Sometimes people can be silly

It's amazing how some people don't mind heavy criticism of their holy books, but others will freak at even the most benign statements made towards them.

Take, for example, what happened recently when Billy Nye the Science Guy gave a lecture at a community college:

The Emmy-winning scientist angered a few audience members when he criticized literal interpretation of the biblical verse Genesis 1:16, which reads: “God made two great lights - the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.”
He pointed out that the sun, the “greater light,” is but one of countless stars and that the “lesser light” is the moon, which really is not a light at all, rather a reflector of light.

A number of audience members left the room at that point, visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence.

“We believe in a God!” exclaimed one woman as she left the room with three young children. 

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 2.1

Onward!

Now we're finally ready for day 2 of the Truth About Origins Seminar.

For those of you just joining us, Flimsy and I (Ziztur) run this glorious site that specializes in beating dead horses. We're gluttons for punishment, so even though we're hardcore atheists, awhile back we attended the Truth About Origins seminar, a 3-day excursion into young earth creationism happy land.

Day 2 of the Truth About Origins seminar covered proofs for the Christian god. Dr. Brad Harrub opened his seminar by presenting a picture of the cover of the March 2006 Discover Magazine, in which the headline read, "Unintelligent Design". You can find the article here.

The article argues that even though viruses are often thought to be latecomers in the great bingo game of life, there is new evidence that shows they may have been the precursors of all life on earth. The point of the article is that viruses aren't even cells, so they are almost an intermediate between living and non-living organisms.

Dr. Harrub dismissed the role viruses may have played in the origin of life by saying that viruses are dependent on other organisms - whether eukaryote, bacteria, archaea, or more complex life. He said something to this effect, "how can we come from viruses if viruses depend on a life form in order to be alive"?

This simplification of the astounding work that scientists do in the field of biology is just silly. Do you really think that biologists would have just overlooked this, or is Dr. H building up yet another strawman? Even from reading the article in question, one can see that the evolutionary history of viruses is far more complex than Dr. Harrub's gross oversimplification.  The point of the article is that scientists originally thought that bacteria were the precursors to life on earth and that viruses are latecomers, but new evidence is suggesting that both bacteria and viruses were precursors to life on earth.

In the Discover article, the writer uses the term "chemical morons" to describe viruses - basically meaning that they are reproducing, exchanging genes willy-nilly, replicating and so forth without any particular direction other than the path of least resistance. Dr Harrub used this as a springboard for yet another false dichotomy, saying that the origin of life boiled down to two worldviews: "Chemical morons or likeness of God"

Yes, those are two competing worldviews. No, they are not the only two competing worldviews. But moving on...

Dr. Harrub moved on, and told his audience that whether or not his god exists is one of the most important questions one can answer, as it is a question that affects all other questions. He then presented this argument, which he told his audience was an example of undeniable logic:

1. If there is no god, then life does not matter-
2. only lives with no end can have meaning-
3. no lives which are finite have meaning-
4. If there are no gods, then there are no endless lives-
5. If there are no endless lives, then nothing has any meaning

Sigh.. where to begin...

Why does life have to be endless for it to matter and have meaning? I've written about this before, as have many atheists, especially those who come to atheism after believing at one point that their lives were endless. The problem is that meaning in our lives as derived from having infinite ones has no bearing on the reality or truthfulness of endless lives. We may think that a life that ends is meaningless, but that does not mean that hating the finiteness of life means that life somehow isn't finite.

The problem is that the desire to survive is hardwired into our brains by billions of years. As less thoughtful animals, we might not think that it is possible to not be alive. We only know that we are alive, and we only know that we want to stay that way. As human beings capable of thought and consciousness as well as observation and awareness, we look out into the world and we see that things do end. People die, animals die, buildings are erected and then they fall. Nothing is eternal. We hate this. So how do we reconcile this hardwired desire to live with the rationalization that we won't live forever? We pretend that we will.

Not living forever is terrible. It is terrible to lose everything we have worked for, to lose everything we have learned, to have our consciousness snuffed out forever by the mere cessation of a small amount of electrical activity jetting around in the pâté we call brain.

But to deny that this is reality to the point where the mere thought of being a finite consciousness renders our lives completely without meaning is a terrible disservice to the glory of simply being alive.  It is saying in effect, that this universe is not enough.

If this life is just an 80-ish year stepping stone to eternity, and Dr. Harrub's particular version of god is the real deal, then this life is nothing more than a switch: switch up for eternal happiness, switch down for eternal torment and misery. That to me is much less meaningful than this being the only life we've got. So even though meaning does not play a role in the evidence that when we die, we just die, I find that this life is much more meaningful if I do not pretend it's not the only life I have.

Dr. Harrub moved on and told his audience that if there is no god, then the duty of any individual is only to "eat, drink and be merry", whereas if there is a god, then our duty is to fear him.

There might be some people in this world who believe that the purpose of life is to eat, drink and be merry, but I do not, and I don't know anyone else who does. Looking at the evidence one is presented and concluding that there is no god is a conclusion. The "eat drink be merry" worldview is a non-sequitur - it does not follow anymore than an acceptance of germ theory leads us to the conclusion that we should all go out and infect everyone we can with a cold because germs pretty much only live to ultimately make more germs. Once one comes to the conclusion that there is no god, they need to objectively look at the rest of the universe to determine what kind of purpose it has and then formulate their worldview based on that.

Dr. H moved on, tossing up PowerPoint slides of some recent books on atheism such as The God Delusion, God is Not Great, The End of Faith and God: The Failed Hypothesis. Showing these books, Dr. H. Claimed that our culture is being "bombarded" by books proclaiming that there is no god.

I am going to go out on a limb and assume that Dr. H has been to a bookstore and noted that the religion or pro-god section usually takes up several whole aisles, while the atheism section usually is crammed into a corner of the religion section, on one shelf perhaps two feet in length.

Just for fun, I looked up the wikipedia article on the bestselling books of all time. Let's see who's bombarding who. I counted nine religious books including the Bible, Quran, book of Mormon, The Truth that Leads to Eternal Life, In His Steps: What would Jesus Do?, The Purpose Driven Life,The Celestine Prophesy, and the Left Behind book series.

Funny, none of this "atheist" bombardment is evident from this list, unless you want to count His Dark Materials or The Naked Ape. If you want to feel bombarded, go to the local bookstore and pretend that all of the Christian books are atheist books. If people are being bombarded by some atheist books making the bestseller list, then atheists are being nuclear bombed 200 times a day by Christian books.  (also... aren't people bombarding themselves? How did those books get to the top of bestseller lists?)

Just you wait - tomorrow we'll actually start talking about some of Dr. Harrub's "proofs" for his god.

Also, our better third Saint Gasoline has published his critique of day 2 on his blog, so go check it out.

Girls trapped in burning school ON PURPOSE

From the BBC (this is old, but I am using it to illustrate a point):

Saudi Arabia's religious police stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress, according to Saudi newspapers.

In a rare criticism of the kingdom's powerful "mutaween" police, the Saudi media has accused them of hindering attempts to save 15 girls who died in the fire on Monday.

About 800 pupils were inside the school in the holy city of Mecca when the tragedy occurred.

15 girls died in the blaze and more than 50 others were injured
According to the al-Eqtisadiah daily, firemen confronted police after they tried to keep the girls inside because they were not wearing the headscarves and abayas (black robes) required by the kingdom's strict interpretation of Islam.

One witness said he saw three policemen "beating young girls to prevent them from leaving the school because they were not wearing the abaya".

The Saudi Gazette quoted witnesses as saying that the police - known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice - had stopped men who tried to help the girls and warned "it is a sinful to approach them".

The father of one of the dead girls said that the school watchman even refused to open the gates to let the girls out.

"Lives could have been saved had they not been stopped by members of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice," the newspaper concluded.

Relatives' anger

Families of the victims have been incensed over the deaths.

Most of the victims were crushed in a stampede as they tried to flee the blaze.

The school was locked at the time of the fire - a usual practice to ensure full segregation of the sexes.

The religious police are widely feared in Saudi Arabia. They roam the streets enforcing dress codes and sex segregation, and ensuring prayers are performed on time.

Those who refuse to obey their orders are often beaten and sometimes put in jail.

 Specifically, I am going to go out on a limb and assume that anyone who reads this thinks it is horrifyingly immoral to beat little girls back into a burning school because they are wearing incorrect clothing. I am going to assume this because most people think it is wrong for little girls to die for something so minor. It is wrong because the punishment (death by fire) far outweighs the crime (wearing incorrect clothing).

Some Christians I talk to say that disbelief in their god is such a terrible crime that for my disbelief, I deserve to spend an eternity in torment.

How is this different than someone in Islam saying that these children deserved to die for their crime of wearing incorrect clothes?

I realize that men trapping children in a burning building due to their choice of clothing is not quite the same as the Christian god sending me to hell for disbelief, but if someone from Islam said, "I think those girls deserved to die, because wearing the incorrect clothing really such a bad offense against my god that the punishment of death fits the sin", how would you argue with them? I'm honestly curious.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 1.9

This post covers the Q&A session of the WEC Truth About Origins seminar and then launches into day 2 of the seminar.

After my question on the mechanisms, testability and reliability of Dr. Brad Harrub's "creation model" (which really wasn't explained at all other than to say that his god did it) another member of our group stood at the microphone and told Dr. Harrub that we had, in fact, observed speciation. Dr. Harrub asked for an example, and the guy (who is a biology major) explained experimentation that yielded speciation in fruit flies.

Dr. Harrub told his audience that this does not count as "macroevolution" because it's "just a fruit fly turning into a fruit fly".

This is a classic example of a "no true Scotsman fallacy or "moving the goalpost".  Only now it's "no true macroevolution". Rather than acknowledge the evidence for evolution, he just defines macroevolution to mean "evolutionary changes we have yet to observe" and then says we have not observed them and so therefore they have not happened.

Moving on, the biology major explained that we have seen beneficial mutations. Dr. H asked for ten.. yes TEN, examples. He went on to say that evolutionists are always "blowing smoke", because they can't give him an example of ten beneficial mutations we have observed.

Guess what - this is more an example of a creationist "blowing smoke" than an evolutionist "blowing smoke" by being vague in a presentation or by only poking imagined holes in evolution, yet providing no positive evidence whatsoever for creation. Then he expects multitudes of specific evidence from unprepared people in a Q&A session and uses their apparently lack of evidence as evidence that his position is correct.

This is why it is much harder for creationists to argue in an online debate or book format - in a public debate format, they will always ask for reams of evidence from their opponent while providing very little evidence of their own. Perhaps when engaging in debates with creationists, we should fall into the same tactics?

Here are over ten examples of beneficial mutations.

Another Q&Aer stood up to try to explain the evolution of sexes, but his explanation, while very good, fell on mostly deaf ears.  A few members of the church stood up, but I'll be honest and say that I had started talking with the other members of the group and so failed to write down and subsequently forgot what others asked.

After the Q&A session ended, we had several people approach us. One woman thanked me for my apparently awesome question, another woman told us that she was 75 years old and that she had learned to just open her ears instead of just debate. Dr. Harrub himself came over and chatted with us for about 20 minutes. Personally, he is just like anyone else - basically a nice guy. It was interesting though how his demeanor changed once he was speaking to us instead of his awed flock. Instead of speaking as though he were an authority, he spoke more as though he were our equal.

I also have to mention that right before the end of his presentation, he told his audience that dissenters were likely to go online to rage and vent at what he had to say. Have I "raged" or "vented" so far? I don't really think so.

Meetups!

Since I pointed out the Skeptical Society of St. Louis yesterday, I figured I'd also point out that the St. Louis Atheists Meetup wins equally as much as the Skeptical Society.

No, I take that back - the Atheists Meetup wins more because we have like 4 meetings a month and 350 members.

If you live in St. Louis and are not a member of the St. Louis Atheists Meetup... well why the heck not?

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 1.8

If you're just joining us, this is part 8 of our excessively detailed rebuttal to the Truth About Origins seminar we attended Friday, April 17th.

Moving on from vestigial organs, Dr. Harrub made a comment regarding the creation-evolution controversy, stating:

Maybe we should humble ourselves and admit that we do not know everything.

Indeed. What I know is that Dr. H. has failed to provide any proof for his model of creation, and rather has undermined science by poking invisible holes in biology. Cool.

He moved on to talk about mutations and their role regarding bacteria, stating that even if bacteria mutates into another form of bacteria, that they are still just bacteria.

This is a classic example of moving the goalpost that we've mentioned before. The point is that the genetic makeup of bacteria has changed. He quotes someone (who I have written down in my notes as "Professor Witten") as saying evolutionary theory is not testable.

I think this warrants some extra punctuation:

Not... Testable!?!?!? The whole point of evolutionary biology is it's obnoxious testability. We've seen genetic changes in species. We've seen new species arise since the dawn of evolutionary biology when we first began studying speciation in this way. We have innumerable fossils. It is absolutely testable.

Is creationism testable? Hmm...

He goes on to quote several more people as saying evolution is going to collapse, Darwin fails, and mentions the silly peppered moth thing.

Okay. So I will once again quote shamelessly from Talk Origins:

According to the traditional peppered moth story, cryptic coloration confers protection to the moths from predators, and as the habitat changed due to industrial pollution, natural selection caused the frequencies of different color varieties of the moth to change. As the trees became darker, the lighter moths stood out more, so the darker ones became more plentiful, and vice versa as the pollution cleared. That story is no longer supportable because of flaws found in the experiments, such as where the moths rested, and the occurrence of contrary data, such as unaccountable frequencies of uncamouflaged moths in areas

Source:
Wells, Jonathan, 1999. Second thoughts on peppered moths. http://www.arn.org/docs/wells/jw_pepmoth.htm or http://www.trueorigin.org/pepmoth1.asp
Wells, Jonathan, 2000. Icons of Evolution, Washington DC: Regnery Publishing Inc., pp. 137-157.

Response:

   1. Although the experiments were not perfect, they were not fatally flawed. Even though Kettlewell released his moths in daylight when a night release would have been more true to nature, he used the same procedure in areas that differed only in the amount of industrial pollution, showing conclusively that industrial pollution was a factor responsible for the difference in predation between color varieties. Similar arguments can be made for all other experiments. Although no experiment is perfect (nor can be), even imperfect experiments can give supporting or disconfirming evidence. In the case of peppered moths, many experiments have been done, and they all support the traditional story (Grant 1999).

   2. Even without the experiments, the peppered moth story would be well established. Peppered moth melanism has both risen and fallen with pollution levels, and they have done so in many sites on two continents (Cook 2003; Grant 1999).

   3. The peppered moth story is consistent with many other experiments and observations of crypsis and coloration in other species. For example, bird predation maintains the colorations of Heliconius cydno, which has different coloration in different regions, in both regions mimicking a noxious Heliconius species (Kapan 2001). Natural selection acting on the peppered moth would be the parsimonious hypothesis even if there were no evidence to support it.

   4. The peppered moth story is not simple. The full story as it is known today fills thousands of pages of journal articles. Familiarity with the literature and with the moths in the field is needed to evaluate all the articles. But the research and the debates over its implications have all been done in the open. Charges of fraud and misconduct stem from neglect and misrepresentation of the research by the people making the charges (Grant 2000). Of those familiar with the literature, none doubt that bird predation is of primary importance in the changing frequencies of melanism in peppered moths (Majerus 1999).

      In teaching any subject to beginners, simplifying complex topics is proper. The peppered moth story is a valuable tool for helping students understand how nature really works. Teachers would be right to omit the complexities from the story if they judged that their students were not yet ready for that higher level of learning (Rudge 2000).

Dr. H. uses the peppered moths as an example of how the experiments of evolution are not repeatable, meaning that the peppered moth experiment was not repeated. He says (quite correctly) that one of the bastions of good science is having repeatable experiments, I.E. someone else does the same experiment and gets the same results. Another bastion of science is predictability, that is that a hypothesis allows one to make predictions which are then testable. 

Okay, pop quiz. Pretend you're a creationist:

The peppered moth experiment is an example of:
a. "Microevolution"
b. "Macroevolution

If you're a creationist, then the answer is a. "Microevolution", which Dr. H has already admitted several times that there is plenty of evidence - mechanistic, predictable, supported, testable, repeatable evidence - for. So using the peppered moths as an example of how evolution is not repeatable just doesn't make any sense, because he's already said that it's repeatable!

Dr. Harrub concluded with a diagram that looked something like this (my personal depiction):

He told his audience that a theory of origins needs to explain these three "pillars" and that the theory of evolution stands or falls if it can explain: How we got life from non-life, the origins of the universe, and the design found in nature. He told his audience that the "evolution model' cannot explain these things. Right at that moment, the triangle at the top fell away (as in, he used a PowerPoint presentation in his sermon, and it was animated so that the triangle fell away), and instead of saying, "evolution model" it says, "creation model". He told his audience then that even though the evolution model cannot explain these things, the creation model does. I suppose I don't have to mention that evolutionary biology does not concern itself with how life arose from non-life. Evolutionary biology definitely does not concern itself with the origins of the universe, and design is only seen in nature if you beg the question by calling it design.

The diagram doesn't even make sense. It would make more sense if the triangle said, "science model". We already know that evolution is not a theory of everything. It only explains how living organisms became complex and varied. You could put "sociological model" up there and the diagram would be pretty much equivalent. 

I have a better diagram. It's a diagram of the pillars of good science. A good theory only gets to sit on top of the pillars if it actually fits:

Now, does creationism rest nicely on top of these three pillars?

NO.

Not only does it not fit, but I pretty much got Dr. H. to admit during the Q&A that creationism is without mechanism and unscientific. At this point, the seminar was finished, and people brought out microphones so that the audience could ask questions. At first, no one went up there. So I jumped up and said this (which is slightly paraphrased):

Ziztur: "Okay. So you say that for a theory of origins to be a good, solid, scientific theory, then the theory of origins has to have a mechanism, right?"

Dr. H. "Yes."

Ziztur: "Okay. It also has to be testable, right?"

Dr. H. "That's right"

Ziztur: "Cool. It also has to be replicable. (he nodded) You claim - and I disagree with you but for the sake of argument - you claim that evolution fails as a theory of origins because it has no mechanism, is not testable, and is not replicable, right?"

Dr. H. "Yes."

Ziztur: "Okay. So explain to me the mechanism of the creation model, and then explain how it is replicable and testable"

Dr. H. "Well the mechanism, obviously, it was miraculous."

Ziztur: "So your mechanism is supernatural?"

Dr. H. "Yes, that's right."

Ziztur: "Okay. So how is it testable and replicable?"

Dr. H. "Well, since miracles are by definition not replicable and not testable, it is not replicable or testable."

I was nervous, and I should have pushed further. I've given enough lectures in my life but it was me versus almost everyone else in the room. I've never held such a minority opinion in a group before. Plus, my question would obviously make it known my position on the matter. So I left it at that, rather than point out that the creation model fails miserably as anything other than an ancient myth of origins.

Stay tuned. We'll talk about what the other people said during the Q&A tomorrow!

Skeptical jewelry!

Flimsy and I are poor, but what we lack in cash we make up for with our brains and, apparently, our creativity.

We've decided that there is a serious lack of geeky, skeptical, atheist jewelry. So we've decided to make our own.

Here are our first few pieces:

 

Flimsy, wearing the necklace above:

One specifically for the doubting ladies (or guys who like pink abalone shell):

Here's one that's a little less subtle...

and one for a skeptic!

 

This is the first time I've ever really made jewelry, and I am hoping that someone out there will love this stuff enough to buy it from us and therefore help send us to TAM7! Right now they are one of a kind. I've got more design ideas in my head, these are just the ones I've made so far. I've also got a bunch of really thick brass blanks to make key chains. I already made one for my friend The Alien - it says, "Incredulous Spiritualist" on it.

I'm not sure exactly how much to charge. I was thinking somewhere between $10-$15.00 depending on what bits I use. What do you think?

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 1.Flim.2

Ziztur has analyzed the variety of evolutionary hoaxes pointed out by Dr. Harrub, and explained why they have no impact at all in criticizing evolution theory. She also explained how his criticism of Lucy as an evolutionary specimen is completely flawed - all that he addressed were a select few of Lucy's ape-like features. He completely ignored her ability to walk upright, which would obviously be the significant feature of Lucy as a hominid ancestral to modern Homo Sapiens.

He also addresses one other well-known evidence of evolution - the famous Archaeopteryx. This is a common creationist line; Archaeopteryx is simply a bird, not a reptile or a reptile-bird transitional. Dr. Harrub does an even poorer job than many creationists I've seen, too; he simply quotes from a creationist magazine that claims Archaeopteryx was a bird, and dismisses the whole matter on that basis alone! Most creationists can at least find a quote from an actual scientist describing Archaeopteryx as a bird. Interestingly, Dr. Harrub has an article online that addresses Archaeopteryx in much greater detail, here. However, this article argues that Archaeopteryx fossils are not like birds at all, and instead are simply reptiles, with feather impressions being either frauds or misinterpretations! Which is it, Dr. Harrub?

His article mainly consists of large bodies of quoted materials from a certain Alan Feduccia, a paleornithologist. From Wikipedia: "Feduccia is best known for his view that birds have their origin not in the advanced theropods, the most widely-held view, but basally within the archosaurs." What Dr. Harrub declines to mention in his article is that, for one, Feduccia's opinion is well outside of the mainstream scientific opinion on the matter, and for two, that Feduccia's view of the evidence is still an evolutionary model, simply an alternative one. In the article, Dr. Harrub claims to have had personal correspondence with Dr. Feduccia - did he mention that Feduccia's alternate theories are still wildly incompatible with young-earth creationism? Just what is Dr. Harrub's claim, here?

Whether Dr. Harrub claims that Archaeopteryx is an insufficient example of a transitional fossil because it is actually simply a bird (as in the seminar), or simply a reptile (as in his article online), he still completely misses the point. Based on our human conception of biological classification, we have to put an organism somewhere, so simple classification will end up putting Archaeopteryx into either the "bird" or "reptile" categories. However, this certainly doesn't mean that this creature doesn't have numerous features of birds and/or reptiles; on the contrary, Archaeopteryx has numerous reptilian and avian features. Most tellingly, Archaeopteryx has numerous avian and reptilian features that are distinguishing features of modern birds or reptiles, respectively. Talkorigins.org has an excellent breakdown on these features here.

One other interesting point made by Dr. Harrub is worth mentioning. I have to at least give him credit for discussing such a wide variety of topics in such a short amount of time, even if the brevity with which he discusses most topics prevents him from a very meaningful discussion. For example, take the common argument for evolution of the fact of vestigial structures in organisms. How does he answer this clearly-successful prediction of evolution theory? Literally, he simply quotes another mysteriously agreeable creationist resource, claiming that a feature does not classify as being vestigial if it has any function at all, no matter how limited. He then claims that every single feature of any organism that has ever existed does indeed have a function, even if we can't figure out what it is! Even if the evidence screams that a feature is vestigial, his answer is to simply say that it isn't, and that we may or may not one day figure out what function is performed by the feature in question!

Firstly, of course, we can discard his assertion, as it is what we fancy-pants like to call an unfalsifiable hypothesis (by his reasoning, we can literally never determine if a feature is, in fact, vestigial - making his theory immune to disproof, but also making it completely useless).

Secondly, his fellow creationist's definition of "vestigial" is a fabrication. While there is a legitimate distinction to make between vestigial features and exaptation, there is a small degree of overlap between the two concepts. Biologically, vestigial features are features that once had a certain function, but now serve no function, or considerably reduced function, or serve a different function to a small degree. Exaptation is specifically a feature being adapted to perform a different, very significant function. The difference is the degree of usefullness of the feature in it's new, adapted function.

Here's an extremely simple example of exaptation, from the Wikipedia entry: "A multi-stage example involves human hands, which evolved to facilitate tool use and which are an exaptation of primate hands that were used for grasping tree branches. Those primate hands, in turn, were an exaptation of front legs that were used for locomotion on the ground, and those legs were an exaptation of the fins of fish, which were used for locomotion in the water." The important distinction here is that each new function serves a vital purpose.

For those creationists still not understanding the concept of vestigial features, personally, my favorite example is the reflex of goose-bumps. They cause your body hair to stand up, right? Well, think about it - what good does this do for you? What purpose does it serve? You don't have body hair! Now imagine, what purpose does it serve in our ape cousins? That's right; if you do have thick body hair like our close evolutionary cousins, getting goose-bumps when frightened makes you look bigger and more threatening to a predator. Getting goose-bumps when cold insulates you with another layer of air. Without thick body hair, goose-bumps are a vestigial feature.

This makes up a good volume of Dr. Harrub's material, it seems; strawman distortion, quote another creationist to supposedly support the strawman, then make bald assertions if even the strawman isn't sufficient to establish your case (maybe a moved goalpost thrown in occasionally for good measure). Stay tuned, folks.

Hm. During the question and answer session of these seminars, Ziztur and I stood up and asked several questions. It was quite apparent that we were atheists. We said as much to Dr. Harrub and members of the church, etc. Does this mean that the seminar weekend was not so much a "faith infiltration" as a "faithless invasion?"

Defending the faith from the faithless

this morning I am attending a meeting at a church which is a joint effort by my friend Michael Blanford at the Skeptical Society of St. Louis and the Twin Oaks Presbyterian church. Apparently the church is ending a course on apologetics and wants to learn about atheism and have their students strut their stuff for some hardcore disbelievers. Here's what Michael had to say about it:

I have been invited to speak about skepticism and atheism to the "Defending the Faith" adult Sunday School program at Twin Oaks Presbyterian Church in Ballwin. The Reverend Bill Meyers has asked me and anyone else I would like to bring to come into the class to engage in a "dialog" about what we believe or don't believe about God and why? It seems this is the culmination of a Christian apologetics course and he would like his students to test out what they have learned by engaging with some people who have world views that compete with Christianity. I will be giving a short talk to the class and then hope that some of them members of our group will participate in a broader discussion. Please come even if you have no interest in participating in the dialog. I think we can all learn a lot from this type of discourse.

 It should be fun! I will let you know how it goes.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 1.7

Continuing on in our series of blog posts concerning a creation seminar we attended a few days ago, this is part 7 of day 1 of the Truth About Origins Seminar that Flimsy and I attended on Friday, April 17th, 2009.

After Dr. Harrub asked his audience at what point in the evolutionary tree did his god install the soul, he moved on to several other things.

1. How did males and females arise?

Ray Comfort likes to talk about sex too, asking when and where a female evolved to mate with a male, or proposing ridiculous scenarios in which a dog spontaneously evolves and he happens to look around with his eyes that evolved at the same time and sees a female who happened to evolve waiting for copulate with him.

I am not a biologist and sex is not my area of expertise (um... boy do I want to insert a dirty joke here) but suffice to say even a basic Google search will yield one of several competing scientific hypotheses on the origin of sex. You can even look on Wikipedia.

