin gets the same punishment, according to Ray) is an immoral god. The whole idea does not make any sense and flies in the face of ethics and reason.

I know there are people out there who might say, "Yes, but when someone gives their life to God/Jesus, they automatically do good things, just because they really want to please the lord". This does not follow from Comfort's theology, and doing what pleases the lord is a scary concept - a lot of strange and immoral things please him.

The next questioner mentions Comfort's "Good Person Test" and says that Jesus and the god of the old testament doesn't even pass the good person test. Here's the good person test:

1. You shall have no other gods before Me.
   (Have you always loved God above all else?)
   
2. You shall not make yourself an idol.
   (Have you made a god in your mind that you’re more comfortable with, a god to suit yourself?)
   
3. You shall not take God’s name in vain.
   (Have you ever used God’s holy Name as a cuss word?)
   
4. Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy.
   
5. Honor your father and mother.
   
6. You shall not murder.
   (God considers hatred to be as murder.)
   
7. You shall not commit adultery.
   (“Whoever looks upon a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart”; this also includes sex before marriage).
   
8. You shall not steal.
   (Have you ever stolen anything? — the value of the item is irrelevant.)
   
9. You shall not lie.
   (Have you lied even once? Including answering these questions.)
   
10. You shall not covet.
    (Have you ever jealously desired what belongs to others?)

Instead of actually addressing the question, Comfort simply says - how dare you point your finger at Jesus, Jesus is perfect and has never sinned.

This is a common tactic among believers. They say God/Jesus is incapable of doing X, and when you point out that these entities, according to the Bible, did do X, they simply say that X does not count because God/Jesus are perfect. This does not address the issue at all. It takes an apparent contradiction and removes it by saying that the entity in question is simply incapable of contradiction, and so any apparent contradiction just...isn't. So basically, God and Jesus get a moral and ethical get-out-of-jail card, as whatever they do, no matter how immoral it we think it is, is actually moral simply because of the entities performing the act in question (which, by the way, is moral relativism) This is like believing that your cell phone battery will never die and cause your cell phone to turn off, and when your cell phone battery dies and your cell phone turns off, you insist that your cell phone battery is not really dead and your phone isn't really off, because your phone battery is incapable of dying. What?! Why do I have to explain that this doesn't make any sense and relies on unstated premises and circular reasoning?

The version of christianity that Comfort creates in his books, street preaching and prolific websites and dvds makes the Christian worldview look patently absurd and immoral. I like to believe that most Christians are much more reasonable than this. I hope so anyway, otherwise I have reason to be afraid.

Have you heard of Project Steve?

Creationists/Intelligent Design proponents have a long tradition of assembling lists of scientists who do not fully accept out outright deny natural selection in favor of creation. The point of theses list is generally to show the public that not all scientists accept natural selection, and to cause people to question the notion that there is a scientific consensus that natural selection is the mechanism by which living things have differences.

One such list can be found on the Answers in Genesis website, here. It is a list of what looks like a few hundred scientists.I guess they decided their list wasn't impressive enough, so they also include a list of dead scientists who did not support evolution, including scientists who died before Dawin was born.

Obviously, science is not decided by which group of scientists has the longest list of supporters, but the folks over at the National Center for Science Education have decided to make their own list – a tongue-in-cheek one – of scientists who support evolution. The trick is that they made a list comprised only of people whose first name is Steve (or variations of Steve such as Steven). It's called, aptly, Project Steve.

Population estimates claim that only about 1% of the population has a name such as this, so only 1% of scientists are allowed to add their name to this list. So far, there are 1072 Steves who support evolution. About 51% of the Steves are biologists, and the Steve list is considerably longer than the Answers in Genesis’ list.

Ray a Day - 2:3

Here's more of Ray Comfort's second chapter.  I'd like to take this moment to point out that Comfort states that the point of this chapter is to show that the human moral conscience proves the existence of God, just as he tried to show in the first chapter that creation proves a creator.  Yet virtually every question in this chapter results in Comfort ranting about all human beings being worthless, evil creatures.  He literally claims, over and over again, that it is impossible for any human being to be "good."  Does it even need to be said that the vast, overwhelming majority of people (theist and atheist alike) do not possess a sense of morality that even remotely resembles these bizarre assertions?

Next up, we've got another person who claims that someone can be a good person without being a born again Christian.  Comfort takes lots of cookie-cutter questions almost exactly like this in rapid succession, and these following couple quotes pretty much sums up his ranting for most of this chapter:

The dictionary has fifty-eight definitions for the word (good), but the principle meaning is to be "morally excellent."  In other words, to be good means to be morally perfect in thought, word, and deed.

No, Ray, no it doesn't.  See, what you did there was blatantly exchange the word "excellent" for the word "perfect."  They are not synonyms, and your entire argument crumbles.

In the above objection, the person implies that you don't have to be a Christian to live a good life.  That's true.  Anyone can do the things that Christians do.  They can start hospitals, schools, feed the poor, build houses, etc.  But that won't get anyone to heaven, nor will it save anyone from hell.  This is because salvation has nothing to do with our "good" works.  How could it?

Yes, here, Comfort literally states (pay attention here, let it sink in, there will be a test), "So stop pretending to be good, and realize that doing good will do you no good on Judgment Day."

1.  This brand of fundamentalist theology is truly horrifying.  It should be apparent by now that Comfort has no evidence that there is a heaven, hell, or any need to save ourselves from either of them, yet this is the one, singular point of consideration in Comfort's worldview.  It is childishly irresponsible and amoral to say that we shouldn't bother with doing any good in the world, instead only being concerned with our own reward in the afterlife.

2.  If  (and granted, this is a big if) the state of the human moral conscience says anything at all about the existence of a god or gods as Comfort claims, then by the measure of my own moral consciousness and that of every other half-way intelligent human being I know, Comfort has just conclusively proved that his god does not exist.

3.  This is such a ridiculously distorted, narrow doctrine that Comfort seems to almost be trying to make Christianity look bad.  It goes without saying that even a considerable majority of Christians are more intelligent and reasonable than this.  Statements such as this are so extreme, even by Christian fundamentalist standards, that they will probably literally cause at least a few Christians to (at least) begin to doubt their faith.

Central to Comfort's arguments in this chapter is his assertion that even though we can be decent people by our own standards, by God's standards, we are all literally liars, theives, serial killers, and as far as God is concerned we all probably have sex with goats, too.  Every part of this chapter rests entirely on his idea that according to God (whose opinion on morality is the only one that matters, and for no other reason than that he is the one we must please to escape the horrors of eternal hell), there is either moral perfection, or there is complete, unadulterated evil (with all of humanity falling into that latter category).  Expect to see a post or two dealing with this absurdity in detail.

Believe the cake.

Believe what the cake is telling you!

It is written.

 

The other day Flimsy and I decided to go to Dairy Queen to pick up an ice-cream cake, mostly because we're pigs. When we grabbed it from the freezer and brough it up to the counter, the clerk asked us if we wanted anything written on it.

Of course we do! We asked the clerk to write "There is no God" on our delicious cake. The three clerks there gave us a funny look, and one said, "Okay.... what color?" We told her to surprise us. Look, she even added an exclamation point at the end!

Ray a Day: 2:2

In yet another installment of our Ray a Day series, a questioner tells Ray that his conscience is perfectly functional, but is silent on matters of atheism. Ray says this in response:

The reason your conscience has nothing to say about your atheism is that atheism is not a moral issue. It's an intellectual issue. If I were to lie or steal, my conscience would scream at me. But if I said something that was intellectually stupid, like one and one make five, my conscience would remain silent. The same applies with the foolishness of atheism.

It’s interesting how people can be internally inconsistent in such a blatant way in the same book, within a few pages. For example on page 5, Ray says:

He has to deny common reason and logic ... it seems worth it to some because they think you then become a moral free agent.

On Page 8 we find:

Your stumbling block isn’t as intellectual as you maintain … it’s moral. … It’s not intellectual. His or her reason [for denying god] is moral.

And page 32:

That is why atheists hate Him so vehemently. Atheists want to be free from all moral or spiritual responsibilities …

I find it pretty funny that Ray is so inconsistent, and people come to him in droves proclaiming that he is a wonderful apologist who explains everything using undeniable logic and reason. Are you kidding me? I guess atheism is an intellectual issue when it suits Ray that it be an intellectual issue, and a moral issue when it suits him that it be a moral issue.

The next questioner says that he (or she) thinks that people who don’t believe in God can be good, normal people, just not perfect. Ray responds by saying that it “deeply concerns me when I hear a professing Christian tell an atheist that an atheist can be a good person”. He “explains” that Jesus said there is no one good but God, so “Anyone who says that human beings are good is calling Jesus a liar. My concern isn’t just that the atheist is being confirmed in his deception, but it makes me doubt the genuine nature of the Christian’s salvation, because it seems that he has no knowledge of sin himself”

We’ve already been over this liar business in this post. Comfort says that no one is good, even himself. The reason that no one is good is because Jesus says that God is the only good thing. This is a complete perversion of the word “good” to the point at which it becomes totally meaningless except as an arbitrary word used to describe his god’s unfathomable greatness.

So what Comfort is saying is that compared to God’s infinite goodness, we have zero goodness. But this same standard should apply to any other quality god possesses. Compared to God’s infinite perfection, the world has zero perfection. Compared to God’s infinite wisdom, the universe has zero wisdom.

Honestly, we’re just paying word-games here, and eliminating our ability to call pieces of Comfort’s God’s creation good, wise, perfect, moral, or any other quality he uses to describe his god by redefining those words as being qualities only god possesses. While he plays games, he also discourages Christians from seeing atheists as people who are good. I realize that he is, at the very least, condemning himself as well as everyone else, but it seems like he is saying, “Atheists are terrible people, and if Christians think atheists are not terrible, they aren’t true Christians. I’m not perfect either.” It’s a cheap way to pretend to be humble.

P.S. I skipped a few questions because they were repetitive and brought up issues already previously answered.

Faith Infiltration: Circle of Light Spiritualist Church

This week, Flimsy, Alien (who wrote about her experiences on her blog) and I infiltrated the Circle of Light Independent Spiritualist Church, which is a church located within the Pathways Metaphysical Store. (Or "resource center" as it's called).

Flimsy and I have been to a spiritualist church before, which we blogged about here.

Spiritualism, in a small nutshell, is the belief and practice that living humans have the ability to contact dead humans via Mediumship.  These contacted "spirits" can then pass messages from the afterlife to the living earth world. Spirits come in all sorts of forms, ranging from spirit guides to angels to dead loved ones. They also believe in a god, though this god can range from monotheistic to pantheist. Basically, what separates spiritualism from everything else is the belief in the ability to communicate with the dead.

We arrived about 45 minutes before the service, and I noticed that the store had some of my favorite incense, so I grabbed a few packets and paid for them. There was an open (ish) area near the front of the store where people set up folding chairs and placed rainbow colored cushions on them. There were about 15 people in attendance and five or so mediums, who wore purple silk scarves.

Before the church service began, the announcements were read, and then a disclaimer - the services are part of Pathways and thus no part of the service may be recorded or copied, as they are fully copyrighted.

....

???

...

I've never heard of a church having a disclaimer like this, so I am not sure what to think. Alas, I am fairly sure I am not violating any copyright by writing about my experiences at a church.

Like the other spiritualist church we visited, it had a reiki/prana/energy healing service at the beginning, where people could sit in chairs at the front and have energy worked on. I watched as the Alien sat while a healer waved her arms around and chopped off some bad energy.  We were also told to write our names on slips of paper and put them into a basket, so we could receive a message from the "other side".

The announcements were pretty much what I expected, except that the owner of the store mentioned that she would be having a class with "Dr. white, doctor of philosophy". I didn't think much of this and just assumed that this was a living person with a doctoral degree in philosophy, until Alien leaned over and said knowingly, "That's her spirit guide".

During the service, we passed around a miniature etched glass globe to pray and send good energy to the world, and a notebook filled with requests and people's writings to pray and send good energy to the people in the notebook. The sermon was about how spring was coming and that just like when planting seeds for a garden, we have to plant new ideas and new projects and tend to them appropriately - not too much and not too little. 

After the message, it was time for the spirit mediums to communicate messages from their guides for us, by "standing between two worlds". My spirit medium told me (after reaching into the basket to pull out my name) that he was seeing pages and pages of the Koran - the first and greatest Arabic work - and seeing the distance of time and space revealing a greatness in a work. He told me more practically to look at my older works to find greatness.

Okay?

After the spirit guides gave messages to every person who had placed paper in the basket, they gave messages to themselves. Then, it was time to meditate. The meditation consisted of everyone cloing their eyes and relaxing, while a leader said things like, "the eagle flies overhead................. it's wings lifting it higher........................ you feel the world soaring under you...........like a moving river..........."

During the meditation, Flimsy and I wrote sentances to each other by tracing letters into each other's palms, or simply looked at each other - which was perfectly quiet until he made a face, which made me let out a stifled laugh that thankfully sounded like a sneeze. We've got a way of communicating to each other without words - if we think something is funny but can't laugh, we will often grab a leg or arm (of the other person) and squeeze.

I find that spiritualists are, in general, an open-minded and tolerant bunch. They tend to see themselves as freethinkers and they are - I think that sometimes they are just a little too credulous. You know that saying, "Don't have such an open mind that your brains fall out"? I think that can be applied here - especially in the case of easily testable phenomenon like the ability of certain crystals to cure diseases and so forth. I think the mysticism of spirituality really draws people into spirituality - the same way tarot cards and Ouija boards were intriguing in high school. It's a way of being religious while shirking mainstream religion.