From Talk Origins:

The variety of life cycles is very great. It is not simply a matter of being sexual or asexual. There are many intermediate stages. A gradual origin, with each step favored by natural selection, is possible (Kondrashov 1997). The earliest steps involve single-celled organisms exchanging genetic information; they need not be distinct sexes. Males and females most emphatically would not evolve independently. Sex, by definition, depends on both male and female acting together. As sex evolved, there would have been some incompatibilities causing sterility (just as there are today), but these would affect individuals, not whole populations, and the genes that cause such incompatibility would rapidly be selected against.

Many hypotheses have been proposed for the evolutionary advantage of sex (Barton and Charlesworth 1998). There is good experimental support for some of these, including resistance to deleterious mutation load (Davies et al. 1999; Paland and Lynch 2006) and more rapid adaptation in a rapidly changing environment, especially to acquire resistance to parasites (Sá Martins 2000). 

The point is that Dr. Harrub asks his audience how males and female arose as a rhetorical question. The goal is to stump his audience into going, "Huh.. how DID sexes arise?" and thus since the audience members cannot answer that question, they are supposed to assume that evolutionary biologists cannot either. Of course, their answer is that the sexes arose when their god made them, which really doesn't say anything at all. "the forces of natural selection caused the sexes" or "our god caused the sexes" as standalone statements don't really give us any new information.

Dr. Harrub also asks how we developed certain behaviors such as altruism, or the ability to laugh, cry, have language, or a consciousness. Honestly, these questions are basically the same as the question of how sexes arose. There is no reason that over a period of millions of years, some animals would develop these abilities. One might ask why other animals do not have the same abilities we do but the answer is that they do not have our abilities, but they have other abilities we do not have. Altruism in particular is blindingly easy to explain. If you're a pre-hominid, and you've got some tools, and you give your tools to your neighbor, and your neighbor in turn gives you some food or trades you a different tool, you're better off and probably more likely to survive. Altruism is seen in non-human animals, as is language, emotions, etc. In fact if one looks at the whole of earthly organisms, one can see different levels of all of these abilities, just as one can see different levels of the ability to fly or run fast. Consciousness might seem-extra special to us humans and it might be hard to comprehend how consciousness arose, but if we were a cheetah we might be arguing that we stand out evolutionarily because of our incredible ability to run fast, and see all other animals as crazy slow.

Moving from humans and to other animals, Dr. Harrub opens by citing another National Geographic piece outlining the evolution of the horse. He claims that scientists originally thought that certain fossils were showing ancestral horse transitions, but then they decided later that these were actually camel transitions, so they "changed the diagrams, showing horses instead of camels"

It's not really possible to establish with absolute certainty that any particular fossil species is the direct ancestor of another. As such, there will always be conflicts. In this case, evolutionary biologists originally thought that one lineage of fossils belonged to horses, but upon further examination and research determined that the lineage was probably the ancestors of camels. This is an example of science working well - when they discover new things, they change existing theories to fit evidence. Unlike creation, who tries to mold the evidence (and by mold I mean misapply, mis-characterize, and ignore evidence that obviously falsifies it) to fit in with the theory.

Studying a little about horse and camel evolution, I am not even sure Dr. Harrub is on target when he talks about "changing diagrams. It seems that horse evolution and camel evolution are so similar (really, they are very similar animals) that people hardly talked about camels back in the day, simply because people were more familiar with horses and so it was easier to illustrate evolutionary paths to hordes of non-scientists using an animal they were familiar with. Really, it does not seem as simple as some evil scientists changing diagrams around.

The good Dr. moved to embryology and talked about the oft-cited "fake embryo drawings" of Haeckel, stating that these "faked" drawings are still used in biology textbooks. To my knowledge, corrected drawings are used in biology textbooks, so I invite proof: show me a newer book in which they are still being used.

Besides, this, it is not the drawings that are important, but the embryos themselves. To quote Talk Origins yet again:

Within a group, early embryos do show many similarities. For example, all vertebrates develop a notochord, body segments, pharyngeal gill pouches, and a post-anal tail. These fundamental similarities indicate a common evolutionary history. Other embryological similarities are found in other lineages, such as mollusks, arthropods, and annelids. These similarities have been long known. Professor Agassiz in 1849, for example, said, "We find, too, that the young bat, or bird, or the young serpent, in certain periods of their growth, resemble one another so much that he would defy any one to tell one from the other--or distinguish between a bat and a snake." (Scientific American 1849) 

The embryos also show some differences, which Haeckel glossed over. However, differences should also be expected, since the animals are not all equally related. It is the pattern of both similarities and differences that displays patterns of descent. Organisms that are less closely related are expected to look less similar.

Using corrected pictures is an example of science working properly. A longer explanation can be found right here.

If inaccurate pictures are supposed to falsify or weaken some theory, I need only point out that there are many different pictures of Jesus - "he was only one guy, so why does he look so different in pictures?" is a similarly inane argument.

Dr. H also mentions that Haeckle considered his reading of Darwin a turning point in his thinking. So? Is this supposed to imply that reading Darwin will lead people to falsify drawings of embryos?

Moving on, Dr. H pulled up a powerpoint slide of the cover of a Wendy's happy meal showing a picture of an Archaeopteryx. He then ranted for a few minutes about how this was an example of the "evils of marketing" and how dumb he thought it was that we were learning about evolution from a fast food bag (I don't remember exactly what he said here. My notes say, "haha - Wendy's "Evil of Marketing"/fact - birds "PROBABLY" related to dinosaurs - hahahaha" - which means that Dr. H said something that made his audience laugh appreciably)

Yes, scientists do sometimes use funny sounding language such as "fact - birds are probably related to dinosaurs". This is because there are such things as "facts" but there are no absolute truths. Theories are either supported or falsified, and at least the general body of scientists has the integrity to make this very clear. This does not mean that religion actually has absolute answers while science does not - this means that religion claims to have absolute answers, while science does not make that claim.

Before Dr. H changed topics, he mentioned the supposed evolution from scales to feathers, asking rhetorically, "Has anyone ever seen a sceather?"

Oh snap, you totally got us there. There's no way we've ever seen some kind of intermediate between a feather and a scale that one might amusingly call a sceather. That's not even fathomable. Gee, evolutionary theory just totally tanked on that one. No sceathers. Creationism wins.

But wait! I bet some bird-owners or fanciers out there have seen a scute!  What's a scute, you ask? Oh, only the scale-like-yet-also-feather-like things on the feet of birds that are made of up the same chemical composition and genetic material as feathers. Have you ever looked at the feet of a bird, Dr. H.? They look kind of like something between scales and feathers. You can clearly see a transition, right on a bird's foot. You don't even need an imagination.

Just because you don't know what you are talking about does not make what you are talking about false. Even these Christians here are capable of recognizing the scale-scute-feather thing.

Refs:

1. Barton, N. H. and B. Charlesworth, 1998. Why sex and recombination? Science 281: 1986-1990.
2. Davies, E. K., A. D. Peters and P. D. Keightley, 1999. High frequency of cryptic deleterious mutations in Caenorhabditis elegans. Science 285: 1748-1751.
3. Kondrashov, Alexey S., 1997. Evolutionary genetics of life cycles. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 28: 391-435.
4. Paland, Susanne and Michael Lynch. 2006. Transitions to asexuality result in excess amino acid substitutions. Science 311: 990-992. See also: Nielsen, Rasmus. 2006. Why sex? Science 311: 960-961.
5. Sá Martins, J. S., 2000. Simulated coevolution in a mutating ecology. Physical Review E 61(3): R2212-R2215

The day of the lost phone

Sometime while attending the Truth About Origins seminar that I have been ranting about all week Friday night, going to Applebee's for food afterward, and driving home, I managed to lose my perfectly good yet several year old cell phone.

In losing my cell phone, I've lost every single phone number for everyone I know, with the exception of my own phone number, my friend Art's number, my ex-boyfriend from high school's number (I don't know, it just stuck) and my mom's.

On the bright side, this is why I pay for insurance for my phone. Usually I run them through the wash instead of outright losing them, so I surprised myself. My old phone was kinda beat up, and this new one is - you know - new.

On the dim side, it still cost me $50, I don't know anyone's effin' phone number, and I am coming up on my 2-year renewal contract in two months, so I'd be getting a new phone in two months anyway.

If I know you, send me an email with your phone number if you have not already done so. I guess if I don't know you, you can send me your number as well, though I have no idea why you'd want to do that. EMAIL PEOPLE, don't post your number in the comments, duh.

Oh yeah and in case you can't find the contact button over on the left, my email is ziztur at ziztur dot com.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 1.6

Onward!

This is part 2 of day 1 of the Truth About Origins Seminar that Flimsy and I attended on Friday, April 17th, 2009. If you'd like to read all of our posts on the subject, click the "Harrub" label at the bottom of this post.

Dr. Harrub moved on from Lucy's alleged weaknesses to some actual evolutionary hoaxes:

1. Piltdown man: a hoax where some people took the skull of a human and the mandible of an ape and claimed it was a transitional fossil

Yes, Piltdown man was a hoax. Who decided it was a hoax? Scientists. Using what? The application of evolutionary theory. Science realized (yes, after 40 years, but still) that Piltdown man was a hoax, and science corrected itself. the hoax unraveled because Piltdown man did not match other hominid fossils.

One hoax does not invalidate archeology or evolutionary biology anymore than a creationists or religious hoax invalidates creationism or religion. It just cannot be used as evidence for creation or religion after it is discovered that it is a hoax.

 However religion treats hoaxes in different ways than science. If science discovers a scientific hoax, scientists announce that it is hoax, wipe their hands clean of it, and stop using it as evidence. Scientists have not continued to use Piltdown as an example of a transitional fossil.

If religionists discover something is a hoax, many times those hoaxes continue to be used as evidence, I.E the Shroud of Turin.

2. Nebraska man:  a tooth that was used to create an illustration of primitive man and was later determined to be a pig tooth. A good writup of this can be found at Talk Origins, so I will shamelessly quote here:

The tooth was never held in high regard by scientists. Osborn, who described it, was unsure whether it came from a hominid or from another kind of ape, and others were skeptical that it even belonged to a primate. The illustration was done for a popular publication and was clearly labeled as highly imaginative.

Nebraska Man is an example of science working well. An intriguing discovery was made that could have important implications. The discoverer announced the discovery and sent casts of it to several other experts. Scientists were initially skeptical. More evidence was gathered, ultimately showing that the initial interpretation was wrong. Finally, a retraction was prominently published.

 3. Orc man was a donkey skull

It's identity is still debated. This is why it is no longer used as evidence. Here is more information.

4. Neanderthals were possibly diseased humans, having rickets or arthritis

I quote again from Talk Origins with expanded info here:

An early stereotype of Neanderthals was that they were stooped, very hairy, and had divergent big toes. Straus and Cave (1957) showed that they were fully human in posture. However, Neanderthals do have distinctive features that distinguish them from modern humans (Straus and Cave 1957). Some of these features -- powerful bones and muscles, in particular -- cannot plausibly be attributed to pathology or injury.

Neanderthals are known from many specimens. It is extremely unlikely that all of them would be suffering from exactly the same illness.

The signs of rickets differ from Neanderthal fossils in several respects, including the following:

*People with rickets are undernourished and calcium-poor; their bones are weak. Neanderthal bones are fifty percent thicker than the average human's.

*Evidence of rickets is easily detectable, especially on the ends of the long bones of the body. This evidence is not found in Neanderthals.

*Rickets causes a sideways curvature of the femur. Neanderthal femurs bend backward.

Virchow, who first reported the possibility of rickets in a Neanderthal, did not cite it alone. He said the fossil had rickets in early childhood, head injuries in middle age, and arthritis in old age. It is doubtful that an entire population suffered these same afflictions.

Lubenow attributes rickets to a post-Flood ice age, with heavy cloud cover, shelter, and clothing, and a lack of vitamin D. But the greatest differences from modern humans, seen in Homo erectus, are found mostly in tropical areas. 

5. Some hominid rib (my memory escapes me as to what he was talking about) was actually a rib from a dog.

When Dr. Harrub mentioned that a supposed hominid rib turned out to be a rib from a dog, that got a murmer of laughter from the audience. Exactly what he was talking about escapes my brain at the moment, so I can't comment on that. But it is safe to say at this point that most of his audience had decided evolutionists were funny enough to laugh at. After this, he quoted Jeremy Rifkin as saying:

"What the record shows is nearly a century of fudging and finagling by scientists to conform with Darwin's notions, all to no avail."

 Okay, so Jeremy Rifkin, an economist and anti-evolutionist, said something bad about evolution. Dr. Harrub may as well have quoted himself.

Dr. Harrub asked his audience at this point to consider where on the evolutionary tree of life did his god "install the soul"...

...What? Seriously, dude. What?

a. There is no evidence for the soul
b. Evolution does not propose that there is a soul
c. Evolution does not involve anybody's god "installing" anything.

I know that people really like the idea of a soul, but using a concept for which there is no evidence whatsoever to try to disprove a mechanism that has countless evidence is pretty backward.

Stay tuned, next we're going to discuss sex, alruism, consciousnes, and then move from human fossils to the fossils of other organisms.

Girl is now the Atheist Examiner for St. Lou

Hey everybody!

I just wanted to let you guys know that I am the official "atheism examiner" for St. Louis's Examiner.com.

Examiner.com is a citizen journalism site, in which local users write about their area of interest with a local bent. I'd like to get more atheists on board, so if you think you have what it takes then check them out here.

You can also check out my column here. I'll mostly be cross-posting.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 1.5

Onward, Onward we march incessantly in our quest to document our experience at the Truth About Origins seminar.

This is part 4 of day 1 of the Truth About Origins Seminar that Flimsy and I attended on Friday, April 17th, 2009.

Dr. Brad Harrub again mentioned the puff National Geographic piece, noting this quote:

Evolution is both a beautiful concept and an important one, more crucial nowadays to human welfare, to medical science, and to our understanding of the world than ever before. It's also deeply persuasive—a theory you can take to the bank. The essential points are slightly more complicated than most people assume, but not so complicated that they can't be comprehended by any attentive person. Furthermore, the supporting evidence is abundant, various, ever increasing, solidly interconnected, and easily available in museums, popular books, textbooks, and a mountainous accumulation of peer-reviewed scientific studies. No one needs to, and no one should, accept evolution merely as a matter of faith.

 Dr. Harrub then told his audience a little bit about the author of this Nat Geo piece - David Quammen - noting that his background is in literature. He made a joke about how appropriate it is for a literature writer to write a work of fiction, which received a buzz of giggles from his audience.

This is quote possibly one of the most ridiculous ad hominem's I have ever heard. I am not sure if I really need to explain why, but I will anyway.

1. This piece was written for National Geographic - it is not meant to be serious science writing, but science writing aimed at a laymen audience. Science articles in National Geographic are meant to be popular science, which is exactly why you'd hire a popular science writer to write said articles, rather than a evolutionary biologist who may not be able to write well for the same audience. So basically, Dr. Harrub is dismissing the whole of evolutionary biology not with a thorough review of peer-reviewed science journals, but with a piece of writing meant for a target audience of people who read at a high-school level.  This would be like me using an article written in Christianity Today, mentioning that the author is a literature writer, and then using that to dismiss the whole of Christianity as fiction?

2. Reducing the writings of one popular science author down to strawmen versions of evolutionary biology does not disprove evolutionary biology. The same goes for Time magazine or any other pop-science magazine. Why not read the many whole books on evolutionary biology, not just a column in a magazine? Books like Your Inner fish by Neil Shubin, or Evolution: what the Fossils say and Why it Matters by Donald R. Prothero , or The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins,  or Climbing Mount Improbable by Dawkins, or any other of a very long list of books? Dr. Harrub, have you read these books?

Dr. Harrub moved on to ask an interesting question: In airports, bookstores often line up lots and lots of copies of the same magazine such as Time, which have information about evolution inside of them and on the covers. What happens when people see these magazines in an airport?

Indeed, what happens? I assume he means that what will happen is that if people decide evolution is true, they will become atheists, act like monkeys and be racists. He didn't really elaborate but if that is what he means, this is an argument from consequence - which is a logical fallacy. The consequences of something being true have no bearing on whether or not it is true, and on top of that, there is absolutely zero evidence that accepting evolution as truth leads to social ills. Accepting evolution as truth and either misunderstanding it or failing to think critically can lead to social ills, but this is true for just about any scientific theory and especially true for unscientific ideas (like religion). Clearly the solution then is to teach evolution (and other theories) so that it is easily understood while also teaching critical thinking skills.


 Finally, it was time to actually move on to fossils. Dr. Harrub began his segment on fossils by saying that all we've got are a few bones as evidence for evolution. I could point out that all Christianity has is the lack of the body of their savior, but I am not that surly.

Dr. Harrub is wrong on several counts.

1. We also have genetic evidence of evolution, which is perhaps stronger evidence than fossil evidence.
2. One can get a LOT of information from a "few" fossils.
3. If by "few" bones he means fossils from almost 4,000 hominid individuals, he is deliberately downplaying the number of fossils we have. As of 1999, there were fossils of about 150 Homo erectus individuals, 90 Australopithecus robustus, 150 Australopithecus afarensis, 500 Neanderthals, and more. Here's a link to some prominent ones. We're not even talking about all of the fossils of other organisms, either.

He then goes on to talk about an article in the July 23rd, 2001 Time Magazine called How Apes Became Human, which mentions a specific toe bone of a species of hominoids. He claims that since this toe bone was found ten miles fro the rest (it was), that it makes the entire skeleton suspect.

I found what I believe to be the article in question here. Time does mention the conflict with the toe (why would they mention that for the whole world to see if it destroys evolutionary theory?) There is indeed a conflict, but it is not over a single skeleton, it is over whether or not the toe belongs to a specific population of hominids. They are not talking about this toe bone discounting evolution, the conflict arises as to whether or not the toe is part of the same evolutionary branch or not. To quote:

In the case of Ardipithecus, says Donald Johanson, professor of anthropology and director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University (and the man who discovered Lucy back in 1974), "when you put 5.5 million-year-old fossils together with 4.4 million-year-old ones as members of the same species, you're not taking into consideration that these could be twigs on a tree. Everything's been forced into a straight line." Beyond that, he's dubious about categorizing the 5.2 million-year-old toe bone with the rest of the fossils: not only is it separated in time by several hundred thousand years, but it was also found some 10 miles away from the rest.

 Besides, a few evolutionary biologists coming into conflict over the exact details of a specific toe bone does not mean we should discard evolutionary theory - the conflict itself arises due to an understanding of and application of evolutionary theory.  That wold be like saying two Christian theologians using their knowledge of the history of Christianity to argue over what some very minor Hebrew word actually meant on a piece of parchment falsifies or weakens Christianity.Contradictory interpretations of fossils by various scientists does not falsify evolutionary biology, and those conflicts arise out of application of evolutionary biology, not in spite of it.

I should mention that if differences of opinion among evolutionary biologists or archaeologists invalidates those fields, then using the same logic, disagreements among creationists invalidates creationism.

Onward, Dr. Harrub talks about Lucy, and makes several points.

1. She had locked wrists
   
Incorrect. She had some traits of locking wrists, much like you'd find in an intermediate species between locked-wrist apes and bipedal apes. The scientists who discovered said trait also concluded (along with every other scientist) that Lucy was bipedal. In other words, she was a bipedal ancestor with long arms which she probably used sometimes to walk on her knuckles, just like an intermediate would do. The Dr. would be reinforcing the point of Lucy if it weren't for leaving out vital information about her.

2. Her rib cage was conical - more like an ape, rather than barrel shaped - like a human. This information comes from an article by Peter Schmid, who said this (emphasis mine):

We were sent a cast of the Lucy skeleton, and I was asked to assemble it for display," remembers Peter Schmid, a paleontologist at the Anthropological Institute in Zurich. For people interested in ape and human anatomy, the institute is a center of great renown. There, during the 1940s and 1950s, Adolf Schultz built up one of the world's best collections of ape skeletons. Schultz's work provided a foundation on which much of contemporary comparative anatomy is built, and his institute welcomes a constant stream of researchers who need to understand ape anatomy. "When I started to put the skeleton together, I expected it to look human," Schmid continues. "Everyone had talked about Lucy as being very modern, very human, so I was surprised by what I saw."

The chest was the problem. "I noticed that the ribs were more round in cross-section, more like what you see in apes," he explains. "Human ribs are flatter in cross-section. But the shape of the rib cage itself was the biggest surprise of all. The human rib cage is barrel-shaped, and I just couldn't get Lucy's ribs to fit this kind of shape. But I could get them to make a conical-shaped rib cage, like what you see in apes."

We know that Lucy had unusually long arms and relatively short legs, but the assumption was that, because she was bipedal, her body was like that of modern humans. After the experience with the rib cage, Peter decided he would look further into the anatomy of the entire upper body. He examined the whole trunk, the lumbar region, and the shoulders.

The shoulders, the trunk, and the waist are important in human running the shoulders for arm swinging and balance; the trunk for balance and breathing; and the waist for flexibility and swinging of the hips. "What you see in Australopithecus is not what you'd want in an efficient bipedal running animal," says Peter. "The shoulders were high, and, combined with the funnel-shaped chest, would have made arm swinging improbable in the human sense. It wouldn't have been able to lift its thorax for the kind of deep breathing that we do when we run. The abdomen was potbellied, and there was no waist, so that would have restricted the flexibility that's essential to human running." In other words, Lucy and other australopithecines were bipeds, but they weren't humans, at least in their ability to run.

Here's the thing. Lucy is an intermediate - and thus it is expected that she would have both ape-like and human-like characteristics - that's the point! Of course her rib cage didn't look like a human rib-cage. That is because she was. not. human. If she looked exactly like a human, she'd have been classified as a human. If she had looked exactly like an ape, she'd be classified as an ape. But she had features of both. Dr. Harrub is saying that because her ribs weren't human ribs, this makes her suspect. However because her ribs weren't like human ribs is the entire point. Houston, we have a quote-mine.

3. He showed different pictures of Lucy laid out unassembled on a table, which showed her having varied numbers of ribs.

Impressive, but here's the thing - when you send the fossilized bones of a hominid all of the world to be put on display, and the ribs come in like 20 different pieces, one can expect that the individuals laying her bits out on a table might put them out in slightly different ways. Given the extremely fragile nature of fossilized bones, it's pretty obvious that while you might see 15 pieces of rib in one picture and 17 in another picture with one longish rib not in the picture with 17 pieces of ribs, that it probably broke. Oh my. That totally proves Lucy is a fake. It also completely discounts the countless other fossils of organisms we've found.

Dr. Harrub goes on to say that people need to be skeptical and evaluate evidence for evolution rather than relying on hype, propaganda and media lies. He says that with regard to fossils, there are those that look like us, and then there is everything else. He mentions how biology books say we evolved even though there is no evidence, and mentions something quickly about the inner ear as not being proof of evolution. I don't recall exactly what he said about the inner ear, but here  are  some  articles  on  the  subject.


Nobody wants to be taken in by media hype, propaganda and lies. The trouble then, is determining which is which.Dr. Harrub continually paints people who "believe in" evolution as people who are intentionally trying to destroy the Bible in an effort to mask his own agenda - poke holes in evolutionary biology and that somehow proves that creation and by extension the Bible, is true.

I love shredding!

My friends and I are big fans of WillItBlend, a website whering people stick nonfood items into a blender and blend them - things like video cameras and Iphones. An example video is here:





Why do I love this kind of destruction? I don't know. The other day my friend Matt (who is an OT too) pointed me to this place, Watch It Shred!

These videos are on a whole new level - it's the blender gig on meth. Check it out:






Ahh...It's so good.


Oh and for an added kick of happy, NonStampCollector has a new vid out:



Enjoyment for your afternoon!

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 1.4

Continuing on in our series of blog posts concerning a creation seminar we attended a few days ago, this is part 4 of my endless analysis of day 1 of the Truth About Origins Seminar that Flimsy and I attended on Friday, April 17th, 2009.

As Dr. Harrub continued, he moved from his bizarre dismissal of the role "chance" plays in evolution to the role time plays in evolution. He dismisses time by saying that the age of the earth keeps changing and that scientists keep "adding time to the back of the age of the earth somehow". His point of course is that since godless evolutionists want to prove the Bible wrong, and in order to prove evolution occurs they need lots of time, they are just inventing the age of the earth. This a. An ad hominem, again and b. Completely inaccurate, given the actual recorded history of science. There is an excellent article on the history of the age of the earth here.  The fact that scientists are changing their minds (based on evidence, observation, testing and critical thinking) is an example of science working well. If you'd like to know how scientists determine the age of the earth, a decent article can be found here, on the great website Talkorigins. That Dr. Harrub would dismiss the age of the earth as "adding time to the back of the earth somehow" is a ridiculous dismissal. Rather than look at actual evidence for the age of the earth and changing one's mind to fit the evidence, he seems to want those who listen to him speak to dismiss objective evidence out of hand in favor of counting the generations of Biblical figures in the Bible to determine the age of the earth.

Just to recap, Dr. Harrub asserted that these were the four elements of Neo-Darwinism:


1. Time
2. Mutations
3. Natural Selection
4. Chance

Moving on, Dr. Harrub addressed the role of mutations by quoting Stephen Jay Gould  who is apparently known for saying that mutations do not add raw genetic material to organisms. I could not find where Gould said this, and even if he did - he was incorrect. We have directly observed mutations which add genetic material.

Dr. Harrub gave the example of scales over time mutating into feathers, noting how implausible, he believed this to be, and said that it seems impossible for a fish to "turn into" a cow. He also mentioned that scant few mutations are beneficial - which is true.  But beneficial mutations have been observed, see evidence here.

This fish to cow business is an argument from personal incredulity - that is, because Dr. Harrub can't imagine how a (population) of sea-dwelling animals could over time evolve into a (population) of land-dwelling, delicious animals, that it must not have happened.

There is actually an evolutionary basis for why it is so hard to imagine one population of animal evolving into a very different population of animal - our brains simply have never needed to think this way until recently, and being able to think this way isn't really even an advantage with regard to passing along our genetic material (ask any geek: chicks prefer jocks). Our brains evolved to solve problems on much smaller time scales than 4.54 billion years. We have a hard time contemplating the size of things that are smaller than we can see, and we stare in wonder and amazement at things like mountains while we can barely comprehend how big the earth is. One might deny the size of the universe because they can't comprehend something so massive, but that does not mean that the universe is much smaller than measured. The same goes for something like fish-to-cow. Just because our fiddly minds can't handle those kinds of changes does not mean they didn't happen - and in fact evidence all but assures us that it did. What Dr. Harrub does is classic - make evolution sound absurd, thus "proving" that it is - when all he has proven is that our minds have a hard time contemplating things on a larger scale than we have been contemplating for 3 million years.

Dr. Harrub moved on and told his audience that the "evolutionary model is completely self-contained" and explained that "Darwinists" believed that there was no "first cause" or "divine guidance" in the universe and that we instead believe that everything arose from natural processes over time.

Evolution has nothing at all to do with the causes and origins of the universe. This is cosmology. Evolution explains the mechanism of organism population change over time, it does not explain the origins of the universe or the origins of life itself. I could dismiss this cosmology stuff because it is not really relevant to evolution, but I won't. I've explained before that cosmologists do not think that the universe has no first cause. It does, and attempting to paint evolutionists cosmologists in this light is; you guessed it, another strawman. It's easy to dismiss a position held by someone if you first mischaracterize that position.

Moving on again, Dr. Harrub briefly discussed Micro Vs. Macro evolution, a nonexistent distinction only made by creationists.

He said, of course, that we have observed "microevolution", that is small changes made in species, such as the chances in different breeds of dog (He used for example, the wolf to pug transition) but that we have not observed "big changes" I.E. Macroevolution - as an example, he used "dog to fern".

The "dog to fern" example is just silly. Microevolution and macroevolution have the exact same mechanism for change. For microevolution to be possible but macroevolution to be impossible, there has to be a reason why a population of organisms cannot change to such an extent that they can no longer interbreed (this is the definition of speciation, which is usually what people refer to when they mean macroevolution).

Of course, later on in the evening during the question and answer session, another member of our group pointed out that we have, in fact, observed speciation. Dr. Harrub dismissed this by saying that that was not an example of one "kind" of organism changing into another "kind" of organism. I'd really like to see him define "kind" in this instance.

Since we have observed small changes within species, and we have also observed speciation, the mechanism for "kind change" (whatever "kind" is defined as) is also the same. We don't need to observe "kinds" changing into "different kinds" anymore than we need to observe the entire history of a river to understand how it became a river. What he is claiming is akin to saying that the formation of the Grand Canyon is impossible because rivers only erode a tiny bit of material a year compared to the material needed to form the Grand Canyon.

Creationists basically use the term "macroevolution" to mean "evolution to an extent great enough that it has not been observed yet" As such, macroevolution is nothing more than a moving goalpost. What I mean by that is that it is defined as something that is impossible to achieve. If we observe speciation of beetles, for example, this does not count because it's just "a beetle changing into another beetle". If we observe a beetle population evolving into a non-beetle population, that won't count because it's "an arthropod changing into another arthropod". We'll keep moving up along the biological classification system until we get to a point where evolution has not been observed, and this will be "macroevolution" and the creationists will claim it hasn't been observed.

Here are some evidences for macroevolution, by the way. Here is an explanation of why the two are the same thing.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 1.Flim

Very interesting weekend! Now, before Ziztur and I get too terribly in-depth concerning the various misconceptions of Dr. Brad Harrub, I'm going to take a minute to rant about the basic, underlying philosophy of the scientific method, and from there, I'll explain one of Dr. Harrub's most significant mistakes. First, though, a little background.

Regular readers know that I was raised in a fundamentalist Southern Baptist home and church, and that I gave up religion by reading the Bible. When I gave up my belief in God, I knew nothing of science, philosophy, or any formal rules of logic; I rejected the Christian God on the basis of my conscience alone. Thus, I acknowledge with some embarrassment that I was an atheist/agnostic who didn't know anything of evolution theory, except for the terrifying straw-man distortions commonly claimed by creationists (since the only things I had ever heard about evolution, or about science in general, were from fundamentalist Christians). Then one day I was discussing Biblical morality with one other non-believer and several Christians on a message board, when the discussion shifted to evolution. At one point, I admitted to the other atheist on the board that I was skeptical of evolution. He told me to ask him any questions I had, and he immediately recognized that I had a basic misunderstanding of the scientific method. For any creationists reading this, I'll try to explain it to you simply, as it was explained to me, in such a way that it finally clicked.

Science does not test histories; it tests mechanisms. The true test of a theory is not whether you can use it to fill in a complete history. The true test of a theory is it's mechanism - can you create specific predictions using the mechanism? Check. Can we check at least some of these predictions against observation? Check. Do these specific predictions, generated by the mechanism, accurately model reality, as compared to observation? Check; and so we have a strongly supported theory. If the first test fails; if you cannot generate specific predictions based on the mechanism, then the theory is useless and should be discarded. If you find that your predictions significantly differ from reality (as demonstrated by observation), then you have to modify or discard the theory.

Here's an extremely simplified example. I live in Illinois, and was seen there Saturday afternoon, the day of the second Truth About Origins seminar. I was also seen at the seminar, in Missouri, Saturday night. Both of these observations are verifiable. Suppose we develop a theory to explain how I got from the one spot in Illinois to the other in Missouri; we'll say that I drove from one to the other. What else do we know? We don't know what highway I started on in Illinois, or even if I started on a highway at all. We don't know what roads I took in Missouri to get to the church. We don't know whether I crossed the Mississippi at the Poplar Street Bridge out of East St. Louis, or the Clark Bridge out of Alton. We have "missing links" all over the place! Our theory doesn't give us any kind of "history" at all!

Now, we have a theory with huge gaps and missing links, and doesn't give us a history. Does this prove that I didn't drive from Illinois to Missouri? Of course not! Just because we don't have a complete history, that doesn't mean that our theory fails. So how would we test to see if our theory holds water? We test the mechanism (my driving a car from one state to the other), and make predictions based on it. For example, we might predict that I have a valid driver's license. We check this, and it's true. This doesn't prove the theory, just supports it. That's an important distinction - scientific theories are basically never "proven;" they are either supported, modified, or falsified. Think of Newtonian physics - it was accepted for years and years. Einsteinian physics came along and beat out Newtonian physics. Newtonian Physics was never "proven," just very well supported. Einsteinian physics isn't "proven" either, it's just very well-supported as being even more accurate than Newtonian physics.

Back to our theory of the road warrior that I am. Our highly scientific theory of my putting the pedal to the metal says that I have a car, and that my car will be at the West End Church of Christ. We check, and it is, so our theory has more support. Our theory also predicts that a minimum of 45 minutes would have to pass between my leaving Illinois and my arriving in Missouri. Uh oh, we have a problem - we observe evidence that only 15 seconds passed between my being in one location, and being in another location, in another state, 40 miles away (Obviously, this claim is patently absurd on the face of it. Should basically just be dismissed out of hand. What magic fairytale does this remind me of . . .). If this were true, our theory would have to be discarded, or modified to allow for a flying car (or, more likely, a flux capacitor). The theory was well supported, yet we still disproved it. How? By showing that a prediction, based on the mechanism, failed observation.

This brings me to one of the most enormous misunderstandings in all of science - the illusory distinction between microevolution and macroevolution. Creationists like Dr. Brad Harrub give this illusory distinction a place of paramount importance in their criticism of evolution theory. Why?

No one denies that some degree of change occurs in an organism - this is obvious simply by looking at a child and his or her parents. No organism looks exactly like it's parent generation, and anyone can observe the biological features of dogs, insects, or any other organism over a few generations to see how they change. So a creationist must admit that small change obviously occurs, because we can observe it, but that greater change than we can directly observe somehow will not occur. Dr. Brad Harrub claims that the mechanisms of evolution theory are insufficient to account for evolutionary change. Ziztur has already explained how his criticisms of these specific mechanisms are flawed. All I want to convey here is that the simplest way to refute the false distinction between micro- and macroevolution is to point out that "microevolution" uses the exact same mechanisms as "macroevolution." If we test these mechanisms and find them to be extremely well-supported, then we have demonstrated "micro-" and "macroevolution," because we're not testing any kind of history, we're testing the mechanisms. Therefore, if someone wishes to demonstrate a significant, material difference between the two, they basically have two choices:

1. Demonstrate that "microevolution" actually does not operate via the mechanisms of genetic variation and natural selection. This is basically impossible, since any biologist worth their salt can conclusively demonstrate these mechanisms (on what creationists call a "microevolutionary" level) beyond a shadow of a doubt.

2. Demonstrate a mechanism that will somehow prevent an organism from undergoing speciation (or, moving the goalposts, one "kind" changing into another "kind" - more about this below). The discovery of such a mechanism would basically shatter the foundations of modern biology. If such a theory could be substantiated, the discovering scientist in question would immediately obtain a level of fame and prestige not unlike that of Charles Darwin himself. And yet, no such mechanism has ever been demonstrated. Creationists, like Dr. Harrub, have not, to my knowledge, even attempted to substantiate such a theory.

At the Origins seminar, Dr. Harrub first distinquished between "micro-" and "macroevolution" by specifically stating that species don't change into other species. Of course, there are many, many examples of directly observed speciation that we could give. One fellow atheist stood during the question and answer session to offer such an example - speciation of fruit flies. Dr. Harrub's response? It doesn't count, because "they're still both fruit flies." He then changed his criteria to an organism changing from one "kind" or "type" of creature to another, without giving a detailed description of what "kind" or "type" was supposed to mean in a scientific context.

Do you know what really gets me? He then accused the young biologist, in front of a large Christian fundamentalist audience, of "blowing smoke" when he couldn't name an example of "macroevolution." He says this, blatantly moving the goalposts, after being given exactly the evidence that he asked for earlier (one "species" changing into another "species"). Why didn't he give a specific, detailed definition of "kind" or "type"? Because that would either enable us to give an example according to his new criteria, or it would reveal his understanding of evolution to be a ridiculous strawman distortion ("Okay, give me documentation that a dog can evolve into a tree!").

Ziztur and I met with Dr. Harrub after the seminars, and he has one of Ziztur's business cards with this blog's address. So if this little anecdote makes Dr. Harrub out to be a bit of a jackass, well . . . this is exactly what happened. He's welcome to tell his side of the story.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 1.3

Continuing on in our series of blog posts concerning a creation seminar we attended a few days ago, this is part 3 of day 1 of the Truth About Origins Seminar that Flimsy and I attended on Friday, April 17th, 2009.

Moving on, Dr. Harrub explained that Darwin believed behavior modifications during the lifetime of an individual animal caused the genetic offspring of that animal to be altered. As an example, he showed a picture of a giraffe and explained that Darwin thought that since giraffes reached up into trees to get their food and stretched their muscles, this stretch would be passed down to the next generation. Obviously though, alterations of body structure of a given organism do not pass down to offspring - a person who is paralyzed does not birth paralyzed children.

He is explaining, of course Lamarkian Evolution, which was an idea that existed far before Darwin was born (Lamarck lived 1744–1829, Darwin 1809-1882) Natural selection is accepted as scientific, while Lamarkian evolution was abandoned over 150 years ago. Dr. Harrub tried to explain that Darwin was wrong when he thought that species change was driven by those characteristics acquired during the organism's lifetime. It was not Darwin who was wrong on this, but Lamark. He refers to this idea of acquired change as "True Darwinism" when it is actually not "Darwinism" at all - it's Lamarkian Evolution

Dr. Harrub goes on to conclude that "adaptation is not a mechanism for change". He is of course referring to individual adaptation, hence the references to Lamarkiansm. It is true that individual adaptation is not a mechanism for change. Evolutionary theory, however, shows that adaptation of populations is a mechanism for change. This is, essentially, a misdirection, and a mischaracterized strawman version of evolution. It sounds false because it is false. The difference between population adaptation and individual adaptation is an extremely important distinction to make here.

He went on to say that "True Darwinism" has been set aside for Neo-Darwinism, and explained that these are the elements that are important to Ne-Darwinianiam:

1. Time
2. Mutations
3. Natural Selection
4. Chance

First, I'd like to say that evolutionary biologists do not follow Neo-Darwinism as the good Dr. described here, but rather they follow Modern Evolutionary Synthesis - which is a revision of Neo-Darwinism. These two lines of thinking are distinct. To borrow from the Wikipedia entry on the subject:

The modern synthesis bridged the gap between experimental geneticists and naturalists; and between both and palaeontologists, stating that:

1. All evolutionary phenomena can be explained in a way consistent with known genetic mechanisms and the observational evidence of naturalists.
2. Evolution is gradual: small genetic changes, recombination ordered by natural selection. Discontinuities amongst species (or other taxa) are explained as originating gradually through geographical separation and extinction (not saltation).
3. Selection is overwhelmingly the main mechanism of change; even slight advantages are important when continued. The object of selection is the phenotype in its surrounding environment. The role of genetic drift is equivocal; though strongly supported initially by Dobzhansky, it was downgraded later as results from ecological genetics were obtained.
4. The primacy of population thinking: the genetic diversity carried in natural populations is a key factor in evolution. The strength of natural selection in the wild was greater than expected; the effect of ecological factors such as niche occupation and the significance of barriers to gene flow are all important.
5. In palaeontology, the ability to explain historical observations by extrapolation from micro to macro-evolution is proposed. Historical contingency means explanations at different levels may exist. Gradualism does not mean constant rate of change.

The idea that speciation occurs after populations are reproductively isolated has been much debated. In plants, polyploidy must be included in any view of speciation. Formulations such as 'evolution consists primarily of changes in the frequencies of alleles between one generation and another' were proposed rather later. The traditional view is that developmental biology ('evo-devo') played little part in the synthesis, but an account of Gavin de Beer's work by Gould suggests he may be an exception.

Almost all aspects of the synthesis have been challenged at times, with varying degrees of success. There is no doubt, however, that the synthesis was a great landmark in evolutionary biology. It cleared up many confusions, and was directly responsible for stimulating a great deal of research in the post-World War-II era.

So, Dr. Harrub is essentially talking about an oversimplified yet blindingly incomplete version of Biological evolution. Amusingly, even the CreationWiki article on the subject makes the distinction. To quote: "biological evolution theory has therefore become an integration of Charles Darwin's theory of the evolution of species by natural selection, Gregor Mendel's theory of genetics as the basis for biological inheritance, random genetic mutation as the source of variation, and mathematical population genetics. This composite of mechanism is known as the modern evolutionary synthesis.

Either Dr. Harrub has not studied enough biology (Modern Evolutionary Synthesis has been around since before he was born) or he is doing something akin (I am exaggerating here) to showing how modern medicine is foolish and false because doctors still believe that diseases are spontaneously generated

Regardless of this mischaracterization of modern Evolutionary Biology, I am still going to critique this portion of his presentation, because I'm obnoxious like that. I could dismiss this whole section out of hand.

Dr Harrub started out by dismissing the role of "chance" in Evolution by talking about dice. His simple dismissal went something like this:

If you roll two dice, there is a chance that you might roll two 6's. There is also a chance that you might roll two 1's, or a 3 and a 4, et cetra.  But does chance ever change these dice?

 ... WHAT? I expected him to say something like, "If you roll two dice, you'd expect to get 6's sometimes, and 4's some times. But you would not expect to roll the same two dice and roll 6's a million times" but no... I fail to see how this has anything at all to do with evolution. I really don't know what the hell his point is, seriously.

Okay that's a lie. His point is that dice don't change and so that somehow is supposed to mean that organisms don't change either even if you.. um.. roll them a bunch of times? Evolution does not say, "if you roll a rat a bunch of times, it will eventually change into a hamster".  In all seriousness, I suppose he is saying that you can... no, you know what, I give up. I have no idea what his point was.

Here is a better analogy for evolution. If you've got a dice-making machine that has a dice mold, and said mold is made out of lead or some other soft metal, over time the metal will change shape due to use and produce dice that are not exactly the same shape and quality as the original dice. The mold is our genetics, the pressures on the mold that cause it to change shape over time are the environment, and the dice produced are the population.  In his "analogy" the "dice" are the environment, genetics and the organism. Once again, it sounds absurd because he has created an absurd strawman version of evolution, only to knock it down.

P.S. I mentioned in an earlier post that we were with several other people, including our friend Saint Gasoline. You can find part 1 of his analysis of the seminar right here. 

The Beautiful Kind vs. Jehovah's Witnesses

This is a blog post by my fellow blogger (who is a sex-positive kinkster) The Beautiful Kind. Her moniker is, "Be open and honest. Don't be ashamed of your inner pervert. Work the kinks OUT." She was recently visited by some Jehovah's Witnesses, and she blogs about her experience here:

The other day I was sitting around enjoying my lady of leisure status when the doorbell rang. I was wearing clothes for a change, so I answered it.

As soon as I did I thought, "Oh here we go again!"

I have a rule that if a religious person ever seeks me out to talk about their religion, I gladly take them up on the offer. I have an open mind, and love hearing what they have to say. I have to admit it is incredibly amusing. I feel like a cat batting around a mouse. I'm not mean or snide at all about it, in fact I pretty much act delighted with everything they say. And I ask them A LOT of questions.

The two at my door were Jehovah's Witness, a black matronly woman and an Asian middle aged woman. The black woman was in charge. She introduced herself and told me she wanted to talk to me about some amazing things - Jesus was alive and there would be no more suffering in this world. People would come back to life, and we would return to the state of Eden.

This was all pretty incredible, so I responded appropriately. "REALLY! Oh my gosh, that is AMAZING! I know Jesus just had his Easter party didn't he? So he keeps coming back to life right?"

"Well he's in heaven now," she explained.

"And I'm ALL about reducing suffering in the world. That's why I'm vegetarian - it's humane, and we were vegan in Eden, did you know that?"

"Yes, that's right," they said.

"You should be vegetarian, it's really good for you. Factory farming is a cruel industry, you know. I refuse to support something like that." It seemed only fair that if they were going to push their agenda, I would plug mine as well.

They nodded and smiled politely.

"But back to what you said about how people can come back to life - that is awesome! I've never heard that before. I always thought death was final. Doctors should know about this - they could really use the information! I'm so glad you are spreading the word!"

They asked if I'd like to do bible study with them. I said SURE! I'd love to learn all about the bible. I asked them to come back at 11 the next day.

The next morning I finished my porn review, masturbated, then got dressed for bible study. It was so cool they were coming to me, and bringing me a bible and everything.

They asked me which section of the study guide I'd like to know about. I picked the one about Spirit Creatures.

This time the black woman brought her adult daughter with her in lieu of the Asian woman. They sat on the couch and asked me to read parts of the study guide and bible to them. I LOVE reading out loud, so I was glad to do so. The problem was, everything I read MADE NO FUCKING SENSE.

Here is an example: "Angels are sons of god. God created ten thousand times tens of thousands angels through his firstborn son."

So I asked questions.

"Wait, so angels are boys? I thought they were girls. How come all the angels depicted are beautiful women?"

They said those were artist interpretations.

"And is Jesus an angel?"

"Yes."

"So god created heaven, then Jesus, and then Jesus created all the angels?"

"Yes."

"So where are the angels?"

"They are invisible, and up in heaven."

"Why are they up in heaven?"

"So they can do god's bidding. They are his army."

"OH so Jesus is like the sergeant, and then other angels are soldiers?"

"Yes they have different ranks - sherubs and cherubs - "

"Cherubs are those fat little baby angels, right? Oh but wait they are invisible. So does god really tell them all what to do? I mean how can he keep track of all of them? Don't they get bored hanging around heaven waiting for orders? I mean what is there to DO in heaven anyway? It's not like they have ditches to dig or anything."

They tried to get me back on track, but the whole thing was so confusing. We only made it a page into the study guide, cuz every sentence required clarification. I never even got to the evil demon part of spirit creatures. I wanted to ask them how they KNEW which spirits were good and bad, cuz if they were invisible, couldn't a bad spirit just SAY he was a good guy?

Finally they suggested that we try starting at the beginning for our next lesson ("What is the Truth About God?") That might answer all the questions I was having about god. I was agreeable.

They told me I had a lot of great questions, which was nice of them. Unfortunately they didn't have a lot of great answers. :(

But that's OK, we'll give it another go. In fact, I plan on meeting with them as many times as they want before they finally give up.

In the meantime, I better hide my bible from Beast...  (link to http://www.thebeautifulkind.com/2008/11/19/three-days-solo-in-a-hotel-room/ )

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 1.2

This is part 2 of day 1 of the Truth About Origins Seminar that Flimsy and I attended on Friday, April 17th, 2009.

After Dr. Brad Harrub offered up the idea that the Big Bang violated the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics (as if countless astrophysicists wouldn't notice that one of their theories violated basic high school laws of physics...) he characterized the Big Bang as a theory in which "the big bang made the world from nothing" and blamed excessive individualism in our society for this idea (Can you say ad hominem?) and then went on so say simply that design demands a designer. I've explained why this kind of reasoning is known as "begging the question" before, so if you'd like to read up on my particular counterargument for "design demands designer" then you can go here.

Moving on, Dr. Harrub introduced evolution by natural selection in the form of a puff piece (I.E. an article on evolution meant for the mass media) published by National Geographic, an online version of which can be found here. The Nat Geo article is entitled "Was Darwin Wrong?" and outlines the history of evolutionary theory as well as discusses why some people don't buy it. He said that before he began talking about the theory itself, he wanted to talk about the man behind the theory, in order to "bring this man that some people almost treat as a god down to the human level" (paraphrase).

He mentioned several facts about Darwin's life:

1. His mom died, and thus she had little influence on him and he was mostly influenced by his father and grandfather.
2. Concerning his finches, he could not believe that his god would create 13 different kinds of finches and so wondered if they both had a common ancestor.
3. He and his daughter were very close, and when she died he was devastated and he must have been angry at his god due to this.

Obviously, these are ad hominem arguments, designed to characterize Darwin as someone who possibly came up with his theory due to being angry at god. This has absolutely nothing to do with the validity of evolutionary theory - if Darwin had been convicted of rape, his theory would still stand. The point is that the strength of the idea lies in the idea itself and not in the particular personal life or motivation of the man behind the idea. Dr. Harrub is attacking the man, rather than the man's ideas.

Dr. Harrub goes on to say that the original title (actually, it was the original subtitle) of the Origin of Species was "On the origin of species by means of natural selection or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life." This is undoubtedly true, and has been used repeatedly by anti-evolutionists to paint Darwin as a racist, which Dr. Harrub does without apology. He told his audience that Darwin and other evolutionists believed at the time that since all of our ancestral origins were in Africa, that they believe  Caucasian man were further evolved than African-Americans. He went on to insist that schools are actively teaching that the white race is further evolved, pausing for emphasis to say emotively, "either way you cut it folks...... that's racism."

It is racism if you characterize it as such, which Darwin did not and which evolutionists today do not. In fact, back in Darwin's day, people (and by people I mean people who were racist due to the religious belief that Blacks and Whites were two different "kinds", and that blacks were the inferior "kind") hated Darwin for suggesting that we're all from the same stuff, that we're all animals, not just the "savages".  Dr. Harrub told his audience that if one merely opens the pages of Origin of Species, one can see just how racist Darwin was. Actually, when one compares his writings to other writings of his day, he was blatantly anti-racist and constantly harped on how the "savages" (which was a common word for anyone who didn't live in an industrialized nation) were no different from he and equally intelligent and capable. 

I've explained exactly how and why Darwin was not racist, especially compared to his religious counterparts in this post here. suffice to say that claiming Darwin was a racist in this manner seems to have a hidden agenda - to reduce the role that religion played in racism by painting scientists as the racists and religionists as the ones who are tolerant. Even if he was a racist (which he wasn't), this says nothing about the truth of evolutionary theory.

Dr. Harrub characterizes the position of evolutionists as: since we all evolved from African common ancestors, African-Americans must be less evolved than white people.  This is not a position that anyone other than people who misunderstand evolution hold and this is not a position that Darwin held (and even if it was, this does not matter) but he implies that this is being taught in schools.

Just for fun, here's a diagram I made of the difference in Dr. Harrub's Strawman version of evolution, and the actual evidence-based position held by evolutionary biologists. It should be noted that this is an extremely simplified version, meant to merely lay out the racist aspect. Time and time again, experimentation had show that neither race is "inferior" or "superior" to the other. Dr. Harrub ignores all of this evidence and instead attempts to paint evolution as a racist or inherently unfair theory. Once again I will point out that the implications of a theory say nothing about whether or not a theory is true, but in this case the implications of evolution are not what is presented, anymore than Germ Theory implies that humans should parasitically use other humans as hosts for biological functions.

 Stay tuned! This is only the second page of notes I took over the three day seminar, and I took a total of 31 pages of notes (on a 7"X5" notebook).



P.S. We'll still be posting Ray a Day's, they just will be spaced out to make room for this stuff!

Random blog questions

I've changed a few things about my blog, I am not sure if you noticed:

1. Comments are now embedded below the post instead of in a pop-up window.What do you think of that?
2. For a few minutes, I had my archive set to weekly. What this means is that instead of a monthly archive over on the sidebar with each month set as a link you can click, each WEEK was over on the sidebar. So instead of saying:

November 2008
December 2008
January 2009
February 2009
March 2009
April 2009

It said:

10/31/08-11/7/08
11/8/08- 11/15/08
etc...

I am almost thinking that the weekly archive might be better since my posts are.. well.. LONG. I mean, do you guys even read all this shit? When I started this blog I didn't really realize I was capable of blathering on so incessantly.

Then again, the weekly thing doesn't look nearly as clean as the monthly archives. It's also four times as long, but after I've had this blog for a year or more it wil be very, very long.

3. I really want a tag cloud. I tried looking on the net for some open-source code I could just plug in to my blog, and I found a really cool one but could not get it to work (and nor could Petter, my reader/website fixyman.) The problem is that I am using Blogger and publishing via FTP. If I were publishing via blogspot, I would just add a cloud as a widget. Alas, that is not an option for FTP.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar 1.1

Flimsy and I, along with some members of the St. Louis Atheist Meetup Group, attended something called the Truth About Origins Seminar, hosted by the West End Church of Christ. The seminar occurred Friday, April 17th, 2009, Saturday, April 18th, 2009, and Sunday, April 19th, 2009.

The seminar was sponsored by the church and featured young earth apologist speaker and writer Dr. Brad Harrub, who writes articles for publications and journals such Reason & Revelation, Apologetics Press and Focus Press.

On the first night of the seminar, Flimsy and I along with Saint Gasoline and some other folks showed up at the church after almost an hour's drive. Even at 7pm, the parking lot was full as the sun slowly faded. We walked in and noticed that most people were dressed in their Sunday clothes. The demographic seemed mostly to be older adults, but there were quite a few people our age and several families, along with a few children and babies.

The church was moderately-sized, with padded pews in three sections - center, left and right. The church does not have a lot of frills and lacks the rock-concert quality of some of the non-denominational contemporary churches we've been to, so it was somewhere between classic and contemporary. We sat four rows from the front on the left and chatted idly until it was time to start.

Dr Harrub opened by saying that whatever our belief, we were welcome at the church, and then he told a story, which I will paraphrase here:

It is happening in more and more colleges and schools across the country. On the first day of a biology class, a professor walks into a full classroom, holding two books. The professor holds aloft the first book - a textbook on biology - and says, "This is the book that you'll be reading and understanding this semester". He then lets his arm drop, and holds aloft the second book - it is a Bible. They [the professors] often wait a moment for smiles. Then they say, "If, by the end of the semester, you think that this book is the truth, you will fail this class". The professor then throws the Bible into the trash.