*Flimsyman*

My spirit message was about me, standing in a field, . . .  Dressed like a cowboy.  Ten-gallon hat, six-shooters, the whole nine yards.  A horse trots up behind me - a pure white horse.  The horse knows that it's mine, and the horse loves me.

Um, yeah.  First off, fuck that.  I'm not a cowboy, I'm a goddamn ninja.  Even in that setting, I'm still not a cowboy; I'm a native quietly weeping as ignorant fucks destroy the things I care about, right before taking a tomahawk to some crackers' faces.  Beyond that, Ziztur and I exchanged some humorous (i.e. not serious) speculation that she's the white horse, that she is good and pure (wtf), and that she knows that she's mine.  Of course, this is a ridiculous (and more than a little sexist) interpretation, but what's the alternative?  That the 'vision' actually means nothing at all?  Um, wait.  Yeah, that's pretty much the case.

*Sigh*  I always hate to make fun of the 'spiritualist' folks.  Is it completely irrational to believe in "spirit guides"?  Definitely.  Do they typically infringe on the rights of others?  No, they are usually pretty ethical people.  Do their beliefs deserve a modicum of automatic, intrinsic respect?  No, absolutely not.  At the end of the day, though, do I really have a problem with them?  No, not really.  So they believe some silly things.  I probably believe some silly things myself.  I try not to, but how can I be sure?  The true test, then, of whether I have a legitimate, justifiable problem with somebody is their ethics, not their beliefs.  For all that it's a classic skeptic/freethinker/atheist line, it is not always true that "Those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities."  Sometimes people can live in perfect good will with society, and with myself and those I care about, while believing things that are almost certainly insane.  And you know what?  That's their right.

Ray a Day - 2:1

Well, we have finally reached the second chapter of "You can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions From Angry Skeptics".

As Chapter 1 was all about evolution (actually, it had very little to do with actual science, never mind evolution itself, but we tried our damnedest to keep some science in the discussion), Chapter 2 is all about the human consciousness and how it's existence proves the existence of God just as thoroughly as 'Creation proves a Creator.'  First thing's first; let's look at the introduction.

Comfort tells a story about a spectacular painting; a true masterpiece.  As a group of experts are admiring the extraordinary skill of this peerless artist, one of them notices the painter's signature in the bottom corner.  He leans in close to see who this amazing painter was, and discovers to his horror that the artist is black!  Informing his colleagues that the painter is "the 'n' word," they produce a knife, and proceed to scrape the artist's name off of the painting.  You can probably guess what this analogy is supposed to mean.

No, Ray, the analogy fails.  The art experts in your story did not deny that there was a painter, they only harbored a bigoted attitude towards the artist.  Again, no matter how much Comfort wants this to be the case, atheists do not deny the existence of God because they don't like him.

In any event, Comfort goes on to say that the nature of the Creator is revealed by the wonderful beauty of creation.  He goes on to list very lovely imagery, and claims that if evolution were true, it would leave us sitting on bare rock with only the bare essentials or our survival.  Even after we've completed the chapter on evolution, Comfort still has to insert some scientific ignorance at random points.  Obviously, evolution doesn't just affect change within the human species, but will drive the adaptation of every single other form of life as well.  How on earth does Comfort come to the conclusion that evolution will somehow cause human beings to survive, but will not function on any other animal or plant species?  Is he just refusing to think even slightly outside of his mental framework of 'everything in the world is designed for humans?'  One simply cannot properly comprehend evolution if one approaches it from such an egocentric creationist state of mind.

All that follows is just some more insults, like the apparent 'fact' that "Atheists want to be free from all moral or spiritual responsibilities."  He also touches on the immortal problem of evil.  His stance is the usual 'everything good came from God, and everything bad came from human sin."  You could probably guess that he makes no attempt to explain why or how he knows this to be the case.  He mentions murder and pollution specifically as evil created by the sin of human beings, yet ignores the existence of disease, natural disasters, and death itself, which human beings are not responsible for.  He also ignores the obvious fact that, by his own theology, his God is supposedly the one who created we lowly human beings with the capacity for sin, and did so with full knowledge that we would in fact sin, and, at times, commit gross injustices.

The first question is just a comment on the mechanism of polygraph tests; remarking that they don't detect a lie, they detect patterns in body responses that often correlate with a lie, and nothing more.  Comfort replies that polygraphs are not lie detectors, they are actually conscience detectors (which is completely wrong).  He goes on to say that the human conscience is a dilemma for the believer in evolution, and that even the experts don't know why it exists.

This is completely ridiculous.  I am far from an "expert," and I can see that humanity evolved as an extremely social creature, and that the degrees of altruism and kinship cooperation present in humanity aided our species survival.  See here, here, and here for some basics on the evolution of human morality.  As cliche as it is for an atheist to point out Richard Dawkins, I am inclined to mention his extensive body of writing on the subject.  For example, he details how certain species of birds that organize into flocks will compete for the 'alpha' position via altruistic behavior - they will literally achieve status in the flock by giving their "inferiors" food, or taking dangerous look-out spots on the very highest branches to warn the others of airborne predators.  They will even go so far as to violently rebuke another bird that is 'lower' on the ladder of status for offering them, the 'alpha,' food.

This should be a very interesting chapter, folks.  Some of you may know, I myself had no knowledge of science at all when I first became an atheist.  I gave up my religion by reading the Bible, and violently shrugged off my religious beliefs specifically because Christianity offended by moral conscience.  Stay tuned.

Ziztur has a facebook fan page

For those of you who enjoy Facebook, Ziztur.com now has a fan page, which can be found here.

Come be our fan and you'll make Flimsy and I feel extra squishy! You might even get a sneak peak at a few more pictures of us, or be let in on extra-special Facebook-only secret things.

You know you wanna.

:)

Ray a day: 28 - end of chapter 1

Holy cow! We've published 28 posts, one per day, and we've finally gotten through the first chapter of Ray Comfort's "You can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions From Angry Skeptics". 

Today's "angry skeptic" says that it doesn't seem very intelligent for a creator to put nipples on men, since they will never breastfeed. Comfort's response:

I could say that male nipples are God's thumbtacks to keep the chest in place, but I'm sure one or two atheists would take me seriously. Still, it sounds better than the theory that they are the evolutionary beginnings of making men capable of nursing.

First of all, that thumbtack thing is actually pretty funny, never mind the jab at the ability of atheists to understand sarcasm (It's kind of funny that people talk about how kind and nice Ray is...), so it's official. Ray, you have earned one [1] point. Lucky for you, points can only be earned and never taken away.

It's pretty clear that Comfort is just making things up now, because I have never heard of anyone claim that male nipples are the evolutionary beginnings of making men capable of suckling. Once again, Ray provides no reference to the aforementioned theory, so we have no idea where it came from, aside from his own head. Evolution does not work in this way - it does not build up adaptations with some sort of goal in mind. The idea that the human species is growing nipples in order to eventually suckle infants smacks of intelligent design!

Ray, please cite your source of this theory. I'm waiting.

Natural selection is a blind process. It is going in a direction, but it does not have some goal in mind. It did not hop in the car to drive to Las Vegas, it hopped in the car and is driving along the path of least resistance, wherever it may lead. The goal of the rainstorm is not to knock your house down - it has no goal.

So anyway, why no men have nipples? Let's ask a biologist, rather than a creationist. How about Andrew M. Simons, a professor of biology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario?

A human baby inherits one copy of every gene from his or her father and one copy of every gene from his or her mother. Inherited traits of a boy should thus be a combination of traits from both his parents. Thus, from a genetic perspective, the question should be turned around: How can males and females ever diverge if genes from both parents are inherited? We know that consistent differences between males and females (so-called sexual dimorphisms) are common--examples include bird plumage coloration and size dimorphism in insects. The only way such differences can evolve is if the same trait (color, for example) in males and females has become "uncoupled" at the genetic level. This happens if a trait is influenced by different genes in males and females, if it is under control of genes located on sex chromosomes, or if gene expression has evolved to be dependent on context (whether genes find themselves within a male or a female genome). The idea of the shared genetic basis of two traits (in this case in males and females) is known as a genetic correlation, and it is a quantity routinely measured by evolutionary geneticists. The evolutionary default is for males and females to share characters through genetic correlations.
The uncoupling of male and female traits occurs if there is selection for it: if the trait is important to the reproductive success of both males and females but the best or "optimal" trait is different for a male and a female. We would not expect such an uncoupling if the attribute is important in both sexes and the "optimal" value is similar in both sexes, nor would we expect uncoupling to evolve if the attribute is important to one sex but unimportant in the other. The latter is the case for nipples. Their advantage in females, in terms of reproductive success, is clear. But because the genetic "default" is for males and females to share characters, the presence of nipples in males is probably best explained as a genetic correlation that persists through lack of selection against them, rather than selection for them. Interestingly, though, it could be argued that the occurrence of problems associated with the male nipple, such as carcinoma, constitutes contemporary selection against them. In a sense, male nipples are analogous to vestigial structures such as the remnants of useless pelvic bones in whales: if they did much harm, they would have disappeared.
In a now-famous paper, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard C. Lewontin emphasize that we should not immediately assume that every trait has an adaptive explanation. Just as the spandrels of St. Mark's domed cathedral in Venice are simply an architectural consequence of the meeting of a vaulted ceiling with its supporting pillars, the presence of nipples in male mammals is a genetic architectural by-product of nipples in females. So, why do men have nipples? Because females do. 

It is interesting to note that male lactation in mammals has never developed as anything other than anomaly - males can lactate if stimulated by estrogen, however. Human babies can also be calmed by sucking on daddy's nipple, even if he isn't lactating.

Here's a break:
















We're back!

In this same question/answer, Comfort changes directions and goes on to make fun of a website, book and show The Future is Wild. The whole idea of these is to imagine what the future might be like in millions of years. The idea is to have some fun and predict how species might change over time. Of course, he points to this as evidence that evolution is all about imagination, and claims that this makes a mockery out of science. He also says he doesn't understand how different this is from when he and Kirk Cameron presented a picture of the "Crockoduck" as an example of what they imagined would be a transitional form.

I shouldn't have to point out that making predictions about the future of the animal kingdom millions of years into the future for a kid's TV show and stipulating in a book for adults that changes will occur is about injecting imagination into the framework of evolution, but this does not mean that the framework of evolution is also imaginary. 

That's it for Chapter one, folks! I'm going to stick all of these blog posts together in one webpage and will add it to the "science" section of my blog. I'll let you know when it's up.

Faith reduces errors on psychology test

From World Science

At least for one type of test, be­lief in God can help re­duce mis­takes and anx­i­e­ty, ac­cord­ing to new re­search that al­so shows dis­tinct brain ac­ti­vity pat­terns in be­liev­ers.

In two stud­ies led by Uni­ver­s­ity of To­ron­to psy­cholo­g­ist Mi­chael In­zlicht, par­ti­ci­pants per­formed a Stroop task, a well-known psy­chological test that as­s­eses cog­ni­tive con­trol. Mean­while, elec­trodes meas­ured brain ac­ti­vity in the test-takers.

At least for one type of test, be­lief in God can help re­duce mis­takes and anx­i­e­ty, ac­cord­ing to new re­search that al­so shows dis­tinct brain ac­ti­vity pat­terns in be­liev­ers.

Com­pared to non-be­liev­ers, In­zlicht found, re­li­gious par­ti­ci­pants showed sig­nif­i­cantly less ac­ti­vity in a part of the brain called the an­te­ri­or cin­gu­late cor­tex. This struc­ture is be­lieved to help mod­i­fy be­hav­ior by sig­nal­ing when at­ten­tion and con­trol are needed, usu­ally as a re­sult of some anx­i­e­ty-producing event like mak­ing a mis­take.

The stronger their re­li­gious zeal and faith, the less cell ac­ti­vity in that zone-and the few­er er­rors sub­jects made, In­zlicht and col­leagues re­ported. They de­tailed the find­ings in the cur­rent on­line is­sue of the re­search jour­nal Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence.

The anterior cingu­late cor­tex might be thought of as an "alarm bell" that rings when some­one "has just made a mis­take or ex­pe­ri­ences un­cer­tain­ty," said In­zlicht. "We found that re­li­gious peo­ple or even peo­ple who simply be­lieve in the ex­ist­ence of God show sig­nif­i­cantly less brain ac­ti­vity in rela­t­ion to their own er­rors. They’re much less anx­ious and feel less stressed when they have made an er­ror."

These cor­rela­t­ions re­mained strong af­ter tak­ing in­to ac­count per­son­al­ity and cog­ni­tive abil­ity, In­zlicht re­marked. The find­ings, he added, show re­li­gious be­lief has a calm­ing ef­fect on its devo­tees, which makes them less likely to feel anx­ious about mak­ing er­rors or fac­ing the un­known.

The Stroop task meas­ures a per­son's abil­ity to in­hib­it one re­ac­tion in or­der to do or say some­thing else that gives a cor­rect an­swer. For in­stance, a test-taker might be asked to quickly state the col­or ink in which a word is printed, though the word it­self names a dif­fer­ent col­or.

In­zlicht de­clined to ex­trap­o­late too much from the test re­sults to real life, cau­tion­ing that anx­i­e­ty is a "double-edged sword" that is some­times nec­es­sary and help­ful. Ex­ces­sive anx­i­e­ty may leave you "par­a­lyzed with fear," he not­ed, but "it al­so serves a very use­ful func­tion in that it alerts us when we’re mak­ing mis­takes." With­out that, "what im­pe­tus do you have to change or im­prove your be­hav­iour so you don’t make the same mis­takes again and again?"