 Dr. Harrub repeated that this is happening more and more on college campuses.

I don't want to accuse Dr. Harrub of perpetuating a myth or urban legend, but I can find absolutely zero evidence that this is happening. No testimonials from students, no lawsuits (and there surely would be), nothing. Nothing at all. This did not happen when I went to college, and I have never heard of this happening until now. On the other hand, every college campus I know of has a campus ministry and prolific Christian or theist clubs.

So, if this story is not true (or even if it is, really), what is the point? The point is to create a false dichotomy - Either you believe in evolution, or you believe in the bible. The point also is to make an ad hominem argument. Essentially the point of the story is that college students are being "indoctrinated" to "believe" in evolution or face failing their classes. Since the professors are supposedly using fear tactics (accept my teachings or fail, you cannot question evolution) to teach, this is supposed to weaken the argument for evolution since people clearly have to be forced to accept evolution rather than accept it due to the overwhelming evidence for it.

Of course, the people in the congregation are supposed to be horrified. They consider the Bible to be the holy and inerrant word of their god, and so defiling it or giving it anything other than sacred respect is pretty insulting.  Obviously, you know my opinion on this - if the reverse were true and I were sitting in a Bible study class learning about creation, I would not be particularly offended if someone threw away a biology textbook - I would probably just giggle. But this is supposed to represent how depraved our college campuses have become. Too bad there is absolutely no evidence that this is actually happening. I gave Dr. Harrub my business card so that he could respond to me here, so.. Dr. Harrub... Citation needed. Show me the evidence that this is happening. I am waiting.

Dr. Harrub went on to say that in schools and colleges, young people are only being taught one theory of origins, which is that the universe came about via the Big Bang and that Evolution by Natural selection is the cause of the diversity in life we see in th world. He says that this theory (which is actually theorieS, BTW) does not answer these questions:

1.Who am I (and what am I worth)?
2.Where did I come from?
3.Why am I here?
4.Where am I going when I die?

The various naturalistic scientific theories about how the universe operates does not answer the first or third question per se, but that is not the point of naturalism. It does, however, answer the second and fourth.  the first and third questions are easily answered by individuals, so I don't really understand the implication here that since naturalistic theories of origins are incapable of answering 1 and 3 that they are somehow inadequate. General relativity does not answer these questions either, but we don't decry it due to this because General Relativity is not around to answer those questions.

Dr. Harrub went on to say that the Big Bang, when one boils it down, violates the First and Second laws of Thermodynamics. I expected him at this point to explain why, but something interesting happened. He quickly (almost hurriedly) clicked to the next slide without any explanation at all as to why the Big Bang violated those two laws. I am not sure why this is. Perhaps he will explain it at the next seminar? Maybe he glossed over it because the Big Bang has painfully little to do with Evolution?

To recap, the First Law of Thermodynamics basically states that matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed. I.E. It can change into different types of energy, but cannot come from nothing or simply disappear.

The Big Bang model of the origin of the universe does not violate this law because it does not state that all matter and energy came from "nothing". I've actually discussed this before, and you can also find more information from someone who knows more about astrophysics here and here.

The universe also does not violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and I have actually written about his before, so rather than rewrite it, you can just read it if you click here.

Essentially, Dr. Harrub sets up a false dichotomy right in the very beginning of his seminar, insisting that there are only two models: the "creation model" and the "evolution model", and thinks that by poking holes in the "evolution model" that he can prove the "creation model" is true. Throughout the first seminar, he made absolutely no attempts at showing how creation is true. Rather, he found supposed holes in various naturalistic explanations in both cosmology to natural selection.

I'm posting these WEC seminar posts in place of most Ray a Days, so until I am finished with this, Ray a Day will be on the back burner a little. I took about 31 pages of notes on a 7"X5" notebook, and this was the first page. I don't want my memory to impede my analysis, which I fear will happen if I post my analysis over a 2 month period.  If anyone wants to Guest Post a Ray a Day, drop me a line via e-mail and I will drop you some pages of his book.

If Dr. Harrub, any members of the West End Church of Christ, or anyone else wishes to comment, I welcome anything you have to say!

Faith Infiltration: Faith Church St. Louis

Each week, Flimsy and I (along with some other local friends, like Alien) and I visit a church. This week marks our 21st church. We chronicle the general atmosphere of the churches we visit, talk about notable things we hear in sermons, and give our overall impression of the places we've been.

Occasionally, we skip out due to laziness or other plans, but we've been pretty regular in attendance, which is probably more than a lot of church goers can say! We've collected lots of experiences, some random trinkets like mugs and stuff, and we've even been counter-infiltrated by pastors of the churches we've been to.

This week, we went to the Easter Sunday service at Faith Church St. Louis, a non-denominational church who prides themselves in their message of their god's love, rather than their god's wrath.

We found Faith Church while driving over to St. Charles one day - they have two locations, and we passed one on the highway and gawked at how huge and impressive it was - I think they leased a former country dancing club. Our friend Alien wanted to join us, so we decided to go to the one closer to her.

We entered the church sanctuary and noticed huge LCD screens at either side, crosses at the front, and plush chairs instead of pews. A screen saver counted down the time until the service was to begin, which was only a few seconds. We sat, noting that the sanctuary had pretty much become standing-room only.

I overheard a lady talking, and she said something to this effect, "Wow, look at how full we are this week. Everyone is here. It's amazing how so many people only show up on Christmas and Easter". I suppose I wasn't surprised to hear something so stereotypical come out of someone's mouth, so I guess what they say is true - some people are only Christian on Christmas and Easter. The lights dimmed slowly, leaving the sanctuary almost in complete darkness.

We were sitting in the back, just a few seats to the left of center, and we saw a man roll in what looked like an upside-down white trash can on wheels with a green light inside and some water on top, as if it had been out in the rain. The band began to play uplifting, energetic contemporary Christian rock music. The upside-down can was a drum, and while the man drummed it, water jumped in the air. This reminded me of Blue Man Group, and was actually a pretty cool effect, except that the congregants closest to the drum got splattered with water droplets.

Obviously, the music was meant to evoke feelings of being uplifted, of being exited. The first song ended with a burst of musical energy, and then the LCD screens lit up and showed - surprisingly - scenes from The Passion of the Christ. They chose to use the scene where Jesus is on the cross, and a drop of water falls to the ground, causing the earth to shake, and all sorts of crazy stuff to happen. Sanctuary-shaking bass rumbled through the air. I felt like we were at the movies and really - well - we were.

The Passion faded away, replaced by an uplifting but softer solo, where a heavily tattooed woman danced around in a white dress with white streamers. After this, an energetic solo by a male vocalist ended with a bunch of children on stage jumping around in a massive cloud of bubbles, while older children and young adults waved streamers. The children and soloist left, and another song began. This time, during the song, people came out and pinned roughly-torn sheets of paper directly to the cross situated at the center. On the sheets of paper words were typed, words like: divorce, fear, pride, hopelessness, unforgiveness, alcohol, low self-esteem, lust, gossip, depression, shame, loneliness, lack, pressure, offense, greed, mental torment, sin, disease, poverty, pornography, stress, etc. The metaphor being, of course, that all of these things are being washed away by the blood of Jesus. The music faded and the pastor arrived.

The pastor, I swear, looks and sounds like Billy Ray Cyrus. He led the congregants in a quick prayer, saying, "all eyes closed all heads bowed". He then told his congregation that he doesn't like being a televangelist, so hey, go ahead and tithe during the announcements if you want.

All of the announcements were played over the LCD screens and were well-produced and extraordinarily hip. Apparently this church has a hip youth group, a contest for kids to win a dune buggy (yes, a real dune buggy - they had it on display outside the church), a really hip children's event during which, among other things, they will be giving away an X-Box 360, a group for young adults that is just freakishly cool, and a group for girls that is all about "Setting the world on fire!"

If you go check out their website, you'll see exactly what I mean - the stylishness of their website oozes over into the church itself.  Obviously, they are trying to appeal to contemporary secular culture - the whole thing was very urban.

The fact that tithing was done during the announcements is an interesting contrast to the churches we have been to that make a big deal out of tithing, giving it five minutes of prayer and a special song. Instead of using guilt and peer-pressure to make you tithe, they went with the, "holy crap, this church is doing all of this cool stuff, you know you wanna support our awesomeness so we can keep being awesome" tactic. I guess it works, because this church obviously has tons of support.

 So, right as everyone is supposed to feel good about tithing and good about how urban, hip and contemporary this church is, Pastor Dave launches into his sermon. He talks about how when he was a little boy, his parents didn't have a lot of money. Near Easter, his was at Wal-Mart with his mom, and his mom couldn't afford to buy him a chocolate bunny. But, he saw a bunny with a broken ear and a 50% off sticker on it. He ran to tell his mom and begged her for the cheap, broken bunny. She agreed, and they went back to find the bunny, but someone had taken it.

I'll assume that in Fenton, MO, where this church is located, a lot of people can relate to this. Hell, I can relate to this. While I was growing up, nearly all of my possessions came from yard sales, my mom coupon-clipped until she had blisters on her hands, and we would get slightly damaged or old Easter candy too. Anyway, Pastor Dave tells his congregation that his mom was "trained in sin", and so she gave him a look and told him, "well... you could break another ear..." and so, of course, Pastor Dave, being a little boy, broke a whole row of bunny ears, and the next day they came back and he got his broken bunny.

The point: without Jesus, your life is broken just like the bunny ears. When you're "trained in sin", you need Jesus to help you pay the price for wholeness.

He goes on to talk about how the wages of sin are death - but in a slightly less literal sense. He spoke not of actual mortal death but of death of family, marriage, happiness, etc. Of course Jesus never sinned but became sin itself so that we (never being righteous) could become righteous. I know these are the basic tenants of Christianity and even though they were presented in a more palpable way than I have heard before, they still don't make any sense. Once again: the Christian god supposedly creates all of us in sin. Then, he is thinking about how all of those people created in his image are imperfect sinners, and decides we all deserve eternal torment in life and in death for being so imperfect. but, he realizes this is not fair, and so he sends himself down to earth to sacrifice himself to himself so that he doesn't have to torment us in life and in death, but with one stipulation - we have to believe that he sent himself down to save us from himself and we have to repent our sins in order to be saved, because otherwise we're getting a free ride, and that doesn't make sense. But the whole thing doesn't make sense! Anyway, moving on...

Right as his congregation is supposed to be nodding their heads in understanding of how exactly to be saved, he tells a story of a kid whose funeral he had recently been to. This kid apparently was into drugs and suffering from depression, but some members of his congregation had been bringing him to church. The pastor told of how the kid had accepted Jesus and become a Christian. A few weeks later, he killed himself. The pastor talked about how this kid had been declared righteous in the eyes of his god and so thus was in heaven now. The point: be compelled to find troubled people in your life and bring them to church so they can be saved.

Pastor Dave then tells another story about a different pastor doing an internship at a mental institution. In the institution was a lady who was totally crazy and had to be constantly retrained in order to keep her from hurting people. Apparently the pastor went in, sat down, and sang "yes, Jesus loves me" for three months. After this, eventually the woman started signing with him, she became totally healed and went on to live a normal life.

Really.

I hate to be cynical but.. really? If this woman was in a mental hospital, she had to have been given care other than this. The nurses did nothing? Her psychologist did nothing? This was her only treatment, some guy coming in and singing a song to her over and over again? Evidence please. Case study, please. I found a similar story about a guy named Robert Cornwall here, near the bottom of the page. It's so funny how stories morph and change when passed along orally.

A few more things:

* The devil is the one who has all those tapes of your life to be played on judgment day.
*Faith and belief erases those tapes of your sin
*Other preachers like to preach that "god is mad" at you, but Pastor Dave wants you to know that his god isn't mad at you.

The point: even though you do bad things and sin, the Christian god is not mad at you for it, and your belief in Jesus will erase all of your sins so that god doesn't see them when reviewing the events of your life. This sounds like the same stuff Ray Comfort says, only Pastor Dave phrases it in a way that is much more palpable. But, the problem still remains. Why be good, if you know your belief will acquit you from wrongdoing? How is this way of thinking a superior reason to be moral, rather than humanist morality? It seems to me that this sermon was designed to rid people of their guilt and fear for sinning, by letting them know that their god will not see their sins as long as they believe. But when you do bad things, you should feel guilty - an appropriate sense of guilt is a powerful tool, and many a sociopath feels no guilt. I am not at all saying that this way of thinking necessarily leads to sociopathy, but it surely does not seem superior to humanist morality as far as giving people reasons to act in a moral and ethical way.

The service ended with uplifting music in which the themes were winning wars and conquering enemies. So, the congregation is supposed to feel uplifted, as though they've won the battle against sin... for now.

Ray a Day: 7:3

So today's angry skeptic asks Ray a common question. He asks, "Can God create a rock so big he cannot lift it?"

Ray doesn't actually answer the question at all, other than saying that yes, some things are not possible for god to do, like sin or lie. He then goes on to say that his god is a perfect judge and that if we trust in Jesus, god will lift up the massive stone of sin hanging over our heads.

Okay so here is what I think of this whole big rock business. I think that it's an irrelevant question because it is asking if an entity can do something self-contradictory. Is "the ability to do something self-contradictory" included in the definition of omnipotence? If so, then omnipotence is illogical. But I think that when we include this as part of the definition of impotence, we're creating a strawman version of omnipotence.  In this way, it seems to me that we're no better than when someone says, "an atheist is someone who believes nothing created everything". Only we're saying, "A Christian is someone who believes his or her particular brand of god is so powerful it has the power to do self-contradictory things."

Obviously, the logic goes like this:

P. X is defined as an all-powerful entity.
Question. Can x create a rock so powerful X cannot lift it?

1. If X can create a rock that is so big X cannot lift it
2. X is not all-powerful, because X cannot life the rock X just created.

1. If X cannot create a rock so big X cannot lift it.
2. X is not all-powerful, because X cannot create a rock so big he cannot lift it.

When you break this down into what the argument is really asking, it is asking this: Can an all-powerful entity do something that it cannot do? Can this all-powerful entity do contradictory things? A similar question would be to ask if someone's god can create a round square.

Infinite power is a logical impossibility, because infinity itself is an abstraction. Christians generally say that their god is omnipotent, but they also say that there are some things their god cannot do - such as "violate his nature". So generally, I think they are speaking in hyperbole, where "omnipotent" really means something closer to, "the most powerful thing". I could be wrong though, as I am obviously not a Christian, but I generally think that Christians and other theists over the age of thirteen have heard this paradox a thousand times.  Proving that any given god is not infinitely omnipotent doesn't really prove that that god does not exist.

On the other hand, if a theist insists that their god is infinitely ompotent and said omnipotence surpasses logic (such as, for example, if their answer to the god paradox is that he will create a rock so big he cannot lift it, but then he will lift it) then you may as well end your conversation right then because any god that is defined as an entity which does not follow the laws of logic cannot be defined or spoken about in any meaningful way whatsoever. If any indifidual definition of god includes the trumping of logic, then that definition is totally nonsensical and pretty meaningless.

Book Review: The God Virus

A few weeks ago I attended what amounted to a seminar by Darrel W. Ray, author of The God Virus: How Religion Infects our Lives and Culture.

In The God Virus, the author uses the metaphor of religion as a virus to explain how religious ideas pass from individual to individual and infiltrate society.

The idea of ideas or systems of ideas as "viruses" was first described by Richard Dawkins, who coined the term "meme" to mean a "postulated unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, gets transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena". They are analogous to genes (hence the similarity in spelling and pronunciation), in that they are said to self-replicate and respond to selective pressures. In this book, the author explains religion through this viral/meme metaphor.

The author first explains exactly how religion can be appropriately viewed using the viral metaphor, and then uses this metaphor throughout the book, explaining how different religions survive and dominate others, and how some of the strategies religion uses to survive and propagate are very similar to actual, biological viruses. He explains that religious conversion can affect individuals on the personality level, taking over critical thinking and causing an individual to be "immune" to other religions by being able to point out the flaws in other religions while simultaneously being unable to see the flaws in their own religion. The author speaks of the importance of "vectors" (priests, ministers, etc) in propagating religious ideas and how religious people and organizations will protect those "vectors" even in the case of abuse or other crimes.

In the second chapter, the author explains the types of strategies the "god virus" uses to survive and spread, and how advanced religions are more effective than other religions, which is why they continue to survive and replicate. The author says that one of the tools to fight the "god virus" is science and critical thinking education, which is something that religion tends to rally against, especially if the science concerns ideas that seem counter to religious belief, I.E. Evolution.

The third chapter deals with how religion infects and persuades groups and political structures as well as individuals, and underlines religion's influence on public and civil culture. The fourth is about guilt and shame and how religion uses mixed messages to create a cycle of guilt in which the religion reduces feelings of guilt by promising an elimination of it, yet individuals continue to feel guilty and return to religion to have their guilt temporarily suppressed. The author gives a long list of some of the conflicting messages in religion, such as:

*God loves you, but he will send you to hell if you do not do exactly what he says.

*God loves you, but you were born unclean and can never be clean without god.

*Allah loves you and created women as beautiful creatures that you are forbidden to enjoy, except in marriage and behind closed doors.

Similarly, the fifth chapter deals with sex, and religion's attempt to control sex by creating a sex-negative environment. He mentions that even though religion uses positive terminology such as "focus on the family" really the message of "focus on the family" is a message of focusing on the rules and tenets of religion, which cause feelings of guilt and negativity towards sex. The function of this is not to create happy, dynamic family structures, but to propagate religion.

Chapter six is particularly interesting, as the subject is morality and how even though religionists insist that morality is objective and defined in concrete terms by their god, morality is an ever-changing product of culture in which the only way a given religion can survive is by adopting and changing its morality to fit in with the culture enough to continue to propagate. People who are religionists find it difficult to see this changing morality and believe they are more moral than others, and this blinds them to real-world data which shows that religionists are nor more or less moral than atheists. The author specifically shows how various studies such as studies on divorce and prison populations how that religion has little effect on morality and even that non-theists may be slightly more moral.

Chapter seven is about American Evangelism and how it has spread to the point where mega-churches are dotting the US landscape chapter 8 explains why some people are drawn into religion and others are not, and the role that intelligence and personality plays in religiosity. The second to last two chapters deal with unbinding oneself from religion and breaking free of "the virus", especially in deprogramming ourselves of the ideas that have been taught to us since an early age.

The last chapter concerns the difference between science and religion: in short, science has error-correction mechanisms and thus builds up a continuity of knowledge based on previous work, and this knowledge can be objectively tested. Religion, on the other hand, does not have these errors and instead has built-in mechanisms to change with the cultural climate. Because science is so powerful, many religions have adopted scientific language while simultaneously decrying scientific methods.

I found the structure of the book to be well-organized and accessible to individuals who are not well-voiced in formal argumentation. Rather than approach the god problem from a logical or hypothesis perspective A la Victor Stenger's God: the Failed Hypothesis, it approaches the problem of religion's impact on the individual and society. Thus, while it is aimed at non-theists, those who believe in god but are opposed to religion (and no, I don't mean evangelical Christians who insist they aren't religious because they really have a "relationship" with god - those people are just being deceptive) such as my friend Alien, who is a spiritualist or my friend Tim, who is "Christian" but perfectly comfortable at our local atheists meetup in St. Louis. It may not be so appealing to people who are intensely literal or who take the metaphor of the god virus as an argument rather than as a mechanism or metaphor for explanation. It is also important to note that other ideas act as "mind viruses" as well (like empiricism!), but that the religion virus acts in a particular way that is unlike other "mind viruses" - the particulars of which are outlined in the book. I think that individuals who do consider themselves religious might be offended at the negative connotations of the word "virus", and so I urge religionists who might come across this book to consider what I have said above about other ideas spreading like viruses as well. One could say that atheism is a type of mind virus, and my feathers would not be ruffled. I think that it is very accessible to people who are capable of stepping outside of religion and looking at it objectively. I think that the book could have also been titled "the religion virus" without much harm.

Now I  have an announcement: keep on the lookout - I'm interviewing Darrel W. Ray in a few days, and I'll be posting the interview here!

Anti-Gay Marriage Commercial

No Ray a Day today: instead, we have an analysis of an anti-gay marriage commercial! Whee!

Now, Ziztur and I never watch television. No, really, never. She has House, M.D. on her computer, and I have Gargoyles and MacGyver on DVD. The only actual television we've watched over our entire relationship was news coverage on election night, back in November.

So maybe some of you out there have seen this commercial, from The National Organization for Marriage. Some of you may have projectile vomited at the time, as well. You'll have to excuse me for getting a little . . . passionate at times here; there are many issues (abortion, gun rights, social welfare programs, etc.) where I can see part of the other side's perspective at least, but I have nothing but apocalyptic contempt for people who are against gay rights.





Now, some degree of vague language is understandable, even to be expected in a short commercial, but obviously, this trash is extremely non-specific, almost deliberately ambiguous. There's a reason for that. A bit of digging around in their website reveals this release by their organization, detailing the supposed basis for the commercial's statements.

Among the scare-mongering with dramatic background imagery, we have lots of firmly-stated assertions that people's lives are being invaded and changed, and their freedoms taken away, but with only three actual cases to back up their rhetoric. Let's take a look at the very best examples they could come up with.

"I'm a California doctor who must choose between my faith and my job."

This refers to an incident that occurred in California last year, when Dr. Christine Brody refused to proceed with artificial insemination after learning that her client was a lesbian. Dr. Brody attempted to refer the client, Guadalupe Benitez, who had already been through 11 months of fertility treatments, to another clinic that would have no such objection. Ms. Benitez, however, was informed by her healthcare provider that Dr. Brody's clinic was the only one covered under her healthcare plan, leaving her pretty thoroughly boned ( . . . er, you know what I mean). So . . . yes, Dr. Brody, that's correct. If your job requires you to perform certain procedures on people, and your "faith" commands that you refuse to perform said procedure on someone whose lifestyle you disagree with, then you absolutely must choose between your "faith" and your job.

If I were in Dr. Brody's shoes, and I, for example, had a religious belief that self-righteous religious snobs shouldn't raise children, and you, Dr. Brody, came to me for such treatment, I would have the same choice to make. I could either choose my dimfuck overtly discriminatory beliefs over my job and quit, or alternatively I could grow the fuck up.

"I'm part of a New Jersey church group punished by the government because we can't support same-sex marriage."

Out of these three examples, this one is perhaps the most deeply retarded. What this refers to is a day two years ago when the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association refused to allow a lesbian couple to use the organization's beach pavillion to hold a civil union ceremony. Sounds bad, right? Well, the "punishment by the government" was not that the Christian organization had to host the civil union ceremony. The issue here was that the OGCMA had recieved, from the government, with taxpayer money, a rather large tax exemption of something amounting to around $20,000 in exchange for the pavillion being open for use by the public. The OGCMA then decided that the pavillion was not open to the public, and only people whose lifestyles they approved of could use it. Surprise, surprise, they then lost the tax exemption (just the exemption on the pavillion and the small lot it sits on, mind you, they still have the rest of their exemptions, ensuring that they pay virtually no taxes for an organization of it's size).

Same deal: If I had such a property and structure, with such a tax exemption from the government in exchange for making the pavillion available for public use, and then refused to let heterosexual or Christian couples get married there . . . I really couldn't whine if my exemption was revoked, could I? Now imagine for a moment that I proceeded to bellow about my religious freedom being trampled upon. Would there be any sane response besides repeatedly striking me in the testicles? This is not even a matter of a private business refusing to serve certain customers in a discriminatory way - this is an organization with property that is subsidized by taxpayer money through the government, insisting that they have the right to discriminate with the use of that property.

"I'm a Massachusetts parent helplessly watching public schools teach my son that gay marriage is okay."

This clusterfuck of paranoid delusion was all over one little book; Who's in a Family? One day, young Jacob Parker returned home with the morally degenerate volume in question, much to the dismay of his father, David Parker. To make a long story short, Mr. Parker basically told the school that he forbad anyone at the school from discussing any aspect of same-sex couples with his son without his explicit permission . . . and when the school replied that this request would basically be impossible because many students at the school come from homes with same-sex couples, he staged a pathetically childish sit-in protest at the school until he was arrested. Seriously, folks, this is the best example you have of the radical facsist homosexual agenda? A school showed students a book that basically says that there are kids who have same-sex parents, and you probably shouldn't treat kids like shit because of it? Really? How absolutely horrible.

As you can probably imagine, you could spend all day surfing Youtube and watching any of the plethora of parodies that have been made, mocking this idiocy. My favorite, I think, is this one.

Yeah, I know you've already heard this analogy. The reason that you always hear opposition to gay marriage compared to opposition to interracial marriage is because there isn't any rational rebuttal to the analogy. If you oppose gay marriage, you aren't "coming together in love to protect marriage" any more than those who shat themselves over the possibility of women actually voting were "coming together in love to protect democracy."

TAM7 again!

So even though Flimsy and I are poor, this summer we're planning on attending The Amazing Meeting 7, a meeting of the minds for skeptics and freethinkers.

Of course, we can't really afford to go, but damnit, we're planning on going anyway! We applied for scholarships to cover the entrance fees. We're driving instead of flying because it will be cheaper, even though the drive is 24 hours total.  We're also asking around to see if someone would be willing to share a room with us.

We'll be driving from St. Louis, making a slight detour to stop at the Grand Canyon. Our driving map looks like this.

Hot damn, that's daunting. 3300+ miles total. Flimsy's car gets like 33 mpg. Last summer, it would have been cheaper to fly. This summer, it's cheaper to drive.

If for some reason you have a charitable heart, you can donate to our TAM7 fund by hitting the donate button over on the sidebar. We've had.. one(!) person donate, so thanks! Also coming soon, Flimsy and I will be making and selling SKEPTICAL JEWELRY to help us with costs.

Also, I just got new license plates and had to retire my old ones (they made a new plate design), which are custom and say "ZIZTUR" on them. Maybe I can auction them off?

Faith Infiltration: Origins Seminar

I thought I would remind my dear readers that today at 7:00PM is the first of three seminars on creationism I will be attending that are being hosted by a local church. I mentioned it a few weeks ago.

The seminar runs for three days: Friday, Saturday and Sunday and will include these topics:

Topics Include

• Was Darwin Wrong?
• Evolutionary Hoaxes
• Intelligent Design or Ape-Like Creature
• Atheism’s Attack on America
• Is the Bible Just a Good Book?
  

There is a question and answer session after the Friday/Saturday seminars, which cover the first three topics. Sunday's seminar is during church time so I assume it is not a seminar but a sermon on how evil we atheists are. Funny, because they will probably have more atheists in their church than ever before. I would love to point out that since 15% of the population are nontheist, and a decent chunk of those people specifically define themselves as atheist, they probably know an atheist even if they don't realize it. Their brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, parents, collegues at work, etc could all be atheists - and all of the things they are going to say about atheists they will be saying about those people they know.  I hate to have expectations but when you call your sermon "Atheism's Attack on America", one has tgo expect bigotry and atheophobia.

Leading the seminars/sermon will be Dr. Brad Harrub, who says he will, "Expose the errors, inconsistencies, and hoaxes of Evolution during the three-day seminar, Truth About Origins"

There was a slight hubbub over where these seminars would take place. Originally it was to take place at Lindenwood University, but according to the Origins website, Lindenwood canceled their reservation. 

The guys at Lindenwood tell a slightly different story:

Lindenwood Provost Jann Weitzel sent me the following  clarification from President Jim Evans (4-13-09) and requested  that I notify you: "The President of Lindenwood did not cancel  the event.  It had not been officially scheduled.  Rather, the  application to use Lindenwood’s facilities was declined because (a) the event was not being sponsored by Lindenwood for its students, and (b) the requester did not follow established procedures for obtaining approval of an outside organization’s event on the Lindenwood campus."

I'm waiting for Dr. Harrub to cry "Expelled!" but we shall see.

Ray a Day: 7.2

So today in Ray's book we have an angry skeptic asserting that since Jesus told his disciples to up and take a donkey from a villager, and if the villager protests to simply tell him that Jesus needs it and take it anyway, that this is the definition of stealing.  The skeptic is probably referring to this:

When he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, saying, "Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' you shall say this: 'The Lord has need of it.'" So those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them. And as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, "Why are you untying the colt?" And they said, "The Lord has need of it." And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. (Luke 19:29-34)

Okay so, these dudes come up to your donkey and go to take it, and you ask them what's up, and they tell you it's for the lord, and... who knows what happened after that, but I guess the owner said, "Oh, okay!"

The simplest explanation is that Jesus wasn't stealing a donkey because the owner gave it to his disciples once they explained why they needed it. Big deal.

However Comfort does not explain it like this, and instead does something that fails in an epic way. He says that Jesus didn't steal the donkey because Jesus was god, and god made the donkey. The owner was just holding it for him, but he really owned everything because he made everything.

This "explanation" would work for any act Jesus committed. If he came down to earth and made himself a bed out of the stretched and tanned skins of sixty-five newborn male infants, brutally tortured every woman who came across his path, stole bread from starving families and ensured that his followers would facilitate the spread of HIV in the name of religion (oh.. wait....), according to Comfort he would still be morally perfect because he owned and created those babies, women, families, etc. So now, we've got a problem: Jesus's actions have absolutely nothing to do with his status as being morally perfect, because he is morally perfect regardless of his actions due to being defined as perfect. Comfort could have explained the donkey story easily, but instead he chose to explain it in a way that makes his worldview look dangerous and obscene, not to mention logically bankrupt. Comfort says this (that Jesus owned the donkey) is hard for atheists to swallow. It's hard for us to swallow because you're doing this again:

 

Comfort goes on to "explain" the second moral problem with Jesus, which occurs when he apparently disobeys his parents. He's talking about this:

And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom. And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it, but supposing him to be in the group they went a day’s journey, but then they began to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances, and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. And when his parents saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, "Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress." And he said to them, "Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?" (Luke 2:42-49)

Comfort says that this is not an example of Jesus disobeying his parents, but an example of bad parenting. Apparently Mary and Joseph were irresponsible for not making sure that the son of god "went up according to custom".

So.. Jesus knew that his pack was leaving, but he deliberately did not go with his parents and instead stayed on Jerusalem, and his parents had to search for him, but since Jesus is morally perfect, he must have been doing the right thing. Once again, Jesus' actions have no bearing on his status as morally perfect. If he had kicked his mom in the teeth, Comfort would say she deserved it. I've mentioned before how this thinking is dangerous here, here, here and here.

The third problem is when Jesus apparently lost his temper when he cleared the temple. Ray says that this wasn't anybody loosing their temper, this was premeditated because Jesus took the time to make a whip. Here is the whole bit:

The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, "Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade." (John 2:13-16)

So Jesus came into a temple and noting the money changers he made a whip and then drove them all out. I don't really get why it being "premeditated" means that Jesus didn't lose his temper. After all, people are often known to do this - say, for example, that a woman realizes their husband is cheating on her out at the local bar. So she drives home, grabs a knife, drives back and slashes his tires. Premeditated? Check. Moral? Probably not. but apparently as long as one does something in a premeditated fashion, one is not losing one's temper - especially if it's Jesus. Also, since he made those money changers and owned them, he can do whatever he wants, right?

In the end all I can say is... who cares if Jesus stole a donkey, spat on his parents, and overturned some tables? I mean sure, the overturning of the tables pretty much guaranteed that he'd be crucified, but this is some pretty minor stuff to quibble over. Jesus is a million times more moral compared to the Christian god anyway - and they are supposed to be the same entity. Both are apparently morally perfect. Huh? Just write that stuff out of the next version of the Bible or something. 

Petter fixed it: my blog!

Once again, my most awesome commenter Petter Häggholm who wrote this guest post and this Ray a Day post and blogs over here (or by RSS; you can use tags to narrow it down to essay-style posts, or only posts related to skepticism or religion), has extended his EPIC WIN BRAINMEAT to my blog and fixed another ongoing problem I have been having - how to make my pretty template images show up in individual blog posts. So for those of you who go to individual blog posts to read content, you'll probably notice they just got a lot more colorful.

He fixed this problem for me in all of five minutes. He also found like 600+ errors in the template, which makes sense given that I only have a rudimentary understanding of HTML. He tells me he fixed a bunch of these too, and I can only nod my head in mock understanding.

Petter, you totally win, and you make me feel squishy, and you deserve the highest idolatry.

*bows to your godlike website fixy powers*

Ray a Day - 7:1

Quick note:  Early on, we sort of half-heartedly and not entirely intentionally merged two chapters into one, and then we started numbering our reviews in the above format.  Meaning, the 5:Xs are actually Chapter Six, and now we're on Chapter Seven.  Sooner or later, we'll get around to changing them up and putting them in the proper format . . .

So!  Chapter Seven is titled "The Witness of Jesus Christ and of God's Holy Spirit."  In the introduction, we have here a rather obnoxious story and some staggeringly poorly reasoned assertions.

Ray Comfort describes how he once went to a New York synagogue, attended the Jewish service, and then, of course, attempted to proselytize the orthodox Jews gathered for worship.  He is shocked and saddened to find himself expelled from the synagogue:  "I was guilty of the terrible crime of belonging to Jesus Christ, and their justice was swift for such wickedness."  Oh, by the way, he wore a spy camera during the service, and was joined after by his full camera crew to film his aggressive evangelizing and subsequent ejection.  If Ziztur and I tried to pull any bullshit like this in our Faith Infiltrations, any establishment we visited would be more than justified in kicking our asses out.  Why do I have this feeling that if an atheist behaved like this in the headquarters of Comfort's "Living Waters" ministry, that it would be exhibit #1 in the hateful, bigoted, intolerant actions of those who deny God's existence?  How can he so dismally fail to comprehend that such actions are so obnoxiously pushy and aggressive when he does them?

Comfort uses this story as an example of sinners (in this case, one of the Jewish folks) being very uncomfortable with just saying Jesus's name.  Here's the main point that Comfort is trying to make here:

Isn't it strange that sinners have such trouble saying His name in truth, but when they use it in blasphemy, it rolls off their tongue without a problem? . . . They are still living in sin, still fighting the Holy Spirit, and therefore any reverential mention of Christ's sacrifice makes them uncomfortable. . . . Their very discomfort proves that the Spirit of God is real and active; otherwise, why would they feel anything at all at the mention of God or the name of Jesus Christ?  Their discomfort is the Spirit's testimony to His existence and His desire for them to know Christ.

Yes, you read that correctly - some people who don't believe in Jesus are slightly uncomfortable when someone like Comfort aggressively evangelizes in their general direction, and this proves that Jesus is real and wants what's best for us!  I'm sure that Comfort wouldn't be at all uncomfortable if someone walked up to him, on his property, followed by a camera crew, and started saying "Hail Satan!" into his face over and over again (drowning in sarcasm . . .).

See, Mr. Comfort, when you speak of people saying the name of Jesus "in truth," you mean for us to say, "Jesus is the eternal Son of God and the Creator of all the universe" or some such nonsense.  Of course those who don't believe in Jesus are uncomfortable saying that!  Of course those who don't believe in Jesus are uncomfortable saying, "I believe in Jesus"!  We say his name in "blasphemy" so easily because when we say that Jesus was not the son of God, we accept that as the most reasonable conclusion, based on the evidence.  You constantly insist that we atheists actually do believe in God, but that we only deny this because we just love being immoral people.  Your case would be stronger if you claimed that atheists were only feigning discomfort with Jesus's name, and that we actually we're actually very uncomfortable with blaspheming against him.  However, as you point out, we frequently commit the greatest biblical sin without any hesitation or discomfort.  Doesn't this demonstrate pretty conclusively that we do consider your Jesus, your heaven, and your hell to be nothing more than myth?

Or, to put it another way, I want you to repeat after me, Ray:  "Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the messiah of the Jewish scripture and of the Christian Bible, was a deranged, drooling, half-bright con man."  Are you . . . uncomfortable saying this, Ray?  If it makes you so uncomfortable, that obviously means that it's true, right?  Or does it, more likely, mean that there's something horrifyingly wrong with your logic?

Faith Infiltration: Pastor Moody Infiltrates back

The other day I received a comment from Pastor Moody, the pastor at Holy Cross Deaf Lutheran Church. We infiltrated this church several months ago, and our encounter can be found here. 

So apparently we've been counter-infiltrated - a pastor from a church we infiltrated has infiltrated back! We're having quite an interesting conversation there in the comments of the original faith infiltration now. We think this is pretty cool. Pastor Moody's comment was:

I want to thank you again for visiting Holy Cross Deaf. I encourage you to keep on visiting Christian Churches because I believe that gives the power of God's Word more opportunities to bring His grace and forgiveness into your hearts.

Like I said in my sermon on Easter Sunday, using the three of you as examples of all of us in our dead (without faith in Christ) condition, that God greatly loved us all and sent His Son to save us all. In Baptism God crucified us with Christ, we died with Him; we were buried with Him and He rose us with Him so we can live His life now and forever. We can, as the Bible says, be the walking dead (whitewashed tombs)or have Christ's empty tomb as ours.

I mentioned you in the Sermon since one post mentioned that I could not pray for something (President Obama to understand that life begins at conception) unless it was mentioned other places in the Service. I pray for a lot of things without mentioning them other places including prayers now for you three by name. I have encouraged our members to do that also and will be contacting other Church that you have infiltrated to ask them to also pray for you.

An aside about the "simple" language used in our services... Deaf people have no Passive Voice in their language or thinking process. So we speak/sign everything is in the Active Voice. It makes the English sound simpler but it is just clearer and more easily understood by all.

God does love you. There are no atheists after death. I just hope you realize His love for you before that day comes. That is my prayer for you.

If you ever want to talk about anything, let me know.

Pastor Moody

 I responded that Flimsy didn't really mean that Pastor Moody couldn't pray for something he hadn't already mentioned in the service - Flimsy just thought it was a little unexpected, and I think the language he used might have led to a slight misunderstanding.

The "no atheists after death' comment is interesting. By this I take that to mean that there are no atheists after death because P. Moody believes we'll all stand in front of the Christian god on judgment day.  I suppose that since I see no evidence that our consciousness continues after death, I can conclude we're all atheists after death - none of us are theists after death, after all - as there is no neuronal activity in which to give us any thoughts. But, that's just an aside.

It's interesting that we've been used in sermon(s?), and I am not entirely sure how I feel about that. I am inclined to say since I visit churches and write about my experiences on a blog that can be viewed by the entire world, its only fair that said churches be able to speak or write about their experiences with me.

Ray a Day: 5:10

So, today Ray's book gave me another dose of atheophobia, and an interesting subject: prayer.

In Ray's book, an angry skeptic mentions that he prayed to god when he was a believer but god never answered. Ray responds by touting the same nonsense he's repeated several times about the difference between "believers" and "Christians". He says:

Every sane human being is a "believer" in God's existence. Some people pretend he doesn't exist (atheists) but they know He does. I know what an atheist knows because God's word tells me that he has given light to every man.

He goes on to say that believers have prayed to his model of god and gotten no response because believers have to do what his god wants before his god will answer them. There is some sort of appropriate procedure to follow. Said procedure is repenting and trusting in Jesus.

Comfort then gives his reader a common parable about his god - concerning prayers, his god always responds, and the response is either "yes", "no" or "wait".

I have covered this nonargument about atheists knowing there is a god several times over, so I'll not repeat myself. There is no compelling evidence for Comfort's god, so no, I do not "know" that his god exists. I could say that comfort is merely pretending that his god exists so that he can feel good about his special place in the universe, but I do not wish to stoop to his level of pandering. I could say that he is just pretending that Thor does not exist, so that he does not have to be held accountable when Thor's gigantic godly hammer comes crashing down. As amusing as that would be, we don't have any compelling evidence for Thor's existence, either.

I also don't need to show you, my dear reader, how silly the "yes/no/wait" prayer argument is because someone else has already done so fairly well, in the form of a youtube clip by GIIVideo:

Ray a Day - 5:9

Now, obviously Comfort takes great pleasure in insulting atheists (and anyone else outside of his "true Christianity").  If you think you've seen some horrifyingly baseless and utterly absurd fear-mongering so far, get a load of this single page from his book.  Of course Comfort completely dodges the actual challenge here, but that's par for the course.  There is a bigger issue here.  This is in response to a skeptic questioning why so many Christians seem to be afraid of atheists (the skeptic suggests that perhaps some Christians are afraid that their belief system is so easy to take apart):

A very wise man once said, "Most I fear God.  Next, I fear him who fears Him not."  Atheists are probably about as dangerous as "religious" people (as opposed to those who truly love God).  Religious people have killed millions throughout history in religious wars (the Crusades of the Catholic church, Islamic terrorism, etc.), the Spanish Inquisition (the murder of Christians by the Catholic church), the killing of the prophets of God (by religious Jews), the murder of Jesus, the persecution of the Church (see the Book of Acts for details, or read Foxe's Book of Martyrs for greater and horrific detail).  Religious hypocrites come in a close second to atheistic communism, which is responsible for 100 million deaths throughout history.  If someone doesn't fear God, they will lie to you (if they think that they can get away with it), they will steal from you (if they think that they can get away with it), and they may even kill you (if they . . . you know why by now).  The atheist thinks that he's getting away with his sin.  He denies that there is a God, and therefore he believes that there is no judgment for his actions.

Of course, I'm going to go over this bit by bit, but I wanted you dear readers to be able to read this all at once.  Just let this mountain of fail sink in for a moment or two . . .

Where to begin?  ". . . as dangerous as 'religious' people (as opposed to those who truly love God)"  Again, Ray, if you claim to love God, you are, by definition, religious. You use the adjective "religious" as if it's a grave insult, yet you have no rational basis for denying that you yourself are religious.

*List of terrible shit that the Catholic Church has done* - Still, with the ridiculous assertion that Catholics are not Christians!  Do Catholics believe in the Bible? Check.  Jesus?  Check.  Were Jesus and God one and the same?  Check.  By any reasonable definition, they're Christian.  Get over it.  Again, what's your basis for insisting that Catholics aren't Christians?  They're theology isn't perfectly straight, according to the Bible?  The Catholic Church created the Bible.  If you're disgusted by the Catholic Church, Ray, take a good, hard look at your own religion, because to all intents and purposes, your religion is Catholicism by a different name.

Islamic Terrorism:  Islam is also a Judaic religion; it's from the same school of thought as your religion, Ray.  Islam is not as different from your religion as you obviously think.  Did you know that Jesus is an extremely revered and honored figure in Islam?  Muslims even agree with you that he was born of a virgin.  Consider:  It can probably be safely assumed that atheists universally reject any supernatural attributes of Jesus Christ, if they believe that he existed at all.  Islam agrees with Christianity that he existed, was born of a virgin, was a great prophet, performed many miracles, and was taken into the sky, into heaven, by the monotheistic Jewish God.  There is no real guilt-by-association to be explored here, but if there were, it would not be within atheism.

"Religious hypocrites come in a close second to atheistic communism, which is responsible for 100 million deaths throughout history."  See, now, this is exactly the sort of thing that would warrant a reference (preferably more than one).  The obvious implication here is that atheism caused the human rights abuses that took place in communist Russia and China, which doesn't logically follow at all.  The governments in question were also made up of people who wore clothes.  Did communist human rights violations occur as a result of a pants-based ideology, as well?  Besides which, there is a crucial distinction that is completely ignored here:  Communistic regimes invariably begin with an authoritarian worldview, which shares many doctrines of common philosophical support with most monotheistic religions.  However, the regimes in communistic Russia and China absolutely did not follow the principles of Secular Humanism.  It's one thing to say that history demonstrates that communism as a political philosophy is very seriously flawed; it's quite another to say that communists had a certain attribute in common and that attribute is the direct cause of that government's gross human rights abuse.

"Most I fear God.  Next, I fear him who fears Him not."  People who don't "fear God" will apparently lie, steal, and commit homicide as long as we don't think that we'll get caught.  One big question, made up of a very small word - why?  Why does Comfort know with such certainty that we atheists are horrible people?  I have two major responses to this:

1.  As has been mentioned on this blog numerous times, atheists, agnostics, and all varieties of freethinkers are no more likely to commit immoral actions than persons of any other demographic.  We're no more likely to divorce, cheat on our partners, or commit a violent crime.  This correlation that religious bigots want to see so badly simply isn't there, in any way, shape, or form.  As many such religious bigots do, Comfort tries to explain this by claiming that persons who commit such immoral acts are not "true Christians."  Of course, this actually defines religious bigotry as part of their worldview.  No religious group can reasonably claim that their "true" members are, for example, people who believe in God, the Bible, and Jesus, and behave in a moral way the vast majority of the time.  One would need a truly staggering volume of evidence that their particular group is almost always moral to even attempt to demonstrate that such a qualifier could be rational.  Many, many religions claim to have a monopoly on morality, so this qualifier is completely meaningless.  I can state unequivocally that atheists are no more intrisically moral than anyone else.  Why can't folks like Comfort do the same?

2.  So, Comfort makes no bones about it; he's certain that people who don't fear God will commit any immoral act, if they think that they can get away with it.  How on earth does he come to this conclusion?  Every single atheist that I know has morals that they follow, and every single one has many morals that are completely independent of a threat of punishment.  This is the main thing that worries me about folks like Comfort - why would he be so certain that people will act immorally when there's no threat of punishment, unless he himself would act immorally without threat of punishment?  Comfort states this many, many times; all humanity is horribly sinful and immoral.  So he doesn't actually mean that "people *who don't fear God* will commit immoral acts if they think that they can get away with it," he means that everybody will commit immoral acts if they think that they can get away with it.  He just thinks that people who believe in a wrathful God "know" that they'll never get away with it, because their God sees all.  That's the main issue here (possibly the main issue with Comfort's entire worldview . . .):  In Comfort's world, not one single person does anything moral out of an actual moral conviction!  Genuine ethics literally don't exist!  In his world, the only reason that anyone does anything moral is merely to avoid punishment!

No, Ray.  People do have genuine morals and ethics.  Altruism and compassion are real parts of being human.  These humanistic principles stand on their own merit - the betterment of our world and humanity are worthwhile goals in and of themselves.  A person who is truly moral is exactly a person who does the right thing without the promise of reward or the threat of punishment, and the real, godless world out here is full of such people.  Your bizarre theology genuinely depresses me, Mr. Comfort.  It is your worldview, not atheism, that is so forlorn . . . dismal . . . indescribably bleak.  What a sad, pathetic fantasy world you live in.

Photography: Hey look, it's us!

Hey look, it's me!

And...Flimsy and I!

And Flimsy.

We're so precious.

Ray a Day - 5:8

Well, we're in the last 30 pages of Ray Comfort's book, "You can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions From Angry Skeptics".

Today, Comfort's Angry Skeptic says:

Welcome to a dangerous new era - the Unlightenment - in which centuries of rational thought are overturned by idiots. Superstitious idiots. They're everywhere - reading horoscopes, buying homeopathic remedies, consulting psychics, babbling about "chakras" and "healing energies", praying to imaginary gods, and rejecting science in favour of soft-headed bunkum. But instead of slapping these people round the face till they behave like adults, we encourage them. We've got to respect their beliefs, apparently. ... Why should your outmoded codswallop be treated with anything other than the contemptuous mockery it deserves?

 I looked up this quote on Comfort's blog and noted something interesting - it is a quote by Charlie Brooker, from an article published in The Guardian. The blog commenter (or "angry skeptic", if you will) made it clear that he was quoting someone else, by clearly citing who he was quoting.  Comfort takes this quote and though he obvously knows from the original comment that this quote was authored by Charlie Brooker, he fails to cite the original author of this comment in his book.

I am not nearly this dishonest, so I will give credit where credit is due. The text above is from a column in the guardian. The entire column can be found here.  Charlie Brooker has been writing for tv and media for decades and has written several books.

I am fairly sure that Comfort could get sued for using quotes from an article written in the guardian without crediting the author. I do not think that it matters that the quote came from his blog comments (He can use his blog comments due to fair use laws) because the commenter was quoting from someone else, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, Comfort says that he agrees with Brooker. He agrees that we're surrounded by crazy people who'll believe anything. He says that he and Kirk Cameron once snuck a hidden camera into a psychic store, but they got kicked out because their "questions cut too close to the bone". He thinks healing energy and imaginary gods, seeing mary in a cheese sandwitch is all a bunch of bunk.

So far, we're with him, right? But what does he have up his sleeve? Oh, he says we should "go one step furthur and say to stop all this nonsense and to love and serve the Living God". He says that he's going to make a prediction, and that his prediction is this: his blog will make us mad, and when we read that we'll decide we aren't mad, and will then get confused about how to respond.

You see, to an atheist, or to someone incredulous, there isn't much difference between healing energy and non Comfortian Christian gods or comfort's particular brand of god. There is no more evidence for his god than for any of these other things. Why is it that Comfort can so easily dismiss the claims of other religions but is incapable of applying the same logic to his own? What is the difference between a "false god" and thw apparently "true god" Comfort believes in? Why is it so easy to dismiss other gods as foolish, but you can't let go of your own using the exact same tools you used to dismantle the others? I'll never understand this.

I am going to guess that Comfort and Cameron got kicked out of the psychic store maybe cause they... had a camera on business property. I don't really know, as I can't find any verification that this took place aside from in Ray's book - but since he seems to be a master heckler, I am going to go out on a limb and guess that he may have been heckling and creating a schene.

Oh and, Comfort's prediction was incorrect. This does not make me mad. It makes me think. When you're an outsider to religion, people's different religious beliefs sort of blur into a fuzzy spectrum (The Religion Spectrum). People who have beliefs that do not infringe on the believers' ability to function in daily life, are ethical, moral and do not undermine science or take away my rights don't particularly bother me, even if they are a fairly far cry from reality. To me, the only difference in the Christian and Muslim god, for example, are the behaviors of their believers and some minor specific beliefs. They both fall squarely in the categoy of "mythology".

The Day they Kicked God out of the Schools - Rebuttal

The yesterday I posted a video which my friend had forwarded to me. Here is a transcription of the narrative of the video, and my (long...) rebuttal.

Dear God,

Why didn’t you save the schoolchildren at: Moses Lake, Washington; Bethyel Alaska; Pearl Mississippi; West Paducah, Kentucky; Stamp, Arkansas; Jonesboro, Arkansas; Edinboro, Pennsylvania; Fayetteville, Tennessee; Springfield, Oregon; Richmond, Virginia; Littleton, Colorado; Taber, Alberta Canada; Conyers, Georgia, Dinning, New Mexico; Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, Santee, California; El Cajon, California; Blacksburg Virginia.

Sincerely, Concerned Student

Reply: Dear concerned student,

I am not allowed in schools.

Sincerely, God

This video implies that these unsaved students were victims of school shootings, given the graphics of the video, which shows a map of the U.S. with the states (and Canadian provinces) in which the alleged nonsavings took place.

I've linked to some of the incidents mentioned in the video with quick references to the character of the individuals who were responsible for the shootings. I'll just do the first few, but you'll see a theme:

Moses Lake, Washington; mentally ill, had delusional and godlike thoughts, tormented by bullies.
Bethyel Alaska; sexually abused, depressed, suicidal, bullied
Pearl Mississippi; bullied, satanist
West Paducah, Kentucky; schizophrenic, bullied
Stamp, Arkansas; bullied

The fact of the matter is that mentally ill individuals attend schools, and sometimes mentally ill individuals snap and kill people. The fact of the matter is that kids bully other kids - even christian kids who pray and go to church bully other kids - Flimsy tells me that anyone who wasn't Christian at his high school would have been bullied mercilessly. At my high school, no one particularly cared what your religion was.

Nowhere are any of these incidents due to a kid's atheism.

I know this list of school shootings is long and impressive-sounding, especially with the sniper scope graphics, but let's look at this in a more realistic context. According to the CDC, there were 116 deaths from homicide at school between 1999-2006. Let's compare that to something else really unlikely, such as getting struck by lightning: there are about 100 deaths and 500 injuries due to lightning strike in the US every year.

So, what is the (I assume Christian) god's role in this? The narrator's god's snarky reply is that he simply isn't allowed in school. So, he's apparently not going to protect students because he's not allowed. Apparently the Christian god is not powerful enough to protect children in more secular situations. Apparently, not bothering to save children is some kind of punishment for not forcing children to pray to him.

But, it's not that the Christian god is "not allowed" in public schools. Public school children have not had their rights to practice their religion taken away, so it is only that the Christian god is not mandatory in schools. So apparently, the Christian god will not protect children unless the school mandates a daily prayer to him.

I have to wonder - why doesn't the Christian god save all of the people in church shootings? I am pretty sure he's mandatory there.

Fun! Let's move on, we're barely a quarter into the video:

” How did this get started? I think it started when Madalyn Murray O’hair complained, she didn’t want any prayer in our schools. And we said, “Ok”. Then someone said, “You better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says, “Thou shalt not kill, “Thou shalt not steal, and, Love your neighbor as yourself”…And we said, “Ok”. ”

No, that's not what happened. In 1963 in Abington Township School District v. Schempp the US Supreme Court declared that school sponsored Bible reading in public schools was unconstitutional.  The Abington case began when Edward Schempp, a Unitarian and a resident of Abington Township, Pennsylvania, filed suit against the Abington School District in the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to prohibit the enforcement of a Pennsylvania state law that required his children, specifically Ellory Schempp, to hear and sometimes read portions of the Bible as part of their public school education. That law (24 Pa. Stat. 15-1516, as amended, Pub. Law 1928) required that "[a]t least ten verses from the Holy Bible [be] read, without comment, at the opening of each public school on each school day." Schempp specifically contended that the statute violated his and his family's rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.[2]

Like four other states, Pennsylvania law included a statute compelling school districts to perform Bible readings in the mornings before class. Twenty-five states had laws allowing "optional" Bible reading, with the remainder having no laws supporting or rejecting Bible reading. In eleven of those states with laws supportive of Bible reading or state-sponsored prayer, courts[clarification needed] had declared them unconstitutional (Boston, 1993, p. 101).