I think that the last paragraph here about excessive anxiety or no anxiety is taking two extreme cases and commenting on them, which really says very little about typical people. I also find this test amusing because I don't fit the results - I do very well on stroop tests - I really freaked out fellow students when we took them in groups during class to learn about them with an "inhuman" ability to fly through them. I wonder what that says about me?

Ray a Day: 27

Today's questioner from Ray Comfort's new book asks why God created marijuana. Ray responds by saying that hemp is useful, and "Marijuana is often called 'weed' and weeds came about as a direct result of the curse of God, following Adam's sin." He says that if the questioner is really asking why we shouldn't smoke marijuana if God created it, he has an answer. His answers is that his god also created sand.

He goes on to say that man has chosen to "kill his brain cells" by burning marijuana, and that breathing in the burning fumes of anything is harmful, and, "Another word for marijuana is 'dope'. I wonder why?"

Actually, I have a better question. Why would God create marijuana, and then specifically create cannabinoid receptors in the brain? Why would God create us to grow THC (the psychoactive compound in pot) in our brains?

There is a specific receptor for THC in the human brain (and in what appears to be all mammalian vertebrates and even some non-mammalian vertebrates). They are

one of the most abundant G-protein coupled receptors in the brain. It has its highest densities in the cerebral cortex, hippocampus, hypothalamus, cerebellum, basal ganglia, brain stem, spinal cord and amygdala. This distribution explains marijuana's diverse effects. Its psychoactive power comes from its action in the cerebral cortex. Memory impairment is rooted in the hippocampus, a structure essential for memory formation. The drug causes motor dysfunction by acting on movement control centers of the brain. In the brain stem and spinal cord, it brings about the reduction of pain; the brain stem also controls the vomiting reflex. The hypothalamus is involved in appetite, the amygdala in emotional responses. Marijuana clearly does so much because it acts everywhere.

 So, it's really not just a matter of god creating marijuana and humans "misusing" it. It's a lot more complicated then that.

I don't think I have to mention that smoking is not the only way to gain mind-altering effects from marijuana. It's active ingredients can be imparted into a carrier oil which is ingested, it can be baked into brownies, or folded into milk chocolate bars, thus eliminating all of the negative effects on your lungs from smoking it.

There is absolutely zero evidence that marijuana "kills brain cells". Of all groups of people, even the government agrees.
 
Finally, here's why a slang word for marijuana is "dope".  "Dope" has been used as slang for Marijuana, heroin, meth, and cocaine.

Cocaine is a dopamine reuptake inhibitor (and a serotonin and nerepinephrine reuptake inhibitor) which is addictive because it affects the mesolimbic reward pathway - which is the pathway in the brain that is involved in behavioral responses to stimuli that activates feelings or reward and reinforcement. Meth also affects dopamine, as does heroin. It was originally thought that marijuana also had an effect on dopamine, hence the slang "dope". Research, however, has shown that it does not have an effect on dopamine.

The sand analogy doesn't work - sand is not pleasurable to eat, does not have any health benefits when you eat it, and we don't have specific sand-receptors in our brain. We don't grow sand in our heads.

As far as the "theory" that weeds came about as a direct result of Adam's sin...

1. Whether a plant is considered a "weed" or not is entirely based on human subjectivity -a weed is a plant in an undesired place. Dandelions are weeds on your perfectly trimmed Kentucky Bluegrass lawn, but are cultivated elsewhere.

2. All "weeds", even if they are in a place a human doesn't want them - still have their place in the ecosystem.

3. Is Comfort really saying that before the fall, no plants grew in "unwanted" places? I normally try not to be insulting, but if I roll my eyes back any further than they are currently rolled, I'm going to pass out. Comfort is always going on and on about how "unscientific" evolution is. Up until this point I have forgotten to mention how "unscientific" most of Comfort's third-grade theories are. How scientific is it exactly, that all plants grew in only the places Adam wanted them to grow, and once he sinned, they no longer bowed to his every wish and grew only where he wanted them?

Guest post: Petter Häggholm on Determinism

 So a reader of mine recently commented on my post on determinism, and his comment was thought-provoking to the extent that I feel the need to post it as a guest post. Petter Häggholm's website can be found here, and here is what he has to say about determinism:

This is a purely philosophical question, untouchable by science, because (thanks to Heisenberg) we know that it is impossible (theoretically, not just in practice) to gather all the information about-well, even so much as a single particle.

That aside, I think (having read Dennett's Elbow Room) that non-determinism doesn't really do much to save the notion of free will as it seems to be commonly envisioned. Basically, we have two possibilities: Either the universe is completely deterministic, in which case everything that happens does so according to fixed rules, and everything that happens could in principle be predicted if we knew everything in the universe (which happens to be impossible); or the universe isn't deterministic, in which case some things happen randomly, for no 'reason' whatsoever-as we tend to think with regard to phenomena like quantum field fluctuation, radioactive decay, etc.

Apply this to the notion of 'will', and what do we get? Either our decisions are all completely determined by events in the past; or they are influenced by random events. We tend to look aghast at the former notion and protest that it robs us of free will, and I can see this; but is the latter notion really any more palatable? Personally, I would rather that my mind worked entirely on the basis of things that happened in the past (because there is then a possibility that I'm behaving rationally according to known, accessible facts) than that my decisions are influenced by completely random elements. After all, how does the latter free my will? It seems just as un-free, only now it is chained not only to the past, but also to a pair of metaphysical dice on which I can exert no control whatsoever (even in the sense that I control things as a causal agent in a deterministic universe, however foreseeable my actions).

It seems to me that defenders of 'free will' are really thinking of a third option, where the will is neither deterministic nor non-deterministic. I'm not sure what that third option is supposed to be, though.

Ever since reading Susan Blackmore's book on consciousness, and Dennett's Elbow Room (subtitled, not coincidentally, The varieties of free will worth having), my standard response to people who argue for a notion of free will is to ask them to please define it. Unfortunately, the conversation has never yet advanced from thence…

 So there you have it. Written from the hands of a guy with superb mindmeat. (and you should check out his essays here)

P.S. Petter managed to figure out why I could not paste entries from word or other sources directly into blogger without encountering annoying character translation problems, thus fixing a problem I have had since I started this blog. So everyone should thank him now for being awesome. 

Ray a Day: 26

"You can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions From Angry Skeptics".
 
More of the same.  Just a quick one today.

Today's angry skeptic calls Comfort a liar, and points out a couple strong indications of terrible "design" in certain biological organisms.  This skeptic mentions fish that live in caves yet have non-functional eyes, he mentions the fact that there is only one coronary artery, that has no back-up route, which can be easily clogged.

Comfort, as is par for the course, doesn't attempt to answer the actual thrust of the question.  He says that it seems obvious to him that if the fish live in dark caves, then they don't need functional eyes.  He doesn't even try to reply to the obvious question of why they produce eyes at all, as this is a wasteful use of biological resources; a highly inefficient bodily design for an organism that doesn't need eyes at all, especially when they eyes that are grown don't work.

He actually gives what could be a half-way decent point about the coronary artery, that one can vastly decrease the chances of the artery clogging with a healthy lifestyle; eating healthily and exercising regularly.  Of course, this still doesn't address the fact that a back-up artery or two would be a much, much more "intelligent" design.  However, entertainingly, he then shoots himself in the foot, reminding us that we also have only a single esophagus (and doesn't try to defend the "intelligent design" of a single, easily blocked esophagus).  His own example is even more damaging, because the esophagus can be blocked regardless of how healthy you are, obviously causing severe injury or death.

Comfort asks the evolutionist a few more questions:

"Which came first - the blood or the heart that pumps the blood?"

"How did the body survive when the heart hadn't yet evolved?  Or was the body alive without a heart?  How did that work?"

"Did skin exist before the blood formed?  How did the skin stay alive without blood?"

Etc.  Of course, there are organisms alive today that have structures like muscles (which the heart obviously is) yet have no blood.  An organism can have structures like a heart without blood or skin and survive perfectly well, as there are countless such organisms alive today.  To ask whether the heart, blood, or skin came first, as if an organism cannot survive without all of these biological features, betrays a staggering ignorance of the natural world, considering the countless plants and microorganisms that thrive without any of these features.

Behavior shaping

I decided, on a whim, that my dog has gotten lazy, so I taught him how to put items I hand him in the trash can:


I taught him this using shaping - a technique where you take a dog's behavior and reward it and slowly modify your reward to shape a behavior you want. In this case, the steps went like this, with the dog only being rewarded for the behavior in question.

1. dog brings soda bottle to me (a behavior he was taught as a puppy)
2. dog drops soda bottle and it touches or goes in trash can lid, which is placed by my feet on the floor.
3. dog drops soda bottle in the lid only.
4. dog figures out it is easier to place bottle into lid rather than flinging it and hoping it lands in the lid.
5. I move to different spots in the room while dog puts bottle in lid.
6. lid is placed by trash can while I move to different spots in the room.
7. lid is lifted off the floor incrementally until it is put on the trash can.
8. dog works on putting objects other than bottle in trash can.

The next step is having him put things in the trash when we're not in the kitchen - I.E. in another room, and then we'll work on different types of trash cans so he can do it at other people's houses.

Notice in the video that he has learned to look into the trash can to make sure the item went into the trash can and did not fall outside the trash can - if something falls outside the can he picks it up and puts it back in, as he doesn't get rewarded if it falls outside the can.

Ray a Day: 25

Today's Ray a Day is incredible. Honestly, I am surprised people can get away with publishing this stuff, here it is:

Ray's "angry skeptic" says:

MacArthur says, "The most damaging ideologies of the nineteeth and twentieth centuries were all rooted in Darwinism." So what he is saying is that we would be better off if scientific advancements never happened. That's totally bogus.

Comfort answer by saying:

Genuine scientific advancement is wonderful. ... Darwinism is not scientific. It is a brainless and unproven theory that comes from the imaginations of sinful men. ... The truth is that any evolutionary believer (especially an atheist) speaking on behalf of science is like Jeffery Dahmer speaking on behalf of the Boy Scouts of America.

 Let's repeat that last line and think about it for a minute:

The truth is that any evolutionary believer (especially an atheist) speaking on behalf of science is like Jeffery Dahmer speaking on behalf of the Boy Scouts of America.

 ...

...


Now please. If anyone wants to defend Comfort for writing this, and defend his publisher, WND books. (You should really go there and see what kind of other books they publish), you'll have to do better than, "Well he didn't really mean it that way" or something like that.

I've really tried to refrain from slipping into angry diatribes but this is perfect example of a damaging ideology - the ideology that your group of people has a stronghold on morality, and equating people who believe differently than you to an individual who was a serial killer - who brutally and gruesomely raped and murdered mostly Asian or African boys, dismembered his victims, and engaged in necrophilia, cannibalism, and torture.

It is absolutely unacceptable that a publisher would allow this kind of putrid hateful bigotry to spew forth from the pages of a book found in bookstores across the country. WND books - you should hang your head in shame that you let someone like Comfort, who has built himself up as a public figure of apologetics and Christianity (though a lot of Christians would contend that this is not a good thing), publish something that only serves to reinforce people's prejudice and hatred toward people different from themselves. This is a terrible thing to do.

First of all, many scientists are also atheists, so the analogy does not even work. Even if Comfort thinks evolution is not sound science, a better analogy might be "an evolutionist speaking for science is like an alchemist speaking for science" or maybe even, "an evolutionist speaking for science is like a holocaust denier speaking for holocaust survivors" or something.

But no. He does not make a good analogy. He does not even attempt to make a good analogy. I can take a guess at his motives...

It's pretty obvious that this analogy is meant solely to be a horrifying jab at the moral character of people who don't believe in god.

Then there is the idea that dangerous ideologies were rooted in Darwinism. I've already shown (in this post) that Darwinism actually served to start to wear away at the dangerous theologically-based ideologies - namely that different races of people were different "species" and that non-whites were inferior and got their skin color as punishment from god, etc.I've shown (in this post) that evolution is descriptive and saying that evolution causes evils or dangerous ideologies is like saying that germ theory is the cause of dangerous ideologies because germs cause people to get sick by piggybacking on other organisms and therefore swings open the door for "pathogenicists" (I just made that word up) to take advantage of other people in any way they can.

Any morals derived from evolution would naturally have to recognize that we are social animals and have evolved as such, and so cooperation and altruism lead to better fitness of the species.

The dangerous ideologies MacArthur (and the original angry skeptic) were referring to were probably Social Darwinism and Eugenics, which are based on misunderstandings of evolution (Comfort also obviously misunderstands evolution... Need I say more?). Eugenics and Social Darwinism both fail because they do not take into account the genetic variation is one of the things that makes a population stronger, not weaker. The only connection between Social Darwinism and Darwin is the name, as Social Darwinism was based on Lamerkism and the writings of Herbert Spencer, and Protestant nonconformism. Lastly, both are tied more closely to the science of genetics than the science of evolution. If Comfort knew his history, he'd be going on about how genetics is a fairy-tale for the gullible and sinful.

Speaking of sinful - I know Comfort believes that all people are sinners, and so it's interesting that he chooses to describe evolution as an "unproven theory from the imaginations of sinful men". Since all people are sinful, then all of the people who say they "know" his god, know his god as "sinful men" too. All of the people who believe in creation, believe it as "sinful men". So I'm not sure what his point is other than to make another petty jab.