Yes, you can still pray in school.Yes, you can still read the Bible in school.

On top of saying thou shalt not kill or steal and thou shalt love they neighbor and all of that happy stuff, it also says plenty of evil, hateful, disgusting things, which I shall not bother to point out here because you can find hateful or bizarre things in the Bible simply by opening it up to just about any random page of your choosing. I opened one of my bibles to Ezekiel 4:12 and found the Bible commanding people to eat barley cakes cooked over a fire which uses human excrement as fuel - um.. okay?

I recall very distinctly being taught not to murder or steal and to follow the golden rule about a million times, both by my school and my parents. I do not need the Bible to learn these rules. Seriously, you really can teach children appropriate morality without ever referencing the Bible. Lack of mandatory Bible readings in schools has nothing to do with mentally ill students killing other students.

” Dr. Benjamin Spock said that we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave, because their personalities would be warped, and we might damage their self-esteem. And we said, “An expert must know what he’s talking about, so we won’t spank them anymore”. ”

Many people other than Spock have determined that there are better, more effective ways of punishing children other than inflicting pain. Pain is not the only type of punishment that works for any animal, including children.There are also reams of peer-reviewed journal articles on this subject, in which actual research has been conducted, not just speculations. Spanking has been linked to abuse, child aggression and anxiety, and increased risk of sexual problems. If one actually bothers to look at the way children learn and spend five minutes consulting reputable literature, one will find that punishments are good, but spanking is not as effective a punishment as other types of punishment. One should absolutely punish their children for misbehaving, but use effective punishments.

Besides, um, spanking is still legal in US schools. Spanking is, however, NOT legal in any European school and spanking is illegal even in the home in many European countries. Funny, the rates of atheism in Europe are higher, spanking is illegal - and the rates of crime are lower. Related specifically to the school shootings, I can't say for sure but I can bet that every one of those children were spanked or abused in some way, either by their parents or someone else.

” Then someone said, “Teachers and principals better not discipline our children when they misbehave”. And the school administration said, “No faculty member in this school better touch a student when they misbehave, because we don’t want any bad publicity, and we surely don’t want to be sued”. And we accepted their reasoning. ”

Wrong. Children are absolutely disciplined when they misbehave. There are ways to discipline a child without inflicting physical pain. Lack of spanking has nothing to do with mentally ill students killing other students.

” Then someone said, “Let’s let our daughters have abortions if they want, and they won’t even have to tell their parents”. And we said, “That’s a grand idea”. Then, some wise school board member said, “since boys will be boys, and their going to do it anyway, let’s give our sons all the condoms they want, so they can have all the fun they desire, and we won’t have to tell their parents they got them at school”. And we said, “That’s another great idea”. ”

It being legal for minors to have abortions is not the same as "letting them have abortions if they want" and abortion is a healthcare issue - minors are entitled to the same rights to healthcare as adults. Only six states have no parental consent laws, and the rest of them do - surprise, there is no rash of school shootings in those particular states. Oh and abortion was legalized in 1973, and crime started dropping off in 1990 - all of those legally aborted babies would have been 17 years old or younger. It has been suggested that a possible hypothesis for the sharp downturn in crime is due to the legalization of abortion, and at least in this case we have an obvious correlation. See the Wiki article on this hypothesis here.

Besides, which, abortions have nothing to do with mentally ill students killing other students.

Okay, condoms. If one takes five minute out of their busy day being hateful and bigoted to actually look at studies done on sexual activity among high school students, one will find that the sexual activity levels are the exact same whether condoms are given out freely or not. Sexual activity is also the same whether we teach our kids abstinence-only or comprehensive sex education. The difference is that kids taught comprehensive sex education are more likely to use condoms. Oh yeah, and condoms have nothing to do with mentally ill students killing other students.

” Then, some of our top elected officials said, “It doesn’t matter what we do in private, as long as we do our jobs”. And we said, “It doesn’t matter what anybody, including the president does in private, as long as we have jobs, and the economy is good”. And someone else took that appreciation a step further, and published pictures of nude children, and then stepped further, by making them available on the internet. And we said, “Everyone’s entitled to free speech”. ”

I don't think that's what they said. I think this refers to an individual's right to privacy. The point was not that only the economy matters, but that people have the right to engage in legal activities while not working without getting fired. Child pornography is illegal, and it should be. If someone claims that child pornography is "free speech", they are either deranged or trying to build up a pathetic straw-man argument.  This has nothing to do with mentally ill students killing other students. Tired of me repeating that yet?

” And the entertainment industry said, “Let’s make TV shows and movies that promote profanity, violence and illicit sex; and let’s record music that encourages rape, drugs murder, suicide and Satanic themes”. And we said, “It’s just entertainment, and it has no adverse effect, and nobody takes it seriously anyway, so go right ahead”. ”

...Okay, you know what? You might actually have something possibly slightly true here. FINALLY! Studies have had conflicting findings on whether or not depictions of violence lead to violence. I've got to ask though - why did this narration leave out the news media reporting industry? This is the only place in which real violence is depicted.

Here is the problem though... Crime has dropped off significantly since 1993:

So if violence on TV is to blame, one would think that this drop off in crime is due to a drop off in depictions of violence. If anything, depictions of violence have gone up, and certainly more violent video games have been released. Oh yeah and.. atheism is on the rise.

” Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience; why they don’t know right from wrong; and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, classmates or even themselves. Undoubtedly, if we thought about it long and hard enough, we could figure it out. Surely, it has a lot to do with: ” We reap what we sow “.

Your premise fails miserably to the point of being laughable, because we're actually not living in more violent times than back in the "good old days". We're actually enjoying very low crime rates right now. So, rather than your premise supporting that all of the things mentioned in this narration are a cause of ills of society, actual data shows the opposite. If we do reap what we sow, right now we're reaping reduced crime rates!

Children have a perfectly functional conscience, they do know right from wrong, and it does bother them to kill strangers, classmates and themselves. A few mentally ill students killing other students is not a good way to judge the rest of the children in the US, nor is it a good way to judge the crime climate in the US. There will always be mentally ill people in society, and we're not living in more violent times. Still don't believe me? Here, ask Stephen Pinker:



It's time to be realistic. God didn't save these kids - because there is no god.  The crators of this video are using it as a propaganda tool to promote their particular brand of religiosity, and I find it despicable that they would ignore real data in favor of sensationalism while disrespecting the young victims of violent crimes to furthur their own agenda. The creators of this video should be ashamed.

Ray a Day - 5:7

So, today's Ray a Day is about Mahatma Gandhi.  A skeptic recites the commonly heard quote of Gandhi's, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians.  Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."  Comfort's response is that no one is like Jesus.  He challenges us to try and live one single day like Jesus, being completely perfect.

Well, for one, it seems obvious to me that Jesus Christ was not perfect.  I should make clear, I do think that Jesus was an excellent moral teacher for his time.  Even by the Bible's own standards, however, Jesus failed:  saying that we must all hate our mother and father in Luke 14:26.  In John 4:2, he blatantly insults his mother, Mary.  The Bible makes it clear that any failed prediction conclusively proves that a person claiming to give prophecy is a fake, yet in Matthew, Chapters 16, 24, and 26, Jesus claims that his return will happen very soon, within the lives of the people he was speaking to (these predictions are repeated in Mark 13 and Luke 21).  By humanistic morality, such as my own, Jesus fails as well.  He ranted frequently about hell.  I strongly object to the concept of a person who so thoroughly approves of the idea of hell being morally perfect.  He was also racist.  Was the rest of his culture racist?  Definitely.  Do I consider him a terrible person based entirely on his relatively mind racism?  Not at all.  I do, however, think that it firmly establishes Jesus, at least as he is portrayed in the Gospels, as being considerably less than "morally perfect."  (Verses in question are Mark 7:24-30.)

Concerning Gandhi, Comfort goes on to say that it seems that Gandhi did not accept Jesus as his savior, and so is burning in hell, and certainly was not perfect in word, thought and deed, like good 'ol Jesus.  Now, it should be obvious that the skeptic was not claiming in any way that Gandhi was perfect, he was simply using a well-known quote to illustrate that while Jesus was an admirable moral teacher on some issues, a great many of his followers are not (pay close attention to this part, Ray!).  Many followers of Jesus are overbearing, judgemental, dishonest people who hide behind an air of self-righteousness.  If folks like Comfort don't want to give people a bad impression of their religion, then it wouldn't hurt to actually take some of Jesus' advice. He might start by actually apropriately and honestly answering the point of a question instead of simply dodging it while adding a sprinkle of ad hominem.  Ghandi's point was that even though people claim that they are following the teachings of Jesus, they are very unlike Jesus or his teachings.


Oh yeah and - happy Jewish zombie day! Today's the day the dead people crawled out of their graves and walked around Jerusalem, but no one noticed except Matthew (who wasn't even there).

Violence and atheism

So my friend Alien's grandmother sent her a video which she forwarded to me called "No God in School" that starts out as a narration of a letter from a child to the (I assume Christian) god. In the "letter", the child asks his god why he didn't save all of the students that were murdered in a long list of children murdered in schools.

The god in the video answers and says that he is not allowed in schools. The video then goes on to "explain" that this all "got started" when Madalyn Murray O'hair "proclaimed she didn't want any prayer in our schools"...

Here is the video in question...




So...the Christian god isn’t powerful enough to overcome government legislation in order to save innocent lives? Really, the legislation of the United States is SO powerful that God can't hang out in school because they made god's hanging out not mandatory?

Or, are they saying that because god is not mandatory in schools, that he isn't going to bother saving innocent children? If that's the case, then he's a prick. How do you explain the shootings that happen in church? Why did the video conveniently leave out the shootings that took place in an Amish school in Lancaster County, PA?  I am pretty sure God is mandatory in those place.

I guess is comes as no surprise that it really skeeves me off when religionists blame violence on secularism.

School shootings have gone down since 1993 (despite widespread media attention), and atheism is on the rise. Using the same logic of this video, I can conclude that atheism is causing a reduction in school shootings.

Frankly, it is irresponsible and disrespectful to use the stories of students who have died in school shootings as a crutch to promote your religious agenda.

I am going to go through this video piece by piece, as soon as I transcribe all of the narration into text (or find a transcription)

Ray a Day - 5:6

Today, I'll hit a specific pathology of Ray Comfort's; those familiar with Comfort's apologetics will recognize this argument instantly.  We don't even have an actual question from a skeptic today - Comfort only publishes the beginning of a question, that reads, "When I was a Christian . . ."

Here, Ray explains that "It's important to speak truthfully about our experiences, by using the correct terminology.  Rather than saying 'When I was a Christian,' you should say 'When I professed to be a Christian,' or, to be biblically sound, 'When I wa a false convert.'"

He references John 17:3, which reads:  "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent."  To Comfort, the only acceptable definition of 'Christian' is one particular biblical verse, and he interprets it to mean a personal, direct knowledge, and he must define "knowledge" as information that is completely accurate, and that the person who holds the knowledge will never change their mind.  This is just wrong, on so many levels.

I'm sure that someone somewhere has at some point stated something to the effect of "atheists know there is no god."  How stupid would it be if I simply quoted this line and insisted that the only "true" definition of "atheist" was a person who knows that there is no God, and that therefore anyone who has any belief in a higher power has never at any point in their life been an atheist?  What if I can't be a liberal unless I know that liberal social and government policies are the most fair and just policies, therefore, if I ever vote Republican, I was never a liberal?  Where does this stupid word game end?

If a person cannot hold a belief and be a true member of a given demographic unless they never change their mind, then how do we know that Comfort is a 'true' Christian?  We don't - he could (um, yeah, highly unlikely, but theoretically possible) change his mind, which would mean that according to his bizarrely narrow definition, he was never a Christian.  If we can never know with 100% certainty that a person won't change their mind in the future, nobody, including Comfort himself, can actually call themselves a Christian!  The same goes for any other belief or opinion that we could apply such weaselly semantics to.  Sometimes people change their minds.  It's not dishonest, as Comfort says, to say that I was once a Christian and am now an atheist, nor is it dishonest for Comfort's buddy Kirk Cameron to claim that he was once an atheist and is now a Christian.

I think that this might be Comfort's bigger picture:

The other thought is, if you were of the disposition that you could be deceived, how do you know that it's not happening again?  The essence of "deception" is that the deceived person doesn't know that he's deceived.  That's why we need God's Word as a guide.

Yes, Ray, and that's exactly the point.  The person who recognizes that he or she could be deceived is far more likely to spot a deception or irrational fallacy in an assertion than one who insists that they could never be deceived, like you.  Most particularly if a person has been deceived in the past, and after looking at the logic and evidence of the deception, has given up their faulty opinion or belief, they are even more likely to spot a deception.  You simply assert that "we need God's Word as a guide."  How do you know that you aren't being deceived by the Bible?  After all, 'the essence of deception is that the deceived person doesn't know that he's deceived," right?  Comfort's language is designed to sound convincing by weight of his own conviction, but it obviously doesn't actually demonstrate anything, because it can be used to "cast doubt" on any assertion at all.

Richard Dawkins believes Aliens seeded the planet!

Ever since the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed graced us with a perfect example of how not to make a documentary, rumors have flown all over the internet that Richard Dawkins believes we were spawned by aliens.

In fact, when Flimsy was engaging in an e-mail correspondence with a Christian the other day about his beliefs (Said Christian is a fan of Ray Comfort, and his language in explaining himself makes this obvious) the Christian said:

Richard Dawkins himself claims that we were intelligently designed by space aliens. Clearly, his problem is not with design or with the abstract concept of "god" or "gods" but with the specific God of the Bible.

I am going to clear up this nonsense once again. Here is what Prof. Dawkins had to say about this whole episode:

Toward the end of his interview with me, Stein asked whether I could think of any circumstances whatsoever under which intelligent design might have occurred. It's the kind of challenge I relish, and I set myself the task of imagining the most plausible scenario I could. I wanted to give ID its best shot, however poor that best shot might be. I must have been feeling magnanimous that day, because I was aware that the leading advocates of Intelligent Design are very fond of protesting that they are not talking about God as the designer, but about some unnamed and unspecified intelligence, which might even be an alien from another planet. Indeed, this is the only way they differentiate themselves from fundamentalist creationists, and they do it only when they need to, in order to weasel their way around church/state separation laws. So, bending over backwards to accommodate the IDiots ("oh NOOOOO, of course we aren't talking about God, this is SCIENCE") and bending over backwards to make the best case I could for intelligent design, I constructed a science fiction scenario. ... I patiently explained to him that life could conceivably have been seeded on Earth by an alien intelligence from another planet (Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel suggested something similar -- semi tongue-in-cheek). The conclusion I was heading towards was that, even in the highly unlikely event that some such 'Directed Panspermia' was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved, if not by Darwinian selection, by some equivalent 'crane' (to quote Dan Dennett). My point here was that design can never be an ULTIMATE explanation for organized complexity. Even if life on Earth was seeded by intelligent designers on another planet, and even if the alien life form was itself seeded four billion years earlier, the regress must ultimately be terminated (and we have only some 13 billion years to play with because of the finite age of the universe). Organized complexity cannot just spontaneously happen. That, for goodness sake, is the creationists' whole point, when they bang on about eyes and bacterial flagella! Evolution by natural selection is the only known process whereby organized complexity can ultimately come into being. Organized complexity -- and that includes everything capable of designing anything intelligently -- comes LATE into the universe. It cannot exist at the beginning, as I have explained again and again in my writings.

This 'Ultimate 747' argument, as I called it in The God Delusion, may or may not persuade you. That is not my concern here. My concern here is that my science fiction thought experiment -- however implausible -- was designed to illustrate intelligent design's closest approach to being plausible. I was most emphatically NOT saying that I believed the thought experiment. Quite the contrary. I do not believe it (and I don't think Francis Crick believed it either). I was bending over backwards to make the best case I could for a form of intelligent design. And my clear implication was that the best case I could make was a very implausible case indeed. In other words, I was using the thought experiment as a way of demonstrating strong opposition to all theories of intelligent design.

Well, you will have guessed how Mathis/Stein handled this. I won't get the exact words right (we were forbidden to bring in recording devices on pain of a $250,000 fine, chillingly announced by some unnamed Gauleiter before the film began), but Stein said something like this. "What? Richard Dawkins BELIEVES IN INTELLIGENT DESIGN." "Richard Dawkins BELIEVES IN ALIENS FROM OUTER SPACE." I can't remember whether this was the moment in the film where we were regaled with another Lord Privy Seal cut to an old science fiction movie with some kind of android figure — that may have been used in the service of trying to ridicule Francis Crick (again, dutiful titters from the partisan audience).

Richard Dawkins DOES NOT BELIEVE that aliens seeded the planet. He was asked to think of any circumstances whatsoever in which intelligent design might have occurred, and he came up with the most plausible fictional circumstance and used said circumstance to point out that even if such a circumstance were to occur, the seeders would they themselves have to have evolved.

 If I approached a Christian and asked him if he thought there was any possible way that humans could have ended up on earth due to a force other than the Christian god, and they thought about it for a second, smiled, and replied that we could have maybe ended up on earth due to being seeded by an alien intelligence from another planet, but that that alien intelligence would have to have been created by god, and so he was the same god, would it be honest of me to say...

"WHAT? You believe we WEREN'T created directly by god? You believe we were seeded by ALIENS FROM OUTER SPACE?"

...and then to go on to proclaim that the Christian believed we didn't come from his god and that we were seeded by aliens? Obviously not. This is akin to Lisa Simpson in a Simpsons episode being asked if she was going to marry a carrot (because she became a vegetarian) and then when she sarcastically replies, "Yes... I'm going to marry a carrot", the children prance off, proclaiming that Lisa told them she was going to marry a carrot.

To be a little snarkier - GROW UP. I'm not writing this to defend Dawkins, as he is more than capable of doing so himself. I am writing this to point out that if you want to make a case for intelligent design, creation, god or whatever, it would serve you well to be honest and not act like a child in the process. I'm not really saying that the individuals parroting the whole "Dawkin's believes space aliens seeded the planet" is childish, but those who originally made that claim and then proceeded to spread it all over the internet certainly are. The parroters just need to do a little more research and be a little more incredulous about claims people make and seek the original source rather than accept a third-hand account of what someone believes as gospel.

Ray a Day 5:5

Today Ray's angry skeptic says that if he (or she) ever becomes a believer, he might believe in deism like Antony Flew, but he (she?) would never believe in the Christian god - as a reason, the skeptic says "I could never worship a god that could quote possibly be torturing Anne Frank"

For those of you out of the loop, Anne Frank is an adorable girl who died in a Nazi concentration camp when she was fifteen. Here diary was discovered and published posthumusly. Isn't she absolutely adorable? Too bad, because this cute adorable face is suffering eternal torment in hell because she didn't think correctly, according to Comfortian Christianity.

Ray says, "It seems that this skeptic is willing to believe in a God who created all things, but he's not willing to believe in a God who is a God of Justice. ... imagine that perhaps Anne heard the Gospel from those with whom she was captive in Nazi Germany, and as a Jew she embraced the Jewish Messiah. then our skeptic friend will therefore end up in hell, when he could have instead ended up in heaven with Anne Frank"

He's missing the whole point. The problem is not that the skeptic has a particular problem with a just god, the problem is that the skeptic is using the evidence of the Christian god's supposed actions and behaviors and coming to the conclusion that the Christian god is an unjust god. What comfort is doing here is asserting that the skeptic does not like justice, when in fact the opposite is true - the fact that he sees justice as a positive force is precisely the reason he rejects the christian god. Comfort, on the other hand, thinks that his god is defines as "a just being", and so no matter what this god does, it is a just god. It can do things that we would consider horrible, but it is still just, simply because it says so.

I've said this before in a different way, but it is worth repeating. here goes:

There are two ways (there are possibly more, but two for the sake of this argument) to decide that something/someone/some action is just:

1. Look at any given entity X and observe it's characteristics and determine the status of its justice based on those observed characteristics and a working definition of the word "justice". In this case, justice is determined based on experience I.E. a given entity is just because we have observed that is fits the definition of "just".

2. Define a given entity X as just, and define any action any given entity X does as just, in which case no observable characteristics will change its status as a just thing. In this case, a given entity is just in spite of any flaws one might encounter - those flaws are dismissed as not actually being flaws, because the given entity has already been defined as just. This is using an a priori definition and is independent of experience, I.E. A given entity is just because it is just.

The problem occurs when we do both in the same argument - by create a working definition of a word (in this case, justice) and then applying it to entity X, but then defining entity X as justice. Then even when entity X does things that are counter to our prior definition of justice, we simply say that entity X is just, and so even if it looks as thought entity X is being unjust, entity X is not being unjust, because that's impossible. Make sense? No. It doesn't.

The first way of deciding that something is just fits in with our observational model of the world - observe, experiment, and think about what has been observed and experimented on. The second way has nothing to do with our observed world. The first way is rational, and the second is not.

Imagine, if you will, that I think Flimsy is perfectly just. If I think he is just based on my observation and experience - if he always behaves in a morally right way based on ethics, rationality, law, fairness, natural law, equity, etc - then his justness is subject to change say, if he decides to kill my dog to punish me because I blinked at him the wrong way. If he does something unjust, then I will question whether he is a just person. If he repeatedly acts in an unjust manner, I will decide that he is not just.

If I think he is just because he is just and he defines justness, then his actions do not matter, as his justice is not based on my observation and experience and not subject to change. He can do whatever he wants and because he is perfect justice, whatever he wants to do is the just thing to do. He did the right thing. I am the one to blame.

If he holds out his hands and says, "in my right hand is a blue bead. In my left hand is a red bead. I am freely giving you the choice to take whichever you want, because I love you and care about you and want you to have free will" and I choose the red bead, and he says, "Um no. If you don't choose the blue bead, I am going to beat you to within an inch of your life, rape you, kill your pets, cut out your eyes, and set you on fire. But I love you, so I want it to be your choice. No really. Choose whichever you want".

If I tell my parents that my perfectly just boyfriend gave me this choice, what are they going to think? They are going to think it is appropriate for me to get as far away from him as possible. They are not going to think, "wow, that guy really knows how to follow Biblical moral principals!"

This type of reasoning is, frankly, dangerous.

Of course, there is also a third type of belief concerning Justice and god - a lot of people believe god is perfectly just and does not do unjust things, so whenever an unjust thing is attributed to god's doing, the believer chooses to believe that those attributing an unjust behavior to god are just wrong. A similar situation might be if a friend of mine told me that Flimsy had robbed a bank - I would not believe that individual, because I don't believe that is something Flimsy would do. If I saw Flimsy arrive in his car with a bag of cash while being pursued by the police, I would have ample evidence to change my mind. Since the only behaviors I can attribute to a person's god are those attributes the person tells me their god happens to have, I can only look at an individual's god as a character, and decided based on that god's actions if their particular version of god fits the definition of a just god. 

Also, how does pretending Anne Frank is in heaven by pretending she accepted Jesus helpful? The point is that Anne Frank was a good girl who suffered terribly in a concentration camp and died, and it does not seem just to inflict maximal punishment by eternal torment in hell because she happened to be born in an environment and under circumstances which did not give her the opportunity to repent and accept Jesus as her savior.

Let's take a break, ye of little attention span...:







That was fun! Moving on...

He then goes on to quote himself from another book he wrote called The Evidence Bible. He talks about a televangelist who claims to believe that all of the people who died on the Holocaust went to heaven. He says we should really think about the implications of this statement: His statement limits the salvation of Jews to those who died in the Holocaust:

If the slaughtered Jews made it into heaven, did the many Gypsies who died in the Holocaust obtain salvation? ... Perhaps he was saying that the death of Jesus on the Cross covered all of humanity, and that we will all be saved ... this means that salvation will also come to Hitler and the Nazis who killed the Jews. ... Such a statement would have brought the scorn of his Jewish host, and of the world whose compassion has definite limits. If pressed, he probably didn't mean that only the Jews in the caps went to heaven, because that smacks of racism. He was likely saying that those who died were saved because they died in such tragic circumstances. ... So is there another way to heaven - death in a Nazi concentration camp? Or is Salvation limited to German camps? If their salvation came because of the grim circumstances surrounding their death, does a Jew therefore enter heaven after suffering for hours before dying in a car wreck...if he was killed by a drunk driver who happened to be German?

 Okay. First of all, this whole idea of suffering being the entrance into heaven is a derailment of the topic - it reminds me of this terrible debate I saw once in which the atheist (who I feel lost the debate, sadly enough) asked his opponent exactly where Jesus went after he descended onto heaven - space? But he can't breathe up there! He would have burned up in the atmosphere!

No, the televangalist is not saying that suffering is the key to heaven - he is saying that it is not ethical to torture people (for eternity.) who don't believe in Jesus while they are alive and the people who do believe in Jesus are the ones killing them. Because it's not ethical, God would not do that, since god does not do unethical things. Therefore, God did not punish the Jews for not believing in Jesus. He believes the third way mentioned above - he uses a working definition of justice, and sees if his god fits that definition. If he does not, then he determines that his god did not do the thing that did not fit the definition of "just". Ray believes God is just in the second way - no matter what his god does, it's the just thing to do.

More? More!

Comfort says:

I'm a little weary of hearing atheists parrot their popular and old phrase about "God torturing His Children". presumably speaking of God sending sinners to hell. God will not "torture" anyone. He will give them "justice". A criminal may believe that his being thrown into a cold prison because he viciously raped three teenage girls, is torture. The judge rather knows better. He calls it "justice".

 Guess what.  I am more than a little weary of hearing Christians parrot their popular and old phrase about "hell being perfect justice". Hell, as described by the Bible, is torture, and that's the point. The point is not to teach people a lesson so that they will stop being bastards, the point is to make them suffer eternally in maximal, conscious, irreversible punishment. The point is not justice, the point is suffering. A criminal is thrown into prison because prison is a place to:

1. Put people who are a danger to society.
2. Put people so that they may be reformed and then re-enter society.

The point of prison is not eternal, irreversible conscious torment. You simply cannot compare prison to hell and then claim that hell is mere justice, just like prison. Hell is torture. Ray is basically saying "Oh no.. god doesn't torture people, he only tortures them, but we call it justice because that sounds more fair." Yes, and I didn't rape that little girl, we had consensual sex.

Grah! There is so much for me to write about in this one blog post. I'm not even done yet. Comfort goes on. He says that sinner will be damned "from all that is good in a prison called hell. ... So they will get what the Bible calls "Equity". Equity, according to the dictionary, is, "the quality of being fair or impartial; fairness, impartiality; the equity of Solomon." ... In other words, equity is doing that which is right, fair and just". Sinners are not God's children. The Bible makes that clear. We are not his children until we are washed away from our sins by the grace of God, and are born of his spirit through the new birth of John 3:1-5.

Hey look, Ray has cited another source without referencing it or crediting the source. Of course though, if he wants to cite five paragraphs of himself, does reference it. What's up with that? Here is the definition of Equity, from Dictionary.com (see what I did there?)

Equity (n)
1. the quality of being fair or impartial; fairness; impartiality: the equity of Solomon.

So what Ray is saying here is that because The Bible says that people will get equity, and equity according to the dictionary means fair and impartial, that means that his god is fair and impartial. Also, apparently no human is the child of Comfort's god until they repent, accept Jesus, and get born again. In other words, God does not give a shit about Anne Frank. Even though he created her. Since we can't be Comfort's god's children until we do the Jesus thing, and since Comfort's god apparently considered Anne Frank to be a worthless sinner whose perfect and just outcome was maximal, infinite, irreversible punishment, what then is the impetus to care about, say for example, unborn babies? Unborn babies, according to Comfort, cannot possibly be his god's children.

Isn't it fun to follow a premise to its logical conclusion?

Flimsy's state fails

Flimsy and I are always getting into arguments about whose place of residence is superior. Flimsy considers himself to be an Illinoisian, and I consider myself to be a St. Louisan, even though we both live together in an apartment in the middle of St. Louis.

Why, you might ask, do I consider myself a St. Louisan, but not a Missourian? Trust me, there is a HUGE difference.  Anyway, for some reason, Flimsy is proud of his sand-hiller roots. When Obama won the Presidency, Flimsy proclaimed that his state was better because his state voted Obama into office (and Obama came from Il) and my state voted for McCain (even though my CITY voted for Obama, thankyouverymuch)

I got to mock his state over the whole Blagojevich thing.

Once again, Flimsy's state fails.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- A judge has ruled state officials can't force pharmacists to dispense the so-called "morning-after" pill.

Two Illinois pharmacists won the temporary restraining order in Sangamon County Circuit Court on Friday.

They claim a 2005 order from former Gov. Rod Blagojevich that they must dispense such pills violates state law prohibiting enforcement of health care decisions over religious objections.

The pill reduces the chance of pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of sex. The pharmacists believe it's tantamount to abortion.

The Supreme Court ruled in December that a circuit court had to hear arguments in the case.

A hearing could be held in June.

 This is interesting, and the language of this ruling is a little confusing. Apparently, Blagojevich ordered that pharmacies (not individual pharmacists working for a pharmacy, but the pharmacy itself) make plan B available for those who wanted it. I don't think that pharmacies should be required to stock and fill plan B. This is an unnecessary intrusion of the state into business practices.

However I also do not think that individual pharmacists have a right to get a job as a pharmacists and then force their employer to exempt them from a job requirement out of respect of their religion.

It's simple, really. I have no problem with people having ethical or religious objections to certain kinds of job requirements. But if you have an ethical or religious objection to certain kinds of job requirements, than it makes no sense to pursue a career in which you ethically object to part of your job duties.

People who oppose the morning after pill should not be forced to dispense the morning after pill or engage in any other act that they find immoral. But employers should not be forced to keep them as employees, either. It would be wise to choose careers in which you are fairly certain you will not object to one of the job requirements.

 One can imagine all sorts of situations a pharmacist might encounter that he or she might find morally objectionable. this basically comes with the territory of being a pharmacist. Some pharmacists believe that birth control is wrong. In fact, if you're savvy, you can use regular old birth control pills as morning after pills (you have to take extra doses of certain pills). Fertility drugs interfere with natural processes and may cause selective abortion if too many children are conceived, so some pharmacists may be opposed to those. If I, for example, I opposed anti-depressants or anti-psychotics, would I have the right to force an employer to continue to employ me after I refused to fill prescriptions for these types of drugs on moral or religious grounds? What if I am opposed to a certain prescription because I have looked at all of the evidence and it is clear that the drug does not work better than a placebo, or has too many negative side effects, or I believe it might be linked to autism or Alzheimers?

Sharry F Colb, a Findlaw Columnist, put it pretty well:

[I]t is the people taking the medication who should bear ultimate responsibility for morally questionable consequences. For the pharmacist to make the judgment that a patient should not have an "immoral" medicine, is not "choice" at all but an abdication of her responsibility to fill prescriptions so that patients can make up their own minds.

 However the issue is stickier because this ruling is not about individuals and employers headbutting each other over moral issues but pharmacies not stocking Plan B. It is not a requirement of a pharmacy to stock all drugs, and many pharmacies don't carry different kinds of drugs and said drugs need to be filled at a different location. I don't think I have any objection to a particular pharmacy not carrying plan B and I am pretty sure I object to the state disciplining pharmacies for not stocking Plan B. A pharmacy is a business that provides a medical service to individuals. Hospitals aren't required to perform abortions or have fertility clinics

Ray a Day - 5:3

So here we are, in the midst of Comfort's chapter about the why Christianity is unique - that all "religions" are man-made and that they rely completely on self-righteousness because they require you to actually do good and refrain from doing evil.  This is what sets Christianity apart from man-made religions, Comfort explains.  Christianity recognizes that no good works that we do can be of any moral value, and the only way we can be saved  is by belief in Jesus, regardless of how ethically we actually behave(!).

At this point, Comfort slips into super-repetitive mode.  He more or less simply repeats the above paragraph over and over again, in response to every single skeptic.  Here's some highlights.

One skeptic brings up census data and violent crime rate information, pointing out that in 2007, both general crime and violent crime, as well as teen pregnancy rates, were far higher in portions of the country that described themselves as being very religious.  The skeptic acknowledges that this doesn't even remotely prove that religion causes violent crime, but that it does disprove Comfort's constant insulting claims that the nonreligious are such dangerous moral degenerates.  Comfort's reply is the common stock response that they are all "false converts;" that they cannot be "true Christians" if they have an immoral lifestyle.

This is a very interesting contradiction on Comfort's part.  He has asserted repeatedly that any so-called "good works" of anyone, Christian or atheist, are completely worthless.  He even states outright on page 93 that, "our 'good works' (religious deeds) are in truth attempts to bribe the Judge of the Universe."  Yet here, he also states outright that we can tell who is a 'true Christian' and who is a 'false convert' by whether they are a moral, ethical person.  Now, when most people contradict themselves, they do so with two different statements that they believe to be rational or ethical on their own, yet contradict each other if they are claimed to each be part of the same worldview.  For example, a person might claim cultural moral relativism and, as a result, assert that a patriarchal society was perfectly ethical for ancient civilization X, but would be wrong in our modern, enlightened culture.  However, this same person will then say that ritual female genital mutilation is unethical in any society, regardless of the fact that is it an integral part of many African and Middle Eastern cultures.  This person has contradicted themselves, but we can at least give them credit for abandoning their faulty logic in a specific ethical situation.

Comfort, on the other hand, contradicts himself by saying that ethical behavior, even that of Christians, is completely worthless, and even offensive to God, yet that a person who is unethical cannot be a "true Christian."  This . . . this is about as horribly wrong as a person can twist a moral philosophy.  Beyond the blatant logical failure of the conflicting statements, the first is plainly the opposite of morality - morality is striving for ethical behavior and refraining from unethical behavior.  Comfort somehow claims the exact opposite; that morality has nothing to do with moral behavior, and everything to do with one specific, ethically neutral thought that you must hold in your head.  His second assertion could, if he wanted to be consistent, state that, clearly following from the first statement, Christians are not any more likely to be moral or ethical than atheists, because Christians are defined only by their belief in God and Jesus, not their ethical behavior.  Comfort instead pulls a complete 180 on his first statement, not only blatantly contradicting himself, but insisting that someone who behaves unethically cannot be a "true Christian," adding overt religious bigotry to the mix!

Join us next time for Anne Frank, and more of Comfort dodging simple questions!

Truth About Origins Seminar

This should be good...

On the weekend of April 17th, a local church in St. Charles (a suburb of St. Louis) is hosting a "Truth About Origins" seminar. Here is what the seminar website has to say about it:

2009 marks the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
Come and hear Dr. Brad Harrub expose the errors, inconsistencies, and hoaxes of Evolution during the three-day seminar, Truth About Origins, April 17-19, 2009.

Topics Include

• Was Darwin Wrong?
• Evolutionary Hoaxes
• Intelligent Design or Ape-Like Creature
• Atheism’s Attack on America
• Is the Bible Just a Good Book?

If anyone living around me wants to attend, let me know! The point is not to be belligerent and angry or make a scene, but to ask important questions.

I've heard most of the arguments for why Darwin was "wrong" and which fossils were hoaxes, so I doubt I will hear anything new. Still, it should at least be fodder for some interesting dialogue.

Originally, this event was scheduled to be hosted at Lindenwood University. However I was e-mailed today by the director of the philosophy department and told that no one knew this event was being held and that the university does not support and will not sponsor this event.

Apparently, the school was not notified of this seminar and did not approve if it being held at the university. If a new location is found, I will change this information.

Here is the message from the philosophy department chair at Lindenwood:

The Truth About Origins Seminar will NOT be held at Lindenwood.  At 5:30PM yesterday, President Jim Evans canceled the on-campus part of the event.  The official reason is given by (name removed) below.  But until yesterday no one in the administration knew about the event and it wasn't cleared by our Campus Chaplain--the event was never sponsored by or approved by our university.  The first the administration heard of it was when a professor at UMSL contacted someone in our science division.  I only found out about it when the Campus Chaplain was asked by our student paper for a comment.

 I can't help but wonder why no one knew about this event. This also explains why a university would host an event in which the goal of the event is to convince people that a scientific fact (evolution) is not a scientific fact. They were hosting the event because they didn't know they were hosting it.

I called the church, and they tell me that the events will now be hosted entirely by the church.  I'm wondering if they are going to claim they were "expelled" from Lindenwood for "promoting facts that go against Big Science"

Ray a Day: 5:2

Today's questioner asks Ray how we know we've got the right god.

Ray says that this is a good question, and goes on to explain a few of the other gods (the Mormon, Aztec, new age) and even throws in "evolution as a god - "You could make evolution your god, and give it praise for creating everything through (super)natural selection". I shouldn't have to point out that evolution is a process, and so saying that you could make evolution your god is about as bizarre as saying you could make economics your god.

Here is how, Ray says, you can know you've got the right god.

-you have guilt.
-the ten commandments says stuff.
-the conscience produces guilt about not following the ten commandments.
-this guilt is a product of our impending judgment.
-It's true whether your believe it or not.
-the Bible says Jesus suffered to take away your sins and guilt.
-The Bible promises you won't feel guilty anymore if you repent and trust Jesus.
-Then, we won't feel guilty for anything - lust, adultery, etc.
-No other religion can wipe away the guilt you feel for doing bad stuff.
-all those false religions still have sacrifices through prayer, doing good works, etc.
-Not Christianity! Once we trust Jesus and repent, we're literally not guilty anymore of doing bad things.
-This is so simple a child could understand it. "Obey the gospel, and guilt is replaced by absolute assurance of everlasting life"

Without writing out the whole paragraph, this is literally what Ray is saying. I hope that any Christians reading this realize that Comfort it making a mockery of your religion. People should feel guilty for not doing good works, because doing good works is the ethical thing to do. I cannot believe that Comfort continually mocks and berates atheists for being the scum of the earth while simultaneously claiming that his savior will wash away all of his crimes and he will no longer have to feel guilty for committing any of them.

On top of this did Comfort really even answer the question? The right god is apparently the one that makes all of your guilt for doing bad things wash away. Honestly, I don't understand this. Comfort claims that atheists reject god so that they can do whatever they want without feeling guilty, but his version of Christianity seems to imbue the exact same sentiments that he rails against. What is to stop someone from committing adultery and then saying, "It's okay! It's no big deal! I accept Jesus, so I don't feel guilty for betraying my wife. God will forgive me!" The only "argument" he has to fall back on, then, is the argument that if you're a "True Christian", then you'll never do bad things. I am going to go out on a limb and assume that Ray considers himself a "True Christian" yet he admits that he has broken every one of the ten commandments - he says this is okay, because Jesus will forgive poor little sinful Ray Comfort (p55). Apparently atheists are terrible scum because they are "moral free agents", but with all guilt for immorality washed away, Comfortian Christians are more morally free than atheists - believe in Jesus and if you hurt society, you don't have to feel guilty because you are forgiven. Be an atheist, and if you hurt society you feel guilty because you've gone against social morals. This form of moral extremism is dangerous to society and I can't understand why Comfort is advocating it.

If you're forgiven for doing bad things, and your god allows you to feel no guilt at all for doing bad things, what is the impetus to stop doing those bad things? I'd personally rather people follow a god that makes people feel appropriately guilty for harming others. Lack of feelings of guilt for doing bad is a classic sign of sociopathy.

Ray Comfort's morality scares me. It offends my ethics. If a subjective feeling of guiltlessness at one's moral crimes is how one finds the right god, I hope that no one finds the right god.

Faith Infiltration: St. Louis Friends (Quakers)

For those of you just joining us, you'll be amused to know that Flimsy and I attend church every week. But, it's not what you think - we don't bring any flammable substances with us. Each week, he and I (along with the occasional friend) attend a different church. So far, we've been to twenty.

This week, we headed over to a St. Louis Friends Meeting, which is the weekly worship of Quakers.

Quakerism is quite interesting - it is a Christian religious denomination formed in England in the 17th century by people who were dissatisfied with the creeds and hierarchical structures of typical churches. There are two types of church services: "Programmed" and "unprogrammed' worship. Programmed worship is close to a typical protestant services, with a sermon, hymns and prayers. We went to an unprogrammed type worship.

We entered the small church building and were met with the greeter, who asked if we were familiar with the unprogrammed Quaker worship style. We were, but only because we had looked it up prior to coming.

Inside the sanctuary, pews are arranged in a loose circle.

 

Worship service begins when someone - anyone - enters the sanctuary and sits in a pew. Others follow or mill about silently. There is no leader.

Quakers who practice unprogrammed services believe that messages come to any member from God. When a member feels that he or she is being called to give a message, he or she stands, gives the message, and sits back down. Silence follows in order to meditate on the messages. Sometimes, and entire service occurs in silence. 

We sat for about 20 minutes, watching people enter. Some people entered and sat, a few people fiddled with their cell phones for a few minutes, and eyes slowly closed. At this point, a woman stood up and said somthing about letting Jesus into our hearts. 

Another 15 minutes went by, and a man stood up and told a story, which went something like this:

A man is walking up a mountain, searching for enlightenment. As he walks up the mountain, he sees an old man carrying a backpack making his way down the mountain. The man stops the old man and asks, "How do you find enlightenment?". The old man looks at him, and puts down his backpack. The man says, "I see. How do you know when you have found it?" The man picks up his backpack and continues down the mountain.

 Ten minutes pass, and an older lady stood and recounted the story of her week and how her husband was out of town. She intentionally stayed alone and did not listen to the radio or watch TV - she just wanted to enjoy being alone with her inner thoughts. She said that this caused her inner self to come to the front of her mind.

More minutes pass, and a young woman (who was totally beautiful!) stood to talk about how interesting it is that all of today's messages are about inner journeys. While she is doing this, a pile of young children file in holding Easter baskets. They sit as silently as possible, though after ten minutes or so they are fiddling with their baskets, putting them on top of they heads.

Worship service ends when an "elder" shakes the hand of his neighbor. After this, everyone else shakes hands. Announcements were made and then everyone went in a circle, stood up and intruduced themselves. We said that we were visitors and that we visited a different church every week. I told them this was our twentieth church, and everyone laughed.

Quakerism seems fairly liberal to me theologically, at least that is the impression I get from attending service and reading about them on the wide, wide internet. They seem to be of the mindset that you don't need to believe in any specific creed or dogma to be a member.

*Flimsyman* - Not bad.  I can't really say that I have any particular problem with these folks.  I was occasionally distracted by a vision of someone standing and saying, "Well, I just feel led by God to say that yes, he wants us all to know that he does indeed really, really, hate faggots."  This was entertaining to me specifically because it would have been so out of place.  They weren't at all put off by the fact that we had been to so many churches, or at the implication that we wouldn't be back to theirs.  They were friendly, yet they definitely did not venture into creepy Oh-Happy-God-Jebus-Day-PEOPLE!-Hello-HowAreYou- YOU SHOULD COME BACK HERE ALL THE TIME land.  How amazing - they were friendly while not doing their best pushy salesman impression.  Good folks, even if we disagree on a great many things.  They even mentioned during the anouncments that the Missouri State Budget for this year cuts funding for certain services for children and disabled persons, and how unhappy they all are with this.  Good folks, indeed.

And the young woman who stood and noted that all the day's messages were about our inner journeys was a young black woman with dreads down to her butt.  Ziztur and I agree that she was extremely hot.

Ray a Day 5:1

Onto a new chapter in our review of Ray Comfort's book.  Our good Catholic friend, Augustine79 has already hit a few bits of this chapter, so today I'll try to give a backdrop of what this chapter is all about.  It's titled, "What Sets Christianity and Christians Apart?"  In a nutshell, this chapter is all about why Christianity is the one religion to rule them all, and why all other religions are false.

In the introduction, Comfort says that some people may have been deprived of any knowledge of "genuine" Christianity.  As he says, "All they have seen is the inside of a dead Catholic church."  He says that many Christians insist that he is 'casting pearls before swine' in trying to minister to atheists, but that he will persevere.  One must wonder how on earth he can believe that he will convince atheists to change their minds while insulting them as frequently and as vehemently as he does.

I want to touch on a truly deranged sidebar titled "Hope for a 'True Atheist'."  Here we have the 'testimony' of a former supposed atheist who was saved by Jesus.  Pay attention here, this is what Comfort describes as a "True Atheist":

I was a true atheist, addicted to pornography and a big fan of torture. I hated the Bible and literally looked at "contract killer" as a career option. I favored Darwinian abortion of potentially disabled children and agreed with the majority of Adolph Hitler's statements about the disabled and invalid. I fantasized about murder and contemplated suicide and held nothing but hatred in my heart for anyone who told me I was wrong.

So obviously, we have a true sociopath here.  This person is actually criminally insane . . .  And this is what Comfort calls a "true atheist."  Comfort does not specify where he got this supposed testimony, but he posted about it on his blog, Atheist Central.  Ziztur and I hunted, but could not verify this testimony in any way.  The only bit that we came up with was that a commenter under Comfort's post claimed to be this person, Jacques Reulet, and he has a pretty useless blogger profile here.  Let's take this apart piece by piece.

1.  Pornography is not harmful to myself or anyone else.  If it is a genuine addiction, then that would be a different matter, but it would be the addiction that would be harmful to the individual or society, not the pornography.  I personally do have a soft spot in my heart for pornography, because I was celibate for a good long while.  My enjoyment of pornography does not infringe upon anyone's rights, therefore it is completely ridiculous to put it in the same category as the other 'sins' in this list.

2.  "A big fan of torture."  Seriously?  Really, dude?  This line alone makes me doubt the honesty of this 'testimony."  Even if it is accurate, this will make this dude the one single atheist I've ever heard of who would actually say that he was a "big fan of torture."  Besides which, um, . . . do I even need to point out that Comfort's God will torture everyone who doesn't worship him forever?  Ray Comfort makes no bones about it - anyone who has ever felt lust (which we all have felt) is guilty (yeah, that means all of us) and deserves the punishment that God has chosen for us, and that punishment is to be burned alive in hell forever.  Ray Comfort (and a good many other theists I could name) are literally bigger 'fans of torture' than any atheist I know.

3.  I don't have anything against any individual Bible, obviously, but it would not be completely inaccurate to say that I hate the morality and science that can be found there.  Funny that I despise biblical morality precisely because it offends my ethics, in the same way as most of the above paragraph does.  As mentioned in #2, torture and gross injustice and oppression offend my moral conscience, and that's why I reject biblical morality and the biblical God.

4.  How does one even attempt to break into the 'contract killer' business?  Mob contacts?  Military training?

5.  What does 'darwinian abortion' even mean?  Miscarriages?  'Cause, um . . . that's what we would actually be talking about here.  Those women who are least likely to miscarry will obviously have a greater chance of giving birth successfully, thus passing on such traits.  As for aborting potentially disabled children, I also don't know of anyone who actually advocates a societal policy of such a thing.

6.  I'm not entirely sure what Adolf Hitler had to say about the 'disabled and invalid,' it's tough work fishing for such quotes in the sea of love that Hitler had for Jesus.  But seriously, again, no one I know agrees with Hitler on this stuff nowadays.  This seems like just another cheap shot for them to use, to accuse atheists of gross immorality.

7.  If this miniscule sample size (literally, 1 [one]) were in any way indicative of reality, then the prisons would be filled to overflowing with atheist murderers.  I'll even leave out the snarky, sarcastic response to this . . . just Google "atheist prison population" or something similar to get figures if you're interested.  Suffice it to say, atheists (as well as agnostics and other freethinkers) are a moderate-sized chunk of the population at large, yet are a practically non-existent portion of the prison population, especially when it comes to violent crime.

8.  What if I stooped to this level, Ray?  Here's my deconversion story, then:  I was a "True Christian," I went to church every Sunday, I never ate shellfish, I prayed often, I was sure to stone to death any same sex couples that I found, and I never failed to kill someone who blasphemed against God.  Then one day, I realized what a giant fuckwit I had been.  I gave up my silly belief in God, I treated the Bible as nothing more than a silly, ancient tribal myth, and tried my very best to be an ethical person, treating others with respect, compassion, and human rights."  Would I ever say such a thing?  No, that would be completely dishonest.  Would I publish it if I found such a testimony?  No, that would imply that at least a significant portion of Christinans fit this horrifyingly condescending stereotype.  Would I find such a testimony, publish it, and them explicitly state that this is what a "True Christian" is like?  Absolutely not, that would mean that I was acting like Ray Comfort, and I'm quite insulted by the mere thought.  That anyone could read this and not see how actively and deliberately Comfort is fomenting hatred and bigotry is completely staggering to me.

Expelled: #1 documentary?

I happened to stumble upon the website for the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and I noticed something curious. I couldn't help but notice a personal message from Ben Stien on the front page near the top:

I want to thank you America for making Expelled the #1 documentary of 2008. This movie has made real change from the legislature to the classroom and I want to encourage you to continue to support the cause.

The #1 documentary according to whom? The people of Expelled ran a press release claiming that it was the #1 documentary in American in 2008 0n October 17th, just hours before it was dwarfed by Religulous. Religulous was released October 1st (Expelled was released on April 18), and three weeks after it's release, it had grossed 9.1 million dollars. Expelled may have been the #1 documentary in 2008 on October 17, but it had lost it's position by October 22nd. This is especially amusing in light of the difference in the most number of theatres (per week) each was shown in:

Religulous: 502
Expelled: 1052

It does not speak very highly of the people of Expelled that they continue to be dishonest. Religulous made almost twice as much money as expelled, in half the amount of theatres.

So, what types of "real change from the legislature to the classroom" has Expelled actually caused? Do they mean the bit where he used a clip of John Lennon's "Imagine" in the film, and Yoko Ono attempted to sue him for copyright infringement and then later dropped the suit? Because I'm not seeing any changes worth mentioning.

Ray a Day - 4:4

Here we have a question from a skeptic and "answer" from Comfort that is just extraordinarily entertaining.  A skeptic asks, "So, a talking snake, a man living in a whale's stomach for three days, a virgin pregnancy, and a man walking on water don't contradict logic?"

Comfort's reply:

So, a talking parrot, three hundred people flying through the sky in a big tin can called a 747, a human being growing inside another person, and men walking on the moon don't contradict logic?  Of course they do, if you are small-minded.  However, science and technology have exploded the word. . . . when we are born again, the supernatural takes logic into a new realm.  When we discover that the supernatural is a reality our mind is suddenly expanded and logic explodes.

*Sigh*  Where to begin?

Okay, first off, do we even need to explain the obvious differences between the talking snake in the Bible and a "talking" parrot?  We have evidence that certain types of parrot can mimic human speech, the most obvious evidence being the fact that we can directly observe this as often as we feel like.  It does not  "contradict logic" to accept a claimed phenomenon if you can easily observe that phenomenon.  Ziztur tells me that in very rare cases, parrots are capable of actually forming sentences and responding to a stimulus with an actual intelligent thought process (usually, they simply mimic human speech).  We have mountains of evidence that snakes are not as intelligent as parrots.  The snake in the Bible was not simply mimicking human speech, he was forming actual thoughts and audible speech as intelligently (or more intelligently) than Adam and Eve.  This hasn't ever been observed, and in fact we have no reason to believe that such a thing would be even remotely likely to occur.

That's all this little list of his is, really.  It should be obvious that everyone knows that these things don't contradict logic because we can observe these things happening (the bit about a human being growing inside of another person is particularly stupid).  It's espesially bizarre that Comfort goes on to say that all these biblical claims are possible because anything is possible with supernatural forces involved.  Every one of the counter-examples that Comfort gives (parrots, 747's, etc.) can be explained with purely physical explanations, without resorting to the supernatural in any way.  Yet, "supernatural forces" is exactly the so-called explanation that Comfort and the like must resort to in order to explain biblical claims like these.

The way I see it, the root of the problem is this:  Comfort applies his reasoning in a completely inconsistent way, and, of course, completely dodges the actual question.  He claims that accepting Jesus opens our eyes to the existence of the supernatural, and that all these seemingly impossible things become easy to "explain" with supernatural forces involved.

If supernatural forces exist, and all possible phenomena are easily capable of occurring when supernatural forces are involved, then how can we know anything for certain?  How can Comfort know that evolution hasn't occurred?  How does he know that it's not just snakes and parrots, but also mice and dolphins that are much more intelligent than us humans, and are laughing at us behind our backs?  How does he know that the Bible is completely useless, and that God actually wishes for us all to study science and behave in an ethical way?

And that is the heart of the matter:  To all these questions, Comfort is left with only one possible response - because the Bible doesn't say so.  But that, of course, begs the question:  Why does he believe in the Bible, thus accepting all of the Bible's supernatural claims, while rejecting supernatural claims that contradict his scripture?  This is the question that he dances around in his response.  If a Christian wants to convince a naturalist that they should accept the Bible, or any other supernatural assertion, then they have to actually provide evidence or a logical argument to this effect.  To simply say that, "Once you believe in the supernatural, then supernatural forces explain how the illogical can be logical!" is a cheap dodge, and obviously circular to boot.