We're growing in numbers

A new survey, the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey, shows that 15% of the US population identifies themselves as having "no religion" - up from 8% in 1990. The number of people self-identifying as atheist or agnostic has risen too:

Only1.6 percent of Americans call themselves atheist or agnostic. But based on stated beliefs, 12 percent are atheist (no God) or agnostic (unsure), while 12 percent more are deistic (believe in a higher power but not a personal God). The number of outright atheists has nearly doubled since 2001, from 900 thousand to 1.6 million. Twenty-seven percent of Americans do not expect a religious funeral at their death.

So 24% of people are either atheist/agnostic/deist. It seems that belief in a personal god is slowly fading away as the generatons pass.

So to those who say atheism is dying - sorry, but you're either mistaken or delusional.

Ray a Day: 24

That's right, we're continuing to review Ray comfort's book,   "You can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions From Angry Skeptics".

Back for more, eh?

Two quick questions today; this first one is fucking hilarious.  This skeptic says that "Cosmological evolution is not the same as Darwin's theory of organic evolution.  How many times would you say you've been corrected about that? . . .  And still you repeat it!"

Comfort replies, "The evolutionist says, 'Let's have a debate about the validity of Darwinian evolution,' and when he finds himself in a corner with no species-to-species transitional forms in the fossil record, he changes the subject of the debate.  Suddenly, it's not Darwinian evolution, but 'cosmological' evolution.  But I'm staying with the subject."

He then goes on to say, "You have faith in an unscientific theory (Darwinian evolution) that is in great error . . . You have no explanation as to the origin of Creation (how it began), why it began, or where the materials came from for the beginning."

Yes, you read that correctly.  First and foremost, as has been pointed out so many times before, there are a multitude of transitional forms in the fossil record.  Seriously, if a person really insists that there are no transitional forms, they should be made to provide a definition of what they would accept as a transitional form.  They usually refuse to do so, because once they do, two things could happen:  A.  Such an organism or fossil would be found or pointed out to them, and they would be forced to admit that they were completely wrong, or  B.  They would be revealed to have a completely ridiculous strawman definition of evolution (as in the case of Comfort's infamously ignorant 'Crocoduck'; he wasn't quite clever enough to bluff his way out of this challenge).

Besides which, um . . . this is probably painfully obvious to everyone else in the world except for Ray Comfort . . .


1.  A skeptic points out (for the millionth time) that evolution and cosmology are practically as unrelated as two scientific disciplines can possibly be.

2.  Comfort, in effect, claims that this is a strawman distortion, and that it is actually the evolutionist that deliberately pulls a bait-and-switch from biological evolution to cosmology.

3.  Comfort then does exactly what he insists that he doesn't do, committing the exact same glaring bait-and-switch failure of logic that he had just insisted is committed by those who accept the theory of evolution.

Leaving this absurdness behind, the next skeptic remarks that gravity (which Comfort often says 'evolved,' fortunately, right when lifeforms needed it to keep from flying off of the face of the planet) can be found in the 'physics' section, while the theory of evolution is found in the 'biology' section.

Comfort's reply is to simply reassert that gravity's existence is extremely fortunate, saying that, "If (as is commonly accepted) the natural phenomenon of evolution had no end in mind when it created all living things, it is incredibly intelligent, but it forgot that they would go spinning into space without the law of gravity."  He goes on to say that "chance" or "accident" are leaps of faith too large for him to accept.

Ziztur and I have discussed this before. Comfort's trick is to work an unstated, hidden premise into his argument - that gravity is an extremely unlikely phenomenon.  How does Comfort qualify exactly how likely a phenomenon like gravity is to occur?  How do people usually come up with a statistical chance of something happening?  Comparison.  To even have a tiny, remote chance of coming up with a figure of statistical likelihood that might have some actual meaning, relevance, or predictive usefulness, we would have to compare the number of universes that have gravity with the number of universes that don't.  Does this sufficiently illustrate how absurd it is to claim that something is unlikely to occur, when the phenomenon in question occurs in every single possible situation that we can possibly observe?  Nobody, not Comfort or anybody else, can make an argument that something that, as far as we can tell, is completely universal is in fact highly unlikely to occur.

Far be it from me to suggest that there is something that science cannot seek to explain.  What chance is there for the existence of a universe that naturally lacks gravity?  There may yet be a physicist so brilliant that he can actually devise a method, using all the knowledge of the universe that mankind has ever amassed, to determine this.

Ray Comfort is NOT.  THIS.  MAN.

Now you can be a postmodernist!

Someone pointed me to this awesome site which automatically generates a postmodernist essay, complete with citations.

You might have figured out from reading my blog that I am definitely not a postmodernist. Here is the essay it generated for me:

1. Neodeconstructive discourse and textual theory

If one examines Lyotardist narrative, one is faced with a choice: either reject expressionism or conclude that society, somewhat ironically, has intrinsic meaning. Therefore, Baudrillard uses the term 'cultural nihilism' to denote a mythopoetical whole. In 8 1/2, Fellini denies expressionism; in Satyricon he affirms postmaterial materialism.
In a sense, von Junz[1] suggests that we have to choose between cultural nihilism and capitalist subdeconstructivist theory. A number of desituationisms concerning the role of the observer as participant exist.
It could be said that the feminine/masculine distinction intrinsic to Fellini's Amarcord emerges again in La Dolce Vita, although in a more dialectic sense. Debord suggests the use of neocultural Marxism to read language.

2. Narratives of paradigm

The primary theme of the works of Fellini is the difference between sexual identity and class. In a sense, any number of narratives concerning cultural nihilism may be revealed. Lyotard promotes the use of textual theory to challenge sexism.
In the works of Fellini, a predominant concept is the concept of constructivist sexuality. Therefore, the subject is interpolated into a that includes narrativity as a totality. Debord uses the term 'textual theory' to denote a self-sufficient reality.
"Truth is intrinsically meaningless," says Derrida. In a sense, Lyotard suggests the use of subpatriarchial dematerialism to analyse and read sexual identity. The subject is contextualised into a that includes narrativity as a totality.
"Class is elitist," says Marx; however, according to Abian[2] , it is not so much class that is elitist, but rather the fatal flaw of class. But in 8 1/2, Fellini analyses textual theory; in La Dolce Vita, although, he examines cultural nihilism. If postsemioticist discourse holds, we have to choose between expressionism and textual subcultural theory.
The main theme of Sargeant's[3] analysis of cultural nihilism is not appropriation, but preappropriation. It could be said that the characteristic theme of the works of Fellini is the role of the artist as participant. The subject is interpolated into a that includes reality as a reality.
However, a number of theories concerning a subtextual whole exist. Cultural construction holds that the Constitution is fundamentally dead.
But Bataille uses the term 'cultural nihilism' to denote the stasis, and hence the defining characteristic, of postdialectic language. Marx's model of textual theory suggests that society has significance, but only if culture is equal to sexuality; if that is not the case, Lacan's model of Lyotardist narrative is one of "the constructivist paradigm of discourse", and therefore impossible.
Thus, the example of cultural nihilism depicted in Fellini’s 8 1/2 is also evident in La Dolce Vita. Expressionism holds that language is capable of truth.
In a sense, the subject is contextualised into a that includes truth as a paradox. Sontag promotes the use of expressionism to deconstruct capitalism.
However, the main theme of Dahmus's[4] essay on textual theory is the common ground between sexual identity and society. The subject is interpolated into a that includes culture as a totality.
Thus, Marx suggests the use of expressionism to analyse sexual identity. The characteristic theme of the works of Fellini is the genre, and subsequent economy, of cultural truth.

---

1. von Junz, T. Z. C. (1971) Expressionism in the works of Joyce. Panic Button Books
2. Abian, Y. ed. (1996) The Futility of Expression: Expressionism and cultural nihilism. Schlangekraft
3. Sargeant, Q. F. (1978) Expressionism, objectivism and patriarchialist capitalism. University of Massachusetts Press
4. Dahmus, P. D. A. ed. (1990) Neodialectic Discourses: Expressionism in the works of Koons. Panic Button Books

I hope you don't think this is a great essay, because it's totally meaningless. The people who wrote this are using a random text generator that takes common postmodernist words and puts them together in a grammatically correct sentence, adds a few citations, and then there you have it. 

If you don't know who Alan Sokal is, then you should. He wrote a brilliant, yet meaningless article which was accepted and published in one of the top postmodernist journals. His intent was to see if the journal would publish something intentionally meaningless if it seemed to fit their ideological preconceptions. Of course, they did.

Ray a Day: 23

Today's skeptic asks Comfort what he would say to Michael Shermer if he were his parents the day Michael came home to tell his parents he had been taught in biology class that the world's living things weren't created all at once.

Comfort responds by saying that Shermer's parents should have taught him the Ten Commandments rather than just to give his heart to Jesus, because this is a recipe for "false conversion" (whatever that means). He then goes on to say that when people repent and trust his savior, they'll come to "know" his god (we've blogged about this "knowing God" thing here and also here, so there's no sense in repeating myself).

He then goes on to tell his readers that since this theory contradicts his god's word, people should ask questions about, it, ask for proof, be a skeptic, ask why there are no species-to-species transitional forms, ask for specific evidence, and to keep pressing the issue. "They will talk about variation between species. That's not Darwinian Evolution. It's a rabbit trail" he says.  He continues:

You will have the choice between two beliefs of the origin of mankind. ... You can either rest in the evidence of the God you know personally, or toy can turn your back on Him ... and blindly have faith in an unscientific theory. And why would an intelligent person Do that?

 First, even though in this particular scenario "Michael" is presented with two theories of the origin of mankind - either God did it or natural forces did it - these are the only two theories, this is still a false dichotomy. It's not really, "evolution or God" It could be evolution, god, fairies, aliens, evolution and god combined, maybe we all created ourselves by observing ourselves, maybe we're all brains in a jar. the trick is to tease out which of these theories fit the evidence and observations we have about the world - the rest are unsubstantiated.

We would not expect to observe large changes (such as speciation) directly, except in populations moving through rapid change. The field of recorded science simply has not been around long enough. Evolution is small changes in populations over long periods of time - in fact, if we were to observe quick speciation (such as a reptilian species changing into a bird species over a few generations) this would be great evidence against evolution. The evidence for evolution does not depend on us observing "macroevolution" directly. Regardless of the fact that we don't need to have observed speciation for "macroevolution" to be true, we have observed speciation.  There is no known barrier to large change. Creationists, I am waiting for your theory as to the mechanism that blocks speciation from occurring. We can expect small changes over time to accumulate into large changes. Imagine going out to a spot in a huge warehouse and dropping a grain of sand on the floor. You add a grain of sand daily. You die, and your descendants continue your mission, adding grains of sand. What creationists are saying is that this sand will never become a small hill, and that there is some sort of barrier to these grands of sand piling up until they make a hill.

Apparently Comfort thinks that if someone claims to believe in God, or even is a pastor for decades, but eventually becomes an atheist, that they are a "false convert". What he appears to mean is that anyone who changes their mind about Christianity was "not a True Christian" and instead is a "false convert" - our ever-present no true Scotsman fallacy.  He is making the claim that it is literally impossible for a "True Christian" to stop being one. Black and white world of bigoted absolutism, Comfort hearts you.

I might also add that I agree with Comfort that one should demand evidence for evolution - you absolutely should! Just like you should demand evidence for creation. "Creation proves there is a creator" does not cut it, and nor does any other evidence for creation.

Anything worth believing must be refutable.

ghost kitteh visits me

So the other day I was browsing I Can Haz Cheezburger, when I discovered this picture:




I stopped and blinked and looked closer. I didn't take this picture, but this looks EXACTLY like my cat that I lost a year ago, sitting on an EXACT copy of my motorcycle with NEARLY IDENTICAL saddlebags cut in the same way I cut mine to fit on the bike, with a white car in the background that looks like my brother's (we lived together when I had the cat) and set against a light colored house, which is where we used to live.

I'd venture to say that it's STRANGER that this is not a picture of my cat, but that it looks so much like it should be a picture of my cat that I was fooled.

Pastor Fred Winters shot at First Church Maryville: update

From Fox News:

The man suspected of killing a pastor and injuring two others at a suburban St. Louis church on Sunday reportedly had a mental illness after Lyme disease attacked his brain.

Police did not release the gunman's name, but the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported late Sunday that a source near the case confirmed that he is Terry Joe Sedlacek, 27, who had developed mental illness after a tick bite, according to his family. FOX News could not immediately confirm the report.

According to the newspaper, the man's mother, Ruth Abernathy, said he contracted the disease after he was bitten by a tick on a family farm in the late 1990s. She described him as an avid outdoorsman and hunter.

The man was taking several medications to combat the disease and seizures, which nearly killed him in 2003, the paper said.

Neighbors, who believed Sedlacek was mentally ill, told a reporter he would sometimes wander into the middle of the road and shout obscenities for no reason.

Illinois State Police Director Larry Trent said Monday morning on CBS's "The Early Show" that authorities are "hopeful" the suspect, whom authorities did not name and described only as a 27-year-old from Troy, can be charged sometime Monday.

The gunman strode toward the Rev. Fred Winters shortly after 8 a.m. Sunday in the church, exchanged words with him, then fired a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol until it jammed. Churchgoers then wrestled him to the ground as he brandished a knife, Trent said.

Worshippers at the sprawling First Baptist Church in Maryville, Ill., initially weren't alarmed when the young man walked up the church's center aisle during the early morning sermon -- until he opened fire.

None of the about 150 worshippers attending the early morning service seemed to recognize the gunman, and investigators did not know details of Winters' conversation with him, Trent said, but they planned to review an audio recording of the service.

Winters later died of his injuries.

The mystery leaves church members wondering why anyone would want to hurt the man who was their pastor for 22 years — and why.

Authorities didn't know whether Winters, a married father of two, knew the gunman.

Ray a Day: 22

Today's Ray a Day will focus on Tiktallik - an "angry skeptic" asks about Tiktallik and asks Ray to explain why this doesn't count as a transitional species. Comfort's answer is simple and yet... Well, you'll see.

Tiktallik basically is a fish that has a head similar to a crocodile and the gills of a fish. Comfort dismisses this fossil by saying:

Tiktallik is "technically a fish, complete with scales and gills" ... Big deal ... it's a fish ... This has nothing to do at all with evolution or species to species transitional forms.

Comfort does not seem to realize that "fish" is not a species. "Fish" is one of the five classes of vertebrates - the other four being amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. It's actually an intermediate between fish and amphibians, which is cool because it actually shows a class-ordered transitional form, rather than the more mundane and exceedingly common species-to species "transitional forms".

Though technically, if you think about it, we're all transitional forms. "Transitional form" is a human way of looking at population change over time - as is "species".

Obviously, populations change over time, but there is no barrier to speciation - speciation is a human way of classifying organisms based on their inability to interbreed. That is all.

The next questioner asks Ray, in essence, if he would change his mind and stop believing in his god if a "missing link" or something showing that man and apes had a common ancestor. Comfort replies:

I'm going to have to use an "ATMAM" ... Analogy That Makes Atheists Mad. ... The question is similar to asking me, "If you discovered that your mother-in-law was a draught horse, would you stop believing your wife existed?" The analogy is applicable because I know that it's impossible for Sue's mother to be another species (it's against nature), and I could never deny the existence of my wife because I know her. ... A Christian is someone that "knows" God.

This analogy doesn't make me mad, but here is a better one: "If you discovered that your mother-in-law's ancestors once lived in Africa, would you stop believing that your spirit guide is Cleopatra?"

Yes, it is impossible for Sue's mother to be another species. Yes, it is against nature.  But it is true that Sue's mother's genetic lineage has changed over time, and has changed so much so that she could not have interbred with her ancestors at some point (obviously, I am tossing the temporal problem to the wind). Besides, people can and do believe in both God and evolution. So even if Comfort's mother-in-law changed into a draught horse, he has no reason to stop believing his wife exists - he only has to believe in metamorphosis. His mother-in-law turning into a draught horse does not lead to the conclusion that his wife does not exist, that's a total non-sequitur.

Saying that a Christian is someone who "knows" God tells me nothing - the very question of God's existence is what is under contention, and so simply saying, "I KNOW God" does not prove anything. If it did, then me saying, "A follower of Zeus is someone that "knows" Zeus." would be taken as proof that Zeus exist. But it doesn't work, does it? Why not? Because I haven't really even added anything to the conversation.

Comfort's wife is another story entirely. For one, I'm willing to accept that Comfort has a wife because:

1. It's not really that extraordinary that Comfort has a wife.
2. I can observe that he has a wife, and find independent observations of his wife.
3. I can create falsifiable hypotheses about Comfort's wife (I hypothesize that Comfort possesses a marriage certificate) and then perform a (repeatable) experiment to test said hypothesis.

Such things cannot be said about God. If Comfort contends that I should accept the existence of his God because he tells me he has experienced his God, then I must also accept the existence of any other entity that other people experience - aliens, ghosts, spirit guides, totem animals, past lives, unions with the universe while partaking in peyote, whatever. I do not doubt that Comfort and these other folks have had genuine experiences - I just doubt what these individuals attribute as the cause of these experiences.

I'll give another example - I have, I swear, experienced being "abducted by aliens". That's right - I woke up one night paralyzed, feeling a presence in the room. I saw short figures with big heads, and then I experiences flying through the universe -etc. I do not attribute this very real experience I had to me actually being abducted by aliens.

Feeling a sense of a higher power or union with the universe seems more likely to be related to the feelings we felt as an infant, before we had a sense that we were seperate beings from our surroundings, before we realized our parents weren't gods. I don't doubt that people feel a godlike presence or feel united with the universe - but I do doubt that this is due to a god causing that feeling or an actual union with the universe.

Should I?

So a bunch of random people have been telling me I should get a Facebook account. The straw that broke the camel's back was a reader, who e-mailed me and told me I should join.

I thought - FINE. I'll join the frickin' Facebook.

I do however, have a problem. In a way, I lead a double-life. I am a career woman and I live in a world in which I do not belong - a world in which "professional behaviors" can make or break you. I've managed to be fairly open about being a godless heathen, but Facebook is a potential way to connect people I know on a more professional level (professors, othr students) with my more.. shall we say... unprofessional activities - such as the presence of scantily-clad (read: mostly nude) photos of myself (granted, they are artistic) in my online photo album.

I want my bloggy friends to connect with me on Facebook, and I want my IRL friends and professionals to connect to me on Facebook. I'm not sure I want all of my bloggy friends to know my real name, and I'm not sure I want all of the people I know in real life to have access to my blog.

So what's a girl to do? Create two facebook profiles?

Pastor Fred Winters shot at First Church Maryville

*Flimsyman*

Earlier today I learned that Pastor Fred, the pastor of my former church (which Ziztur and I visited in this faith infiltration) was shot and killed today during his 8 AM service.

In the most recent news reports, it is stated that a gunmen walked up to the pulpit, and upon being greeted by Pastor Fred, he opened fire.  It seems that a few members of the congregation tackled the gunmen, one of them managing to stab the assailant with his own knife.  Current news says that Pastor Fred Winters was pronounced dead at the hospital, and that a few others are injured.

No word yet on the identity or possible motivation of the gunmen.  I'll be in touch with my family (who still attend this church) and will have more updates when more information is known. My mother and all of the other members of the congregation who were in the service at the time are being interviewed by police.

Our thoughts are with the family of Pastor Fred and the other injured people during the aftermath of this senseless tragedy.

Ray a day: 20

Today, instead of reading a question and answer from Comfort's book, we're going to look at a little insert box - an insert box so pathetic that you might just feel the need to run outside and harm various amounts of inanimate objects with your teeth.

The little gray insert box on page 18 of  You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions from Angry Skeptics Reads: "Man or Mouse?"

Have you ever wondered why scientists do research with mice? I thought about it recently when I heard Mr. Ronald Evans, PHD, from the 'Salk Institute for Biological Studies" say, "All of the genetic components are exactly the same in mice as in people." Wow. All the genetic components are there. This opens up a whole new realm for the imagination of the believer of the theory of evolution. Man may have evolved from the mouse, or should I say, had a common ancestor in the mouse.

For an evolutionist it really is just common sense when you think of the homologous structure of the mouse. Think of how the mouse uses its human-like hands in a human-like manner. Think of its human-like ears, human-like eyes, mouth and teeth (kind of).The mouse, as do humans, has a heart, brain, liver, kidneys, lungs, legs, feet, blood, veins, etc. Humans and mice both need male and female to survive. But more: "As fellow mammals, humans share many physiological, anatomical, and metabolic parallels with mice" (Nadeau and Taylor 1984).

So there you have it--a new theory for naive believers to blindly embrace . . . and why not? There are no rules and no bounds of the imagination when it comes to the theory tale of evolution.

There is one similarity I forgot to mention. Both the mouse and the human being are easily trapped and killed. One by the smell of cheese, one by the mere hint of sin.

 If one were to back far enough, everything would have a common ancestor. That's one of the basic tenants of evolution. So, in a way, Ray's right - Mice and humans had a common ancestor. But there is no "new theory" and no "imagination" involved. I'm having a hard time deciding to what level Comfort is being sarcastic. Does he already know that if you go far back enough (way before our apelike ancestors), humans and mice do have a common ancestor?

Of course there are "bounds" - said bounds are called evidence. What Comfort seems to be implying there is that Evolution is not based on sickening amounts of evidence but on some people's wild and imaginative idea.

There is no dispute that all mammals share a common genetic makeup and this is why animals like mice are used in labs. If we weren't genetically similar, then experiments on mice would not tell us anything at all - but we are, and so they do.

Though mice are used in reasearch, especially medical research, experiments on mice only tell us that certain medical tecniques or drugs might work on humans - mice and humans are twi very different species despite their similarities, and it is a fallacy to assume that what is safe and works for mice will be safe and work for humans - the results cannot really be extrapolated from one population (species) to the next. We can only hypothesize that if a certain drug or medical procedure works on mice, that it might also work on humans.

I also like that Comfort seems to imply that "humans and mice had a common ancestor" is just a more complicated-sounding way of saying that humans descended from mice. The two are very different things. A thought experiment:

Imagine, if you will, a family tree. At the root of the tree are your great, great, great grandparents. Imagine that you and your cousin are sitting are the bar having some drinks, and your date (whose name happens to be Jay Snuggly) says,

"Ancestry doesn't make any damn sense. There is no way you came from your cousin. That's a fairy tale"

 In response, you say,

"Right. Ancestry doesn't work that way. I didn't come from my cousin, but my cousin and I had a common ancestor"

 Your date Jay Snuggly says

"Ever wonder why you were able to get that liver transplant from your cousin? All of your genetic componants are the same. So here's a new theory - you evolved from your cousin. There you have it. Evolution is a fairy tale"

 For some reason, you can't seem to get Jay to understand that you did not evolve from your cousin, but that you and your cousin had a common ancestor.  Eventually you figure out that he does not understand, or he is deliberately creating a strawman version of ancestry so he can easily tell you how dumb it is. You order five more martinis and go home with alcohol poisoning, but figure that's better than arguing with your date.

On being a Teacher's Assistant

This semester I am a TA (teaching assistant) for the assistive technology class at my graduate school.

The other day I and several other TA's, lab instructors and professors gave a practical checkout - first year grad students had to show off what they had learned over the semester about assistive tech', including what kinds of cushions are out there, positive and negative attributes of said cushions, what kind of driving systems are available for people with mobility limitations, how to do a seating evaluation (which included measuring someone for a wheelchair) and my station: how to take apart a manual chair to fit it in a trunk, what kinds of things to consider when getting a wheelchair for a person, and how to teach them how to push the wheelchair.

The first year class has over 65 students, so I had to repeat the same four questions over sixty-five times.

Dude. Having to repeat the same four question that many times really makes someone kinda loopy. After 8 hours of doing it, I wanted to cartwheel down the hallways. The first question was this: "what kind of frame does this manual wheelchair have" and the answer was that it is a folding frame chair. Thankfully I only said, "What kind of frame does this folding wheelchair have" one time, and the student just laughed (deservedly) at me.

The second question was really more of a command: the student had to take the chair apart as if they were planning on storing it in a car. They had to remove the footrests, rear wheels and then fold it in half. I was surprised: nearly everyone remembered how to take the wheels off (they were quick-release) and most people took the footrests off. People had the most trouble folding the chair in half, and would grab all manner of bits of the chair looking for a way to fold it - it was both amusing and awkward to watch people flounder around.

The third questions asked people what things they'd have to consider when giving a  manual wheelchair to a client for the first time and the last question asked them to teach me how to propel a wheelchair. Those two went pretty well, but I could really tell when people were blanking on me, turning red-faced and stammering, "um.. um... cushion? er... power chair?"

Also, on the last written test, a student wrote that a benefit of a two door car was that you could store the wheelchair on the hood...

???

Being on this side of the test is definitely an interesting perspective.

Ray a Day: 21

"You can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions From Angry Skeptics"

You all know the score.

First a rather stupid non-question from another angry skeptic.  This person asserts that evolution did occur (true).  They assert that species have changed - dramatically - over time (true).  They say that no faith is involved in accepting the reality of this process (true).  They tell Comfort to just move on (he really should).  The line that makes no sense is this:  "No one is ever, ever going to go back to the idea that species were created fully developed at a specific point in time.  NEVER."

If the line had been, "It is overwhelmingly likely that no competent biologist will ever go back to . . ." then there would be no problem.  But . . . um . . . sir, you realize that literally millions of people will read this book and think that it deals a crushing blow to evolution theory and atheism, right?  People absolutely do believe in these irrational ideas.  I find it entertaining that this person is the first genuinely "angry skeptic" featured in the book . . . and this person's anger makes them somewhat less than rational.

It's not entirely relevant though, because Comfort's reply makes the skeptic's illogic look highly rational by comparison.  Here we have such gems as, "You don't know how life began; you simply believe that what you have been told happened actually did happen.  Like it or not, you are a "believer" in the theory of evolution."

And this, "If you have faith in ever-changing science, you can't "know" anything for certain."

Etc.  He goes on to repeat the misconception that he stated earlier in the book that because science adapts to new knowledge and evidence, it is not trustworthy, while God and the Bible are, because they never change.  We've already dealt with this incredibly simple-minded notion, so I'll just point out that Comfort tries to claim that one must have "faith" to accept a scientific assertion.  To make the claim that Comfort does, he does violence to the definition of "faith."  It is possible to use faith in a sense of general knowledge (he knew that once he changed the oil and replace the sparkplugs his car would faithfully run), but in this context, faith is obviously meant to mean loyalty to a god or gods, the doctrines of a religion, or complete loyalty to and belief in any other assertion for which there is no proof.  To claim otherwise, as Comfort does, is to do such violence to the meaning of the word "faith" as to render the term far less meaningful.