Oh, now I am sad...

The other day I got one of these awesome pendants from SurlyRamics.

I was pleased to wear it for a few weeks, until yesterday. As I was walking out to my car from class, I saw something dangle from the corner of my eye. I was wearing a lanyard with my student ID and several keys, a backpack, and clutching my huge pile of car and house keys, so I just took off my lanyard, annoyed at all of the swaying things I was wearing.

I realized when I got home that the dangling thing was my necklace, falling off in the hall.

 

Now, I have a serious sad. I went back to the building and asked security, and all of the offices in the hall if someone had turned it in. Nope.  No one found or turned in my pendant. Sad. I can only assume someone took it, so I hope they somehow get more use out of it than I did.

Ray a Day Guest Post: Augustine79

Here is a guest post by Augustine79, our resident ethical Catholic!

In Ray Comfort’s book, You can lead and Atheist to Evidence but You Can’t Make Him Think, he proposes that Christian theology purports that human moral action does not lead one to salvation. In other words, God does not care about right living with a pure conscience, as long as a human being believes in Christ. My intention here is to expose, to the best of my ability, accurate Christian teaching that flows from human reason, from scripture, and sacred tradition.

Logically, if God is just then it would follow that the deeds of His creation would be taken into account depending on upon whether their actions are immoral or moral. Otherwise, humanity would have absolutely no intrinsic value and goodness, insofar as it can be known either through reason or divine Revelation, would mean nothing.

Before I refute Ray’s uncompassionate, heart-wrenching view of God, here is the actual excerpt I will be contesting:

“All manmade religions still offer sacrifices. That’s the altar upon which they are built – the sacrifice of prayer, of giving money, of giving time, doing good works, of doing penance, of fasting, etc. They have to sacrifice, because they still have guilt, because the conscience demands a continual sacrifice. Not so with Christianity. The guilt is removed because the sacrifice was accepted. Completely. And our guilt is dismissed through simple repentance and faith in Jesus.”

Most of the audience who reads this passage would be quite bewildered by these clearly contradictory statement to Christian living. The Bible explicitly states that good works are organically linked to faith as a part of the equation of infused salvation. Ray subscribes to Sola Fide, or faith alone; bringing one to salvation. Ray, and many fundamentalists hold this view based on Romans 4. However, St. Paul never used this term, and furthermore exposed that justification by faith is something you have you do as well as believe. The only place in the Bible where ‘faith alone’ is used is in the Epistle of James. This passage also proves that salvation involves right action. ““What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can such faith save him? …You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only…? For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” (James 2:14, 24, 26)

In addition to this, the sacrament of Baptism is known in scripture and tradition to remove original sin. However, Ray would view this as a human work, therefore no grace would be infused within the individual. It is arrogant for Ray to assume that he is saved for eternity based solely on belief, and moral works are superfluous.

Here are excerpts from catholic.com providing scriptural and traditional evidence that this notion supported by most fundamentalist protestants is one hundred percent plain wrong.

“Scripture teaches that one’s final salvation depends on the state of the soul at death. As Jesus himself tells us, "He who endures to the end will be saved" (Matt. 24:13; cf. 25:31–46). One who dies in the state of friendship with God (the state of grace) will go to heaven. The one who dies in a state of enmity and rebellion against God (the state of mortal sin) will go to hell.

For many Fundamentalists and Evangelicals it makes no difference—as far as salvation is concerned—how you live or end your life. You can heed the altar call at church, announce that you’ve accepted Jesus as your personal Savior, and, so long as you really believe it, you’re set. From that point on there is nothing you can do, no sin you can commit, no matter how heinous, that will forfeit your salvation. You can’t undo your salvation, even if you wanted to.”

“Regarding the issue of whether Christians have an "absolute" assurance of salvation, regardless of their actions, consider this warning Paul gave: "See then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise you too will be cut off" (Rom. 11:22; see also Heb. 10:26–29, 2 Pet. 2:20–21).”

“One can be confident of one’s present salvation. This is one of the chief reasons why God gave us the sacraments—to provide visible assurances that he is invisibly providing us with his grace. And one can be confident that one has not thrown away that grace by simply examining one’s life and seeing whether one has committed mortal sin. Indeed, the tests that John sets forth in his first epistle to help us know whether we are abiding in grace are, in essence, tests of whether we are dwelling in grave sin. For example, "By this it may be seen who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not do right is not of God, nor he who does not love his brother" (1 John 3:10), "If any one says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen" (1 John 4:20), "For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome" (1 John 5:3).”

“Likewise, by looking at the course of one’s life in grace and the resolution of one’s heart to keep following God, one can also have an assurance of future salvation. It is this Paul speaks of when he writes to the Philippians and says, "And I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1:6). This is not a promise for all Christians, or even necessarily all in the church at Philippi, but it is a confidence that the Philippian Christians in general would make it. The basis of this is their spiritual performance to date, and Paul feels a need to explain to them that there is a basis for his confidence in them. Thus he says, immediately, "It is right for me to feel thus about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel" (1:7). The fact that the Philippians performed spiritually by assisting Paul in his imprisonment and ministry showed that their hearts were with God and that it could be expected that they, at least in general, would persevere and remain with God.”

It is important for theists and atheists/skeptics alike to know this simply because most people receive incorrect information regarding Christian doctrine, and are consequently turned off from organized religion altogether. Its astounding and appalling that Ray dismisses sacrifices that are inherently part of Christian living. Prayer, fasting, charity, and putting yourselves before others are all integral to the Christian faith. Christianity is not only about saving yourself, but spreading peace throughout our world through humble servitude. St. Augustine stressed in his grandiose work, The City of God, that Christians are on this earth to improve upon the temporal world by serving the interests of society in general through the enhancement of social ethics and morality.

Resurrection clause included in plea bargain

According to CNN, a woman in Maryland starved her one year old child to death after her religious leader decreed her son to be a "demon" because he would not say "amen" after meals.

After denying food, her son died. The woman has pleaded guilty to the death of her son, but as part of a plea bargain, all charges will be dropped if her son is resurrected.

The condition was made a part of Ria Ramkissoon's plea agreement, officials said. She entered the plea Monday in Baltimore, Maryland, to a first-degree felony count of child abuse resulting in death, her attorney, Steven Silverman, said Tuesday

Ramkissoon, a member of a group called One Mind Ministries, believes Javon Thompson, her year-old son, will rise again, and as part of her plea agreement, authorities agreed to the clause.

In court Monday, it was clarified that the "resurrection clause" would apply only in the case of Javon's actual resurrection -- not a perceived reincarnation, Silverman said.

Ramkissoon and the others are accused of denying Javon food after the group's leader, a 40-year-old woman who goes by the name Queen Antoinette, decreed the boy was a demon since he refused to say "amen" after meals, Silverman said.

"Ria would cling to him every day and try to get him to say 'amen,' " Silverman said. Eventually, Queen Antoinette ordered that Ramkissoon be separated from the child, he said.

Javon is believed to have died in December 2006, court documents allege. Following his death, the group members put the boy's body in a back room, and "everyone was directed to come in and pray," according to the documents. "The Queen told everyone that 'God was going to raise Javon from the dead.' Javon remained in the room for an extended period of time (in excess of one week). The resurrection never took place."

Authorities believe the boy's body was then placed into a wheeled suitcase along with mothballs and fabric-softener sheets, documents said. Prosecutors allege Antoinette opened the suitcase periodically and sprayed its interior with Lysol to mask the decomposition odor.

The group then moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and befriended a man who agreed to take care of their luggage before they left, documents said. The body was found in April 2008, still inside the suitcase, in the man's storage shed.

 God can do anything, right? It is a terrible tragedy when a child dies, and death by starvation is nothing short of torture.

Ray a Day Guest Post: Tom

May I introduce to you, Mr. Tom!

This segment of Ray's book opens with our atheist asking,

I would like to ask you a couple of relevant question pertaining to the "sacrifice" of Jesus and its purpose. Please logically explain why an omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent God would need to sacrifice Himself(as Jesus) to Himself(God) in order to forgive man of sins against Him(God)? The entire premise seems totally absurd."

     When I read this, I was looking forward to read how Ray was going to justify this "sacrifice", and hopefully understand this for as I've been wondering this myself. Now, the first part of his reply, on the surface at least, appears to be agreeing with our atheist, by saying "I appreciate the way you said that the sacrifice of the Cross seems absurd. It does." Did anyone else catch that? If read quick, it appears as though he is agreeing with our atheist's saying that the sacrifice seems absurd, while in reality, he isn't.

Instead, he goes on to one of his little stories to try to explain his point of view, in a very similar manner to the one he used back in Ray a Day 3:1.

He starts it out with "Imagine if I said to you, 'I just sold my house, my car, and used all my savings to pay a fine for you.'" And then, in the very next paragraph, he rewords his whole story to take it from making no logical sense, to making even less sense, by making it sound like the person with the fine has really messed up, with the fine coming from numerous violations that just mount one on top of the other. And now, out comes the use of verses from the bible to try to support his point. Here, I actually did something that I haven't done in a while, got out a bible and looked them up, so that I could see exactly what he was referencing.

He claims that we don't know that we've broken God's law and are in trouble. And, just for good measure, he tries to put down atheists by saying that are in a "drunken atheistic stupor" before continuing to say that we have ignored our conscience while rushing to sin. Last time I checked, paying attention to your conscience and being an atheist, or any religious preference for that matter, are mutually exclusive. From here, he goes on to describe how god is "all knowing", and how our "behavior" has made him angry at us.

At this point, he is referencing verse after verse to support his point, and so far they are in support of his point.

Now, he decides to show how as you lie to people that are more important, the punishment goes up. That's something that I've known since I was little, and most other people also know.

And now, a demonstration of Ray's logic, just to prepare you.




We're back, and Ray is going on about how sacrifice doesn't work to reconcile your "sin", and how the Aztecs would conduct human sacrifices to appease the gods when they felt that they had angered them, and then says that "any sacrifice we make is an abomination to God."

Here, I must contradict Ray, by also quoting verse. If you look to Leviticus 1:1 to 7:18, it not only outlines how to make sacrifices and offerings, but also how to atone for one's sins and transgressions as well. If god were so against sacrifices, why then would he have told Moses the process, in detail, for conducting sacrifices and offerings? The only part of what Ray said regarding sacrifice that agrees with this part of the Bible is that human sacrifice isn't acceptable, and is an abomination.

Then, he goes back to trying to explain how Jesus' dying on the cross was a sacrifice to save everyone from sin, after saying himself that all sacrifices are an abomination. And what's he do, quote another verse. Here he introduces a rather interesting irony. Jesus was actually god on earth, but of the three verses he referred to, one actually says it, one implies it, and one is barely even related to what he is trying to say. Now, if Jesus was god, then how is sacrificing him actually a sacrifice? Going back to his story, it would be like the one who was going to pay the fine for you being the one that it was paid to. Doesn't look like much of a sacrifice if you ask me.

Ray is trying to claim that the fact that Jesus was sacrificed on the cross was too save us from death by mentioning that he was raised from the dead. This, when looked at from a scientific standpoint, and knowing what happens when someone is crucified, would be impossible. When someone is crucified, from the angle that they hang at on the cross, their lungs will start to fill with fluid. They also have a hard time breathing, and the only way to get a deep breath is to pull their body up with their arms, which from the location of the spikes, creates excruciating pain. Those two things together, along with exposure, combine to kill the victim. And, once dead, your body immediately begins to decay, and the brain is the first thing to be affected functionally, while the digestive tract is where the main decay begins at. This would make his rising from the dead impossible, and based scientific fact regarding what happens after you die, the biggest hoax in human history.

He's tries to use this to show why giving money to charities, praying, and other self sacrifice won't help you when it comes to sins. If you look at the fact that when the bible was originally written, livestock was the measure of your wealth and social status, then this actually makes very little sense. If you were to update the instructions on how to make a sacrifice according to what is written in Leviticus to modern terms, you would literally give money to the church, for the priest to sacrifice for you, to atone for your sins.

He proposes that the whole reason that god sacrificed Jesus as atonement for our sins is that it would be out of his character to just forgive us. Now, if it were out of his character to forgive us, then why would he have Jesus die for our sins as a sacrifice, after providing everything needed? If his character isn't one of forgiveness, and he were bound to his character, then why would he go out of his way and give us a means to forgive those sins? It just doesn't add up. Only for him to say that if we don't repent, we'll pay the price. Now, if you don't believe in a heaven, hell, or afterlife, then what price could he be talking about? There has yet to be any solid scientific proof that heaven, hell, or any other afterlife exist that I've seen, so how would we pay for not repenting? By dying, which everything that is living is bound to do at some point.

Ray finishes up by claiming that he has proven his point, which he has danced around as carefully as he could. He failed to logically explain the "sacrifice" of Jesus. Nowhere did he say or explain how it makes any sense to make a sacrifice to yourself, and still have it count as a sacrifice.

He closes this section up by saying "For the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God," only to throw in a post script saying that if it still seems absurd to read that quote through to figure out why it seems absurd.

From reading this, he seems to only like the parts of the Bible that he can use to support his opinion, and to pretend that the others don't exist. And the whole while, when asked a question that needs a logical explanation, to dance around it and provide no real answer to the question. If I were to base my religious decisions off of Ray Comfort, I would be looking more at anything other than Christianity.

This has been Tom doing my guest Ray A Day post. Hope you all have also seen the lack of true logic that Ray uses. Thank you Ziztur for this opportunity.

If You Can Raed Tihs, You Msut Be Raelly Smrat

Fox news actually published a bit of skepticism, so today when I went outside to my car, a pig was hovering around near the neighbor's front porch. Granted, it was in the scitech section.

Have you ever gottan an e-mail or read something like this:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteers be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe

I imagine most people read this, understand it, and think that the information presented in the text is factual because the actual text proves it. I mean, here we are, reading a bunch of words wherin their first and last letters are the same but the rest are jumbled, and we can read it just fine, but maybe slightly slower than usual. the text tells us that we can do exactly what we're doing - we're reading jumbled words, and it tells us we can read jumbled words. The proof is right there.

Not so fast, believers of funky paragraphs! For one, there was never a study done at Cambridge University. While some people can read the letters of jumbled up words if the first and last letters are the same, the ability to do so depends very heavily on context and the type of word being jumbled. Matt Davis of the MRC Cognition and Brain Unit has a page up which completely breaks down and explains the letter, and why it is mostly bunk.


But to illustrate the point, here we have three sentances in which the words are jumbled using the same rules as the original letter:



1) A vheclie epxledod at a plocie cehckipont near the UN haduqertares in Bagahdd on Mnoday kilinlg the bmober and an Irqai polcie offceir

2) Big ccunoil tax ineesacrs tihs yaer hvae seezueqd the inmcoes of mnay pneosenirs

3) A dootcr has aimttded the magltheuansr of a tageene ceacnr pintaet who deid aetfr a hatospil durg blendur

I am going to bet that these sentances were progressively harder to read for you. That's because fewer of the words are short (1-3 letter words can't be jumbled) and rather than just flipping adjacent letters (porbelm vs pborlem), the letters are placed furthur from their original positions. So, it's not really true that the "huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe"

Ray a Day: 4:3

Today's angry skeptics asks Ray:

the Bible itself is presumed to be the Word of God written down by inspired men simply because the men said they were inspired? Or is there something else? Also, if the entire Bible, OT and NT, are the inerrant Word, how are the differences between the OT and NT reconciled?

Ray responds by saying that there are lots of questions one can ask about the Bible, but the whole point can be summed up as man violating the law of his god. Comfort says that death and then damnation in hell are our just (I.E. the correct) punishment for the crimes we have committed against God (the usual crimes: lying, lust, adultery, hatred, etc). that's okay thought because God is so merciful. He is merciful because he knew that the human beings he created were going to sin and thus deserve hell, so he sent himself down in human form to sacrifice himself to himself so that instead of humans suffering death and hell, he suffers death. Ray says, "He freely gives the gift of everlasting life. that's the gospel, and if it's true, then it is the most incredible news that humans could ever hope to hear"

He goes on to say that if he picked up an instruction book for some kind of appliance, he would know that said instruction book went to said appliance by testing it's claims - follow instructions in the book for the appliance and see if the book's instructions match up to the actual performance of the appliance.

The is the claim of the instruction book, "He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest [reveal] myself to him" (John 14:21). Either that's true, or it isn't.

He basically ends his answer by saying we should trust what the book says and if we do, we'll see that the Bible is awfully true, and questions we ask will "be asked in a humble awe"

You'll probably notice that Ray not-so subtly didn't bother to answer the question at all. He Basically says that we should assume the Bible is inerrant, and if we do, we'll see that it is inerrant.

It is interesting that Ray speaks of this "incredible truth" that his god created us knowing that we would sin and damning us all to death and hell, but then he sent himself down to earth as the most perfect blood sacrifice instead of us.

this is the most bizarre type of justice I have ever heard, and I am surprised that so many people believe it without really questioning what it is really saying. to be flat out honest, I didn't think much of this story for the longest time, it just seemed normal to me - I think this is because even though I have been a secularist all of my life, I have heard the Jesus-came-down-to-save-us story so many times, it took me a long time to realize how bizarre it actually is. The god character of the Christian Bible just does not make sense.

The whole appliance analogy just does not fit with the specific analogy that Comfort uses. If you want to believe the Bible is true, then you will twist and contort your thoughts to make it so - just like if I want to believe that I am an Indigo child. This is not a testable claim because it is not falsifiable.

Most of the belief-centered claims in the Bible are not testable, and this is why they are not worthy as a hypothesis.

Remember the witch-hunts or early modern Europe? People were really into post-hoc reasoning then - witches accused ot witchcraft were examined for the devil's black mark - if found, then they were hanged for witchcraft. If not found, people often accused them of being so witchy that they were able to make the black marks vanish upon inspection.

Pretty much anyone can see that this kind of reasoning is fatally flawed and dangerous. When applied to belief in the Bible, the same exact reasoning goes unchecked - if you're a "true believer", then you see the Bible for it's "inerrancy", and if you're not, it is because Jesus hasn't opened your eyes to the magic and wonder of the holy texts.

The same logic applies to other holy texts: He who believes in Allah and Mohammad as his prophet will have Allah reveal himself to him. Same logic, but try this on a theist and they will probably protest. This same sort of thinking applies to people who believe in psychics, EVP's, and other "paranormal" trappings. You apparently have to want the bible to be true before it can be shown to be true. Telling me, an atheist, that I don't believe the bible and don't understand the bible because I have not accepted Jesus into my heart is a cheap cop-out and fails to address any issues I have brought up.

March's visits!

In the month of March I got a record 4,346 unique visitors and 8,457 visits. This is approaching twice the number of unique visitors that I got last month (4346), and is a 53% increase in total visits.

I must be doing something right! Though I don't get nearly the hits that Pharyngula gets (PZ Myers says he got 2,296,911 visits in March).  Assuming PZ is talking about any visits and not just unique visits, that means I am .003681901%  as awesome/controversial/known as he is.

I want more, MORE! visitors are like an addictive drug, I need more and more as time goes on to feed my precious ego.

The visits, Ziztur wantsss them, my preccccccioussssssss.......

Ray a Day Guest Post: Alien

Here is a guest Ray a Day by The Alien, who is my longtime friend (we've known each other like 10 years):

I am sure I am adding to the beating of a dead, decimated, now barely visible as once a living being horse here with my post, however that does seem to be the point of the Ray A Day blog entries, so I will also enjoy adding to the sense-ful beating. Ray says:

Yet God, in His justice and holiness, cannot let our sins remain unpunished. More than that, because of His love for us, He hates it that sin separates us from Him. He knows even better than we how desperately we need saving, and the only One powerful enough to save us is the One Who created us in the first place. God, therefore, did the only thing He could do that would satisfy both His justice and His love for us. In the Person of Jesus Christ, he took our sins upon Himself, thereby paying our debt and offering us a chance at salvation and a restored relationship with Him.

The Alien holds her head in her hands as she reads this, amazed at the fact that a rather educated-seeming man could write something that contradicts itself not once, but twice, in just one paragraph. It starts with idea that God is All. There is Nothing Without God - note that starts the bible itself. It's the first...words. "In The Beginning God Created the Heavens and the Earth."

If God created everything, and everything is created by God, then nothing can be not created by God. The snake, the devil, all was created by him...and what the Alien fails to understand how the Devil cannot be his creation or become something different than his creation - if nothing else exists that is not of God's creation. I will attempt to render this in mathematical format as I see it. Let's represent God as one. We'll represent the Devil as 0 as it is seen as different, outside of God.

1=1 (there is nothing else)

1+0=1 (Even with the addition of something new, everything still equals God.)

We'll take more numbers here. Thinking of everything God has created, we can assume that they were all a part of him at some point as everything was God to start. The number is huge, so I will make a more comprehensible number here, let's say 321.

321 = 1^321  (All parts of God)

321+0=321 (All parts of God plus devil...don't do anything)

No matter what we do mathematically here (in basic math anyway), the devil does not, cannot, hurt anything. It cannot separate or divide something which is part of a larger something. How is it, Mr. Comfort, if 0 cannot separate 321 parts of God, how can the devil? He cannot, of course, because in the normal world (not the mathematical one), he does not exist! He cannot exist as away from God when it is impossible by the words of your own bible, to be separate from him! No matter what we do, feel, think, or say, we are saying everything that can only exist because we are a part of Him!

Of course, the next part just reads even more insensibly using my same thoughts above. By the words of the Bible and by Comfort here, apparently a Part of God came down to reside in another Part of God to help cleanse other Parts of God from something that does not exist.( I shall use the |, which means Restriction.) Mathematically, 1+1=2 | 0

So us Parts of God needed another Part of God to pay our debt against a nonexistance that does nothing to us in order to guarantee our restoration of a relationship with God.

The Alien wonders if any Christians actually think of the mathematics behind their God and Devil's existance -  because no matter what way I crunch the numbers, even if God exists, God is highly more likely to exist than the Devil is, and Jesus suddenly seems...unnecessary.

D.C declares today National Atheist's Day

From CNN

Today, spokespeople for Washington D.C. officially declared today to be "National Non-Believer's Day".

Against the backdrop of leaders from American national and local Atheist, secular, Humanist and Rationalist groups, President Barak Obama signed into law the new Federal Holiday.

"We are very pleased to be able to recognize non-believers as a vital and growing part of our community," President Obama said.

It's so cool that we finally get our own day of recognition! Theists get their National Day of Prayer, and we get our national day of we're-just-not-buying-it. Sweet!

Ray a Day Guest Post: Nigel

Here is a guest post by Nigel!

This section was quite interesting as it's something I have never really looked into very much 'End Time Prophecy'

Here is what the 'Atheist' has to say.

The question raises (for me at least) the whole issue of the rapture. Proof for the existence of God? I think that would pretty much do it for me... According to the myth, people will vanish, the dead will rise and head off to heaven - and will most likely be under the control of a Jewish homosexual world leader... Let us not forget that we will also get a red moon and a black sun - a huge meteor will burn one third of the grass and trees - 200 million horse like creatures will run rampant - oh and fresh water will become blood. Tell you what, if all that bunk comes to pass - I will have another think about this god, I can't promise anything, even then, but I will certainly have another think. Really water turned to blood and horse-like creatures - golly.

Wow scary stuff. I thought I better look up and see if his claims really fit the bible. Now some of this stuff was actually a lot harder to pin down than I expected. Lots of hits in google for Homosexual Jewish Antichrist, but frankly not many of them seem to specify bible verses to back up the claims. This is nothing against our 'Athiest' because a quick google will indicate that many many people (like John Hagee) think this is all true, but the biblical basis is actually pretty thin.

Apparently the origin of the Antichrist being Gay Jew is this verse.

Daniel 11:37 Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all

And Jewish is also apparently from a Tribe (Dan) being mentioned in Jerimiah 8:16 and NOT mentioned in Revelations 7.

Here is the relevant verse about the sun and moon being covered.

Revelation 6:12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;

And of course Water to Blood is a relatively common bible theme including

Revelation 11:6 These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.

Revelation 16:4 And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood

The Meteor has name by the way, 'Wormwood'.

Revelation 8:7-11 The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up

And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood;

And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.

And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;

And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.

And here is our Army of Monsters. (Horse-like doesn't really begin to describe it)

Revelation 7-10,16

And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men.

And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions.

And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle.

And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months

And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them

Wow some fantastic stuff there, lets see what Ray has to say.

May I say respectively, you may have been watching too many Hollywood movies, or the Discovery Channel, or maybe reading stuff on weird Web sties, or eating too much cheese before you got to bed (that can cause bad dreams).

I wonder if Ray included Kirk's 3 'Left Behind' films in this assesment?

I would suggest that you take a deep breath, then read the Bible with a humble hear, praying that God would show you what is prophetically symbolic and what is literal. If you don't do that, you will end up with the nightmare that you have just related. The Bible is a book filled with symbolism - from Ezekiel's wheels, to the dreams of Joseph and Daniel, to the Book of Revelation, and of course, many of the words of Jesus. Again some things are literal and some are symbolic.

Wait, what? Did I read that correctly...

Again some things are literal and some are symbolic.

Huh, ok, so Ray is quite happy to accept that some of the Bible is symbolic. Just not Genesis 1&2 I guess. Couldn't possibly be, No way, No how.

When Jesus said that He was "the Door," He didn't mean a do with literal hinges that swing back and forth. He is the entry to heaven(see also John 14:6). When He said that his flesh was meat and we were to eat it, He wasn't speaking of cannibalism. We spiritually "taste and see that the Lord is good." When He held the cup of wine and said "This is My blood" and told us to drink it, He wasn't speaking of His literal blood (He couldn't have been, because His blood was still running through His veins)

Wine is often used as a symbol of blood - Jesus turned the water into wine at the Cana wedding, and God turned water into blood with the plagues of Egypt. All these symbols and events have hidden and wonderful meanings behind them for the are willing to dig a little. If you think about it, thing that we value in life usually have to be searched out - gold doesn't just like on top of the ground. You have to search for it. It's the same with the silver, diamonds, pearls, etc, and it's the same with Biblical gems. You have to dig a little to find the riches.

Alright so this hits on one of the I find quite interesting about the way people view the bible. You read it, and then interpret it. You decide to take what sections literally, and what symbolically, and then decide what the verses actually mean. It really is a case of 'Pick your own biblical meaning', no wonder there are so many branches of the church.

As much as I would like to be, I am not a prophecy expert of a even a prophecy buff. I don't get too deeply into it, because so many people end up with weird and strange scenarios, and what's more they all they it right. I prefer to put my time into trying to read people like you with the Gospel. Your salvation is finitely more important to me than my eschatological interpretation.

So basically Ray is saying "Eh, I don't know anything about bible prophecy, don't ask me, get saved"

Then why include this question in the book?