The next question is quite simple; "Could an evolutionist give you any evidence that would make you believe in it?"

Comfort's response?  Ladies and Gentlemen, I shit you not . . .  "Could I give you any evidence that would make you believe in fairies or that the sun is made of ice?"

Yes, Ray, yes you could.  If there actually did exist fairies (or if the sun were made of ice) then all the power of modern technological observation and the scientific method would provide overwhelming evidence of these facts.  We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that these assertions are false because there is no evidence for them whatsoever.

A more honest response would have perhaps been "Well, is there any evidence that you would accept as falsifying evolution theory?"  The answer, of course, is that there absolutely is, and every single even halfway competent biologist on the planet could tell you that.  It would take a staggering volume of evidence to completely falsify evolution, because we have such a downright stupid amount of evidence in support of it.  However, we can give the budding creationist researcher a few jumping-off points, at least.  So, what sort of evidence would falsify evolution theory?

1.  An organism with a completely different chemical foundation.  Note that an organism which evolved in a completely isolated environment, like an organism discovered on another planet, could exist without violating the theory of evolution.

2.  A complex organ which had no simpler ancestors.  Such a feature, being very complex, useful, and with no ancestral features in any form would, if not falsify evolution, then at the very least demand very heavy revision of the theory.  Creationists have tried to find countless such organs and features, and all attempts have failed (they are now forced to use features smaller and simpler than a single cell - bacterial flagellum ring any bells?).  Of course, in reality, such necessary intermediate features can be seen painfully obviously, and just as painfully often, in organisms still living today.  Think of the "primitive" sexual reproduction system of earthworms, or the "primitive" eyes of starfish.

3.  A person's pet snake giving birth to a human fetus.  Creationists are fond of saying that they'll believe in evolution when a monkey gives birth to a human, or when a dog gives birth to a cat.  Ziztur and I are fond of pointing out that they would be complete idiots, because almost more than any other event, this would falsify evolution theory.  If an organism somehow came into existence that had no genetically related parent organism (for example, a pile of dust begins to breathe and sit up in the exact form of a human man), then evolution would have to be heavily revised or discarded altogether.

So creationists, hop to it.  Find us an organism with no evolutionary ancestor . . .

*End of evolutionary theory rant*

Comfort then goes through a number of terrifyingly irrational statements.  Next, he claims that being a Christian means that he "knows" God (later, he compares his "knowing" God to "knowing" his wife).  I would ask him, "Why the hell can't you demonstrate the existence of this thing that you 'know' simply and obviously?"  Let's put this in it's proper context:  There are people who believe in ghosts and UFO abductions.  A great many people would say without hesitation that they "know" they have seen a ghost, or have been abducted by aliens.  People of other religions "know" their own gods and messiah figures in the exact same way that Comfort believes that he "knows" his God.  Does any of this prove the existence of these things?  No?  Okay then.  Let's forget this unverifiable bunk about personal experience and stick with observable, repeatable phenomena, shall we?

He then says that "He created man in His own image, morally cognizant, and as male and female."  He says that the theory of evolution flatly contradicts this.  This assertion is not insulting to atheists, but is quite condescending to the great many intelligent Christians (Ziztur and I know some of them personally) who know that the Genesis creation story is obviously just that, a story, a metaphor.  There is no intrinsic impossibility in the idea of God "creating man in his own image, morally cognizant, and as male and female" and doing so by an evolutionary process.  Is Comfort really going to insist that God is incapable of creating humanity via evolution?

His next assertion:  "I've been looking into the issue for more than thirty years, and I have never seen a hint of genuine evidence of species-to-species transitional forms in the fossil record."  I'm sorry, Ray, but . . .EPIC FAIL.

Comfort goes on to say that we should just accept that evolution did not occur, and, "That is upsetting for its true believers, because it leaves only one alternative - that God created mankind as male and female and that you and I are morally responsible to Him."  This is a textbook example of a false dichotomy fallacy.  There are other options that Comfort fails to even consider; one can only presume that he does not look at other possibilities because this obvious fact spoils his theories about we atheists only accept evolution because we are terrified of moral consequences to our actions.

*Sigh*  Okay, that's enough for one day.  Next time folks, same godless time, same godless channel.

More book reviews coming soon!

Today I received in the mail a review copy of two books: "Secularism: The Hidden Origins of Disbelief" and "Postsecularism: The Hidden Challenge to Extremism" both by Mike King. To give you an idea about what these books are about, I shall quote the back cover of "Secularism" here:

Secularism: Spirituality is a difficult subject in the modern world. Everywhere, from popular media to university, from bookshelf to dinner table, religions are derided or marginalized; public figures, such as Richard Dawkins, set upon anyone who admits to belief in God. The secular mind has been shaped by the Enlightenment legacy of Marx, Darwin and Freud, where disbelief has arisen from the twin impact of the rise of scientific rationalism and the revulsion against religious cruelty.

 In Secularism, Mike King argues that the Englightenment thinkers who initiated these arguments intended to improve, not to eradicate religion. Instead, a hidden factor is shown as the key to the origins of Western disbelief: the rise of a non-devotional spiritual impulse, best understood in Eastern terms. Its failure to be accepted, either by mainstream religion or the secular world, encouraged the expression of atheism. An uneasy detente developed between secular culture and faith tradition, which coexisted in a "mutual ignorance pact" until the rude awakening of 9/11.

King ... [is] providing a perspective that readers are unlikely to have encountered before. A compelling case is made that the current antagonism between religion and science has no basis: the "God" put forward on one side is too narrow a historical conception, and the science put forward on the other side is too limited to account for the variety of spiritual impulse.

This is the back cover of "Postsecularism":

The detente or 'mutual ignorance pact' between secular culture and religious faith that characterized most of the twentieth century has been shattered in the early twenty-first. From the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the American christian Right to the fiercely anti-religious writings of staunch atheists such as Richard Dawkins, arguments over the role that religion and spirituality should play in our lives - public and private - have never been more hotly debated. One extremism is pitted against another, but a new voice of moderation, a hidden challenge to both extremisms, is now emerging.

... [O]ut of the conflict between socially dominant secular thinkers and the embattled 'new defenders of faith' a third approach arises which is neither a return to pre-Enlightenment beliefs nor a continued hegemony of the secular ... the postsecular. [It] provides a framework within which to move beyond religious and atheist extremism. ... What emerges is a thoughtful and persuasive discussion of the route to reconciliation between the combative worlds of the religious and the secular.

It will be very interesting reading these two book, considering Flimsy and I are two of the so called extremist atheists the author will be writing about. I probably will not go into nearly as much detail as Flimsy and I are doing with Comfort's book, mostly because we're using Comfort's book as a springboard for discussion on atheism and argumentation. Also, I need to have a life outside of this blog.

 

I'd also really like to know why these books carry such a hefty pricetag. Each book is an average-sized nonfiction paperback yet is priced at $52.50 each. It seems a bit out of most people's price range for a book.

Ray a day: 19.1

I think this is the longest post we have ever written. Good luck!

Wow, we're already on our nineteenth post using Ray Comfort's newest book as a springboard to discuss all manner of things including atheism, cosmology, argumentation, fallacies, evolution, biology, science, research, ethics, etc. Believe it or not: we're only on page 20 of the book. We've got 113 left to go (it's not a big book). Here's one we haven't discussed yet: Racism. An "angry skeptic" asks Ray what Darwin's stance on racism is, and answers his own question by saying that Darwin was against racism. Ray responds by quoting Darwin:

At some future period not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time anthropomorphous apes ... will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest Allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as the baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla

 After this quote Comfort goes on to say that Darwin was a racist bigot and that "his hooded believers" will give a fiery defense of these "evil racist beliefs". He also makes another jab at people who are atheist, saying essentially that behaviors like "rape and pedophilia" are "to be expected from those who deny that there is good and evil".

Once again I have to point out that claiming (not outright, but rather somewhat indirectly) that atheists are "to be expected" to commit terrible crimes such as rape and pedophilia betrays Comfort's bigoted atheophobic hatred for people who don't believe in his god. I find it frankly disgusting that a publisher was willing to publish something like this - it serves to alienate people and create or reinforce horrifying, disturbing stereotypes. In case no one has figured it out yet, I'll type it loud and clear:

THIS IS WHY I CARE ABOUT RELIGION.

It's rather ironic that this question is about racism. Comfort clearly thinks that racism is evil, and it is. It is evil to say that black people are rapists, and it is equally evil to say that atheists are rapists. Ray is committing essentially the same crime that he claims Darwin is committing, only Ray's hatred toward atheists makes Darwin's "racism" look like a candle to the sun. Comfort is just as bad as people who claim black people are to be expected to rape and be pedophiles. It is irony of the order that makes me want to cry.

Which brings me to my next point. To understand Darwin's views on race, one has to understand them in the context of the time in which he lived - the original "angry skeptic" is absolutely correct.

Evolutionary theory actually served to quell racist views in the time in which it was published. His theory  refuted theological beliefs of his time that were fundamentally racist - namely that white people and black people were a different "kind". To see Darwin as a racist is to misunderstand the history of racism, antisemitism, and other atrocities committed by western civilization, often due to Christian theology and pulpit-preaching.  Before evolution was accepted by mainstream science (and please, don't kid yourself - it has been accepted by mainstream science), education on the nature of biology was primarily theological.

The idea of the Aryan race was popularized by Arthur de Gobineau, who wrote "An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races". There was absurd (read: copious amounts of) theological support for slavery and white supremacy and the moral defense of slavery was almost exclusively based on scripture and supported by those on the pulpit. Abolitionists of slavery, including our friend Abraham Lincoln, argued that whites should take care of the inferior darker-skinned races instead of exploiting them due to their inferiority, much like the modern-day P.E.T.A.. 

Prior to Darwin, the primary (theologically based) view was that people of different races were actually people of different species. It was widely believed that interracial couples were engaging in species-to-species copulation, and that the degeneration of society was due to this interbreeding. People were taught that among these "species" of people, African-Americans and Native Americans were inferior to Europeans biologically.

Furthermore, it was believed that these races were created in this way by God, and that God both intended them to be separate and that the darker skin of the "inferior" species was due to the more sinful nature of said species. It was widely believed that darker skin was God's punishment, like a whole-body scarlet letter. These were views taught in Sunday School and in universities, and preached during church services by pastors and priests. People were enslaved because they were viewed as an inferior species to people of European descent, and thus treated like property - like dogs or cattle.

In Darwin's time, "savages" and "civilization" were hot-button issues, with people believing that the European and US way of living was more civilized, and that tribal peoples (including Native Americans) were "savage". This terminology was used in a way that is just as commonplace and P.C. as our usage of "industrialized" and "indigenous" are now. Darwin differed from his contemporaries by remarking that "savages" were really quite nice and intellectually capable.

In fact, the original opposition to Origin of Species was not that it was racist or hateful, but that it suggested that all people had a savage origin - including white Europeans. Darwin argued in the face of people who insisted that Europeans and people of darker skin were of differing species, and instead argued that we are all the same and that we all have a common ancestor. He contended that culture and biology are two different things, that all of the races blend together, and that there are no clear distinctions - we're all the same species, we're all Homo Sapiens. He suggested that differences in apparent behavior or morals were not due to one race being inferior, but due to environmental press. He was horrified by slavery and the mistreatment of people, and was a strict abolitionist.

Claiming that Darwin was a racist or claiming that Darwin inspired the holocaust (Ray at least admits that he is aware of Hitler's religious reasons for Nazism, but of course blames it on the Catholic Church which he claims is somehow not true Christianity) not only serves to perpetuate the myth that evolution causes evil, it also attempts to absolve Christianity of its undeniable ties to the Nazi Regime (and racism.. and slavery...). Hitler believed in Evolution and creationism. He believed that the Aryan race was created by God, but that the "inferior" races descended from apes.

To be succinct - "Darwinism" was not the problem.

We're not done yet, but you clearly need a break. Here's a comic, courtesy of our bestest buddy, Saint Gasoline.

We're back from our quick comicbreak, and now it's time for Flimsy!

This is a common approach for Ziztur and I to take; she has significant education in science and history, and I know the Bible.  Guess where I'm going with this one?

So, seeing as how Charles Darwin was actually not much of a racist at all, the next obvious question to ask is whether there is any racism deeply embedded in the worldview that Comfort claims.  At the very least, the  Holy Bible itself couldn't possibly be racist in any way, right?

Leviticus 25:44-46:  Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves.  You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property.  You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.

Genesis 28:1:  So Isaac called for Jacob and blessed him and commanded him: "Do not marry a Canaanite woman.

Deuteronomy 7:2-3:  And when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally.  Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.  Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons.

 Plus, like, lots and lots of other verses commanding genocide, which I'm leaving out simply for the sake of practicality.  But what about Jesus himself?  Jesus Christ wasn't racist, was he?

Matthew 15:22-28:  A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession."

Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us."

He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel."

The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said.

He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."

"Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."

Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour.

I think, at this point, we're just beating a dead horse.  To wrap this up:

1.  Darwin was not very racist at all.  If he were born and raised in our modern culture, he almost certainly would not have been racist at all.  While it is true that he might be considered mildly racist if he had been born and raised in today's modern culture, the exact same is true, to an equal or greater extent, of Jesus Christ himself.

2.  No biologist looks to Charles Darwin to dictate their personal morals.  An attempt to tar those who accept evolution theory as immoral based on a claimed immoral opinion of Darwin is doomed to painfully miserable failure.  On the other hand, fundamentalist Christians do look to the Bible to give them their morality.  Neither I nor Ziztur nor any other atheist I know claim that all Christians are immoral based on their adherence to the Bible, but this argument is, if anything, more valid than applying this logic to Darwin.

3.  An immoral opinion held by a person does not invalidate their opinion on something else (like a scientific assertion).  If Charles Darwin was in fact completely racist, utterly sexist, and had an extraordinary fondness for kissing babies with a little bit of tongue, it would make him a terrible person.  And evolution would still be scientific fact.

4.  Words cannot describe how surreal it is to read Comfort describe how such bigotry leaves a blatant moral scar on the character of Charles Darwin, while in the same breath trying to explain with a straight face how those who accept evolutionary theory can be expected to commit rape and pedophilia.

Photography: Gas station

As Flimsy, DelRoady and I were driving around looking for abandoned places to visit, we spotted this gas station with the old "Twin Oaks Gas" sign hanging off of it's pole as though it were pointing at the truck lot across the street.

This poor sign is literally hanging by a thread, and the gas station building is not much better. What really interests me is that there is absolutely no sign of former pumps - it looks like they were all taken up, holes filled, and then the whole thing covered with gravel.

All that's left is basically this shack of a gas station, which at one point featured a garage for auto repair. The whole mess is situated right before the Illinois side of the Chain of Rocks Bridge, which is known as the site of the murder of two young women in 1991.

We entered the gas station through an open door in the back and discovered that there was an uncovered pit remaining - once used to work on cars from below without a lift. Flimsy climbed in...

Undead zombie mechanic rises from the pit! (!!!)

You can see all of the pictures here. You'll also find by clicking the link, access to the rest of my published photography.

NOTICE: book review takedown

I reviewed Ray Comfort's book, "You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions from Angry Skeptics" in good faith on Amazon.com.  My review was repeatedly voted as the most helpful review, with over 600 votes.

Apparently Comfort does not like honest reviews of his book, and he had all of the reviews, including mine, deleted. At least, that's what the grapevine says. Personally, I don't have any proof as to who caused the review takedown, but Amazon doesn't usually remove reviews unless someone complains about them.

Thankfully I saved a copy of my review and have reposted it. People should not be silenced due to their thoughtful critiques of a book they have read. I am very disappointed. Deleting everyone's reviews because you dislike the way your book has been received is dishonest, plain and simple.

Thanks to reader Eternal Critic for alerting me that my review along with everyon else's review had been silenced.

Ray a Day: 19

More from the wonderfully entertaining "You can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions From Angry Skeptics".

Two quick questions today.  The first is from someone reminiscing about their days in a women's dorm in college.  The girls would all sit around discussing important issues while brushing each other's hair.  The questioner then comments on how anyone could miss the obvious similarities between the social behaviors of humans like us and that of apes.

Comfort replies that we do indeed have much in common with apes, but that we also have much in common with pigs and dogs.  He even mentions that we share behavioral patterns with these animals.  Of course, he then does not bother addressing the obvious thrust of the question at all, instead simply stating, "So, were our ancestors apes, pigs, or dogs?  That's up to you and your imagination, if you believe in evolution."

No, it's not.  Evolution theory clearly explains how and why we are much more closely related to apes than pigs or dogs, and that none were our ancestors (we have common ancestors with these modern day animals - just how ignorant of evolution theory is Comfort?), and also explains that, at different points, we are in fact related to all these organisms.  To assert otherwise, to falsify evolution theory, would require a truly staggering volume of research.  Comfort doesn't even try.

The next question is, seemingly, quite pointless.  I find myself wondering what the point of it was.   This person asks Comfort to name a single feature of homo sapiens that is unique among other animals.  What's entertaining is that whereas just about anyone else I know could have given a valid answer to this, Comfort struggles.  His answer?  Atheism.

From Merriam-Webster:  : a disbelief in the existence of deity.  This is a standard definition.  Of course, the interesting point is that atheism is, so far as we can tell, universal among non-human animals.  If it is possible for a non-human animal to believe in something like a god, we have not discovered it. The closest thing to theism among animals we're aware of is elephants, which appear to mourn the death of other elephants.



Comfort goes on to say that humans are also unique in our ability to not be atheists; to recognize the existence of the creator.  This is, perhaps, an example of a specific behavior that is unique to humans.  However, it is clearly possible that religion is a deviation of the tendency of social animals to accept their parents teachings, which is not unique to humans. The elephant example above is a good example of the possibility that animals have some kind of spirituality.

Homeopet: Not organic or FDA approved.

Some of you regular readers from way back when I first started this blog might remember that I was perusing the website where I order some of the food for my dog and came across a collection of products by a company called Homeopet, which claimed (at that time) that their products were the only homeopathic veterinary remedies approved by the FDA, and that their ingredients were all organic. I wrote a blog post about it here, basically explaining how goofy I thought it was to sell $15 bottles of half an ounce of water with a little alcohol in it as a remedy for things like leaky dog bladders, anxiety, and flea bite itch.

Knowing that NO homeopathic remedies are approved by the FDA at all, I decided to report them.

Weeks later, I received an e-mail from the FDA, informing me that NO, of course Homeopet was not approved by the FDA and further, they were upset at the way Homeopet's supposed approval was being portrayed on their website and product packaging. You can see their letter to me here.

Of course, Homeopet was made to remove all claims that they had FDA approval. However they still had claims that their products were "organic".

Did you now that in order to label your product as organic, it has to be certified organic by the USDA? It really bugged me that this company was labeling their products as organic when it did not appear that they had approval to do so, and I didn't see any indication that their products were certified, so I e-mailed the UDA and asked them if Homeopet had organic certification.

It's been several months, but I swung by Homeopet's website today and noticed that all references to their products being organic have disappeared and instead have been replaced by the much more vague "natural".

It's not that I actually cared whether or not Homeopet's products were organic as I am not convinced organic products are better than their not-organic counterparts - I just know that organically labeled things often come with a higher price-tag. It's absurd to sell water and alcohol in a 1/2 oz bottle for $15 to people, masquerading your product as something effective when it's not anymore effective than a placebo, even if it is just for pets.

I'd also like to point out that yes, one person can make a difference toward thwarting bad business practices, though my contribution may be but a drop in the bucket, at least my contributions don't violate Avogadro's number. There are molecules of change actually present in the sea of homeopathy.

The absolute worst thing about this company is a product they have called Wrm Clear. It supposedly prevents worm infestations and is "formulated for removal of" different types of worms that could KILL YOUR PETS IF NOT TREATED BY EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICATION. Not cool. Not cool at all. If your pet has worms, please take them to a veterinarian before using "natural" or "alternative" medicine's. Your pet's life may depend on it.

Ray a Day: 18

As we continue our thorough review of Comfort's new book, we finally come across a few questions that are repetitions of old questions:A questioner asks ray what the point is of his constant criticism of science, and rather than answer the question, he says that we live in a world where bad stuff happens -abortions, murder, rape, lying, stealing, smoking cigarettes, drinking, priests molesting children, believing we're related to primates (yes, believing we're related to primates is apparently just as bad as molesting children. who knew?) and that it really doesn't have anything to do with science or creationism.

Wait ... did I read that correctly?

The Bible reveals the root cause of all this mess. The issue has nothing to do with science or even creationism, really. the issue is a corruption that the Bible calls "sin." The essence of sin is rebellion against our creator.

Fine. the essence of sin is rebellion against our creator. What creator? Moving on...
(Oh look, I found Ray's car!)

 The next question is about the Big Bang, and Comfort goes on to insist that there had to be a first cause.  I've been over this before but I'll touch on this briefly - even though most things have to have a cause, certain things such as radioactive decay suggest there might be exceptions. Because by definition a cause has to come before an event (the effect), time has to be a working variable. Since time appears to have begun with the universe, it is actually logically impossible for the universe to have a cause.

The next "angry skeptic" asserts that we are animals, and that if comfort denies that we are, he needs to take a basic science course.

Comfort responds by saying

This reveals why believers in the theory of evolution have the convictions of religious zealots ... If evolution is true, then man is simply an animal. That means he is free to embark on his sexual prowls, because it is nothing but a basic instinct to do so. It's his procreative nature to fornicate, and therefore not a sin. For the atheist, this is a hill to die on ... Evolution swings open a door to do whatever the evolutionist pleases, as long as what he does is within the bounds of civil law he is ever expanding to accommodate his sinful desires.

If man is an animal, he can even justify homosexuality and bestiality because "other" animals do it. To him, evolution is a license to act like an animal, and he does.

The dictionary says that an animal is "any such living thin other than a human being" ... we are aware of our existence ... we are aware that we are going to die ... trust Jesus. 

 Let's work backward here. The above is a great example of quoting from some source without citing the source. Which dictionary did Comfort quote from? We have no idea, because he did not bother to cite his quote. I'd also like to point out that he cites very little sources for his "evidence", aside from when he cites himself or quote-mines a few scant people such as Stephen Hawking.


I perused the interwebs for several different dictionaries for the word "animal' and universally the first definition was a scientific one such as this one:

1. any of a kingdom (Animalia) of living things including many-celled organisms and often many of the single-celled ones (as protozoans) that typically differ from plants in having cells without cellulose walls, in lacking chlorophyll and the capacity for photosynthesis, in requiring more complex food materials (as proteins), in being organized to a greater degree of complexity, and in having the capacity for spontaneous movement and rapid motor responses to stimulation

The second definition was usually something like this:

2. one of the lower animals as distinguished from human being

 So yes, Comfort was right that some un-cited dictionary probably defined "animal" in the way he did, but it was likely the second definitions. On top of this, dictionaries are meant to be a source of the descriptions of the common usages of words. Yes, we are more than aware that people often refer to "animals" specifically to mean a nonhuman living thing. This proves nothing other than the fact that some people use the word animal in that way. It does not mean that Comfort has proven that humans are not animals, only that "animal" is commonly used to mean a nonhuman animal. Wow, does it annoy me when people use dictionary definitions to try to prove things like this.

I am not aware of any people who justify their homosexuality by claiming that animals do it, except when attempting to refute the argument that homosexuality is wrong because it is "not natural". Homosexuality is natural, so this claim is false. Even if homosexuality were not found in the kingdom of non-human animals, this would not make it wrong - nonhuman animals don't drive cars, either. This does not mean that the naturalness of homosexuality is a justification for homosexuality, it merely means that the naturalistic fallacy is.. well... er.. a fallacy.  It's a fallacy to say "it's natural, therefore it's right" and it's also a fallacy to say, "it's not natural, therefore it's wrong".

When Comfort implies that atheists might be willing to justify bestiality, he is promoting hatred and bigotry - imagine if he said the same thing about African-Americans, and you might see why (in case you don't see just how bigoted this is). Comfort clearly has a case of atheophobia, and is encouraging others to develop the same fear.

I am not sure why the individual telling Comfort that we are animals "reveals why believers in the theory of evolution have the convictions of religious zealots". Anyone want to clue me in on this one?

Comfort is incorrect to say that if evolution is true, then we're just animals. If BIOLOGY is true, then we're just animals. Honestly, Christianity, Islam, and other Abrahamic religions are just about the only ones who consider humans some kind of special transcendent being set apart from the animal kingdom. Baically all other religions think that humans are animals, and some even believe that a human can die and be born again as an animal or plant, and vice-versa.  "Animal" is a scientific term for the kingdom of creatures that are not plants, require complex foods, are complex, and are capable of spontaneous movement and motor responses to stimulation. It's obvious that we are different from other specie of animal, in more than one way. But all species of animal are different from different species.

Evolution does not swing open any door for the "evolutionist" do to whatever he pleases. Evolution explains a mechanism. It is a description of our observations of nature.  Further, "behaving like animals" is meaningless because animals behave in many different ways. If evolution teaches us anything about human behavior, it teaches that humans behave like humans.

Any of these silly arguments that Evolution encourages bad behavior can be applied to God just as easily:  [begin arguing like a creationist] If God created us to be so incredibly similar to animals, and if God gave us the ability to procreate and made sex feel so good, then God must be teaching us to behave "like animals".  After all, God made it okay for animals to behave like animals, and even teaches that we are all terrible sinners in the eyes of God but can be forgiven if we repent and trust Jesus. Christianity opens the doors to all sorts of immoral behavior by teaching that everyone does it and everyone is guilty of it. As long as he repents really hard and trusts Jesus, Jesus will accommodate his sinful desires.  [end arguing like a creationist]

Evolution explains observations: namely that life appeared on earth 2+ billion years ago, that life forms change and diversify, that all species are related via common descent, and that natural selection is one of the causes of change in living things. It makes no moral judgments nor carries with it any more moral weight than the theory of gravity or germ theory.  Saying that evolution causes people to behave immorally is like saying germ theory causes people to behave immorally because germs cause people to get sick by piggybacking on other organisms and therefore swings open the door for "pathogenicists" (I just made that word up) to take advantage of other people in any way they can.

 Okay, I've written WAY too much for this post. I hope you enjoyed it.

The Amaz!ing meeting 7

Flimsy and I really, really, desperately want to go to TAM7, a conference organized by the JREF to promote skepticism and critical thinking.

TAM7 will be July 9-12, and will feature lectures and workshops by all of my favorite skeptics and atheists, including James Randi, Michael Shermer, Penn & Teller, etc. It's a dream come true for a geekskepticatheist girl like me.

I'm not really sure we can afford to go, which is a crappy reason to not attend. We're applying for a scholarship to pay for the conference fee (scholarships are donated) so hopefully that will help us out. Sometimes it sucks being a poor grad student!

I've also added a donate button to my site, in the event that you feel really generous and want to help us get to TAM7 - it's over there on the left sidebar, but if you get RSS feed you'll have to go to the main site to see it as most of the sidebar stuff does not show up in the individual posts. While I'm thinking about it, does anyone know how to fix that?

Is anyone else planning to attend TAM7? If you are, I totally want to meet you!

Ray a day: lost post 16

This is a rewrite of my lost Ray a day 16, which has forever disappeared into the interwebs.

Today, Comfort's "Angry Skeptic" asks Ray how old he thinks the earth is. Ray responds that he's not sure, but that "science can't make up its mind either" - they keep revising the age of the earth as new evidence arises. Comfort says that if scientists decide the earth is some different age than they already think it is, then the "faithful will believe". Obviously, he is implying that science is untrustworthy because scientists revise theories and that belief systems that do not change (specifically, his) are more trustworthy. he is also implying that "science" is one unified unit, and I should not have to point out that it's not, and neither is religion or Christianity, for that matter

What Comfort is basically saying is something like this: other groups of people change their ideas, theories and facts about how the universe works based on evidence, observation, experimentation, and rational thinking. We Christians don't change our minds, ever. We don't care about evidence. We made up our minds, we're sticking to it, and we know we're right regardless of anything else.

So you see, claiming that it's bad to change your mind in light of new evidence is saying that the truth value of your belief is independent of objective evidence.

Let's imagine for a moment that the body of people who use observation, experimentation, and rational thinking to arrive at truths about the universe (scientists) suddenly one day decided that their theories were no longer open to new evidence. Lets say that in the year 35 A.D., science shut the door on new evidence and decided that what they had decided up until that point was true, and anyone who observed differently and chose to change was seen as being weak and untrustworthy because they chose to change in light of new evidence. Where would we be?

Medical science would still believe that good health was due to the balance of the four humours (blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm) and that sicknesses were caused by demonic possession.
Cosmologists would still believe the earth was the center of the universe.
Biologists would still believe that creatures were arranged in a graded scale of perfection rising from plants on up to humans: the scala naturae or Great Chain of Being.
Astrology would still be a viable means of divining the future.

 Now, do you trust the people who change their minds in light of new evidence, or the people whose ideas never change? People who refuse to change in light of new evidence are far less trustworthy beacons of truth than those who assemble evidence and make conclusions based on that. I'm going to stick with people who are aware of the power of revision, thanks.

Since Comfort has apparently decided he is some kind of spokesperson for Christianity, do you (by you, I am addressing Christians) want him writing books that claim Christians think like this?

The fact of the matter is that scientists change their minds. This is what makes science powerful, a force of good and a way to get closer to the truth.  The reason scientific findings change is because they get corrected.

Eros: too gross for most

(This blog post contains potentially icky sexual information, you have been warned!)

The other day Flimsy and I came home. He was starving, so he set about to heat a can of soup up on the stove. I don't really know why he prefers the stove to the microwave, but he does. As he stood leaning against the sink eating his soup directly from the saucepan, I asked:

"Hey, I want to take a bath. Sex first, or bath first?"

He looked at me, stuck another spoonful of soup in his mouth, and said,

"Sex."

 At the time, I was sitting on the floor in front of him, looking up. I'm one of those people who tends to actually act on odd ideas (seriously, ask anyone who knows me), and right then,  I had an idea.

I undid his pants and started kissing his hip bones right there as he grabbed another mouthful of soup. He looked down at me, raised one eyebrow, put the spoon in the saucepan, and grabbed my hair.

...

...

Five minutes later I reached up, pulled the saucepan down to me, and spit out a mouthful of cum in his soup.

He looked at it and said...

"Of course you'd do that."

 ...and then kept right on eating.

Ray a Day: 17

*Flimsyman


"You can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions From Angry Skeptics"

The fun continues:

Today, we have a very simple question with an even simpler answer from Comfort.  Today's skeptic asks why science seemingly should not be allowed to make absolute statements about how the world works, but Comfort is perfectly logical to make absolute statements about God and the Bible.  Comfort replies that science itself claims that it does not have all the answers (which is true).  He says that science is "forever discovering more knowledge and therefore changing its beliefs."  This is where Comfort gets it wrong; while it is true that science is, by definition, open to revising existing knowledge based on new evidence, science absolutely does NOT have "beliefs."  This is exactly what differentiates science from religion.

Furthermore, Comfort goes on to state (of course) that he can make absolute claims about reality because there is one person who does have all the answers . . . God!

*Sigh*  There is a whole array of issues that this tired argument can be applied to.  Many, many theists would never attempt this argument, but many do.  Some will say that one cannot chose how one will vote based on logic and observation.   Many religious persons will leap so far ahead that they literally insist that morality itself cannot be based on logic and observation.  And here we have Comfort saying that the knowledge acquired by the scientific method, based on logic and observation, cannot be trusted.

How does somebody come to this conclusion?  One cannot simply say that one has the holy book of the Ultimate Truth Person, and thus is always right, yet our human logic and observation are incapable of determining truth.  For the purposes of this rebuttal, I'll simply label the two opposing viewpoints 'theist' and 'atheist' (although this obviously will not always be the case, though it won't be uncommon).

1.  The theist is just as fallible as the atheist.  If you say that the mental limitations of the atheist forbid him from determining reality, then the theist's mind is every bit as limited.

2.  The theist accepts logic and observation from our feeble human minds in every other aspect of his or her life.  If a theist went to a car salesman and looked at a vehicle that was advertised as being welded together at random with no actual engineering designs or training used at all, then prayed over to ensure it's safety, would the theist trust God, or his powers of observation to ensure that the vehicle is safe and runs properly?  Yes, one can possibly be mistaken by using logic and observation, but which is really more reliable?

3.  If God is indeed the God of the Holy Bible, then he has indeed changed his beliefs.  The laws of reality forbid any number of things that supposedly occured according to the Bible.  Why did God change his mind about these laws of physics?  Why did God change his mind about morality and ethics between the Old Testament and New?  According to the Bible, God HAS changed his 'beliefs' concerning reality.  So why should he be treated as less fallible than human knowledge?  Has the Bible really contributed more knowledge to mankind than science and logic?
 

Faith Infiltration: First Unitarian Church

Every Sunday, Flimsy and I attend church. Sometimes, we're just trying to see if we'll erupt in flames once we enter the sanctuary. Most of the time, we're there to see what other people believe, to see what draws them to church, and to hear what pastors have to say to their congregations.
This is our 18th church. That's right, we've actually been going to church for over four months. We don't have a specific goal in mind for how many we'd like to visit - we'd figure we would do it until we lost interest.

This week we attended the First Unitarian Church of St. Louis. This place looks like a church. It is a early 1900's church with a light stone face, a sanctuary with modest pews, and all the trappings of a typical Christian church, minus the Christianity.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Unitarianism, let me just tell you that this is one of the churches where we weren't afraid to tell the pastor we were atheists. Unitarians are not united by their dogma or docrine or specific beliefs - rather they encourage people to follow their own spiritual path.  Here, the pastor mentioned "non-theists" in a positive way - this is the first time we've heard something like this during a sermon.

The opening reading was not from a Bible or holy text, but from a by Chet Raymo's book:  Natural Prayers and was good enough that I feel it warrants repetition, in part, here:

The earliest prayer I can remember is "Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep". Head on pillow, tiny palms pressed together, parent sitting close at hand, I sleepily mumbled the words. "If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." The prayer was formulaic. It might as well have been a nursery rhyme or a string of made-up words like "abracadabra." It was in fact an incantation, a magical plea to the powers of the universe to guide me through the little sleep of night into the light of another day.

I was raised in a culture of petition, from an early age inculcated with a repertoire of formulaic prayers addressed to God, his angels, or his saints. All the prayers assumed a response: Here I am, Lord, deserving of your attention, favor, healing, forgiveness. Never did it pass my mind that my prayers were not heard. My education was hemmed about with a huge body of stories affirming God's intervention in human affairs. The evidence of efficacy was overwhelming. Or rather, the evidence for the efficacy of prayer appeared overwhelming to a mind predisposed to belief. Later, I trained as a scientist and also studied the history and philosophy of science. I learned something about controlled experiments, the statistical analysis of data, and the appropriate exercise of educated skepticism. Most importantly, I learned how belief can influence judgment even the judgment of scientists - and how scientists seek to minimize the role of belief in the evaluation of evidence.

In the light of my new scientific skepticism, the evidence for the successes of petitionary prayer became a thing of smoke and mirrors, a compilation of mere anecdote.

For many of us, the hole in our lives has been filled by a new story of the creation that does not require a God who interferes in the day-to-day unfolding of events: an evolutionary story that reaches inward to the ceaseless dance of the DNA and outward to the spiraling galaxies. It is a scientific story that places human life and consciousness squarely in a cosmic flow of complexifying energy. This new story is solidly grounded in the empirical method, but open to revision as we learn more.

So far, the majority of religious people have recoiled from the new scientific creation story, instead seeking security and comfort in Scriptures and traditions that derive from an older, more human-centered cosmology. In the older cosmology, an Olympian God mostly listens and responds individually to our prayers. In the new cosmology, God reveals himself in and through his creation, as law and chaos, light and darkness, creator and destroyer. He is, in the words of the Jesuit theologian David Toolan, "the Unnamable One/Ancient of Days of the mystics, of whom we can only speak negatively (not this, not that), a 'wholly other' hidden God of Glory." Or again, in the words of the Greek novelist Nikos Kazantzakis: "We might have given it any other name we wished: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence. But we have named it God because only this name, for primordial reasons, can stir our hearts profoundly. And this deeply felt emotion is indispensable if we are to touch, body with body, the dread essence beyond logic." The God of the new story does not take note of our childish cry: Here I am, Lord, deserving of your attention, favor, healing, forgiveness. Rather, he sweeps us along on the grand wings of his abiding plan and presence.

How are we to pray in such a universe, to such a God? Thomas Merton says, "The option of absolute despair is turned into perfect hope by the pure and humble supplication of monastic prayer." He defines monastic prayer as "a prayer of silence, simplicity, contemplative and meditative unity, a deep personal integration in an attentive, watchful listening of 'the heart.'" Learning to pray, then, as I understand it, is learning to listen with the mind and heart - making oneself attentive to what the poet Mary Oliver calls "the light at the center of every cell." It is a fearsome task, best suited to solitude and silence. Our prayers are not answered with miraculous gifts, tagged with our names or those of loved ones, but with beauty and terror. For the prayerful listener, the world becomes the sublime scripture, full of stories of structure and chaos, law and chance, complexification and decay, including the individual stories of the human persons in whom the universe becomes conscious of itself.

David Toolan writes: "We are here to make sacraments of nature - signs that give grace, life, hope - whether in raising a family, educating children, running a corporation, governing a city, searching for a synthesis of all physics, collecting garbage. All such activity takes nature's energy and transforms it, tries to pour soul into it, makes poetry of it, a thing of beauty. Liturgy is the big clue: here we regularly take fossil fuels, stone, metals, silicon, water, fire, grain, grape, animal stuffs, air waves, and sound - indeed, as much of space-time as we can sensuously lay our hands on - convert it into a gathering of voices, a ceremony of praise and thanksgiving."

Praise and thanksgiving: these are enduring motives for prayer. All of my life has been a re-learning to pray - a letting go of incantational magic, petition, and the vain repetition "me, Lord, me": instead watching attentively for "the light at the center of every cell," listening for the "dread essence beyond logic." It is a watching and a listening that is informed by science, because reliable knowledge is a prerequisite for love. "Less and less do I see any difference between research and adoration," wrote the great Jesuit scientist and theologian Teilhard de Chardin Teil·hard de Char·din   , Pierre 1881-1955.

French priest, paleontologist, and philosopher who maintained that the universe and humankind are evolving toward a perfect state.  near the end of his life. A scientific experiment that rebuts the effectiveness of intercessory prayer could itself be a revelation of God's modus operandi in the world. Let me watch and pray, then, in utter silence, or aloud in a gathering of like-minded souls, raising our voices in praise and thanksgiving. Prayer is for me now being mindful of a story - the story of the unfolding of life and consciousness in a universe of godly dimension - an activity summed up in Saint Augustine's words Noverim te, noverim me, "May I know you, may I know myself."

During the sermon, the pastor told his congregation that he knows God means different things to different people. To him, "God" is poetry or a metaphor - an abstraction that is within each of us but beyond all of us. This is a church that wholly accepts non-theists and atheists, people of whichever gender, and whose ultimnate goal seems to be communion of all people with all beliefs. Yes, we're adding this one to our reccomended list.

*Flimsyman:

It's not hard to see why we like this particular church.  How to describe the deliberate atmosphere in a simple way . . . it is very literally as if no one at this church would ever be derogatory or condesending to someone simply because they disagree with you on a theological issue.

It seems that the Pastor is homosexual, and the church and it's members are quite proud of how inclusive they are to those often excluded from so many other church families.

And that is exactly why The First Unitarian Church makes Ziztur and I, on the whole, proud of the human species.  Even the theistic portions of it.

Dude, where'd my post go?

I had my "Ray a day: 16" post written up and scheduled for this morning... but it disappeared!

Later today we will return to your regularly scheduled blogging.